“Sylar has been defeated. Primatech Paper Company is victorious!”
The crowd cheered. As I made my way down from the podium I shook the hands of several young paper enthusiasts. They shouted out to me, “Great job, Mr. Bennet!” and “Four more years!”
Clearly my decision to participate in Sylar’s Bachelor was the right one, even if I didn’t capture the world’s most dangerous brain-eater.
“What do you mean you didn’t capture him, Noah?” Bob asked.
“He got away,” I explained thoroughly.
“What do you mean he got away, Noah?”
“He escaped,” I added.
“But what about your mission accomplished speech, Noah?” he asked.
It was clear that my boss was going to require more details. I decided to start from the beginning…
I told him about Ron Paul stealing my luggage, my date with Sarah Michelle Gellar, my boy band, Samuel L. Jackson being eaten by a shark, making a fruit salad out of Richard Simmons, talking to Mother Gray’s ghost, Samuel L. Jackson cutting his way out of the shark with a lightsaber, and finally how an FBI agent and I made it to the final two.
Primatech teaches us that people manipulation is the key to any good paper sale. Also, we tend to work in pairs. So, naturally, I teamed up with and used Agent Hanson to ensure my capture of Sylar.
“But you failed to capture him, Noah,” King Midas rudely interrupted.
Unfortunately, a manipulator is only as good as the weak-minded fools he has at his disposal, and my fool apparently got her FBI badge from a cereal box and affirmative action.
I specifically told her to wait outside the window with a butterfly net. Everyone knows that Sylars can’t use their magic inside a butterfly net.
By using my own son (by marriage) as a decoy, I managed to get the jump on Sylar, scaring him out the window after being shot in the kidney with mind bullets. (That’s telekinesis, Kyle…Lyle…whatever his name is. He was dead, so my explanation fell on death ears.)
Trusting that Agent Hanson had the fugitive entangled in her entomological trap, I decided to look after my wound. I had some leftover Adam blood in my pocket.
“Looks like there’s only enough for two,” I said to my son, recently turned corpse. “I better take it all just to be on the safe side.”
The blood healed me perfectly, or so I thought. On my way downstairs to check on Agent Hanson, I had to stop to pee thirty-seven times! My kidney was still in bad shape, but I could take care of that later.
I walked outside and found my partner crawling aimlessly away. In the half hour since Sylar leaped out of the window, she managed to crawl approximately two and a half feet. She had failed me. Sylar was gone, despite her bold-fisted determination to continue crawling after him.
I called The Haitian who arrived quickly and mind-zapped her.
Before heading back in to the office, I remembered I had a present waiting for me upstairs. I went back into Sylar’s bedroom and opened the brain box. There was a note.
Brain-Eating Instructions
Step One: Eat Brain
Love,
Sylar
I stared at George Clooney’s encephelon, and the frontal lobe eyed me back without ever blinking. Probably due to the lack of eyelids.
After a couple minutes, I picked up the brain and took a bite. “Holy Cerebellum Supper, Batman. This is delicious! Oh, brother where art thou been all my life?” At that moment, I understood why Sylar killed. Unlike me, he didn’t do it for sport or pleasure or paranoia or to make paper sales. No, he did it for the divine taste of evolved brain. I finished my meal and left the mansion.
They were everywhere! As soon as I stepped outside, I was surrounded. I could barely get to my Nissan. It must have been the Clooney brains. I gained the power of fame.
“Yeah, about that, Noah,” Bob again interrupted. “We’re going to need to remove the ability from you. Fame isn’t ideal for a Primatech agent, Noah.”
“But how can I slip back into anonymity? I didn’t eat Stephen Baldwin brains, ya know.”
“Simple, Noah. We stage a drunken foible, then say you checked into rehab.”
It was a good a plan, but I really had to pee. “Can we hurry this up? I really need to pee.”
“Oh, yeah, Noah,” Bob said. “Your kidney. Should we try some Claire blood?”
“Doesn’t work.”
“Well,” he tossed the vial at me, “take it for Lyle, Noah.”
“Lyle?”
“Your son, Noah.”
I was about to toss it back to him when I had a great idea. If I heal Lyle, then trick him into thinking we share a father-son bond, maybe I could convince him to give me his kidney. Then, after the surgery, I could lock him out of my life forever.
“Thanks,” I said.
“We still have a problem, Noah. Sylar is still out there. He is a threat, a growing threat, to all of humanity, Noah.”
He was right, of course. There was that. But I had also won the competition. Sure, it may seem like an arbitrary victory, but it’s still a victory.
Bob berated me for a few minutes, then realized that essentially he’s blackmailing me into working for him, so he backed off. Beggars can’t be performance-based evaluators.
Sylar’s on the loose. My son is temporarily dead. Samuel L. Jackson killed a shark. And I am Sylar’s Bachelor!
Mission accomplished enough.