Disclaimer: I do not own -Man. It is the property of Katsura Hoshino; I merely borrow the characters for my own amusement.

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Eden’s Precipice

Tykki wonders how he got his name sometimes. It is curiously spelt, yet still conjures the image of a hefty wood-man in the tropics with buggy eyes and leaves for hair. In the next moment, he dismisses his thoughts as ridiculous—names were the preoccupations of humans – normal humans – and he was a Noah, and that was that.

But Rhode doesn’t care, at all.

“Tykki Mikk,” she’d say, rolling the words about her tongue, as if juggling them, pirouetting about the room, as if performing, “Mykki Tikk. Tykki Mykki Mikk.”

It was amusing the first time, less so the second, and none at all the third. He tries the cajoling, the frowning, the scowling, and Rhode being Rhode, ignores him – somewhat – and only redoubles her efforts, to spite him.

(Spite. The inheritance of the Noah, he thinks sometimes, and shoves the thought to the back of his head, because it wasn’t a Noah-like thought, and un-Noah-like thoughts would eventually make him not-a-Noah. And if he were not-a-Noah, he couldn’t keep Tykki happy, which is a bad, bad thing.)

Rhode is clever, and he is her brother, and soon she is cavorting about the room, interspersing her rhyme with an obnoxious jingle. It is a human song, a normal human song, and it doesn’t matter how Rhode happened to learn it, because it soon annoys everyone, excepting maybe the Earl, who even hums along absently sometimes, in a not-altogether-on-key whine.

“M-I-K-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E, Mikkey Mouse, Jasdavi! Mikkey Mouse, Jasdavi!”

(And if the Earl were annoyed, Rhode wouldn’t sing it anymore, anyway—anything to please dear old Daddy-o.)

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Although their esoteric little family can’t seem to stand the humans, it is often quite clear that they cannot live without them. The simplest to explain, the Earl needs humans – the pitiful little things – to create his Akuma, for what other species would think so much of themselves as to equate themselves with God? And subsequently, which species would dare to fly as high as Icarus once did, with the surest possibilities of failure?

(Like Daedalus, the Earl watches them squirm and flail in the filth of their birthright—unlike the father, the Earl has the singular power to save them, and with that power just as gleefully lets them burn, and fall, and drown.)

Rhode – pretty, talented little Rhode – simply wants to play. The eldest of disaster – of chaos – Rhode searches for entertainment (perhaps a reprieve from the heavy burden of responsibility) and that is all humans are to her, playthings, toys. Rhode wants humans to play with.

Tykki though, Tykki sees the humans – some of them, anyway – as his friends. It is a particularly strange sentiment for a Noah, especially so for a Noah who happens to possess such an intense bloodlust (and humans are so easy to kill, after all). And he so does like to imagine their flimsy little limbs separated from their equally feeble bodies, and dashed to a glorious incarnadine splash against some pointy surface far below—below. If they were not made a nest for the insert butterfly name here first.

But then he thinks of his friends, the ones who consider him family too, but as a beloved older brother, Tykki with the curly hair and the thick glasses, Tykki the absentminded, goodhearted, easygoing cardsharp. But that was not all he was.

Some days, Tykki mussed his curls and pushed on his glasses, stepped into his loose-baggy hobo-clothes, and was Tykki, big brother, human. Other days, Tykki slicked back his hair and donned the top hat, dressed in a snazzy tuxedo, and was Tykki, Noah, murderer-executioner, (dandy), cardsharp—a real one.

And so this is what it all brings him to, this ever-present, ever-constant envy of Allen Walker.

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No one had seen Rhode so happy in months, maybe years, and she was positively giddy with it—her steps around the room were light, like floating – were floating – and every movement as if on air, delighted, like a little girl at play.

No one could dispute the cause of such joy, and Tykki knew immediately.

Allen Walker.

He’d asked her why, why him.

And Rhode—she’d looked at him as a big sister would, the eldest would – like he were brain-damaged, or dropped at birth, or both – and she’d continued her dances across the room, with an extra twirl, a pirouette.

He’s special.

And there’d been that giggle, half-smothered by tiny hands, as she remembered him. And of course he is—the boy is different, one who walks with humans and lives for the Akuma. (His very existence he owes to the body fashioned by God as a weapon against the Akuma, the fallen angel’s minions.) Tykki envies him, this duality.

If only it were possible to be the companion of Akuma (as he should be) and the terror of all humans (as also he should be), to have the perfect and proper balance he should have. It’s not like that for him.

Some days, he can hardly stand the company of his fellow Noah much less the presence of Akuma (which he can’t stand, even on his best days). Most days, he wishes that he could be frittering his time away in carefree pursuits with his very human friends (who coincidentally don’t know of Tykki, the one who is not cuddly and friendly, who would kill them without remorse, if only the Earl asked).

It goes without saying that this mindset is not a healthy one for a Noah.

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Names decide who you are, Tykki decides one day, and shakes himself, because he is concerning himself with ridiculous, human matters again. But the tiny part – so very tiny part – of him that finds being one of the Noah a tedious, tedious bore also thinks that he is right.

There is a good part of Tykki that wants to sit down and just relax, and take things easy, and slow, and maybe not legally. He wants to be able to take an hour to walk a few blocks through a small, picturesque town, to hitch a ride in a compartment of a train—a ride that he hasn’t paid for. He wants to do things at his leisure, and to maybe someday reach an earthly paradise with glittering waters and white sands and palm trees, lots and lots of them.

He thinks of Allen Walker, and of his name as well, because there he had time, and one can only think of tropical beauty for so long.

(And because many things he considers somehow bring him back to the topic of Allen Walker—something tells him the effort is pointless, but still, he does it, can’t help it.)

What strikes him is not Allen’s first name, but his last, a word nearly peculiar, and one hardly ever used. One who walks to the store, or to the park, is not called a “walker,” after all.

Tykki admits that this unique trait is probably what caught his attention in the first place, and some other things beside. (He wonders how those firmly set lips would feel beneath his, and continues wondering because Rhode will not be asked—in any case, Rhode would not be likely to tell.)

Allen is clearly Walking somewhere, and where Tykki cannot decipher, or decide, but the more he thinks, the destination clearly is not where he will end up, in an earthly paradise where no one but family will reside, and the rest of pitiful humanity ostracized and exiled into eternity.

And though he is one of the Elect, and blessed by his Father (Millennium Earl, Daedelus the Craftsman), the thought is a little less than fully pleasant.