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Noah of Innocence

Chapter 1

The rain came down in a never ending blanket that concealed the grieving boy from the public eye. His small figure was knelt in front of a grave inscribed Mana Walker. No other words was cast into the rough, cheap stone, the only thing the town was sympathetic enough to provide for the traveller who had only lived among them for the past four days. None of them had had a second thought about the small boy who had travelled with the clown. Over all, the boy was the sort that you would not remember. He was polite and well mannered, as was expected of children in those times. He would often be seen helping Mana out in his clown acts, dressing up as a clown himself to do small tricks, such as acrobats and juggling, but, other than that, the child tended to keep to himself, and none of the town people even knew his name. They had no idea the boy had just lost the only person that had ever loved him. No idea that the child had not left with the rest of the circus troop. No idea that he was still there, kneeling in the rain, slowly freezing, and crying on his own, with no one to comfort or care for him anymore. He was alone, and this he knew. The tears silently ran down his cheeks leaving streaks through the dirt that had settled there when he had slept next to the grave the previous night, with nowhere else to go, and no one to tell him otherwise, he had not left the grave yard since the funeral the day before.

The child was small, even for the five years of life he had so far experienced in the cruel world. Those years had not been happy, and when he had though things were finally starting to brighten a little, this had happened. Mana had died. The child had been born to a young woman, in her early twenties, she had been so looking forward to parenthood, along with her husband, both were so happy when their first child was born. Happy, that is, until they saw it. Saw his arm. It was a horribly disfigured limb, a harsh red with cracked skin, and a strange cross imbedded in the hand that glowed an eerie, sickening green. One look at their, previously presumed perfect, son and the mother had burst into tears. The father had left the house, only to come back hours later drunk out of his mind. And so the boy had spent his first three years living in a house, not a home, where his only family could not even bear to look at him. They hated him. He had ruined everything for them, so they ruined everything for him. They made the poor boy's life hell, and he was not even old enough to understand what he had done wrong nor that the way they treated him was not normal. On his third birthday both the mother and father had had enough of their son. They considered him and embarrassment, and never let him out the house or let him meet anyone outside the family. On that fateful anniversary of his birth they took him out the house for the first time. The child had been overwhelmed with the everyday life he was seeing for the first time, as his parent lead him out of the town and into a carriage. The boy had remained silent throughout the journey, not wanting to disturb his parents' seemingly good moods, as they had not hit him or yelled since they left the house. The journey by carriage had lasted around three hours, and when they had left the warmth, and braved the elements outside his parents had walked though a city, where the boy saw more people than he knew to exist in the world, as he ran to keep up with their longer legs. When eventually they reached a street corner, opposite a cafe, the couple had turned to take in their unwanted son, for the last time. They had told him to wait there and they would come back to collect him. They never did. To this day the boy is still convinced that they did come back, but he missed them, and that it was his fault just like they had always told him.

It was not long after that, he discovered people's disgust towards his arm. After the first incident, involving a couple of street kids who beat him senseless whilst calling him a monster and devil child, he invested in a glove he found in someone's trash. It was much too large for him, and would often fall off, until he found some rope and tied it around his wrist, holding the glove in place. He still wore the same glove now, kneeling in the dirt. He had always been careful not to let anyone see the abomination after the incident and had only slipped up on a few occasions, one of them being with Mana's dog. He had found a small stream one afternoon, around 5 months after being abandoned, and had removed the dirty material briefly to clean it and the disgusting hand beneath. That is when the dog had appeared and licked his hand as though there was nothing at all wrong with the crimson limb. The child had also cried at that time, he could not have told you why, his emotions were too confusing and all he knew for certain at the time: he was relieved. Relieved beyond belief that something could accept his deformation, and happy for this brief sense of normality. The dog visited his humble abode of a cardboard box behind some trash cans in an ally every day after that, and often brought some food with it, bits of a loaf, and sometimes some meat, the boy always presumed it was receiving these from its owner. It was on one of the dogs visits that the unthinkable happened. The child had become a little slack on the wearing of his glove after his hand being excepted by the dog. On one of the brief occasions he took off the garment, another street urchin had seen. The boy had been unaware of his deformation being discovered, until later when he found a group of street kids beating up the dog. They called the dog a monster and devil as it had licked his hand, they thought it was disgusting. They beat the dog and all the boy could do was watch, and cry. When the children finally left, the child stepped out from the shadows. He walked to the dog's side, trembling all over. It was his fault just like his parents had said. Bad things always happened around him, and to those close to him.

It was then that he saw Mana for the first time. The clown had been walking the streets searching for his trusty companion and had heard the shouting and yelling and come to investigate. What he found was his dog. Bloody, bruised and dead. No one else was around so he ran forwards and pulled the poor thing into his arms. He did not notice the boy hiding in the shadows, tears still streaming down his face. Guilt was what the boy was feeling now. Guilt beyond anything he had felt before. And it was here that the child swore he would never let anyone get close to him again. Never would he get attached to another thing or person. Never would he care. He broke this promise the next day. He went to see what had become of the dog, and found a grave by the side of the stream where they had first met. He sat beside the grave and decided he would let himself cry one more time for the dog that had cared, the dog that had accepted him. It was then that he saw Mana a second time, but this time they met. After a few minutes of watching the boy at his dogs grave Mana had spoken, saying he was happy the dog had had another friend other than himself. After that they got to know each other, and, eventually, the child opened himself up to the owner of this dog that had been the only one to ever accept him, and therefore broke the promise. He came to care, became attached, and came to love Mana Walker.

And it was because of this attachment that he was paying so dearly now. He was once again feeling the hopelessness and loneliness of one who had been left behind once again. And, just like the time when Mana had found his dog, he did not see the man hiding in the shadows watching his misery with great interest. This man however was not crying as the boy had been, he was grinning an insanely large grin that took a large portion of his face. This grin did not falter once. Also the man wore a large top hat, with rabbit ears extending from the top, and the man was huge. Huger than Mana had been dressed in his too big clown outfit, and he had a pumpkin toped umbrella shielding him from the rain. This man was known as the Millennium Earl. He was feared, hated and opposed by a small number of people, loved and followed by a select few and unknown to the majority of mankind. Usually he was good at turning up on time for his job, and found the grieving friend or relative fairly quickly, within a few hours of the deaf of their loved one. However on this occasion it had taken a full day to get to the location. This in itself was not entirely unusual as sometimes people's grief came in waves and when the emotion was weak it was difficult to pinpoint, however something was different about this one. The grief was strong enough to call him all the way across the planet, and that in itself was unusual, but what distracted him was something was trying to block the signal that was sent out to him, it was obvious how strong the grief was, however the pull he usually felt was blurred, and this made it difficult to find the exact location. All this interested the earl greatly. Who was this person that was being protected by a force he had never felt before and was obviously inhuman, but felt a human emotion of guilt in such strength he had never seen before? The answer was in front of him now: a little boy.

It was of no matter, he decided, he would win, as all he had to do was convince the boy to bring back his loved one. Stepping out from the shadowed alley, the Earl approached the grieving child. As he approached he took in more details of the boy's appearance. He had grey eyes, like the clouded sky above, which were unfocused. His eyelashes were clumped together from the endless tears and all of this was set into a rather feminine face. The boy's body was extremely small and very thin, suggesting malnourishment or illness, but, due to the state of his clothes, the Earl concluded he was most probably a street kid, so would have troubles finding enough food. Even though the earl had been standing directly in front of the boy for a good minute or two, he was yet to be noticed, this irked him some, and that is when he noticed the boy's eyes never left the grave he was standing behind, so, he resorted to other measures.

"Would you like me to bring him back?" He asked, the grin still not leaving his face. Slowly the boy raised his head and looked at the Earl, and he waited impatiently and the child blinked a few times before the words seemed to register. A sparkle appeared in the backs of the grey eyes when he realised what had been asked.

"Could you? Is it really possible? Can he...?" The boy was interrupted by the Earls laughter.

"Of course, but I'm going to need your help as well." A strange skeletal looking figure appeared beside the large man. "I need your voice; only your voice can call him back to walk among us once more." The boy's eyes were shinning with a light that the Earl was seeing for the first time, and he realised that the eyes had been grey only because of the grief, with the hope he had provided they became silver pools so deep that they appeared bottomless and the Earl had trouble looking away. The Earl also felt an emotion rising within him that he could not recognise, but he put that aside for now and concentrated on the work at hand.

"Call him." He told the child before him, and he was surprised to discover his voice was soft a gentle towards the boy who had obviously been through a lot...

"MANA!" The boy cried, turning his face towards the sky and receiving a face full of rain for the trouble. An eerie glow fell upon the metal skeleton, and as it faded a screeching filled the air as the soul-that-was-now-trapped's name was scratched into the head of the creature. A new voice was added to the conversation filled with anger and despair.

"Why...What's...Allen, Allen how could you? You turned me into an akuma!" The voice echoed throughout the grave yard, and the boy took a step toward the new weapon of the Earl's.

"Mana! Your back! Everything will be alright now, right?" The child looked pleadingly up at the Akuma. With a manic laugh the Earl cut in.

"Akuma, I order you, kill the boy and wear his skin." And with that he walked off into the night to watch the performance at a more preferable distance.

"Allen, I curse you Allen!" And with that the creature lunged forward and sliced his knife like arm downwards across the young boy face. Crying out, he fell backward onto some wet grass and began scrabbling backwards tears anew dripping from the one remaining eye that was grey once more.

"Mana, Mana, Mana, Mana..." He began to murmur over and over like a mantra, eyes never leaving his loved one as he desperately tried to get away. But now he found his back pressed up against another grave and could move no further. In defeat he closed his one eye that still operated and waited for death. However it never came, and when he heard a howl fill the night he opened his right eye once again to find his left arm had changed. No longer was it red and scaly, but now white and huge, lager than himself, in fact. But all this did not matter to him, as at that moment in time it was lodged into the stomach area of the strange machine. It leaked black oil in the way that a human would bleed crimson blood, and the last words that left its mouth before it disintegrated was:

"...I love you Allen..."

And once again the Earl was looking upon a scene with a young boy, now laying, in a grave yard crying his heart out. He knew what he must now do and walked out of the shadows once more to kill the child who had been 'chosen by God' before he became a danger. However when he reached the child, he looked deep into the dull grey eyes and found he wanted nothing more but to see the silver pools, nothing more that to see this child happy and smiling. This scared the Earl greatly, who was this boy to do this to him. To make him feel emotions he had never felt for anyone before, not even the Noahs who he considered family. But these thoughts soon evaporated as his eyes fell upon the grey ones once more, and then he knew what he must do. He knelt down beside the boy, his knees hitting the ground causing a miniature earthquake, and leant over so his face fell into the boy's line of vision.

"What is your name child?" He asked gently, even the pumpkin shaped umbrella seemed uncertain at this new caring side of its master. After a few seconds the boy responded.

"Allen Walker..." he croaked, and closed his eyes in pure misery.

"Would you like to come with me, Allen Walker?" The Earl asked kindly. The child saw no reason to stay where he was or resist anything, so simply nodded, his eyes remaining closed, and shortly he felt the ground fall away from him as the Millennium earl lifted the tiny, cold, shaking child into his arms, and stepped through a chequered door that appeared out of nowhere to his left, the umbrella now protecting the pair from the dreary night.

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