Tyki gave a heavy sigh, checked his keys, wallet and phone one more time before he slung a heavy canvas duffle bag over his shoulder. It would probably make more sense to change now, rather than later, but walking around dressed in tails and a top-hat at this time of evening was not a good idea in his district, better to look like a hobo. He shut the door firmly behind him having to wriggle the key in the lock for about a minute before it clicked. It was then that he realised that he had left his hat in his apartment.
Damn.
He glanced about, stuck his key in the lock, and glanced about again. He turned his back to the door and began to bash the door in, swinging his bent leg in a pendulum like motion. It flew open with a bang that left the door and walls shuddering. Picking his top-hat off the floor, he blew the dirt off it before striding out and yanking the key out of the lock, slamming the door shut behind him. The walls vibrated and an irritated 'Oi!' sound from the apartment across from him. Flipping his hair out of his eyes, he absentmindedly avoided the puddles of piss and dried blood stains in the hallway and waited for the lift.

It arrived with much clunking and the doors vibrated as they opened, sending some used and discarded syringes rolling over the evil looking floor. Tyki glanced at the syringes and the gaps in the plywood walling; through which there was only an abyss of darkness and an untimely end. He opted for the stairs; they were relatively safer. Tyki may have had a slightly warped sense of what was dangerous, but it didn't mean that he was a complete idiot. He could hear the clunk and shudder of the lift as it made its way up to some other unsuspecting individual.

His foots steps echoed as the scuffed, heavy-soled boots thudded down the concrete stairs. Tyki glanced at his watch and his golden eyes gleamed with pleasure.
"Good, 6:30. At any rate I'll be late, or at least annoying." He spoke aloud for no other reason than to hear his voice reverberate down the stairwell. He laughed to himself as he restrained the urge to call out 'echo' and opted for humming instead. The sound of his shoes made a nice beat behind the tune and he continued to hum as he stepped down several more flights of stairs.

The heavy, scraping squeals of an opening fire door sounded somewhere above him and he stopped humming abruptly as footsteps followed the sound. He was fine with looking like a hobo; looking like an insane hobo he was not. Nodding a greeting to the doorman who was employed for no other reason than keeping the homeless from sleeping in the relative safety of the putrid smelling foyer, he entered on to the street. It would be the state of the traffic would be the decider in whether he would take a taxi or walk. The reaching heat hit him like a wave, carrying the scent of the car exhaust and cigarette smoke that was guaranteed when one lived in the city, on the outskirts of the red light district. The heat lines were visible as they shimmered off the cars, it was peak hour traffic and the massive traffic jam snarled and rumbled like an angry beast. The corner of Tyki's mouth lifted in a wry smile and he hailed a taxi.

Tyki slung his duffle bag off as he slid onto the cool back seat of the orange cab. The driver turned to face him with a dubious look on his face, jiggling a leg as he did, as if he had gone over the legal limit to energy drinks and now could not stay still.
"Where too, uh, sir?" The driver licked dry lips and Tyki didn't miss the hesitation before sir. He didn't resent the driver; in his current state of dress it was an easy mistake to make. He let the matter pass, instead deciding to tie back his tawny shoulder length hair into a queue.

"The Black Order Hotel, if that's alright with you?" Tyki leant over and started rooting in his duffle bag for his wallet. The Taxi driver frowned at him looking cautious, leg still jiggling twitchily.
"Um, yeah. Well, see the thing is..." the driver trailed away as Tyki glanced at him, eyebrow raised inquiringly. He continued on a little hurriedly, fingers jiggling now, not wanting to offend his customer, "That place is a little, expensive. I mean, it's the Black Order hotel, can you even afford the cab fare?"

The taxi had not moved from its spot on the curve and Tyki's eyes glinted with suppressed amusement. He slid four 50 dollar notes from his wallet and offered them to the driver. "I can pay now, if you'd like. Or do you take credit card, Platinum?"

The driver stared at Tyki with astonished eyes and then burst out laughing, a broad grin spread on his face. "That should more than do it. A rich hobo, who would think!" He guffawed loudly as he shoved the taxi into the traffic, beer belly wobbling in combined mirth. Tyki felt his face move into an answering grin, one that was, perhaps, slower and more dangerous that the cabbie's, but there was humour behind it all the same. Just not for the same reasons as the cab driver.

To think that Tyki was a Hobo who, by some strange twist of fate, had come across a lot of money would be to make a wrong assumption. Tyki was a rich person who liked dressing up as a hobo because it was safer and hobo clothing was strangely comfortable. If anyone asked Tyki why he knew that ripped, faded, hobo clothing was so comfortable in the first place they probably would not get a straight answer. If fact they probably wouldn't get an answer at all.

Tyki would give his slow beguiling smile, whisper something in their ear in a husky voice, pour them an incredibly alcoholic drink, and invite them to a friendly game of cards where they would lose all the money in their pockets. They would also wake up the next morning with absolutely no memory of the previous night, but with a mild hangover and feeling like they had been fucked for most of the night - But it would be less a feeling of having been subjected to Tyki's 'affections' and more of a concrete fact. Of course the latter depended on how Tyki had been feeling at that point in time and on the persons looks. Not on your gender. Tyki had no real preference but found males that much more fun. Not that he would be discriminate if there was a woman there of course. Tyki was nothing if not a gentleman. He would also never answer your question because it was precisely that question which touched upon a past that he would prefer to not discuss with anyone or indeed, prefer to forget.

He had not always been rich; in fact he had not always had a family. There had been a period of about one to two years in his life where he had been an orphan in all but the strictness sense –h is parents had not died leaving him with no family, but he had in fact been disowned.

From the time that he was ten, Tyki's blood parents, middle class citizens and devout Christians, had failed to control their increasingly wayward son. By the time he was fourteen, he had begun to run away from home; not coming home from school and sneaking back into the house just before dawn the next day, smelling of beer and hard partying. A month before his sixteenth birthday he could be missing for days at a time, turning up in the middle of the night and climbing a tree to his bedroom window which was always left unlocked. Six years ago, things came to a head three weeks after his sixteenth birthday,

Tyki's parents came home early from a long weekend away to find their house in shambles; drunken and hung-over teens were lying all over and their only child was in their bed with two other boys and one girl – all with nothing on.
That was also the last time that they spoke to him, leaving only a condemning silence that ran throughout the house, taut and thin, like a rubber band stretched too far. Two days later Tyki left the house at dawn, taking with him the entire contents of his uni fund and combined bank account. As well as some clothes and a blanket; he took his laptop and iPod, selling his CD player the day before at Cash Converters. These he stuck in a duffle bag, the same one that he carried now in the Taxi. That was the last time he ever saw his family. They never went to the police, or filed a missing person report – as far as they were concerned, they had never had a son. Tyki lived on the streets for a year and a half. It was a source of pride for him that he managed to stay relatively clean; he didn't do drugs, and didn't turn to much crime.

Thanks to his laptop, he managed to earn himself some cash. Not enough for a decent living off the streets, but enough for food that wasn't Mc Donald's or KFC, as well as other necessities that were needed to be able to walk around without people looking at him suspiciously. At the start he did frequent soup kitchens and Salvation Army free food markets, but things improved when he made his street friends and they got a system going. Tyki with his small hacking business would pay for the food; in return Ghar and his partner, the only girl in the group- Lief, were the protectors of the group. Ghar with his large stature was a formidable foe while Leif was a master of the weapons, their black market acquired daggers and gun as well as Lief's prized katana and broad sword meant that the group was reasonably safe from some of the larger boss gangs that roamed the streets, while Chase with his myriad of contacts could find them a safe place to sleep with a single word to someone.

They were not a gang with members, but a group of people who trusted and depended on each other for survival in the harsh reality of street life. They were all there by choice, but unlike most, they were clean– escaping from abusive family or having been disowned from their family. Chase had been born on the streets, but his mother and father had managed to shield him from most of the harshness of the street and his natural charisma meant that he could talk to almost anyone. Ghar had left home after his mother had died and his father started drinking. Lief didn't talk much about her back ground; she was the daughter of the 'father' of the largest crime gang in Sydney. This background was the reason why she had her skill with the group's weapons. She, like Tyki, had been disowned from her family but unlike Tyki she refused to tell the group why. Only Ghar knew and his loyalty to Lief was unshakable.

When his adopted family had gotten Tyki off the streets, he had attempted to help get his friends off the streets as well. He had done reasonably well; Ghar and Lief now ran a self defence/martial combat/weaponry combat business in Melbourne while Chase had found an undiscovered talent in the matchmaking industry in London. Tyki had seen Ghar and Lief quite recently; they were now expecting their first child, a girl.

It had not been easy, nor comfortable, but he had gotten by well enough and there were times that Tyki looked back on with some fondness and there were things that he would take with him from that time, such as his appreciation for people who you could trust and depend on, but overall he disliked looking back on those days, even through his acquired taste for freedom was still with him to this day. This meant he disliked anything that intruded upon his freedom or anyone who put him on a leash or tried to get him to jump through hoops.

Unfortunately , 'Family meetings' fell into this category .The meetings were mandatory and if you missed one for any other reason than dying or being in a coma nothing you did would be able to stop the hell on earth that was to follow. It usually meant nephew sitting the twins to keep them out of trouble. Jasdero and Davit delighted in nothing but pure, flame blazing anarchy - Hell on earth personified.

Though Tyki sometimes thought that it would be worth putting up with the twins just to avoid the meetings, he knew that that his 'Uncle', the Earl, would just get worse. Besides Tyki knew that he had a 'duty of loyalty' or some shit to the Earl because it was the Earl who had gotten him off the streets and given him a home, a purpose and a 'family'. Albeit a slightly strange, twisted family, but a 'family' nonetheless. Of course Tyki hadn't really known what he was getting himself into when the Earl had (literally) rescued him from the gutter where he had been lying after somehow getting mixed up in a street fight - Ghar and Lief had been on the other side of the city, retrieving new blades from a lucrative arms deal and were too far away to help.

Tyki could just remember the 'conversation' that they had in the gutter; he remembered how the man's wide-grinning, spectacled head swam into view and how the Earl poked him with an umbrella after every sentence.

*Poke, poke*

"Ehhh? " *moan*

"Hello."

"uuuhhh."

"But of course you can!" *Poke, poke*

"Aghhh."

"But of course you can stay!" *poke, poke*

"Huhh?"

After that Tyki remembered being swung over the Earl's shoulder before everything went a little dim.

The Earl had no blood ties to Tyki, in fact none of Tyki's 'siblings' did. All of them were adopted by the Earl who was the self professed Uncle of his family, The Noah. When Tyki had woken up in a room in the Noah family mansion, the first thing he saw was rather fat, creepily grinning man sitting in a chair beside his bed. His first thought had been, "Fuck he's weird." With the second being "what's with the top hat." The third thought was, "Have I been raped?' and then, finally, "where the bloody hell am I?". He met the rest of the Noah soon after. The adorable if twisted Rhode who had a thing about the Earls umbrella and called it Lero; the insane Twins who like to be called Jasdevi even through their real names were Jasdero and Davit; Skin who ate way too many sweets and had his own chair at his dentist; and Lulubelle who was just a bitch. There were also a couple of others, but they were off in Spain or something and Shyrle was creepy in a slimy "I raped your babies in your sleep" kind of way. Tyki called them all Cousins, nieces or nephew's because he thought that it was weird to call them brother or sister.

It wasn't until later that he found out that the Noah family was richer than Bill Gates and the Value of the Apple Company combined with a string of varied businesses and hotels. He had become part of the Noah about six years ago, he was now 23 and living in an apartment in the bad part of town, out of choice.

As much as Tyki loved most of his adoptive family, he had the vaguest feeling that if he stay with them for more than a week or two at most, he would be pronounced psychotic and sent to a loony bin to live out the rest of his days wearing a straight jacket in a padded room. Besides, living in the bad part of town had its pluses. For a start, none of his family sprung surprise visits on him – which could only be for the good. It didn't however stop spring family meetings on him – which could only be for the bad because when the Earl called a meeting; it meant that he wanted to meddle and when the Earl meddle it meant that some serious shit was going to hit the roof.

The driver continued to tap out small rhythms on the wheel, occasionally giving his head a little shake, like a dog with something in its' ear. Tyki sighed, stretched out and gave a yawn. The baggy sleeves of his once-used-to-be-rainbow-tie-dye-but-now-looks-more-like-dirt, but deceptively clean hobo shirt fell back to expose the rolled sleeves of his white dress shirt. The Taxi Slugged a long in the orange heat haze of the setting sun, the shadows of the gray-black apartment blocks grew long, like watching sentinels, heralds of the time when the underbelly of the city comes out to play. Tyki ran his hands down his black pants and glanced at his watch, wrinkling his nose at the time. This was taking longer than he first thought, he had only meant to annoy his family a little bit, not seriously piss them off. On the plus side- wait, there was no plus side. Damn.
Tyki couldn't tell for sure, but he had a feeling that the driver kept sneaking glances at him out of the corner of his eyes. He shrugged mentally; people were entitled to look after all, if they wanted to, at risk of attracting Tyki's own brand of "attention". But this driver was safe for now, he wasn't exactly what one would call good looking but even in the driver was good looking, he would probably still be safe. Tyki had lost interest; people were interested in him, but not the other way around. It was just too plain repetitive. He hadn't felt like it for a couple of weeks, it had been a month maybe two since he had last felt like it. But he was fine, perfectly fine. He restrained a sigh, and looked out the window; the driver still sneaking glances at him. After more than a minute of this, it was getting kind of annoying, Tyki cocked an inquiring look at the driver.
"Is there something on my face?"
The driver flushed and began to jiggle his leg nervously again. Tyki waited patiently for an answer as the driver hesitated then lowed on, seeming determined to get an answer for his unasked question.
"Are you, by any chance Mikky?" The cab was filled with a nervous beat. A thrum, a tap, a shudder of nervousness. Tyki wanted to sigh again at the mention of his other alias. Instead he twisted his lips into the semblance of a smile, pretending wry abashment.
"How did you know? What gave the game up?"
The driver gave a relived smile, the beat filling the taxi stopped abruptly as he explained. "It was your glasses; my mates (both cabbies) and I play a game, well it's less of a game as such, My name's seeker by the way, we see who taxi's the oddest or most unusual person during their week and then the person who taxied the weirdest person get brought around. Bud won a couple of weeks back; he described a rich aristocrat named Mikky, who read in his cab but wore the thickest swirliest pair of classes he had ever seen, all misty and funny; very distinct apparently, a pair exactly like yours."
Tyki gave a shamefaced laugh- a real one this time, "I have to look out for that, usually I wear a different pair if I'm not going hobo, but I must have forgotten that time. Interesting game you guys play through, see anyone who might let you win this week?"
The driver brightened and nodded enthusiastically and began to talk about some you-old looking person with a British accent. Tyki wasn't listening, he was too busy staring at the texted he had just received.
Tyki, where r u? Earl's V. Pissed. He's got his angry smile + his nose is all red. Twins looking gleeful. If ur not in a coma, u better get over here. NOW!
Rhode.
P.s Earl has decided to wait for you. Skin and Lulu not happy

Shit. Shit. Shit.
Tyki swore out loud, causing the driver to break off mid sentence to look at him apprehensively.
"Seeker, I'll give you twice your normal months pay if you get me to the Black Order, now."
Seeker frowned for one second the clicked the right hind indicator, sliding the cab into a very fast if choppy right turn. "Sure, but what's the hurry?" He asked, "You seemed perfectly relaxed a second ago."
"I'm late for a meeting with my family, the Noah." Tyki replied, pulling off his hobo shirt to revel the white dress shirt underneath. He rolled down the sleeve, flipping over the cuffs so they lay flat. Seeker yelped.
"The Noah! Your family's the Noah! Shit! Wait- you're Tyki Mikk; owner of The Tease. Fuck. Why didn't you say so?'
Tyki shrugged, bending down to remove his boots. "Just easier."
Seeker shook his head as he reached for the glove box. "At least I have this, more than paid me back for the price." He flicked a switch and stuck the wailing, flashing blue light onto the outside roof of the cab. Tyki was slammed into the back seat of the cab as the taxi screamed forward, mounting the side walk if the cars in front didn't immediately get out of the way. Tyki furrowed his brow as he reached for his duffle bag to continue his transformation.

A couple of minutes later a taxi screeched to a halt in front of the Black Order Hotel. An aristocratic man with a top hat stuck crookedly on his head, wearing misty classed and carrying a duffle bag that trailed the sleave of an old tie die shirt stepped out, his long legs carrying him up the steps and into the hotel as fast as they gracefully could.

Inside the taxi Seeker swore bitterly, staring at the space were the man had been just a few seconds ago. He hadn't collected his taxi fare. Aww Fuckkk. The wife was going to beat him tonight.