Lightning's Child (Hiatus)

Chapter 1

"Hey! Zin!"
The young man turned around to see his best friends, Opia and Raiden, walking towards him. He grinned.

"Hey to you too. What"s up?"

Opia, an excitable girl and one of the village"s hunters-in-training, rolled her eyes.  "What do you mean, "what's up"? Today's the Hunter's Exam, idiot! How did you forget?"

Zin cocked his head to one side. "Wait, what?"

"The Hunter's Exam. It's today."

"Ah. Wasn't that next week?"

Both Raiden and Opia shared a will-you-murder-him-or-should-I look before sighing. "Zin, we've been talking about this for months," she continued. "Don't you remember?"

Zin"s face was blank. He began studying his nails, which he suddenly found rather fascinating. "Um, not really."

A glare. Opia surveyed his outfit and sniffed. "Are you gonna take the Hunter's Exam in that?"

"C'mon, I'm wearing some pretty respectable clothes," Zin objected. "Fine, then. Guess I better go change."

Zin was a fairly tall young man, with long legs and messy blonde hair that was somehow naturally tinged an odd turquoise colour. His angular face gave him a wolfish appearance, but he somehow managed to pull it off. His eyes were what defined him, anyway. Sometimes they were a bright yellow, sometimes a light green colour, but usually an icy blue that reminded people of fierce thunderstorms. His skin was pale. His Hunter's training had been with a long sword.

Opia, on the other hand, was completely different. With her light brown skin, beetle-black eyes and dyed pink hair, she had a cheerful demeanor and was the joker of the three, unserious the majority of the time. She used an insect glaive, and actually had her Kinsect, named Arth, nestled on her shoulder right there. Arth was a dark red Mauldrome, born and bred to support hunters in battle.

"Yes. Yes, you really should. Don't you want to make a good impression on the judges? After all, the aim is to pass, correct?"

That was Raiden, the last member of the trio.

Raiden was considered to be the intellectual among them, although he constantly denied it. His golden-yellow hair was haphazardly cut, reaching down to his shoulders and sticking out everywhere in a tangled jumble. He was easily the tallest among them, with a wiry frame and long, dexterous fingers which allowed him to wield and load the bowguns he used with great speed and skill, that when combined with his near-perfect aim made for a deadly fighting force. He had once killed a Great Jaggi in just one shot by hitting its spinal column with a Pierce shot. His eyes were a bright crimson colour, a side effect of one of his experiments that allowed him better eyesight than normal humans. Being more interested in research than the others, he permanently wore a pair of safety goggles upon his forehead and carried six different notebooks on his person.

Zin gave them a nervous grin before sprinting off to his house, tearing across the green turf of the little village they resided in. Yariel Village, a small town built to support the trading industry, was as impressive as its name- that is to say, not much. Catching fish was something every aspiring millionaire aimed for; it was easy, profitable and was suitable for a long-term profession. Unfortunately, fishing alone was not enough to transform the village into a full fledged city, and its setbacks to modernism gave the quaint little place quite a bit of struggle over the years. Yariel Village had tried its best to keep up with the times, though, which many said was a step in the right direction. Zin and his friends lived in the North-Eastern part of town, close to the markets where (in Opia's words) "all the fun stuff went down."

Zin skidded to a stop outside his house, where he lived with his aging mother, Rosaria. Dashing into his room, he quickly began changing into a new outfit- something that was mildly less grubby than the last.