Chapter 1: An Easy Job Brings Difficult Complication

Slum Alley, Kashew Ave, City of Plia...

An overcast sky loomed over the city of Plia many humble working men and women moved about their day to day along with children having modest homes and interesting places to be. Life seemed to be going well for the vast majority of the inhabitants but it had not been so well for the foster child of a known criminal gang leader known as Harker Reese. The nefarious criminal thief Harker kept a boys' home where he had essentially taken in the outcast runaway and orphan boys that were sadly thrown to the waste side of their modernized society and largely forgotten by the vast majority of the cities citizens until they became trouble for them that was. One such boy, one of the youngest ever raised by Harker had been seen as a golden ticket of sorts given that, unlike his "brothers," he was born with extraordinary abilities that were a great benefit to Harker who had believed the boy to have been a freak when he found him wandering about the world without a family after he had mistakenly wandered from the facility that housed him since his birth and he subsequent tragic death of both of his parents.

His name was Reyden.

Reyden Alexander Tempet, a small frail boy with pale skin and dark colored hair highly gullible and given to bad ideas if only for a chance to belong not at all knowing that his dear adoptive father had been a low life using his abnormal ability to conduct electrical currents via his superior nervous system to intimidate people and terrify them into handing over their goods not to mention his ability to overload various currency stations to the benefit of Harker and others once the shortages caused made cash flow out it them easily.

Nine-year-old Reyden had hung on to the charismatic and sinister Harker's every word desperate to belong and to have a father that loved and accepted him, even with his odd abilities. Only Harker had known of Reyden's odd traits and kept them to himself due to greed and secrecy. Reyden was an obedient child and mischievous in his attempts to impress his new father no matter how much he had pushed himself to do so.

At the current moment, he'd been strolling about the mall area noting the many people going about their collective shopping and a few of them had children traveling with them. The sight of a nice and well-to-do family having as much fun as possible had given the boy a feeling of resentment. His father had only been interested in his "work" and making him do the same. There was no time for jokes nor laughter of any sort when he'd always been "on the job". The nine-year-old had been clad in a black hooded sweatshirt, dark grey trousers with worn tan trainers that were quite dirty and soaked from the puddles that lined the water-slick sidewalk.

With his hood covering his head and his eye on the prize, Reyden sighed as he stuffed his hands into his pockets unsure of what to do as the rain began to come down causing the people to become unsettled and venture toward dryer areas or head to their respective homes altogether.

The little thief had been scouting the area, just as his father had thought him to, and as a result, he'd finally seen the stash of currency machines that were to his liking. His father never wanted him to go too big in terms of their collective money schemes but he was feeling particularly good about the day and the weather. For some reason, the rain had always given the lad mixed feelings. He was told he was born during a tempest and his last name indicated that there was something special about it when it came to him. He wondered often if it had something to do with his strange elemental and telekinetic abilities.

He discovered by way of accident that he could literally shift the element of lightning between his fingers when he needed to catch a spark from even the smallest fragment of electricity in the air. His keen dark grey eyes had scouted the area once the people had all gone away and he sent a bolt of lightning toward the currency machines hoping to overload them all at once and scoop up as much cash as possible before a technician was sent out to make repairs.

He had not been in the least put off about robbing the currency machines as they had belonged to Globecloud, the largest electronic distribution manufacturing company in the world. There were stories of them ripping off various unlucky consumers and whispers of bad business practices which gave them a dicy image P.R. wise.

Reyden thought them raider scum despite his own thieving ways. He figured taking from them was just as well considering their track record, or at least that's what his father had wanted him to believe. Everything had been going according to plan for him to obtain the money and lots of it when a woman and her child found themselves having difficulty in the middle of the storm. Her child, a smaller boy with unkempt brown hair had wandered away from her as she did her best to navigate amid the high winds and pouring rain that clouded her vision.

Her son had been obsessed with a tiny toy boat, blue in color and quite impressive, that she had just purchased for him at one of the shops lining the mall. The boy's father was a sailor and often brought him home boats for his little collection, this one reminded him of his father's boat whom he missed when he'd been on leave. When the winds picked up and the rain increased, he dropped it while his mother struggled to get him someplace warm and dry.

Not wishing to leave the boat behind, the boy broke away from her to retrieve it not at all paying any attention to the fact that he'd been standing near a large metal pole, an ideal spot for lightning to strike amid the chaos of the coming storm. Just as the lightning threatened to strike the pole and the boy who had attempted to keep his balance by holding it amid the wind, Reyden had only a split second before the blast struck and possibly killed the child in front of him before he rushed over and pushed the boy out of the way taking the full brunt of the current as it overloaded his system and caused him to black out but not before igniting his young body and causing him to shoot lightning from his fingertips in various directions.

Once the ordeal passed, Reyden collapsed once he saw the grateful and terrified mother reach her son and pull him close to her. Reyden had never known such love, nor the love of a mother but witnessing it made him feel even more alone in the world than he'd felt before as his body hit the floor amid the cold rain, he had not seen the disappointed look on his father's face when he neglected to get their score and opted to save the random kid. Harker packed as much cash into his sacks as possible taking off and leaving the unconscious boy behind believing him to have been dead and a thousand Galets richer.

"It's been nice knowing you kid," said the gruff-looking thief taking off without looking back with the Galets in tow.

Reyden remained unconscious as the woman and her son went for help owing their safety to the strange older boy who had absorbed the lightning strike in place of letting it hit her son.