August 15th, X799, Approximately 8PM, Outside of Poppy Village

"UGH! To hell with them!"

A rather rugged looking woman stomped up a dusty, forest-lined trail up to the small village that she now called her home. The woman stood at 5'8'' with a pear shaped figure that was clad in a revealing lime green tube top and black leather short-shorts with silver chains hanging from the belt-loop and dark brown, calve-high hiking boots with bright magenta laces. A black and neon purple bandanna hung from her neck and her hands were covered by leather, black fingerless gloves with neon blue cuffs and X's cut out from the top of them.

Her skin held a deep tan to it and while the right side of her hair was buzzed, the left side was chin length, hanging down messily with a braid in the front, framing her jaw. It was dirty blond in color, with bright magenta dye in the front of it. Her eyes were narrowed and forest green, with thick, arched brows and lime green eye liner, black eyeliner and mascara. She had two silver studs in her right ear, one at the lobe and one at the top, and they were connected by a silver chain. There was a jagged burn scar on top of her right forearm and over her left rib-cage was a large, sky blue asterisk with lime-green lining.

Overall, the woman looked nothing short from a thug and her angry appearance didn't help matters any. She fumed and occasionally through her hands up or punched at the air as she made her way back home. "Why the hell would they let me into the stupid alliance if they weren't gonna help me out any?" She questioned.

She pictured Nero's smug face when he informed her that God Hand would not be giving any funds to Goblin Grin. She was one of Nero's best A-ranks, probably! How the hell could he refuse to help her any?

"GAH!" she growled, throwing a glowing green fist into the air as she tried to punch Nero's face in her mind. So. Fucking. Annoying! How was she supposed to get her guild, Goblin Grin, kicked off without a little help? He wouldn't even advertise for her or send any mages her way! What was wrong with him?! On top of that, he had treated her absolutely coldly since she had announced that she would be leaving her place as a God Hand A-rank to found her own guild. Why? Who the hell did he think he was?

And then… There was Harlow. In all honesty, if she wasn't so pissed, the woman probably wouldn't have any reason to be annoyed with the master of Seahorse Crest-another guild in the Summit Alliance, but it added insult to injury that at the meeting Harlow didn't even know who she was? How could someone not know Tik, the strongest Hazard mage in all of Fiore?! Not that there were that many Hazard mages in Fiore, but that didn't matter right now! She was mad and she had reasons to be!

Tik had left her guild less than a month ago to make her own guild, which she had named Goblin Grin after a children's storybook that she had read a lot when she was child. After talking for months with her grandmother about it, she had finally gotten approval to go ahead and go through with it. However, she hadn't been informed that no one would be helping her, even though she had been told that she could be part of the Summit Alliance!

Now, she was heading back to Poppy Village where the Goblin Grin guild hall was located, if it could even be called a guild hall. It sure as hell wasn't anything compared to the old clock-tower that God Hand was located in. She was going to miss- Like hell she was! She was a guild master now! And she was going to be the best guild master in all of the Valley! She would show Nero and Harlow and rub it in their faces when Goblin Grin became the best guild in the alliance!

She was grinning from ear to ear, a cocky, boyish grin, just thinking about it. Yep! She was going to be the best! She and all of her guild members… Once she actually got guild members of course! Apparently, thinking about being the best seemed to calm the woman down and she tucked her arms behind her head and slowed her pace for the first time since she had gotten off of the train.

Suddenly, an oddly sickening feeling being watched crept over her and she stopped and turned around. Her brows furrowed and she lifted a hand that was glowing with bright green magic. "Who the hell is following me?" she snapped.

Silence.

She poked out her thin lips and let out a grunt. "Damn… I must be losin' it with all this stress," she commented to herself, rubbing the back of her head and continuing up the road. "Maybe I'm just hungry," she added, patting her belly. Due to having to use all of her personal funds to make the initial purchase of the guild, she didn't have enough money to afford any edible food in Narcissus, so she hadn't eaten anything.

The road turned into a slope now and she walked faster up the hill, passing an old, wooden sign with peeling white paint that read, "Poppy Village: Come and Rest" in fading red letters. She sighed when she saw the sign, her eye twitching. Such a boring little town compared to Gladiolus, the home of God Hand.

It was so quiet… There wasn't a lot of money in the town and there wasn't very much tourism, though the locals seemed quite ecstatic by the few visitors they got during the weekend, when the town square boomed to life with many market stalls. The roads were dusty, beige cobblestone that was a bit worn, but still easily traversable. Most of the houses had peeling, white paint exteriors and dull colored roofs that were made of round shingles, giving them an almost cartoonish appeal. Many houses had gardens and even farm animals in some cases behind them and there were red and blue flowers outside of almost every house. Since it was night, there were simple, rusted street lights lighting the walk-way, but they were few and far between, so it was still fairly dark.

Tik wasn't used to this kind of life. All of her twenty-five years had been spent in Gladiolus and Narcissus, both of which boomed with life, especially in comparison to Poppy. She hadn't even known that Poppy existed until a week or so ago, when she started shopping around for a guild hall. She had planned to make the purchase and then get money from her grandmother and Nero to renovate and make it awesome, but… Yeah.

She passed a couple of the villagers, who looked at her with either confused or interested eyes, as she made her way to one of the few restaurants in the town: The Sprout Café. It was a small, two story building with a dull green roof and a few green plants in the flowerbeds in the front. The door was opened and a cozy, yellow glow could be seen pouring from the café.

Tik walked in and instantly, a woman with brown hair in low bun smiled brightly at her from the counter across the room. The woman was a thin, lithe woman with pale white skin and big, hazel eyes. "Well, if it isn't Poppy's local guild master!" she greeted cheerfully.

Tik waved and walked over to the counter. "'Sup, Anna!" she greeted cheerfully. "Got any work for me?"

"Still haven't gotten any missions yet, have we?" Anna questioned with a gentle laugh. When Tik's face dropped a bit, the woman stopped laughing. "Of course we have work, though."

"Thanks!" Tik said with a grin. For the past week, she had been helping to close up the restaurant in exchange for one meal at the café. It was menial work, but what else could she do? Goblin Grin hadn't gotten a single mission yet so she had nothing better to do.

"No problem," Anna responded. She then called back to the kitchen doorway behind her, "We got Tik helpin' us again!"

A "Yay!" was heard from a woman named Abigail in the kitchen, making Anna giggle. "And don't worry about missions or mages. Poppy Village and Mayor Rum are proud to have its first guild and everyone around here's talkin' about it, so I'm sure word'll get out there soon enough."

"Damn straight," Tik responded, her eyes gleaming. "And when it does, Poppy Village and Goblin Grin will be boomin'! Jus' you watch!" With that, Tik took her seat at one of the tables that were closest to the counter and looked around. There were only a couple of patrons in the café, since it was getting late by Poppy's standards. The café itself was cute, with dark wooden floors and rounds tables that were covered by dark green cloths with cute sprout patterns that matched the lighter green walls. The walls were lined with flowerbeds that had more green plants in it, making the restaurant smell like grass.

Anna brought Tik her food, which consisted of a large piece of fish and various greens and the mage chowed down. If there was anything that she could say she really enjoyed about the town, it was the food. Most of it was homegrown or fished up daily from the beaches just north of Poppy, so it tasted amazing. Besides that, the guild master was starving, so it took her no time to down the food.

As soon as she finished, she was given a list of chores that Anna had written up on a napkin for her. It was typical things, like sweeping, changing out table cloths and wiping down tables, mopping and helping with the dishes. Easy enough, even if it was really boring.

The night passed and after she was finished with work, Tik parted ways with Abigail and Anna and continued to walk towards her guild hall, crossing the sprawling town square that was located at the center of town in the crosshair of the four roads in the process. She stopped at the bulletin board in town, hoping that maybe there was something that needed to be done, only to find that the only postings were advertisements for shops that would be there in the following weekend.

She headed down the southern road and walked all the way to the edge of town, where there was a two story building that matched the rest of the town, with a pale orange roof. She could see trails that led into the mountains that loomed over the village right behind the guild hall. There were empty flowerbeds outside of the building as Tik did not know how to garden enough to plant anything and over the dark brown doorway, there was a messily painted sign that read "Goblin Grin" in neon green paint, covering black letters that used to read, "Sunnyside Café". The paint had dripped and colored the white, stone landing green and black. Just to the south of the building, there was a small chalkboard sign that read, "Looking for strong mages! Come inside!" in orange and green chalk, though the "strong" had been slashed through recently.

She pulled out a small, golden key from her shorts pocket and unlocked the door, entering the guild hall. It was obvious that the building used to be a café. There were round, cream colored tables everywhere and four-person booths lining the walls, all with pale orange seating. The floor was made of pale wood and the walls were pale orange with bright orange flower prints on them. There was a ceiling fan in the middle of the room, which began whirring when Tik cut on the lights.

To the left of the entrance was a counter with an empty display case and a door behind it leading to a kitchen. There was a chalk-board menu over the counter, but Tik had written, "Anyone welcomed to cook! Will cook fish for jewel!" in messy handwriting. Across the room from the entrance was a doorway, leading to a staircase that led to the second floor and a hatch that led to the cellar. Beside that was an empty bulletin board for missions. To right of the entrance was a hall that led to two restrooms.

Tik had done some cleaning, but it was still so dusty and there were still some old boxes and barrels here and there that the old owners had left behind that she had yet to move. Instead of getting the guild hall flawlessly clean, she had been trying to meet some of the residents of the town and find mages who may be interested in joining the guild. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a strong affinity for magic in Poppy Village, so while most of the village liked the idea of Goblin Grin, none of them had any interest in joining.

"Oh, well," Tik sighed out as she headed for the cellar, flipping open the hatch. "Tomorrow is a new day! And I jus' know I'll get some guild members soon!"

She climbed down the ladder in to what used to be a wine cellar, with wine shelves lining the walls and cold, gray stone floors. Now, it was the Goblin Grin "dorms" if one could call them that. Really, there were just a bunch of dingy brown bedrolls on the floor, each with a wooden box and oil lantern beside them for a nightstand and lamp, and a small, cheap black lockbox at the foot of the bedroll for storage. Tik had the keys to the lockboxes, but she planned to give them out to mages who decided to live in the guild hall.

The southern-most wall stood out because there was a fairly large hole in it, and a shove beside it. Tik had heard rumors of a hot-springs near the mountains and she had decided that if she could find it, she would have awesome bathing facilities for her mages, instead of the single shower that was located in a bathroom on the top floor of the guild.

She walked over to the hole, but sleepiness hit her at that moment and she held her forehead. Today had been tiring and annoying. "I'll jus' work on that some tomorrow," she mumbled to herself, walking over to the bedroll that was closest to the hole. She had placed a piece of cardboard against the oil lamp that read "TIK" in black writing, marking that particular bedroll as hers. She curled up on it and fell asleep while thinking about what kind of mages she was going to get in her guild. She couldn't wait!

Author's Note: A new project! I'm so excited to be uploading this! Anyway, a few of you visited my forums so you guys may have seen us discussing doing something like this. Well, we got our plans together so welcome to The Summit Project! This is a collaboration between MyDearWatson, Origm2012, Dreadburner94 and myself! So that means, in order to know everything about the characters and the universe, you will need to read these four stories:

The Summit Project: God Hand by Dreadburner94

The Summit Project: Seahorse Crest by MyDearWatson

The Summit Project: Goblin Grin by Raiyane

The Summit Project: Ragnarok's Call by Origm2012

I'm really happy to be working with these three because they are awesome people and writers and really fun to work with! X3

There will be links to the other three stories on my profile, along with OC submission rules and the OC form. So, there are some rules that I want to reiterate here, though!

-All four of us will look at and have access to every character! We don't want too many similar characters as all characters have a chance of appearing in every story, though they will be side characters or villains in the stories that aren't of their guild. We only want characters via PM! And send us characters of our guild. That means Goblin Grin OCs go to me, Seahorse Crest to MyDearWatson, God Hand to Dreadburner94 and Ragnarok's Call to Origm2012.

-For now, we only want 2 Main Character OCs per person across the entire project! That means before you decide to reserve a spot/send a character to a story, you should read all four prologues and decide where you want your OC(s) to be. We also want each OC to be in a different guild, unless you have a really, really good reason to have 2 OCs in the same guild. We will be strictly limiting the amount of 2 OCs in the same guild though.

-We will be limiting slayers, too! We don't want too many of one type of slayer and for Goblin Grin, I will only accept 1 (ONE) SLAYER! They must be creative, too.

-You MUST use the OC FORM on our profiles and send it via PM! We know the form is long so we will accept reservations, though!

-For Goblin Grin, I do NOT want OCs that just bring a whole lot of money or a new guild hall to the guild. I want there be a sense of progression in the guild hall slowly getting better and better over the course of the story, so having a character with lots of money would ruin the fun. They can bring some money for small upgrades, though, as long as every single character doesn't do it.

-I will be accepting 15 or 16 mages for Goblin Grin and no S-classes to start! They absolutely must be completely new characters! No use of characters that have been given to other creators! These 15-16 characters will be the frontier members of the guild! They will be only members of the guild and will be joining throughout the introduction arc.

-You may make establishments in Poppy Village to go along with your character, but make sure you somewhat follow the scheme of the village!

-PLEASE READ THE RULES FOR GOBLIN GRIN BEFORE SENDING OCS! THANK YOU! THEY ARE HIGHLY IMPORTANT! AND FILL OUT THE ENTIRE FORM! DON'T EXPECT US TO ACCEPT OCS THAT DON'T ADHERE TO THE RULES DON'T HAVE A COMPLETE FORM!

Hope you guys enjoyed! This is going to be lots of fun! Have fun everyone~