Hay Lin

Hay Lin is a member of W.I.T.C.H., a group of teenage girls who make up the Guardians, the people who guard Kandrakar, the center of the universe, from evil. Hay Lin is Chinese. Hay Lin is the "H" in W.I.T.C.H., acronym of the girls' names. She is voiced by Liza del Mundo in the animated series of the same name.

Profile
Hay Lin (age 13) was born on June 4, thus bearing the sign of the Gemini, and was raised in the town of Heatherfield. She is feisty, confident, pretty and full of energy, and very optimistic and determined.

Hay Lin is something of a free spirit: she's absent-minded, but at the same time extremely creative, talented and insightful when it comes to people around her. She loves to draw, paint, and sketch. It is no surprise that her favorite subject in school is art. She has a sense of humor rivaling that of Irma's. She can be considered a slight comic-alien geek at heart because of her love to collect comics and alien collectables. She enjoys just about anything related to science fiction, air, or art. Her quirky style spills into dialect as well, with idiosyncratic expressions like "cosmic", "spacious" (in place of more mainstream options like "cool") and "weirdific". In the Spanish version of the comic, she often exclaimed: "Yap!" Hay Lin is not superb at Physical Education, as shown when she herself once says she shall need to get into shape after running.

Her family owns a Chinese restaurant called the Silver Dragon where she often works at to help her family out. She has a habit of writing people's names, dates, numbers and anything else that might come in handy on the back of her hand or arm so she does not forget anything important during one of her creative brainstorms. Later on, she begins to wear dental braces, which an important plot element in the TV series (T is for Trauma). She has a huge crush on the new boy in town, Eric Lyndon, who likes her just as much. Hay Lin had her first kiss with Eric.

Powers
Hay Lin is the Guardian of Air in both the Comic and the TV Show and her signature color is purple/indigo/grey/periwinkle. When she transforms, she wears a teal tank-top, purple waist-cloth that covers her front and back, a blue cord with matching beads around her waist, green and sky blue stockings that reach her knees (they are full-blown tights in the TV Show), and purple Mary Janes. Her hair has grown longer and her pigtails held in place by purple bands. In the "New Power" arc, she loses her pigtails and gains a pair of Chinese buns atop her head, her tank-top and skirt have fused together with her elemental symbol now on her chest, she has multiple cords wrapped around her arms, a pair of black fingerless gloves are on her hands, and she's grown noticeably taller. Below is a list of her powers in both the comic and the TV show.

Elemental abilities
Hay Lin has power over Air; she is aerokinetic and can manipulate aspects of her element, including wind and clouds, and she can turn her breath into a weapon. Hay Lin can move objects using her elemental power, and, in the comic book, she is the only member of the group who can fly both in and out of her Guardian form, but can temporarily give others the ability to fly. In the TV show, all the Guardians can fly, but still, Hay Lin is the one who can fly the highest and quickest among them. She can conjure clouds and even use her power to soundproof rooms, as she did in the Nerissa and Phobos Arcs, respectively. She can also create windstorms and tornadoes, though she does the latter more in the TV Show. In the TV show, Hay Lin has shown an ability to control the temperature of the air, and often uses this power to freeze enemies. She can also create air bubbles for traveling underwater and can hear things on the wind because of the soundwaves that travel through the air. When she's excited, she involutary flies up (in the TV series). It should also be noted that Hay Lin has been known to talk to the Air and that it has even responded, in a sense.

Advanced elemental abilities
Hay Lin can recall a person's memories by listening to their favorite music and creating sonogramms with the sound to show them the images of their past, and also learn the history of an object by the sound it makes. She can also get the history of an object by touching it and closing her eyes. When she does this, she is feeling the atmospheres the object was in and how it was touched. In the TV show, Hay Lin is the only one who can become invisible and make other things invisible. In the comics, all the girls can become invisible, and Will was actually the first one to find out how to do so. At some point Hay Lin has managed to do shape shifting.Also in the TV show, she was capable of empathic precognition; if she's thinking strongly of someone before she sleeps, she can see what will happen to them in the future, like she did with Elyon before her coronation. Once again, her grandmother, Yan Lin, who used to be the former guardian of Air also has the same exact powers as her granddaughter.

Hay Lin has shown that she is able to:


 * Conjure visible clouds
 * Create windstorms and tornadoes
 * Control the temperature of air
 * Freeze people and objects
 * Create air bubbles for travelling underwater
 * Use super hearing
 * Recall memories from the sounds of objects
 * Create music notes just by listening to music
 * Use empathic precognition
 * Soundproof rooms
 * Shape shifting
 * Use wind to move objects
 * Use her breath as a weapon
 * Act as an empath
 * Read the history of an object by touching it and closing her eyes
 * Transmute objects
 * Invisibility
 * Throwing beams of silver energy
 * Manipulate aspects of said element
 * Use her breath as ice
 * Use air shields
 * Shoot air blasts at her opponents.
 * Use her breath as wind
 * Control air vortexes
 * Give others and herself the ability to fly
 * Communicate with the air
 * Suck air out of humans
 * Explore the history of the atmosphere that she is in

Hay Lin's powers as a Guardian include:


 * Flight
 * Glamouring
 * Teleportation
 * Invisibility

Before W.I.T.C.H.
Before becoming a Guardian, Hay Lin would work at her family's restaurant and go to school. She would often goof around in her classes and try to turn every project she got into something creative, even if her teachers didn't approve of it. Once, she was assigned the task of making a simple kite for a school project. She decided to make an overly fancy Chinese dragon kite and spent all night working on it. Her teacher failed her before Hay Lin even had a chance to fly it because her teacher assumed it would not fly on its own and that it was far too heavy to even lift off the ground. Luckily for Hay Lin, her connection to the element of Air (even though she didn't know it) was established long before she became a Guardian, and her kite turned out to be the only one in the class that managed to fly.

It is slightly ironic that she is the Guardian of Air. While the show and comics use the Greek Elements, (Air, Water, Earth and Fire), Hay Lin is a person of Chinese culture, and Air is not one of the five Chinese elements, which instead include Earth, Fire, Water, Wood, and Metal (gold).

Love life
Hay Lin fell in love with Eric Lyndon, the grandson of an astronomer named Zachary Lyndon. He owns an electric scooter and loves playing basketball with the other boys. In the comic, they met when Hay Lin was trying to balance on roller skates and hold an ice cream cone at the same time; her bag got caught on Eric's scooter, causing her to fall, and he went to help her. When she got up, she accidentally spilled the ice cream on him. When Eric's parents, Louise and Charles, decided to move to another city, the pair was separated from one another; Hay Lin was devastated, but her friends did their best to comfort her. Despite the move, she and Eric are still together, and he sent her a laptop with a webcam so the two could chat online face-to-face.

Despite her relationship with Eric, Hay lin later on falls in love with Liam, who, unfortunately for her, is in love with a girl named Mariko.

In issue 103, Hay Lin falls in love with a boy named Vincent who is part of a vampire-like rock band. She tries everything to get his attention, even changing her personality. This worries the girls, as they see Hay Lin is not herself anymore. After Vincent kisses her on the cheek and pressures her to buy an instrument she doesn't want, Irma tries to confront her but fails. Hay Lin uses her magic to look her best for Vincent's birthday party, only to find out Vincent is dating another girl from the band.