Awakening 1.1
Taylor triggers as a Fullborn. She has the abilities of the Lord Ruler and the knowledge of how to use Hemalurgic spikes. In the absence of naturally-occurring God metals, she can use the ashes of dead capes to make atium or lerasium. If you don’t know what any of that means, that’s okay. I’ll do my best to describe everything as the story advances, and will be adding my own bits of lore where canon is lacking. A short description is that Taylor can either literally eat bits of metal and then ‘burn’ them for certain powers, store attributes like strength or speed inside of metals she’s touching, or make metal spikes and stab people to put their abilities/powers inside the spikes, and then stab someone else to give that person whatever is in the spikes.
I’d been so certain I was a Tinker.
Diagrams and images and descriptions had flooded my brain, slamming into it with the force of a freight train. For once, I’d been glad to be in the hospital. When I untangled all the information and learned the truth, I’d been disappointed. Tinkers could do so much, especially if they collaborated. I would’ve had to join the Wards and deal with all the teenage drama that entailed, but with a lab and materials that wouldn’t have been as much of a problem.
The doorbell rang, and I bolted, throwing the door open and snatching the package from the confused and wary delivery man before he could set it down.
“Thanks!” I said before slamming the door behind me and rushing back inside. I reached my room and tossed the brown box on my bed, then stretched, taking deep breaths. I needed to get in shape, especially if I was going to be patrolling on the streets and taking down crime.
Online, capes said powers were instinctive. They might seem weak at first, but there was always a trick to them. Skidmark was a prime example, first classified as a mere Shaker two until he started layering his lines to make inescapable prisons and portable railguns. That lined up with my abilities. I had prepackaged instructions in my head for how to use my powers and a vague feeling of what they did, but couldn’t get any more information without the metal I needed. The screws of my bedframe didn’t count, it had to be a certain alloy, and ordering that was expensive, especially without letting Dad know.
I opened the package. Inside were four vials with thin steel flakes suspended in liquid and a two-inch sphere of the same metal. I’d considered adding a spike as well in case just having it told me more about that ability, and had been almost relieved when it turned out that I barely had enough money for just the ball and the vials.
A vial turned over and over in my hands. I stared, shrugged, tugged the cork out and downed the contents. The liquid tasted sharp and left an aftertaste. A moment later, I felt something. It wasn’t like a trigger, more like a furnace I could stoke in my stomach. I concentrated and blinked as blue lines appeared, leading from all around me to my center of mass. I followed the largest one, which connected to my bedframe. Dad still wasn’t home. I Pushed. The bed scraped along the floor, and I went flying.
I picked myself off the floor, rubbing at my new friction burns and glaring at the bed. That … was probably something I should’ve expected. I’d picked steel based primarily off my wallet, but also because of the feeling it gave me. There were sixteen metals my powers used, but there were three ways I could use each metal. The one I knew was Allomancy felt positive, somehow, like it wanted to be used, and came with the wordless knowledge that using it with steel would make things move. I’d confirmed that worked, so I spent the next few minutes on top of my bed hanging on for dear life as I burned through my swallowed steel just in case I could get metal poisoning from having steel in my digestive tract.
That had been kind of disappointing, but I shrugged it off. I’d been expecting telekinesis, and I’d gotten telekinesis. Just … metal-based. And only in a straight line. That pushed me back just as hard. I was more interested in what I could do with the second use. Feruchemy, the neutral one. I picked up the little steel ball and could tell that it would accept what I put in, but it wasn’t eager, not like Allomancy. I let a trickle of something pass from me to the metal, then when nothing happened a flood. I sighed and stood up, but when I moved it was slow. My limbs moved like jelly, and the clock on the wall ticked and spun at a frantic pace. I cut off the transfer, and the world returned to normal.
Except that now there was something inside the steel, waiting for me to take it out. I drew from the tiny well and watched as everything slowed down. I picked up my notebook from on top of my dresser. It moved strangely, and when I let it go it was still creased where I’d held it. Slowly, ever so slowly, it fell, drifting to the ground. Then the flow of energy from the ball evaporated. The notebook hit the floor with a thump and I jolted in surprise.
Yeah, I could definitely work with this. I’d originally wanted to start with gold—not for its Allomantic use, which translated from pure feeling to English was roughly “self-past-ghost,” but because I could use Feruchemy with it to store health. If I was going to beat up supervillains, I’d definitely need healing. Especially with Lung wandering around.
But super speed, and especially super speed that didn’t come with any of Velocity’s limitations? Sign me the hell up.
I was grinning for hours after dinner as I sat on my bed, legs crossed, the world flowing forward without me. Tonight I’d store speed, and tomorrow I’d fight crime. The costume in the basement was a thrown-together piece of garbage and I had access to one-sixteenth of the powers I was willing to use, but for the first time since Emma’s betrayal, I was anticipating tomorrow instead of dreading it.
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