Mist

Chapter One

The fog had rolled in, and it was a misty night in Brockton Bay. Yet to Taylor, the moon burned in the sky as brightly as the sun.

She walked as silently as she could, trying to tell herself that the stomping of her feet and the drumbeat of her heart was more due to her enhanced hearing than any sound she was making. The city's nightlife had come out; groups of large, thuggish men looking for trouble, lonely whores looking for clients, and homeless homeless beggars looking to get through the night. Taylor avoided all of them, nearly invisible in the darkness that blinded everyone but her.

That was her power, one of them at least. She could metabolize tin to enhance her senses. Taylor didn't have good control, but powers were powers and she wasn't complaining. Night vision and better hearing were perfect for the kind of hero she was going for. Some capes went for the spotlight, flying through the air under the sun and stopping for interviews, but that would never be her.

She soon reached the park, and she activated her second set of powers. When she burned zinc she could influence people's emotions to excite and agitate them. She looked around and picked out the few people that were still around this late. Most were homeless, sleeping under benches and picnic tables in a nest of blankets. Others looked like thugs and junkies, looking for trouble or at least a place to get high. There were even a few couples caressing each other, giggling, and making out under the cover of darkness. Taylor burned zinc and rioted their fears until one by one, the different people left.

As far as Master powers went, zinc wasn't that impressive. It could make her dad sing badly while making breakfast one Saturday morning when she had tested it out for the first time, but it wasn't in nearly the same league as, say, Heartbreaker. But as long as she was subtle with it, but as long as she was subtle with it, the people she used it on would never know that the emotions weren't theirs.

The park goers didn't run screaming, and they didn't leave at once, but they did leave, and Taylor had the park all to herself, and she could practice without worry. Even if she missed someone, she had come in, well, not exactly costume, but with her face covered. She wore her hood up and had wrapped a scarf around her so only her eyes were showing, and plenty of capes showed a lot more.

Feeling secure, she burned iron and steel. If she burned either, a blue series of blue lines lit up, connecting every bit of metal within range to her chest. Then she could pull on those lines with iron or push against them with steel. Out of all the powers she had discovered, iron and steel were the most dangerous to burn and the most useful in a fight if she could learn how to use them.

She spent the next twenty minutes or so practicing, trying to get a feel of how much control she had and how much power. She experimented with pennies, those being the cheapest bits of metal she could get her hands on, and scattered them across the park. She pulled on them, pushed on them, and even took notes and measurements like the total nerd she was. By the time she was done, she wasn't ready to get into a cape fight, but she was better than she had been before.

WWW

She wasn't looking for trouble on her way home, but she found it anyway. That was the problem with tin; she could hear a cry for help from blocks away when it was quiet. That would be useful after she became a hero to find bad guys, but right now she wanted to go home and ignore it and she couldn't. She heard the meaty thumping sound of someone being beaten, and the sound of laughter.

Taylor gritted her teeth and ran towards the sounds. She hadn't come out here looking for a fight, but she had come out looking for practice. She had iron, steel, tin, and zinc in her stomach, which was enough to scare off most thugs. Or get herself shot. One of the two.

She found them easily, four men gathered around a prone figure in a dark alley. A woman, judging by the sound of her sobs. Taylor could see them clearly through the darkness with her tin-enhanced vision, but they couldn't see her, which gave her the advantage.

I have powers, they don't. I know where they are, they don't know where I am. I ... got this?

She stretched out her hand, focused on the metal the four men had on them—belt buckles, buttons, a crowbar, and what she really hoped wasn't a gun—and pushed.

Newton's third law of motion knocked her off her feet. Ow. Fortunately, no one saw her.

"Hey, what was that?" one of the four men said. With her enhanced hearing, it sounded like he was right on top of her.

"What was what?"

"I dunno. Just felt a little dizzy for a bit." He shook his head. "Don't matter. Let's just finish this whore and go home."

Right. If she wanted to send something flying, she needed to push on something smaller than she was. If she wanted to send herself flying, she needed to push on something bigger. Like four guys at once.

She tried again, bracing herself and burning iron to pull on the crowbar one of them was holding, yanking it from his grasp. It lurched into the air and clattered on the sidewalk, stopping at her feet.

Now they noticed her.

Crap.

They hesitated, recognizing her as a parahuman but not necessarily as a dangerous one. Some capes in the city were tough enough to take a bullet to the face and throw cars at people, while others were, well, more like her.

To see which category she was in, one of the men pulled out a gun.

Crap!

Flaring steel, she pushed on the gun, making herself stumble backward but sending the gun flying. Before it could get too far, she Pulled on it and caught it against her chest. She pointed it at them and burned zinc, rioting their fear.

"Go. Away."

To her credit, she did not sound afraid. At least, not as afraid as they were. They took off running into the night leaving Taylor alone with their victim. She rushed over to her and knelt down.

"Are you alright?" Dumb question. Of course she wasn't, but she was still breathing. This close, Taylor could even hear her heart beating. "Can you stand, or do I need to call an ambulance?"

The woman groaned and opened an eye that wasn't swollen shut. Her lip was swollen too, and her nose was bleeding. "Who ... who are you?"

Right. The woman hadn't been looking when Taylor had used her powers, and the hood and scarf she was using to cover her face wasn't much of a costume. She hadn't settled on a cape name, but she didn't want to use her real name either. "Anne. Can you tell me yours?"

"Claire," she mumbled.

"Can you move, Claire? I know you're hurt, but we're not safe here." They were in the downtown district, but one of the more rundown areas near the docks. If the woman lived nearby or if they could at least get away from where she had just been attacked, Taylor could focus on calling an ambulance or-or whatever came next.

Taylor helped Claire to her feet as carefully as she could and got a decent look at her. She was pretty, even in the shape she was in, maybe in her early twenties. Though the attackers had seemed more interested in kicking her when she was down than tearing her clothes off, so it didn't look like Taylor had interrupted an attempted rape. They hadn't seemed interested in taking her stuff either, so she couldn't say it was a mugging. It could have been a racial thing; the men had been white and the woman Asian, and the Empire Eighty-Eight was the dominant gang in the area.

Or maybe the men had just been in it for the sake of hurting someone. Taylor went to school with plenty of people like that.

Taylor let the woman lean on her as she led her toward safety, keeping the gun in hand. Ironically, if they ran into trouble the gun might be less lethal than steelpushed coins. She hadn't learned how to aim the pennies she pushed and she didn't know how much damage they could do to people. Meanwhile she could aim a gun at someone's foot or, ideally, use it to scare people off. And as long as someone had a reason to be afraid, Taylor could riot that fear without being obvious about it.

They moved slowly with Claire leaning on her shoulder as they walked. Taylor thought that she must have had a cracked rib or too, because her breathing sounded stuttered. Taylor wanted to sit her down, call nine-one-one and treat her for shock and see if the first-aid class she'd taken was worth the trouble. But the first step of any treatment was making sure the area was safe, and this area was anything but.

As if to illustrate that, two vans came down the street and stopped. Taylor heard them coming long before she saw them, and even when she saw them there wasn't much she could do besides hope they kept going. When people began pouring out of the vans—four from each—carrying butterfly knives, brass knuckles, and even a few more guns, Taylor realized that she was in the worst possible scenario. Most of them wore red and black, and she could see a few Empire Eighty-Eight tattoos openly displayed on their skin.

"Can you run?" she whispered.

Claire didn't answer.

"I can stall them for a bit." I hope. "But I'm going to need you to run."

Taylor could hear her breathing, hear heartbeat, and she could tell that this wasn't going to work. Claire was too scared right now, too beaten to do what she needed to do. If Taylor could calm her down a bit ... but that wasn't how zinc worked, and Rioting her fear wasn't going to help. Could she Riot the opposite of fear? Courage? Was that even an emotion?

Instead, Taylor burned zinc and focused on her anger. Gently at first, but bit by bit she pulled harder, and as she did so she felt Claire grow more steady next to her, clenching her fists and gritting her teeth. They hurt you for fun, they beat you, and they've come back to hurt you again. Do not give them the satisfaction. Survive!

Claire was still afraid no matter how angry she was, but hopefully she would run when she needed to instead of freezing.

Then things got worse. A ninth Empire gangster stepped out of the van, and the others gave him space. He wasn't wearing a shirt despite the brisk April night. He never did. Instead, he wore a steel mask in the shape of a wolf.

"I take it you're new," Hookwolf said.

Taylor burned iron, studying the metal her Ironsight highlighted. There were only two guns she could pick out in the crowd. The rest carried melee weapons.

"It feels like there's another one of you every week," he went on, his voice dry.

Why? Were guns that expensive, or was there another reason? There was another major gang in the city run by Coil that, besides the leader, didn't have any parahumans at all, just lots and lots of guns.

"If this were a professional ring, there'd be a few preliminary fights to weed out the trash. Instead, there's me."

She had iron, steel, tin, and zinc, and she wasn't going to be able to scare Hookwolf off with Zinc. She could try to push everyone's weapons away like she had earlier, but they'd just beat her with their fists. And that wasn't even counting Hookwolf, who was more dangerous than all of them put together.

Actually, why had they come at all? What good were henchmen anyway when someone like Hookwolf was around?

Crowd control. Hookwolf wanted to fight, and the henchmen were there in case she tried to run away. Distract Hookwolf. Disable the henchmen. Give Claire time to escape. Hopefully they'd be more focused on her to worry about their original target. And maybe, if a miracle or three occurred, Taylor would get the chance to run too.

"So here's what's going to happen. You, kid, are going to entertain me, and I am—"

"Run!" Taylor hissed, and she flared zinc. She focused on Claire's anger to keep her focused, and pulled on her fear as well to make sure she tried to run instead of fight. Hell, she rioted everything, if only to trigger a little bit more adrenaline to get her through this alive.

Meanwhile, Taylor pulled out her gun, pointed it at Hookwolf, and fired.

WWW

A/n There aren't enough Worm/Mistborn crossovers, so I wrote this. Okay, it's not really a crossover as much as giving Taylor Mistborn powers, but those are still fun powers to write. This chapter has been beta read by Lightwavers, who wrote a story with a similar idea where Taylor triggers as a Fullborn. Let me know what you think!