Note: Steel does store mental speed. There's always a certain degree of overlap between the Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual realms. Zinc just stores mental speed to a vastly greater degree, and also stores acuity or wits. Basically, zinc excels in super fast on the ground battle planning. Certain scenes in the Mistborn series just wouldn't make any sense if steel flat-out couldn't store mental speed.











Today had been a total flop. School was Emma, as usual, and when I finally went crime hunting There was nothing to find. I even used some of the power in the steel sphere to look for crime—a steel-mind, my power called it—which meant I had less speed available when I finally went out and fought lung.





Fought. Lung.





I had a reason, of course, I wasn’t going to just try beating up probably the strongest cape in Brockton Bay to see if I could. I wasn’t about to let him kill children, no matter how long he chased me.





I put on another burst of speed as I turned the corner, accelerating to one and a half, two, three, four times my usual speed for a few brief seconds in the hopes of finally losing him, when he appeared above me wearing wings. Because of course. I was just running by now; I had no hopes of actually winning a fight with Lung with only a steel-mind, especially when it felt like it might actually run out sometime soon.





“Hey, maybe we can work something out,” I said just before dodging a jet of flame. I got back to my feet, glad I’d had the foresight to tape the steel-mind to my chest, and kept running. If only I’d waited until I could order brass, then I could just store the heat he blasted me with. Or gold; knowing I had a way to heal would make this whole situation a lot less stressful.





“Like, how about you just kind of lightly singe the kids instead of killing them?” I tried.





He roared and descended toward me with an open maw. I squeaked and tapped my steel-mind as hard as I could until the only sound was my beating heart. Nothing that big should be that fast. I spoke to myself between pants as I jogged, shoes slapping against the pavement.





“Okay. Can’t run forever. What can I do?”





My mind was fuzzy, my recent memories a blend of fear and fire and desperately tapping my steel-mind when he got too close. I hadn’t had time to slow down and plan, and now a part of my brain was screaming at me to stop using my speed now or else he’d catch me and I’d have none left and I’d get burned, and what would Dad think.





“Got flakes. Can burn them?” I mumbled.





Wait. That was actually a good idea. I scrabbled at the pouch where I kept my three remaining vials of steel flakes and tipped one down my throat. I focused, and blue lines appeared all around me. A huge, thick rope of a line pointed directly behind me. I turned, and there was Lung.





I panicked, holding my hands out as if to ward him off as I jumped and Pushed against his scaled form, wings stretching out behind him, and sailed off into the sky. At that point I was extremely glad I was tapping steel, because otherwise there was no way I was touching the ground again without splatting against it. The blue lines were thin and faded this high up—I was even above the distant skyscrapers Downtown.





I drifted, passing a pigeon in midflight, wings moving with excruciating slowness. It was scary at first, but after a while it became boring, and then calming. It was less a desperate attempt to save my life and more of a game, using Allomancy to Push against metal below with feather-light touches, smoothly decelerating my fall to earth.





When I touched down on the roof of a squat building with a flat roof and handy fire escape, I was almost disappointed. The day had been terrible, but up in the air with nothing but me and my thoughts, it all seemed inconsequential. Who cared if Emma hated me now, if Sophia shoved me down the stairs or Madison kept one of her sycophants near me at all times? What did it matter that Lung wanted to kill me, or Armsmaster had seen my descent?





Who cared? I could fly.





“Are you a villain?”





Four words were all it took for reality to come crashing back down. I glanced down. My costume wasn’t the best, sure, and I could see how the hockey mask might evoke the image of a bank robber, and I suppose the all-black outfit didn’t help. But it wasn’t like I’d been doing anything wrong. Why couldn't he have asked if I was a hero?





“Always wanted to be a hero. Just my luck all the good guys think I’m evil. It’s the mask, isn’t it,” I said, slumping against the wall.





I looked longingly at the fire escape. It was only a few feet away, and what was super speed for if not escaping awkward situations? But I was running really low, and what if Lung found me as I was going home?





“Hmph. Be careful. Lung has been sighted not far from here.”





“Uh. Yeah.”





He mounted his bike, but didn’t drive off. “Name?”





I opened my mouth. Closed it. He didn’t mean my civilian name, of course, he wanted my cape name. Which I didn’t have. I thought. It didn’t take long, I had no ideas.





“Hero … Person … Girl?”





“…You may want to rethink that name.”





With that, Armsmaster drove off. I buried my head in my hands, then took it out a minute later. It just wasn’t the same with a mask on. I had the opportunity to speak to Armsmaster himself. He was my hero, and eventually my favorite after my Alexandria phase. And his last comment to me was that I needed a better name. He wasn’t wrong, but still.





I’d been planning on brainstorming ways to get cash if I got out of the whole Lung thing alive—a choice few metals would have allowed me to get away easily, if not turn the tide until he grew enough to overpower me again. But now I was going to do something else with what remained of the night.





I was going to pick a name.