Assault had been right.





My Dad wasn’t angry, not even close. He acted kind of … hollow, like he was trying desperately to treat everything as normal despite how everything had changed. He even ignored the phone the PRT had given me, even though I awkwardly held it clutched against my chest as I got in the car.





“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said as we started driving.





I flinched. He said it in a calm, level tone, but his hands were tightly clutched against the wheel.





“Dad…”





“What would you like to have for dinner tonight? I forgot to go to the store today, but we still have that spaghetti from last night.”





I closed my eyes and breathed in. This was his way of saying that everything could still be normal, that he knew I hadn’t told him about my powers and was willing to play along. A few days ago I would’ve said this was the best possible outcome, but now I just wanted him to react.





“I was going to tell you, Dad. When I finally figured out how my powers worked and got enough money—”





“Enough money that you couldn’t hide it.”





I curled into myself. That was the harshest thing Dad had said to me since before Mom died, and even though I knew it was relatively innocuous and he was completely justified, it still hurt. Somehow the sting was worse than Sophia’s beating, which caused a twinge in my side as I remembered it.





He let out a breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I was just worried about you.”





But I knew he did mean it, that moments of tension were when the truth came out. Like when Emma revealed her hate for me, or the druggies I’d sometimes see wandering around broken and begging for money. Everyone was rotten inside in some way, but some people, like Piggot, were really really good at hiding it. And others such as Assault or Clockblocker warded away that inner nastiness with humor.





“I … talk to me Dad. I don’t know what you’re thinking.”





He smoothly stopped at a yellow light, ignoring the furious honk from behind us. “I always knew something like this would happen. I just hoped it would be later. Your Mom, she always stood for what she knew was right.”





He was referring to the time that Mom had run with Lustrum’s crew, before that wave of feminism had gone too far and crashed and burned, setting the movement back years. I’d had suspicions that she hadn’t quit quite so early, and it seemed Dad was finally acknowledging that.





“It wasn’t what killed her, in the end, but sometimes I couldn’t help but think that it would come back to us. And then you just go out and—I heard that was you Lung was following last night. Lung. Please tell me your power makes you invincible.”





“It uh … can kind of do that, yeah,” I said cautiously.





“That’s a no, then,” he said grimly.





“If I had the right metals, I could survive my own beheading.”





I paused. I wasn’t sure where that knowledge had come from, but it felt right. If I had enough health inside a gold-mind … yeah. One of the rules of Feruchemy I’d teased out of the info-dump in my head was that I couldn’t hurt myself from storing something vital, I’d just automatically start tapping instead. I assumed that rule held true as long as I was touching the relevant metalmind, even if I couldn’t consciously tap it because I lacked a head. I wondered if a new body would grow from the head, a new head would sprout up from the body, or I’d just have to flail about until I found my head and manually reattached it. I shuddered. One thing was for sure: I never wanted to learn from experience.





The car started moving again. Dad was tense, shoulders drawn in in a mirror of my own.





“I shouldn’t be working myself up in the car,” he muttered, consciously relaxing his muscles in an exercise I recognized as one the dockworkers used to limber up before working. “We’ll talk more once we get home, okay?”





I quietly agreed, and stored steel for the rest of the ride. Once we reached the house, Dad parked the car. We went inside and sat at our places at the kitchen table, habit making the action automatic.





“So you probably want to know about my powers.”





He had an odd look on his face. “I—sure. What’s your power?”





I got up. “I’ll be right back, just gotta get my notebook.”





The trip upstairs was quick. I took a moment to calm myself. Didn’t I have emotional control as an ability? I could really use a dose of pure relaxation right now. I mentally bumped up the priority for zinc or brass and groaned when I remembered the last time I’d had my backpack, and with it my notebook, had been at the scene of a crime. I had no illusions about the ability of my substitution cipher to stand up to government code crackers. At least I’d only written down some of my Allomantic abilities. I resolved right then to never write down anything about Hemalurgy. If the Protectorate saw what I could do with that, learned about the superpowered minions or incredibly-strong trolls I could create and mind control to do whatever I wanted, I’d be sitting in a cell until I agreed to join the Wards or else get shipped off the Birdcage. I’d seen the Canary trial, I knew what happened to capes even vaguely reminiscent of Nilbog or the Simurgh.





Speaking of the Simurgh, I wondered what copper would do against her. Hide-pulse, my power told me. The key was the pulse, I thought. Was precognition done through some sort of science-y ‘pulse’ that copper could block? I shook my head. I was trying to distract myself from Dad, and it was working. I dropped the phone on my desk and snatched a vial of steel flakes from under my bed, clomping down the stairs and pulling up my chair.





“Sorry Dad, the PRT probably have my notebook as evidence.”





Not that it mattered all that much. I had all the information I needed about my power right here in my head. I’d just thought it would be less awkward if we were staring at a page instead of at each other. I quickly explained the difference between Allomancy and Feruchemy, and how they were two different methods of using my power.





“I only have steel right now, because it has to be the exact right alloy or it won’t work, but even without any other metals I have two useful powers already.”





I touched my steel-mind and tapped, pulling hard at the stored speed until everything was frozen in place, then walked over to the other side of the room, hunching down as close to the ground as I could get so that I didn’t accidentally push myself into the air and have to wait for gravity to ever so slowly pull me back down. I let the world resume.





Dad jerked back, startled, then shook his head. “Guess I’ll have to get used to that.”





I went back and sat down, pulling out the vial and putting it on the table. The steel flakes swirled around in the alcohol solution. I took it, unstoppered, and drank. The store of power flared to life inside me, and translucent blue lines appeared leading from sources of metal all over the house to my chest. I put the steel-mind down and tried giving it a light push, just enough to send it rolling across the table. It stubbornly refused to move. I frowned and pushed harder. With an effort of will, the metal inside me flared and I felt the lightest full-body shove. The metal rolled forward a few inches and stopped.





“That’s odd. When I used it before, Pushing off with Allomancy was strong enough to let me fly.”





Dad frowned, putting his hand to his chin as he thought. “Well, I can think of two possible reasons that you had such a hard time moving it. The first is that your special steel resists your telekinesis just because it’s the right alloy to use with your powers. Having that kind of weakness would line up with what I’ve heard about many of the most powerful heroes and villains, except for the Triumvirate. The other possibility is that your two ways of using your power interfere with each other, so you can’t easily move anything you’re using for speed, and vice versa.”





Huh. That was pretty important to think about. If I had that kind of weakness, I’d have to watch out for metal. First I’d need to test it, though. I had two more vials of Allomantic steel upstairs I needed to try Pushing. And I might as well try storing some speed in a steel flake and then trying to burn it to see if it worked the other way around as well.





“So what are the other metals, and what do they do?”





I brought him up to speed with what I knew and suspected of the first eight Allomantic metals, then started speculating about the rest. There was cadmium, which gave me the feeling of Pull-time, and bendalloy which seemed paired with cadmium, as I got Push-time from it. Some sort of time manipulation was my guess, and depending on how they worked—maybe freezing and unfreezing objects in time, respectively—I might be able to pull off a decent Clockblocker impression. Gold was hard to interpret, but a rough translation was past-self-sight, which … might be useful? Electrum was the opposite, as future-self-sight, and I had a good feeling about that one.





“Sounds like every two metals are paired in some way, like iron and steel. We might be able to guess at what they do if we just get you half of every pair,” Dad said, absently fiddling with the empty steel vial.





I went through the next Allomantic metals quickly. Chromium was empty-other, aluminum empty-self, and I was not going to be trying that on anyone friendly until I knew exactly what that meant; nicrosil was burn-other and duralumin burn-self. That probably meant it enhanced Allomantic abilities, based on how I burned steel, but I resolved to treat them like chromium and aluminum.





Thankfully, the feeling-descriptions I got for Feruchemical abilities were much clearer.





“So at first I thought that iron would let me store weight, but I’m pretty sure tapping it really hard won’t cause me to collapse into a puddle, so now I think it lets me store density. It won’t let me fly on my own, but if I use it and steel I bet I could do a pretty good imitation of it. Tin and Pewter feel the same as the Allomantic versions, just more … selective. Then zinc is also speed, but only mental speed, along with something else. Intelligence, I think?”





By now it was night, and neither of us were at the table anymore. I was pacing, alternately storing and tapping my steel between thoughts, and Dad was cooking for the first time in a while. Well, he was reheating spaghetti, but still. This was the first time we’d had more than brief, cursory interactions in a while.





“For brass, I get warmth. It’s part of what made me think I was a Tinker when I first got my powers, because when I think about it I get this image of me melting metal and shaping it with my bare hands, and I know I can do it. It’s like I have these instincts, where I know exactly how to get the right alloy of any metal or make sure it’s pure.”





And how to fashion any metal into the ideal Hemalurgic spike, and place it optimally in the human body to take or give power, and give me influence. Or to change it into an inhuman one. At most, I was going to use that knowledge to make myself piercings that wouldn’t fall out.





“Copper lets me store memories, so when I get some studying will be a breeze.”





Dad laughed and placed two plates of spaghetti down on the table. “I think your teachers would consider that cheating.”





I stuck my tongue out at him. “Hey, it’s not like anyone’s going to know. Unless someone tells on me.”





He raised his hands. “Alright, alright, I surrender. I’ll keep your secret, mysterious parahuman.”





I smiled. “After that, there’s bronze. I can put in … anti-sleepiness?”





“I think you mean wakefulness.”





“Eh, that works too,” I said with a shrug. “Cadmium can store breath. I’m not sure if that means it holds oxygen, or if I can breathe in something like sleeping gas and store that so it doesn’t affect me. I’ll have to test that. Just like everything else. Bendalloy lets me store … energy, sort of. But not like pure energy, more like … food? And drinks? Gold’s the metal I should probably get next because it can hold health. Unfortunately, it’s gold, so I’ll probably have pretty much every other metal first.”





Dad paused and gave me a look I couldn’t read. I tilted my head, inviting him to interject, but he said nothing. I frowned and continued.





“Electrum’s made from gold and silver, so it’s probably going to be just as difficult to get ahold of. It only stores determination, so it’s not essential or anything. Chromium is kind of weird. It can hold fortune, but I don’t know how that works. My luck’s bad enough as it is that I don’t really want to risk storing it, but I’ll probably have to if I want to actually be a hero.”





And if used as a Hemalurgic spike, chromium could steal destiny. I imagined someone spiking Eidolon and shuddered. Would it act like a Stranger power, transferring all the respect and authority he had? Or would someone with his destiny just happen to luck into killing Nilbog and other similar S-class threats?





“Then nicrosil stores … powers, is the closest word I can think of. I might be able to put my ability to use Allomancy or Feruchemy inside some nicrosil, though I’m not sure exactly how that would work in practice, or if someone else could use them.”





“You should think about testing that,” Dad said mildly.





Yeah. Trumps were rare, and if I could gift someone with, say, a few hours of steel Feruchemy people would pay a whole lot for that. I might be able to buy a gold-mind much faster if I could literally sell powers.





“The next two are pretty nebulous. Aluminum stores identity, and duralumin connection.”





Dad looked at me and nodded, though I got the feeling that the gesture wasn’t really meant for me. “You’re not going to stop.”





I could guess what he meant. “I have to be a hero, Dad. I have powers, really good ones. I can’t just do nothing.”





“I know.” His smile was wistful, now. He fiddled with his wedding band and slid it off his finger. “Twenty-four-karat. Pure gold.”





He slid it across the table to me. My eyes widened and I plucked it off the table. “Dad, you don’t have to—”





I could feel it. A neutral acceptance of whatever I decided to do, leave it empty or start filling it. The metal didn’t care.





“Dad…”





His smile was sad now. “If she knew what you could do with it, she would tell me to give it to you in a heartbeat.”





I put it on my finger, rapidly blinking. “I … thanks.”