Mistrunner 1 (Mistborn/Cyberpunk)

Welcome to Night City

The first breath was a shock, like a bolt of lightning throughout his entire body. Possibly more painful than that, since last he checked, he didn’t have a body anymore. 

Elend’s vision swam before him as he tried to make sense of everything. Hills rose and swelled but they were jagged and wrong. Unnatural. Off in the distance he heard screeching sounds, bangs, and the crackle of fire. He tried to pull on tin instinctively, only to fail, his stomach empty of any metals. Probably for the best. I couldn’t handle the sudden increase to my senses as well as Vin could.

Vin! He whirled around, his thoughts drawn by her before remembering she was dead- and then Elend saw her body. Not as a vision, or dream, but really her. She was lying in the muck, her chest slowly rising and falling as her eyes fluttered open. “Elend?” 

He covered the scant distance between them in an instant, holding her close. “I thought you were dead.”

“Me too. I thought you- we both died,” she said, coughing, as if getting used to speaking again. “I ascended, guided you to fight Ruin, then you died. I fought Ruin and I died. How are we here?”

It was a good question, and Elend had another. “Where is ‘here?’” Standing up, they looked around, taking the new world in. The world they once had was dying so any world would be new, but this one seemed different, beyond even his expectations of what could be possible.

Piles and piles of broken machinery made up the ‘hills’ that surrounded them. They littered everywhere, save for a mostly clear and very smooth road that ran through the piles of garbage. And it was definitely garbage from the smell of it. While (hopefully) not excrement, there was a nasty smell to the entire place.

Elend wandered over to look at a cube, mostly made of metal but with a glass front. It had symbols, numbers on the side, and a large button on the bottom right hand corner that when pressed, caused the door to swing open. Inside it there was a lightbulb that turned on illuminating the interior, empty save for a glass disc on the bottom.

And this was just… discarded? Why? It was hardly the only piece like it. There were several more of that type of machine scattered about the heaps of waste, alongside all of the rest. Most of the strange contraptions seemed broken or damaged in some way.

“Ruin,” his wife began, haltingly. “They sent us here as I killed them. Claimed that the afterlife would be ‘too good for us after all the trouble we caused’. I was dying too, Preservation’s power not enough to overcome Ruin, only match them. But for each push, a pull. As they expended the power to throw our souls to this dimension, I gave us our Allomancy, our bodies.”

“Then… what happened to everyone else?” Elend worried even as he burned to know the answer. If Ruin died, is the world still doomed, or… His heart lifted as he saw Vin’s smile. She was able to bring peace to his mind in a way no one else could.

“They’ll be fine. Preservation had a plan, over a thousand years in the making. The Hero of Ages will save them.” A smirk danced across her face and he knew there was more to the story than that, but it was fine. He could seek answers for the past later; for now he had to look to the present.

“So we’re… on another planet.” It was a little mind-boggling. Are their people here too? Do they look like us? Think like us? It feels cool at least; perhaps a bit too much so, but that’s better than a scorching, burning heat. The sun on this planet is so pale, I can look at it directly without it hurting, even see the strange craters on its face.

Vin was always one to take to action, swiftly moving ahead. “Wherever we are, we could use this,” Vin said, striding off to a jagged spike from the wreckage. “There’s plenty of metals here we could burn-” She stiffened, stopping suddenly.

“What’s wrong?” Elend began to ask before turning to the sound of a person approaching. Walking in from the road around one of the piles was a man in his late thirties. He had on a jacket of an odd make and faded denim pants, with some kind of odd pipe holstered at his hip. His hair was sandy brown, and scraggly, with plenty of fuzz on his chin that spoke to a lack of regular shaving.

“What er you doin here?” He demanded, his words slightly slurred. “Anyone who wants to pick from the dump needs ta pay me at least fifty eddies! I may be high, but not so high I’d forget about a man in a dirty white suit rummaging through here.”

Elend grimaced, glancing down at his attire. It was what he’d been wearing before he died, and landing in the muck here made it look almost as bad as his blood splattered over it would have been. And I used it as such a symbol of authority in the past. I suppose it’s refreshing to know that even in this strange world it helps me stand out.

“Apologies friend,” Elend spoke, giving his best winning smile as he strode over the precarious piles towards the man. “We found ourselves lost in here. If you could point us to the nearest civilization, we’d be much obliged.” Instinctively, he tried to call upon brass to soothe the man, only to find himself empty again. Damn, I haven’t been a Mistborn that long but I find myself relying on those powers.

The man snorted. “Sure sure, just cough up the eddies and we’ll talk.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Eddies, eurodollars, man! You fucked in the skull or what?” Is this vulgarity common here or just part of his ‘charm?’

“Sorry we don’t have any of those.” Elend had the vague sense that it was a type of currency, but he couldn’t tell much beyond that. Whatever Vin did to let us understand and speak the language here was already more than could be expected.

“Why’d you keep on saying ‘we’, gonk?”

He blinked “Because it’s me and my… wife.” He finished lamely before turning and realizing Vin had slipped away. Turning back, she saw him crouched behind him, improvised blade in hand. Elend gave a subtle shake of his head, as if clearing his mind while letting Vin know she didn’t need to do anything drastic, yet.

The hapless stranger looked at him strangely. “Fuck this, don’t need to deal with some cyberpsycho this late at night over a bunch a scraps.” The man trudged off back down the road, muttering to himself about ‘suits in trashcans.’ 

“What do you think?”

“I think that metal device on his hip was a weapon of sorts. His hand neared it every time he got agitated or scared,” Vin replied. “Now let’s get some metals and get out of here.”

“Are you sure these will be any good? If they’re alloyed or impure burning them could be dangerous,” Elend pointed out.

“I can test them.” At his increased alarm, Vin reassured him. “Don’t worry about it, I had a good feel for this even before I burned the mists, back when I was on the streets. I instinctively knew which trace minerals to burn.” Elend could hardly deny that his wife was gifted with Allomancy. Despite being stronger than her once he gained his powers, she was always far more skilled than him.

“Only if you have to,” he said reluctantly. “This,” he gestured to the trash all around, “Must have come from a civilization. They might have better sources of metal for us to use.” I can only hope they do with this much waste. 

Vin and Elend scrounged around for different metals, getting what were hopefully iron and steel easily enough, as well as brass and copper. Not wanting to waste any more time, they headed out, climbing in the direction a large strange metal bird exuding heat had glided to overhead.

Upon cresting the hill, they were greeted with a sight that shocked them still. It was a city, but nothing like Luthadel at all. The buildings rose up, hundreds of massive towers shooting into the sky. Smaller buildings clustered around beneath them, mostly at the edges. The construction of the architecture was different than that of noble houses, and many buildings had large illuminated displays across them, showing words or symbols, or pictures. Figments of other images were projected rising far into the sky, clearly unreal and slightly see through, but still easy to determine what they were depicting.

Of all of it, in the city’s splendor and oddness, what struck out most to Elend was a particular tower within the city, one of the tallest in the center of the vast metropolis. It lacked the spikes or other directly threatening measures of Kredik Shaw, with a blocky design and a symbol like a three branched white tree emblazoned near the top, but something about that structure disturbed him.

Vin caught on to what her husband was feeling, reassuring him by saying, “Don’t worry. If it’s anything like the Lord Ruler’s keep, I’ll crush it the same as I did that.”

“Wha- that was you? Hah, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Shall we?” Elend asked holding out an elbow for his wife, despite her being more graceful than himself, she easily took it and they marched down to their new destiny. Their new world. Their new city, and as a large sign said at the front of it, it would be a city not of mists, but of Night. 

A/N: So, this is an idea I’ve had rattling around in my head for a while now. Mistborn (especially Era 1) and Cyberpunk have a lot of fun parallels, especially between Vin & Kelsier (her former teacher) and V & Johnny. Decided to have it be Elend that goes with Vin instead, because that means that they sorta get they’re ‘happy ending’ while still getting to explore the setting. Plus I feel Elend has some roles he can grow into here too.

Being from a medieval, technologically suppressed society, this whole world is going to give them more than just a bit of culture shock. Still, they do have some pretty nifty powers on their side to help them adjust/deal with things. Like the fact that it’s actually night time, and Elend was just looking at the Moon before, but they didn’t have one on their home planet (the general smog and pollution made it too difficult for him to see the stars or other celestial bodies).

I’ll admit that I’m playing a little fast and loose with how things work in the Cosmere to have the premise work, but hopefully that isn’t a dealbreaker for the idea. Most times I find stories don’t even bother to explain how a character(s) gets transferred over so hopefully this handwave is good enough.

For people less familiar with the Mistborn side of things, Vin and Elend are Allomancers or ‘mistborn’, who are people that can gain a number of powers based on metals they swallow and then ‘burn’ using up. Here’s a list of all the metals and what they do:

• Steel: Pushes metals away, or the user (based on weight)

• Iron: Pulls metals towards the user, or the user to the metal (based on weight)

• Pewter: Enhances Physical Attributes

• Tin: Enhances Senses

• Brass: Soothes Emotions (does not work on self)

• Zinc: Riots Emotions (does not work on self)

• Bronze: Hears Allomantic Pulses

• Copper: Conceals Allomantic Pulses

• Gold: Reveals your past self, what could have been

• Electrum: Reveals your future self, what could be

• Bendalloy: Creates a bubble centered around the user, time is sped up within compared to outside

• Cadmium: Creates a bubble centered around the user, time is slowed down within compared to outside

• Aluminum: Instantly burns all other Allomantic metals for no effect

• Duraluminum: Other Allomantic metals that are being burnt are used up in an instant, for enhanced effects

• Nicrosil: Enhances the Allomantic burn of someone else the user is touching

• Chromium: Drains someone else the user is targeting of all their Allomantic metals

As you can tell from that list, there’s a number of useful powers in there, as well as a few that won’t come up in the world of Cyberpunk (most of the ones related to Allomantic metals have no use outside of their world/any world in the Cosmere that has Investiture, the basis of their magic systems). Still quite a number of useful powers to be had there.

If you’re unfamiliar with Cyberpunk, well it’s a dystopian setting ruled by several ‘mega corporations’ that exploit and use the people. Gangs and crime run rampant, with the cops and politicians often in the pockets of the megacorps. Cybernetic enhancements are abundant and used to some degree by all citizens, in day to day life, but also in more violent applications. The internet is broken up into several chunks with dangerous AIs kept barely at bay. I’m using mostly just elements from Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk Edgerunners.