Vin Venture vs Taylor Hebert (Mistborn vs Worm)

 

(Vin art by spvcespvce, Taylor art by lizardinkart)

"People are inexterminable - like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices - that's us." - Robert Frost

Vin Venture, the Mistborn Saviour from the Cosmere.

Taylor Hebert, the Teenage Warlord Turned Hero from Worm.

Betrayal can be a poison, turning anyone into a withdrawn loner, untrusting of anyone around them. But with some unexpected new connections, they can break out of their shell, and truly come into their own. And when the stakes start escalating, you can be sure that these two girls will rise to the occasion, and do whatever it takes to win.

But when they meet face to face, who will be the one to come out on top? Will Vin be able to preserve her own life, or will Taylor buzz her way to victory? Read on to find out who will win a DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

The media I’ll be using for both is rather simple. For Vin, I’ll be using the main seven Mistborn novels, plus the short stories and novellas (don’t expect to see Fortnite here). For Taylor, it’ll be the Worm web serial, plus its sequel Ward.

It’s worth noting that both combatants are somewhat reliant on their environments. Because of that, for the purposes of this blog, both will be placed in a modern city.

This blog does contain massive spoilers for both Mistborn and Worm. Read at your own risk if you haven’t read either series.

References:

• Taylor vs Vin Master Doc by VelvetKey

• The Coppermind

• Worm Wiki

Background

Vin Venture

(Vin art by Deandra Scicluna, preview image by Cabbage)

“Anonymity. Hiding, even when you’re with others. Being quiet, unobtrusive. Forcing yourself to stay apart—emotionally, at least. It’s a way of life. A protection.”

On the planet Scadrial, the sun burns red, ash falls from the skies, and the mists rule the night. Here the skaa people faced brutal oppression from the wealthy noble class of the Final Empire. For over one thousand years they oppressed the skaa people, led by the immortal king, the Lord Ruler. As with any oppressed people, there are those who rose up in defiance. One rebel of note would end up not just shaping the Final Empire, but the whole world itself: Vin Venture.

Born simply as Vin, she was the daughter of a skaa prostitute and a high ranking member of the Lord Ruler’s religious order. After her mother went crazy, killed her younger sister, and gave Vin an earring, Vin’s older half-brother, Reen, took Vin into his care and left. For years, the two survived on the streets, barely making it by, even resorting to thievery. Though Reen taught her the best he could, he wasn’t exactly an amazing brother. He constantly abused her, verbally and physically, in order to keep Vin in the shadows. This abuse had a profound effect on Vin’s ability to trust others, making her reserved and afraid of getting close to others. Eventually, Reen disappeared, leaving Vin with a thieving crew led by Camon.

For months she stayed with Camon’s crew, suffering from his abuse. Camon forced her to stay so he could use her strange ability to make people more docile in order to get more money out of them. Eventually, this caught the attention of a man named Kelsier.

Kelsier was the only known survivor of the pits of hathsin, a brutal work camp where the Lord Ruler sent prisoners to work until they died. Thanks to awakening to strange powers, he had managed to escape, and had come up with a plan to take down the Lord Ruler and end skaa oppression. After noticing Vin’s similar powers, he got rid of Camon and recruited her to join his cause. It was here that Vin finally learned what her powers actually were.

Vin was an Allomancer, someone who digested certain metals and gained abilities from them. Better yet, she was a Mistborn, like Kelsier, who had the ability to use every Allomantic metal. This made her incredibly unique, as most Allomancer’s could only use one metal. While Kelsier set out to build an army to fight against the Lord Ruler and grab his atium, a rare and valuable metal, he would also train Vin on how to use her Allomancy.

Among the crew, Vin met Sazed, a Terris scholar who had suffered from the cruel breeding program of the Final Empire. He had joined Kelsier’s crew in an effort to fight back against the empire as much as he could. Vin had trouble settling in with the crew, and almost left once. But she decided to stay and help out with the rebellion. In time, she would grow closer to the crew, forming friendships with each of them, and even growing to see Kelsier as a father figure.

Eventually, it was decided by the Kelsier and his crew that someone had to go undercover among the nobility themselves, and they deemed Vin the best fit for the job. Despite her reserved nature and misgivings about it, she was eventually persuaded to act as Valette Renoux, niece of Lord Renoux, a noble who Kelsier had switched out with an imposter. As Valette, Vin would go undercover at balls and other gatherings to get as much information on the nobles as she could, and see how Kelsier’s actions affected them. It was at one of these balls that she met Elend Venture, heir to the great house of Venture. The two had a not so great start, but they grew closer and closer as they met more.

For the next few months, Vin’s life was a mixture of training with her Allomancy, and going undercover as Valette. She grew closer with Elend, eventually developing feelings for him that helped push her to stop an assassination attempt on his life

Not long after that, however, disaster struck. Renoux and some of his crew were captured by the Final Empire, and were sent to be executed. Kelsier was enraged by this, and fought to rescue them. He was successful, but then the Lord Ruler showed up and killed him.

With the rebellion’s main figurehead dead, all hope seemed lost. Until it seemed like Kelsier had come back from the dead to inspire the skaa people into fighting back. In truth, it was the imposter Kelsier had to act as Renoux, taking his place. With this, the rebellion was kickstarted back into full swing, and Vin herself went to confront the Lord Ruler head on. Although she was captured and nearly killed, with the help of the mists themselves, Vin managed to kill the Lord Ruler. With Elend now on the throne, and officially a couple with Vin, things seemed to be looking up for everyone. However, it would not last that way for long.

The rebellion could not find the Lord Ruler’s atium, and there was a growing discontent among the assembly Elend formed to help him rule. One year after the Lord Ruler’s death, things seemed dire for this new kingdom. Especially when three separate armies began to siege Luthadel.

While Elend was dealing with three armies on his doorstep, Vin was dealing with her own troubles. She began to doubt herself, her abilities and her place in the world. The arrival of Zane, an enemy Mistborn, and Elend’s half-brother, did not help at all. Throughout the siege, he would try and convince Vin to leave it all behind and come with him.

It all came to a head one night where Zane made one last attempt to convince Vin. It was here when Vin’s self-doubt disappeared, and she finally realized what she wanted. She wanted to stay by Elend’s side and support him, no matter what. Zane, upset by her rejection, attacked Vin, but was killed by her. Afterwards, Vin would then go to Elend and the two were married quickly.

Not long after that, the siege would come to an end by Vin’s own hand, gaining control over one army, the allegiance of another, and destroying most of the last army’s forces. After the battle, Vin went to the Lord Ruler’s palace, having found the true location of the Well of Ascension, where the Lord Ruler got his power from, located there. Vin took on the power, but instead of using it for herself like the Lord Ruler did, she gave it up and let it be free.

This turned out to be a huge mistake. The power Vin freed was actually Ruin, a god determined to destroy the world, who had manipulated Vin into letting him free. He was trapped in the Well many years prior by his counterpart, Preservation, who wanted to save humanity and the planet. With Ruin able to see and listen in on everything Vin did, except her thoughts, Vin needed to, more than ever, put her trust in Elend and her friends in order to combat him.

In a climactic battle with Ruin’s forces, Vin ended up absorbing all of the mists covering the Final Empire, which was actually Preservation’s body, and ascending to godhood. Vin and Ruin were now on equal footing, but she found herself unable to do anything with her new power. After witnessing Elend’s death, Vin had had enough, and gave one final push to defeat Ruin, killing the both of them in the process.

Sazed, Vin’s old Terris friend, had witnessed this, and decided to take the power of Preservation and Ruin for himself, using his new power and vast knowledge to stop the fighting and restore the planet to what it once was. With green grass, bright blue skies, and no falling ash, Scadrial was saved. In time, Vin would become known as the Ascendant Warrior, a hero who had changed the face of the world, and an inspiration to many in the new age.

Taylor Hebert

(Taylor art by NeoWorm, preview image by Cabbage)

“I’ve done things I regret, I’ve done things I’m proud of, and I’ve walked the roads in between. The sliding scale is a fantasy. There’s no simple answers.”

On the planet Earth Bet, people with extraordinary powers called parahumans exist. Many of these parahumans would become capes, a term for the superheroes and supervillains of the world. And one cape would affect the world in ways no one could’ve expected, Taylor Hebert.

Born in the city of Brockton Bay, United States, Taylor grew up a normal girl. She loved reading books and hanging out with her best friend Emma. But everything changed when her mother died in a car accident. This tragedy would change the Hebert family forever, with Taylor becoming more closed off, and straining her relationship with her father. In time, things seemed to be getting better for her, until Emma decided that she didn’t want to be friends with Taylor anymore, and began a ruthless bullying campaign against her.

Caught off guard by Emma’s betrayal, and her father still depressed from her mother’s death, Taylor had no one to turn to. For over a year she endured Emma’s harsh bullying, eventually culminating in the worst day in Taylor’s life. On the first day back to school after Christmas break, Emma and her friends had stuffed Taylor’s locker full of used menstrual products, and stuffed her inside it. After realising that nobody was going to save her from this horrible experience, Taylor had a trigger event, the worst moment in a parahumans life where they gain their powers, giving her control over bugs.

This did not actually help Taylor’s situation. It actually made it worse, since the new senses from the bugs were overwhelming enough to send her into a catatonic state and put her in the hospital. Not even this was enough to save Taylor from the bullies, as the school did nothing about the bullies, and only offered to cover the hospital fee if her family didn’t sue them.

Although she was forced to endure more bullying from Emma, Taylor now at least had a goal in mind: to become a superhero. Since she didn’t want to deal with more teen drama, she refused to join the Protectorate, the official government superhero organization, and decided to fly solo. Taylor practiced with her powers in secret, and even used a bunch of black widows to make a costume for her.

Eventually, Taylor could no longer fight the desire to use her powers and fight crime, so she snuck out one night to see what she could do, without even having a cape name yet. After getting saved from death by the Undersiders, a group of teen villains. After they conversed with her and left, Taylor came to a startling conclusion about them: they thought she was a villain.

Though Taylor was shocked by this, she thought that she could maybe use this to her advantage. After the Undersiders invited her to join them, she accepted, thinking it would be a good opportunity to learn more about them and uncover the identity of their secret boss. With the Undersiders, Taylor would commit all sorts of crimes for the sake of her secret mission, robbing banks, fighting Nazis, and dismantling a gang. She even finally got her cape name: Skitter.

But throughout her time with the Undersiders, and learning more about them, Taylor found herself growing closer with them, even becoming friends with them. After growing disillusioned with the Protectorate, Taylor decided to go all in on being a villain.

After crashing a party held by the heroes, the Undersiders had finally met their secret benefactor: Coil, a powerful villain in Brockton Bay. He created the Undersiders, and recruited other capes like the Travelers, in order to further his goal of gaining full control of Brockton Bay. But after meeting Dinah Alcott, the young precog that Coil used the bank job as a cover to kidnap, Taylor was furious, and decided to quit the team.

This happened to coincide with Leviathan, one of three Endbringers terrorizing the world, coming to Brockton Bay. Taylor decided to join the fight against it, though there was little she could do against a veritable kaiju like Leviathan. The city was flooded, buildings were destroyed, and many died in the fight. But after Scion, the first parahuman, showed up and drove Leviathan off, the city was saved, or at least, salvageable.

Unfortunately for Taylor, at the end of the fight, her original plan to join the Undersiders as a spy was outed. Taylor thought this was the end of her time with the Undersiders, but it was not to be. Lisa, another member, met with Taylor and revealed that she knew what Taylor’s plan was from the moment she joined. She then made an offer for Taylor to rejoin the Undersiders, with the goal of freeing Dinah from Coil’s clutches.

Thanks to Brockton Bay’s precarious position after Leviathan’s attack, Taylor managed to establish herself as the warlord of the city’s boardwalk, ruling it as her territory. However, it wouldn’t be long before another major threat rolled up to the city.

The Slaughterhouse 9, a group of parahuman mass serial killers, had come to Brockton seeking to recruit a new member. This was already terrible for the recovering city, but it was made worse when Dinah made a prediction. She predicted that if Jack Slash, the leader of the 9, left Brockton Bay alive, he would become the catalyst for the end of the world 2 years later.

Taylor and the other capes in Brockton fought their hardest, even defeating a few members, but unfortunately Jack Slash learned of Dinah’s prophecy, and managed to escape the city.

After the remains of the 9 left, Taylor stayed in Brockton in order to look after her territory and her people. She dealt with Coil once and for all, and even witnessed the reveal of a secret organization that has been helping run the superhero world from the shadows: Cauldron. Afterward, the heroes would out and leak Taylor’s identity to the public, in order to try and bring her in.

Although this initially failed, Taylor eventually did turn herself in. She did this because she was told by Dinah to cut ties with the Undersiders, believing it to be the only way the world could survive. The ensuing interrogation went horribly, resulting in her killing two figures on the heroes side, including Alexandria, a major hero that was previously revealed to have been involved with Cauldron.

Due to Alexandria’s relation to Cauldron, the facts of her death were obfuscated, and Taylor was taken into custody and made to serve as a hero, debuting with her new cape name: Weaver.

Throughout the next two years, Taylor would work tirelessly to hone her skills, in preparation for the end of the world. Eventually, Jack Slash came out of hiding, with the new and rebranded Slaughterhouse 9000, including multiple cloned versions of every member that had ever been in the 9.

It was a hard fight, but eventually all of the members were killed or surrendered, including Jack Slash himself. But this did not stop the end of the world. Jack was able to communicate with Scion, the progenitor of the parahumans and the most powerful being in the world. Jack’s words managed to turn Scion away from the acts of heroism he had been doing, and he had decided instead to turn towards violence, destroying land masses and killing thousands.

And thus, Dinah’s prophecy had seemingly come true, with Scion bringing about the end of the world. Many parahumans joined the fight against him, including Taylor, but it was a losing fight. Scion was far too powerful for them to combat, even though he was holding back.

Taylor grew frustrated at her lack of ability to meaningfully fight against Scion. In an act of desperation, she turned to Panacea, a cape that could manipulate biology, and asked her to modify her powers. This change gave her the ability to gain instant control of any human within sixteen feet of her, but at the cost of giving her gradually worsening brain damage.

Despite her declining mental state, Taylor pushed on, and amassed an army of parahumans under her control with the help of two capes that could make portals and see everywhere at once. Throughout her time as a cape, Taylor had seen, time and time again, other capes refuse to cooperate and work together. Now, under her control, everyone was finally working together.

Taylor, now known as Khepri to everyone not under her control, threw her army at Scion. Though this was marginally better thanks to her organization, it still wasn’t enough. She grew desperate, throwing attack after attack at Scion. Eventually, she came to realize one strategy might work.

After witnessing Scion’s reaction to a recreation of his former partner, Taylor figured out his weakness. She had multiple capes create structures resembling his partner, so much that it was all he could see wherever he turned. Eventually, Scion gave up, opening himself up to attacks that destroyed his body, and ending his destruction for good.

Though the day was saved from Scion, Taylor herself was now considered the next major threat from the survivors. With the help of one sympathetic cape, Taylor slipped through a portal to another world. There she would meet Contessa, a major figure in Caldron. They talked about Taylor’s past, and her regrets. After being given a choice, Taylor decided she wanted to die, and was shot twice in the back of the head by Contessa.

However, this didn’t actually kill Taylor, only removing her powers. After recovering, Taylor was sent to Bet’s neighboring world, Earth Aleph. Though her name would only be spoken of in hushed whispers, she was given a fresh start at a new life. Taylor was still troubled by her past and did not know where to go, with her dad by her side, she figured she would learn to be okay.

Skill & Experience

Vin Venture

(Art by Gediminas Skyrius)

Despite having no prior training when joining Kelsier’s crew, Vin rapidly grew in skill over just a few months. She was even able to defeat a fully-trained Mistborn with only barely eight months of training. Eventually, Vin managed to surpass her mentor, Kelsier, in skill as an Allomancer. By the end of her three years as a Mistborn, Vin was widely known as one of the strongest Allomancers in the Final Empire.

Mistborn are often described as a one-person army, which is more than true for Vin. She’s able to defeat several Allomancers on her own in just a few minutes, and kill twenty soldiers with just one person’s belt buckle. When storming Cett’s keep, Vin managed to kill 300 of his soldiers in less than ten minutes (though she had help from someone else). Vin even killed hundreds of monstrous koloss (basically big strong blue people) on her own when a massive army of them stormed Luthadel.

Vin is quite fond of using distractions against her foes, shifting their focus so she can sneak in a killing blow, or maneuver around them. She has even used her Allomancy to attack her foes from behind. Vin is extremely mobile while fighting, being compared to a gust of wind. When fighting Zane, an Allomancer who could see into the future, Vin managed to react to his own reaction to her future actions, and change her plan of attack to land a killing blow on him.

Taylor Hebert

(Art by butchseiya)

Though she had no prior experience, Taylor took to cape life like a fish to water. While she’s only had a bit of martial training, her skill with her power is what’s most effective. She’s an expert in using her bugs to conceal herself and misdirect foes. Taylor has used bugs to pick up glass to block containment foam, and steal objects without notice. She’s used flying bugs to carry spiders and other objects. Taylor’s extreme level of multitasking can let her attack, defend, and prepare all at once. Taylor even taught herself braille so she could read with her bugs. 

After only a short time with the Undersiders, Taylor eventually became their de facto leader and field commander, as she was good at thinking more tactically and improvising, making plans for how the team would move during fights. Even more experienced capes like Miss Militia have called Taylor a criminal mastermind and a capable strategist and battlefield tactician. Taylor has a tendency to throw herself into dangerous situations, but she is noted to thrive and work at her best in those situations.

Due to how her powers work, and her lack of super strength, Taylor prefers to fight from a distance, often attacking foes from completely out of their sight. She has snuck her bugs past her foes blind spots in order to target more vulnerable areas. Taylor will often just swarm them with countless bugs. Taylor has also experimented with substances for offense before, dipping her bugs' stingers in capsaicin and Newter’s unique blood to make them more effective in combat. She’s set up tripwires throughout her surroundings, up to ten thousand of them, to let her know when and where someone enters her range.

Over her two years as a cape, Taylor has fought a wide variety of foes. From those with super strength, ones who can manipulate the environment, make special technology, fire lasers, shapeshift, manipulate emotions, fly at fast speeds, and more, each requiring a different strategy from her. While fighting Mannequin, someone who normally should’ve completely countered her power, Taylor was able to analyze his abilities and think of a plan to defeat him in just a few seconds. She managed to bind his limbs in silk, preventing him from being able to move or attack. This proved to be so effective, it became a common strategy for Taylor in fights.

Equipment

Vin Venture

Mistcloak

(Art by Ben McSweeny)

A cloak made of countless long ribbonlike tassels, usually with a hood as well; it serves to signify Vin’s status as a Mistborn. It doesn’t have any combat applicability, but it does look cool.

Daggers

(Art by Todor Hristov)

Twin daggers serve as Vin’s main weapons in combat. To make sure that they aren’t used against her by enemy Allomancers, Vin uses daggers made of glass or obsidian.

Koloss Sword

(Art by Ben McSweeny)

A massive sword used by the monstrous Koloss. These blades are usually around Vin’s own height. For reference, Vin herself is around five feet in height. Despite the massive size of these blades, Vin has no trouble at all swinging them around.

Staff

A wooden staff Vin sometimes uses in fights.

Vials

Vials containing metal flakes mixed into an alcoholic solution that Vin drinks in order to refill her Allomancy reserves. Due to not wanting enemy Allomancers to take these for themselves, Vin usually carries only a few of these on her person at any given time.

Earring

(Art by Deandra Scicluna)

A stud earring that Vin received from her mother. Despite being metal, it piercing her body prevents it from being manipulated by other Allomancers. It’s more than just a normal earring however, as it is actually a Hemalurgic spike. Hemalurgy is the act of killing a person with a spike, and then impaling someone else with that spike in order to transfer their abilities to them. Vin’s earring was made from her own sister, and since she was an Allomancer who could use bronze, wearing this earring enhances Vin’s own use of bronze (more on that later).

Coins

(Art by Manuel Castañón)

Vin has a pouch of coins with her that she can use for maneuverability with steelpushes and ironpulls, or even as a ranged offensive weapon called coinshots. She even has some padded coins to help silence them when hitting objects and walls.

Taylor Hebert

Skitter Costume

(Art by LinaLeez)

A black and gray costume Taylor wore for protection while she was the villain Skitter. Inspired by a documentary, Taylor chose to make her suit using spider silk. Specifically, from black widows. Spider silk has a tensile strength comparable to steel, but at a fraction of the weight, making it pretty good protection that Taylor can wear with little trouble. This costume is a one piece, and can stretch, letting it resist regular wear and tear more easily. Taylor also attached armor to the suit made of arranged and layered shells and exoskeletons from bugs, reinforced with dragline silk. A surprising feature of this costume is that it’s insulated against electricity, meaning that Taylor won’t get shocked easily with this on.

Her mask is also made from the same material, with yellow lenses designed to reduce glare. The lenses come from swimming goggles, and have a pair of glasses sealed inside to help Taylor see. The armor sections on her mask were designed to imitate a bug's mandibles. However, her mask does not cover the back of her head, giving her a weak point.

This costume is incredibly tough. It’s cut resistant enough to protect Taylor from knives, arrows, and darts. Even stronger foes like Mannequin and Jack Slash have trouble cutting through it. It’s even bullet proof, and though Taylor still feels the effects of the bullet hitting her, her costume prevents it from ever touching her flesh.

Weaver Costume

(Art by LinaLeeZ)

The costume that Taylor wore when she joined the Wards as Weaver, designed blue and white to show her turn to the heroes. It’s functionally the same as her Skitter costume, but with a few differences. The silk of this costume comes from Darwin’s bark spiders. This silk is incredibly strong, being over ten times tougher than kevlar. Her mask has blue lenses, and a small flashlight attached as well. Taylor has also outfitted this costume with silk dispensers in her belt, which can hold hundreds of feet of silk. Some of it is even the strong Darwin’s bark spider silk.

Knives

Taylor uses a standard combat knife as one of her weapons for fighting. The knife she got from Coil is a little over six inches long, and is strong enough to be used as a crowbar.

Later, Taylor received a nanothron knife from Defiant. Nanothorns are a special technology that can let blades slide between atoms and sever molecular bonds, letting it cut through anything and everything. Taylor’s own blade takes 3.7 seconds to fully activate. However, nanothorn blades are vulnerable to heat, and require significant maintenance, lest they break down and take longer to activate.

Baton

A collapsible baton Taylor uses for non-lethal attacks. Trigger activated with a weighted tip, this baton can extend up to eighteen inches long.

Handgun

A simple handgun that Taylor uses for more dangerous situations. She carries two ammo clips for it. No I’m not making that stupid fucking joke.

Utility Compartment + Misc. Items

(idk what else to put here for an image)

Taylor has a utility compartment attached to her costume’s back to store her items in. This includes EpiPens, coins, extra silk and a phone. She even has pepper spray, which has a range of ten feet. Taylor also has a taser.

Anti-Gravity Jetpack

(Art by RespicePostTe)

A jetpack that lets Taylor fly around, it was given to her by Defiant. It has four antigravity panels to help give Taylor lift, and the ability to offset her gravity or momentum in a direction. These panels have low acceleration, going from 0 to 30 miles an hour over eight seconds. These won’t stop her when moving at terminal velocity. The jetpack also has a propulsion system when the wings are deployed, allowing it to go from 0 to 45 miles an hour in 3.5 seconds. The propulsion ends if the wings break, and they aren’t designed to be durable. Taylor can toggle between antigravity or propulsion, but can’t use both at once.

The jetpack can be controlled with the attached gloves, or with her bugs using the built in tracks. These tracks are sensitive enough for ladybugs to trip them. The jetpack even has a vent exhaustion system, a pair of mechanical arms to grab stuff, though they aren’t very strong, and has EMP shielding when the wings are retracted. The jetpack does have limited fuel, but it can last a full day. Taylor even has a spare should the one she’s using becomes damaged.

Swarm

(Art by u/Cassysancerito)

Taylor’s main weapon and tool is her massive swarm of bugs. She can have anything from house flies, cockroaches, wasps, hornets, bees, moths, centipedes, beetles, butterflies, mosquitoes, ants, fire ants, even bullet ants, and pretty much any kind of bug that could live in an American city. Taylor also has access to special bugs called relay bugs. Made by Panacea, these bugs can extend Taylor’s range by 300 feet around them. While they did die off, Taylor later received a version of them that could breed, making them a more permanent addition to her swarm. At its biggest, Taylor can have millions of bugs in her swarm.

Taylor has had some of her bugs stingers dipped in capsaicin, an irritant used in pepper spray, to give them an extra intense burn.

The most dangerous and useful bugs in her arsenal are her spiders. Specifically, black widows and brown recluses. A black widow’s bite can induce latrodectism, causing intense pain, muscle rigidity, sweating, and vomiting. The bite from a brown recluse spider can cause the flesh around it to necrotize, making that part decay and die. While these spiders are usually non-aggressive, and people can heal from their bites just fine, under Taylor’s control, they become an extremely deadly force. Taylor’s swarm can have millions of spiders in it, with that only making up a fraction of its full size.

Abilities

Vin Venture

Allomancy

(Art by Isaac Stewart)

Allomancy is an ability that involves ingesting metals into one’s system, and then gaining special powers from those metals. There are sixteen different metals that can be used for Allomancy, plus a few special ones, and each one can grant the user a different power. Most Allomancers are called Mistings, meaning that they can only use one metal. However, Vin is a Mistborn, meaning that she has access to every metal.

Allomancy is hereditary, with Vin inheriting hers from her father. Allomancy lays dormant within a person until they undergo an extremely traumatic event, which is known as Snapping. For Vin, she Snapped during her own complicated birth.

The metals and their powers can be activated mentally. This is called “burning”, due to the feeling of warmth it gives the user. Metals can also be “flared” which can briefly increase their potency. These metals don’t last forever, as burning them can make them disappear over time. Not all metals burn at the same rate, as some can last for hours, and others only minutes. The more metal Vin has ingested, the longer she can use them. Vin is capable of distinguishing different metals inside her, even seeing how much she has left in her reserve. The metals being used also must be pure as that makes them more effective, and using less pure ones can make one sick.

Allomantic metals are categorized into multiple different types: Physical, Mental, Enhancement, and Temporal. The metals are then categorized further as pairs, one that Pushes, and one that Pulls. One that affects internally, and one that affects externally. These powers have similar but opposite affects, and one metal is usually an alloy of the other.

The true source of Allomancy lies with Preservation, a god who invested his power into humanity, giving them the metallic art. Allomancers use metal to draw on the power of Preservation in order to use their abilities.

Pewter

An internal, physical Pushing metal, pewter enhances Vin’s physical abilities. It makes her stronger, faster, tougher, and more resistant to fatigue and pain. With pewter, Vin is strong enough to destroy windows and snap people’s necks with a punch. She’s fast enough to keep up with horses and dodge arrows. She can even withstand the pain of being stabbed. She can heal and recover much quicker than normally as well. Pewter even increases Vin’s sense of balance. With enough pewter in her system, Vin is capable of running for sixteen hours straight. Pewter can also make Vin resistant to hot and cold temperatures and even the effects of alcohol.

However, pewter isn’t perfect. It is one of the fastest burning metals Vin has, meaning that she has to be careful about how much she uses (though she typically keeps enough on her to last as long as she needs). And while it may give her endless stamina, that fatigue doesn’t necessarily go away. Fatigue is bottled up over time while Vin uses pewter, and it hits her all at once when the metal is deactivated or she runs out. This is called pewter dragging, and could potentially prove fatal if Vin isn’t careful.

Tin

An internal, physical Pulling metal, tin is used to enhance the senses. Sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell are all enhanced by tin. With this, Vin can see clearer and further away. She can even see in the dark and spot light sources from further away. Tin can be used to hear sounds much further away, and even accurately judge which direction they’re coming from. Tin is one of the slowest burning metals, lasting for hours. Vin often uses tin as a way to shock her system and get herself back into focus. Vin’s senses are known to be more keen than most other Allomancers.

The biggest weakness with tin is that it enhances everything. One cannot choose which senses get enhanced, and can sometimes be distracted by what they sense. The pebble in your shoe, the tag on the back of your shirt, the clicking noise that’s just a bit too loud, all of this can be very distracting with enhanced senses. While Vin has trained to deal with distractions, any unexpected bright lights or loud sounds can incapacitate her for a bit.

Brass & Zinc

Brass and zinc are both mental metals that are used to manipulate emotions. Brass, an external Pushing metal, can Soothe one's emotions, dampening their effects and making them less powerful. Zinc, an external Pulling metal, is used to Riot emotions, making them even more powerful. Emotional Allomancy is used to fire off pulses of emotion at a person or group, changing how they feel. 

Emotional Allomancy cannot be used to control a person directly, only push or pull them in the direction that one wishes. Strong pulses are mostly ineffective, as they alert the target to what is going on, and a person could easily fight its effects if they know what’s happening. As such, subtlety is the name of the game when it comes to emotional Allomancy. Vin herself is known to be very subtle when it comes to Soothing, constantly catching people off guard with it. Even those more experienced than her have trouble noticing her Soothing effects.

Due to its reliance on subtlety, emotional Allomancy isn’t very useful for direct combat. It has trouble affecting those in extreme emotional states, and it requires too much focus to be of much use in combat.

Bronze

A mental and internal Pushing metal, bronze is used to detect Allomancy being used. Each Allomantic metal gives off a distinct signal in the form of a vibration. Vin is skilled enough with bronze that she can tell what type of metal a person is using, whether it’s a Pushing or Pulling metal, detect what specific emotions are being targeted by emotional Allomancy, whether a metal is being flared or not, and even how much metal someone has in reserve.

Normally, bronze is countered by burning copper. However, Vin is able to completely bypass this. This is due to her earring being a Hemalurgic spike made from her own sister who could burn bronze. As such, wearing this earring enhances Vin’s own use of bronze.

Copper

A mental and internal Pulling metal, copper is used to hide from being detected by bronze. Copper can also be used to make one immune to emotional Allomancy. Burning copper also produces an invisible bubble around the person, called a coppercloud, that protects anyone else inside it from being detected by bronze. However, the immunity to emotional Allomancy is not extended to others within the coppercloud.

Iron & Steel

(Art by Deandra Scicluna)

Iron, an external Pulling metal, and steel, an external Pushing metal, are both used to manipulate other metals. Iron lets Vin pull metals towards her, and steel lets her push metals away from her. Pulling with iron is called Ironpulling, while pushing with steel is called Steelpushing. While burning, blue lines appear from Vin’s chest and connect to nearby metals, and only she can see them. The thickness of a line is proportional to the size of the object it’s connected to. The further away Vin is from the metal she’s manipulating, the fainter the blue line becomes, and the less force she can exert on the object. Metals can only be pushed or pulled directly away from, or towards Vin. Iron and steel are both very long lasting metals, and can be used for hours.

Weight is a major factor in how Ironpulling and Steelpushing work. If Vin pulls on something heavier than herself, she will pull herself towards it. If she pushes on something heavier than herself, she will push herself away from it. Pushing or pulling on something that cannot be moved any further can also have this inverse effect. Vin often uses this to her advantage by pushing off of coins on the ground to get into the air. She can push herself 100 feet in the air, or lighter objects 100 paces from her. It is with this that Vin can achieve pseudo-flight, throwing herself into the air, and then pushing or pulling on nearby metals to gain distance. She can even move herself fast enough to keep up with galloping horses. The movement isn’t necessarily linear, as enough momentum can make Vin swing herself in an arc. Vin can use Steelpushing to slow her fall, slowly pushing on an object beneath her to keep from crashing into the ground.

Vin can pull heavier objects towards her by pulling on a metal behind her, making herself unable to be moved, thus pulling the object towards her. The same can happen with steel, being able to push heavier objects away by anchoring herself in place.

Vin can use both metals in combat with deadly efficiency. She’s more than willing to yank on any nearby metals and use them as weapons. Vin can push coins faster than the eye can see, and with enough force to kill a person. Vin has also pulled on metals from behind her foes as a sneak attack.

Gold

An internal temporal Pulling metal, gold can be used to see one’s own past, or even another version of themselves had they made different choices. This metal has little use, in combat and generally, and can sometimes disturb the user.

Atium

(Art by Dan Rossi)

One of the God Metals, coming from Ruin himself, atium can be used to see a bit into the future. When burning atium, Vin can see shadows that appear before a person, showing what they are about to do. She can even see the future of moving objects. Atium also enhances the mind, allowing Vin to process information faster. Burning atium can also be used to counter others burning atium, as seeing what the opponent does changes what a person does, and then the other person sees that and changes what they do, and so on and so forth until the metal has become almost useless. In this state, the battle mostly comes down to who’s atium goes out first.

Atium itself burns very quickly, usually lasting less than a minute. And due to not wanting enemy Allomancers to use her own, Vin usually carries very little atium on her person, so she needs to be very careful about how she uses it. Also, large crowds can disrupt atium’s effectiveness, as it essentially doubles the amount of bodies that a person sees.

Electrum

An internal temporal Pulling metal, once referred to as “poor man’s atium” by Elend, electrum allows a person to see their own future, in the form of shadows similar to atium, and prevent others burning atium from seeing theirs.

Aluminum

An internal enhancement Pulling metal, aluminum can be used to wipe away all of an Allomancer’s metal reserves.

…Not exactly useful in a fight, but hey, it’s a metal that can be used Allomantically.

Malatium

Another god metal, also coming from Ruin. Malatium is the fabled “Eleventh Metal” that Kelsier said was the Lord Ruler’s weakness. Malatium can be used to see another person's past self. With this, Vin was able to uncover the true identity of the Lord Ruler.

Duralumin

An internal enhancement Pushing metal, duralumin can be used with other metals to provide a massive boost in power, at the cost of wiping away her reserves for that metal. The more metal Vin has in reserve, the more powerful the duralumin boost is. This metal essentially acts as Vin’s trump card, to be used in desperate situations in order to turn the tide of the battle. However, since it wipes away her metals, she needs to be extremely careful about how she uses it.

With pewter, Vin can one-shot foes that were previously stronger than her. She even once attempted to use both metals to burn a sleeping drug out of her system.

With iron and steel, the power of Vin’s Ironpulls and Steelpushes is drastically increased. A duralumin fueled Push can send Vin flying high into the sky.
With emotional Allomancy, Vin can wipe away all capacity for feeling in a person. She can even affect kandra and koloss, who are normally immune to its effects.

With tin, Vin can… basically flashbang herself.

With bronze, Vin can hear Allomantic pulses much louder than normally.

With atium, one can see much farther into the future than normally.

Other Metals

Note: These metals were discovered after Vin’s death, and as such they will not be counted towards the verdict. They are merely being listed for the sake of completion, since she does technically have the ability to use them as a Mistborn.

Bendalloy, an external temporal Pushing metal, creates a bubble of sped up time around the user.

Cadmium, an external temporal Pulling metal, creates a bubble of slowed down time around the user.

Nicrosil, and external enhancement Pushing metal, can be used to boost another Allomancer’s power at the cost of instantly draining their metals.

Chromium, an external enhancement Pulling metal, can be used to drain another Allomancers metal reserves via touch.

Resistances

Emotional Manipulation: Burning copper makes Vin immune to emotional Allomancy.

Hot and Cold Temperature: Burning pewter makes Vin resistant to hot and cold temperatures.

Alcohol: Pewter makes Vin resistant to intoxication.

Taylor Hebert

Arthropod Control

(Art by WhisperanzaRose)

Taylor’s primary power is the ability to control arthropods. Her control works by sending a telepathic signal to her bugs through unknown channels, who relay information back to her. She can control insects, arachnids, centipedes, earthworms, and even crustaceans. Anything that can be classified as an arthropod falls under her control. Taylor is precise enough to make bugs twitch or control massive hordes of them all at once. She can even make them breed, and control the amount of venom that a bug can inject. Taylor is also capable of seeing a bit of a bug's genetic makeup, including its health, fertility, and available venom.

Controlling bugs takes practically no effort, with Taylor comparing it to moving an arm. Her bugs are capable of coordinating well without any conscious effort on her part. A good bit of her use is automatic, with Taylor using her bugs without even thinking about it. Bugs under her control also move in coordination with Taylor’s own movements, even without her knowing it. Taylor can single out groups of bugs by species and maturity, even pinpointing exact bugs. Taylor can control up to millions of bugs, possibly even more. Taylor’s range of control forms a loose sphere around her, and though its exact range can fluctuate a bit, the biggest it has gotten is a 1,800 feet radius.

Offensively, Taylor sends her bug to target any exposed skin her opponent has, making them bite, sting, and inject venom. While many bugs may normally be nonaggressive, Taylor can make them into a deadly force, making them bite and sting multiple times and inject as much venom as they can. She can also force bugs inside a person through any openings in the body, targeting their insides or just drowning them in bugs.

Aside from direct attacks, Taylor is also adept at using her bugs to bind her foes in silk to restrict their movements. Taylor often has spiders in the background making silk just to prepare for any bindings. She can use them to make tripwires, even 10,000 of them given enough time, or makeshift stretchers for holding objects. Taylor sometimes has her flying bugs hold onto spiders as they move, so that they can create silk over enemies while moving. She can do massive sweeps with these flying pairs in order to bind opponents in silk faster. They can even create enough silk to slow down massive beasts like Crawler.

Defensively, Taylor often uses her bugs to conceal herself, completely obscuring herself underneath her bugs, or forming a barrier. This allows her to move without anyone seeing her movements. She pairs this with her ability to condense bugs together and make “swarm clones”, small collections of bugs formed to somewhat resemble her shape, and make others confused as to where the real Taylor is.

Taylor can also conceal bugs in her costume and hair, and can hold nearly a thousand on her. She usually does this to hold some of the more effective bugs on her, to attack and defend her against anyone that comes too close.

Taylor can also, somehow, speak with her bugs. With enough bugs, and the right frequency of sound, Taylor can communicate near perfectly through her bugs. Though, this does require enough concentration to point where she can only hold one conversation at a time.

Taylor often uses her bugs as a way to channel her emotions and stress, achieving an “indomitable calm”, because I’m sure that’s healthy. This is what lets her stay calm in intense situations. This channeling can even let her trip up Defiant's lie detector and Alexandria’s superior processing capabilities.

Taylor’s best aspect with her control is her multitasking. She can control every individual bug in her swarm, giving millions of instructions, performing innumerable tasks all at once. She can attack, defend, sense with her bugs, create silk, and make plans simultaneously. She’s given hundreds of warnings to people about attacks, and is very good at dealing with multiple foes at once.

One curious aspect about Taylor’s control is that it can even work when she is unconscious. Initially this made the bugs follow her last order, such as attacking someone, but eventually her swarm also began to spread itself around the area, and even make silk string as well when she went under.

Other miscellaneous uses of her bugs include: stealing, folding paper, lighting matches in a circle, and forming words. Taylor even once shoved a cockroach into the back of her own throat in order to cancel hypnosis placed on her.

Swarm Sense

(Art by bodegadulac)

Taylor’s secondary power is the ability to feel the senses of her bugs. While sight doesn’t work well, she can hear near perfectly through her bugs. She often uses this ability to talk long distances with her bugs, or to spy on conversations. Her bugs can even hear ultrasonic waves. Taylor can’t read tone through her bugs hearing, however. Taylor can also sense strong tastes and scents through her bugs.

By far Taylor’s best use of this sense is through touch. As Taylor is acutely aware of every bug in her range, and can tell where they are in relation to her, she can get a strong mental picture of people and the area surrounding her, including the air currents. Taylor often spreads her bugs throughout an area to gain a picture of what it looks like. Her bugs can even do this automatically without her thinking, even while she’s unconscious. Taylor can tell what material her bugs are touching, as well as if they’re moving, still, or are being moved. Taylor can even sense heat, and can tell when her bugs are burnt or electrocuted, or when they die. Her sense of touch is so strong, that it can allow her to function mostly normally even when she’s blind.

Taylor’s swarm sense makes her virtually omnipresent throughout her range. As long as she has enough bugs, she can quickly get a play-by-play of everything surrounding her. In combat, this gives Taylor a sense of forewarning, letting her dodge attacks that she normally wouldn’t be able to, such as thrown knives and arrows. Her senses can even help her aim a gun correctly. Taylor often uses her bugs to keep track of foes she’s fighting. It even lets her keep track of Leviathan, who’s fast enough to move like he’s almost teleporting. She can also track actual teleporting. By keeping her bugs on the teleporter, they move with them, allowing Taylor to immediately know where the person moved.

Queen Administrator

(Art by tactilescream)

The source of Taylor’s power. Originally only known as Administrator, it has also been dubbed Queen by Glaistig Uaine and Scion. QA is a Shard, a fragment of an incomprehensibly large alien known as the Warrior Entity. Shards form the foundation of the Entity’s body, akin to cells in a human. Shards themselves are gigantic in size, being as big as islands, or even larger, and are crystal-like in form. Entities are composed of trillions upon trillions of Shards, and each one serves a specific purpose. The role of Queen Administrator was to determine and rearrange Shards.

During an Entity’s life cycle, many of these Shards are cast out along predetermined paths to find a host to latch on to, making them a parahuman with powers. Once a host is chosen, the Shard is placed in an alternate lifeless world in order to process information and remain safe from danger. Shards connect to a host through a trigger event, a moment of extreme stress and trauma for a person. It is also possible to second trigger, where, in an event that mirrors the first, a parahuman can trigger again, which reshapes their powers in some way. The type of powers a parahuman gets are based on their trigger event, such as physical harm granting one super strength. The physical connection between the Shard and the host is made through the Corona Polentia, a structure formed inside the brain, which helps to manage use of powers. With the connections established, the Shard uses a parahuman’s existing mental condition to nudge them towards engaging in conflicts with other parahumans.

For Taylor, she triggered when bullies shoved her into a locker full of used menstrual products. Taylor actually second triggered right after her first one, due to how overwhelming the new bug senses were to her. This is apparently common enough to be known as a double trigger.

With a parahuman host, QA specializes in control over a large number of smaller beings, which is why Taylor can control bugs. QA handles a lot of background work for Taylor while she uses her power. It processes all of the information from the bugs, and helps with Taylor’s multitasking as well. It can take control of bugs under Taylor’s control itself, such as making them follow her last order when unconscious, spreading bugs over the area, and moving the bugs with her. QA also helps Taylor subconsciously develop new skills that she didn’t even know she was using.

Pain Tolerance

(Art by Mikezeddart)

Taylor’s pain tolerance is absurd enough to get its own section here. After getting hit by Bakuda’s pain bomb, which affected her nervous system and she described it as the worst pain she has ever felt, Taylor has naturally been able to withstand a lot of pain. Taylor can power through cuts, broken arms, getting shot at and breathing smoke, and a metal spike embedded in her shoulder bone, which actually left a medic surprised that she hadn’t passed out. Her fight with Mannequin left her feeling like red-hot pokers were being constantly driven through her body, and she still managed that. Even when Taylor’s arm was crushed, she still managed to stay conscious.

Resistances

Electricity: Taylor’s costume is insulated against electricity.

Feats

Vin Venture

Overall

(Art by Deandra Scicluna)

• Defeated Shan Elariel, Zane, The Lord Ruler, and Ruin

• Kickstarted the house war in Luthadel

• Helped bring victory to the skaa rebellion

• Discovered the Lord Ruler’s true identity

• Killed hundreds of Cett’s guards in a single night

• Ended the Siege of Luthadel

• Discovered the true location of the Well of Ascension

• Paved the way for Sazed to become the Hero of Ages and save the planet

• Accidentally helped inspire a religion

Power

(Art by Steph Li)

• Killed four people with coinshots

• Destroyed a window with a steelpush

• Smashed a lock

• Destroyed a window by crashing through it

• Uses the momentum of her pull to snap a person's neck with a punch

• Killed a dog in a single strike

• Jumps seven feat in the air

• Drop kicked a person

• Pops a man's eye with her finger

• With duralumin, headbutts a person hard enough to blow up their head

• Swung around a gate to kill a whole group of koloss

• With duralumin, pulled on a huge window to destroy the frame and send glass flying, killing a group of soldiers

• Used a koloss sword to cut Straff and his horse in half

Speed

(Art by Jessica Liu)

• Travels between two cities twice as fast as a horse

• Pulled herself across a corridor at uncontrollable speeds

• Dodges a spray of metal

• Dodges arrows with Atium

• Catches an arrow with Atium

• Steelpush lets her keep up with a horse

• Kept pace with a horse while running

• Pushed coins faster than Elend could see

• Shot forward like an arrow with steel and duralumin

• Dodged a bunch of arrows

Durability

(Art by David Astruga)

• Backhanded by Camon

• Gets pushed across the floor

• Fell onto a roof

• Survives getting pushed by the Lord Ruler

• Gets slammed into the floor by Zane

• Thrown into a door hard enough to crack it

Taylor Hebert

Overall

(Art by Ariif)

• Defeated Lung, the Wards, Mannequin, and Scion

• Became leader of the Undersiders

• Ruled over Brockton Bay’s boardwalk

• Helped drive off the Slaughterhouse 9 from Brockton Bay

• Killed Coil, and saved Dinah

• Instrumental in defeating Echidna

• Killed Alexandria while in custody

• Successfully joined the Chicago Wards

• Partook in multiple Endbringer fights

• Saved humanity and every Earth from Scion’s destruction

• Kicked ass with butterflies

Power

(By Adaptation VFX)

• Kicks Rachel in the face

• Knocks a fire extinguisher out of Amy’s hands

• Choked out Leet

• Crushes an Echidna clone’s skull in with her baton

• Knees a person in the stomach

• Drags a knife through Cricket’s thigh

Speed

(Art by Overshia)

• Dodged an attack from Amy

• Aim dodged a thrown knife

• Pushed herself and Tattletale out of the way of a thrown table

• Ducks under a crossbow shot

• Backed away from Mannequin’s frenzied attack

Durability

(By Adaptation VFX)

• Attacked by dogs

• Hit by a thrown Tattletale

• Hit by the force of an explosion

• Slammed into the ground by Armsmaster

• Hit by an attack that knocks her into the air

• Punched in the face by Rachel

• Gets shot by Mannequin's shotgun, which two shot one of Rachel’s mutant dogs

• Slightly crushed by Lung

• Costume prevented her from being cut by Mannequin and Jack Slash

• Struck by a bullet

• Hit by one of Rachel’s mutant dogs being thrown at her

Scaling

Vin Venture

Kelsier

(Art by Antti Hakosaari)

The Survivor of Hathsin, and major figurehead of the skaa rebellion. Vin was trained by Kelsier, and eventually surpassed him, meaning that she’d scale to any feats he has.

• Steelpushed two people off of a balcony

• Ripped a safe out of a wall

• Kicked a person into a wall

• Breaks an Inquisitor’s arm

• Decapitates an Inquisitor

Era 2 Characters

(Art by Rocío Sogas)

In the future, far past Vin’s death, a group of detectives try to uncover a conspiracy that could doom the planet. More about scaling in Before the Verdict.

• Wax destroys chandeliers with a Steelpush

• Wax makes himself heavier than a building and drops through the floor

• Wax survives getting hit by an explosion

• Wax increases his weight and flattens a building

• Wax Steelpushes a train car

• Marasi gets Steelpushed into a wall

• Wayne cracks a person's skull with a cane

• With the Bands of Mourning:

• Telsin says that the bands possess the Lord Ruler’s own power

• The bands give ones Allomancy the power of older Allomancy

• Marasi moves fast enough to create a vacuum

• Marasi pushes a bunch of guards fifty feet away

• Wax says that the bands could let him survive a bomb powerful enough to destroy a large city

Taylor Hebert

The Undersiders

(Art by Shadaan)

Taylor’s best friends and partners in crime. They’re all normal humans, and have fought alongside each other many times, so Taylor should scale to their feats.

• Grue cracks a helmet with his knee

• Grue knocks out Vista

• Grue gets sent flying into a wall

• Grue dodges Dauntless’s Arclance (see Before the Verdict)

• Grue intercepts an attack from Cricket, who can dodge bullets (see Before the Verdict)

• Bitch gets hit by one of Gallant’s blasts, which feels like a gut punch

• Bitch gets hit by a laser

• Bitch kicks plywood out of a window frame

• Bitch’s dogs can outpace cars

• Three of Bitches dogs knock over a large van

• Flechette/Foil catches a crossbow bolt

• Parian moves Flechette/Foil out of the way of Scion’s attack (see Before the Verdict)

Weaknesses

Vin Venture

(Art by Rafael Sousa)

Vin can be quite reckless at times, such as when she stormed the Lord Rulers palace by herself, and got herself captured and nearly killed. While her Allomancy can be a powerful and versatile weapon, it is reliant on a constantly draining resource. If she’s not careful, Vin could run out of metals sooner rather than later. She is also quite dependent on her Allomancy, and can even be debilitated without it. The powers her metals grant her also have a lot of hard restrictions and limitations, which can work against her.

Weirdly enough, the metal aluminum acts as a counter to Allomancy. It cannot be Ironpulled or Steelpushed at all, can prevent emotional Allomancy from working on someone, and block Seeking from bronze. Also, aluminum can prevent one from using pewter if they are embedded with it. Not even atium works on it. If Vin were to ever go up against someone with a significant amount of aluminum on them, she would be at a huge disadvantage.

Taylor Hebert

(Art by lonsheep)

Taylor can be very reckless at times, constantly throwing herself into disadvantageous situations (among her myriad of other personal issues). And while she is known for excelling in these situations, it’s still very dangerous for her, and has screwed her over before. Such as getting caught and nearly dissected by Bonesaw when she tried to save Grue, almost got herself thrown into superjail when she turned herself in and killed Alexandria, or when she willingly got herself lobotomized by Panacea just on the off chance that it would help the fight against Scion.

In a fight, Taylor is very reliant on her bugs. The larger the swarm, the more effective she is. This reliance makes her struggle against foes who can more easily deal with the swarm, such as those with area of effect attacks, or those who can manipulate the environment in some way. Distorted space has been known to mess with her swarm sense. Getting her polentia messed with can cripple her abilities as well.

Before the Verdict

Era 2 Scaling

Scaling Vin to feats in era two might seem ridiculous at first. After all, she died hundreds of years before anyone in that series was born. How would she scale? Well, there are two ways to provide scaling.

First, there’s the Bands of Mourning (the item, not the book). These bands are stated to have the Lord Ruler’s power, and this is repeated multiple times throughout the book. While it is revealed that they don’t actually have his power, it still supercharges one’s own Allomancy to levels that are still compared with him. With this, we can cross scale the Lord Ruler and anyone in era two who uses the bands.

The second way is with Allomantic decay. Allomancy is hereditary, but it does decay over time, becoming weaker with each new generation. The decay is slow, but noticeable over longer periods of time. So by pure virtue of being born earlier, Vin’s Allomancy would be naturally stronger than those in era two.

With all that said, however, Vin doesn’t benefit from cross era scaling that much. Vin does not scale to the Lord Ruler on her own (more on that later), so she would not scale to any feats performed with the Bands of Mourning.

Allomantic decay is extremely slight, so even over three hundred years, the differences between Vin and era two characters would be slim. Also, many characters in era two use Feruchemy, a separate ability, to enhance their own Allomancy. The power of Feruchemy is completely dependent on the individual, and can greatly vary, so it’s questionable if Vin should even scale to many feats in the first place.

So while a case can be made for scaling Vin to feats in era 2, it’s clear that she would get very little if no benefit from it at all.

Can bronze detect parahumans?

(Vin art by mikki.belle)

Now, bronze being able to detect parahuman powers seems like a weird idea at first, but I feel it bears going over since it’s an idea that I’ve seen mentioned before.

On the surface, the idea makes little sense. Taylor’s powers don’t resemble Allomancy at all. She controls bugs, and has nothing to do with eating metal. But the actual reason for the argument goes a bit deeper than this.

The idea stems from the idea that Vin and Taylor’s power sources are similar. Allomancy comes from Preservation, a godlike being, and a shard of the creator of the cosmere, the universe Mistborn takes place in. Taylor’s power comes from the Queen Administrator, a shard of the Warrior Entity, an abstract multidimensional alien.

The argument is, since Vin and Taylor’s powers come from shards of abstract beings, then bronze would be capable of detecting parahuman powers under verse equalization.

In my opinion, this doesn’t hold up at all. Allomancy is a form of investiture, basically a catch-all term for powers in the cosmere, and is spiritual in nature. This is an aspect that the Entity Shards in Worm lack. Entity Shards specifically connect to hosts through their neural network, and have nothing to do with souls or spirits. So a power that only detects other spiritual abilities should not be able to detect one that isn’t spiritual at all.

Worm Speed

There are a lot of speed feats in the Worm series, and I’ll be going over some of them here, specifically to see if Taylor can scale.

Supersonic

The first feat we’ll go over is Dauntless’ arclance, which Grue has a feat of dodging. This arclance has a faster-than-the-eye statement, and even has a supersonic calc on VSBW. Should be fine, right?

Well, we have one major problem. The FtE statement and the supersonic calc are only for the arclance’s ranged attack, which Grue did not dodge. He only dodged Dauntless’ own movements, and there’s no reason to think that he can scale to the weapons attack speed.

The other feat would be Cricket dodging bullets, and Grue intercapting an attack from her. The problem with this is that Cricket most likely isn’t actually dodging the bullet. Her powers are noted to mess with Grue’s aim with his gun, so she’s most likely just aim dodging.

Even if we accept these feats and scaling, Taylor having supersonic speed would make no narrative sense. She’s been threatened multiple times by guns being pointed at her. Taylor has even said that she can’t dodge bullets, and this was after failing to react to a bullet that was fired at her. These feats would be outliers for Taylor at best.

Lasers

As a series with sci-fi elements, it makes sense that lasers would exist in Worm. There are also many feats of characters dodging laser attacks as well, but are any of these legit?

The biggest problem with these feats comes with Worm’s nature as a literary medium. Without visuals, it’s hard to tell if any in tandem movement is actually happening, or if the lasers even have the proper criteria for being lightspeed. Without these two, it’s hard to take any supposed laser dodging at face value.

Scion

The big golden man himself, Scion, has some of the best speed feats in the series. His flying around the world twice can get up to thousands of times faster than sound, and his energy blast reaching the UK in a short time span gets very similar numbers. There’s even his full body flying through space millions of times faster than light.

We have some arguments in favor of scaling to his speed. First, Parian managing to pull Foil out of the way of one of his attacks, and second, Taylor closing one of Doorman’s portals before Scion could react to it.

For the first feat, it’s hard to tell if any in tandem movement is happening. Like I said before, Worm is a literary medium with no visuals. The second issue with the feat is that it’s probably not moving at such crazy high speeds. It’s made very clear throughout the fight with Scion that he’s holding back, so it’s likely that this particular attack isn’t moving thousands of times faster than sound. Parian is a physically unaltered parahuman, and she’s about as “normal human” as you can get as far as her physical capabilities are concerned. Saying that she can move at massively hypersonic speeds when no other characters with super speed, such as Velocity and Legend, don’t is hard to accept.

As for Taylor closing a portal before he can react, this one doesn’t work either. He often lets attacks strike him, knowing that they won’t do anything. It’s likely that he just didn’t care. Even so, this required no physical movement from Taylor, so at best it would only scale to her perceptions when she has the Clairvoyant with her.

Preservation & Khepri

Both Vin and Taylor have “super forms” (if you could even call them that) that they transformed into at the end of their stories. For Vin, it was becoming Preservation. For Taylor, it was being turned into Khepri. These forms aren’t standard for either of them, and I’ll go over why here.

For Vin, that requires a bit of explanation. At various points in the series, Vin displayed the ability to draw on the mists themselves, fuelling and empowering her Allomancy. Eventually, she drew upon all of the mists in the Final Empire, which made her into the new Preservation.

The first problem comes with drawing on the mists. It happened very few times in the series, and almost always completely by accident. It isn’t something that Vin can do consciously. Also, her earring being a hemalurgic spike does actively push the mists away from her, which is something she never discovered on her own. The only times she was able to draw from the mists was when her earring was removed by accident.

Also, the mists themselves would technically count as outside help. The mists are the body of Preservation, and the god made the choice to give Vin his power. Both the ability to draw on the mists and her ascension to Preservation were both given to her, without any input on Vin’s part.

This also means that Vin cannot scale to the Lord Ruler at all, since she only defeated him by drawing on the mists.

For Taylor, it’s much easier to explain. She was only able to become Khepri thanks to Panacea using her own powers to remove the restrictions on Taylor’s Shard. It’s a very clear cut case of outside help. And while it was a permanent change to Taylor, her time as Khepri was very short, and she ended up losing her powers permanently after getting shot by Contessa. Because of that, it wouldn’t make sense to count this as standard.

Bonus Art

(Vin art by misspannacotta, Taylor art by lizardinkart, TN by VelvetKey)

(Vin art by GisAlmeida, Taylor art by chroma-imp, TN by Ninjamonkey3904)

(Vin art by ThePixelPuffin, Taylor art by u/GrahamasaurusRex, TN by Bowser_The_Second)

(Vin art by Deandra Scicluna, Taylor art by Ariif, TN by WagonWorks)

(Vin art by GisAlmeida, Taylor art by chroma-imp, TN by Hilda)

(Vin art by Deandra Scicluna, Taylor art by NeoWorm, TN by Omen)

(Vin art by Anadia-Chan, Taylor art by snazzycrown, TN by Emerald Grove)

Verdict

(Vin art by Cyndy Pisani, Taylor art by NeoWorm)

Close Range

Stats

In terms of pure physicality, Vin takes a clear edge. Vin can break bones, snap a neck with a single punch, and swing around heavy gates with enough force to crush people’s bodies. Taylor herself is just an above average teenage girl, with nothing more impressive than what an average human would be capable of. Even comparing her to the Undersiders doesn’t help, as their best feats consist of knocking preteens out and cracking plastic helmets. Taylor would easily get outmuscled in this fight.

However, where Taylor lacks in muscle, she makes up for in durability. Specifically, with her costume's durability. This costume silk is 10 times tougher than kevlar, and can protect her from bullets, shockwaves from explosions, and even Mannequin’s shotgun, which two shot a huge mutant dog. Sure, Mannequin did this by hitting a weak point, but that point is deep within the dog's flesh, meaning the shot would’ve had to be strong enough to get past the dog's exterior body in the first place.

These dogs are pretty strong, being able to crush most objects, and three of them combined were able to knock over a large van. Vans on average weigh about 4,000 pounds (though this one was likely much heavier), meaning the dogs would’ve had to exert some serious force.

I do want to stress that only Taylor’s costume would scale, and likely only downscale, as she has been threatened by them before. Her Weaver costume is much stronger than her Skitter costume that tanked the hit, but even that might not match. However, against Vin, this costume should prove strong enough to protect Taylor from a good few blows at the very least.

That is, until duralumin shows up. This metal drastically increases Vin’s strength, allowing her to headbutt someone hard enough to make their head explode. And this person was stronger than Vin was normally, making the duralumin boost more impressive. Even with how strong her costume can get, one duralumin boosted hit from Vin will one shot Taylor. Vin does have to be careful about using duralumin though, as it can quickly drain her metals if she uses it too much.

So, Vin has a decisive edge in strength, but speed is a bit more complicated. Sure, Vin is physically faster, being able to dodge and catch arrows out of the air, while Taylor, again, has no feats more physically impressive than a normal human.

However, taking Taylor’s perceptions from her swarm sense into account helps even things up. With enough bugs spread out, her swarm sense helps Taylor to react to things she normally wouldn’t be able to, including arrows. Her senses can even keep up with Leviathan, who moves so fast that he’s almost teleporting. Compared to Vin, Taylor’s perceptions should be even with her movements, which will allow her to keep up with the Mistborn to a degree.

But that’s just reactions and combat speed. Travel speed is a different story.

Vin’s best showings of travel speed are her keeping up with a galloping horse. This goes for running and with steelpushing. On average, a horse can gallop up to 25 to 30 mph. While Vin does state that she once traveled between two cities “twice as fast as a horse”, this is likely an exaggeration she made while being amazed at how fast she went. Later books only show her being able to keep up with horses, lending more credence to it.

While on foot, Taylor’s best feat is running 6 miles in half an hour (12 mph at best), her jetpack can give her much better travel speed. The anti-gravity panels can accelerate up to 30 mph, and the propulsion system can allow her to fly at 45 mph.

Comparing the two, Taylor actually has a slight edge in travel speed. Depending on which end you use, Taylor’s travel speed with her jetpack would be anywhere from 1.2 to 1.8 times faster than Vin’s. A duralumin Push would make Vin briefly faster, but she can only do that a few times before she starts running out of metals.

Overall, while Taylor has solid durability, even perceptions, and slightly better travel speed, Vin’s sheer physical strength would give her the edge in stats.

Weapons

This one should be pretty clear cut, Taylor’s weapons are just better.

Vin’s glass and obsidian daggers and her staff aren’t gonna be able to get past Taylor’s costume. The costume itself is pretty strong, and protecting Taylor from knives and slashes from stronger characters like Mannequin prove that it can handle Vin’s daggers just fine. The koloss sword would be her best weapon here, due to its range and power.

Taylor herself has a steel knife, and a nanothorn knife that can bypass Vin’s durability entirely. Pepper spray would also be a good option to incapacitate Vin with. She also has a taser, a baton, and a handgun.

Sure, the koloss sword’s range combined with Vin’s greater strength would make it tough for Taylor to use most of her weapons. But any gun would have more range than a 5 foot sword, and one hit from a bullet will put Vin down. And this is all without going into how deadly Taylor’s swarm would be as a weapon.

The koloss sword might prove tricky for her to deal with, but overall Taylor’s arsenal is just better and more varied than Vin’s.

Skill

This one is also clear cut. While Taylor has had a little martial training, she just doesn’t compare to Vin’s skill. Vin is known as one of the greatest fighters in the Final Empire, is often compared to a one-woman-army, and has feats to back that up like killing hundreds of Cett’s soldiers in minutes, or slaying hundreds of koloss on her own. Her feat of predicting Zane’s future movements by seeing his reactions to her own future movements is just insane.

Sure, Taylor has had a couple years of training, but that was mostly training her power, not her martial skill. For Vin, she has been training for about as long, focusing on both her powers, and her fighting skill.

There’s nothing else to say here, Vin takes skill.

Endurance

This one is fairly complicated. On one hand, Taylor has better showings of pain tolerance. She took a hit from Bakuda’s pain-bomb, which affected her nervous system, withstood being stabbed, having her bones broken, and even her arm crushed. Vin’s best showing is powering through getting stabbed with pewter.

On the other hand, Vin does have better stamina. Well, technically. With enough pewter running through her system, Vin theoretically has indefinite stamina, even running for 16 hours straight at one point. That’s not something Taylor has ever done. However, it is important to note that this is just with pewter. When it deactivates or she runs out, all of that built up fatigue will hit her all at once. With enough fatigue, this could even kill her. But if 16 hours of running couldn’t do it, it likely won’t come up in this fight.

With that in mind, neither would really have an edge in endurance over the other. Taylor has better pain tolerance, while Vin has better stamina. It’s best to say that this category is a tie.

Overall, the close range fight is a bit more complicated than it might seem at first. Both have plenty of advantages and disadvantages over each other here, but taking it all into account, it’s clear that Vin should be the one to take the category. Sure, Taylor has better weaponry, solid durability, and is about even in speed when taking combat speed, perceptions, and travel speed into account. But against Vin’s physical might and greater skill, she’s not likely to come out on top in close quarters.

Vin takes the edge in close range.

Long Range

This is where the fight starts to really get complicated, so let’s break down what each of them can do.

For Vin, really her only ranged offensive weapon is her coinshots, using steel to Push coins a distance away. These aren’t too bad as a ranged option, as she can Push them with faster than eye movement and with enough force to kill a person. Emotional allomancy is also a decent ranged option, as it can affect a whole room full of people in it.

If she gets within range, Vin is more than willing to yank on Taylor’s weapons  with iron and use them for herself the first chance she can get. This almost completely shuts down Taylor’s weaponry advantage. And while Vin has no idea how to use the gun or the nanothorn knife, they’re still stuff she can throw back at Taylor. She can also interfere with Taylor’s jetpack, shutting down her mobility and allowing for Vin to get in close.

For Taylor, she has her previously mentioned gun. One hit from a bullet, and Vin’s going out, no doubt about it. But Taylor’s best weapon here is her swarm of bugs. This swarm is massive, having millions upon millions of bugs in it. It can cover a massive area, and Taylor’s swarm senses mean that she gets a good mental picture of her surroundings.

If Vin is ever caught by the swarm, there’s no small list of things it can do to her. It can blind her by covering her eyes, or bind her limbs in silk to restrict her movements. They can also sting and bite her, inject her with venom, and enter her body to attack her insides or flood her lungs with bugs to drown her. And Taylor’s multitasking abilities mean that she can do all of this to Vin at once. And while Vin can probably take a bit of poison, the amount that Taylor can inject her with is frankly absurd, and Vin would not be able to handle that much. Vin is stronger, but not by so much that she can stonewall any attempts to bite or sting her. Spider silk itself is very strong, giving Vin trouble in breaking out of it, especially since Taylor can bind foes pretty fast, enough to slow down even car sized monsters like Crawler.

So with both having strong options for taking each other out at range, it’s best to compare their effective range to help gauge who’s the better. Vin can Push herself up to 100 feet, which is pretty good for her effective range with ironpulling and steelpushing. She has pushed lighter objects up to 100 paces, or roughly 250 feet, but that would only likely be how far she can Push them rather than how far she can manipulate it. Like how a bullet will go past a gun's effective firing range, but slow down and drop to the ground afterwards. This would only be her max range for lighter objects like her coins.

Taylor’s effective range with her swarm, however, is a whopping 1,800 feet. That’s 18 times greater than Vin’s effective range. And it can get bigger with her relay bugs, each of them extending Taylor’s range by another 300 feet. It’d be pretty hard to overcome that distance.

Vin’s coins won’t really help her. Coinshots have considerably less range than Taylor, and since Pushing gets weaker the further an object is from Vin, it likely won’t do much to get past Taylor’s armor. And while Vin is stronger, we have to remember that weight is a major factor in regards to the efficacy of steelpushing and ironpulling. Since simple coins weigh so much less than Vin does, it takes very little effort for her to move them. Vin can kill with coinshots, but there’s little reason to assume that they can get past Taylor’s bulletproof costume.

And Vin cannot deal with the swarm directly. Like, at all. She can swing her daggers and kill a dozen or so, maybe hundreds with the koloss sword. But that swarm has millions of bugs, all attacking her from different angles. Dealing with it directly is not an option for Vin.

Vin could potentially use duralumin and pewter to try and burn any venom out of her system, like she attempted to do with a sleeping drug, but that's a band-aid solution at best. For starters, the bugs are still there, and can just inject her with venom again. Also, this drains all of her pewter reserves, meaning that she loses her stat edge, and has to take any built up fatigue. This could easily leave her too debilitated to act.

What about emotional Allomancy? That’s a bit complicated, but Taylor should be capable of dealing with it. First off, rioting isn’t gonna work. Taylor often offloads her emotional reactions onto her bugs, achieving an “indomitable calm”. Inflaming her emotions even more isn’t gonna accomplish anything. Soothing however is trickier. Offloading her emotional reactions likely won’t help with her emotions being dampened rather than inflamed. This could prove effective against Taylor, however Vin doesn’t often use Soothing in combat, and even then mostly against kandra and koloss, who both have a specific weakness to it. Also, her range with emotional Allomancy is far smaller than with steelpushing or ironpulling, usually only being large enough to be able to affect an average house.

But a duralumin boosted Sooth could wipe away Taylor’s emotions, leaving her in an apathetic state and completely open. But not even that is a surefire way of dealing with the swarm. Taylor’s bugs will continue to enact her last order, even when she’s unconscious. Even if she gets Soothed into apathy, her bugs will still be attacking Vin. And it’s not like the effects last very long anyways, so Taylor will get back into action soon enough.

And then there’s atium, the metal that grants Vin precognition. Taylor has no good showings against precogs, so that should be a pretty clear path to victory for Vin, right? Well, not really. Atium does not last long, usually half a minute or so, she has very little time to capitalize on it. And she can’t refill her reserves as easily as her other metals, since she carries less atium on her. Also, large crowds are known to disrupt atium’s effectiveness, as they essentially double the amount of people that one sees. Taylor’s swarm is massive, and should easily be capable of replicating this effect. With the swarm practically doubled in size from Vin’s perspective, atium will likely hinder her chances of getting close more than helping her.

About duralumin, using it for pretty much anything but directly attacking Taylor would not be a good idea. Vin is already reliant on a constantly draining resource with her metals, and using duralumin too much will exacerbate that issue. Sure, she can refill her metals, but she only has a few refills before she runs out. Vin has to be very careful about how she uses her duralumin, but thankfully for her, she usually is.

Vin’s tin senses also don’t help. She hasn’t been able to hear or spot anything from the distance Taylor can fight at, and her senses are generally inferior as well. Sure, her sight is actually enhanced, but that’s it. Taylor can hear near perfectly throughout her entire range, and having a few bugs attached to Vin means that she will always know where the Allomancer is. With enough bugs, Taylor can get a pretty clear picture of the entire battlefield and where Vin is in relation to her. Also Vin’s senses can prove a detriment at times thanks to the swarm. The constant buzzing and touching will be greatly enhanced by her tin, and any sting or bite will hurt much more. And any sting from a capsaicin laced bug will feel like fire in Vin’s veins. With tin activated, all of this can prove distracting and even debilitating to Vin. And while Taylor did initially get overwhelmed by her swarms' senses, she learned to deal with processing the information, and even how to turn off selective senses, which Vin cannot do.

Vin’s best option would be to try and use her mobility to avoid the swarm and get close to Taylor. And this could potentially work, as Taylor can’t easily disrupt Vin’s mobility as Vin can to hers. But the swarm is so large, and is so spread out, that it probably won’t work.

Vin might be able to avoid the swarm if Taylor sent all of it at her at once, but that’s not how she fights. She always splits her swarm up, some close by to her, some to go after the enemy, and some to do whatever task she sets for them. Vin might be able to react and dodge any group of bugs that come her way, but that will just let Taylor dictate where Vin can go. Since Taylor prefers fighting at a distance, she would just direct Vin to go away from her.

This can let Taylor set up swarm clones to try and confuse Vin as to where she is. Sure, the blue lines from iron and steel pointing to whatever metal Taylor has on her person would hard counter any conceal and confuse tactics. But from a distance, this won’t work as the blue lines get fainter the further from Vin the target is at, before disappearing entirely. At a far enough range, she won’t be able to tell where Taylor is even at. With her slight edge in travel speed with her jetpack, and her ability to always tell where Vin is if she has some bugs attached, Taylor can easily play the keep away game against Vin.

All in all, it’s obvious that Taylor has a huge advantage at long range. Her effective range is 18x greater than Vin’s, at least, and she has ways of dealing with Vin’s own ranged options. Vin has good mobility, but Taylor’s concealment and decoys can make it hard for her to even know where Taylor is at a distance, while Taylor just has to have a few bugs attached to always know where Vin is. And if Vin’s caught in the swarm once, it’s game over for her. She has no way of dealing with the swarm directly, and will be extremely vulnerable to bugs injecting venom, attacking her insides, or just drowning her. Add in several of her metals having caveats that hinder their effectiveness here, or are just straight up useless, and Vin’s ranged options are looking very weak.

Taylor takes the decisive edge in long range.

Experience

Both Vin and Taylor are experienced fighters, and have dealt with a lot of foes over their careers. So who’s the better at dealing with the other characters' tool kit?

Unfortunately for Vin, she is found to be very lacking here.

While Vin may have more direct combat experience (3 years as a Mistborn vs Taylor’s 2 years and some months as an active cape), that doesn’t mean much. Vin has only ever fought other Allomancers, normal humans, or koloss, which aren’t that different from the other two. Vin has never fought against someone even remotely like Taylor before, and would likely struggle against her because of that.

Meanwhile, Taylor has fought against a variety of enemies. This includes foes with very similar power sets to Vin, even including her precog, and those with very different abilities altogether. While some abilities Taylor hasn’t fought against directly, they would be stuff she still has knowledge of, such as emotion and metal manipulation.

Taylor has even fought against foes that can fly at fast speeds, such as Dovetail (who Taylor handled quite easily by the way). This goes to show that even Vin’s own mobility is something that Taylor can handle and fight against. She can very easily set up swarm traps for Vin to run into, and this is a common tactic from Taylor.

Speaking of tactics, Taylor takes that as well. Both are good at adapting on the fly, but Taylor especially is good at analysing the field and playing tactically. Vin has never been one to strategize, usually leaving that up to others. Taylor, on the other hand, is known to be a capable strategist, with even more experienced capes than her admitting it. She’s made plans in seconds against foes who would’ve normally completely countered her abilities, and those plans ended up working in her favor. There’s no doubt Taylor would be capable of making a solid plan of attack against Vin.

It’s also important to note that this fight is the exact kind of situation where Taylor is noted to thrive in. Sure, it’s dangerous, and she has several disadvantages, but against a physically stronger foe who has many powerful tools of their own, this is where she works at her best.

With all that in mind, it’s clear that Taylor takes the edge in experience.

Conclusion

Vin Venture

(Art by Deandra Scicluna)

“I can't decide if you're a fool… or if you simply exist in a way that makes you incapable of considering some things… You said that the only reason to create something is to destroy it… We create things to watch them grow, Ruin… To take pleasure in seeing that which we love become more than it was before.”

Advantages:

• Stronger

• Physically faster, with better travel speed than Taylor on foot

• A duralumin boosted attack will one shot Taylor

• Mobility cannot be interfered with

• Can interfere with Taylor’s jetpack mobility if she’s in range

• Can use Taylor’s weapons against her

• More skilled fighter

• More direct combat experience…

• Soothing could potentially put Taylor in an apathetic state…

• Better stamina

• Short Queen

• Is getting an adaptation

Disadvantages:

• Slightly slower travel speed than Taylor’s jetpack

• Coinshots and daggers cannot get past Taylor’s costume

• Massively outranged and outnumbered by the swarm

• Worse battlefield control

• Cannot withstand the amount of poison Taylor can inject her with

• Vulnerable to bugs entering her body and attacking her insides or suffocating her

• Swarm can easily blind her and constrict her movements

• …but has never fought against someone like Taylor

• …but that won’t stop the swarm from attacking her

• Likely cannot perfectly avoid the swarm to get in close

• Will lose track of Taylor is she spends too long avoiding the swarm

• Rioting won’t work on Taylor

• Atium has several weaknesses that make it unreliable

• Reliant on constantly draining resources

• Duralumin is very situational and can exacerbate her resource problem

• Worse pain tolerance

• Tin senses are generally inferior, and can increase the pain she feels from the swarms attacks

• Several metals are useless

• Weaker tactical thinking

• Can straight up flashbang herself by accident

• Was not the messiah

Taylor Hebert

(Art by u/CytrixDrawsStuff)

“This was it. Finally, everyone was working together.”

Advantages:

• Perceptions can keep up with Vin’s movement

• Slightly better travel speed with jetpack

• Costume can protect her from daggers and coinshots

• Swarm grants her far greater range, numbers, and battlefield control

• Will always know where Vin is if she has some bugs attached to her

• Can inject Vin with too much poison for her to handle

• Can send bugs inside Vin’s body to attack her insides or suffocate her

• Swarm can easily blind and constrict Vin

• Has fought against, if not at least seen a version of each of Vin’s powers

• Experience dealing with flying foes means that she can catch Vin with her swarm

• Greater tactical thinking

• Overall better weaponry…

• Better pain tolerance

• Rioting her emotions won’t work due to her offloading her reactions to her swarm

• Swarm will still attack Vin even if she’s Soothed to apathy

• Swarm’s large size will make atium unreliable

• Swarm senses are overall superior

• Tall Queen

• Can sic spider crabs on Vin

Disadvantages:

• Physically weaker and slower

• Slower travel speed without jetpack

• A duralumin boosted attack will one shot her

• Jetpack mobility can be interfered with if she’s within Vin’s range

• Cannot interfere with Vin’s mobility

• Soothing likely can work on her

• ..but has little opportunity to use most of them

• Vin can use her weapons against her if she’s in range

• Worse stamina

• Less skilled fighter

• Never getting an adaptation

• Take that you worm

• The fandom

When all’s said and done, this is a very close fight. If we run the fight over a hundred times, Vin will surely come out on top a good number of them. But Taylor should be the one to win a majority of the time.

Sure, Vin is stronger, but Taylor’s costume is durable enough to handle at least a few blows, especially from her daggers or coinshots. Speed is overall even, with Vin having faster combat speed, while Taylor can keep up with her perceptions, and has slightly better travel speed.

Taylor has an overwhelming advantage at ranged combat, which Vin will very much struggle to deal with, especially since her own much weaker ranged options. Rioting Taylor’s emotions won’t work, and while Soothing might, it won’t stop the swarm from attacking Vin.

Vin prefers close range fights, and would have to perfectly avoid the swarm to get close to Taylor, and her mobility with steelpushing and ironpulling does give her an option to do that. But Taylor is someone she has no experience fighting, someone who has experience against people like Vin, including her flight, is able to think more tactically, and is in a situation where she works at her best. Add in the 18x range difference, and it’s far from likely that Vin would be able to close the gap.

When caught in the swarm, Taylor can easily blind Vin, constrict her movements with silk, bite and sting her, inject her with too much venom or capsaicin for her to handle, or even flood her lungs with bugs and suffocate her. Thanks to Taylor’s multitasking abilities, she can even do all of this to Vin at once.

Vin has some strong tools, and Taylor will have to be careful about letting Vin get too close, but with Taylor’s greater ranged capabilities and experience, the Mistborn ends up falling short in this fight. In the end, Vin’s victory skittered away.

The winner is Taylor Hebert.

(Art by spaghettiandart)

Next Time