Author's Notes: Chapter edited and corrected by Scott Fellman.
[Welcome contractor, enjoy your experience at The Company!]
That's what the notification that appeared across the screen said. I blinked slightly before fiddling with the phone once more. The Company, Waifu Catalog, was the app installed on the phone. I don't remember when I agreed to become a contractor, but I do remember filling out the build I was looking at. It made sense that I had replaced the old Serena before her sixth year. It was something I had specified in the build. I absolutely didn't want to be 13 years old again, as was the norm for substitutes, and there was a considerable difference between 13 and 17 years old. I felt more comfortable.
But yes, I was 17 now; Hogwarts started a year later at 12, according to my memories. Thus, I had just finished my fifth year despite being of legal age. Everything happened exactly the same, with little to no difference from canon.
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Starting World: Harry Potter [1970-1981 (The First Wizarding War)]
Starting budget 225
Intensity [6.25]
Legacy Difficulty 0
You as Serena Snape (Substitute) of T5 -20 [205]
Bindings
Company Stamp free [205]
Lures
Sticky Fingers -5 [200]
Faerie Feast -10 [190]
Home Perks
Pocket Space -5 [185]
Talents
Template Stacking I x2 [You as Serena Snape has Lord Ruler/Rashek (Cosmere), Roy Mustang/Flame Alchemist (Fullmetal Alchemist)] -60 [125]
Body Tune-Up -5 [120]
Performance -10 [110]
Soul -10 [100]
Athletic -5 [95]
Martial -10 [85]
Aesthetic -10 [75]
Added Potential x2 [You as Serena Snape has Ancient Magic (Hogwarts Legacy), Parsel Tounge (Harry Potter)] -10 [65]
Defenses
Body -5 [60]
Stress x2 -10 [50]
Defenses discounted for retinue members +4 [54]
Misc Perks
Universal Calibration -10 [44]
Sexual Calibration -2 [42]
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I narrowed my eyes slightly as I saw an option to accept the bonuses. I tapped the screen, accepting it without hesitation, and felt a tingle all over my body before memories hit me. First, they were Snape's memories, not mine, but Severus Snape's. From his birth to his death, I now remember everything he had done in his life as if I had been present as if it had happened to me.
Next up were the templates. I had chosen Roy Mustang's template; he was an alchemy specialist even by the standards of elite state alchemists, so there was a lot to unpack there. The worst was that I had chosen Rashek's template, better known as Lord Ruler, a virtually immortal bastard who had lived a little over a millennium, a long life. Though templates didn't exactly come with memories, knowledge was power, and Lord Ruler acquired vast amounts of it in his lifetime. Still, I used my poor occlumency, pushed all of that down, and left only the important things for now: my memories and experience of Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy. I blinked lightly as I got used to my new body, my older, healthier body. I no longer felt any headaches or pain anywhere. I quickly returned to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror again.
My body had changed; I looked a bit plumper, and I still had angular features but not as marked by a lack of proper nutrition. Instead, I looked healthier, like my skin was still pale but had a much healthier color that looked slightly shiny. It would seem that merging with the templates or the Body Tune-up had made me healthier. I didn't have super strength, obviously, but I quickly noticed that my arms gained a bit more flesh and definition. My breasts grew half a cup in size; they went from being hopelessly flat to having a small mound. I huffed, but I wouldn't be complaining; breasts were breasts, they were better than the nothing I had before. The other change was my muscles; I went from being malnourished with a sunken stomach to having a nice well defined six pack and lean muscles on the rest of my body. I didn't know if it came from Rashek, Roy Mustang, or Body Tune-up, but it was a welcome advantage.
Returning to the room, I grabbed my phone once more. Browsing through the app, I found what I was looking for: my Pocket Space inventory. My eyes widened at the amount of items in it and I quickly hit remove. With that, a large amount of jewelry began to fall in front of me. There were several dozen of them, rings, bracelets, piercings, and hoops; I could see several spikes falling around before a blue uniform and a small briefcase fell on top of them when my pocket space finished emptying. I blinked a couple of times as I put my phone away and went through things.
The first thing to inspect was the briefcase. I opened it with ease and couldn't help but a wide smile grow on my face almost reverently. I took Roy Mustang's gloves and ignition cloth. I didn't know what they were made of, and the memories of the alchemist's template didn't give me any results either, so the 6 pairs in the briefcase would be the only pairs I would possibly have in the short term. Still, I put them on with ease, and they fit like, well... a good pair of gloves. They were completely adapted to my hands, neither Too big nor loose, and they were perfectly tailored. I couldn't help but snap my fingers; I smiled at the spark that blossomed from the fabric. I really wanted to try out the transmutation circle on the glove, but doing it inside a room for the first time was a terrible idea. So reluctantly, I sent them once again to the inventory to avoid the temptation.
Leaving the gloves back in the briefcase, I grabbed the blue State Alchemist uniform, and it really wasn't something I could see myself wearing. It was an army uniform and would look horribly bad in any situation I could think of. Still, I couldn't help but notice that it was too small for Roy Mustang's build, so I figured it was also tailored to my physique as well. I would try it on later just to see how it looked; if for nothing more or less, for no other reason, obviously.
I almost reluctantly put it aside when I noticed a chain on the uniform. As I pulled on it, I nearly squealed in joy: a pocket watch from the state alchemists!! I quickly pulled it off its chain and looked at it closely. It was beautiful. I put it away just as quickly in my inventory; it was something I would be using, but first, I had to find ways to enchant it to keep it from breaking. Even though I could repair it if the damages were minor, I didn't want to risk it.
With a happy smile, I continued looking at the uniform; before putting it away, I patted all of its pockets in case there were any other surprises. I only found a lighter, and that inside the uniform, there was a shirt. I hummed lightly before taking it out. I also separated the pants and boots and placed them on my bed, they were better than any clothes I had at the moment. The ones I had were either too old or too torn or both. I quickly changed, and as I thought, it fit me perfectly. I left the black coat without insignia to the side and put the rest in the inventory, which was only the top part of the uniform and the half skirt of the bottom part.
I hummed before returning to the rest of the pile, now much happier with some clothes in decent condition. The first thing in the pile was a wooden flute. I blinked before remembering that it was something Lord Ruler kept as one of his relics. I wasn't really a fan of flutes. Still, I liked music even though I was very bad at any kind of musical discipline, which was why I chose and did choose, in most of my builds, Performance Talent. If I were building a CYOA, I would create one I actually enjoyed. Music was one of those things, as was Aesthetic Talent.
I put the flute away before looking at the rest of the pile. There were no articles of clothing or any weapons that I remembered. Did Lord Ruler use spears? Or was he pierced by spears? It didn't matter at the moment. I analyzed the jewelry quickly: rings, bracelets, and earrings, all of them metals. With a simple glance, I could tell they were a reasonable combination of the 16 base metals. I wasn't worried about the ones made of iron, steel, tin and the others; but the rarer ones like cadmium, bendalloy, electrum, chromium, nicrosil, and duralumin did catch my attention; I was almost certain that cadmium and bendalloy were not available during the time Lord Ruler was alive. As for chromium and nicrosil, Rashek's memories did not give me any answers, but you certainly wouldn't hear me complain. All metal was good metal.
I quickly began to sort through my new acquisitions by their metals. Among them, I also found hemalurgy spikes, or rather just metals in the shape of spikes. As far as I recall, Lord Ruler had no hemalurgy spikes on his body. Still, he did practice it on his Inquisitors, so I was surprised to find them in the pile. Still, like all the jewelry, they had no investiture on them, the jewelry had no feruchemical charge, and the spikes no stolen spirit grids, so despite having all the metals present and Lord Ruler's knowledge on my side, I couldn't even begin to pull from them.
There were 16 different metals suitable for metal arts, eight base metals, each with an alloy, 16 in total, each manifesting a specific ability depending on how it is used.
Iron, steel, tin, pewter, zinc, brass, copper, bronze, cadmium, bendalloy, gold, electrum, chromium, nicrosil, aluminum and duralumin.
Allomancy required ingesting any of the previous 16 metals and burning them from the inside, which would manifest different abilities. Someone who could burn all 16 metals was known as a Mistborn, something that Rashek, and now I, was.
Iron allowed me to pull nearby metals, and steel let me push them. Tin heightened my senses, and pewter increased my physical abilities. Zinc inflamed, ignited, or stirred up the emotions of others, while brass calmed them. Copper concealed Allomantic pulses, and bronze allowed me to hear them. This would only work if there were others with the same powers, so I wouldn't have to worry about the world of Harry Potter.
Moving on, cadmium allows me to slow down time and bendalloy to speed it up. Gold reveals my alternate past self and electrum my immediate future. Chromium nullifies the target's reserves of Allomantic metal, and nicrosil enhances whatever Allomantic metal the target is burning. Aluminum removes all internal Allomantic reserves, and duralumin enhances whatever metal the target is burning at the time.
Feruchemy, on the other hand, allows one to store certain attributes in specific metals and then retrieve them from the same metal. A full Feruchemist was someone who could use all 16 metals to store attributes, again, something Rashek was. It was the reason I chose him as a template. He was one of the few people who was both a mistborn and a full Feruchemist, making him extremely powerful.
When I actively store some attributes, there is a substantial change in those attributes at that moment. For example, iron can store physical weight, which means that while I am actively storing my weight in iron, I become lighter, and when I want to remove it and decant the metal, I become heavier. Once I store an attribute in some metal, that metal becomes a metallic mind and is usually named with the "-mind" suffix, in this case, an iron-mind.
Usually, when I decant an attribute, it happens at the same rate as I store it. If I store 50% of my weight for 1 hour, when I decant from an iron-mind, I will have a weight of 150% for an hour. However, I can speed up the rate at which I decant; if I remove the attribute faster, I can have my weight at 200% for half an hour or a little less due to the loss that exists when pressing the attribute.
As a side note, iron stores physical weight, steel stores physical speed, tin stores senses, pewter stores physical strength, zinc stores mental speed, brass stores heat, copper stores memories, bronze stores wakefulness, cadmium stores breath, bendalloy stores energy, gold stores health, electrum stores determination, chromium stores fortune, nicrosil stores investiture, aluminum stores identity, and duralumin stores connection.
Between both metal arts, there were a total of 32 skills I could take advantage of, and a few combinations could be played with. Hemalurgy was practically useless outside of the Cosmere, Mistborn's universe, or at least, more than half of them so it was unlikely I would use it since they couldn't give any substantial worthwhile advantage, so I continued organizing the jewels.