'My power is trash,' I thought, gloomily, kicking a piece of litter to the side.

I was walking back home, after the rollercoaster that had been this year's annual check.

After I'd recounted to Ameliah how I'd discovered my Power, she'd practically gone into a frenzy, shouting about how incredibly useful teleportation-type Powers could be and how they'd definitely promote her for finding one, before we'd set out to try to test my Power's limits, to add to the database and find what field my Power would be most suited towards.

The results had been utterly disappointing.

Not everything was bad, mind. My Power was apparently incredibly rare in that I could use it indefinitely, since it didn't need time nor energy to recharge and didn't really cause any sort of physical or mental fatigue. I could also use it in extremely quick succesion, the limit seemingly being how fast I could think.

No, what made my Power practically useless was something else. Two things, actually. The ridiculously short range was one of them.

I thrust my hand into my pocket and pulled it back out a moment later, now holding a small, 50 cent coin between my index and thumb. Old currency, practically a relic, from before we made the transition to digital, something that happened even before the Merge. I'd gotten it as a souvenir or something, for my 'cooperation'. Probably a consolation prize.

I scoffed, then focused on the round piece of copper, before willing it to teleport itself straight up, as far as it could go.

About a second later, I caught it with ease as it fell just to the right of my waiting hand. The coin had only gone up about five meters, which was the absolute range of my ability.

That meant I could only teleport things within five meters of what we estimated to be my center of mass, and to a point in space within that same space around me. Meaning, I could at most do ten meters if I moved something from one end to the other.

Utter horseshit.

That wasn't the main issue. No, if that was all then my Power would still be quite decent, most likely D or even C Rank. The problem was the hard limit on the volume of anything I wanted to teleport. I couldn't measure more than five centimeters a side.

Once again, bullshit.

It was incredibly restrictive. I couldn't even teleport a Rubik's cube, much less anything bigger, such as guns, people or even cars, such as Blank, a Peacekeeper so famous he was basically a household name. Of course, that meant I couldn't teleport myself either, like Blinker, who despite being a mere C Rank was a big shot in his City, over at the west coast. As it was, though, deciding my Power's Rank had been trivial.

It was F, of course.

It seemed like there wasn't even any room for improvement, like most Powers had, but a hard limit instead. I simply couldn't form that mental connection with any object that was too big or farther from me than the five meters, not even by a single milimeter, no matter how hard I pushed myself. I sighed wearily, teleporting the coin back up into the air and failing to account for my own movement as I stretched my hand forward to catch it, causing it to bonk me on the forehead as I looked up.

"Ouch..." Rubbing the sore spot, I bent down to pick the half-dollar up, when I spotted a small piece of paper, being languidly carried by the breeze before touching down on the ground right next to the copper coin. On it, were five short words, written in prim yet simple calligraphy, honed to be perfectly readable yet most likely fast to write. The words were narrow, almost cramped though, despite the ample space on the paper. After all, the message was simple;

[Get rid of the coin]

Looking around, I only saw a few passersby near me, none in the direction the paper had come from. After staring at my surroundings like an idiot for a few more seconds, I picked up the piece of paper and, after a moment of hesitation, took the coin too. I wasn't just going to let a random paper I found on the street make my decisions for me.

The following minutes flew by, and in no time at all I was already in front of my apartment, letting the peephole scan my retina and the doorknob my fingerprints. A moment later, I was slumped on the sofa, my stressed body and mind revealing in the familiar comfort of home. I hadn't even realised how exhausted I felt, with adrenaline and tension having kept me going. It was already eight, due to the tests having dragged on for a while, and the sun was setting already. 'I need to have dinner,' I thought, 'Then I'll go straight to bed...'

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Those was the last of my thoughts as I passed out on the couch, too tired to even realise I'd fallen asleep.

----------------------------------------

The next morning, or rather, midday, found me waking up both refreshed and depressed, an odd combination.

I had some cereal for breakfast, all the while flipping the coin I'd been given in my hand, pondering on who could've given me that message, and why.

'Definitely not someone from the Government. A prank, perhaps? No, too subtle and elaborate... some kind of terrorists? A supervillain? But it should be impossible for any terrorist groups to pop inside a City, under the Government's thorough control, and there hasn't been a villain in the city other than common thugs since... must've been 5 years ago, already. I remember being in school, and hearing how half a district had gotten razed to the ground.

Plus, even if there really was one, they would risk exposing themselves, and for what? To warn a random guy about a coin that might have a tracking device or something installed? To throw him off? It just seems to far-fetched.'

I couldn't quite dismiss the whole thing as a coincidence, but I nonetheless put it on the back burner, in favor of more pressing matters.

'I don't know where the note came from, but it did have a point. The coin might very well be chipped, or worse. I might be able to do something about it, if that's the case. Unfortunately, my coding prowess will be useless if I can't actually uncover the thing... Plus, I don't exactly have any metalworking tools around, and I don't think a kitchen knife will cut it. Literally.'

I sighed, once again regretting the many limitations of my Power. I couldn't teleport parts of an object away from each other in order to see the insides, only whole units. At least, that was how it went for solids and liquids. Gasses, like air, I could do as I pleased with, probably due to their low intermolecular connectivity, or something like that. Wouldn't do jack shit for me right now, though.

I examined the coin in my hands, for the umpteenth time willing it with all my mind to split, to break into two separate units, that I could teleport away from each other—

—and once again, nothing happened. "Shit!" I hurled the coin at the wall with a vengeance, unconsciously teleporting it as I did so, as far as it could go.

However, to my surprise, I didn't hear the loud sound I expected from the coin's impact with the wall a bare few minutes in front of me, but rather a soft toc I didn't quite understand the source of.

Looking around, I saw the coin had disappeared.

'What? Did I teleport it to the other side of the wall?' As I thought that, I looked down, spotting a brownish red, clay-like piece, the exact same size as my coin. I mistook it for it for a second, actually, until I picked it up and actually realised what it was made of.

'Wait, is that... brick? Did it somehow switch positions with the coin I teleported? But wait, that would mean...'

I looked at the wall which, indeed, looked to be about five meters in front of me.

'...The coin's in there?'

I closed my eyes, breathing deeply, and tried, seriously tried, not to freak out at the implications of this discovery. I'd known my Power wasn't so much teleportation as... switching the space occupied by an object with another occupied by the air at the destination, but I hadn't even considered being able to teleport said object into something else, effectively carving a portion out of it, with the same size as the thing I teleported. It could have so many applications...

'No, calm down, Leon. First, let's try to retrieve the coin.'

Leaving my eyes closed, I focused intently on the piece of wall I held in my hand... and a hazy memory slowly drifted into my mind. It was like a dream, fading so fast I could barely grasp it, but I managed to hold onto it for a second and, channeling my will into it, use it as an anchor for my Power as I turned the piece of wall to match the tilt of the coin in the wall.

When I opened my eyes, on my hand was a dusty coin, over half of its 'tails' side and a good part of the curved surface above it now a different hue as if the outermost coating had been peeled off, the opposite surfaces with a slight buildup of debris, most likely parts of the wall that had come with. I smiled.

'Not perfect, but pretty good, for not being able to see the destination!'

I dusted the coin off, then remembered what I'd wanted to do with it in the first place.

'Wait, knowing what I do now, maybe I could...'

Focusing on the empty air in front of me, I imagined a small, flat circle, with less diameter than the coin and barely a fifth of its thickness.

Then, I teleported the air into the coin, causing a slice of metal to appear on top of my other hand, where I'd taken the air from.

I felt like I was going to explode from joy.

'Wow! It really works! If it's like this, there's no way my power can be waved off as F Rank anymore... Perhaps not even E, actually. D, most likely, though it might even be C! Perhaps I wouldn't make a very effective Peacekeeper; after all, I'm harmless as long as I'm not within 5 meters of others, but being able to cut any material into any shape, without any real limit other than the need to rest my body and mind... how many new doors could my Power open in, say, science, for example?'

As I thought this, I looked down at the cut coin in my hand, and the decidedly non-coppery metal that greeted my sight snapped me back to reality.