Hazel's power is to control metal, so does that mean she can manipulate locks that are made out if metal? Also is it possible for her to move entire buildings made out of metal?
1 Answer
Your first question: In theory yes. She can control metal and locks are mostly made of metal so she should be able to control them. If you mean can she pick locks with her power then the answer is maybe but maybe not. To unlock a lock would take pretty fine control and a decent knowledge of how locks work. She may be able to get the control (we never see her exercise this kind of fine tuned power, she usually goes with brute force but with practice she could almost certainly do it.) but she (probably) has limited knowledge of how locks work. With Leo instructing her on where to move each pin she might have a chance but lock picking is hard. An easier way would be to force the bolt of the lock to retract or just snap the bolt. This would takes minimal effort and is easily within her powers and would allow her to open the door although may break the door permanently.
Overall, yes, she can force open locks, but they might not be reusable afterwards.
Metal buildings: Yes. In the books we see her move large quantities of metal and rock. For example here:
an outcropping of rock the size of a garage jutted from the sea of grass. Hazel realised it was her anchor. She'd caused the rock to appear.
Emphasis respected.
This shows that Hazel can move at least a garage sized rock and didn't appear to have to try that hard. She does have limits though. She couldn't dredge up all of the Imperial Gold weaponry of the 12th cohort from the sea all at once although that might be because of distance or how spread out it was rather than weight. I suspect she can move a decent quantity of metal, probably up to at least the size of a house. I suspect a whole skyscraper might be beyond her but I don't know. We do see other demigods succeed in doing things of nearly that magnitude.
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Pin tumbler locks (which tend to be among the most common) would actually be fairly simple for a metal manipulator, since the nature of the pins means she'd only have to move the top part (attached to the springs) upwards, while the rest stays behind. Then again, depending on the amount of force her metal moving abilities are able to generate, she might be able to bypass the need for locks altogether.– Mwr247Commented Apr 21, 2017 at 19:29
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@Mwr247 She can definitely bypass locks by ripping through hinges or holding them shut mentally. Unfortunately most of these methods destroy the doors. The issue with the pin tumbler thing is would she know which bit to move? Commented Apr 21, 2017 at 19:45