With Great Power: Performing Under Pressure

Danny yawned loudly as he passed by Taylor sitting on the couch. He glanced down at his daughter who had yet to take notice of him, and smiled softly as he saw what she was writing in her notebook. As usual, he couldn’t make heads or tales of it, but it was clear that it was some type of math problem.

“Excited for your first day of high school tomorrow, Taylor?” He asked, finally catching her attention. She nodded, not taking her eyes off of her notebook.

“Yeah, I am. Especially since Emma was finally released yesterday so we can start together.” She scribbled down an answer to the equation she was working on before writing a whole new one, “I was worried that I’d have to start school without her.”

Danny frowned. He still couldn't believe that Alan's little girl had gone through something so horrific. Nor could he believe that his had nearly suffered through the same thing. If it wasn't for that hero showing up, he wasn't sure where they'd be right now. One thing was for sure, he was grateful to Shadow Stalker for what she had done, though…

“I can't believe one of them managed to get away. I thought that Ward would have been able to catch one more thug before she escaped.”

Taylor’s grip on her pencil tightened noticeably, “Yeah. Neither can I.”

Danny noticed her reaction and frowned. He reached out, putting a hand softly on her shoulder as he spoke in his most reassuring voice, “Don't worry, Taylor. The heroes’ll find them. Just give them some time.”

Taylor didn't say anything, but some of the tension in her shoulders went away, which Danny took as a good sign. He smiled, before his mouth cracked open in a loud yawn, “I think I'm gonna head to bed. You should too; you have school in the morning.”

“Can I finish practicing first? It'll only take a couple minutes.”

Danny smiles, “Alright, Little Owl, but try not to stay up too late. I don't want you to be late for the bus.”

Taylor finally turned to look at him, smiling brightly, “I won’t. Thanks Dad!”

Danny ruffled her hair before turning and disappearing up the nearby stairs. Taylor watched him go, her smile slowly fading as it was replaced with a tingling feeling of guilt. She felt bad for lying to him, but she knew that she couldn't tell him the truth. That she had no intention of going to bed anytime soon.

She turned back to her notebook. At the very least, she wasn't lying about wanting to practice some more. She spent the next hour and a half writing and solving random equations, waiting for her dad to well and truly fall asleep. She couldn't be sure when he was actually asleep but she could make an extension based on how often he got up to go to the bathroom.

Once she stopped hearing the telltale sound of the toilet flushing, she waited another thirty minutes or so before putting her notebook and pencil on the table, turning off the nearby lamp, and slowly creeping her way down into the basement.

In the back of the basement, past boxes of old clothes and random memorabilia and folded on top of even more boxes, was a bundle of clothes that was the result of several days worth of work with Emma. Her costume.

Well, she calls it a costume, but it was really just a hoodie and some track pants, along with a cheap face mask that you could pick up at pretty much any pharmacy. The only expensive thing was a pair of reflective snow goggles that Taylor had found in her dad's closet. They were brand new and had clearly never been used, so she had a feeling he wouldn't need them.

On top of the pile were two, wrist-band shaped pieces of metal, under which small, finger-sized cylinders had been messily welded to the base. Taylor picked them up, inspecting the half-rusted metal. It wasn't pretty, but it would work, or at least she hoped.

“Guess we're going to find out.” She muttered as she clipped them to her wrists. The cool metal pressed up against her skin and she shivered, before moving to pull the rest of her outfit on. She only had a few hours to do this so she had to be quick.

~~~

Taylor stared out at the rolling waves of the bay in front of her. She took in the water – so dark it was black at this time of night – and mused to herself that this was a lot easier than she had thought it would be.”

“Emma was right. These powers really are a good way of getting places I shouldn't be.”

She was standing on top of one of the warehouses in the docks, only a few yards away from her dad's actual office. Since it was so late, not even the late workers were present to see her nor was anyone around to alert the authorities of her presence, which was good. She wouldn't want anyone to see her fail if this went wrong.

As for what this was, well…

Taylor looked down at the water, several dozen feet below, before turning her gaze up towards the large crane hanging high above it. It was one of those cranes that people used to move shipping containers onto the ship itself, and though it was rusted from disuse and practically falling apart, it would be more than enough to hold her weight. Probably. She just had to hope her web fluid was up to the task

Taylor glanced down at the bracelets attached to her wrists and the small vial of clear liquid that peeked out the back of them. It was a substance that she had been theory crafting for a while now, though she never intended for it to be used like this. As a matter of fact, she never imagined she'd be able to complete it in the first place. It was mostly a passion project, something to challenge herself with and challenge her it did. Roadblock after roadblock had almost caused her to give up. For the first time in a long time, she was completely stumped. She couldn't think of any way to make it work.

But once she got her powers, something changed. The roadblocks disappeared, and it was like the rest of the formula had simply opened up to her. What she imagined would take months was completed in just a few days.

In the beginning, when she still had any hope of actually completing the formula, she had been hoping to pitch it to the PRT as an alternate, more economical form of containment foam. Something that could restrain weaker villains and wouldn't make much of a mess like the foam itself. If she had managed it, she probably would've gotten a full scholarship straight through the college of her choice. Heck, maybe she would have even gotten a nice job at their R&D department or something; weirder things had happened.

Now though, it looked like that research would have a different purpose, but maybe one that would be just as helpful. Though, there was nothing saying that she couldn't still give her research to the PRT as a hero. She just had to test it first. Which was why she was out here in the first place. Her creation has already run through a battery of tests, from tensile strength to flexibility to even fire resistance. That last one went about as expected. Taylor wasn't sure she'd ever be able to wear those clothes again after how much smoke they'd absorbed.

Now there was just one more thing to test. Emma's words in the hospital the other week gave Taylor an idea, one that she hadn't been able to get out of her head. She just had to try it out.

Which was why she was standing on the roof of a warehouse by the docks in the middle of the night. Now she just had to hope all of her calculations were done right, or she was in for the quickest and coldest salt-water bath of her life.

Taylor adjusted her goggles to make sure that they were properly secure. The entire world was tinted yellow while wearing these things, but she was just able to see enough to point her hand toward the crane. Her fingers curled like she was about to grab it from all the way over here, before her index and pinkie fingers stretched outwards, and the others pressed a small switch on the palm of her hand. There was a soft hiss, like the sound you get when you spread spray cheese on a cracker, before a thin line of white thread shot out of the wrist-mounted device hard enough to push her hand backwards. She might have compressed it a bit too much,

It flew with enough force to easily clear the distance between her and the crane in an instant, attaching to the metal with a loud ding and sticking there. Taylor tested the line, pulling on it hard enough that she began to slide off of the roof to make sure that it wasn’t going to immediately break, before taking a deep breath.

“Do or die time… Well, more like do or take the coldest bath of my life.” She muttered, looking down at the freezing water below her. She sighed, this was such a bad idea.

Before she had a chance to talk herself out of it, Taylor stepped forward and off the roof, putting all of her faith into the thin web that she was tightly holding with both hands. Gravity took over for a split second, making her heart fall into her stomach, a millisecond before her web went taught, and she swung like a pendulum across the water. The wind whipped through her hair as her hood fell down around her neck and her heart was beating a mile a minute as her web carried her to the other side, holding her weight just as she had hoped it would.

And yet even with how incredibly terrifying this should have been, especially with Taylor’s fear of things like roller coasters and heights, a strange exhilaration filled her body, so much so that by the time she landed on the roof of the warehouse on the other side of the water, she was smiling from ear to ear.

“That… was so freaking awesome!” She cheered as she let go of her web, looking down at her web shooters. She had half expected the thin line to snap and for herself to be sent into the water, but it didn’t even fray! She probably couldn’t snap them if she tried!

Taylor looked up, catching sight of another crane sitting only a few yards away, this time situated over the cold, hard concrete. And maybe it was the adrenaline from her first swing, but Taylor didn’t even hesitate to reach a hand out and attach a web to this one too, leaping from the roof and swinging across the concrete at a speed and height that would do much more than just scrape her knee if she fell.

But she didn't fall. And she didn't stop. It was like some hidden instinct inside of her bloomed forth the moment her hands touched the webs, and soon enough, Taylor wasn't even stopping to land on the ground before starting her next swing, just moving from crane to crane to even building as her swings took her away from the docks and into the city itself as her confidence grew.

She swung through the night, a massive smile splitting her face underneath her mask as her arm pumped and her chest heaved. It was like some sort of hidden instinct had taken her over, and soon enough it was as if she had been doing this all of her life.

Was this another part of her power? It had to be, right? She used to get scared getting up on the roof of her house when her dad had to clean the gutters, how does that translate to being able to do something like this?

Actually, it didn’t matter. An explanation was the furthest thing from Taylor’s mind. All she was concerned about right now was the wind rushing through her hair and clothes as she swung through the empty streets of the city she called home. She flew across Brocton Bay like a bullet, just barely holding herself back from screaming with joy as she picked up speed. She flew around corners and even ran along walls as whatever part of her power told her how to swing from webs did its work, allowing her to do things she never would have even thought of.

As she swung, she made sure to keep careful track of how much fluid was left in her web shooters, knowing that if she ran out in the wrong place it was likely game over. Still, she was extremely glad that her webs dissolved after a couple hours, because at the rate she was going, she didn’t doubt that she had left her mark from the Docks all the way up to Captain’s Hill.

Alas, all good things had to come to an end. And it was as she was heading back to the Docks, tracing a path along the outer line of buildings along the coast, that that end came.

As Taylor swung up to the top of a billboard to catch her breath, the telltale screeching of tires on asphalt caught her attention. She looked down, and her eyes widened as she was met with two cars nearly colliding on the high bridge just below her. The first was clearly out of its lane, crossing the double yellow line as it drifted into the other’s path, while the second was aware of this and was doing its best to correct its course without being run off of the road. The first car realized what was happening just in time, and swerved out of the way at the last second preventing a head on collision.

The second car continued down the road, the driver no doubt yelling expletives in the cabin of their car, but something was wrong with the first. They weren’t driving normally, and from her position on high, Taylor saw what was about to happen long before it actually did.

The car swerved to one side, overcorrecting for the earlier near miss, and then they swerved to the other. They lost control of their car as it fishtailed and spun out, screeching a path straight towards the crumbling concrete guardrail that was the only thing blocking them from a deep plunge into the icy abyss below.

Taylor watched with horror as the car slammed into the barrier at full force and the concrete finished years-long task of crumbling into chunks of rock and debris. It did its job somewhat, slowing the car down enough that instead of simply flying over the side, it was perched precariously off of the edge, but Taylor could tell even from her perch that that wasn’t going to last for long. The front wheels were well off of the road, as was half of the car itself, and it would take only the slightest breeze to push it the rest of the way.

The world froze for a single moment, moving so slowly that Taylor was sure she could feel each and every beat of her hammering heart in her chest, before the car’s rear wheels rose off of the ground and it slowly began to tilt forward.

She acted before she could even think about it, jumping off of the billboard and shooting two webs out and slingshotting herself towards the falling car. She landed just short of it, and sprinted the rest of the way, using every muscle available to her to get to the car before any hope of catching it was lost. She just barely managed it, and mere seconds before the car took the plunge, she managed to get her hands underneath the rear bumper and stop its descent just as the rear wheels slipped over the edge as well and gravity took over.

Taylor grunted as she went from being empty-handed to holding several hundred pounds of plastic and steel from falling off of the edge of the bridge. It wasn’t like when she had picked up her dad’s truck, there she had the luxury of finding the right leverage and actually preparing herself for the act. Here, it was only dumb luck and panic that managed to get her fingers under that bumper. Her shoes slid against the concrete as they failed to find purchase, before they caught on the small lip made by the broken barrier and refused to move any further.

Now that she actually had the leverage needed, Taylor could focus on the task at hand. She took a deep breath, tightening her grip on the metal to the point that it practically crumpled in her grip, before beginning to pull. The teenager’s muscle’s bulged as she began to lift, urged on by the sound of a crying child coming from the back seat. She couldn’t hear the driver so she had to assume they were unconscious, or at the very least out of commission. That meant that she was on her own. She pulled harder, using her super strength to its fullest extent even as her sweaty palms threatened to undo all of her work, and just as the rear wheels met concrete once more and she was sure she was going to make it, something horrific happened. The bumper, which she had been holding onto like a lifeline, was ripped from the car.

“NO!” Taylor shrieked as the car began to fall off of the edge once more. Both of her arms shot out as she pressed the buttons on her palms hard enough to make her fingers hurt. Her webs shot out, clinging to the space the bumper had once occupied, as well as the roof of the car, and Taylor pulled with all of her strength, gritting her teeth so hard that her dentist probably felt it.

“Come on, come on!” she hissed as she began to slowly walk backwards, pulling the car with her and praying to god that it stayed intact this time.

Luckily he seemed to be listening, and she managed to pull the car back up onto the bridge. The back wheels touched the ground, then the front. Taylor dragged the car fully onto the bridge and kept pulling until she was positive that there was no chance of the car falling off again.

The car’s hazard lights flashed in her goggles as she let go of her webs, letting them fall to the ground. Taylors hand stung and she was breathing heavily both from adrenaline, as well as the effort required to pull the car back up. Ignoring it, she jogged up to the driver’s side door, cupping her hands around her mouth to be heard better, “Are you alright in there?”

There was no response. Taylor leaned forward, looking into the window, only to freeze as she saw the woman in the driver’s seat slumped over the steering wheel, seemingly unconscious. Or worse.

“Oh no.” Taylor breathed, “No no nonono!”

She pulled at the door handle fervently but the door was locked. She couldn’t get in. As she backed away, Taylor's hand shook as she realized how serious this was, and her breath quickened as her mind took the current situation to its natural conclusion. A dark-haired woman, struck dead in a car crash and a young girl left behind to mourn.

She needed to get in there. She needed to get in there now!

She hurriedly glanced over the surface of the car, looking for a way inside. She could break the window? No, that might hurt the woman inside. If she was even-no, don't think like that. Taylor grit her teeth, glancing down the length of a car as an idea came to her. Yeah, that might work.

Muttering an apology to the woman inside, Taylor reached out and dug her fingers into the cracks of the door, before pulling with all of her strength. Metal bent like butter underneath her fingers but she pressed forward, tightening her grip and pulling harder and harder. The car tilted on its side, threatening to topple over, and the child inside wailed even louder. Taylor ignored them, focusing all of her attention on her task until eventually, something gave and the entire door came off of its hinges.

Stumbling back, Taylor ripped her fingers out of the indents they had made in the door and rushed to check on the woman. She was hunched over her steering wheel and blood was leaking from her hairline, but to Taylor's eternal relief, she was breathing.

Reaching out, Taylor gently pulled the woman from the car, doing her best to avoid cutting her on the sharp pieces of metal that had been left after she ripped the door off. She paused as the woman's leg hit something on the way out, and her lips thinned as several beer cans tumbled to the concrete just outside the car.

“Are you kidding me?” She hissed as she realized exactly how the crash had happened. The woman groaned in her arms, and Taylor had been around Kurt and the rest of her dad's friends to recognize the sound. This woman was totally sloshed.

Disgusting. Any pity Taylor was feeling immediately disappeared as she realized that the woman's current state was her own fault, only for it to immediately come back as the child began wailing again. Gently placing the woman on the ground, she crawled into the mangled car and manually undid the lock to the back door, before stepping out again and opening it up so that she could get to the child.

It was a little boy, maybe two or three years old and clearly far too scared to understand what was going on. He was thankfully uninjured, with the only actual damage coming in the form of a red mark on his chin and neck from where he had probably slammed into the seatbelt. At least the mother was smart enough to do that.

Taylor pulled him from the wreck, clutching him to her chest and cooing softly in his ear, “It’s okay… It’s okay. You’re gonna be alright.” She whispered, bouncing him up and down and rubbing his back gently. She had held a baby once or twice in her life, but that was always with adults around. Faced with a child this inconsolably scared, she wasn’t really sure what to do.

‘For starters, I guess I should probably call the cops so that they can send an ambulance.’ The teen thought to herself as she navigated her way over to where the woman was lying. She could see the indent of a phone in the woman’s pocket, so she reached down and pulled it out without any ceremony. It was thankfully unlocked, though Taylor was pretty sure that didn’t matter for what she was about to do.

She dialed a number and transitioned the sobbing child to her hip, still whispering soothingly in an attempt to calm him down. The phone rang twice before her call was picked up.

“911, what is your emergency?”

“Hi, this is… Uh.” Taylor’s mind blanked as she realized she didn’t actually have a name to call herself. This was supposed to be a test run. She wasn’t supposed to go out and do any actual heroing. Faced with this conundrum, she made something up on the spot, “T-This is Widow. I’m an independent hero and I just stopped a car from falling off the side of the bridge between Kirkland and Fifth by the docks. The driver’s unconscious and I have her kid here with me so I need you to send someone to help. Please.”

The operator’s tone shifted dramatically after she gave that information, “Is there anyone else present? Any other people hurt? Are either of them in critical condition?”

Taylor glanced down “Not as far as I can tell. The baby has a seatbelt burn and the woman might have hit the steering wheel, but I’m pretty sure she was drunk so she’s probably fine.”

She remembered hearing that drunk drivers had a much better chance of surviving car crashes because of the way their bodies’ didn’t tense up during the impact. It had been a bad day to learn that little piece of trivia.

As she relayed information to the operator, Taylor walked over to the portion of the barrier that was still intact and sat down to wait. Her entire body buzzed with adrenaline as she continued to bounce the much calmer toddler in her lap, but the operator’s smooth voice on the line told her weary mind everything that she needed to know.

Everything was going to be alright.

~~~

Later that morning, Taylor was lying in bed but sleep was the furthest thing from her mind. She was wide awake, staring at the shadows of the moon drifting across her wall as her mind refused to quiet down.

Tonight had not gone how she had imagined at all. She had expected to stay out for an hour or two testing her web fluid and maybe even working on her web shooters if they hadn’t worked properly. She hadn’t been planning to go out on patrol or make her debut as a hero before her gadgets and costume were one hundred percent ready.

But that wasn’t how it went, and now not only had she made her first appearance on the cape scene, with a name she hadn’t put more than a modicum of thought into no less, but she had been seen by no less than twenty people. The officers who had shown up alongside the paramedics, as well as nosy onlookers who happened to be passing by had definitely seen her. And from her experience with the online cape scene, she was sure at least one or two of them had taken pictures. She had unintentionally made her foray into heroism, well before she felt like she was ready.

And now school was in less than three hours. She was going to be dead tired for her first day of High School no matter if she went to sleep now or not. And yet, as she remembered the tragedy that she had prevented, as well as the feeling of relief that had filled her when she learned that both the child and mom were going to be okay, she felt no regret at all.

‘Heh. I can’t wait to tell Emma about this.’