It was the day after Christmas, and Lisa woke up early. She rolled over and tried to decide if she should go back to sleep or not, but soon she smelled cooking coming from the kitchen. You couldn't tell by looking at her, but Lisa loved to eat. She ran her hands through her messy hair and walked out into the hall towards the kitchen.

"Hey, Mom", Lisa greeted her mother as she came in.

"Good morning, sweetheart.", Gloria Freeman Sanchez said without turning around. When she did turn around, she laughed. "Lisa, sweetheart, I'm glad we have don't have company. You'd lose your reputation." She laughed again.

"Mom, do I have to always look like a million bucks? Can't I just look natural?"

"Ha, natural? Lisa, you don't look natural, you look like a cave woman." Gloria herself always looked impeccable. Even this early in the morning she looked regal. Lisa could sometimes be rebellious, but normally Lisa looked a lot like her mother. Lisa was taller, but they had similar builds. Gloria had been a beauty queen in the past just like her daughter. Unlike Lisa's long mane of flowing hair, Gloria kept her hair in a short afro. She thought it showed off the graceful sweep of her neck, and it did. At age 53, she managed to keep her figure almost the same as when she was twenty years younger. When Lisa was in grade school, she used to boast that her mother had been a Jet beauty of the week, and that she hoped that she grew up to be as beautiful. Gloria would just smile and tell Lisa that she was going to grow up to look however she was meant to look. By the time Lisa was 13, Gloria had known that Lisa was going to be a beautiful young woman, but Lisa had never let her own looks or her popularity go to her head. She had been a hard working student; she was now a hard working businesswoman, and she was a good daughter. Gloria's first child, a son, had died as a baby, and at the time she thought that she would never get over it and love again, but three years later Gloria and her husband Ricardo had been blessed with Lisa. That little girl had filled Gloria's heart. Once Lisa was born, Gloria hadn't wanted any more children. Lisa was the sort of child who demanded attention, not because she craved it, but because she deserved it. Gloria didn't have room in her heart left to love another child the way she loved her Lisa.

Gloria chuckled to herself and looked over her shoulder again. "I'm almost finished, but I am not going to serve you looking like that."

Lisa hurrumphed and stomped towards the bathroom. She came back to the kitchen after a while all cleaned up. "Now, there's my daughter", her mother teased. "I couldn't even see your face before."

"So you like this better? Are you sure you don't want me to go put on make-up?"

Gloria laughed and set Lisa's plate down in front of her. "Lisa, you don't need make-up we already know that story, but there is no excuse for walking around with your lovely hair looking like an eagle's nest." She kissed Lisa on the top of her head and sat down to eat.

"Did somebody say eagles?", a still sleepy voice asked from down the hall. Simon Freeman was Lisa's first cousin. Gloria had been taking care of him since he was a boy. Gloria's brother James had been in and out of his son's life and his mother, Ruth, just hadn't been equipped to deal with a mentally challenged child, so one day Gloria and Lisa had driven from their home in Atlanta to South Carolina to pick up Simon. He was 11 when she took him in and now he was 25.

Gloria looked over at Lisa before she answered. "No, we were talking about eagle's nests, but no eagles."

Simon sat down at the table. "Its too bad. I like eagles, and hawks, and falcons." He looked at Lisa and smiled the most innocent smile. "Good morning, Lisa. You look really pretty this morning."

Lisa's grin was the same as it had been when she was a child. "Thanks so much, Simon."

"You're welcome. I tell the people where I work that I have the most beautiful aunt and cousin in the world. They don't always believe me. Can I have some food?"

"Sure", Gloria said and started to rise from the table.

Lisa put her hand on her mother's wrist. "I'll get it." Lisa made Simon's plate the way she knew that he liked it and set it down in front of him. He closed his eyes and prayed before he dug in.

Later that day, after dropping Simon off at his job at the Goodwill Store, Lisa and Gloria went to their old neighborhood. Gloria and Lisa had lived in Southwest Atlanta, lovingly called the SwAT for several years after they moved to the city. The area had its bad parts, but some of the neighborhoods were very close knit. Lisa and her mother had lived in a small brick triplex that they shared with another family and the landlord. The landlord still lived there, but he hadn't been the nicest in the world. They would speak to him if they saw him, but he had once threatened to put them out in the middle of December. He had even started proceedings, but a nice old lady from church had paid their rent for 2 months while Gloria was still searching for a job. The years between Lisa's father's death and her mother becoming a registered nurse were hard, but it had made a bond between Lisa and her mother that couldn't be broken. That was one of the reasons that Lisa felt so guilty about keeping a secret from her. Lisa knew that if there was anything stronger than her muscles, it was her relationship with her mother. There were hundreds of times that Lisa had wanted to tell her mother the truth, but she just couldn't find the words. The more she thought about it, the more guilty she became.

Lisa parked in front of her cousin Tony's house. They were going to eat dinner there that night. Lisa enjoyed herself, but for some reason she couldn't shake the guilt of keeping something from her mother. Then for the first time in a long time, she began to hate her secret. She had allowed herself to forget just how unnatural her power was. It was so unnatural that by the end of the night, she couldn't bear to look her mother in the face.

In the car later that night her mother was singing along with the oldies station until she looked at her daughter's face. "What's wrong, Lisa?"

Lisa looked over at her mother. Her mind screamed for her to tell the truth. She had the words. She knew what to say. She could hear the words, 'Mom, I have a big secret that I've been wanting to tell you about it. You're going to think its freakish...', but instead her courage failed her. "Its nothing", she actually said aloud. "I'm just preoccupied."

"Well, just so long as you pay attention to the road so we can pick up Simon and make it back home." Her mother patted Lisa on the shoulder and went back to singing.

The next day Lisa and Simon sat in the living room of the apartment watching television. There was a story that cut into the tv show about three teens that had gone missing on a trip in Northwestern Georgia. The reporter was in the woods not far from a small town. She was breathlessly explaining that the area was quite rural and was dotted with old mines and quarries. To make matters worse, the temperature had dropped well below freezing overnight, but the rescuers were hopeful that the teens had been able to survive. People had organized search parties that were going off into the forest and the back woods to look for the teens.

"Ohh, let's go find them. Let's go find them!", Simon exclaimed.

Gloria walked into the room and looked at her daughter, then she looked at the television. They were sitting comfortably in the apartment that Lisa had found for her mother. They were warm and content, but a plea from one of the mothers changed that contentment. They had to go. Simon hurried to his room and got dressed warmly. Gloria and Lisa packed some food and warm clothes. They piled into Lisa's car and drove to meet the coordinator of the search effort. They got there at about 9 am, and they were out in the woods searching by 9:30.

Their boots crunched through the woods as they searched, but Lisa was having a problem deciding what to do with her hands. Lisa had forgotten her regular gloves back at the apartment. She only had her welder's gloves in her trunk. Lisa pulled off the thick welder's gloves before putting them back on again only to take them off.

The group had been given a map and a general location to search. Gloria, Lisa, and Simon were spread out in the forest looking at their own area, but within sight of each other. There was another group of people searching a little farther away. Lisa saw her mother to her left and once again got guilty, but this wasn't the time to talk about her problem. They were trying to help someone else. They stopped walking for a short time around noon to eat and then they started searching again.

A couple hours later, the group was near the Tennessee border, but they didn't know how close because they were off the little local map they had been given. They knew their way back and it was getting close to the time to call it off for the day. If they waited any longer then they would risk being in the woods after the sun went down. Most of the other groups had already turned around and started heading back. Gloria, Lisa, and Simon decided to give it another half an hour. Simon walked out ahead of the group. He had been walking in sort of a pattern, but now the young man started straight through the woods. He walked very quickly and with purpose. He kept going until his aunt and his cousin couldn't see or hear him anymore. They followed behind him and after a time, they broke through the forest into a huge man made clearing. They looked around and saw that Simon had found a long abandoned mine. They could see a mound of refuse as high as a natural hill off to one side and behind it, water had collected to form a small nearly round lake.

Old equipment littered the space. There were cranes and hoists and rusted diesel mules that used to pull the ore to the processing building. That building was a pile of ruins on the other side of the clearing. It looked like no human had seen this place in decades. There was no trash or any other sign of human activity, just the relics left over from another era. Gloria and Lisa decided that it was time to leave, but not Simon. He had a serious look on his usually innocent face. He tracked around and around. He looked under things and on top of things even though the spaces were too small for people to fit. Gloria was about to call for Simon, but she didn't. She wanted him to look everywhere he thought that he should. He really wanted to find those missing teens.

Simon was working his way to the top a platform built into the side of a hill. He had to be careful, but he was determined. He was huffing and puffing when he got to the top. The top was a jumble of industrial machines. There were four steel beams sticking up from the platform. They weren't sticking straight up, instead they were leaning in towards each other forming a pyramid frame. Large pulley wheels were mounted on the top of the frame and a thick braided steel cable ran down into the mouth a huge vertical shaft. There was no railing and Simon was scared to go near the shaft. Instead he looked at the huge engine that powered the hoist that used to go up and down the shaft. Rust and weeds marred it, but the power of that old machine was still evident. Simon peeked in through the broken windows of the cab at the antique controls of the old hoist machine. He looked around and sighed deeply. He'd had a good feeling about this place. He had thought that he would find those kids here, but he was starting to believe that they weren't here. He pulled a strawberry Nutri-grain bar from his pocket and took a bite. After eating it, he stood up and despite his fear, he walked up the incline towards the lip of the vertical shaft. It was about forty feet in diameter and it looked a little too much like a mouth, but in the past it had been a hive of activity. That shaft ran nearly a quarter of a mile into the earth and was the main way ore was extracted from the mine deep below. That massive engine that Simon had looked used to raise and lower a huge pallet that brought tons and tons of material to the surface. Simon could even see the overgrown narrow gauge rail that used to take the ore to the processing plant. But he couldn't see the hoist pallet. It was down in the shaft. It could be all the way in the bottom for all he knew, but it wasn't.

Gloria and Lisa took the opportunity to have a seat on the remnants of a low wall at the foot of that man made platform. Lisa took a bite of her snack and looked at her mother.

"You have that look again", Gloria told her daughter.

Lisa sighed put her hands in her lap. She pulled off her welder's gloves and slipped off her heavy jacket. It was cool, but it wasn't really cold. Lisa was used to Chicago winters, and after a moment's thought she slipped her pull-over off as well. The cool air felt good against her skin. "Well, Mom, I've got something to tell you.", Lisa began after gathering herself. "I've been wanting to tell you for a long time. I thought about putting it in a letter, but this is something that I just had to tell you in person."

Gloria's brow gathered, but she didn't say anything. She just listened.

"About a year and a half ago, I found out that I was different than other people. This is going to sound a little strange, Mom, but I'm going to try to explain this as best I can." This was it. It was now or never, she still didn't have the right words, but she was going to do the best she could.

On top of the platform, Simon got down on his hands and knees and crawled towards the edge of the huge hole. There was prominent lip around the hole, and he only just looked over the edge and down the shaft. Most of the time, he would have only seen blackness, but the winter sun was at just the correct angle to allow some light to shine down. He saw the pallet about seventy feet from the top of the shaft. There were huge rocks stacked on it. It must have been the last load the old engine had ever pulled from the mine. Simon was about to pull his head back when he saw something move. It wasn't much, and there were lots of shadows, but then he saw it again. "Hey!", he called down the shaft waiting to hear the echo of his voice. He's always liked echoes. He heard the echo, but he heard something else too. He heard the word help.

"I found them!" Simon yelled down the shaft before realizing that his aunt and his cousin couldn't hear that. He backed away from the hole and yelled again, "I found them! I found them!"

Lisa was in the middle of her story, and she was only a few moments from revealing her secret to her mother, when she heard Simon yelling. Lisa looked at her mother and then they both hurried up the platform. They saw Simon standing near the pyramid frame pointing down the hole.

"I saw them down there!" He pointed and was jumping with glee. "Don't worry we'll get you out of there!"

"Help us please!", a voice yelled from below. Jessie's hurt. I think her leg is broken, and Shane has a big knot on his head. Please get us out of here!"

"Don't worry", Lisa yelled down the shaft. "We're going to call the rescue folks so they can pull you out!"

"Hurry please! Hurry!"

Lisa stood up and pulled out her cell phone. That was a x where her signal strength indicator should be. Lisa swore under her breath, and her mother checked her phone. She didn't have any service either. They looked at each other and shook their heads.

"Wonder how far back towards the highway we have to go before we get a signal?", Lisa asked.

"No telling. We're off the map anyway", Gloria replied. "But its okay. Simon remembers every turn we made on the way to this place don't you?"

He grinned his innocent smile. "Yes, ma'am. I always remember all the turns and how far too. You all stay here! I'm going to go tell the people!" Before Gloria could ask him to wait, Simon had already run down the hill. They decided to let him go. He was on a mission.

While they were trying to figure out who should say behind with the teens, they dropped some energy bars down to the teens and several bottles of water. One of the bottles broke open, but they still had enough to share. Everybody had started to relax. They believed that the worst part was over. The kids had been found. It was only a matter of time before they were rescued, but that wasn't the case.

"How did you get down there?", Gloria asked them.

"We were just messin around", one of the teens began. "We got tired after a while, and we sat down here on these rocks. We didn't know that we were sitting on an elevator. It was getting dark, and we couldn't see the cable. Next thing we know, the thing starts going down. We tried to jump off it, but it went down too fast. We thought we were going to die, but it stopped, but we couldn't climb back up. The walls are too slick and the cable's too far above our heads."

Gloria sighed. Youth really is wasted on the young she thought as she stood up and backed away from the hole. No one was paying attention to the hoist engine. They didn't noticed the sounds coming from it. For forty years since the mine closed, the clutch on that old engine had held up the pallet. The pallet was just the right size to go up and down the shaft, and had been loaded with tons of ore, but it held it against all the elements and in all conditions. A tornado had even passed over, and still it held, but no matter how well it had been built, every machine had a limit. That old clutch had finally broken allowing the pallet and everything on it to fall down the shaft, but the engineers had been smart. The emergency brake still worked after all those years of neglect, and it had stopped the pallet from crashing into the water filled bottom of the mine. The pallet now hung in the shaft and only the emergency brake kept it from falling, but that brake hadn't been designed to hold so massive a weight for so long a time. While Lisa and Gloria stood there, the emergency brake was falling to pieces. In a moment it would totally fail, and the pallet would start to fall. There were no more brakes and no more safety devices.

There were a cascade of failures. First, the emergency brake failed and the pallet started falling. The teens yelled as soon as they felt the movement. The cable was moving in a blur and the friction was causing a fire. Second, the pulley at the top of the pyramid frame began to wobble. The massive weight had over the years misshapen the wheel and it no longer turned easily. It banged against its own connecting bolts until the rusted bolts failed. Lisa looked up and saw the wheel flying apart. The cable jerked and started pulling straight.

"Move!", Lisa yelled over the roar of the cable and pushed her mother away. The cable jerked straight with enough force to slice through a car, and the pallet fell even faster. The teens had been so close to safety, but now they were preparing to die.

In the panic of the situation, Lisa didn't think about what to do, she just reacted. She pulled her thick welder's gloves from her back pocket and quickly pulled them on as she ran towards the hole. She grabbed the cable with both hands, and gripped it tightly. All the force snatched her off of her feet. She bounced along the rough concrete platform towards the hole. Shards of cement flew in the air as the cable dug a furrow through the old cement. Lisa gripped the cable even tighter and tried to right herself.

For Gloria, it was like looking at her worse nightmare. She saw her daughter being dragged towards her death, and there was not a single thing she could do about it. Gloria thought that Lisa was caught up in the cable. She wouldn't have believed that she was holding the cable on purpose. "Lisa!", Gloria screamed and tried to scramble to her feet.

The cable was digging deeper into the hard cement of the platform as the super heavy pallet fell towards the bottom of the quarter mile deep shaft. The noise was deafening. Pressure was building up beneath the falling pallet causing the squared timbers in the tunnels radiating off the shaft to turn in to splinters. That was causing cave-ins in some of the oldest tunnels near the top of the vertical shaft. The cement platform that held all the equipment was being stressed too. The brackets that attacked the platform to the hill had already been weakened, but this strain was causing them to warp. The entire platform shook so hard it caused Gloria's teeth to clatter together. Lisa was being dragged by this powerful force towards the hole. She hung on even though her mind and her mother screamed for her to let the cable go. Lisa knew that she couldn't let it go. Those kids down there were going to die if she didn't do something. They might die anyway, but she had to try.

The raised lip around the shaft was coming up in a hurry. Lisa turned her body so that her feet would hit the lip first. Everything was happening so quickly, but Lisa knew that she had to react fast enough. Lisa squeezed her hands on the tight cable and prayed that her strength would be able to do what she planned. She could feel the strength flowing through her body. Her muscles were already starting to harden, but was it going to be enough.

Lisa felt her feet hit the raised portion around the shaft. She screwed her eyes shut, and willed all the power she could. She knew that she would need every ounce of power her body could give her. Her fingers tightened around the cable, and then Lisa strained every muscle in her super body.

There was a horrendously loud groan and rush of air from the shaft, and then a serious of loud pings as a few individual fibers of the thick braided cable snapped from the strain. The ground shook violently. So violently, that Gloria was knocked to the ground again. She saw dust fly up and then she saw pieces of stressed concrete crumble and crack. The gap got wider as the ground kept shaking. She could hear the sharp reports of the cracking concrete of the platform echoing off the distant hills, and then everything was still.

Gloria could barely see through the dust. She had no idea what had just happened. Deep in her heart she feared the worst for daughter, but she was too confused to show it. She put a hand on the now cracked cement and slowly pushed herself to her feet. She stepped over the nearly 6 inch crack, and noticed then that on this side of the crack, the ground was not still. It vibrated and she could feel it moving under her. She wanted to step to the still side, but she had to find her daughter.

She walked towards the mouth of the shaft with her arms out in front of her because she couldn't see. She took another step, but then stopped when she heard Lisa's voice.

"Don't move, Mom", Lisa hissed through clenched teeth.

Lisa stood there holding the cable in her hands leaning against the enormous weight. Her body shook under the weight, and her muscles looked flexed and hard to bursting. Every muscle in her beautiful body was harder than stone. Muscle fibers flexed super humanly fast, but Lisa's body was being stressed terribly. Usually Lisa's strength had to be built up, but she was demanding strength from her body quickly. She wasn't used to that, and the weight she was holding was truly massive. Never in her life had Lisa used more of her strength. Her face showed the inhuman effort it took to keep the pallet from falling. Lisa was trying so hard it hurt. She could feel parts of her body grating against one another, and she could feel her muscles working to their limits.

Her forearms burned like fire instead of blood was coursing through her veins, and she could no longer feel her fingers. She knew she had to keep her grip strong, but it was getting harder and harder by the moment. Her right arm was wrapped around the cable once, but that was only an anchor that would pull her over if her muscles failed.

Lisa had been so focused on her grip, she didn't really notice that her knees were knocking together. Her arms and back were taking a lot of strain, but her legs were taking all of it. The soles of her boots were squashed flat and had burst from the sides. Her calves were so sharp and so defined it could hardly be believed, but the bulging muscles were near enough to failing. Lisa's body was powerful but this maybe more than even she could take. It was certainly more than the platform could take. It had never been designed to withstand a lateral load like this. The crack was getting wider, and Lisa felt her muscles getting weaker. There was an uneasy balance between Lisa's powerful perfectly muscled body, and the tons of weight she was holding up, but something was going to give.

A gentle breeze blew from the north, just enough to ruffle the collar on Gloria's jacket. It also cleared away the dust so that she could see. Even now, she wasn't sure what she was looking at. She could see her daughter holding the cable, and her face looked as if she were struggling to hold the weight of the world on her suddenly broader shoulders. Gloria didn't get closer to the mouth of the shaft. She was afraid to. She could hear noises coming from the shaft, including the cries of the teens on the pallet. Their voices sounded so weak and far away.

"Lisa? What are you doing?", Gloria asked. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. Her mind was running in all directions at once.

"No time to explain", Lisa managed through labored breaths. She was working to keep her voice calm, but she wanted to scream. "Mom, please back away. Go down the hill."

"Lisa, I'm not leaving you up here alone."

"Mom", Lisa had to pause when an intense pain shot up both of her legs and into her back. It made her arms momentarily weak, but she just grit her teeth and held the cable. "Mom, please. This is more weight than I can control. Get away, so I don't have to worry about you. I can't do this if you stay up here." Lisa opened her eyes and turned her head to catch a glimpse of her mother before she shut her eyes again and concentrated on what she was doing.

Gloria reluctantly backed away. She stepped over the widening crack. "Ok, Baby. I'm going down the hill!", she called out and turned to go down the hill. She wanted to stay up there, but she knew that she couldn't. Lisa was dealing with forces and tensions that could rip her pieces. Gloria went back to the low wall where she and Lisa had been sitting only moments before. She picked up Lisa's coat and held it. She didn't know why, but it was as close as she could get to her daughter right now.

Lisa opened her eyes and slowly turned her head first to her left and then to her right. She was looking for her mother, and was satisfied when she didn't see her. Lisa was all alone on the platform. There was a tension up here that she hoped that she could face, but she knew that her mother could not have. Every piece of equipment on the platform was being stressed in a way that it had not been designed for. Everything wanted to fly to pieces. The pallet wanted to fall down the shaft. The old winch engine wanted to follow the pallet and the cable down the shaft, while the platform itself wanted to crack up in to three different pieces. One piece was crumbling to dust, another piece wanted to follow the pallet down the shaft, while the last piece wanted to slide down the hill. Lisa's power held everything together. Her muscles would not let the pallet fall anymore, and in a backwards way, she was actually holding up the back half of the platform.

"Are you alive down there?", Lisa yelled out. She was ashamed that part of her brain didn't want to hear a response. Part of her brain just wanted to let the cable go and take away the pain.

"Yes!", came the frantic reply. She could hear that those teens were having a hard time keeping it together down there.

"Ok hold on!", she yelled down to them. Lisa sighed and wondered what she should do next. She had saved the teens' lives, but they were hanging there. Lisa's first thought was to just hold on until Simon came back with help. That would mean exposing her secret to everybody, but her secret wasn't worth anybody's life. If she had to be exposed then so be it. She thought it was sort of ironic that she hadn't been able to tell her own mother about her powers, and now the whole world was about to know. There was one other thing she could try.

Lisa adjusted her fingers on the cable, and slowly worked her hands down closer to the mouth of the opening. Lisa spread her legs further apart. She had to work her feet over because she was afraid to actually take either of her feet from the concrete. She wasn't sure if one leg, even her extraordinarily strong leg, could take this much weight for even a short period. Once her feet were far enough apart, and her hands close enough to the mouth as she dared to put them, Lisa paused. Lisa had done some amazing things with her body, but she didn't know what would happen this time. She was about to ask her muscles to do more than she had ever asked them to do before. There was a distant fear that Lisa would finally find the limits to her strength and something bad would happen. She had to try, and she had to know. Lisa prepared herself. It was now or never. She closed her eyes and gathered her thoughts. She took a very deep breath, expanding the size of her bosom, and with a mighty roar and the mightiest of efforts, she pulled.

Lisa's body produced a landscape of muscle. A wave of muscle growth from her calves to her traps traveled along Lisa's gorgeous body. Her calves had been defined and hard, but the definition was now beyond sharp. Her thighs had grown with thick slabs of pure super human female muscle in the instant she had started her pull. The heads of her quads had grown so quickly that they spilt her pants legs in several places. Lisa's back and shoulders grew and hardened with every moment. Her body had gained more size in an instant that many every would even after a lifetime of lifting weights, and she wasn't even finished yet.

The entire hill shook as Lisa pulled on something with all of her might. Her mother felt it, and the birds in the trees far away had taken to the air. Lisa had pulled the cable up two feet with her first tug. The strength she had felt surging through her muscles had been exhilarating. Lisa usually tried to down play her strength. It had become a part of her life, but nothing she ever bragged about, or felt proud about. In this moment though, Lisa felt other worldly. She opened her eyes and looked at her own body. Every muscle in her body was so swollen and pumped with awe inspiring power that she had to admire them for a moment. She flexed her thighs and watched as her quads defined even more. They were impossibly defined, and impossibly hard. She felt the power grow as the muscles grew. She bent her back and slowly worked her hands down the cable again. Once she was ready, she pulled again. The ground shook once again and the cable moved.

There were loud creaks and scary grinding noises as the pallet moved back up the shaft. Lisa could feel her muscles getting even stronger, and it was intoxicating. She stared down at her arms. Her muscles were stretched taunt by the cable, but she was satisfied at seeing them like this. So on her next pull, she continued through and pulled her hands up towards her chest. Her biceps virtually exploded with layers of muscles atop the thick mound of muscle. Her forearms were a jumble of cords of pure muscle and thick veins that fueled the growing power in Lisa's body.

She took a breath and pulled again. The pallet moved up. Lisa's back was unbelievably thick and the muscles writhed and bulged as Lisa pulled the cable up. Pull after pull, the heavy pallet moved up the shaft. Lisa felt like she was floating as he used her superhuman strength so near what she had thought was her limits. She still had yet to reach her limit. Her muscle fibers just fired faster and faster, and her muscles got harder and bigger the more she demanded.

It wasn't easy though. Lisa could feel a headache coming on, and she could feel the fatigue coming on as well. She was once again in a race, but this race was against her own conditioning. She had to get the pallet up before she was too tired to do it. So, she kept pulling and pulled. Her muscles were a choreographed ballet of perfect human form as she used her strength to save lives. She guess that there was no better way to use her strength, and there was no better way her mother to find out the truth.

While Lisa reveled in the feeling of using more power than she had done in the past, she didn't notice that things were going to pieces around her. The platform was starting to fail. The crack that had been 6" was now more than a foot. A fissure in the stone of the hill was starting to widen and it hastened the failure of the platform. Lisa grunted and pulled again, but the pallet was still at least 60 feet from the top of the shaft. She looked around her and saw the cracks spreading. She decided that she had to hurry. She stared down at the hole and took a good grip. With her muscles powered up, she once again dug deep within herself searching for more power and more strength. Then she pulled.

The pallet rose faster than it would have if the old hoist had been in perfect condition. Lisa pulled the pallet faster than it was designed to be lifted. Lisa didn't notice a problem until one of the thousands of centimeter thick wires that made up the braided cable poked her skin. She looked and gasped at what she saw. The cable itself was starting to fray. It couldn't take the strain of Lisa pulling as quickly as she was. Lisa pulled up some more trying to beat the unraveling and get to a good part of the cable, but it was unraveling too quickly. Then it stopped. She knew that she had pulled her last. There was no way she could put strain on the cable again.

As Lisa had been pulling, the cable had simple coiled and piled up behind her. She now worked her hands back along the cable she had already pulled. She had to take careful steps as she worked her way backwards, all the while keeping tension on the cable so the pallet wouldn't slip back down. She stepped over the crack and onto the portion of the platform that was sliding down the hill. She carefully walked around the old hoist and wrapped the cable around the thick legs of the machine as she did. She did it a couple more times. Then reluctantly, she let go of the cable. It jerked itself closed around the legs of the hoist. The thick legs of the old machine bent under the enormous pressure, but they didn't snap. The weight of the pallet also had the effect of pulling the platform back together.

Lisa could head the sounds of the tortured metal, but everything seemed to be ok. The pallet was still about 40 feet from the surface, but it wasn't in danger of falling again, or so Lisa thought. She walked up near the edge of the lip around the opening and looked at the cable. She saw then that the unraveling hadn't stopped. It had only slowed. The individual wires of the cable were snapping and unwinding from the other strands while she watched. Once that reached the pallet itself, Lisa knew that it was all over. She had to think quickly.

Lisa ran back to the hoist machine and took up a length of cable that wasn't wrapped around the legs of the machine. She took the old cable in a firm grip, and squeezed the braided cable as hard as her powered up muscles could. The wires flattened against one another as Lisa's hands compressed them. Her face was distorted in effort as she worked to pour more and more strength into her grip. After a few seconds of steel crushing, she started twisting. Her entire upper body once again flexed in bold relief as she twisted the cable. She could feel the wires snapping as she twisted them and applied more pressure and stress than the thick cable could take. Finally with one more powerful tug, Lisa tore the cable. She dropped one end and took the other end to the mouth of the shaft.

"Stand back!", she yelled down the hole as she started dropping the length of torn cable down the hole. Once it was down to pallet, Lisa started climbing down. She could hear the teens behind her yelling as she worked her way down the cable. She would have slid down, but she was afraid of getting snagged on a jutting piece of steel. She got down quickly enough.

"Can yall climb?", Lisa demanded as soon as her ruined boots touched the pallet.

"Yes, ma'am I can!"

"I can too!"

"I can't", was Jessie's reply. "My leg hurts so bad, I can't even move." She was in tears and near hysterical.

"I'll carry you up", Lisa told her. She looked at the two guys. "You two get moving up the cable. Now!"

They didn't argue. Both teen aged boys started climbing up the thick cable that Lisa had lowered. They barely got off the ground when the pallet shook then dropped a few inches. Pieces of concrete fell down from above. No one got hit, but they all knew that the platform was coming apart. The boys put their hands on the cable to start again, but the platform dropped again. It was just too much weight.

Lisa looked around and saw the square openings that were the entrances to dozens of tunnels that radiated from this central shaft. She looked closely into one of the tunnels and saw that these older shafts were held up by timbers. She wondered if she could use some of these timbers.

She hurried over to the edge of the pallet. There was very little room between the wall of the shaft and the pallet, but Lisa judged that even in her muscle engorged state, she could fit. She turned towards the boys. "Start climbing again, and this time don't let go. Jessie, you hold tight." Lisa got down on her hands and knees before she looked down below the pallet. There was a shaft just below. She jerked her head up when the pallet dropped another couple of inches. Lisa slipped her body down and pushed with her legs and she fell into the tunnel. She sighed with relief and looked around. She didn't have to go far to find a suitable timber.

Lisa wrapped her arms around the two foot thick squared timber and worked her fingers between the wood and stone wall of the tunnel. Once her fingers were behind the wood, she used her upper body strength to pull her body up the fourteen foot tall timber like a profession tree climber. She worked her arms up the timber. Once she was near the top, she stopped and put her legs against the wall of the mine tunnel. She bit her lip and powered up her legs. They were ready for action and the quivering masses of muscle hardened and flexed into razor sharpness. Lisa heard the pops and cracks as the wood began to break from its base like she had hoped. Her legs were nearly straight, but the wood had yet to break fully. Lisa grunted with effort and pushed with her toes as hard as he could. Her calves flexed out into diamond hardness, and she pushed against the wall with tremendous force and the timber broke. Lisa fell to the tunnel floor and the heavy squared timber fell on top of her, but she didn't care. She picked it up and hurried to the end of the tunnel. She stuck the end of the timber out into the shaft. She was prepared to wedge the other end of the timber, but there was no need. The pallet dropped another couple of inches and the bottom of the pallet slammed into the top of the timber. There was a deep boom and the pallet stopped, but Lisa could hear the fibers of the wood being compressed from the weight. It wasn't going to hold for long, and she didn't have time to wedge another one.

She used the timber and climbed back to the top of the pallet. Jessie had dragged herself and her badly broken leg over near the hanging cable. She had planned to try to climb, but now Lisa was back.

She reached down and scooped Jessie up as if she weighed nothing at all. She told the girl to hang on to her back. Lisa looked up the cable and saw that the boys were pretty close to the top. Lisa tugged on her gloves a little and then started up. There were strange and tortured sounds coming from above and below as Lisa climbed with Jessie on her back. Jessie had been scared at first, but the steely feel of this woman's muscles somehow made her feel safer, as if this woman could lift anything.

The two boys climbed up onto the platform about thirty seconds before Lisa pushed Jessie up to them. They took their friend and then helped Lisa up. Things looked a lot different on the platform now. There was dust and debris and pieces of steel were flying around stinging if they hit flesh. Everything was under so much tension that usually harmless things were becoming dangerous.

As everyone looked around, the platform lurched and large pieces of concrete fell down the shaft only adding to the weight of the pallet and making the whole thing worse. Then there was a crunch as the timber broke and the pallet started falling. The entire platform was sliding now.

"We have to get off of here!", Lisa yelled. She motioned for the boys to run to the side while she picked up Jessie and followed.

Gloria couldn't make out any individual sounds from the bedlam at the top of the hill. She could only see smoke and dust. Then she saw everything on the platform and the platform itself start to move towards the shaft. She had to cover her ears because of the noise. The ground shook and rocks slid off the hill as the platform and everything on it was dragged down the shaft as if into a black hole. In the space of a few seconds, it was all over. When Gloria looked back up the hill, all the concrete and all the machines were gone. There was just the bare rocks of a hill and the short steel stumps of the brackets that used to anchor the platform to the hill.

Gloria didn't care about the equipment; she didn't see her daughter. "Lisa!", she called out at the top of her lungs. "LISA! Where are you!", she yelled, straining her voice.

"I'm over here", Lisa called out to her mother.

Gloria spun around so quickly it made her dizzy for a moment. She saw her daughter coming out of a bank of trees about 50 yards away with three teens in tow. The two boys were carrying Jessie now. Lisa's clothes were mess and she was as dirty as Gloria had ever seen her, but the smile on her face told the story.

"You did it, Lisa", Gloria exclaimed as she rushed up to her daughter. She threw her arms around Lisa.

Lisa reached out to hug her mother, but her arms didn't want to move. Everybody looked up when they heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter overhead. Lisa looked up too, but now that the adrenaline was wearing off, her body began to crash. All the strain and effort had taken a toll on her. She saw the rescue people coming on ATVs through the trees. She turned to say something to her mother, but Lisa's eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed. Her mother couldn't hold her up, the best she could do was slow her fall.

Lisa woke up with an oxygen mask on her face and an IV in her arm. She was so sore and so stiff that she could hardly move.

"Back with us?", the paramedic said with a smile. He leaned over her and pulled up Lisa's eyelids. He looked into her pretty brown eyes and seemed satisfied. He put his hand behind her back and helped her get to a sitting position.

Lisa grimaced. Her entire body ached. She looked at herself and saw just how ruined her clothes were, but at least her body had gone back to normal.

"How do you feel?", the medic asked her.

"Sore, but okay I guess."

"That was a great thing you and your family did", the man said as he got out of the ambulance.

Lisa didn't respond. She just looked around. She was in the back of an ambulance parked in the staging area where the search had begun. She looked out the back door and saw that banks of big lights had been set up since the sun had already set. The area was full of people. Groups of people who had been searching were together sharing stories and laughs. She noticed then that Simon was the center of attention. There were people all around him. There were news cameras and others wanting to hear what he had to say. Lisa felt so happy for him. She pushed herself up and let her legs hang off the back of the gurney that she was sitting on. The medic came back after a few minutes and took the needle from her arm and taped some sterile cotton to the small puncture wound. Lisa looked over again and saw her mother and cousin approaching.

"How you feelin', Lisa?", Simon asked. "They told me that you fainted", he said breathlessly. It had been over an hour since he had finished running through the woods to get help, but he was still excited from all the commotion surrounding the rescue.

"I sure did", Lisa answered him. "But I'm ok now."

"Good. You had me worried for a minute. I thought I was going to have to carry you to the ambulance"

Lisa smiled. "And I know you would have. You would have carried me all the way if you had to. You're the hero."

He looked down at the ground. "No, I'm not a hero. I just want to do the right thing."

Lisa laughed. She didn't tell him that was the reason that he was a hero. Instead he turned and hurried over to a newspaper reporter to give an interview. Gloria had let everyone know that Simon had not only found the teens, he had been the one who ran all the way back to the staging area to get help to a remote part of the forest. People could not help, but like his infectious smile and his innocent nature. Besides, Gloria figured that her daughter would want the world to know very little about what she had done.

Lisa slowly and woodenly got off the gurney and approached her mother. Gloria had a look on her face that Lisa knew well. Her mother was not pleased. Gloria took a bag from around her neck and handed it to her daughter. She had packed an extra set of clothes for everyone just in case one of them had fallen into a stream or something. Lisa hadn't fallen into a stream, but her clothes needed to be changed nonetheless. Lisa climbed back into the ambulance and quickly changed. She hoped her mother's countenance would be a little brighter when she exited the ambulance a second time, but it wasn't. Lisa tried to smile, but it fell away under her mother's gaze.

Lisa turned towards Simon. "We'll be in the car when you're finished."

"Okay! I won't take too long!", he called back over his shoulder.

Lisa knew her mother was upset, but she still had to use her shoulder for support over the uneven ground. She almost fell twice. She did make it to the car. She leaned against the hood while her mother opened the doors. Lisa was about to slip inside when she heard a voice call out to her from behind.

"Wait! Wait!", Lisa heard Jessie's voice behind her. Lisa turned slowly and saw the girl hobbling on crutches. Her family was with her. Her mother couldn't take her hands off of her daughter. Her two younger brothers were close by too. Her father was out front and he rushed ahead. He trust out his hand to Gloria first and then to Lisa.

"I'm Louis Chambliss, and my daughter told me that she owes you her life. My wife and I can' t thank you enough."

Lisa looked at her mother and then back to Louis Chambliss. "I'm just glad we found them when we did. Anybody would have done the same thing." Lisa didn't look at her mother. She didn't want to see her reaction.

"You'd like to think so", Louis said. "We are in your debt big time. Anything at all, if I can do it, its done. Anything at all."

Jessie made it to Lisa then, and she threw her arms around her. There were big tears in her eyes and her body shook. She had been smiling a moment earlier, but true joy was a fickle thing. She was so relieved to be alive. She just said, "Thank you".

"You're welcome. Like I said to your father, anybody would have done the same thing."

Jessie sobbed and looked up at Lisa. "No", she stated strongly. "You were the only person who could have saved us. Thank you so much", she said through sobs as she leaned her hand against Lisa's chest.

Lisa's eyes teared up then. Her strength had begun to feel like a curse over the last few days, but once again Lisa saw that what Father Brennin had said all that time ago was still true. The only difference between Lisa's power being a blessing or a curse was her. Right now her strength had never felt like more than a blessing.

Simon joined the group after the two families had been talking for a while. They had been getting to know each other. Gloria had discussed her work as a nurse for only a while before she began bragging on her daughter. Even when bragging on Lisa, she didn't actually say a single word to her.

"Well, my wife and I are from this part of Georgia. I was talking to some of my colleagues at Emory and we thought that it would be great for our kids to enjoy a country Christmas like my wife and I used to when we were kids. Then this happened."

"So what do you teach at Emory?", Gloria asked after a few minutes more.

"I teach organic chemistry."

"Chemistry", Lisa repeated then laughed. "You guys wouldn't happen to have a job opening would you?", Lisa joked.

Louis turned quickly. "We sure do."

"Really? I was just asking because I have this friend who's pretty close to getting her doctorate from University of Chicago, and she's thinking of getting back into teaching."

"That's great." Louis reached into his pocket and pulled out one his cards. He quickly wrote his private phone number on the back of the card and handed it to Lisa. "So she's taught before?"

"Yes, its been some time ago. She taught at Vanderbilt, but she's been doing private research for a while."

"You have her call me. I'll be waiting to hear from her."

"That's great. Her name is Moira Kelly.

The two families talked for a little while longer, but the gathering chill in the air convinced them to get into their vehicles, but not before they exchanged phone numbers

"This isn't good-bye", Jessie's mother, Dianna, called out.

"Of course not", Gloria said.

The Chambliss family had been planning a big New Year's party that had been called off after Jessie had gone missing, but now it was back on in a big way. Of course, Gloria, Lisa, and Simon were invited.

In another ten minutes, Gloria, Lisa, and Simon were on the road heading back to Atlanta. Gloria had to drive because Lisa was too beat to get behind the wheel. Lisa was in the passenger seat. It was always strange for her to look at her own car from any other angle than the driver's seat. It was even more strange for Lisa's mother to have not said a word. They were thirty minutes from Atlanta, and Gloria still hadn't spoken to her daughter. Lisa looked over her shoulder and saw that Simon was sound asleep.

"Mom, are you mad at me?"

"I'm not mad at you, Elizabeth", Gloria replied without turning her head.

Lisa sighed. It was worse than she thought. Even her mother rarely called her by her given name. She only did that when she was very upset.

"Mom, I know you're probably mad because I didn't tell you about my strength. That's what I've been trying to tell you for the last couple of days. I just couldn't find the right way to tell you."

"Couldn't find the right way to tell me?" Gloria's tone cut straight through Lisa. "What did you think? That I would freak out or something. Lisa, you're my only daughter. Its not possible for me to love you any more than I do, and I certainty can't love you any less. You thought somehow that I wouldn't accept it? I thought I had shown you how I feel. I thought that I had showed you that you can trust me, but I guess I haven't. That's why I'm upset."

"Mom, I'm sorry, but I just... It was so hard for me to accept this when I found out about it that I thought you would have as hard a time accepting it as I did."

"You should have trusted me. That's all I'm saying. I mean, its not so bad that my child is a super hero." Gloria finally smiled and glanced over at Lisa.

Lisa felt so relieved. She hated having her mother upset with her. "I don't wear tights or a cape. I'm not a super hero."

"There are three teenagers who would disagree with you. I heard Jessie say as much."

Lisa shrugged her shoulders. She still didn't feel like a heroine. "So you are fine with all of this?"

Gloria chuckled. "So my daughter is as strong as a comic book character. Doesn't phase me. Didn't I always tell you that we're related to John Henry on your grandmother's side."

Lisa smirked. "Mom, John Henry is a tall tale."

Gloria frowned. "No, he was a real man, and you are his great-great grand daughter. And speaking of tall tales, unlike Paul Bunyan, John Henry won his contest."

Lisa laughed and took her mother's arm. "Of course he died for it."

Gloria took her right hand off of the steering wheel and squeezed her daughter's hand. "You didn't die. That's all I care about."

"I love you, Mom."

Gloria wiped a tear. "You've had my heart since you born, Lisa. I love you too."

"I love you both", Simon said from the back seat.

Gloria and Lisa looked at each other and laughed. Simon laughed too. He didn't know what they were laughing at, but he hated to be left out of something that was funny. "Merry Christmas", he told his aunt and cousin.

"Merry Christmas, Simon", Gloria and Lisa said at the same time.  They looked at each other and laughed.  "Simon's the hero for today", Lisa said.

"I'm not a hero today", he protested.  "I just want people to be happy", he said in his light hearted way and closed his eyes and started to fade back to sleep.

"You're my hero everyday", Lisa whispered as she sat back in her seat and looked out at the road ahead. 

This is a chapter in the ongoing story "Coping with Power"!  Check out the earlier chapters here:

Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter  8 -- Chapter 9

More coming!! Be on the lookout!!!