Ben sat back and enjoyed the machinations of his genius as the puzzle pieces fell into place with no more pushing on his part.

"Two more laps!" assistant coach Jeffery Chevis shouted as the members of the high school hero team struggled with the single mile of running they were suddenly forced to do.

For a man who was supposedly a member of the Humanity First movement, Coach Jeff (as he wanted to be called) fell into his leadership position quite well. His very first day, he simply watched from the sidelines as Ben ran the practice like normal. The buffalo of a human being didn't say or do anything besides stare aggressively at the kids, especially his son who was hard-focused on his textbook and notes. When they went to the library to discuss power management lessons, he leaned on a nearby bookshelf and listened with an angry intensity. This process repeated itself until his first Friday when he finally called out to have a 'coaches meeting' with Ben.

"You've done fucked up," he said in the southern drawl he occasionally remembered he had.

"What's wrong?" Ben asked innocently, even though he had a very good idea of what Jeff was going to say.

"These kids only practice their sinful powers," he grumbled viciously while clapping a hand on his bicep. "They need to know the power of their bodies!"

"Well, I might be familiar with anatomy, but I don't actually exercise besides an occasional run and some physical therapy stretches. What's your workout routine?"

Jeff smiled like a kid in a candy store and started to ramble on about the physical exercises necessary for youths. Ben was legitimately surprised when Jeff's depth of knowledge on growth and rest periods of the human musculature system almost matched his own.

"Sounds like you did your research," Ben puzzled after a half-hour lecture on muscular-digestive compatibility.

"Ah, well," Jeff awkwardly looked to escape the question, "my major in college was for sports medicine.... Pediatric sports medicine."

"Really? Then, shouldn't you be working at a hospital?"

This was just a little dig Ben wanted to get at Jeff. The city councilman knew very well Jeff worked as the nurse/receptionist for the village's only real doctor. The degree likely allowed him to understand the medical jargon enough to land the position without having a nursing certificate.

"That's not important," Jeff waved the awkwardness away. "Right now, those kids are too focused on a single... muscle group... you know what I'm saying! They need to keep body strength up if they want to do more than just kiddy stuff."

Ben gave the assistant coach a sideways glance while saying, "You seem awfully invested in the future of these meta-humans."

Jeff sneered at Ben, "Says the coach who's actively sabotaging their future."

Ben did his best to act naturally when Jeff hit the hangnail on the head.

"I'll leave any real exercise to you," Ben stepped back. "We've got to get the kid's opinions on it though!"

Ben started to leave, but Jeff yelped, "Hey! Something you oughtta know. My son's got a thing for your intern, Hannah."

Ben smiled, "That begs the question, how are we going to set them up?"

"Make him work for it!" the father laughed before slamming the truck door. "Nothing in life worth having is easy to get!"

"Oh boy," Ben said while turning away and lowering his voice, "don't I know it."

=====================================================================

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

At home for another weekend, Ben saw Hannah gardening in the front yard. She was putting flowers into the ground, digging with a trowel and kneeling on some cardboard to save her knees some pain. When she noticed Ben pulling into his garage, waving like a kind neighbor is supposed to.

Hannah winked at him and shook her ass so they moved independent of the jeans around them.

Ben's friendly neighbor act dropped faster than the fine china in the hands of a newborn baby. He pulled into his garage and closed the door before Hannah got a chance to rush inside.

"Can Hannah come visit?" Idet asked before Ben even got into the house.

"Are you guys besties now?" Ben asked.

"If we are friends, then she is my first, and therefore my best."

"How do you like having a human friend?" Ben curiously probed the higher dimensional being.

"It is lonely. I find that I miss her when she is not around and think about what she might say when encountering unfamiliar situations. She has even given me good reference material that has expanded my horizons substantially."

Ben cast an unbelieving gaze at the symbiote that transcends dimensions, because none of the thousands of references, articles, and institutions of learning that Ben had offered up had elicited such a strong response.

"What exactly has she shown you?"

"Hearts and Soles."

Ben sighed, chuckled to himself, rolled his eyes hard enough to feel a tug at the nerve stem, then groaned in metaphysical and pure physical pain.

"It's a reliable source!" Idet whined like a dopey teenage girl.

"It's a soap opera about a shoe store!"

"It's a shoe empire! They're all rich, but not overly so, and it's so insightful and compelling!"

"It's fake!"

"I know that!" Idet retorted sourly. "But there are so many people that watch it, I can get a glimpse at what they want out of life, and see what they think and want and feel. Analyzing fantasies has a power and insight into human communication that I've never known before."

"Oh, god!" Ben shouted in sudden and drastic frustration. "That's right! The fucking ethics committees! There's no official studies on the dark sides of humanity because those studies are unethical! You don't know what humans hide in their hearts."

Ben reeled from such a simple oversight. He's been trying to get an interdimensional being to understand human beings through corporate backed and government funded research about pre-driven conclusions.

"Quickly!" Ben shouted in fake dramatic fashion, "Get Hannah over here now!"

The floating ball of light formed into a smile then disappeared.

The light came back a minute later while Ben was drinking water, "Hannah's getting ready. She'll be a minute."

Ben wondered what could possibly take her time to get ready when she seemed plenty ready for anything when he was pulling in.

There was a knock at the door and then a moment of silence. Ben cocked an eyebrow as he noticed Hannah just standing on the front porch like a stranger, forcing him to cross the room just to open the door for her.

"May I come in?" she asked politely, curtsying in her Sunday best.

"What's with the tone? Are we strangers now?"

Hannah couldn't quite make eye contact as she said, "It's kind of awkward, but I've been reviewing my behavior recently and realized that I've been acting like an obsessed stalker."

"So?" Idet chirped.

"So, it's wierd!" Hannah griped. "I'm going to stop and just present myself as normally as possible."

"Good," Ben said, "wanna fuck?"

Hannah almost cried, "Yes, please!"

"Too bad," Ben smiled like a true villain. "What do you want for dinner?"

Ben started cooking some tilapia while Idet turned on the TV and pulled up Setflix. He finished when they were halfway through an episode of Hearts and Soles, and delivered their meals. Idet wanted to try some, so she went to the kitchen to get her mouth, then came back and started slurping up the fish. Hannah was watching curiously, then she aggressively stared at Ben.

"What?" Ben broached the topic.

"You don't have, like, a sex doll for Idet, do you?"

Ben choked on his own spit before clearing his throat and answering, "A few things, first of all, if I was going to build a sex doll, it wouldn't need Idet to control it. Also, Idet's entire animal kingdom is so far removed from the realm of sexuality, she's the antitheses of sex. Most importantly:"

Ben stood on the couch and delivered a backhanded clap to punctuate every word.

"DO. NOT. SEXUALIZE. THE. EXTRA. TERRESTRIAL. She is a guest here, not a convenient tool for fun times."

"I would like experience sex at some point," Idet mentioned.

"You're not helping!" Ben shouted. "Consider her a foreign exchange student. DO NOT take advantage of her."

"Then why do you call her 'her' if she doesn't have a sexuality?"

"Because she insists on speaking in a calm, motherly voice."

"It's proven very effective at quickly earning people's trust," the alien confirmed, then her voice shifted to a dark, grumbling, masculine timbre. "It's important to tailor the show to the audience."

"Speaking of which, have you watched Sapping Sad yet?"

Hannah awkwardly turned away from Ben and ate her tilapia.

"We're switching over," Ben said as he grabbed for the remote.

"No!" Idet shouted and the TV remote floated to Hannah. "We're almost to the end of the episode! Just a little longer!"

Ben had never experienced such a reaction from the docile and amicable Idet.

"Okay, we can watch 'til the end of the episode."