Sue woke up to the sound of whirring machinery and a bright, blinding light in her eyes. Her entire body ached, as if she had finished running a marathon after three sleepless nights.

"Get up," said a man's even timbre.

"G-Gentle-"

"I guess you can't keep a secret."

Sue's mind replayed the events of the past two weeks in a ten-second montage, and she suddenly sat up with blurry vision and screamed, "TODD!"

"Your husband and son are fine," Ben offered.

"Can I see them?" Sue pleaded.

"In due time," Ben cooed, "but first, I need to tell you something."

A light mist sprayed onto Sue's face, directly into her eyes and mouth. She sputtered indignantly, but blinked and her blurred vision immediately went away.

What she had assumed to be a hospital was actually a painfully white space craft's medical bay with multi-jointed mechanical arms and shelves stacked high with fluids of unknown purpose. Sitting on a stool next to her bed was Ben, dressed in office casual with a full set of winter clothes on an armchair behind him.

"I would like to apologize, first and foremost, for doubting you," Ben stated softly. "I did not expect you to withhold my personal information under threat of your family's torture and demise. The fact that you did means quite a lot to me, and I'll repay it by treating your son's cancer."

Sue felt a wide range of emotions that were pushing tears from her eyes as she asked, "My son has cancer?"

"Mostly malignant tumors across his body," Ben informed. "To be honest, the system detected it and filtered it out automatically, but I saw them the first time I met your son and just didn't say anything. He's fine, now."

"Thank god," Sue cried, relief mixing into the tornado of feelings she was enduring. "What about Timmy?"

"You call him 'Timmy'? He's fine, resting with your son, ready to go home."

Sue relaxed into her bed, tears in her eyes as the pressure of the worst night in her miserable life broke her.

"I suppose I should actually give you something," Ben scratched his head. "Idet, get the button; please and thank you."

The glowing ball of light floated through a nearby wall as Sue worked through the complex tangle of wires her emotional state had devolved into. After a few minutes, she had calmed down enough to see a door open and the ball of light float through with a box the size of a post-it note.

The box was dropped into Ben's hands as he said, "This is the 'Fucked' button. The next time things get totally fucked, spill some blood on this and I'll be there to solve the problem."

Sue stared at the trinket and asked, "But I thought you wanted to be left alone?"

"I do, and in order to be left alone as efficiently as possible, I need to nip problems in the bud before they bloom into catastrophes. Because of your situation, a child I'm supervising is now aware of my past as a villain, and I'd like to avoid that in future."

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"Why don't you just kill us all?"

Ben smiled softly and admitted, "I might be able to hide a body, but explaining a disappearance is never fun. I got lucky once thanks to some dude being a colossal piece of shit who would absolutely abandon his one and only daughter without prior notice, but a loving family like yourselves is harder to get away with."

"I'll make sure my family's continued existence is less of a hassle than our death," Sue smiled happily.

"Great, because I need you to leave," Ben stated, checking his watch for the time. "I'm on my lunch break and I have to skedaddle in fifteen."

Ben got the whole Maxswroth family out of his infirmary and into their car, which he had obligingly towed to his house for their convenience. Before they left, he gave them a large order of Indian food he had gotten delivered an hour ago.

"Here's your cover story," he said to the parents. "Food poisoning. Make it believable."

"Thank you so much," Tim said for the hundredth time. "Again, if there's anything we could ever do, just ask."

"Oh, I don't think there ever will be," Ben laughed.

"Wait!" Sue exclaimed, stopping her husband from taking the car out of park. "Tim, we should probably mention what we've been talking about."

"What's that?" Ben asked, annoyed that he was going to be late to the office.

"So," Sue awkwardly choked out, "as you may know, we live in your district, but our son goes to the Peak School district."

"Yes, and?"

"The reasoning for that was because of their Hero team," Tim mentioned, "something we hoped Brandon might be interested in when his power developed. But when we heard that our district was going to have a Hero team, we started talking about getting him transferred. This was before we ever met you! Or knew that you were the coach! So.... "

"Oh, I'm not planning to coach past this season," Ben stated. "It's just a publicity stunt for when I run for mayor. 'Elect Coach Ben' was going to be a tagline."

"Oh, then we'll forget about it," Sue said. "Thanks for the Indian."

Ben returned to his car and drove back to the office, where not a single person had noticed his five minute absence. He got back onto an email chain fighting with the city parks department, when his phone buzzed with a text notification.

It was from Katherine, and it just read, 'Don't be mad.'

Ben quickly looked at his watch and clicked it a few times counter-clockwise, expanding his dimensional vision to cover most of the town. He saw the school, found Katherine in the computer lab, and quickly read the email she was smiling herself silly over.

It was from the state-sponsored Hero committee for the High School Hero teams, informing her that they had accepted her application to participate in the State Hero Tournament.

Ben almost slammed a fist onto his desk, but stopped himself right before impact.

While taking deep, meditative breaths, he texted back, 'Why would I be mad?'

He sent the text before searching online for the State Hero Tournament to get details on what exactly he should expect. The website hosting the tournament information made the whole thing look more like a county fair, with carnival food and games around a large field where Heros would compete for glory. It boasted real, active-duty heroes as referees and a four-digit attendance expectation. The tournament would take an entire weekend in May, which was fast approaching, and would feature all of the competitions that normally occur with High School Hero teams. The tournament would be done bracket-style and the games would be randomly chosen by a large, spinning wheel turned by the referee.

The winner of the tournament would win a trophy and a tour of the Hero Headquarters in Denver, Colorado by a legendary hero.

Ben's meditative breathing turned into hyperventilating as he read the fine print, which put a hundred asterisks next to the headquarters tour. Tour date was non-negotiable, transportation not provided, hero not actually a legend, no refunds, tour can be cancelled at Hero Squad discretion, and a hundred other listed inconveniences.

Ben was furious, and he found himself gripping a plastic water bottle and squeezing it as if it were Katherine's throat.

The girl in question texted back, 'I signed us up for a tournament next month.'

Ben returned fire immediately: 'Details.'

Katherine just sent a link to the website that Ben was already on, then bombarded him with details that were on the website.

'How did you pay the application fee?'

'I have babysitting money. Can we please go? Please?'

Ben sighed deeply, trying to put himself in the shoes of generic city councilman Ben Hersh with a useless power to see what the best course of action is. Ben would be out of his depth, but he also wouldn't have the forethought to do too much else. Would he let himself be bullied by a child who went over his head?

Ben sent a text, 'We'll talk about it.'