"Everybody, listen up!" Ben announced as they took the field for another practical practice. "Since we've got a tournament coming up, we'll have to get a bit serious. So, from today onwards, we're going to shift gears. From now on, you'll be doing team-building exercises to get your teamwork down. You can all do regular exercises at home. Let's start with a simple run. Everyone together, one lap around the field. I'll time it."
The kids started their jog as Ben smiled to himself. His time in the military was tumultuous, but he always had thoughts of what it would be like to be a drill instructor.
Now, he was going to find out.
Garrett finished first, being the fastest with his skinny body and boosted snake-agility. Katherine finished in second, followed by Michael maintaining his invisibility, then Stanley. As usual, Gary lagged far behind everyone else, his body being larger and bulkier than everyone else's. Once he had crossed the finish line, breathing heavily through his mouth and nose, Ben stopped the clock.
"You guys have a lap time of four minutes and fifteen seconds," he said, typing the time into a note on his phone. "I expect you all to run faster next time."
"Coach Ben, I finished in under two minutes," Garrett hissed.
"No," Ben corrected, "you're time is four minutes and fifteen seconds. I told everyone to run a lap around the field, together. As a team. And you aren't finished until you team finishes."
This was something commonly seen in movies where a group is pushed together and judged as a unit. In popular media, it's a story about brotherhood, family, and coming together to achieve a common goal.
But in real life, all the members looked back at the wheezing Gary with a judgmental, pitying glance. Something Gary noticed, sneered, but didn't comment on.
"Do one more lap, next will be push-ups," Ben called, expertly hiding his own smile as he reveled in the effectiveness of his plan.
In total, they did fourteen exercises in which each member horribly failed at least a single exercise. When they did, Ben made sure to put the blame squarely on everyone's shoulders, holding them all accountable for a single failure.
"This is so unfair!" Michael groaned after the fifteenth punishment exercise. "Shouldn't the people who failed have to do the punishment exercise?"
"Not as long as you're a team," Ben stated, turning on his 'wise sage' persona. "In a team sport, if one of you fail, all of you fail. And for a team of heroes? The consequences are much worse. That's why, if one of you can't accomplish something, the rest of you will need to step-up and make up the difference. If you're a day or a dollar short, you'd best have someone who can pick up the tab. I chose the exercises specifically to show that all of you fall in some areas. That's all I wanted to say. Let's break, then go home."
Ben opened the cooler he brought with him that had water and bananas in it. Everyone took some water and fruit, then trudged their tired butts over to the where their families were waiting in the nice, air-conditioned vehicles. Ben stayed behind to clean up the cones and gear he borrowed from the school until all the kids were gone. He looked up as a car screeched its way into the school parking lot, Hannah's 2017 Hyundai Sonata.
"I'm just going to return this stuff," Ben called, passing Hannah and entering the school. When he did, he paused as he noticed some girls bullying another in the bathroom. It was outside of his 'official' sphere of sight, so he left it alone, although the harassment was a bit brutal for high schoolers.
He returned the equipment as he watched a poor girl get her glasses broken and toilet water tossed into her face. He went out to the car and got in, looking over at Hannah expectantly.
"Do me a real quick favor," he started.
They drove around to the front, stopped, pulled back as if they forgot something, parked in front of a nearby entrance, then Hannah ran in to find the nearest toilet.
Which, coincidentally, was occupied.
Hannah burst in on the girls, catching them in the act of bullying. The previously abused girl quickly started shouting, breaking up the bullies and letting the bullied girl go free. The victim ran out the entrance that Ben was patiently parked at, and the village councilman got a good look at her.
'That will allow me to identify her if we need to press charges,' he thought as Hannah got into a screaming match with the teenagers.
Suddenly, one of the girl reached out and grabbed for Hannah, catching her jacket and pulling her in. Ben sat up, looking around, aware that he was within view of one of the school security cameras as Hannah was pulled into a brawl with the teenagers. A three-on-one was disadvantageous for Hannah, but she was fighting dirty. She managed to grab one of the brat's nose rings and pull, ripping it out and making the fight two-on-one. Hannah got her claws out then, managing to grab one of the girl's hair and pulled her down while the other one tried to scratch her face.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The cat fight turned nasty as the last girl ran, the blood from her torn piercing covering her face. She ran out the nearest exit, allowing Ben to see her on the way out.
'That looks like an excuse to intervene,' Ben thought, acting confused as he got out of the car and entered the school. When he got to the blood trail, he pulled out his phone and started recording.
"Hello, this is Village Councilman Benjamin Hersh," he said while recording the floor. "I just saw a student run out of the front entrance of the school with blood all over her face. I'm going inside to see what's-"
Right then, he reached the bathroom where the two girls had managed to get on top of Hannah and were punching her randomly.
Ben briefly filmed the girl's restroom sign as one of the girls was bucked off, elliciting a scream.
With a scream on video, Ben cautiously opened the door and filmed the two girls clearly aggressing on Hannah, on top of her and punching like amateurs.
"HEY!" Ben shouted, barging in and confronting the girls. "Get off of her!"
Ben made sure to catch enough of the ensuing scuffle on camera to give a sense that he was bad at physical altercations, then he dropped his phone purposefully and fell. He managed to grab his phone as Hannah got a few good hits in on the girls, then he recorded them running away while cursing.
"Hannah!" Ben huffed for the camera, making sure to get a good shot of Hannah's scuffed face, "What was that about? Hold on."
Ben stopped recording as Hannah looked at him in confusion, only to see him smiling in his characteristically sinister way.
"Thanks for that," Ben said, patting Hannah on the back. "I'll buy us a big dinner sometime."
"You got that on video?" Hannah asked, still gritting her teeth in anger. "Are you going to send that to the principal?"
"Yes," Ben stated, "but first, it'd be best to start a rumor.... Let's get out of the girls bathroom, first."
On the way out, Ben opened the group chat he used to communicate with the High School Heroes and sent them the video of the fight. He asked for identification of the girls, grinning as he did so. The kids would spread the video, the whole school would see it, and the bullies would receive their proper justice. On a more official note, he also sent the video to the school's principal, with a message that he was trying to get the girls identified.
"That should just about do it," Ben said as he slipped back into the Sonata. "Now, where would you like to go? My treat."
=================================================================================
After a delicious Brazilian barbecue, Ben received a text from Katherine that the girls were part of an infamous trio that had a host of victims. Their parents were the town's only lawyers, and the one who ran away was the mayor's little girl. In this town, that made them elites, and they flaunted it over others.
Ben knew the Krofskies, Attorneys at Law, as they had helped him with legal matters in becoming village councilman. They weren't exactly 'big-city lawyers' who were hot on the trail of their next case, they were more about handling government documents and filing paperwork.
The classic case of parents spoiling their children, or in the mayor's case just bad parenting. The teachers also avoided getting involved because the brats were just around for forty minutes at a time. They weren't worth it.
When they got back to the sub-division, Ben got a message from the principal. It was a screenshot of a social media post of the video he had passed to the kids.
"Oh, good," he said as he crossed the threshold into his fortress, "the kids did exactly what I wanted. Let's see where this goes."
The topic stuck in his mind until the next morning against his will. As much as he didn't want to admit it, this was the most interesting thing that had happened in the town since he'd arrived. He was going to pay close attention, soak up all the gossip like a sponge.
In the interest of this, he clicked his watch a few times to see what he could see around the village. The bully girls were in a screaming match with their parents as their parents got tons of messages from other parents about how their kids were behaving in school. He watched while getting ready for work, then on the drive over as the police station got calls about students being viciously preyed upon by harpies. But the police seemed more concerned about an actually serious call that came in, something about a missing child.
Ben looked around the village for anyone out of the ordinary, then he noticed a girl sitting on the edge of the Hiveston Bridge, a railroad crossing bridge that had a foot path going across it as well. It sat above a rocky gorge with a small creek running through, at just about the right height to seriously hurt, or even kill if you fell at the wrong angle. The girl was the one Ben saw being bullied, the one the cops were looking for, and her feet were dangling freely over the gorge as she tried to convince herself to jump.
"UGH!" Ben thrashed in his truck. "This is supposed to be feel-good, small-town triumph! Don't taint it with your tragedy, bitch! Your bullies are going to get what's coming to them, why are you going to jump now!?"
Ben thought about what he could do, but there was no logical thing that he could do. There was no reason that the simple city councilman would have to be crossing a bridge at that time, nor was there any reason to warn someone of her predicament when nobody else could possibly know where she was going to go.
'She'll probably just get down by herself," Ben said, right as the girl almost threw herself off the side. Ben inhaled sharply at the stunt, then sighed when she caught herself at the last minute. Then he groaned as he realized he would have to do something.
"Hang in there, little girl," Ben grumbled with a record level of annoyance in his voice. "I'm going to contrive a way to save you. It's just going to take near-superhuman levels of coincidence."
With a grip that threatened to crush his steering wheel, Ben thundered towards his police station-adjacent office, already forming an excuse to listen in at just the right moment.