Ben was absolutely exhausted as he basted in the sun in the van driver's seat in unplanned traffic.

The drive was an absolute disaster.

He ripped ass twenty minutes into the drive, but one of the parents offered to treat everyone to a breakfast, so they went to a First Watch with the windows cracked and the smell was gone. When they came out, the tire was flat, but all the parents were there to replace it in five minutes and make it an educational lesson on emergency car maintenance. They were back on the highway with a donut that steered the car slightly to the left, but that didn't bother anyone except the driver Ben. Then Katherine ripped a fart so profound, it could be heard over the pounding baseline of "Turn Down For What". The resulting smell was worse than what Ben was prepared for, causing his eyes to water as everyone screamed for release from the stank. They drove the rest of the way with the windows down, but the odor didn't want to escape.

Katherine was sitting in the back of the van, just outside of Ben's 'five foot' range, but he could see that tiny particulates had dug into her pants and the seat she was sitting on. This stench was going to linger. What disturbed him even more was the heart racing reaction of the boys pretending not to notice the constant whiff of flatulence, and how they blushed.

For the half hour left in the van, Ben was ranting internally about what online culture has done to today's youth.

The trouble didn't end when they arrived at the hotel. They were supposed to arrive at the Hilton around 10:00 and take a break before the first game at 12:00, but they arrived just a little late at 10:10. Because of the state fair, there was a line out the door, so there was a team meeting with everyone that the parents would sign in and the kids would go with Ben to the fair and prepare for the first game. Ben hated that he wouldn't be able to collapse onto a bed before he would have to suffer the rest of the day.

He could already feel his mental state eroding away.

The traffic into the fair was disastrous, the hosts clearly underestimated the amount of parking they needed for the function, because Ben was stuck at the first hundred yards for a full hour as some of the carny rides were moved to make more room for parking. When it was coming time that they needed to show up at the registration desk, Ben told Katherine to go find the desk, sign them in, and text him the results.

The kids left and Ben was allowed some alone time, so he took a look around. He lowered the watch to the point that no one saw, then clicked it a few points counterclockwise. His vision expanded massively, covering the entire fairgrounds and into the corn fields around them. The sudden lurch in information gave him a quick headache, but he scanned all the attendees to see if anyone was planning any funny business.

There were a quite a few drugs stuffed into pockets, open carried guns as well as hidden ones, but no particle disintegrators or plans for mass destruction. There were quite a few a people with Humanity First triangles, but most of them were unarmed and there were no stashed weapons anywhere.

As Ben scanned the area, he looked into the announcer's booth where a ton of papers were scattered about. He glanced at them with the intention to continue elsewhere, but something caught his eye, a surprise for the audience that would be revealed at the end of the games.

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Ben smiled-- but kept it to himself as he suffered the indignity of letting some high school dropout in a yellow construction vest tell him where to park.

It was still ten minutes to the official start of the game when Ben stepped out of the car and locked it, only for the clouds above to billow unexpectedly as the sound of a rapidly beating drum reverberated in the air. Ben physically looked up and watched as a helicopter bearing the red cross of the Super Squad descended from above. When it came inside of his expanded vision, the two-faced councilman snarled as he recognized the aircraft's occupants.

Ben had to tap himself on the head to recover from the stress which built up since that morning. A variable had just appeared that he was not expecting, a big hitter with the kind of power that he would have to actively avoid in order to save his life as a small-town village councilman.

Quieting the sense of dread that was rapidly pulling his stomach apart, Ben set a hand on his watch, then stopped.

Thanks to the efficiency of his power, it was very hard to detect if he kept within a small house's distance. Even other supernatural senses that could reveal powers had a hard time pinning down any supernatural power in his body thanks to how 'thin' his power was. But pressed inside of a security van was a larger power detector stored for any of a number of reasons. If that thing was turned on, it would be able to identify his power level was not at the level he said it was, which wasn't inherently a problem so long as nobody checked the records and tied that particular reading to him. He could keep his eye over the entire area to make sure nobody was up to anything nefarious, so long as the machine didn't catch him.

But that would still put him at extra risk, an unnecessary risk. Thanks to the big shot descending from the clouds, this place just became a high-risk/high-reward target. No small-time villain was going to try anything, but someone with some actual chops might take a shot. And if that power detector was booted up while Ben wasn't paying attention, and someone was nitpicky enough to course through the data, his life could become a lot more troublesome.

As Ben considered the ramifications, something tugged at the edge of his sight.

Something... underground. The mixed layer between dirt and bedrock was... moving, ever so slightly. Vibrating almost.

Ben backpedaled to the van as if he forgot something, got in the driver's seat, then reclined the seat until strangers couldn't glance inside to see him. He clicked his watch one more point counterclockwise and felt a rush as everything suddenly started to overwhelm him. A mile in all directions came into view, down to the insects preying on the corn and the purity of every cob. The clouds overhead showed their individual wisps of potential rain as the warm air kept them supported. And a thousand yards underground, a large contraption with a thousand drills and rotary bits was chewing through the earth directly underneath the stadium stands.

"Huh," Ben stated, "didn't expect that."

The mining equipment was being driven by three hillbilly yokels who had their hands full making the inexpertly contrived contraption function. Several valves and lines had to be manually controlled, despite automatic valves already incorporated into the machine, which could only be a lack of parts or brains. The deep south folks had mole-parts, making them almost blind and sensitive to earth movements, and the enormous clamor the machine unleashed was actively deafening their sensitive ears.

It was the most ineptly handled villain attack Ben had ever seen. He almost wanted to resurrect Con Crete just to have someone with which to laugh at these guys.

Ben saw this planned attack as nothing but a positive. The fair would be cancelled, including his team's tournament, and Kate couldn't run any state tournaments past him. He could be hailed as the hero coach who got his team to safety during a surprise villain pop-up. A new campaign slogan would be: "Never falls to a villain!"

With a special tune in his heart, Ben clicked his watch one point clockwise and continued back to the stands where his team had signed up and were waiting for their coach.