Ben activated his watch, stretching his vision across the fairgrounds. He saw Michael sprinting towards the giant digging machine, ignoring the obvious danger he was getting into. The councilman ran after him, matching speed so that he could catch up before the teen could do anything stupid.

Thanks to the huge impression of the villains, everyone was just about gone. The only ones left were the cowards who were hiding and the hero, who was standing on top of the bleachers watching the mole men bickering.

The hillbilly bearded moles were performing a slapstick comedy routine about improper driving and directions, pushing each other off the earth mover and onto the ground where they finally realized the fleeing bystanders had gotten away. They started screaming at each other for incompetence as an invisible kid paused to listen in without interfering. He could hear the very casual family argument they were having, and made the rookie mistake of poking his invisible head out to watch, assuming the moles couldn't see him.

Well, almost immediately, the largest of the three moles whipped his disgusting, buck-toothed, snot-nosed head around and stared right at Michael.

"What's it, Papa?" asked the smallest mole.

"Looks like one of thee grubs hanged back!" said the large one. "Get'em, Mama!"

The middle-sized mole person gave a hearty cackle, then plowed their thick claws into the soft topsoil and dug a hole into the ground. She kicked up enough dirt to raise a cloud, then disappeared under the grass.

Ben watched as this mole swam through loose dirt towards Michael, and he realized he was still too far to catch him, even 'by accident'. The mother mole was going to reach him, and there wasn't anything Ben could reasonably do about it.

"I hope they don't kill you, kid," Ben growled, slowing his run to be more stealthy.

Sure enough, the ground beneath Michael burst open like the blowhole spray of a humpback whale, showering Michael in dirt and dust. A thick claw grabbed Michael's leg, digging painfully into his flesh and making the kid scream. Ben hurried over to the sound of screaming as the teen's lanky body was effortlessly turned upside down and lifted into the air by hideous mole mom.

"This one's fresh!" cackled the mother with malicious glee.

Ben hid behind a porta potty under the slightly bent bleachers as he watched Michael get dragged kicking and screaming back to the family. He looked up into the announcer booth where the professional hero was watching with some concern that a person had just been captured. She seemed to weigh the pros and cons of saving the child or chocking it up to unfortunate death.

Ben chastised the hero for not acting even as he also conspicuously waited for a good moment to step in. He rationalized this by pointing out that one of the cameras was still rolling, recording the whole situation. Ben had to be extra careful, because someone was going to find that footage and it was going to be examined in every detail.

Michael struggled, cussing the mole mom out even as his twisting dug the claw further into his calf muscle.

"Looks like this one could learn some MANNERS!" she shouted, then swung Michael like a sledgehammer straight into the side of the machine.

"Gyathsdjey," Michael coughed/wheezed/sneezed/exhaled as the air was waylaid from his body. The jagged edges of the infernal digging contraption cut and dented his body, spilling blood as pain wracked his brain and screwed his nerves.

The hero finally found the courage to intervene once she saw a student get slammed against jagged rusty metal.

"STOP!" she shouted, taking a heroic stance despite her unheroic behavior. "Villains, let that boy go and face me!"

Standing at the top of the bleachers next to the announcement box was a tall, blonde woman dressed in blue and gold armor plates pressed firmly into her skin. Her golden hair was flowing in the strong breeze from her high position, billowing out behind her like a cape as she stared her green eyes down at the mole people holding the battered Michael. The armor was so polished, it created a shine that was hard to look at, even if your eyes weren't adjusted to underground living.

"Is that-?!" the mole kid gasped.

"It can't be!" his pa shouted.

"It is!" the heroine cheered, and she jumped down from the bleachers with impossibly strong legs. She cleared a distance further than any Olympic long-jumper, then landed on a metal bench the teams used on the sidelines, crushing the metal underneath her as she went.

"Olympia, you bitch!" Ma mole shouted. "Quit seducin' ma husband!"

"Mama, she ain't seducin' me," Pa mole griped, although he glanced at the armored heroine with some hope in his pale eyes.

"I'm," Olympia sputtered a bit, "I'm not seducing anyone. I... don't even know who you are. I'm not like, a slut, or anything. I would never just do that."

"See, mama?" Papa grinned, tracing his wife's irregular jawline with his dagger-like claws and staring deeply into each other's dead eyes. "You're the only one for me, Honey Grub!"

"Oh, Sweetie Beanie!"

The two moles embraced each other in a display of passion and love that had Ben's empty stomach churn like an ice cream maker. And he could see their long tongues swish around their weird teeth, which only added to the vileness.

Olympia quickly stifled her look of disgust as she considered Michael was still being held by the mom for the entire sloppy make-out session.

"So, umh," the heroine coughed loudly, "can I ask you to let that boy go so we can talk about why you put such a large hole in the middle of such a nice field?"

"Ain't it obvious?" the kid shouted playfully. "We here to kill you an'all the surface dwellers! We's gonna take over the world!"

"Good boy," Papa proudly beamed. "Throw'im the kid. Let the youngin start the show!"

Mama tossed Michael over towards the child moleperson, and Ben chastised himself internally for being unprepared. With the way the bleachers were set up, there was an opening dead center. If he had snuck through there, he would be just behind the kid, who was standing closest to the stands, and could have intervened to pull Ben out of there. A golden opportunity wasted just because he was being cautious.

Well, Ben wasn't about to let that slip a second time, so he crept closer very slowly to be ready for the next presented opportunity.

The kid couldn't catch Michael with his jagged claws, and only succeeded in fumbling the teen onto the ground. The victim groaned and squealed as his body's new aches and pains-- ached and pained anew. The blood loss was minimal, but it was just on the edge of where it would start to take a toll on the untrained mind. Plus, anyone whose hasn't experience heavy bleeding tends to freak out over the small stuff. Luckily, Michael had two concussions thanks to being thrashed against hard metal and banging his head on the ground, so he was too delirious to freak out.

"You remember where the liver is, dontcha?" Papa said, and Ben's heart froze.

"I sure do," the child mole said, and he pointed his finger on the skin just above Michael's liver.

"Thas right! Go at it!"

"WAIT!" Ben shouted, unable to think of a better plan with the camera rolling and Olympia watching.

"WHAT?" shouted Mama mole.

"Wait, just... wait," Ben said, then scrambled to make himself look as distraught as possible. He grabbed some dirt and rubbed it on his face and shirt, getting some in his eye and agitating it enough to get some tears going. He also gripped his button-up shirt in a few places and squeezed to put some wrinkles in the fabric, making it look like he fell and it folded over.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Then he found it, just a little bit below the dirt, forgotten by time until just now. He quickly dug it out, adding to his disheveled look.

Ben slowly emerged from the middle of the bleachers with his hands in the air, ready to act on a moments notice. The mole people just watched him come out while Olympia face-palmed, something Ben knew to be entirely reasonable. What he had just done from a hostage situation standpoint was give them another hostage for more leverage. Now that he was out, there was no way he could go back, and the mole people weren't exactly the welcoming type.

But Ben was playing this a bit more expertly than they knew. He may be improvising, but it wasn't brainless.

"T-t-t-TRADE!" he shouted like the terrified civilian he was supposed to be.

"Whut?" Mama called out.

"I p-prop-pose a trade!" Ben shouted, glancing nervously around as if looking for an authority figure to rely on. "Me for the b-boy!"

"Heh," scoffed the father, "junior, bring that dumb surface dweller down here and chop'im up, too."

Ben smiled on the inside as he dropped his hands and slowly backed away. The kid approached the bleachers, then used his powerful claws to cut through the metal link fence underneath and then stab into just under where Ben was standing.

Ben jumped a little, dislodging his foot and backing down under the bleachers.

Where the camera couldn't see.

The little brat was already next to the stairs and tried to stab Ben's feet as he was coming down, but the former supervillain just hopped over the deadly claws and continued down under the stadium seats.

"Thanks mister!" the young mole cheered. "Now I get to eat a whole two people! I usually only get an arm or a leg."

"Sorry, kid," Ben said, reaching behind his back and grabbing the metal rebar he'd snuck into his pants waistband, "but I can't let you do that."

The rebar must have been from when the stadium was just being put in and the cement was being poured, because it was a leftover piece a foot in size with a cut end that made a simple point.

"Ah, shucks," the mole chuckled, "steels my favorite snack! The surface kind tastes funny, but it's awright."

The mole kid lunged at Ben with its tiny legs, planning to dig his claws into the man's legs to stop mobility, but Ben swung the rebar like a sword and cracked the kid in the skull.

"OW!" the kid shouted, but rubbed his head sourly. "That hurt!"

"It's about to hurt a lot more," Ben said, and he spun the rebar between his fingers before finding a good grip to keep going.

The kid ground his huge teeth and lunged again, but Ben was easily able to sidestep and swing for the fences, feeling a hard crack and vibration go up his arm as he got another solid hit on the youngest mole's skull. The mole people were very strong and very durable, almost disgustingly so with the gripping power of their forearms and resiliency of their soft pelts meant for sub-earth pressures. But they clearly had a glaring weakness in their bone structures, specifically their stunted hind legs and the broad skulls that guaranteed any hit would land perfectly on top. The skull itself was a bit too strong to break with simple rebar, but the brain inside was still getting a serious shake on every hit.

Before the child could recover for another lunge, Ben went on the offensive and gave chase, staying just out of claw range while bashing the kid in the head. Just from the mole kid's reactions, he could tell the damage was starting to add up. His eyes that were already struggling to see in the bright surface light was starting to wander away from center, like he couldn't focus them properly. Every swipe was now off-tempo, missing by even wider margins as Ben worked the metal rod into a brain damage delivery system.

Two more whacks and the mole kid realized he was losing, so he turned to run, and that's when Ben unleashed hell.

He grabbed the rebar so he was holding it in downwards stab, then jammed it right into the foot of the fleeing mole kid.

The animal-hybrid let out a mournful scream as jagged, rusty metal pierced his tender feet. It was especially nasty since Ben had managed to get it through in a way that it scraped bone.

"MY BABY!" screamed Mama mole, and she quickly went underground.

Ben didn't have a lot of time. The kid mole was an inexperienced welp, but the mom was a full-grown beast who could probably take Ben down even with some of his less improvised weaponry. He grabbed the kid by the leg he'd stabbed and dragged him over to the bleachers, kicking and screaming in much the same way Michael did. The mole mother was searching underground for any sign of action, but Ben was able to get onto the bleacher steps before she could find them.

"JUNIOR!" Papa mole shouted, enraged as his son cried for help.

"DON'T MOVE!" Ben shouted in his best 'I'm just a civilian and I don't want to hurt people, but don't push me' voice. "DON'T MOVE! Don't... fucking move."

"What are you doing!?" Olympia shouted from across the field, now worried for the cannibal mole child more than the bleeding, dying latino teen.

"I just," Ben had to swallow as all the yelling made some bile collect in his throat, "want the boy. A trade. Your kid for the invisible kid."

Ben made furious eyes at Olympia to go and collect the teen before his wounds got any worse, and the heroine got the message.

"I'M NOT GIVING YOU SHIT!" cussed Papa mole, pounding the dirt with his claws. "IN FACT, I'M HUNGRY!"

Papa mole opened his mouth and waddled towards Michael, who's mental state was barely coherent enough to struggle crawl away.

Ben really didn't want to do this to a kid, but he grabbed the rebar stake in the young mole's foot and ripped it out as painfully as possible. The sound the hybrid boy made was a hoarse wail of pain as his nerves fired all across his body with a sensation he'd never experienced.

"STOP IT RIGHT NOW!" Ben screamed in an octave reserved for whistles, then he raised the pointy end of the metal just over the mole-kid's face.

With a motion that hurt his soul to perform, Ben jammed the business end of a metal stake into a child's eye, stopping just before he reached anything else.

The mole kid screamed in the most abominable and malicious pain he'd ever felt, and the sound brought the mama out of the ground under the bleachers. Ben had to wrestle the kid down so he would stop squirming, but also get him into a position that Papa and Mama could now see the pointed stake over the other eye.

The mother was screaming and cursing and spitting all sorts of vileness at Ben, who genuinely felt guilty for harming a child, but Ben was yelling back while threatening to stab the kid's other eye.

"SHUT UP!" Ben shouted, accidentally jabbing a the other eye a bit, "EVERYONE JUST SHUT UP! THIS NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU JUST STAYED IN YOUR HOLE! THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPENED IF YOU JUST TRADED ME FOR THE KID!"

Ben had to take several deep breaths to recover what he was shouting so much.

"Here's what's going to happen," he said with absolute authority. "Olympia is going to grab Michael and take him to a safe place. When she comes back, I'm going to release this kid once I find out where she put him. Then I'm going to leave, and you all can fight like God intended. Does that sound like a plan?"

"You'd better not hurt my baby, or else-!"

"SUGAR TITS!" Papa yelled, accidently using bedroom lingo. "Don't let him hurt Junior anymore! Leh's just do what he says until we get Junior back."

If looks could kill, Ben would be dead a hundred times over, but the mother remained still on the low side of the bleachers. Ben looked at Olympia to get her to act, but she didn't seem too keen to engage in this hostage exchange. She begrudgingly walked around the huge hole in the field and towards Michael, where she gently picked him up and carried him a good distance away. Ben was telepathically screaming at her to hide the boy somewhere so the mole people couldn't track them after they left, but he didn't have that power and Olympia wasn't that foresighted.

Once Michael had been gently placed on the front table of a carny game about throwing baseballs at bottles, she returned to the scene to look at Ben expectantly.

"What the hell kinda hero takes a kid hostage?" Mama growled angrily, getting ready for a fight.

"That's the problem," Ben growled back, "I'm not a hero."

Ben lifted the mole kid by his bleeding back leg and swung him like a hammer as far as he could. It was a good throw, just barely clearing Mama's upper reach as her stubby legs failed to jump high enough to catch, and landed too awkwardly to support her own weight. She tumbled down a few rows as Ben clambered down at the fastest his feet could find a foothold, then he leaped over the side once there was enough distance to land without breaking anything.

The city councilman ran as fast as he less than fleet feet could carry him over to the carny game where Ben had been set. Thanks to his throwing of the mole kid, the mom and dad were too preoccupied with first aid and Olympia to chase him, but that could change, so he intended to get out of there as quickly as possible.

That is, until he saw it.

"no."

At the very edge of his vision.

"No."

A van.

"NO."

Racing towards the fairgrounds.

"NO NO NO!"

With four teens inside.

NO NO NO NO NO!"

But it was too late. Ben was too far for them to hear from inside of the van. He pulled his phone out and quickly dialed Katherine's number, but he could already tell she wasn't going to pick up. Her adrenaline was pumping at near-toxic levels, and all the boys in the car were yelling at her how bad of an idea it was.

She wouldn't hear her phone over all that.

Papa mole was fighting with Olympia, and just as Ben predicted, it was going badly. Olympia's primary superpower was a healing aura, but she was only slightly stronger than most humans. The arms of the mole people would easily overpower her. She had already taken a huge cut to the gut from Papa, and Mama had finished her checks on Junior and was itchin' to tear limb from limb. It was looking bad for Olympia, until a van horn interrupted their fight as a school-issued beater with a rubber donut on the rear tire came blazing around the corner.

When Katherine saw Papa mole, she knew what to do, and pressed her foot on the gas pedal, completely oblivious to the scene behind Papa mole. It seemed the fatherly hybrid was as stupified as Ben, because he just stared at the oncoming van until it was too late. He french-kissed the bug-ridden grill of the van, which ellicited a cheer from Katherine, until she noticed the enormous, gaping hole Papa and Olympia had been fighting beside.

Katherine screamed as she slammed on the brakes, but the sudden braking lost traction on the slightly damp playing field.

Ben watched horrified as the rest of his hero team drove straight off the edge, and into the unknown darkness of the hole.