Inside of Ben's garage was a full football stadium sized room filled floor to ceiling with glass displays containing monsters, metaphysical artifacts, and superhero memorabilia. Hannah was in awe at the sheer size of everything. There was a monster who was 90% gaping maw of jagged teeth and as large as a house, but it only rose half-way to the ceiling.

"Like it?" Ben asked the star struck intern.

"What is all this?" she asked, then looked at the door and asked a more pertinent question, "How did you fit all this in your garage?"

"It's actually some space I have on offer from an intergalactic storage company," Ben explained with some pride. "I discovered a meta-material that separates space and patented it out to a business man from... a world you can't pronounce. If you stick two of the meta-materials together, you can push one through the other and make a bubble of space that doesn't appear on the other side, like an infinitely inflatable balloon. Since I suck at business, I gave them the rights to the formula in exchange for my own personal storage container. They manage the space, I get storage."

During the explanation, Hannah's train of thought derailed, somersaulted, recovered on a different track, only to collide with another train of thought heading in the opposite direction.

"C'mon," Ben stepped onto the industrial scaffolding heading left into a cube with a door, "I'll give you the grand tour."

Hannah followed closely behind, not wanting to slip and fall down into the ocean of random crap.

The scaffolding braced against the wall and bowed slightly when Hannah stepped on it, but she kept pace with Ben until they reached the door into the cube section. He opened the door and waved her in, only to be confronted by an all-consuming darkness.

"Lights on," Ben said, and the darkness was pushed away to reveal a museum of heroes and villains.

In the center was a large statue of a man wearing a tuxedo battling a very familiar giant.

"What is all this?" Hannah asked again, and Ben smiled.

"This is my past," he stated, "everything that I had to do once, and never again."

Hannah looked to the center where Ymir was facing off against a villain in an epic battle. The same Ymir who disappeared mysteriously five years ago an never resurfaced. Around the same time that Ben showed up...

Hannah turned around wildly, staring at Ben with the most awestruck expression as butterflies twirled in her stomach like figure skaters.

"You're Ymir!" she shrieked.

The look of disgust Ben's face contorted into was enough to drive even the most desperate hope she had into a corner to die.

"Then, who?" she asked.

Ben pointed to the statue again, where the bronze fight scene showed a picture of the former greatest hero and a guy in formal attire.

"That guy?" Hannah asked. "You fought against Ymir?"

"I mean, not with, like, my fists," Ben stumbled over the words, "even I wasn't that suicidal."

"Wait," Hannah put her hands up and stepped back, "you mean that you're...?"

"A supervillain?" Ben smirked. "How clever of you to discover my secret identity. You must be a genius."

Hannah started backing up to the door, but Ben just rolled his eyes.

"You've been working under me for the past year and a half, and I even saved you from thugs; does that not warrant the smallest amount of trust?"

"You could be manipulating me in some way," Hannah said as the door shut before she could escape.

"I suppose I could," Ben conceded, "or I could be trying to help you."

"Help me?" Hannah laughed nervously, "Help me how? By removing my memories of last night?"

"No," Ben said softly, "by giving you some perspective."

Ben motioned for his intern to follow as he crossed the museum to a small side-door with the words 'Early Life' imprinted in glowing green. He walked through the door and Ben's voice from above began to speak as Hannah entered a hallway of strange, ghostly images in regal frames.

"Our story begins where most do, with a man an woman hooking up at a college frat party and making one too many drunken decisions. Not even dating, Samuel Marcel and Jennifer Vance conceived a child and decided to start dating before deciding whether to keep it. Falling in love, the two married the day after their son, James William Marcel was born. Both of them struggled through the hardships of parenthood while also struggling with their assistant professor tracks to become true university professors at their alma mater. It just so happened to be Samuel who received his tenured position first after releasing a ground-breaking study on the identification of meta-humans through spectrum analysis. Becoming the foremost researcher in his field of meta-human studies, this is also when he unwittingly received the ire of one Dr. Steven Slavens."

"I'm sorry, but what's the point of this?" Hannah asked, and the voice-over paused. "What do these people have to do with anything?"

"Hannah," Ben said while pinching his nose in frustration, "this is my story. I'm James Marcel. Sam and Jen are my parents. The relevance becomes greater later, just listen to it for now."

The voice over continued, "Dr. Slavens had been studying meta-human physiology for years, being payed enormous sums by the United States Government on behind-the-scenes research. Being outpaced by someone twenty years his junior looked bad in the eyes of his superiors, but Slavens managed to convince them that Samuel had a secret. When Samuel discovered the method of judging power limits and capabilities of meta-humans, but refused to share his research, Slaven had all the ammunition he needed to justify stealing the research. A team that goes unnamed and unrecognized by the US government stormed into Samuel Marcel's research lab to steal the documents, only for Samuel, who was working a late shift, to be noticed and tragically killed."

As the story was being told, the framed images on the walls moved like they were actually alive. Hannah could see a family portrait with a kid running around, a college campus, a group of armed men sneaking through a lab, and the grisly murder of Samuel at his desk.

"With his hands on the research, Slavens discovered what Samuel had been hiding. He had been testing his theories on his own son, James, who had tested above and beyond what his previous assumed records of meta-human potential showed. Convinced that the child was the key to everything, Slavens had the government kidnap James, and for his mother to be silenced to tie up loose ends. Under the care of the mad doctor, James was the first child in a program that unlocked the secret to super-power activation. There is a moment in every child's life in which they connect with their super-power, and by timing and harnessing this moment, there was potential to activate the super powers of others. But the key was stress, an atrocious amount of it."

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The hallway they were walking down took a left turn dyed in red as visions of pain and vile torture dominated the walls. Bloody scenes played out in front of Hannah, whose stomach was already weak from the trauma of her own torture. As the hallway went on, the scenes became more horrific and tragic, from live vivisection to a scene where a group full of children were rinsed with toxic chemicals. She couldn't even hear the words of the voice-over as she tried to block out the horrors she was seeing.

The straw that broke the camel's back and buckled Hannah's knees was a scene where a child's limbs were amputated in sections and reattached.

The poor girl broke down in tears as she fell, putting her hands over her ears and squeezing with all her might to block out the words. She felt a hand on her shoulder and saw Ben leaning over her looking worried and upset himself. He said something to the ceiling, then tried speaking to Hannah through her hands. The crying girl slowly released her grip to hear that the voice-over had stopped and Ben was just asking if she was alright.

"This can't be real," Hannah cried, to Ben as he got a feeling for her condition. "There's no way this could have happened! It's not real!"

Ben sadly pursed his lips and looked down his hands. Ever so gradually, not trying to make his intern faint again, he rolled his sleeves back to reveal a constant mass of scar tissue. No skin, no hair, just scars from every conceivable injury. When she saw thin sections of perfectly cut circles that went the whole way around his arm, in the same places as the amputated child, her stomach turned over and her pancakes came back up.

Vomit pushed it's way through Hannah's mouth and out onto the carpeted hallway floor. Ben casually dodged the puke, stepping out of the way before it got on him, but maintaining a comforting hand on his intern's back.

"Let's skip to the end, shall we?" he offered apologetically.

Hannah weakly got to her knees as the displays around her went black and regular white lighting replaced the red. Ben held her down the hallway, past a few more turns, and back out into the regular museum. A universal bathroom was hidden in one of the shaded parts of the wall, and Ben shuffled her inside where a series of confusing porcelain creations were offered with pictures of aliens. He led her to the picture of a human where an regular toilet sat ready to be used. He let her go, giving her and her stomach agency over what happened next. She took a few deep breaths as Ben stood to the side, giving her space to take care of what came up.

"Why did you show me that?" she asked, leaning over the toilet.

"Well, because that happened to me," Ben scratched his neck nervously, "and it was perspective that really saved me from going crazy. So I thought that offering you perspective..., might help you get through what you went through."

"What kind of perspective did you get," Hannah hiccupped, "that saved you from THAT?!"

"Well, you know my power?"

"Three-dimensional sight, yeah."

"Not exactly.... It's more like... omniscience?"

Hannah spit into the toilet, "You're omniscient?"

"Not right now!" Ben excused, sitting down on the bathroom floor. "I keep my power limited to a small area around me. But when I first got it, I saw everything! The whole universe, past, present, and future, laid out in front of me like the tapestry of fate. From the edges of the universe to the most minute movement of subatomic energy. I saw it all, but what saved me was the suffering of others. I am not starving today, even though I know that someone somewhere is, and that makes me feel like things could be worse. There were three hundred and fourteen children in the program by the time it was destroyed, and I am the only survivor. Things could be worse, even if they could be significantly better."

Hannah scowled at Ben, who smiled and said, "So, how are we going to make things better for tomorrow?"

"That doesn't make me feel the slightest bit better," Hannah grumbled, spitting into the toilet again. She was lying, it did actually settle her stomach a little to think that she was free from...

"Where is my dad?" she asked suddenly.

"I have him confined," Ben stated. "He's imprisoned, but unharmed. At least, unharmed for now. That was what I had planned, after the tour."

"Really? You didn't take him to the police, or something?"

"Hannah, I'm a supervillain," Ben rolled his eyes, "do you really think I'd leave anyone in police custody?"

"Can I see him?"

"Of course," Ben opened the stall door, "right this way."

They left the bathroom and exited the museum via service elevator which took them down to the ground floor. Standing around the myriad of containers and boxes, Hannah realized the space was much larger than she initially thought. Most of the boxes that looked sized for a mattress were actually large enough to fit a coffin. She couldn't even see over the top of all the stacked storage containers and miscellaneous crap.

They didn't go far to reach Hannah's dad, as Ben said, "I just tossed him right here until you decided what to do with him."

He approached a pile crap and fished out a small, white cube that looked very similar to the material of the walls in this bent space. He unfolded the cube that sat in the palm of his hand until it no longer fit in his hand. He bent and angled the thing out of itself until it resembled a doorway that could be propped up against a nearby crate.

"He's in here," Ben said, entering the doorway to yet another room of removed space. This one had only a single decoration, a tridecahedron of a clear substance separated by a glowing force that looked like slow lightning. It fizzled and writhed about as a man in the center seemed stuck in a single, frozen moment of pain.

"What's wrong with him?" Hannah asked.

"It's a chronal prison," Ben stated as if that explained everything. "Your father is stuck in a single frozen moment of pain."

"What did you do?"

"I kicked him in the nuts and then stopped time around him. And now, it's your turn."

Ben turned back to the doorway where a blue button and red button were located roughly where a light switch would be. He pressed the blue button with a satisfying click and the buzz of energy dissipated around the fat bastard. The fractured space-time put itself back together one agonizing crack at a time until the scream finally came through and Hannah's father fell to his knees, clutching his crotch in agony. His breathing was so labored, it regularly descended into coughing fits.

Hannah almost wanted to rush to her father's side as his piteous moans of despair tugged at her heart strings, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her. She turned to see Ben with a gentle smile and a perfectly cleaned cutlery knife in his hands, the same one he knabbed from Hannah's house before he left.

"An eye for an eye," Ben stated, handing Hannah the knife.

"I...," Hannah didn't quite know what to say. "I thought an eye for an eye would make the whole world blind?"

"Ghandi said that," Ben stated, "and he was as wrong then as you are now. See, an eye for an eye means three things: Revenge, Justice, and Equality. Most people only see it as revenge, no pun intended, but it once stood to mean that the punishment should fit the crime. You take my eye, I take yours, and nothing more. I don't get your teeth, or your hair, or any limbs, just what you took from me. Fair, simple justice that anyone can dispense."

"But it meant more than that, because of WHEN the phrase emerged. You see it was something like 330 BC when people started saying 'an eye for an eye'. This was a time when Alexander the Great and Cleopatra were considered gods, people of such high standing that they existed in a realm above mere mortals. Try telling those people, leaders of entire nations, conquerors, legends, that their eye was equal in value to anyone else's. That even the highest in high society had value equal to the lowest of the low. And that's why it's my favorite interpretation.

"It sets people on equal ground, regardless of how they think of themselves, and relies on our actions to judge what we're truly made of. It pulls the high and mighty off of their high horses and down into the dirt with the rest of us. And that fat slob in there, barring anything he may have said, has treated his eye as more valuable than yours. He clearly does not think that you are on the same level as him."

Ben handed the knife to Hannah and said, "Go pull him off his high horse."

"Whatever you decide to do," Ben said as he turned to leave, "press the blue button if you want to reactivate the chronal prison to save some for later, or press the red button... when you're done. Idet will take care of you while I'm gone."

"Where are you going?" Hannah asked, clutching the knife as Ben opened the door to leave.

"I may have been excused from my council duties," Ben said, "but today's my first day as coach, and I'd like to set a good example for the children."

Ben smiled and waved as he closed the door behind him, whistling on the elevator ride as Hannah looked at the man who almost broke her as a human being.

Ben adjusted his watch before he got in his car. Once blade had met skin, he decided to let the girl work out her frustrations in privacy.

And the mixed perspectives of bent space always gave him a little headache.