The rescue effort took all day and night thanks to the flying hero, Jetstream, not being able to fly while carrying something heavier than a hundred pounds. This small oversight threw Ben into a blind rage. He cussed and swore at the flying hero, calling him nine kinds of weak and cowardly as the poor guy promised to fly down with some food and water. Ben threw a piece of junk at him, which missed entirely, but the flying hero got the point.

Before flying away, Ben quickly apologized and asked about Michael's condition. Jetstream held back his own anger and calmly explained that the boy was in critical condition and had been moved to a hospital for urgent care. Ben thanked him, then waited for him to return with fair food, water, and snacks.

Then the flying hero's true colors were revealed when he followed Ben back to the wrecked van and saw the heavy hitter Olympia passed out on the middle row. He squealed like a fanboy and flew a somersault in joy, then asked if anyone thought she would mind taking a lock of her hair. Stanley got between the two heroes on instinct as Ben explained how weird it was to take someone's hair.

Deflated somewhat, the professional hero said, "At least she's okay. Leadership was worried the attack had gotten to her since it was so coordinated."

"...Coordinated attack?" Ben picked the words out carefully.

And that's when the team found out that their county fair wasn't just a random assault by mole yokels (mokels?), more than a hundred other locations had also been attacked by supervillains simultaneously. They weren't all moles, it wasn't a hybrid animal uprising, but hundreds of small-time villains all attacked junior hero tournaments at the same time.

Ben was shocked into silence, and it wasn't a facade of his village councilman persona. He was genuinely shocked. Villains were so bad at organizing, it was a form of miracle for five of them to cooperate long enough to steal candy from a baby. It would take an extraordinary amount of time and energy to prioritize and disseminate that kind of raw villainous power. Ben cast his vision back to the mole father and inspected his brain closely. Nothing stood out to him, everything was where it should have been and no nano-bots.

If it was mind control, it was either telepathic or hypnotism. The only things that left no visible mark on the brain.

But who was their leader?

Leader being a very specific term. Villains weren't big on council and republic leadership, there had to be a single leader who was powerful enough to keep everyone in line. Nobody immediately came to mind, so either this person was brand new on the scene, or some welp from the past found a way to grow exponentially more powerful.

But there was something else bothering him.

Was it truly a coincidence that Olympia, the primary healer from the top brass of the Hero Association, just so happened to be at the site of a major villain attack? Not just a villain attack, but the attack that also happened to include the former supervillain, The Gentleman? The one who killed Ymir?

Her former, deceased fiance?

It started off as a Hero Association gimmick to have two of their big shots get married. When they found out they had similar depraved tastes, the two really hit it off and got serious about marriage. They were spouse-to-be for two years, and it was their upcoming marriage that had Ymir drop his guard enough to kidnap.

Ben was already careful to limit his time with Olympia as much as possible, lest she pick up on his real identity. The kids made that physically impossible, but there was a catharsis he hadn't felt in a long time watching the blue bastard's bitch get cut. Feeling her giving so much just to protect her fiancée's killer was a wonderful twist of fate.

This had to be sorted out, but Ben wasn't about to activate his whole power right in front of the people who would kill him on sight. He had to wait, to play the village councilman caught in a bad situation, until he was finally, truly alone.

That. Took. Forever.

Olympia woke up soon after Jetstream arrived, and the kid fanboyed like a bitch when she activated her healing aura. When she did so, her bad habit came into play, and Ben could see her mouth water as the skin on his back and arms molded like clay back into place. Ben had been doing his best not to draw attention to it, but his shirt was in tatters and anyone could see his bare torso. The myriad of scars underneath were barely visible in the poor lighting around the car and would become even harder to see as night fell, but Ben still asked Jetstream to make himself useful and get some fresh clothes.

But it was too late.

The giantess heroine directed more of her healing energy at Ben as his body still seemed to be injured.

"You can stop," Ben said in a defeated tone.

"You took the brunt of the fall," Olympia reasoned, "your body's taking longer to heal thanks to that."

"My power allows me to see all facets of my body. Believe me, I'm fully healed."

"Oh yeah?" she challenged. "Then what is this?"

She reached out to an uneven patch of skin and pushed it like a button, expecting some pained reaction.

"That's a burn scar," Ben said, "when I was caught in a housefire."

"Oh!" the heroine said a little too excitedly. "Then what about this?"

She traced her finger across a thin line of split skin that disappeared under his tattered clothes.

"I worked in a warehouse when a shelf collapse dropped machetes all over me," he excused.

"This?" she asked, flicking a mogul set on his shoulder.

Ben gave some pitiless explanation for every visible injury, and he could already feel Olympia's heavy breathing as he went into the scarred story of his life. She was a sadist, but specifically got off on watching skin move around in strange ways. It wasn't specifically an injury basis, she'd get heated just pushing skin around, but Ymir was a specialist in twisting flesh.

Olympia was getting a little too handsy, pulling his tattered shirt aside to get a better look at the roadmap of injuries Ben had suffered. The kids were all intrigued as well, listening in on the mysterious happenstance that caused so many injuries to stain one person's body.

"Can we not?" Ben finally cracked, scooting away from Olympia and giving up the seat he'd spent the last few minutes getting comfortable in. "I don't like people looking at me without a shirt."

Ben realized he made a mistake when Olympia's heart skipped a beat and she started salivating. The chill that ran down his spine was not from the freezing cold air.

"You know, I can fix that for you if I've got some time to work on it," the giant healer offered, placing her pitcher's mitt of a hand fully on his back. "Scars take a bit more time, but they're still injuries I can fix. We'd just have to make sure nothing pinches afterwards."

"No thank you," Ben quickly turned down, picking up the vibe that this wasn't a medical request, it was a wine-and-dine affair. "I've been to physical therapy for a while now. I'm comfortable in this skin."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The former villain had to pound his chest to keep his carnival food down as the back of his mind pictured what a night with the nine foot tall bodybuilding skin-ripping enthusiast would be like.

"Are you really okay?" Katherine asked, noting the many, many, many jagged edges of Ben's body.

"They're old injuries, they don't bother me anymore."

Ben had a great idea, so he ran with it.

"It was before I got my power," he said. "Nothing's touched me since."

"What's your power?" Jetstream asked, really hoping to join a conversation with Olympia.

"He can see five feet in all directions," Katherine interjected. "It's kinda spooky."

"What's that like?"

"I usually carry around a packet of playing cards, like for poker, then have people hold up a whole deck where I can't see with my eyes. Then I just list off what the cards are, because I can see all sides of all things within my area of sight."

"Can you see anything on me?" Olympia asked with a wink.

"You have a tattoo of a tiger on your right shoulder and tendonitis in your right Achilles tendon. Your arteries have some damage from high blood sugar. You ate two corndogs and a whole funnel cake at the fair. You aren't a natural blonde, you're a redhead."

"Wow, so you can see under the skin, huh?"

Ben stared intensely at the giantess's green eyes and said, "Oh yeah, I see everything."

The way he said this was meant to imply, 'do not try anything you sick freak, I am watching you'.

This was clearly not the message that was received, because Olympia almost soiled herself as her heart pounded in frisky anticipation. And when she realized Ben could see her body's reaction, she actually soiled herself a little.

'This sick pervert,' Ben ground his teeth, 'doing this in front of children. I should have killed her while I was still a villain.'

"Since we're going to be stuck here with not much to do," Ben tried to distract by activating his peppy councilman facade, "let's go over how we could have handled things better. Let's start with Katherine. What could you have done differently to get a better outcome?"

"I should have stopped the vehicle and gotten out instead of ramming into the villain," she immediately self-reported.

"That's good," Ben softened the blow, "but I was thinking more about getting an idea of your surroundings before jumping into a situation. If you had circled the field once in the van, you would have seen-"

"I'm sorry, what is this?" Jetstream interrupted.

"We do a review after all our games."

"Then, you should have just left this to the pros," the flying hero said. "You literally had the strongest healing hero in the world on your defense, everything would have been fine if none of you intervened."

"That'll be my critique for Michael."

"OH MY GOD!" Katherine shrieked, suddenly realizing they had a fifth member outside the hole. "How is Michael? Is he okay?"

"I healed him a bit while your coach was having a standoff with the mole people," Olympia said. "He'll be fine. Why was he near the fairground field in the first place?"

"I couldn't tell you," Ben sighed. "Out of the whole team, Michael was the last person I thought would pull a stunt like that."

"He's really confident in his ability to turn invisible," Gary suggested. "He didn't think he would get caught."

"Ahhh, that makes sense," Olympia sympathized. "I once stuck my arm in a paper shredder because I thought my healing would get me through it. Now my left arm is an inch shorter than the right."

"So that's what that is," Ben chuckled. "I thought it was weird that your left forearm had this weird compression to it."

"Compression? What do you mean?"

"Like, it's not just an inch shorter, it's almost an inch skinnier around and down to the bone is denser."

"Denser, huh?" Olympia asked rhetorically, inspecting her arms more closely. "Anything else you can see?"

'Ah, crap,' Ben thought while keeping up a smile, "Nothing a doctor or an x-ray couldn't tell you. Although something I don't need my power to see is how much Stanley there wants to ask you a question."

Stanley suddenly jumped to attention, rendering a crisp salute like rookie infantryman as the professional heroes turned to him.

"Ah, yes, well... uhm," he stumbled for words, "I was just hoping, you see, that maybe, you might, while we're here, give us, I mean everyone, some tips?"

Jetstream and Olympia turned to Ben for a translation.

"He hoped you guys would get involved in our feedback session. Anything you'd like to say on how Katherine here could have handled it better?"

For the next few hours while the emergency crews got together an empire state building worth of rope, Ben hosted a little get together between two professional heroes and four student heroes. Jetstream was very critical, mostly because he had to take time away from his family to be here, so Olympia played heart and was super constructive. Garrett asked the most questions because he was the one with the most problems as a hybrid superhuman, and Gary asked about any tips for constructer type powers because his brown constructs were weak and flimsy.

When the sun went down, Jetstream flew up and brought down more food and lights for everyone and a long-range walkie-talkie. All of the kids got a chance on the comms to talk to their parents who were all worried sick, and Ben very carefully explained what had happened and why everyone was down a deep, dark hole. The flying hero said that there were blankets in case the rescue ran into the night, but a super strength hero had brought in a chain he uses to pull cargo ships up rivers, so rescue should come shortly.

"Before we leave, and before I forget," Ben announced to the kids, "remember to thank Olympia and Jetstream for saving us."

He wanted to puke saying it, but it sounded like something a peppy high school coach would say.

"Actually, that's what I've been thinking of a good way to say," Olympia interjected, standing up and dusting herself off. "Mr. Hersh, if I'm being honest with myself, those mole people were tearing me apart. I normally operate with someone who can tank hits, I'm not a frontline fighter at the best of times. The dad mole really had me on the ropes, and the mother was really ripping me apart. If you and your team hadn't intervened, I don't think I would have won the fight. Don't ever do it again, for the love of god, I couldn't forgive myself if anything had happened that we couldn't fix. But..."

"You guys definitely have what it takes to be heroes, and I hope you continue on the path to become ones. If anyone asks, in my opinion, you definitely won the high school hero tournament."

Ben's mind disassociated from his body and unleashed a fury that could destroy a small planet. He imagined himself destroying the cosmos and collapsing suns, then returned with a smile so strained it could be confused with a botched Botox treatment.

The kids went ballistic, cheering that they won the tournament and thanking Olympia for her vote of confidence. They jumped and hooted and hollered so loudly, the radio buzzed to life asking if everything was okay because they heard a commotion.

The chain that was lowered down had links as thick as Olympia's arms with a shark cage and a dozen harnesses. Jetstream flew back to the top to ask for directions while Ben and Olympia sorted it out on the fly. They all strapped into the shark cage and held on for dear life as Jetstream radioed up that everyone was secured. The climb was slow, but incredibly disorienting as the cage caught on every tiny lip and uneven surface to spin and jerk in all directions. It disgusted him to no end when, after Ben was thrown at Stanley by the jerking motion, Olympia swapped positions with the young lad so she would get a handful of Ben instead.

As the cage ascended the pit, the freezing cold subterranean temperatures became warmer and the dead silence of completely still air gave way to the mumble of a distant crowd. Air started to flow and swirl again. The world became a little more normal.

The rescue workers had a giant spotlight down the hole to provide some small measure of light. When it caught the glint of the shark cage, a cheer went up from the crowd that was deafening. Jetstream thought now was a good time to explain how they would get out of the cage, but he was drowned out by the raucous praise of a thousand carnival goers.

Lights from a thousand phones, multiple stadium spotlights and one news helicopter blinded the people who had spent the last few hours in impenetrable darkness. Ben had to rely solely on his dimensional sight to see what was going on, which was a bit difficult when the cage flipped on its side and he was dangling from the harness like a pinata. Olympia held onto the side and put her arm out to stop Gary and Katherine from slamming the bars. They were dragged like this a bit further while deaf from cheers and blind from the spotlight, then the cage stopped and people rushed to get it open.

Everyone's parents were held back as professionals quickly opened the cage and very carefully extracted one person at a time. Ben was muted during the whole operation, but the accumulated stress and sudden relief had Katherine, Gary, and Stanley tearing up. Garrett didn't have the luxury of tears because he was crying the whole ride up while trying to hold down the consequences of his motion sickness.

Olympia undid her harness and used her strength to hold the others while the professionals undid their harnesses and led them out of the cage. Cameras flashed nonstop, adding to the blindness as everyone's parents were finally released and rushed the cage. Tears and hugs and wails were had by all, giving the photographers a hundred good shots for the front of a magazine or newspaper.

Ben was the last one out, and he got a little bit extra of a helping hand from Olympia. He stepped out, took a second to feel the grass again, and the heroine took the second to put an arm around Ben like old friends.

'I should have killed her,' Ben thought while playing along nicely.

Then she did it, the giantess took true advantage of the situation to ruin Ben's perfect, little life.

While all the cameras were on them, she gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

The Hero Association's most notorious celibate and relationless spinster, whose only known partner was the big, blue Ymir, lovingly kissing a total nobody.

Deliberately in front of the press.

'I'm gonna have to kill her, now.'