Ben shut his home's front door and screamed. He inhaled like a chain-smoking opera singer with a third lung, and just screamed bloody murder. He threw his whole body behind it, flexing every muscle and activating every nerve so his entire being was screaming along with him.
The biggest story in the press was the coordinated attack on high school hero functions across the country. Each area had their own story, but on the second page of every newspaper, magazine, and blog post was some opinion on Olympia's kiss with a stranger.
After the kiss, Ben was hounded by reporters for the entire rest of the trip. Journalists followed their group to the hospital where they were all checked out and got to see Michael, who had almost gotten a full recovery while the rest of the tea was in the hole. They followed him being discharged to the celebratory dinner and even followed him and Jeff to a bar for celebratory drinks. One of them managed to find his personal information, including his phone number, and all night he was inundated with requests for interviews and explanations. He turned his phone off but woke up in the middle of the night when his dimensional sight caught journalists in the lobby trying to bribe the bellhops for his room number.
Against his better judgement, Ben clicked his watch clockwise the whole way, turning his sight off entirely. To hell with situational awareness, Ben was retired from the constantly looking over his shoulder lifestyle and was far too tired to care if some villain shot up the place. He had done enough. He was going to rest.
It didn't stop even the next morning. The games were cancelled, but the impromptu stadium had been cordoned off and the rest of the fair was ongoing. Ben went with everyone to the fair, and the journalists were waiting. It was like a shark feeding frenzy, trying to get every scrap of meat they could tear off their victims. Eventually, Ben had to play bait and declared to give a statement so he could lead the journalists away. He then turned to the journalists and tried to keep his village councilman vibe while chewing them out for making a very hard time that much harder. He kept his bickering up until the journos realized he wasn't giving a statement and they left.
It was Sunday at five in the afternoon, two hours before the fairgrounds closed for good, and Ben finally had a chance to join the festivities. The first place he went was food truck row and he got two handfuls of comfort food, including a deep-fried Oreo and deep-fried ice cream. As he chewed through his second corndog, he saw a giant woman wearing a wig and conspicuous clothing walk up the long entrance to the fair. He tracked her while mixing up the sour cream and scallions on a baked potato, and almost bit through his plastic fork when she went to security and asked if anyone had seen Ben.
There were no words in the English language, curses, swears, or metaphors, to describe his anger, so he used an alien language swear that roughly translated to, "I would dishonor my ancestors to deliver you the smallest inconvenience," but where every word was an abusive epithet.
Ben couldn't continue to be a semi-clueless village councilman and convincingly avoid her, so he went with the human shield method and rejoined the team. The parents and kids were all playing carny games and having fun, which Ben casually joined and cheered as Gary and Garrett used BB guns to hit tiny airplane facsimiles. Garrett got the prize and he gave it to Katherine, who had asked for the prize in the first place.
'It was a macho match,' Ben chuckled to himself.
It wasn't long after, when they were all trying to get plastic rings onto old milk bottles, that a guard radioed in where the team was playing games. Olympia got word of their location and started over to them inconspicuously, standing two feet above the rest of the crowd.
She approached from behind and watched, waiting for a good moment to step in. Ben got a ring on the bottle, and everyone cheered, which was the perfect moment to walk up. When she got close, she reached a large hand out to touch his shoulder and surprise him, but he turned around pre-emptively and stared at her in shock.
"Oh my god!" he faked. "What are you doing here?"
She looked around nervously, "I'm trying to get out and have some fun. Keep it on the down low, though. I don't want to draw attention."
Ben pre-empted any surprise by going through the little crowd and relaying that information to everyone so they wouldn't freak out.
After that, everyone treated her like the weird aunt who never came out to functions, but came out to this one and now everyone has to interact with her. Ben kept up a casual conversation that everybody had one ear on while playing, and when it was his turn to do something, somebody had to swap with him to keep the convo going.
Her presence derailed the whole party. Now everyone had to sacrifice their reckless fun so she could be a part of their controlled fun.
At least they were lucky nobody noticed who she was. The last thing they needed was more journalists on the prowl. But Ben still saw people taking pictures from a distance, double checking Olympia's disguise with her real photos. Only one of the onlookers was brave enough to ask for an autograph, and she was quiet about it, so it didn't start a stampede.
When the fairgrounds officially closed, the parents felt obligated to invite Olympia to dinner, and Ben ground his teeth at her response.
"Oh, I'd love to, but I actually need to talk with your coach alone," she excused. "There's some things that the Hero Association asked me to iron out in person."
"Okay," Ben seemed confused by how the situation was panning out, "um, will it take long? I am getting a little hungry."
"We can pick up food on the way," the heroine said. "I was dropped off, but I can drive if you'd rather ride beside me."
Every cell in his body was self-immolating to tell Ben not to enter a vehicle alone with this woman.
"I'll drive," Ben offered. If he was going to be in a car with this bitch, he was damn sure going to be in control of driving it off the road.
The team families waved goodbye, rumors of trouble or romance already spun on their lips. Ben waved them goodbye as he started a silent walk down the long fairground entrance. He unlocked the doors and slid into the driver's seat while the van tottered as the giantess slipped in.
"So," Ben announced, "what exactly did you need to talk to me about?"
"I wanted to get to know more about you," Olympia said, squishing herself into the navigators seat. "So, where did you learn to handle a shotgun like that?"
"My power, mostly," Ben said nervously, starting the car up and muting the radio. "Where do you want to eat?"
"Your additional sight lets you handle firearms?"
"I can see the inner workings of everything. I'm watching gasoline exploding in the engine right now."
"Ahem, well, sorry if you saw anything... hrm, uncouth, while we were down in that tunnel."
"It's comes with the power," Ben sighed, pulling out of the fairground parking lot and down the long driveway. "Nobody gets to keep a secret from me."
"So, about your body," Olympia derailed. "How did that happen?"
"I was a kid when superhuman powers had no means of being identified unless they manifested. My dad had dreams of making it big as a scientist, and both he and my mom had powers, so he tested it on all of us. He made a cream that hardened when in touch with skin cells that had superhuman genome, and it was a success. He put it on his chest and pulled some hair out. He put it on mom's face and smoothed her skin. I put it on my hands and had some weird gloves. But then it had to be tested to its limits.
"Dad made as much of the stuff as he could and put it all in a bath tub, then covered me in it. Basically my entire body, except the hands, feet, and head. It was supposed to harden, then he would add another layer to see if it could be stacked after hardening. But when he was adding the second layer, it started burning. We hadn't tested how long it could be applied, but leaving it on for longer than thirty minutes had it... dissolve the skin."
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
"The bath was full, so I was carried outside and blasted with the hose. I've lived with whole body burns ever since."
The reason Ben had chosen this particular background to explain his full-body scarring was because this event actually happened. A man was actually developing a cream for superpower sensing, he tested it on his kid, and the kid had very similar scarring to Ben's own. The child grew up rough and disappeared at age seventeen, just about the time that Ben appeared. There were a few differences that Ben had to account for, though.
"I got bullied so much, I ran away from home and changed my name. I was homeless for two years, until I was rounded up with a bunch of other homeless for a university scholarship. I was the only one who passed, which wasn't great for the program, but got me back enough to get a job. I decided I needed a new start, so I found this small town and fell in love. I changed my name so no one could ever find me, and I've been here ever since."
Olympia was silent. As much as the comic books would say otherwise, not every hero in the association had some tragic back story. A lot of them were there for the money or the fame.
"What about you?" Ben reflected the question.
"Me, oh, I was a farm girl in Idaho when my dad got caught in a harvester and tore his arm up," she said like a bored PowerPoint presenter. "When I healed him, we had to register that I had a power, and the Association descended like bats. Healers are so rare, the boys in finance have to bend over backwards to pay us a salary. I signed on, made sure my family was taken care of, and started fighting bad guys."
"What's the reason you stayed? Couldn't you have quit anytime?"
"Yes and no," she twiddled her thumbs. "They were clever when they drew up my contract, they made sure that I wasn't signing on with the association, I was signing on with the United States Government. Federal contracts have a different set of legislations and codes behind them than association contracts, including leaving out a break clause. Even with all my luxury and pay, I can't terminate my contract."
"Couldn't a good lawyer do that?"
"No lawyer in the world has the guts to go against the Hero Association."
"Real shame," Ben stated as he drove mindlessly. "By the way, where are we going?"
They decided on a Dairy Queen run. Ben got a chicken sandwich and Olympia got a bacon cheeseburger, both with flurries. Without asking, he started driving back to the hotel, aware that he had to pack up, check out, and be gone within the hour.
"So, Ben," Olympia said, swallowing the second half of her burger, "are you gay?"
Ben coughed up a chicken chunk and choked on it. He had been getting warm readings from her the whole night, but there was no change in heart rate or gland production that prepared him to be blindsided.
"Ah, uh, no, not really," Ben hacked through his throat obstructions. "I can guess why you're asking, but we don't really have the time. I'm driving home with the kids in an hour."
"An hour's more than enough time," she bit her bottom lip and leaned over to Ben, tilting the van back his way.
At this point, Ben was so far from turned on, he was fighting the urge to puke. This Amazonian woman was a cinderblock of muscle and scar tissue, and she was literally twice his weight. There was no functional position he could go at her without needing a stepstool or a surgical operation. The idea that she would do this around children was also sickening, and churned something inside his stomach. Her hair was too short to grab, and her torso was too long for his arms to reach. She would have to use him like a toy, and Ben was not a sub.
On top of all that, this was Ymir's sloppy seconds. Even after an eternity of time passed, he wasn't going to play second fiddle to the blue abomination.
'Well, maybe if it was their wedding day and he was watching,' Ben grinned with a vile malintent.
The thought excited him, and with some legendarily bad timing, Olympia reached across the center console and grabbed his excitement.
"OooOOooh!" she squealed happily. "I see I'm not the only one ready!"
Ben's options were rapidly dwindling. This mammothine woman seemed intent on getting through some personal time, with or without him. And the former Gentleman knew that she would just take what she could get, but that usually involved a lot of hush money and Hero Association promises afterwards. He wasn't keen on signing any forms those pencil pushing cunt flaps put in his hand, but he had to play his cards right.
He had to be weak city councilman Benjamin D. Hersh, the least satisfying human in bed. And he had to use his knowledge of Olympia's personal fetishes to do it.
"I'm sorry, but there really is no time," Ben apologized as a thick, meaty hand clumsily fondled his junk. "I'm leaving very soon."
"Why don't I... help you pack?" Olympia cooed in his ear.
The shiver that ran down Ben's spine was not from excitement.
"I-" but he couldn't get a word out before the heroine took the initiative
Olympia leaned over for a kiss, but Ben turned his face at the last second and got a pair of lips on his nose. She tried again, but Ben pulled away.
"I'm sorry," he nervously apologized. "This is all going so fast!"
And then Ben paused, staring out the windshield dumbfounded.
His vision had just encased the hotel, specifically his room on the fifth floor. Inside of the room were two people, a man and a woman, wearing plain suits and carrying hero association badges. They were trying to get into his luggage, which was locked with a space lace weave that was impossible for anyone on earth to crack, but the fact that they would go into his personal space was almost too disrespectful. On top of that, most of the parents were in the lobby with all their things, waiting for Ben to come back, but there was also a man in a suit with his phone at the ready, likely a watcher.
"Could I ask you to do something for me?" Ben asked with a soft grin.
"I hope it's dirty," Olympia cooed.
"I need to check out of my room in... two minutes," Ben explained, "but I need to get back in my room before we leave. Can you take my keycard and go up to my room... and wait for me? Room 514."
Olympia smiled and winked, taking the keycard that Ben handed to her.
Ben dropped the giant off at the front desk, watching the suspension strain back into place as he went to 'find a parking space'.
What he actually did was find a parking space and watch the chaos unfold.
Olympia walked into the lobby in her dress disguise, something the watcher noticed, but didn't think to alert the people going through Ben's room. She went up the stairs and got out into the hallway and made it all the way to the door.
The agents panicked as the door lock clicked and the hinges swung open, revealing the agents going through Ben's room. When they saw that it was Olympia and not their target, the agents freaked out even more.
The heroine panicked as well, unaware that the agents were part of the Hero Association, she charged them.
Ben laughed as hard as he could without letting anyone hear him. It was an instant beat down, until the second agent to get her face caved in had her badge out before passing out.
Olympia finally saw the badge, and she looked at the two people she had just knocked unconscious. Now it was the giantess's turn to freak out. She didn't know what to do, expecting a gentleman suitor and having two agents from her own organization rooting through his things. Ben could see her try to fit them under the bed, but laughed when she realized he has dimensional sight and could see them.
Unable to think of anything, the amazon resigned her fate and set the agents on the bed while taking a seat in a chair and waiting.
Ben had to control himself before getting out of the van and going to checkout. When he entered the lobby, the plant quickly called upstairs to tell them that the target had entered the building. The phone rang in his room and Olympia dug it out of the suit pocket and answered it. She cussed out the other agent and threatened him with his own beating if he didn't get up to the room and collect them.
Ben got his paperwork and final checkout receipt for the hotel and hurried up to the room, racing up the stairs to get there before the agent could escape. He got to his floor and jogged to his room right as the agent left while fireman carrying two other agents.
He wasn't supposed to know what was going on, but Ben had to suppress a smile as he caught the scornful expression of the last agent standing.
"What?" he asked Olympia, looking around at his room mid-searched.
"I'm sorry," Olympia sniffled, fighting back real tears. "This is my fault."
"You went through my stuff?"
"No, it's just," the big gal sighed heavily, "I'm such a good asset to the association, they follow me around."
"So those guys were...?"
"Hero association agents who watch my back. They were going through your stuff to make sure you weren't a threat."
"Oh," Ben said, acting super uncomfortable. "That's... that's...."
"It's not okay," Olympia cut to the chase, getting up and crossing the room to Ben. Instead of trying anything romantic, she just stepped past him saying, "I'll see you on the way out."
"Oh," Ben said as she shut the door behind her, closing him into the room. She remained outside while he picked his stuff up and headed out, meeting her in the hallway where she handed his room card back. They silently made their way to the stairs and got to the first floor without saying a word.
"Everyone ready to go?" Ben asked as he finally got to the lobby.
Everyone seemed incredibly impatient, waiting in the lobby, until Olympia walked up behind Ben and nervously waved for his attention.
"Sorry," she said, in a very heartfelt tone, "for everything."
And just like that, she grabs Ben by the head and pulls him in for a passionate kiss, full lips and a tiny bit of tongue creeping through. She let go and Ben stumbled back a bit as Gary whooed the scene in front of the whole team and their parents. Ben's heart seized, but he couldn't look without making the situation worse.
Ben then had to face TWO HOURS of the kids in the van pestering him for every sickening detail of the explosive love life he now had. He even got a call from Hannah that he sent straight to voicemail. He dropped the kids off at school where their parents picked them up and then he went immediately home.
Ben was pulling into his own driveway with the smooth suspension of his truck softening the blow when he got the message he had been dreading.
In the hotel lobby was a front desk clerk who had an Olympia-themed laptop in her employee locker. She had noticed something when the eight foot tall muscle woman entered the hotel, and quickly looked up images of her favorite hero to compare. When Olympia came back down, she had secretly taken pictures of the huge woman in a dress, and even got a clean photo of her passionately kissing Ben.
Ben had crossed his fingers that she would just masturbate over the photo, but she had put it on social media with Olympia tags, spreading it like a virus.
Now, Ben's surprised face touching lips with the foremost healer hero of the world was international news. On top of his photo after their rescue...
This would definitely come up at work tomorrow.