WHACK!
ZAP!
BOOM!

Another day, another crime foiled, Fancy Pants smiled to himself. Sunny Days, his partner for this endeavor, watched warily as the would-be bank robber and “supervillain” Earth aspect groaned and tried to get back up, much to Sunny’s chagrin. She knew there was a good reason she left her students to solving the case of the missing book collection instead of dealing with this. Fancy just sighed.

“I would strongly advise against continuing hostilities, sir. Scans of your body show multiple fractures and torn ligaments, as well as internal bleeding on your left side. If you will allow us to take you into custody, I will personally see to it that your wounds are treated by professional medical care providers, but the choice is yours.”

“Save your sympathy, Iron Suit!” spat the criminal, standing up despite the injuries. “You think I’m new to pain? Pain and I are old friends.”

Without hesitation, and to Fancy’s horror, he simply injected himself with even more of the glowing yellow potion, gasping as his body glowed red with heat and his cells knit themselves back together in scientifically impossible ways. Sunny could only just barely restrain herself from throwing up as he glared up at them with pain and hatred.

“Do you know what it’s like? Growing up in the streets? Scrounging for food? Stealing just so you could eat another day?”

Sunny barely managed to dodge to the side as a glowing fist smashed into the wall where her head had been, and she heard the sound of shattering bone as the man grunted in pain, his arm somehow healing itself again. How in the world was he moving this fast without tearing himself apart?

Her eyes widened as she realized - he WAS tearing himself apart. He just didn’t care.

“You people, with your oh-so-awesome powers, sitting high and mighty, while the rest of us grovel for crumbs!”

Fancy focused his thaumatic energy beams, blasting apart the steel beam the man swung at him. Even with his enhanced strength, and the healing drug, it was clear the villain was on his last legs. Not surprising, given that he’d been fighting the two heroes for the better part of an hour just earlier. Still, his words were giving them pause, and that was all he needed. Leaping forward, he managed to grab onto Fancy’s Iron Suit, his impossibly superheated cells and unnatural strength starting to crush even the world’s most advanced magitech alloys.

“Do you know what it’s like, sitting in a gutter, poking another vein, just to be able to ignore the absolute HELL that is the world around you?”

Fancy gritted his teeth as alarms sounded in his suit, his heads-up display showing all sorts of alarms regarding armor levels and suit integrity. Internal temperatures rising, breech imminent-

WHAM!

The villain choked and let go as a pink blur slammed into his side, sending him flying across the room and into a concrete support pillar. He groaned once more, but it was clear that he was out of potions, much to the relief of the two heroes.

As Sunny zip-tied him, the villain spat on the ground.

“You just watch yourself, ‘Iron Suit’. Someday, you’ll know what the rest of us suffer through, day in and day out. Then maybe you’ll appreciate-”

WHACK!

“SUNNY!” Fancy exclaimed, more out of surprise and shock than reprimand, though the latter was a part of it. Celestia just looked at him with that all-knowing principal look.

“What? He was getting to you. Believe me, he was getting to me too. Don’t worry, I know all the warnings about concussions and brain trauma, I was careful to aim and hold back before I hit him, he’ll be fine.”

The man in the suit sighed as she came over, putting an arm on his.

“He was a hypocritical and self-serving criminal, Fancy. All that talk about poverty and privilege was just to distract us. If he actually wanted to do something about it, he could've used his potions to heal people or help others, and I don't think he was robbing a bank just to give the money to the poor. You understand that, don't you?"

The man nodded, but his heart wasn't there. Celestia looked at him with concern. "Will you be alright?”

“I… I have much to think about,” he admitted. “I will be at my residence, doing repairs if you need me. I’ve already contacted emergency services, medics and police should be here any minute.”

With that, he flew off, leaving the pink-haired woman looking up at the empty sky. After a moment, she glanced down at the unconscious villain, shaking her head.

“We’re the good guys, Fancy. We have to remember that.”

Fancy Pants leaned back at his workbench, waving aside the magical holograms and robotic tools as he did so he could get a clear view of the empty ceiling. The repairs were simple, really, at least to his brilliant mind. It wasn’t the complexity of the work. He was just… distracted.

“Mrs. Spice?”

“Yes, Mr. Pants?”

“Be a dear and get me the file on the Pants Foundation donations, would you? And if you could, some details about the progress in rehabilitating Tauros and surrounding regions.”

“Of course. Here’s the latest quarterly report from our most recent projects, along with status reports of existing projects worldwide.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Spice. That will be all.”

He lifted up the entire stack of pages at once with a bit of will, making the pages float around him in a sphere as his eyes swept over the legacy of his father, and his father’s father, and all the Pants of generations long past. Not all of that legacy was good, either. He’d spent a good amount of money trying to fix things that his ancestors ruined.

“Am I really the hero?” he asked himself softly, looking around at his penthouse. Normally, he ignored the everyday things that he’d been accustomed to since his youth, but this time, he looked at everything in a new perspective. Antique 13th century Chineighse vase, seventy million. Hand-stitched Saddle Arabian carpet dyed with saffron, ten million. Diamond-studded platinum chandelier, twenty million. How many poor starving children in Zebrica could have had a whole year’s worth of food, just with these items alone?

He knew the others were doing their part, outside crime fighting. The Wholesome’s central beliefs made things like slavery and forced prostitution pretty much their trigger, and with their worldwide and growing membership and, well, hivemind, human trafficking was slowly but surely becoming a non-issue. Celestia was doing her best to spread basic education about health and sanitation whenever she found herself overseas or in a poor neighborhood, and just the existence and presence of her Sunny Days persona was doing wonders to inspire youths to do something more productive and less destructive than joining a gang. Minuette, the last time he heard, was doing a splendid job at using her time-stop abilities to clean up litter and graffiti around the city, not to mention fixing up some of the potholes in the roads where there simply wasn’t the budget to repair infrastructure. And of course, Featherweight’s genius was being put to good use coming up with magitek solutions to just about any problem imaginable. He’d even heard that other students at Ms. Celestia’s high school were doing their part, in particular a certain Tree Hugger, who had somehow discovered ways to use crystals to “rebalance” areas of high pollution and ecological damage to repair the environment.

That left himself. Yes, him, Fancy Pants, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. But was he doing enough philanthropy? Was it going to the right places?

He sat up, pulling up Gillion and doing a quick search for an article he’d glanced over a few years ago. Excellent, still there. He tapped on the link, reading over the page again with more attention to the details. A hundred seventy-five billion a year?

Fancy let out a long breath. All right, maybe that was a little over his budget. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t solve hunger, now did it?

More research. Fancy was mildly surprised that there was, in fact, more than enough food to feed the world. The corners of his mouth turned down as he investigated why starvation still existed, this being the case. Always, the same answer. Poverty. Inequality. Corruption.

So technology wasn’t the answer either. Just building a food-producing machine wasn’t the answer - he’d run a very large number of farmers out of business, for one, and even if he didn’t, the starving would still have no means by which to purchase the food. Could he donate it? Perhaps, but doing so may destroy the livelihoods of local farmers as well. Perhaps the local Earth aspects could cooperate with the Pegasus-aspects.

He snorted. Right. And all that was needed in Tauros was a song and dance number.

The billionaire waved away the holograms again, shoulders slumped. Maybe the villain was right. Maybe he would never understand. Here, in front of him, was one problem that all the wealth he had could not solve.

But that’s not the only thing I have, is it? Come on, old chap, I can do better than this.

Steeling his resolve, Fancy brought the cold, hard numbers back into view, eyes flicking back and forth as he flicked his hand, bringing up page after page, chart after chart. No, he did not have the wealth necessary to end extreme poverty on his own - but perhaps he didn’t have to do it alone.

Filthy Rich’s eyebrows shot up as he looked at the caller ID on his personal cell.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Rich, I hope I am not intruding on anything.”

“Not at all, Mr. Pants. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I have a proposal…”

Author's Notes:

Sadly, the author isn't sure where to go with this from here, but he wanted it up to provoke some thoughts on approaching major problems—world hunger, poverty, et al.—with the tools provided by a magical revolution.