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…”
It's pretty obvious where to go: Filthy (having been humiliated by the HuMane Seven at Camp Everfree) wants to have a 'proper' superhero group to ensure that vigilante justice is handed out in line with sensible capitalistic principles rather than anarchic concepts like 'fairness' and 'equality' as well as (gasp) 'harmony'. Basically, he wants to bankroll a kind of Avengers Initiative. Fortunately, Fancy sees through him but decides to play along to see how long a rope Filthy will weave for himself by funding turning thugs and mercenaries in to super-powered thugs and mercenaries and trying to pass them off as superheroes.
Basically, consider them the Tony Stark (Fancy Pants) and J Jonah Jameson or Norman Osborne (Filthy Rich) of the Oversaturatedverse.
9286929
Except that the events of The Legend of Everfree didn't happen in this universe, plus it's Fancy Pants calling Filthy Rich, not the other way around.
Did Fancy forget the existence of Heartsongs?
Because a Heartsong would probably help quite a bit.
Here's some of my thoughts.
Sponsor mass employment and more importantly training to allow people in poor circumstances to begin being self-sufficient. Stimulus packages can be effective at averting or reversing economic collapse if applied and managed correctly. Look to the New Deal or Obama's stimulus package which softened a financial collapse that should have caused a massive recession.
What with all the war and destruction overseas, sponsoring/employing people to go over and help in the rebuilding can help provide some of those down on their luck with employment, experience and training that they can then take with them to other areas. Seriously, a lot of the job deficit is just not having willing people in the right places with the right training. Coal towns are struggling because mining coal is becoming less profitable, but there are few other opportunities in those communities. Investing in retraining those former miners (for example into technicians for cleaner energy forms) can save their welfare as well as the town's as it transitions away from a dying industry and towards a growing one.
One major impediment to gainful employment is simply being homeless. Think about this, when you don't have a home or apartment, a number of simple daily tasks become a chore and a major problem. Eating healthy or at all, (more nutritious foods are also often more perishable, expensive or in need of cooking), sleeping well, bathing, having an address or phone number to put down when you apply to a job. You job prospects are limited when you can't provide a way to contact yourself or proof that you'll be healthy and clean enough to come in each day and do the work. It's why I like charities like Housing First. They provide stability so that people can start putting their lives together with one of the major stressors, being homeless, removed.
On the hunger front, its a similar story. A lot of the people in poverty stricken countries could be self-sustaining and even productive farmers if only they had the equipment and training to get started. It's why my family runs our local God's Global Barnyard for our church every year. The program helps provide animals (goats, cows, pigs, chickens, fish farms, bees, etc.) and training for struggling families and communities to help them lift themselves out of hunger-stricken poverty.
This doesn't solve all the problems everywhere. There's too many for me to properly get into without posting a college research project, but there are ways to help. Getting cooperation deals with a major retail mogul who likely has a very good international transport infrastructure or connections to one seems like a good place to start. Hell, just opening new factories and businesses in these war torn places could help return stability to them. The major reason this kind of investment doesn't happen on as great a scale as it needs to is that such ventures are risky and often needs to be paid for from the ground up. When this doesn't happen that instability and poverty feed into each other, forming a vicious cycle. Breaking that cycle before it gets too far along can avert a lot of suffering.
9287436
A lot of this yes. If we want to live up to Tony Starke’s boast about privatizing world peace, and actually do it, let’s work this a bit more.
At the basic level we need education, infrastructure, income, and vaccination. A lot of these are related to each other. Hiring people for infrastructure projects like developing good transport systems. Maybe we use earth magic for room temperature superconductors and develop an efficient maglev line all through Africa, to help with resource distribution and mobility. Then run it as a nonprofit like the post office.
Many diseases are tied directly to water access. Develop and sell the technology to purify water in bulk, train and hire locals to build and install it.
In general, setting up factories for all the emerging new technologies. Technology that no-one knows how to make, so you aren’t at as big a disadvantage having to train everyone, and make sure everyone else is competing with high wage high benefits positions. Everyone works for you. And it’s a new global market, you’ll be able to ride the wave and just keep expanding for a long time. And money in the community will have side benefits and relate new opportunities.
Teaching, getting educators placement and training and support in difficult circumstances, could be critical. Combine it with vaccine campaigns.
But yeah. In general the idea is to hire and train people and then pay them well to do things that will help others.
Well, that's the problem with a currency system. It breaks the balancing point, leaving only "Broke" and "Rich" left on the scale. If everybody in the world suddenly had the exact same amount of money, half would immediately spend that money, and half would receive the money that was spent, bringing everyone back to square one. Half the world is broke, and half the world is rich.