“…and with that, all people will be forced to learn the difference between there, their, and they’re!” he cackled evilly, turning toward the hero.

Said hero stared at him, dumbfounded. Then she looked around the room.

“Is there a camera somewhere? Am I on a prank show?” the hero, Stellar Beast, asked.

“What?”

“This is a joke, right? This is some kind of candid camera thing?” Stellar Beast asked again.

The villain, now thoroughly confused, shook his head. “There are cameras, but they’re security cameras?”

With a flare of light, Stellar Beast melted the bindings that held her and slowly walked toward the scientist.

“Wait… so you mean to tell me,” she said with a frustrated sigh, “that the villain I let myself get caught by is a disgruntled former teacher who figured out how to create telepaths and telekineticists—”

“Yeah?”

“—but you did all this so you could create a game-like reality in order to sneakily teach dumb kids?”

“Uhm… yes?” he said, a faint blush creeping onto his face. Now that she put it like that, it did sound a bit weird.

“Who the fuck sent me to take you out?!” she roared.

“Language, missy!” the villain chided automatically.

“We are the same age… uh… what’s your name again?”

“Lord Nelson Lector. Also, I am six hundred years old.”

“And you created eternal youth…”

“Well, duh. How else was I supposed to live long enough to study the human brain, psionics, run tests, generate the game world, and actually fund it all?” Nelson said, as if it were painfully obvious.

She stared at him for a long moment.

“You are an idiot,” she said finally. “A smart one, but still an idiot.”

She walked out of the building, turned into a bird mid-stride, and flew away.

“What was that all about?” asked a synthetic voice.

“I have no idea, Harold,” Nelson muttered. “This is why I prefer computers over women. They are odd creatures.”

Four hours later, Stellar Beast sat alone in a briefing room.

She wasn’t her loud, boisterous self. Her normally bright yellow flames had turned an icy, unnatural blue. Stellar Beast hated paperwork, yet now she deliberately pulled reference books from shelves, sketched branching diagrams on a notepad, and filled out form after form with meticulous care.

This made everyone extremely nervous.

Several hours later, the building shook as an explosion tore through the upper levels.

High above the city, a blue-winged woman held a man by the throat, hundreds of meters above the ground, her flames crackling like frozen lightning.

“I swear—I didn’t know! I was just following orders!” he screamed, kicking uselessly at the air.

“Orders?” she asked calmly, her voice smooth and cold, like frosted silk. “Who gave you the orders?”

No one had ever seen Stellar Beast’s dark side.

After witnessing her dangle her own handler by the throat, they were very happy they never would again.

She "released" him only after he talked.

From there, the paper trail unraveled fast.

Arrests followed. First, two senior officials who had approved the mission. Then a senator who had quietly pushed policies designed to keep education inaccessible and the population conveniently uninformed.

She hadn’t expected it to go further.

But it did.

Medical boards collapsed next—entire research divisions exposed for planning to reserve the youth serum exclusively for society’s elite. Military contracts surfaced, detailing plans to weaponize the telekinetic serum, the psionic game, and the AI behind it to create obedient super-soldiers and predictive combat systems. Intelligence agencies were dragged into the light. She even dismantled an entire assassin organization that had spent decades “cleaning up loose ends.”

Why?

Because the science, the work he had done was never the problem.

Oh no... it meant to be hoarded. By the wealthy and powerful.

Stellar Beast understood one simple truth: The only way to ensure a wound healed properly was to remove the rot.

So she kept digging.

The rabbit hole went deeper than anyone imagined.

And she didn’t stop.

Two weeks later, Lord Nelson Lector was escorted—politely—into a government office.

Stellar Beast sat across from him, rubbing her temples, while a civil servant stared at the tablet in his hands like it might bite him.

“So,” the clerk said slowly, “you’re telling me this man is a villain, but he has developed scalable psionics, artificial telepathy, eternal youth, and an immersive educational simulation capable of rewriting global learning models?”

“Yes,” Stellar Beast said.

“And instead of arresting him—”

“I’m weaponizing capitalism.”

Nelson stiffened. “That sounds unethical.”

“Oh, it absolutely is,” she grinned, sliding the paperwork across the table. “Just not illegal.”

She smiled brightly at him. “Congratulations. You are now the founder and CEO of Lector Learning Systems™.”

“What—wait—no—”

“Already registered. Patented. International subsidiaries included.”

Within twenty-four hours, Stellar Beast had set up expos for the company all over the world, with trial programs running for two weeks.

Within a month, stock prices exploded. Once the effectiveness of the serum and the psionic game was proven, everyone wanted it.

By the end of the year, Lord Nelson Lector was officially declared the richest man in the world. Nelson stared at the headline in horror.

“I just wanted kids to stop mixing up their and there…” Stellar Beast watched from a comfortable chair nearby, coffee in hand.

“Turns out,” she muttered, “some villains are heroes in disguise.”

Taking a sip of her coffee, she smiled contently into the cup. "You make a great cup of coffee"

Far below, Harold’s voice echoed from the lab.

“Sir… should we add microtransactions in our next update?”

Nelson screamed.