Chapter 108 Regimen.

Chapter 108: 108 Regimen.

I stared at her, waiting for the punchline. When nothing else came, I raised an eyebrow. "That’s your whole pitch?"

Psyren’s confident grin wavered. "What? It’s super intimidating when I do it to regular people! I can make a normie piss their pants with just a look."

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache coming on that had nothing to do with psychic static. "Psyren. Tell me something. How well does your mind-control translate through a screen?"

"What? Like, if someone’s recording me on a phone?"

"Yes," I said. "How much impact do your powers actually have on someone watching a livestream?"

She shifted her weight, the chains on her jeans rattling. "Um... it loses a little juice. Live, it’s incredibly potent. On a recording, you get some visual distortion and a creepy vibe, but the actual dread doesn’t transmit."

"Exactly," I said, pointing a finger at her. "And that is the problem. We are professional villains, Psyren. Our brawls don’t just happen in a vacuum; they end up on the internet. They get replayed, analyzed, and monetized by millions of hero fans. If you rely purely on an invisible psychic aura, you just look like a girl standing perfectly still while the hero pretends to struggle. The absolute worst crime a villain can commit isn’t property damage—it’s being boring."

"He speaks the absolute truth," Glacia chimed in, her posture rigid with devotion. "I have studied sir’s defeats hundreds of times."

I nodded. "See? Exactly."

"I have analyzed the footage of his combats from dozens of angles," Glacia continued, her breathing hitching slightly. "The sight of sir locked in glorious battle with those pathetic heroes... his booming voice, the raw power tearing up the asphalt... Night after night, I would watch him, utterly captivated, sliding off my pants to—"

"Okay, thank you, Glacia! Excellent point!" I shouted, throwing up a hand to frantically brake that train of thought before it derailed completely. I quickly turned my focus back to Psyren. "The point is, you have to sell the fear without relying on your powers. You are an actor on a very dangerous stage. You have to make the audience want to see you achieve your nefarious aims. They need to want to see you push the heroes to their absolute limit, just so it feels earned when the good guys beat you at the eleventh hour. We are the crucible that makes heroes great, Psyren! Without us, they’re just glorified cops in spandex. It is a given that the good guys win. But we... we must be worth beating!"

I paused, catching my breath. Both Psyren and Glacia were staring at me with wide, completely awestruck expressions.

Okay, maybe I’d leaned a little too hard into the megalomania. I cleared my throat. "Anyway—"

"Woah," Psyren breathed, the pink hearts in her eyes flaring like twin supernovas. "Boss... you’re totally right."

"I am?"

"You hit the nail on the head, sir!" Glacia agreed fervently, stepping into my personal space. "A true villain requires aplomb! Theatrics! The pure, unadulterated thrill of dominance!"

I coughed, my face heating up slightly. "Right. Well. Glad we agree."

"Hell yeah!" Psyren bounded forward, grabbing my arm. "It needs excitement! I need to be a real villain! A real bitch! People need to want to see me lose so badly that they tune in for the sequel! I get it now, boss!"

"Great. So, how about we take that monologue from the top?"

"You got it, bossman," she purred. She let go of my arm and strutted back to her starting position. She turned her back to me, shook out her shoulders, and took a deep breath.

When she spun back around, the transformation was jarring.

The eager rookie was gone. In her place stood a premium-tier femme fatale. She popped her hip, tilting her head so her pink hair framed a sadistic, deeply confident smirk. Even without psychic powers actively scrambling my brain, the sheer arrogance radiating off her was palpable. I could only guess what Glacia was experiencing to make her gasp and stiffen beside me.

"Well, well. Caught me," Psyren crooned, her voice carrying a resonant, mocking lilt. "And here I thought corporate idols were all plastic and no brains. Guess a few of you actually have some self-control compared to these morons in the crowd."

Perfect. The condescension was razor-sharp, and the backhanded compliment to the heroes gave them something to react to. "Good," I encouraged. "Keep going."

Psyren stalked forward a single pace, her smirk morphing into a vicious sneer. "But if you think you’re shutting this show down, I’ve got bad news. Because I didn’t come alone... and this battle of the bands? It’s just getting started!"

I actually clapped. "Yes! That is it!" I laughed, genuinely impressed. "That is exactly how you menace a protagonist. Excellent work."

Psyren preened under the praise, and she had earned it. Off-the-cuff villain monologues were a delicate art form, and she had nailed the exact vibe needed to cue a horde of brainwashed roadies into a brawl. A henchman fight was a classic opener, and bridging that into a real super-brawl was textbook pacing.

"Think I’m ready for the big leagues, boss?" she asked.

"Getting there," I said, opening the trash sack. "You’ve got the drama down, but now we need to work on your survivability. You can’t just stand there monologuing while some streeter throws a batarang at your head. You mentioned you have low-level telekinesis?"

"Yeah, a little," she nodded.

"Perfect." I used my own magnetism to pull a half-dozen crushed aluminum cans from the sack, letting them float in a jagged halo around me. "We’re going to work on your spatial awareness. I’m going to throw these, and you are going to deflect them. I don’t expect you to stop bullets—though that would be a nice perk. But a lot of street-level capes rely on gimmicks: flashbangs, arrows, throwing knives. If you can swat those away without breaking your monologue, you’ll be miles ahead of the competition."

Psyren eyed the floating trash dubiously. "I’m dodging soda cans?"

"It is a highly effective regimen," Glacia chimed in with absolute sincerity. "Sir trained me in the exact same manner. It saved my life when we were ambushed by those heroes at the museum."

I winced internally at the reminder of that particular disaster, but it did the trick. Psyren’s skepticism vanished. "Alright, boss. If you say so."

"I know so," I replied.

We didn’t have much time before the Superstars gig, and I needed her ready for the inevitable chaos of live combat. But as I launched the first can at her head—watching it ricochet off a faint pink kinetic shield with a hollow pop—I knew the golden rule of this industry: no matter how much you trained, you were never truly ready for everything.