Free In Hero Years... I'm Dead Delux Edition by Michael Stackpole

turned out to be the Fantasy Hero Channel
    On FHC the numbers became clear, and that scared me. I was still a bit dreamy from painkillers so nothing should have made sense. What I’d see on the crawl was something like this:
     
    1020105 Gravé C2 E0 R1 H7        KO3 $0 PD .2 Tot Pts: 4.6
     
    That referenced his part in my rescue. Captures, Escapes, Rescues, Hits, Knock outs, Bounty ($) and Power Differential were the various categories. Gravé had been credited with capturing two Zomboyz, one rescue, seven hits, three knock outs, no money recovered and the power differential between him and the Zomboyz left him at .2, so he only got 20% of his amassed points. Rescues and escapes are worth ten points, which is why Vixen scored big in the bank deal. All totaled, Gravé earned 4.6 points for his part.
    This brought back something Randy had said about Kid Coyote–about his being a good choice as a Superfriend. Superfriends were what folks called the heroes in their fantasy leagues. If a hero is active and does well, a Superfriends team benefits. Players who draft well earn money and prizes. I’d already seen Randy’s tip sheet, and FHC was full of adverts for others.
    I actually had an entry: Old Dude with Yo-yo. The incident at the market rated me at C0 E0 R1 H4* KO4 $0 PD 1.25. I got 22.5 points for that battle. Of course, Old Dude with Yo-yo was unranked, and Superfriends were restricted to one of eight classes. And once someone connected Old Dude with the victim in Gravé’s fight, I’d be in negative points.
    Villains, of course, got ranked on similar scales and, if adverts for merchandise were to be believed, had their own fan base.
    As weird as the numbers were, the fighting itself is what made me feel as if I’d never return to action. It even had me thinking that wasn’t a bad thing. I watched for four days straight. Once I got past the old Crimson Skylark doing color commentary, I saw why Selene made me watch.
    In battle after battle heroes and villains unleashed incredible displays of power. Windows exploded. Furnishings were reduced to splinters. Buildings took incredible amounts of damage–sometimes coming down completely. Vehicles got crushed, citizens had to be rescued, fortunes vanished from banks and crime sprees built until one or more heroes came together to stop the villains.
    That’s what happened with Twisterian and the Twisters. The bank had been the fourth in a series of capers, which made Twisterian a hot commodity. His Superfriends ranking was flying high, and since Power Differential was calculated based, in part, on class and rating, knocking him off would really do wonders for a hero. Likewise, even being defeated by a higher ranked hero could work for a villain because the PD would be boosted in his favor.
    Twistron the Twisterian had uploaded his plan of attack to an auction site. The Green Avenger–the guy who had put him down in the street–had won the bid, then turned around and sub-jobbed out fighting the henchmen. Vixen had won the bid for interior rights. Kid Coyote and Blue Ninja combined to get the street rights. Everyone knew the place and time of the caper. The camera crews for BCN and the news networks showed up, so that fight got covered from every angle possible.
    While heroes and villains pumped out a lot of power, damage got restricted to property and soft tissue. Tasers and sonic shotguns–what they called the blunderbusses–weren’t designed to kill. Vixen’s pistol shot mercy bullets that knocked her enemies out. In fact, the asterisk on Old Dude’s Hits indicated that he’d broken bones which, were I ranked, would have cost me points.
    In the new world, everyone played nice. On purpose.
    Pretty much the only reason the Zomboyz hadn’t killed me was because they’d always restrained themselves. They didn’t know lethal techniques. They didn’t have any desire to kill. It didn’t make sense in their world. If Old Dude came back, a vendetta would