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

develop, and that would be great for points production and publicity.
    Regardless of their self-imposed limitations, the heroes were bigger and faster than I’d ever been. And almost everyone had powers, even the guys down in the Ultralight class. Kid Coyote and Blue Ninja came as close as there was to what Nighthaunt, Redhawk and I had been: guys with tricks and a scary schtick. Even they were preternaturally quick. It could have been training or better food or just youth.
    It really didn’t matter. Either one of them could have generated the damage it took a dozen Zomboyz to do, and without breaking a sweat.
    Grant hadn’t been completely correct. It wasn’t that heroing was a young man’s game, it was that today’s heroes were a different species. I’d felt all big and bad in kicking Zomboy tail, but they weren’t anything more than I was. Heck, they didn’t even have yo-yos.
    And that was another weird part of how things had changed. Gangs like the Twisters and Zomboyz were farm teams for the villains. You take a street kid who’s got a knack for petty theft, jump him into a gang, train him up and see if there’s anything there. Villains use the gangs for support, trade members back and forth, and recruit sidekicks. If a villain produced enough other villains, he could retire on his cut of their revenues. One estimate suggested The Napalm Nihilist cleared a billion a year in legacy cash.
    Heroes came out other ways–prep schools mostly. A kid shows promise, someone sponsors him for a school and a sidekick is born. Or, in the case of Gravé and Andromeda, their parents introduce them and their careers take off fast. Near as I could tell, Kid Coyote was strictly homegrown–blue-collar kind of hero with a small but dedicated following.
    We’d always called heroing “the game.” Commentators still used the term, but now they meant it in an entirely different way.
    And I was on the sidelines.
    Selene didn’t talk to me much while I was watching. That’s mostly because I pretended to be asleep when she came in. When we did talk, we kept it light. Only once did I make the mistake of expressing pride in Vixen’s ratings. Selene went cold, so I left things there.
    Finally, on that fourth evening, she shut the Murdoch off. “Seen enough?”
    I nodded. “Lots of changes.”
    “Everything has changed.” She sat on the bed once more. “Tell me what you saw.”
    “I saw a lot of big angry people bashing the hell out of each other, denting huge chunks of real estate in the process. People bet on the fights. When I went to the bank after the robbery, the manager’s executive assistant had tons of flowers on her desk. They were all from admirers who’d seen her on the Murdoch, right?”
    Selene nodded. “Back up a point. All that damage. Think. How much of it have you seen in your wanderings?”
    “Not much.”
    “Want to guess why not?”
    My shoulders slumped. “There’s a fortune being made in reconstruction.”
    “Nailed it. Take your bank. The employees got double-time and a half for the robbery. The windows got replaced before the end of business and cost a fortune–and several companies bid on it with windows already painted up because they knew the battle was happening. Insurance companies pay out for all the damage.”
    “And consumers get soaked.”
    “But they don’t mind because the broadcast revenues get pumped into the Superfriend pools, so everyone wins a little. Everyone is invested, so no one complains.” She ticked a point off on her fingers. “In all the shows, did you see any sociopaths or true psych jobs? Anyone like Belle Jeste?”
    “No, but there should have been. Law of averages.”
    “Your nuts and serial killers still exist, but the system picks them up fast and sends them far away. There’s a prison in Death Valley. They’re left there to rot or kill each other. No one cares. They just vanish.”
    As I did. “That’s not a pleasant thought.”
    “But the people feel