Besides, I was pretty sure they approved of me on some unofficial level. I was easy to hire through the Vilnet app, not terribly expensive, had a clean kill sheet (a point of professional pride, even if it limited my marketability), and was willing to custom-design a villainous persona for a slight surcharge. I was also ready to let an up-and-comer “finally defeat” an established persona for a heftier fee. I was a rent-a-villain, a punching bag with a payment plan. The gig economy truly has a niche for everyone.

  I’d brag, but that would defeat the purpose. On the Vilnet’s “100 Most Wanted” list, I was numbers 26, 28, 30, 33, 34, 41, 77, and 90. I was on the world’s greatest supervillain list three times, too, although two of those were marked “deceased.” All within two years. Barely nineteen years old, and I beat out long-established heels who’d been terrorizing the country for nearly thirty years. My resume was both impressive and deeply, deeply sad.

  I can almost hear you thinking, Blueprint, if you’re so famous, why aren’t you rich and powerful? I mean, you can literally turn air into gold. Why work nine-to-five as a human punching bag for carefully staged heroes instead of retiring to enjoy your ill-gotten gains or, better yet, becoming a superhero?

  I had stock answers ready if anyone ever asked—which they didn’t, because no one looks at the guy getting pummeled on the news and wonders about his 401k. Sure, some of my personas had celebrity value, but sitting still long enough to give a reporter an interview would defeat the entire purpose. My brand was ephemeral, my fame disposable.

  My entire business model involved showing up somewhere in an over-the-top costume that was always one sequin away from being utterly ridiculous, creating a visibly nefarious but ultimately harmless and easily-thwarted plot—like turning everyone in Empire City blue or cornering the nation’s supply of zero-calorie sweeteners. I’d do a lot of property damage to heavily insured but generally useless and abandoned real estate, throw out a monologue about whatever ideology matched the costume and scheme (I had a spreadsheet), and then get beaten up by whatever heroes had agents willing to pay for a high-visibility takedown. It was performance art, with more punching.

  Look, heroes were IMPORTANT. Not the two-bit vigilantes who used powers or brute strength to stop drug dealers and beat the hell out of purse snatchers. Those guys were basically thugs themselves who’d be better off working as alpha auxiliaries for the police or in private security. They were the amateurs.

  But real heroes? Earth was NOT safe. It had become a dimensional crossroads ever since the quantum membrane experiments in the forties resulted in the first q-weapons, and the resulting fallout started awakening alphas. The REAL bad guys—insane megalomaniacs who wanted to rule the world with their powers, dimensional invaders from hell worlds, opportunistic aliens that saw Earth as an easy raiding target because of its low tech levels, displaced deities, mutated super-monsters, suicidal psychopaths, and wannabe warlords—needed heroes to stop their schemes. The kind of schemes that ended with skull thrones and rivers of lava, not just a bad dye job for the local populace.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Those guys were NOT harmless kooks. They had zero compunctions about doing whatever it took to accomplish their cripplingly evil crap. Solid Class Three and Four heroes were needed to protect people from those assholes. The problem was, being a hero wasn’t cheap. Beyond their gear requirements, many alphas had special dietary needs—shoveling away enough food to feed a family of six at each meal, occasionally ingesting expensive substances like deuterium or tritium to stay healthy or grow their powers. Some needed to sleep in special environments like a vacuum chamber or an alpha fallout just to get a good night’s rest. Try finding a decent apartment with a built-in vacuum chamber on a civil servant’s salary.

  And widgeteers, tinkers, and sorcerers? Those guys almost HAD to have federal funding to produce the marvels everyone took for granted: post-radio telecommunications, holographic traffic control, enhanced food production on kaiju-free farmland, the protective machinery that KEPT those farms kaiju-free. All of this required money and had strict limits. True genius and tinker tech worked regardless, but widgeteer junk? Widgeteers could only keep a certain number of constructs active or had to replace them occasionally when they dispersed. That took support. It was the difference between a master sculptor and a guy who could only keep three sandcastles from collapsing at any given time.

  And don’t even get me started on Kaiju. Humans weren’t the only ones affected by the Q-bombs and quantum instability. Kaiju were universally driven to hunt down and consume q-instability sources. Lacking those, they enjoyed consuming secondary q-instability—meaning sapient life. Most cities dealt with occasional Kaiju attacks, from small-scale predators like Z-vamps and cranium rats that had to be tracked and destroyed when they infested a population center, to giant monsters like rocs, dragons, murder-bunnies, and the occasional Lovecraftian monstrosity crawling out of the ocean. It was a fun, vibrant ecosystem, if your idea of fun is constant, low-grade existential terror.

  The thing is, the public was fickle. Alphas were expected to pay their own way unless they were part of state or federal teams—exclusive clubs for well-connected or exceptionally powerful alphas. When something like a roc or an alien invasion appeared, nearly every Alpha higher than Class Two helped out—unless they were totally selfish rat bastards. Medical bills and funeral expenses sucked. I should know; I’d helped set up a few benefit fights for heroes who’d gotten permanently benched.

  That’s where I came in. The economic stimulus the hero community didn't know it needed.