Prologue - Hello World

Let's get the exposition dump out of the way to avoid the hundreds of chapters it would take to smoothly 'show' it all before the real story even begins.

It is roughly a decade after the final confrontation between superheroes and supervillains, which the villains had won in an undisputed victory. While only a small percentage of the population have superpowers, even a normal human can cause sufficient trouble, so one can imagine what disasters these powered individuals caused in the wake of the war.

Over this past decade, the overall population and economy have finally reached a point of hero-free stability. Estimates place the world population somewhere between one-fourth and one-third of the pre-war population, not that anyone would dare attempt a census when you're more likely to get shot than receive an accurate answer in regards to who lives where.

Throughout the years, at any given moment the world is merely one step of an unsupervised white long-haired cat onto an uncovered large red button away from the surface of the entire planet getting glassed. In the face of this alarmingly likely scenario, the supervillains had all fallen into a cold war of death lasers, orbital cannons, robot armies, and of course, their superpowers.

Thanks to this stalemate, grand displays of power had mostly lost their appeal, as they were no longer unique, and could only be demonstrated once. So, they had switched to the pursuit of more creative ways to flex their prowess, or to at the very least amuse themselves.

No small number of these supervillains decided they enjoy receiving lots of attention, so they opted to become celebrities with public-facing personas. They are still just as likely to cut you as before, they're just also happily basking in all of the praise in the meantime.

Individual material wealth had lost most of its value, while paper currencies completely lost all of their value. This is in no small part due to the rampant counterfeits, as well as the sheer challenge of carrying it from one destination to another without getting mugged en-route.

For those with no, or only weak, superpowers, not attracting attention to yourself became one of the best survival methods. As such; flaunting jewelry, fancy clothes, or other such accessories was just painting an unnecessary target on yourself, further reducing such belongings' intrinsic value.

With the shift away from personal wealth, the majority of valuable art, jewels, and artifacts were actually returned to the various museums they were robbed from. It was by no means out of altruism though, it was predominantly because private collections were just so damn unreliable.

This led to capable thieves gaining the entertainment of comparing theft speed runs amongst themselves before returning their loot within a day or two. In shows of one-upmanship, they would even make security recommendations in order to further challenge themselves and others.

Those villains inclined towards intelligence had gone on a continuous spree of invention design and problem-solving. Several mad scientist types effectively went full circle, as chasing solutions to global issues was one of the greatest challenges of all, and provided much-desired mental stimulation. Of course, just as many of them made new problems, just for the sake of having something to do.

However, due to all of the previous standard currencies being rendered useless, the world as a whole had fallen into a barter system. This drove the inventive types who needed constant materials for their creations truly mad. Before long, they were driven to the point of teaming up with the elites from amongst the thieves to create genuinely secure banks for the storage of precious metals and other such valuable materials to serve as the gold standard behind a new digital currency.

A small non-magnetic chip was designed to be implanted within one's body, in a random location so as to not be readily cut out and stolen. These now serve as an ID, replacing easily stolen papers and strings of numbers. Heavily encrypted multi-step authentication is required for every transaction, designed such that even if the data is intercepted it can't be used to steal someone's identity.

Once a reliable basis for an economy was back in place, various occupations returned to work in a state mostly akin to how they had been pre-war. However, barely any customer-facing positions were filled by humans any longer, as the majority of transactions would simply lead to murder, regardless of how much income is offered. Most of these positions are instead filled by robots or other similar technologies.

There was one positive change, beyond technological advancements, that built up during the downward spiral of all previous standard currencies; a large number of people with sufficient resources had begun the habit of regular distribution of food and medications out of sheer spite. This was predominantly because they were actively opposed to anyone who would want to exploit essentials for profit during the economic crash.

Even when money and income were rebalanced, these practices stayed in place. Of course, there is plenty of social stigma behind requiring free assistance ever since the economy had stabilized, but it still remained a necessity for numerous people.

Junk food, snacks, and specialty diets you always had to take care of for yourself, though.

With all of this out of the way, it's time to focus on the present. Enjoy!