There are only two options if you find yourself on the edge of a rooftop being chased by superpowered teenagers. Either pose dramatically and wait for them to catch up, or jump off before they get there. The second choice has always been my personal favourite.

Viper and Echo were closing in fast, barely visible in the darkness with their black bodysuits and matching black masks. They ran side-by-side, boots pounding the rooftop in perfect sync. I stuck out my tongue at them before turning back to face the edge. Cheaters. This was supposed to be a fair three-way fight to test our skills as supervillains-in-training, but the two of them had teamed up to take me out of the competition early.

Not that it mattered – they were still going to lose.

I had a few seconds to spare, so I bounced on the balls of my feet and raised my arms to the sky. The dark abyss just below the tips of my toes beckoned, but I hesitated, unable to resist the urge to pose for a moment. Hundreds of kilometres of empty tundra stretched out below me, moonlight glittering off the patchy snow. I squeezed my eyes shut, imagining skyscrapers instead of stunted trees and apartment buildings in place of scruffy bushes. A whole city laid out at my feet, ready to be conquered.

Distracted by my daydream, a soft hiss was my only warning before Viper’s acid spit hit my bodysuit and a dozen pinpricks of pain burst across my back. I instinctively rocked forward, away from the acid, and tumbled sideways off the edge of the roof with a yelp.

The frigid arctic wind whipped past my face, tugging at the edges of my mask as I somersaulted through the air. I squeezed my eyes shut, ignoring the rapidly approaching ground. Instead, I focused my attention on the wall of the building, rushing past a foot away from my nose. I reached out with my mind, calling on all its atoms to come rescue me. They were reluctant to leave the comfort of the solid wall, but soon I had coaxed a warm wave of concrete to reach out and envelop my feet.

The concrete snapped back into place, halting my fall with a jerk that nearly dislocated both of my legs. Opening my eyes, I discovered the ground was a scant metre from the top of my head. A nervous giggle escaped my lips. Usually I was a bit more prepared to catch myself when I jumped.

“Taking a break?” A figure stepped into my line of sight. I squinted at it upside down, scanning up from the black steel-toed boots to the steel grey hair. My heart gave a jolt as I recognized who it was.

Gran, also known as the Grim Reaper. The only known supervillain to have made it to retirement age, and our head teacher here at the world’s first academy for supervillains. I’d once seen her wrestle five students into submission without a single hair escaping from her bun.

“Gran!” Distracted, I released my mental hold on the concrete wall and it immediately spat out my feet, dumping me headfirst into the snow.

“Come with me.” Without waiting for a response, Gran turned on her heel and strode away.

“But wait, what about the competition?” I scrambled to catch up with her, trying to shake the ache out of my legs as I did.

“It’s over.”

“Who won?”

“You all failed.” Gran had reached the back door of the building at this point and ushered me inside. “Those two teamed up, which is against the rules. And you ran away. Not exactly supervillain material, any of you.”

“But - ”

“You can whine all you like to the principal, but I really don’t care. If it had been up to me, you would have been out of this school ten seconds after you walked through those doors.” Gran jerked a thumb at the Academy’s front doors. We were passing through the foyer now, an empty and echoing room of grey tiled floor and identical grey walls that welcomed every new student.

“The principal? You’re not serious...” I froze, my heart pounding twice as fast as it had when I had fallen off the roof. Principal Sicarius was in charge of this whole building, but in the six years I’d been here, he’d never left his office on the top floor. No one who’d been sent to talk to him had been seen again. There were rumours that he kept the heads of failed students mounted on his walls and fed their bodies to a ravenous polar bear that lived under his desk.

Gran was already halfway up the first staircase, and she turned around just long enough to shoot me a glare that would have made a polar bear stop in its tracks. I closed my mouth and hurried after her in silence, up flight after flight of stairs to my doom. I would see for myself soon enough if the rumors were true. And if Principal Sicarius tried to feed me to a polar bear I would make the floor swallow him alive and jump out a window.

That plan bolstered my spirits enough that I managed to keep my chin high and my hands steady as Gran knocked on the door to his office.

“Come in.”

Gran opened the door and ushered me inside, closing it sharply behind me. I was alone with the only man on earth that even supervillains feared.

Principal Sicarius wore a pristine black suit and tie, with a starched white shirt underneath. The shirt was almost too bright to look at in the harsh fluorescent lights of the office, and I found myself staring directly into his dark eyes instead. His eyebrows were raised, and a small smile lurked at the corners of his mouth.

“Ah, Delphi Dunn. What a pleasant surprise,” Principal Sicarius said, his smile widening to reveal teeth almost as white as his shirt. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the surface of the most enormous wooden desk I had ever seen. Definitely meant for intimidating people.

“It’s Death’s Dancer actually,” I snapped, hoping the harsh words would hide any quiver in my voice.

“Ah yes, you young supervillains do go in for the melodramatics.” He rearranged a row of crooked pencils on his desk.

At the mention of ‘young supervillains’ I took a quick peak around the office. Aside from a row of windows and a beaten-up metal filing cabinet, the principal and his desk were the only things in the room. No severed heads decorated the plain grey walls. That huge desk could easily be hiding a polar bear though.

“So Delphi - ”

“Death’s Dancer.” I didn’t care if he fed me to his polar bear for interrupting him. I hadn’t been called Delphi in six years, aside from the rare time my parents phoned to check up on me. They had no idea that the exclusive boarding school they’d sent me to was actually training me to be a supervillain, and I had no intention of them finding out. Not that they would care, as long as it kept me busy and out of their way.

Principal Sicarius gave me a hard stare, which I met unblinkingly.

“Very well, Death’s Dancer, then.” He gave a little shrug and flicked open a file folder sitting on his desk, rifling through the first couple pages. “Remind me what your superpower is.”

When I didn’t respond immediately he looked up, arching one sculpted eyebrow. “Well?”

I bit the inside of my lip, debating. This was my chance to impress him and prove that I was a real supervillain, no matter what Gran said. If it all went sideways, I could always escape out the window like I’d planned earlier.

“My power...” I paused, both for effect and so I would have time to wake up the atoms of Principal Sicarius’ chair. “...is this!”

In an instant, his chair shot out slender wooden fibres that curled around his arms and legs, trapping him in place.

“Ha!” I shouted, then immediately clapped my hands over my mouth.

Rage flickered over his face, distorting his perfect features. It was gone an instant later, but that brief glimpse killed my laughter. There might not be severed heads and polar bears in this room, but Principal Sicarius was plenty dangerous by himself. With my concentration broken, the chair oozed back into its former shape.

“Ah, yes.” He brushed off his jacket sleeves and straightened his tie, his calm demeanour completely restored. “Thank you for the demonstration. Perhaps you aren’t quite as incompetent as the Grim Reaper seems to believe.”

I opened my mouth to argue, then shut it again with a snap as Gran threw open the door. She inclined her head towards Principal Sicarius. “You called?”

“No, but you might as well stay now that you’re here.”

“Have you told her?”

“Not yet. We were sidetracked.”

“You do know we haven’t got all morning. The train leaves in an hour.”

“Still plenty of time.”

Tell me what? I was bursting to ask what they were talking about, but their rapid-fire exchange left no room for me to cut in.

With a snort, Gran turned to face me, hands on her hips. “Congratulations, you’ve graduated. You’re being assigned to your own city.”

The words echoed in my ears, and I gaped at Gran. She’d made me think I was a failure, about to be kicked out of the school. Instead they were giving me what every supervillain here wanted more than anything – a new life in a new city, where I could finally put all my training to use. “My own city? But I thought, you told me I failed...”

“True.” Principal Sicarius tapped his fingers against a manila folder on the desk. “You’re not ready for this, but RUBE needs a new supervillain and you’re the closest thing we’ve got at the Academy right now.”

I dug my nails into my palms, resentment warring with excitement inside of me. Now was not the time to mouth off and risk losing this opportunity. Besides, soon it wouldn’t matter what Gran and Principal Sicarius thought of me. RUBE was the organization that ran the Academy. The Researchers United for a Better Earth, or the Rubes, as everyone here called them, searched out kids with superpowers, trained us, and funded our careers as supervillains. They were the ones I had to impress.

Gran threw something at my me. I instinctively reached out to catch it before considering that it might not be something I wanted to wrap my arms around. Gran’s favourite teaching tools were small smoke bombs that exploded when you touched them, releasing a cloud of noxious gas. It wasn’t poisonous, but it gave you a nasty cough for a day or so.

The bundle thumped to the ground at my feet. It was nothing more sinister than a backpack, mostly empty by the look of it.

“You have five minutes to pack anything you can’t live without, then you’re coming with me.”