I lay flat on my stomach on the roof of the hotel where the RUBE conference was being held, triple-checking my backpack full of explosives. They gleamed threateningly in the moonlight, a dozen small cylinders of destruction. Satisfied that they wouldn’t unexpectedly detonate while I was carrying them, I zipped the backpack shut and swung it onto my back.

There was a lot of security wandering around the perimeter of the hotel, making sure everything was progressing smoothly, but the Rubes hadn’t planned on a supervillain showing up. You would think they’d know of my existence and my powers, since they had basically created me, but I suppose when you create someone you don’t expect them to turn around and bite your head off.

All of that was going to change tonight. I was going to wipe those smug smirks off their stupid faces, just like I’d wanted to do ever since Mr. Falcus and Ms. Ishida abandoned me in an alleyway with nothing but empty promises and a threatening deadline.

With the heavy security presence, I hadn’t wanted to take the risk of setting the explosives ahead of time, so I was going to have to be quick. Step one: hide the explosives around the perimeter of the grand ballroom where the opening ceremony of the conference was being held. Step two: burst into the room and take them all hostage. Step three: get paid and set the hostages free.

It was a simple plan, and should be easy enough to accomplish with just one person. A small pin pricked my heart at the thought of how much simpler this would have been with the help of my minions, but I brushed it aside. I had spent years training at the Academy, completing all of their impossible tasks by myself. Of course I could do this. My minions would probably just have found some way to mess it up, anyway.

There was no convenient door leading inside from the roof, but that was no trouble for me. I squeezed my eyes shut and sent my mind into the ground, convincing the gravel, concrete, and metal girders beneath me to spread apart. They did so reluctantly, creaking and groaning as they shifted for the first time since the hotel had been built. The concrete was the easiest to shift – it always remembered its previous life as a semi-liquid and was eager to return to that state.

As the roof opened beneath me, I grabbed hold of the edge of the hole. The rest of my body swung through the empty air, all of my weight resting on my arms. I gritted my teeth as my still-healing right arm protested this misuse, and had to remind myself that I was a supervillain and supervillains did not feel pain.

I dropped to the floor below, allowing the hole to close shut behind me. Immediately I was plunged into absolute darkness. This was clearly not a floor reserved for hotel guests. The ground was cold and hard beneath my feet, the ceiling low.

Not wanting to stay in this cold, dark floor longer than necessary, I performed my trick again, opening a hole in the floor beneath me and dropping through. The next level was brightly lit, the floor covered by a plush, flower-patterned carpet and the walls papered in gold-striped wallpaper. This was more like it.

With my chin held high and an insane grin plastered across my face, I waltzed down the empty hallway in search of an elevator. I didn’t run into any people, which was a little disappointing, as it was always satisfying to see their eyes grow round and their faces pale when they saw me. At least the elevator wasn’t difficult to find, so I contented myself with that small victory. With only a slight encouragement I easily pushed the golden elevator doors apart and peered into the dark shaft. Luck was with me – the elevator was at a standstill just a few floors below where I now stood.

I grabbed hold of the heavy metal cables running down the centre of the shaft, gripping them tightly with both hands. The elevator doors closed behind me as I swung the rest of my body inside the shaft, trapping me in darkness once more. I slid down the cables, steadfastly ignoring the pain in my hands, which was only slightly alleviated by my gloves.

In the darkness I ended up crashing into the elevator less gracefully than I might have hoped, falling to my knees and causing it to bob slightly. I could hear startled exclamations from inside the elevator, and snorted with amusement as I imagined what its occupants might be thinking of the sudden thump on the roof. Just as I had gotten to my feet, the elevator gave a jerk and started downwards.

It was thrilling riding the elevator in the dark, with nothing but the creaking cables to keep me company, and the flashes of light as we passed each floor marking the distance. I was disappointed when the ride came to an end, and whoever was in the elevator got off. Quick as a flash, I opened up a hole in the roof of the elevator and peeked in. Empty.

I dropped down inside and pressed the 2nd floor button just as the doors were closing. My grin was genuine now; this was perfect. I could arrive in style, as if I had taken a suite on the top floor and was just now popping down for the conference like all the other dignitaries present.

The elevator slipped down two more floors before announcing its arrival with a cheerful ding. I stepped out into an even more plush carpeted hallway, the walls again papered in gold. Just in case you weren’t sure if this was a fancy hotel, old-fashioned chandeliers marched down the hallway, hanging from artfully sculpted plaster nests.

The hallway was surprisingly empty, but I could hear the sound of a loud voice, probably magnified in some way, from just down the hallway. It seemed to be echoing from behind the grand double doors at the far end.

As I walked towards the doors, two security guards abruptly appeared from a side passage. Whether alerted to my presence by some sixth sense, or just doing their typical rounds, I wasn’t sure. Either way, two ordinary guards would not be enough to stop me.

Before they could move, I turned the floor to liquid beneath them, and they both sunk up to their ankles in the suddenly watery carpet. I immediately allowed the floor to become solid again, so that for all their struggles they could not remove their feet from the hideous brown and green floral patterned carpet.

“Stop right there!” One of them shouted as I bounced down the hallway towards them, chin up, back straight, in perfect ballerina posture. It was quite brave of her, really. After all, she was trapped in a hallway with a murderous psychopathic supervillain and yet she was still intent on doing her job. I gave her a polite smile, and a small curtsey.

The other guard lifted his radio, but with a tilt of my head to one side, the device melted and dropped to the floor, reforming into a solid object once it reached the carpet. As both guards gaped at it, somehow even more astonished by this than they had been when the floor swallowed their feet, I strolled the last few steps towards them and retrieved the radio.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Thanks, you’re a darling,” I said, giving him a significantly less polite smile than I had furnished his comrade with. I cleared my throat and turned on the radio. “Heavily armed intruder on the ground floor near the service door. Immediate backup requested! Over.”

My radio call was immediately answered by pounding footsteps as other members of the security team ran to capture the fictional intruder. The two guards I had captured both opened their mouths, preparing to yell. I grinned at them, and their thick black jackets oozed up their necks, clamping tightly over their mouths. They struggled frantically, which I ignored. I had more important things to attend to.

Sliding my backpack off my shoulders and dropping it to the ground, I glanced around the empty hallway once before opening the zipper and beginning to remove explosives. I was a little surprised that it had been this easy so far – just two guards on the door, and the others had all been distracted by a phony radio call? It seemed too simple. Still, there was no point wasting time worrying about that when it gave me such a perfect opportunity to plant my explosives.

Once I had all of my explosives arranged on the floor, I slid the first one down the hallway along the side of the grand ballroom, tracking its movement with my eyes. Just before it hit the wall at the end, I squinted at the wall, pulling out a small platform that lifted the explosive into the air. It rose, wavering, towards the ceiling. Frowning in concentration, I opened up a small hole in the wall, just large enough for the explosive to fit inside. I then allowed the wall to snap back into place, its new, volatile addition completely hidden from prying eyes.

This process I repeated with the remaining eleven explosives, sending each one to a different spot in the wall surrounding the conference room. Preparations completed, I got to my feet and rubbed my hands together. Time for step two.

I jumped neatly over the trussed-up security guards and danced up to the grand double doors leading into the ballroom. There I paused for a moment, straightened my tutu, pulled up my gloves, and smoothed my hair. Without further ado, I flung the doors open.

“Ladies and gentleman, your evening’s entertainment has arrived!” I announced, dipping into a dramatic curtsey.

The man standing on a low stage at the front of the room left off peering nearsightedly at his notes, and squinted at me instead. “And who might you be?” he asked.

Despite his ignorance, the number of gasps around the room told me that most of the other paper-pushing dignitaries in the room knew exactly who I was. I wondered how many of them also knew about the secret supervillain academy run by their own organization that had shaped me into what I was today.

“What do you mean? Didn’t anyone order a ballet dancer? No? Oh well, your loss then,” I said, closing the doors behind me and sealing them shut. Even if the security guards discovered my trick and came running back they would be hard put to break down a door that was now one solid block.

I wandered further into the room, pretending not to notice the tension, or the guards who were converging on my position.

“Lovely place you have here!” I said brightly, as I reached out with my mind to the entire floor of the room, encouraging the top layer to become liquid, just for a moment. A series of screams echoed around the room in a beautiful cacophony. Bewildered security guards were arrested midstride, and all of the smartly dressed people in their uncomfortable conference chairs were up to their ankles in plush carpet, just as the men outside had found themselves.

“I do hope none of you have anywhere else to be,” I said, gliding further into the room and up the central aisle between the rows of chairs. My eyes flicked from face to face, searching for the two RUBE agents I knew. They had to be here – they were the two I most wanted to hold hostage.

There! My eyes locked with Ms. Ishida’s. She was sitting beside Mr. Falcus at the very back of the room, dressed in a demur grey pantsuit, which was what had initially thrown me off. Mr. Falcus gave me a condescending smile, which I responded to by wiggling my fingers at him.

Satisfied that they were here, I strode up to the stage. The man who had been speaking when I arrived was stuck there, his eyes wide and curious as I approached. He did not appear to be terrified, but merely intrigued by all of this commotion. That was scientists for you. They never could act like ordinary people.

I pulled out the last trick from my backpack: a big red button. At the sight of this, the susurration of voices in the room cut off abruptly. With the button in one hand, I grabbed the abandoned microphone in the other, and turned to address my rapt audience.

“Good evening, ladies and gentleman of the RUBE!” I began. “So good of you all to be here tonight. Now I just have a simple request of you before I let you get back to your conference. Well, two requests.”

I paused dramatically to let this sink in.

“My first request is that you each sign a paper confirming that I am the greatest supervillain to ever have tread upon this planet.”

A baffled silence followed this announcement. I looked around the room with narrowed eyes, trying to pick out the ones who were faking shock from those who genuinely had no idea what was going on. Surely some of the people in the room had been part of the committee that chose to give new supervillains a one-month deadline to prove themselves. But from the furrowed brows and darting glances, I could tell that a great deal of the crowd was entirely uncertain as to why this would be my primary request. Perhaps the Academy was not as widely known within the organization as I had thought. No matter.

“And my second request is that you each call up your respective institutions and have them fork over 1 million dollars for your safe return.” There was a huge outcry at this, one that not even my big red button could deter. I raised my voice to be heard over the hubbub, and the screech of the microphone made everyone wince. “Should you fail in either of these quite reasonable requests, I will have no option but to blow up this room and everyone in it as an example for the next group of Rubes who think they can defy Death’s Dancer.”

Another muttering rose up, but this one I allowed to grow. I wanted my words to sink in and give them a good amount of time to think about the consequences of their actions should they fail to obey. I set the microphone down and jumped when a throat was quietly cleared beside me.

I had entirely forgotten about the presenter. He was such a short and inconspicuous man in his clean but somewhat rumpled suit, his bald spot gleaming with sweat.

“You wouldn’t happen to know of a place called the Researchers United Academy for Practical Learning, located in an isolated piece of land near Arviat, would you?” I asked him, without much hope. He seemed like exactly the sort of stereotypical researcher who preferred sitting in a laboratory all day instead of concocting schemes to subtly control the world.

“No, I’m dreadfully sorry,” he said, shaking his head and confirming my suspicions. “But...’Researchers United’, you said? Are you quite certain it is run by our organization? I would have thought that any such schools needed to be approved by the board, of which I am the chair.”

While he didn’t add ‘unfortunately’ to the end of that sentence, I could feel the word hanging in the air. I smiled and patted him gently on that bald, sweaty head.

“No worries, it was just a question,” I said, and turned back to my microphone and audience. I grinned at them with as much insanity as I could manage. “Well, have you all reached a decision?”

There was much muttering and uncomfortable scratching of heads. I glanced to the far corner, where Ms. Ishida and Mr. Falcus were watching the entire proceedings with faintly amused smiles. I scowled. What did they have to be so amused about? I wouldn’t hesitate to kill them along with everyone else in the room if they failed to meet my demands. As a matter of fact, they would be the first ones to go.

One woman near the front of the room stood up, wobbling slightly as her feet were still embedded in the ground. “We have no problem with...” she had just begun to say when a huge rush of percussive heat and sound drowned her out.

For a moment I stared in absolute confusion at the flames, blackened walls, and bodies tossed to the floor in awkward positions, their feet still stuck to the ground, but their upper bodies thrown away from the walls. Some of my bombs had gone off. Why had some of my bombs gone off?

Then there was another flash from behind me and I was swept off my feet and hurled from the stage like a discarded child’s toy. My head cracked to the ground and something heavy landed on top of me.

Probably the podium da dum dum, was my last semi-coherent thought before the world tilted and slid towards black.