“Yes?” Ravi said, pointing at a young woman. “The girl with the dreadlocks.”

The young woman dropped her hand, quivering with barely contained excitement.

“You said your power category is Shifter. But what are your powers, exactly?” she asked the upperclassman eagerly. “As for me, I’m a technopath.”

“I said I’d answer non-stupid questions. That one is the definition of stupid. Third lesson of the day: Don’t volunteer information about yourself. Not everyone at the Academy is going to be your friend. Most will be your competitors; some will be your enemies. The less you give away unnecessarily, the better.”

The woman with the dreadlocks looked chastened.

“You in the dashiki,” Ravi said.

A young man even darker than Ravi lowered his hand.

“Sir, may I ask why the servitors are armed?” The questioner eyed the servitors and their sidearms nervously.

“Fourth lesson of the day: Don’t ‘sir’ your fellow students. First year or fourth year, we’re all equals here.” Ravi’s smirk belied his words, like the idea of them being the equal of someone like him was beyond ludicrous, regardless of what the school’s official ethos might say. “To answer your question, the servitors are armed as a precautionary measure. On Villains Island, with literally everyone superpowered, it’s essential to have multiple means of neutralizing someone who loses control or goes rogue. The servitors’ blasters are usually set to stun.” The word usually stuck out to Max like a turd in a fishbowl. “Their primary function isn’t to harm, but to protect, maintain order, and ensure the safety of all. You’re here to learn a bunch of things, but one of the big ones is control. Those weapons are a reminder of the consequences of losing it.”

Ravi pointed. “You, the redheaded girl in braids.”

A freckled young woman lowered her hand, her bright eyes shining eagerly.

“Will we get a sweet uniform like yours?”

“Similar to mine, yes. After Headmaster Strategos addresses—”

“I don’t want a damned uniform! I just want off this godforsaken island!” The speaker was a tall, lanky guy with a mop of disheveled blonde hair. His face was mottled with anger. His tense jaw muscles twitched, and his fists were clenched as he glared at Ravi.

His outburst earned a raised eyebrow from Ravi. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me!” the blonde guy shouted. The people closest to him began sidling away from him in unease. Of the young people assembled before Ravi, only the blonde guy was more formally dressed than Damian—he wore a full tuxedo with only the bow tie missing. “I didn’t ask to be here. I don’t want to be here! I was abducted from a gala by some damned Villain. She jumped me in the men’s bathroom, the coward. I’m not enrolling in your blasted school to be condescended to by the likes of you and your fellow criminals. I demand to be returned home at once!”

“You demand?” Ravi was visibly amused.

“That’s right, damn you, I demand. Don’t you know who I am?”

“No, but I bet you’re just bursting to tell me.”

“My mother’s a very important woman. She’s a Senator.”

“A Senator? Wow! From where? The Bahamas, perhaps?” Ravi made an exaggerated show of surveying the tall boy’s pale skin. “I’d have thought a Bahamian would have more of a tan.”

Some of the first years tittered, which incensed the blonde boy all the more. He stamped his foot, kicking up sand.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“A United States’ Senator, you dolt! She’ll have you in jail and this whole place shut down if you don’t return me home at once!”

“It wouldn’t matter if your mother were the Senate Majority Leader,” Ravi retorted mildly, “the Speaker of the House, the Chief Justice, the President, the United Nations Chairman of the Unreal Council, and the Queen of merry old England all rolled into one. Your mommy and her titles have no power here. Nor do you. Now settle down and keep a civil tongue in your head before I bend you over my knee and spank you. Tantruming children aren’t tolerated here.”

Now the tall boy looked apoplectic, red as a beet. He pointed a shaking finger at Ravi.

“You talk to me like that again, and I’ll knock you right on your ass,” he swore.

If Ravi was about to faint from fright, he gave no sign. At that moment, he reminded Max of Stiletto, despite looking nothing like her. Ravi’s serene self-assurance and hers were twins. Max might’ve considered throwing his lot in with the blonde guy—who was obviously here just as unwillingly as Max was—if Ravi’s Stiletto-like confidence didn’t make him hesitate. Max would keep his powder dry for now and see how things unfolded.

“Since you’re feeling your oats today, Little Lord Fauntleroy,” Ravi calmly told the tuxedoed teen, “I’ll make a deal with you. If you actually can knock me on my ass, I’ll personally fly you off this island to wherever you want to go. I’ll be booted from the academy, of course, as I don’t have the authority to commandeer a helicopter or permit you to leave. Be a crying shame after all these years of hard work. But hey—a deal’s a deal. I hereby instruct the servitors to not molest you so you can take a fair shot at me. ”

The guy in the tux didn’t hesitate an instant. He raced toward Ravi like he had been launched from a slingshot. If Max hadn’t been paying close attention, he would have missed how Tuxedo Guy wasn’t moving, and then suddenly he was at a dead sprint.

Tuxedo Guy was a speedster! Max had never seen a speedster in action before.

He could barely see one in action now. The blonde was little more than a blur, his fist reared back to inflict a super-speed punch, sand spraying in his wake.

Ravi’s body underwent a sudden transformation as Tuxedo Guy zoomed toward him. The upperclassman shimmered and changed color, shifting to a graphite gray. Sunlight glinted off him like he had become a hard and unyielding rock.

The speedster, moving too fast to stop or change direction, continued to zoom right at the transformed upperclassman. The speedster’s fist collided with Ravi’s chin with a crack that made Max wince. Despite the impressive blow, Ravi didn’t so much as quiver, immobile as a statue.

The speedster’s fist crumpled as if he’d just tried to punch through a steel wall. Propelled forward by his super-speed momentum, the rest of the speedster’s body slammed into Ravi’s hard immobile one. The resulting sound reminded Max of the summer he worked in a slaughterhouse, and saw a cow carcass slip off a gambrel and smack into the cement floor.

The speedster bounced off Ravi like a basketball, and flew backward through the air, his shrill scream trailing him. He smacked into the beach with a spray of sand, bounced, tumbled, hit again, and skidded before finally coming to a halt.

He shuddered and whimpered there like a wounded animal, apparently too hurt to rise, clutching his injured hand against his chest, blood staining the once pristine sand around him.

His body back to normal, Ravi loped over to the fallen speedster. His right arm became translucent, and from his hand gushed a purple mist which he aimed at the bleeding Unreal. As the mist enveloped the young man, his whimpers and pained cries subsided. Then, Ravi’s other arm similarly changed to produce another type of gas, this one green and thicker than the first. Ravi also directed that gas at the speedster.

Within seconds, the speedster’s eyes drooped, and his body went still. He was apparently out cold.

The first years, including Max, watched in stunned silence.

Ravi, his body back to normal, snapped out orders.

“Servitors Forty-Five and Twenty-Three, take Mr. Tomlinson to the infirmary on the double. Tell the healer on duty I used these analgesics and sedatives on him.” Ravi rattled off some words Max didn’t understand. Latin, maybe?

Servitors with the numbers Ravi had called out stenciled on their foreheads hustled over to the unconscious speedster with the peculiar lurching gait that Max was coming to realize all the servitors moved with. They gently picked Tomlinson up and rapidly carried him toward the mountain on which Prometheus Academy rested.

Ravi directed his attention back to the remaining first years. He wasn’t even breathing hard, as if confronting a speedster was an everyday occurrence. Maybe here, it was.

“Anyone else feeling froggy? Then go ahead and jump.” Ravi was looking straight at Max, startling him out of his shock. The fact Ravi knew Tomlinson’s name despite pretending earlier he didn’t know any of the first year’s names indicated that Ravi knew more about them than he had let on. Ravi staring expectantly at him must’ve meant Ravi knew that Max, like Tomlinson, was an involuntary recruit to Prometheus. The upperclassman expected Max to make trouble, too.

Maybe now, Max thought, was the best time to make a move to escape. Before they entered the academy. The castle would surely be lousy with Unreal Villains as dangerous as Ravi. If not more so. Not to mention packed with servitors.

Swallowing hard, feeling his insides quake as Ravi stared him down, Max raised his hand.