Chapter Twenty — AssaultIsaac waited on the corner of Sixteenth and Spring, just outside the rebuilt zone and only a few blocks from the foster care center. He’d gotten there just ahead of the ten minute time limit, but saw nothing other than a few pedestrians. The usual background noise of sirens and the dots of flying supers made it seem exactly like any other time and place, yet he still felt completely detached from reality.Suddenly there was a sound like a crack of thunder from the clear blue sky, and a dark rent tore itself open less than an arm’s length away. Isaac recognized the woman who stepped through — the transporter that had brought Crash after the drone attack, someone who seemed to be made out of clouds and nebula. Other supers followed. A thin, almost skeletal man in an unrelieved white bodysuit and mask; a man in a baby-blue suit and bowler hat that was three feet tall and three feet wide, his build practically spherical; and behind them a figure in burnt orange armor with a glass dome filled with crackling electricity for a head. Blacktime himself arrived last. A black three-piece suit, white shirt, black tie, and a red handkerchief in the pocket to set off the unrelieved starkness of the image. He had no visible face or hands; instead he was entirely shrouded in the characteristic darkness of the man’s power, as if he were carrying shadow wherever he went. If anything, Isaac was a little surprised that Blacktime had come himself, but this was personal. “Ravdia,” Blacktime said, his voice hollow, sepulchral, echoing from somewhere within the shadows as the transport woman vanished again. “Since you can resist the depowerment effect, you will be the vanguard. But you will follow our direction.” The cold, hard delivery of the statement left no doubt that it was a requirement, a statement of reality more than a demand.“Ravdia understands!” Isaac replied, saluting as the magical girl (...)