“She went after my teammate, and I told her that if she didn’t stop, I would take away her bargaining chip. I’d figured it out myself, I would tell key members of the different multi-triggers—the enemies of her new ‘recruits’, if you will, how the draining works.”

“And?”

“She thought I was bluffing, and I wasn’t.”

Polarize 10.6

“You threatened her and she forced your hand? This is why you can’t play games with dangerous lunatics,” I said.

“I can. It’s doable,” Tattletale answered me, leaning back in her seat, sticking her tongue into her cheek so it poked out. “Doesn’t always work out.”

“The issue is when others suffer because of the games you’re playing,” I said.

“Here we go. Sanctimonious heroes being sanctimonious,” she said. She rolled her head back, heaving out a sigh.

“I’m not arguing for morals, Tattletale. I’m arguing for sanity.”

“Yeah. That’s overrated too.”

Was it possible to respect the fact that she’d been capable enough to take over and keep a city, and yet have zero respect for her as a person?

I knew she prioritized sanity—or she prioritized stability. She’d gone into laborious depth about how she was working to those ends when we’d first met in New Brockton. But now, because she was hurt or because she was petty, she shrugged it off and pretended it didn’t matter. Tongue in cheek, joking, but still so tone-deaf.

“What else do we need to know?” Rain asked, stepping up because I hadn’t followed up. A small part of me had been content to let the awkward comment hang.

Tattletale sat up straighter. She saw her henchman coming, carrying a tiny paper cup like the sort used for ketchup in fast food places and a regular paper cup for water. She took both, drawing out the pause before she gave her response. “You, Precipice, need to make a decision when it comes to March.”

“I picked up on that.”

“I’ve had to deal with her more than a few times, because that’s the price of having Foil with us. As a professional she is efficient, dangerous, and dramatic. She’ll almost always be in the right position, she’ll almost always hit, and she’ll almost always kill whatever she hits, provided she wants to. Her underlings support her well. She combines that professional effectiveness with being petty, unhinged, and lopsided in her focus in non-professional things, and lets the two things bleed into each other.”

Gee, I wonder what it would be like to talk to someone like that, Tattletale, I thought. There might have been something in the look I gave Tattletale, because she rolled her eyes slightly.

“Unhinged in person, still dangerous,” Rain said.