Precipice was staring off to the side.

We’d have to talk about Cradle at some point too. Deciphering that.

Foil’s family situation had gotten other people caught up in it. That explained a bit of March’s fixation or degree of blame, maybe. Or the worship, if March saw Foil as responsible for vanquishing their attacker. Or something.

“I always wondered if my sister was on something, or if she was under the effect of a power, or if she was just that angry. They were supposed to do a full autopsy and send things in to get checked—it was even a request of mine, when I joined the Wards. If they ever figured it out, they didn’t tell me. All I ever heard was that it was still in the works, there was a backlog, the department didn’t see it as a priority. It stung. A small part of my reason for wanting to get out of New York was to get away from the dynamic where I was just another face in a very crowded department. Of course, I picked Brockton Bay, and we all know how that went.”

Foil was fixated on her end of the trigger, but I was left to consider March’s. Thinker triggers were hard, because they took place in a person’s head. What served for one person to trigger might not work for another. The only evidence available would be the course of action before, and the course of action after.

“Power involvement would complicate things,” I said. “And explain things. Like your power’s tendency to go through anything, not just through things.”

Foil nodded. “I’ve talked about that with some power testing people. They didn’t talk about the thinker side of it though.”

“What was your first meeting?” I asked.

“She joined a villain group my Wards team was already dealing with. Low-level, nonviolent, safe enough that our bosses were okay letting us try. She made them more effective and she blew up enough things that our bosses withdrew that permission. We moved on to another sanctioned target, and March joined them.”

“After you from the beginning.”

Foil nodded. “She would disappear for months at a time, then show up with friends. What got me was that I was trying to treat the cape stuff like a career, right from the start. Getting away from… from whatever pulled my sister down. For March, it was always a game. Not the usual way, where it’s a specific meta-approach to crime and criminality. Like an actual game.”

“Sometimes you have to approach it that way,” Candy said. “The worse something is, the more you have to treat it like it’s nothing.”

“Yeah,” Foil said. “It’s just fucked up when she ropes me and Parian into it. Or the other Undersiders. Or civilians.”