March hung back, waiting for Foil to get back to her feet. She glanced back at Tori, head tilted.

“I’m not going to end it there, but I am going to allow it. It’s fair play. You involve her, she involves you. Speaking of…” March said. Her sword flicked to one side.

Wind stirred a bit of snow around them.

Foil glowered, hand gripping her weapon’s handle.

“You did something clever. Did you assassinate my Megacluster?” March asked, voice light. She laughed. “No. I don’t think you could have. But you have a friend.”

“I hate that laugh.”

“You’re going to hear it again, you know. I adore this. This is what it’s all about, my dear. We lead lives that are nasty in the best way, brutish in the bloodiest way, and short in my case, because I’m just a little bit vertically challenged. Then we’re together forever.”

“You’ve said something like that before.”

“You know this, Foil,” March said. “Deep down inside. You feel hate because it’s a close emotion to love. But we are connected. We’re inexorably intertwined, in power, in mind, and maybe, hopefully, in body. You know that we’re going to end up together in the same way that you know how to put power into that metal rapier of yours, or you know how to move to utilize your enhanced accuracy.”

“Delusion,” Foil said.

“Reality! More real than any of this! I’ve seen it, how do you think I know cluster triggers as well as I do? I’ve seen the network, the landscape, and how it all fits together. I’ve seen the spots that are reserved for us. Homer’s already there. When all’s said and done, that’s where we go. To spend a few aeons talking and intertwining until we dissolve into a greater consciousness.”

Foil stopped, her rapier dropping a fraction.

Tori sank lower, head down. Her heart plummeted.

“It’s glorious.”

“That sounds like a nightmare.”

“You’ll see,” March said. “There’s nothing you can do to change it. It’s inevitable. You, me, Homer, together for a long enough time it might as well be forever.”

More snow blew. Foil threw a nail. March deflected it.

“Come on, don’t be childish,” March chided.

“If that’s true, then I can’t kill you,” Foil said. “I’ll have to trap you somewhere else, in another state.”

“Even Gray Boy’s famous bubbles will only last ten thousand years or so,” March said. “I asked when we were working on the ways to break the time effects. That’s like delaying an eighty year marriage by two days.”

Foil’s neck was rigid, hand clenching her weapon.

“Then…” Foil said, and she was clearly floundering. “Then I have to destroy you.”

“That—”