"...wait, that might work," Lisa said, suddenly.

"Huh?" Taylor asked.

"Never you mind," Lisa replied, grabbing a phone. She rummaged in a drawer, taking out a SIM card, then swapped it into the phone and dialled a number. "Oh, yeah, and you can listen in, but don't say anything."

Mystified, Taylor sat back, and a moment later Lisa's call connected.

"Hi, I just want to make sure I've got the right number?" Lisa asked. "Who am I speaking to?"

There was a pause, then Lisa nodded slightly.

"Great," she said. "I want to call in a tip about someone in Brockton Bay who's been amassing a private army of armed mercenaries. That sounds expensive to me."

Another pause.

"Yeah, I know, but that's the thing. They don't have jurisdiction. He's not actually got powers."

Taylor looked up, startled, and Lisa put a finger to her lips.

"The local PRT's kind of overloaded," she said. "But, like I say, that's not their jurisdiction anyway. He's just a guy with a small mercenary army in a US city."

Another pause.

"I don't know where exactly but it's somewhere underground?" she said, then snapped the battery out of the phone.

Taking out the SIM card, Lisa broke it in half and dropped it into the trash.

"...uh," Taylor began. "Is that actually going to work?"

Lisa shrugged.

"No idea, but it's going to be a laugh if it does."

"...there must be some kind of mistake, officer," Calvert said, about three weeks later.

"Really?" asked one of the officers, with some sarcasm. "So you've got a perfectly reasonable explanation for why you have two hundred and fourteen million dollars in assets on a salary of seventy-five thousand a year?"

"Good stock investments," Calvert replied. "But you don't have jurisdiction in any case."

"Mr. Calvert, you are mistaken, and we're going to have to take you in," the officer replied. "The Securities and Exchange Commission is going to be investigating you on suspicion of insider trading. In addition, the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has a few important questions about how you obtained your stockpile of weapons. But in our case the primary concern is that you've not paid any of the income tax you would legally be required to pay on the income required to gain your two hundred and fourteen million dollar assets, in addition to paying for the equipment necessary to arm your private army. The Internal Revenue Service has reason to believe you are seriously delinquent on your taxes."

Calvert frowned. "Wait," he said. "You're… not PRT?"

"You're not a parahuman," the officer replied. "You're just a man with a suit with a snake on it."

"No, I am a parahuman," Calvert protested. "My identity as Coil is legally distinct from my identity as Thomas Calvert. So you don't have jurisdiction."

The other officer laughed. "Weren't you saying the opposite a minute ago?"

"More to the point," the first officer added. "If you have powers, go ahead and demonstrate them."

Calvert twitched, because in his other timeline the FBI had just come into the base and shots were being fired.

This could be a major problem.

"That… might be difficult," he said. "I don't suppose you've got a coin I can flip? I can guarantee heads on every coin flip…"

"Oh, it's a probability one?" the second officer said. "That's a NEPEA-5 violation for stock market manipulation, Mr. Calvert. Oh dear, you seem to be in trouble no matter how this goes, don't you?"

"...well, so much for that experiment," Rebecca Costa-Brown said, some minutes later. "Did it actually tell us anything?"

"It told us that people who want to set themselves up as parahuman dictators might end up relying on their power too much," Doctor Mother said.

Then she frowned.

"We may need to get Contessa to actually explain the main Path at some point."

AN:

At least he didn't commit mail fraud.