...OK then?

Man, that was the weirdest recruitment attempt ever. And apparently she's stuck with some kind of stalker now??? Fuck, maybe she'd better exaggerate to Krieg so he scares Cam off properly.

"...so he basically said, being a cape's dangerous, I should go with him. Wouldn't say where to, of course, but he's gonna be big as Eidolon, give me anything I want, blah blah blah. And he's going to keep stalking me, and reading everything I write in case I write something to him, in case I ever change my mind. Wouldn't say why me. D'you think my parents hired him or something?"

"I vill look into it. Zank you for reporting zis."

If Cam's a threat to Rune in particular, that makes him less of one to the Empire as a whole, so Kaiser can leave the matter be for now. Let the Clans handle their own problems.

Well, he'd better not start anything it would be a disaster to interrupt, then.

He can eradicate malaria real quick though, that'll take care of itself once it's underway. He flies to its relevant locations.

Nobody stops him from doing so! 

(That's not to say nobody notices him, assuming he flies in a not-deliberately-stealthy shuttle and not under his own power.)

It is actually pretty stealthy but only against, like, the kinds of things people do to monitor flying objects in 2179, which is an almost totally disjoint set from the things powers do in this alternate past.

While he's in transit and making the engineered mosquitoes, he's trying to figure out whether he actually needs Protectorate assistance in any way to do private sector "cape" medical technology within North America.

There are people whose job it is to monitor airspace! (Among the many, many, many jobs that she has.) 

And she is very good at her job.

There's no law that says he needs to work with the Protectorate to do anything! The Protectorate is just very, very good at navigating the laws and bureaucracy that regulate commercial parahuman activity, and it is happy to help parahumans who cooperate with it.

As to the actual law, well, NEPEA-5 was written with the express aim of driving capes out of business and into the Protectorate's arms. And it absolutely worked as advertised! (Don't ask us about any collateral or counterfactual costs.) It is broadly speaking illegal, without government registration-and-licensing giving explicit approval, for capes to:

1. Benefit commercially from their powers, in a way that materially hurts either the bargaining power of human labor or the pricing power of companies employing human labour. (There is an explicit carveout for non-profits.)

2. Use powers to predict or affect markets (broadly defined) to their own or someone else's benefit.

3. Offer products or services which do not or cannot provide the same legal assurances as would be required from human-produced equivalents. For example, a Tinkertech radio cannot be sold because no human can certify that it obeys FCC regulations. A Tinkertech factory producing (ordinary, non-Tinkertech) cement cannot sell it because no human can certify that the production process conforms to EPA emissions regulations. Et cetera.

4. Claim to customers (or to the courts) that a power-produced product or service definitely does or does not have some quality that no human can verify. For example, you cannot take people's money in exchange for foretelling the future with your Thinker powers.

5. Use powers to fulfill a legal obligation in a way that no human can verify. For example, if the law requires a transcript of some conversation, you can't use a Tinkertech transcribing device; you have to employ a human secretary. If the government requires you to file five hundred pages of forms, you can't use your Thinker powers to fill them in while watching TV and then sign at the bottom.

And so on, and so forth.

That is, you can't do any of those things unless you work with or for the Protectorate, because they're a government organization (not to mention a paramilitary one) and so have all the necessary exceptions written into their establishing act.

And absolutely none of that matters! Dealing with NEPEA-5 licensing is playing on easy mode.

Even normal humans can't sell or give away private-sector medical technology without our permission.

Is Canada better? Is... anywhere with a language he speaks better. He is not, to Rune's presumable annoyance, racist.

As far as the laws go, almost everywhere is similarly restricted. Some countries' equivalent agencies are much more straightforward to navigate, but nowhere lets you do stuff while ignoring them entirely.

At least, as far as the official laws state. Some countries have a rather loose relationship between the laws as written and reality on the ground. (Whether one counts the United States among these is a matter of degree and patriotism.) Some countries don't really have governments anymore, just warlords claiming territory, in which case law as a concept isn't really relevant. Some countries' executives are much more capable and willing to override the normal regulatory agency if you appeal to them directly, but they tend to be the same ones that conscript all capes deny entry to foreign parahumans... The fine details are harder to conjure unless he is willing to spend much more time per country.

(There are places in Brockton Bay where he can give out medicine to the locals and be absolutely safe! From the FDA, at least.

There is also a legal pharmaceuticals company in the Bay, fully inspected and licensed by the government. It's called Medhall. The Empire upholds law and order, you see. If he works through Medhall, they would be delighted to deal with the bureaucracy for him!)

How's the situation in international waters / airspace?

A ship (or airship, et cetera) is bound by the laws of the nation whose flag it flies. A 'stateless' ship can, in principle, be boarded by the navy of any state (also by pirates), although normally people won't bother to without a reason. Nationals of states who visit such a ship are still bound by the laws of their respective countries; medical devices and pharmaceuticals they bring back home with them must pass border inspection and, if not licensed in that country, attempting to introduce them carries various penalties. They would also need to get to that ship in the first place, which only rich people can afford.

Also, people have been leery of air and sea travel lately, has Cam read about that yet?

The impression he got was that Endbringers hit cities, do they take potshots at vehicles out to lay undersea cables or enable businessmen to travel from L.A. to Tokyo?

Nnnnnot normally but, y'know, it's quite a bit scary?

Cam can try this and see how many people take him up on it!

Maybe. Not right away. What's the nonprofit carveout like?

That one clause does not apply to companies registered under IRS section 501(c) and their employees, and to individual parahumans who are not working in association with or to the benefit of any company and do not accept any remuneration for their services. The other clauses still apply though; you can't give out free tinkertech electric appliances.

This whole system is really set up to drive anybody who wants to do anything into the arms of the Protectorate. ...is Toybox legal?

Toybox are not prima facie illegal. They're an informal association of people, not a registered company, so you have to consider each of their members and actions independently, and being Tinkers they mostly build one-off projects to order. Most of the things they've sold in the past were in fact illegal, but (apparently) not dangerous enough for them to be labeled a high-priority target by the PRT. In any case, they certainly don't have any kind of certification positively allowing them to do anything the law forbids by default.

It's like they just want it to be possible to nail anyone they take a dislike to. Maybe literally that's the motive.

Sigh. Which PRT office has the least smarmy public communications from its point person for new capes?

They're all using the same copypasted PR comms material.

The PRT has dozens of branches across the US, as well as several in Canada. Bigger branches correspond to bigger cities (Brockton Bay is something of an exception) and have correspondingly more budget and more, stronger and better-known capes assigned to them. Capes who want to work with the PRT and don't care about location usually choose based on which capes their power might synergize with, or that they're fans of (or want to avoid).

The biggest branches are located in:

- New York, with its capes led by Legend, overall head of the Protectorate

- Houston, led by Eidolon

- Los Angeles, led by Alexandria, completing the informal 'Triumvirate' of the most powerful capes who founded the Protectorate back in 1993

- Chicago, led by Myrrdin

- Las Vegas, led by Satyr

- Brockton Bay, led by Armsmaster

Cam might or might not synergize with Tinkers. What's a bit of low-risk Tinkery something he can create while over the Atlantic and out of the way of anyone who might find this information alarming?