A dry chuckle can be heard over the tinny speakers. Condescension is the last thing he'd expect from a puppet of Tattltales. Not conclusive evidence, but rather suggestive. Relatable too.

"We make do with the tools available to us."

Well, that didn't land. Apparently Coil just does not know what he has. He needs to lower his estimation of the man if he wants reliable predictions of his actions.

(This reduction in his respect for Coil is probably visible to Tattletale.)

"That is one option, certainly."

"Mmm?"

"When faced with resources insufficient for your task, you have three choices. Gather more resources, change your task, or fail. I dislike failing, myself. It's very hard to survive doing it very often, even for the best."

"I can empathize, though I've found changing the temperament of some of my employees to be ... more trouble than it's worth."

He's not sure how to respond to the implied threat.

'He's ignoring the threat, defaulting to thinking of this timeline as not mattering, doesn't take consequences in throwaway timelines seriously.' she reports.

Ah. ... Coil is a fool. A picture of his psychology is starting to come together. He is afraid, but fear is not his master, pride is; he is a man who does not change himself except faced with the cudgel of power. The Tyrant must either submit to his pride, and allow him to rule over him until the moment the bullet can strike... or else terrify him into submission. He knows which one he prefers.

"No, your preferred strategy is different," he agrees. "Your strategy is to fail, and fail, and fail again, and finally ascend to victory atop a mountain of your own corpses, confident that no wound they ever suffer will harm the real you. Or am I mistaken?"

"Mostly the corpses of others, unacceptable collateral, rather than my own." Coil replies, stiffly.

How blatant does the Tyrant need to be about his threats? He would have thought that professional supervillains would be better at recognizing when someone knows all their secrets and is threatening to use them to destroy them.

... Coil doesn't like giving in to threats. Doesn't fit his model. But - 

- there's something there. Somewhere to lean in - Coil needs information, craves it - he's powerless when ignorant and hates being powerless -

"Oh no," the Tyrant says. "Do you think that if, say, you found yourself trapped by Simurgh-song in one time, you could escape to the other so easily? If Heartbreaker or Mathers had a word with you? I am neither Master nor Stranger, but this is not a conversation with you that I will have twice."

Coil tenses.

"And why is that?"

Fear. Fear in ignorance and fear in the knowledge that he isn't invincible, that - 

- That his power has limits, his power he already used on the Tyrant -

"I'm very insightful," he says drily. "We are talking here because your attempts to murder me, spy on me, kidnap me, and generally remove me from the board are growing tiresome, Coil, and I am prepared to try talking once, because murdering people who annoy me is generally a waste of my extremely valuable time, but in the event that we meet again after having talked before I will be able to tell the difference. Let this one go, Coil. Some fights you just can't win."

There's a pause on the other end as Coil evaluates his options. The fact that the Morgan was able to determine what happened in the prior timelines lends credence to his claims, and is worrisome to say the least.

He could bet that Morgan is bluffing, end this timeline, and make further attempts in new timelines to test the man's claim of being able to deduce what had happened previously in other timelines. However, if Morgan isn't bluffing than doing so would cut off all chance of negotiation. What Coil really needs hasn't actually changed - information.

"It seems you have me at something of disadvantage - I know far less about you than you about me. Hardly the sort of grounds on which to start a negotiation."

'Nervous that you're not bluffing but isn't sure. I bet he'd give in if more scared.'

Don't give him any information. Information makes him feel safe. Ignorance makes him afraid.

The Tyrant laughs. "You're in over your head, Coil. You're swimming well, but there's bigger fish in the sea than you - as you know." This isn't the first time Coil has had a conversation like this one. He's been rattled before, he's been shaken before, he's been bludgeoned with threats into backing down before, and the Tyrant is almost certain it was since he got superpowers. (If he's wrong, he'll never know.) "Leave me be, and I will have no need to pay you any further heed."

... That's unmistakably a Cauldron reference.

A few things snap into place. A year ago he'd discovered Battery had received her powers from the same secretive organization as him. He'd taken the opportunity to investigate the source, kidnapping Battery and having Tattletale interrogate her, hoping to cross reference Battery's experiences with his own to learn more about the mysterious organization to which he still owed a week of service.

Minutes into the interrogation he'd received an email requesting he stop the investigation in his safe timeline. It had been the only instance he'd encountered of someone breeching the boundaries of his timelines, until today when this mysterious new Thinker has done the same.

He'd stopped trying to gather information after that, resigning himself to waiting till he had gained more power, and especially more Thinkers, however undignified it may be to be in the dark. 

There's a long pause as Coil thinks.

'Holy shit you hit a nerve. Not sure what - can you get more of a reaction out of him?' asks Tattletale.

"Leave my town and my work alone, Coil, and we need have no further words." He pauses. "Keep the timeline."

And then he drops the phone and crushes it under his boot very, very thoroughly, until any bug of any noticeable size will be ground into dust.

The bug was purely digital, which Tattletale would tell him were she not bending over and trying not to let her head spin too badly from the combination of adrenaline and oncoming Thinker migraine.

"Need an Asprin?"

'Yeah, though I have a bit till the migraine hits properly I think.'

Oh wait she can talk aloud now.

"Bet I could have gotten who you reminded him of if you kept him on."

"Oh, I think it went well enough. At some point if I'd kept on he would have noticed what I wasn't saying. - One moment."

And he will go inside and get her asprin and a cup of water to drink it with.