(no subject)

[evowhisperer]

  

-----

"Stand aside, please, I'm a doctor!"

 

Chaos. Pure, grainy, cheaply recorded chaos. The cellphone trembles violently with its owner's hands, and frightened shouting in Spanish from all around threatens to drown out the wails of a child. The dirty sidewalk is no place to treat the wounded.

 

The seven people bleeding out on the ground may not be alive to care, soon. The child screaming at a young couple's side is unhurt, but rightfully frightened.

 

Several someones pass in front of the camera. The owner moves to the side, and a loud male voice blares out, 'Are they alright? Are they alright?' when no one answers. The owner continues to move, and a frilly sleeve is pushed out of the way.

 

There's a man in a white labcoat kneeling over one of the bodies, pressing a cloth flat against a puddle of red.

 

'Hey, are they going to survive?'  the phone owner repeats. The doctor snags the cuff of someone standing too close, and orders them to keep pressing down. They step forward with shaking hands and kneel also, and soon the doctor stands and moves on.

 

Someone's voice is rising and falling hysterically. There's shouting about police, and an ambulance. The camera turns to look, but it doesn't seem that either have arrived, and when it looks back several people have begun to grab shirts from the store's open sidewalk display, following the doctor's example. 

 

The doctor is wearing a large woman's hat with a tag sticking out of it, now, conspicuously snatched from a knocked-over shelf. He's facing a direction that would normally let the camera see his profile, but the hat is big enough to hide all but his neck. He slows as he reaches a body that stares vacantly away--it's not the first he would've reached, but it is the first the camera has seen--and moves on.

 

Finally, there's the body that no one seems ready to approach, curled up and with its back to the crowd. Broken glass litters the ground around it, and when the doctor pushes it onto its back, he kicks a gun further out of reach.

 

Someone passes in front of the camera. "Hey..." The owner complains. No response, and the owner moves around. "Hey, why's he helping that fucker when there's people here who need help?"

 

The doctor's back is to the camera. It's impossible to see what he's doing until he glances towards the crowd, loops the hat's strap tightly around his jaw, and starts CPR.

 

No one stops or helps him. The camera continues to watch, eventually panning over the wounded, and the unhurt victims still milling around. Someone shouts about the police again, and more people are kneeling over the wounded victim's bodies, pressing down more cloth. The child has climbed into a sitting woman's lap, face buried in her hair.

One of makeshift medics calls out to the doctor tearfully, but they are ignored.

 

There's an outcry. The camera snaps back to the doctor, who's lifting his head from the shooter's chest, pushing down arms that have begun to move sluggishly. More shouting, with more than a couple of screams. The crowd is starting to shuffle back, and the doctor throws up a blood-soaked hand, shouting urgent assurances. The camera glimpses part of his face, and he's young, and very clearly aware of the new dangers--both from revived shooter, and the crowd.

 

"He's not armed!" Triple checking. The doctor kneels on his wrist, shifting the man to check underneath. Quadruple checking. "He has no more weapons! He's unconscious!"

 

The shooter's eyes are glazed but open, and the confusion in the crowd eddies and swirls. Before anyone can do anything, there's armed men in uniforms of the law shoving through the crowd, taking control of the situation. The crowd's din reaches a new high, and the man with the camera is forced back. It becomes impossible to see anything else, as people move back and shake the camera every which way.

 

There's only a glimpse left of the doctor left in the clip, and it's from one last ditch effort. The phone gets held high in the air, and it shows a white coat turned to one of the uniforms, hands forward, bloody, and earnestly reassuring.

 

The clip cuts out.

 

Comments

[evowhisperer]

The other man has to type to log in to the network, and it's the only chance Caesar's going to get. He eases a hand behind his coat, draws a taser, and strikes.

Caesar isn't a fighter. That's never stopped him from trying: he commits fully to the motion, making sure that no tiny stumble might accidentally bring the man out of his reach. It should be easy: the man is a mortician, and a twig besides.

[dead_black_eyes]

L wonders idly if it's going to be as easy as forcing the man to admit that he has no inbox and that there's nothing for him to bring up, thus catching him in a shame-faced lie. He has to admit that this outcome, while pretty neatly open and closed, is on the dull side.

Come on. At least put up a little bit of a fight, it's human nature to struggle a little bit when you're cornered.

And you are cornered, Doctor.

He braces a foot against the tile floor when he glimpses Caesar's subtle movement as he fluidly logs into the system. He tenses his thighs and shifts his weight as the man barrels towards him, doubtless relying on what he has in size and conditioning that L-the-twiggy-mortician so clearly lacks. It's underestimation that he usually counts on, in situations like these.

Thank you for making this interesting.

He's quicker than he looks, and far stronger; in a balanced, informed and fair fight, Caeser would probably win, but it's always to L's advantage not to fight that way. He dodges aside, unexpectedly nimble for a guy with his posture and build, following through on the momentum required to drop kick his would-be assailant with a sweeping roundhouse intended to knock Caesar's legs out from under him.

From there, the priority is disarming him, which means locating that taser and knocking it out of the floored doctor's reach.

"I lied... I do bite," he admits breathlessly, pinning Caesar with a knee to his sternum.

[evowhisperer]

It happens too fast to be anything but a spectator. L darts away from the taser's path. Cesar's feet fly out from under him, and the floor whirls and slams up to meet him, clipping the computer table and leaving him on his back and wondering how to breath.

He grasps his hand, but it's empty. He doesn't know where his taser is. There's something on his other side, and Caesar snatches up the fallen keyboard, chopping at L's neck with the elegance of a lumberjack. The kneecap is grinding against sensitive pressure points, but this is no time to flinch.

If he can, he'll take the moment to surge away from L, pushing him while he's off balance. This is an artless struggle for escape, on is part. Perhaps even survival, though that desperation hasn't quite sunk in yet. He's still thinking too much, and it's hurting his ability to fight.

[dead_black_eyes]

What L lacks in sheer strength and weight he makes up for in leverage he knows how to use. He braces against the assailing keyboard, turning so his shoulder takes the brunt of it. There's very little to cushion it; L's body is spare and not well-equipped to withstand heavy blows, but the keyboard simply doesn't have enough mass to do more than bruise him, and the blow lacks focus. Caesar is flailing and disorganized in his approach.

He's light enough that the attempt to push him and power out from under him is somewhat more successful, and he topples sideways. He scrambles to regain his balance, adapting gamely, able to maneuver close enough to attempt gripping the other man in a headlock.

He is not much of a wrestler, but if he lets Caesar go, he recognizes that he might run, which would require him to give chase... and he is less of a runner.

[evowhisperer]

Caesar manages to scramble to all fours before L's cord-like arms snake around his neck. It's an immediate emergency, and it all but stops his progress. He reaches one arm to try to leverage them to his feet with a table, but he can't breath, and L knows exactly how to lean to make the weight shift all but impossible.

Here's where the differences in skills becomes critical. The fastest way to break the hold would be to curl an arm around L's neck, or attack his face while Caesar knows where it is. Unfortunately, Caesar has never tried to solve this problem before, and especially not while a haze of adrenaline floods his system, numbing his thoughts and resorting him to fight or flight. His hands cling instinctively to L's arm, trying to muscle his way out of the grip. Now he finally frees an arm, but at this point L can just duck the reaching hand, and shift with any backwards hits.

He can't breath. His head is pounding, and this fear is a vicious stranger. He gets stronger from the chemical rush, but even stupider than before: He reaches for the table again, forcing himself up on one foot, and tries to swing L off.

He can't seem to manage it, and he doesn't know why.

There's weapons all around. Caesar's head turns towards the nearest counter, and he takes a step.

[dead_black_eyes]

L grits his teeth, clinging to the bigger and stronger man as he attempts to rise. It takes quite a bit of effort to prevent his lanky, 110-pound frame from being easily lifted off the ground, which is why it is paramount that he make as much of his weight as possible completely dead. It pays off; Caesar can't use the table to bring himself to his feet, and L retains the advantage.

As Caesar clings, he tightens his hold, bracing for attempts to scratch or gouge at his skin. Instead, the other man just attempts to pry him off, and is unsuccessful.

Caeser is stronger, though, and L just has time to kick away the taser even further out of reach when he staggers up and attempts to swing him off. L might look just like a scarecrow, but he is slightly more substantial than one, and manages to retain his hold... and begin to guess what the doctor's next plan of action might be.

Bitch, you are NOT going to put a trocar in me.

He tightens his hold, squeezing with intent to cut off Caeser's blood supply to his brain and cause him to black out, and at that point it becomes a race between the man's continued consciousness and L's limited but determined strength.

[evowhisperer]

Caesar reaches, but he's already running on next to no oxygen in his lungs, and it's overwhelming with this much exertion. It's harder than ever to do anything but pry and scratch at the sleeve around his throat, and he forces one arm towards the tube-like weapon. The hand waves aimlessly, falling short.

His knees hit the ground.

Blood roars in his ears. Pure, mindless panic is setting in, but so is weakness, and his struggles are becoming sluggish. In a last-ditch change in tact, he lets himself crumple to the floor, doing his best to land heavily on L. He can see the taser from here. It's across the room, and far out of reach. He pulls frantically at the front of his coat finding--a pen?

He grabs it and stabs it as hard as he can into the thigh behind him, but the pen falls from his grip. He's gaping like a fish on land, and darkness is rushing in to the edges of his vision. Will he wake up dead? He's going to die.

Cesar's struggles slide more and more into the stillness of unconsciousness, and through the rictus of a grimace from the struggle is... regret.

[dead_black_eyes]

That would hurt, even if he only managed to stab the detective sans entrail-liquefying blades and suction capabilities. L is highly motivated to avoid any application of the instrument while it's in the hands of a panicked non-professional person of interest, and fortunately, his efforts pay off. Caeser is losing coordination as his consciousness begins to fade, his knees buckle, and even though he lands heavily on the smaller and lighter man, he manages, even now, to keep his hold tight and firm.

The blunt sting of a pen jabbing into his leg would be far more distracting if Caeser wasn't more far gone, but he's slipping fast. It's fortunate, because strength and effort are both finite and L is approaching the limit of his. Had he ended up beneath Caeser at an earlier point in this struggle, it would have spelled disaster, and he would be the one unconscious or worse.

When he's sure that the other man is out, he doesn't hold any longer; this is already a dangerous way to incapacitate someone, and furthering the risk of death or brain damage is hardly conducive to his goals. He pushes Caeser off him, turning the man over and cuffing his hands behind his back. Then he touches an earpiece, one that's been present the whole time, hidden by his shaggy dark hair.

"Watari, everything's all set. They can come in now."

The words have scarcely been spoken when L's task force warily enters the morgue, staring at the evidence of quite the scuffle.

"Wow, Ryuzaki..." Matsuda comments. "If we'd known it would be this much trouble, we would have come in sooner to help."

"It was no trouble," L replies briskly, brushing off his lab coat. "Transporting him to the interrogation facility alone would have been, though. Pat him down and make sure he's in the back of a secure cruiser with tinted windows, if you would."

[evowhisperer]

Darkness.

Waking up is a sluggish, painful affair. His head is pounding, and his tongue feels thick, and parched dry. Swallowing makes it worse: his throat aches more than it's ever hurt before. He wonders what's happened. Is he sitting up? Did he fall asleep at his desk, somehow without a keyboard for a pillow?

He cracks his eyes open. He's staring down, head slumped forward while the rest of him relaxes against the ropes keeping him in place.

... Ropes?

Whoever he is, he's no trained agent: the idea of playing possum until he knows more about his surroundings has clearly not occurred to him, and he tugs at his bonds with no attempt at subterfuge. He tugs harder. His head hurts even more.

He stops.

The room is white, with its only feature being a single camera positioned directly in front of him, watching him struggle. The bottom drops out of his stomach, and cold dread oozes through his veins. This is right up there with his own personal worst-case scenarios, and it hits him that no one is going to notice he's missing, and no one's coming after him. He's alone.

So much for keeping calm.

He swallows again and starts to speak, and is relieved that after some initial hoarseness, his voice doesn't sound worse than he would with a bad hangover.

"Hello?"

English. Should he have used Spanish? Wait--he was last in Japan, wasn't he? Who are his captors, and what language do they speak?

[dead_black_eyes]

Today, L has opted to remain within the facility, rather than go back to his hotel and remotely monitor proceedings carried out by Watari. If the Doctor cracks quickly, there won't be a need for such drastic measures, and L is all about efficiency. He sits on the other side of that camera, a mere room away, preparing to fully view his attacker and draw all of his secrets out into the great wide open.

Caesar's clothes are gone; in their place, he'll find himself wearing a simple hospital gown, the manner that opens in front and fastens at the sides. He's restrained, tied to a weighted chair, and care has been taken to ensure that his arms and legs are thoroughly pinned. The white room is lit too brightly and fluorescently for comfort, and it is also just a touch on the chilly side, enough to raise goosebumps and make a subject shiver.

"Hello," an amplified voice answers, scrambled through several filters and completely indistinguishable as old or young, male or female. The language is English, the cadence clipped and precise. "In your words, tell me why you think you're here."

[evowhisperer]

Why he thinks he's...? Caesar swallows again, glancing around. The voice didn't come from the camera, but he doesn't see a speaker. It's a head game, he knows, but he still can't help but want at least that one detail explained, like a mosquito hovering just far enough out of reach but still audible. He glances at the ceiling.

Deny everything.

"I attacked a mortician who worked at a morgue that housed the cadavers gathered from a high profile case." Probably the ceiling. It's cold. They don't know what they don't know, and Caesar doesn't want to give anything until he knows how much they know.

"We struggled. I lost."

All truth. Technically.

[dead_black_eyes]

The trick to successful interrogation (one of many that L has picked up over his many years with his title) is to make the person under the bright lights believe that there isno upward limit to the information his captors already had.

I already know everything, but you can't go until I hear you say it.

"Had you seen that man before? What reason did you have to attack him? Surveillance shows that he was there, doing his job, with proper access codes. The attack appeared utterly unprovoked."

Nothing, yet, about the items in Caesar's pockets, or the fact that the morgue did not have him on record as an employee or a contact.

[evowhisperer]

He shakes his head.

"It was unprovoked. I wasn't supposed to be there, and I was hoping I could detain him and get out quickly. In hindsight it was..." A total catastrophe? "... poorly thought out."

Truth. If the attack appeared unprovoked, then they've spoken with the mortician. There might have even been security footage. He can't be sure.

[dead_black_eyes]

It rather is the understatement of the century, and the way Aizawa snorts in disgust just over L's hunched shoulder expresses just how he feels about it. He can't say so out loud, but he still can't believe that the scrawny detective actually went to the lengths he did to personally go after the doctor. Impersonating a fictional college student is one thing, but the more time he's spending on this investigation, the more he's learning about how nothing seems to be too much when it comes to L's cases. Frankly, he's not quite sure how he feels about that.

L turns on the microphone and the voice scrambler again, ignoring Aizawa and addressing Caesar again.

"If you cooperate fully, as you seem to be, we'll do everything we can to work with you," he says, making it sound as reassuring as a scrambled monotone possibly can. "There are a lot of reasons to visit a morgue without authorization, so what was yours?"

The second his fingers are off the switch broadcasting his voice, Aizawa snorts again. "Could you cut that out?"

"What, Mr. Aizawa?"

"That implication. You keep doing it and it's bothering me."

"I'm afraid I have no idea what you're referring to."

"There's no way you don't know what you're doing. The morgue stuff, the bodies, 'many reasons...'" he lets a twisted expression of disgust say the rest for him.

L just gives him a blank, bored expression. "That's a serious crime, Mr. Aizawa. It's probably best not to joke about it."

Aizawa stiffens and his hands clench; Matsuda, out of view of L, shakes his head back and forth wildly and makes a warning, cut-it-out motion with both hands.

[evowhisperer]

For a moment the higher distortions in the camera's voice sound stronger than the lower, and Caesar knows he's hearing someone else's words through them. 'Help us, Caesar, and we'll help you.'.

The Black Knight isn't here. That doesn't mean that people like her don't exist everywhere. Caesar has worked with this before, and he straightens in his chair, attention narrowing to a single focus.

"I knew that the most recent cadavers of Kira's victims were at the morgue. I was curious, and hoped that they would have clues that others might have missed."

There are too many ways that this could go disastrously wrong. Most people would dither and hesitate, but Caesar isn't most people. This is all familiar in its own way, isn't it? Like chemical reactions, catalysts and products... If he plays this right, it could even be a good thing that he was captured. 'Mutually beneficial' indeed.

[dead_black_eyes]

L's nonexistent brows shoot up. "Well then," he comments to his task force, taking care that Caesar can't hear him.

Soichiro pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose as he leans closer to the screen showing them the captive, restrained man. "Ryuzaki, what do you think the chances are that he's lying?"

"He doesn't seem like he is," L admits, tugging at his lower lip with his thumb. "This is highly unusual... most people at least initially try to sound innocent, or like they're detained on false charges, or something, but... he's almost being too cooperative."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Matsuda asks. "If he isn't lying, and he's giving us good information... it means that he knows something about Kira that we don't!"

L seems to entertain that for a moment, before he switches his microphone back on so that Caesar can again hear his scrambled voice. "The IDs that were on your person say that your name is Cesar Sanchez. That being said, there's no record of your fingerprints in any database on earth. In fact, we've been able to find precious little about you. Where are you from?"

Matsuda starts speaking, but immediately stops when L shoots him a glare. He averts his eyes, waiting for L to turn off the microphone again.

"R-Ryuzaki, why aren't you asking him about the computer phone?"

"It's definitely slick. He might have built it himself, but... let me handle this, Matsuda."

[evowhisperer]

They--didn't take the bait? Worse, they lept straight for a direction that could run him straight into the ground. He had answers, but they only led so far... No one knew more than him how little he'd really been able to do to establish himself in this world.

Hopefully his luck wouldn't give out too soon.

"Argentina." Denmark, actually. "My passport is back in my hotel room, at the Imperial."

[dead_black_eyes]

Ah. There it is. A jaded half-smile tugs at the corner of L's mouth; something about this hasn't gone as Cesar Sanchez had hoped, and it means that there might be room for questions he wouldn't have thought to ask before.

"Is this verifiable? I can send someone to the Imperial and they can bring it back, if you give me your room number. That's really the thing, Mr. Sanchez... helping you means that we need to know who you are, as completely as possible, even if you've taken steps to obfuscate that in any way."

[evowhisperer]

Ah, well, shit.

"Sorry for the confusion." A fake, polite smile. "My things are in room twenty-three oh five, in downtown Tokyo. You'll find my passport, and it has my real name."

The name he put more effort into establishing, but not much. He was never supposed to come under scrutiny. Can he really say that he's confident it will hold up against these professionals?

"It's Caesar Salazar."

And it is, both in reality and on paper. The passport is modeled after one of his real ones (left back at his lab), and everything but the date and place of birth was held constant. He has no idea how it will be received. He has no idea if the passport designs even looked the same, over the years.

Caesar seems slightly apologetic for blatantly forging identification and breaking into a morgue and attacking the mortician on duty. A faint sheen of sweat has appeared at his temples, and there's stress lines around his eyes.

[dead_black_eyes]

"It's no trouble. Thank you for being forthcoming.

L switches off the microphone, grinding his teeth only slightly. "Watari, I need you to start running a background check on 'Caesar Salazar' right away."

"Already doing so," the old man at another computer station replies crisply.

"At least we have a control now, for seeing when he's lying and when he's not," Aizawa shrugs, exchanging glances with Mogi.

"No, it's not so simple," L replies. "All it establishes is that he's a pretty good liar. It could just be because the names are similar enough that it seems like a minor variance to him, but... in my experience, people who can lie convincingly about the small things don't have a much of a problem with the bigger ones." He turns. "Mogi, Downtown Tokyo. Room 2305, at the Imperial. Please search it thoroughly and bring back everything you find, not just the passport."

"On it," Mogi nods, turning toward the door.

L turns on the microphone and scrambler again.

"Your actions indicate that you have taken a personal interest in the Kira killings. Are you afraid that Kira would see your actions as an affront to his goal of wiping out criminals? Do you have any strong feelings about Kira, in general?"

[evowhisperer]

"There's no other way to take my recent actions except as an affront."

Fact. Nothing more, nothing less. Did they really need his input? If they were fishing for the fear of a desperate criminal, they missed their target. There isn't even the fear that swept through the former Task Force, though at this point it might just mean he's disassociating everything altogether.

"I have no strong feelings, though I would really rather not die at his hands in the near future." Also fact. "My interest is purely curiosity. If he's killing from a distance, like the broadcast on December 5th seemed to suggest, then he must be using technology far beyond what we knew was possible. If this is true, then he's not infallible, and sooner or later someone will find a sign of it."

[dead_black_eyes]

"Mere curiosity?" Aizawa asks, scratching the stubble on his chin and shaking his head. "It doesn't add up, Ryuzaki. Why go through such lengths to hide what he's doing? Why attack you in the morgue? He's acting like someone desperate and under a time constraint."

"Maybe..." L muses. "It does say something that he's working alone... a reputable doctor or scientist wouldn't be, especially with an undertaking this potentially groundbreaking. Reviving the dead, even for a few days, is pretty remarkable."

He switches the microphone and scrambler back on.

"As it happens, Mr. Salazar, certain minds are working diligently to find a sign of how he kills, and we've been considering your potential to help in this aim since the shooter in Argentina's death, and subsequent resuscitation, was broadcast. It was remarkable, the first known instance of one of Kira's victims coming back to life, even if it was only for a few days. You made some efforts to conceal your face, then, but you weren't entirely successful."

[evowhisperer]

... Hm. Caesar genuinely can't tell where this is going, and if he should give in to growing hope or growing alarm. On the one hand, he was right, he's somehow accidentally wound up exactly where he needs to be, and has already started cooperating with the people who could plausibly get him more information than he could shake a stick at.

On the other hand? What would Providence have done if his records had been gone, and he'd had no DNA to compare to? All of this was on a different scale, of course, and it wasn't as though he'd walked right into the Kira investigation's headquarters and started riffling through documents, but it was still very serious. What would he do if (when) they eventually took him to task over his forged passport?

He didn't have many options. He'd probably lie.

"You're referring to the incident on Calle Bolivar." The smile doesn't falter, but the stress lines in his face are deeper than before. "I tried, but suppose I couldn't account for everything." No apologies. Technically, not even an admission of what he even did.

[dead_black_eyes]

Soichiro takes off his glasses, rubbing at his temples. "We could be at this for a long time, Ryuzaki. I'm sure you're aware, since you've dealt with situations like this before."

"I haven't," L contradicts. "Not beyond a certain degree, at least... this individual recognizes he's backed into a corner and would probably say anything to get out of it. If that means telling us exactly what we want to hear, I think he's determined to do just that. I will confess that this much is a familiar scenario."

"So... what about it is new to your experience?"

L sighs. "The fact that he's working with technology that's potentially decades beyond what we have access to, to the point where he can restart hearts that have stopped beating. I admit, I want to see where it goes, even if it's not linked to Kira. I should say, even if it wasn't linked to Kira prior to the Argentinian shooter. By this point, there's no separating him from that association."

"I can't tell if you're suggesting what I think you are, Ryuzaki, but I must tell you that I have serious misgivings about involving a man who attacked you in our investigation."

"Friends close, enemies closer," L murmurs, turning on his microphone and scrambler again for Caesar's benefit.

"No one person can account for everything, but experts in different fields can often assist one another in shedding additional insight on a matter. As someone driven by the pursuit of knowledge, by your own admission... you must recognize that you're at a disadvantage, working alone."

He switches off the microphone.

"What if he's not working alone?" Aizawa asks.

"Then he might very well tell us that much, but it seems likely that he is."

[evowhisperer]

"... I am." The smile was never very large, and it doesn't take much for it to subtly fade.

His mind leaps ahead, trying to guess where the voice is going by bringing this up. Will the next question be cajoling him to share his 'miracle cure' with a team? He can't. More than his morals chafe at the thought of someone like Kira having the power that he does, Caesar knows that there's no way he could willingly release nanotechnological know-how into this world.

If they ask him directly, it will be an extremely difficult question to tiptoe around. He probably won't succeed. What will the consequences be? Starvation? Another strangulation, this one that he doesn't wake up from? Release with all his possessions tossed after him in neat little baggies?

Torture?

He's holding up moderately well, but he hasn't forgotten the fact that he's tied to a solid chair by something much bigger than he is. If they don't like the answers they hear, no one has to ever find the body.

Perhaps he could steer this conversation so that when it approaches the subject, it will do so on his terms. (Would they let him? Could the attempt at taking control from is captors only make them angrier? He doesn't know.)

"If you've seen footage of the shooter's revival, then you may have also seen the later talkshow presentation by Dr. Montenegro."

He knows this feeling. It's been plaguing him since he saw the camera, and he's felt it before; he's on a rollercoaster, and it's jumped the tracks. Each step is a gamble, and if he could think of any alternatives, he might try for a less reckless approach. Unfortunately for him, he can't.