Disclaimer:

Let's just skip the giant disclaimer you can find in Chapter 1!


x.

FS

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x. ENCOUNTER in VENICE x.

(new version)

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Starry, starry night

Paint your palette blue and gray

Look out on a summer's day

With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

("Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)", by Don McLean)

x.

Since Ai believes…

(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)

x.

Since Ai believes that Seiya's fans will even rent motorboats to stalk them after the musical, they're walking on foot to La Fenice. The brilliant afternoon sun is beaming through skies of broken clouds; and fallen autumn leaves in deep shades of red, purple, and yellow are plastered against the glistening masegni on the ground—colourful patterns on a picturesque but slippery designer carpet, which the city has rolled out for its honoured guests to walk on.

"Infinity was funded by the Organization, and Professor Tomoe—Stinger—was a codename member. But you said the uniforms weren't black but green and brown and that one could apply for Infinity although the final decision rested with the mad scientist. Does it mean that the personally picked 'guinea-pig prodigies' were Stinger's personal project and not the Organization's? What did Professor Tomoe want to achieve by studying prodigies with fast reactions?"

They're strolling along one of the cities' many narrow winding lanes, where it's almost impossible for two slim people to walk side by side without touching. Although there are less tourists on the streets in November than in July during the holiday season or in February or March during Carnival, there are still enough people coming their way so that the three of them have to walk in file. That doesn't prevent Ai from holding Seiya's arm or hand, however, and Shinichi would have believed their gushing behaviour to be an act if it didn't look so right.

It's like watching his own parents in an especially amiable mood—when their petty jealousies and the frustration with his father's looming deadline and nagging editors make way for a glow of warmth and acceptance, rendering them oblivious to the outside world and the opinions of other people. Charade or no charade, this looks like heartrending, tooth-rotting, foolish love; and never before in his life has Shinichi, pricked by his conscience and the stolen screwdriver in his jeans pocket, felt so much like a villain.

"Who has told you that the requirement for becoming a guinea-pig prodigy was an exceptional speed of reaction?" Without letting go of Seiya's hand, Ai turns her head to Shinichi in surprise. The intense admiration in her gaze feels like a relaxing, restorative massage to his ego, and it costs Shinichi some effort to admit that he has gained the information in a stroke of luck, as Kyogoku has kept in touch with Ran's idol Maeda Satoru, who knew Tenoh.

"The guinea-pig prodigies were Stinger's personal pet project," she tells him. "He practically sold his genius to the Organization to fund it. Infinity, on the other hand, was affiliated with the Organization although Stinger was the director and the official owner. The codename members would frequently turn up at the academy to recruit the most promising prodigies. The majority of the students didn't know anything about the Organization, though."

"Tomoe's dream was to create the ideal human race," Seiya interjects, pushing a few locks peeking from beneath his fedora back into place and raising his high collar to hide his face as a group of young women pass by. "He believed that only prodigies with a tactile disposition possessed authentic personalities and wouldn't let themselves be ground down by societal pressure. If there was a gene he could extract to modify the DNA of a non-prodigy, he would be able to turn the average person into a tactile prodigy, who instinctively knew how to use all their resources. Such a person would be, at least in Tomoe's eyes, the ideal human being, who would always be at peace with themselves because they lived up to their own potential—beyond society's distinction between appropriate and inappropriate, good and evil."

"So, in short, he attempted to create the perfect psychopath," Shinichi dryly remarks. "And what did the lunatic plan to do with all the people who refused to have their genes altered? Kill them off because they don't fit his idea of how a human being should be?"

Tomoe may be insane but not violent—Seiya claims, defending the professor with more fervour than Shinichi expected from him. "I don't think he wanted to murder anyone. He was convinced that he was doing humankind a favour—which he might really have done if he had succeeded… Many people commit suicide or run amok because they despise themselves. I don't even find it eccentric to believe that such a gene would have changed the world for the better although I doubt it would have managed to eradicate the existence of violence as Tomoe believed."

Evidently, Seiya is fond of the mad scientist—which doesn't surprise Shinichi, as lunatics of a feather flock together. Slowing down so that the three of them can walk next to each other again when they reach the vast, sunlit Campo San Polo, which is teeming with smartly dressed people even in November, Ai shoots Shinichi bewildered, inquiring looks. "Why are you so bitter?" her eyes seem to ask. Yet the realization that she hasn't got a clue why he feels so unhappy with their present situation only fuels his fury. There are few things Shinichi hates more than being kept in the dark. And the fact that Seiya, despite being lied to, still knows more than he does is an insult considering what the two of them have gone through together.

"Psychopaths have a limited capacity of empathy and love while tactile prodigies, who are accustomed to prioritizing sensations and emotions over abstract concepts, are usually sensitive to the feelings and needs of other people," Ai points out. "One has to draw a clear distinction between them. Stinger really just wanted to help non-prodigies live a fulfilled life by developing their true potential, and he was rather agreeable in his more lucid moments."

Professor Tomoe—whom Seiya still visits from time to time whenever he flies to Tokyo—is still very agreeable when he is in control of himself, and he isn't in the least violent during his fits either, Seiya asserts. Whenever he doesn't indulge in his spine-chilling laugh attacks and disconnected, rambling speeches, Professor Tomoe can pass for a half-way sane scientist, whose genius is only overshadowed by his generosity.

"The student accommodation at the Infinity Towers cost an arm and a leg and a kidney into the bargain, which was why the students didn't manage to set aside anything for their future or their hobbies although we were all paid for our projects," Ai reminisces. "But guinea-pig prodigies like Tenoh-san and Kaioh-san didn't have to pay for anything at Infinity because Stinger was their patron."

"Were you one of the guinea-pig prodigies?" Shinichi asks although he can easily guess the answer.

"No, I wasn't," she darkly admits as she pushes her translucent violet shawl, which has concealed her hair until now, down to her neck before she resigns, unties the knot, and gives her singer the shawl. She has been sweating under her improvised headgear, and her cheeks are glowing in a deeper shade of red than Shinichi has ever seen. "Stinger told me that being intelligent and having a keen disposition towards the tactile isn't the same as being prodigiously talented after I failed to evade the blot of India ink he shot at me. But he was kindly asked to welcome me into his academy if he valued his life. That settled the disagreement over my status as a prodigy!"

"He changed his opinion later, though." Seiya gives her slightly damp hair a few strokes, ruffling it while using only his right hand to fold the shawl and stuff it into her handbag, which he has slung over his shoulder. "He told me he had begun to prefer intelligent people to tactile prodigies after burning down Infinity."

"Why didn't you accept Stinger's invitation to study at Infinity?" Shinichi asks his main suspect as they take the turn into another narrow lane, where they have to walk in file again. "From her reaction when you claimed that you would never have passed the IQ tests at Infinity—" he indicates Ai, "—and from what I've learned about the requirements, I gather Professor Tomoe noticed your speed and asked you to become a guinea-pig prodigy but you declined."

"I didn't like the uniform." The singer flashes him an innocent smile over his shoulder. "Yaten told me that the combination of green and brown didn't look good on someone with black hair and blue eyes."

Shinichi has expected Ai to sigh in exasperation and inform him about what happened. Hence he is positively stunned by her strange lack of reaction. After beholding the bridge in front of them with the wide-eyed interest of a tourist on her first day in Venice, she distractedly remarks that Seiya has his quirks, one of which is his violent dislike of uniforms.

"Why did Stinger incinerate Infinity? Did he believe in all seriousness that he was Nero? Or wasn't it Stinger who burned down Infinity but someone else—someone who had to get rid of a corpse, for instance?"

Seiya shoots Shinichi a sharp, inquiring look while Ai, who has begun to resent the insinuation, narrows her eyes.

"Do you really believe that Tenoh-san murdered Katsutoshi and then burned down Infinity to dispose of his corpse?" Her frown has deepened the fine lines on her face—the first, barely visible indications of wrinkles around her mouth and her eyes—and Shinichi has to suppress the impulse to smooth out those wrinkles by rubbing her frown away. "That's the most fanciful theory you could have come up with."

"No, a more fanciful theory I can come up with is the possibility that you killed Yamada by accident when he stumbled over your research at Infinity while he was spying on Tenoh so that Stinger had to burn down Infinity to save you and himself from being executed by the crows," Shinichi coolly returns. "You received your code name only a few months before that incident, and Stinger cost the Organization too much money but didn't seem to make any progress with his guinea-pig prodigies at all, judging from the lack of information I found at Pandora's Box when I looked into his research findings. But since there is no evidence to support this—admittedly far-fetched!—theory while the possibility that Tenoh accidentally killed Yamada while defending herself seems the more plausible scenario after what I've heard about her fighting style, I'll be following this line of reasoning first."

Ai only gives him an exasperated look while Seiya shakes his head, chuckling to himself.

"I thought she was exaggerating when she described you to me." He flashes Shinichi a good-humoured, mischievous smirk, absently wrapping his arm around Ai's waist to pull her towards him as a group of urban sketchers rushes past them to Canal Grande.

"What did she say?" Shinichi demands in irritation, which evaporates when his gaze falls on the smile on Ai's lips.

"She said you're so obsessed with mysteries that you can't help imagining doomsday scenarios, collecting all the clues and connecting all the signs and dots you can find to solve a mystery whenever you encounter one. But things aren't always so closely connected in real life. Tomoe really burned down the academy because he was disappointed by his research. He told me he wished he could turn back time because he should never have sold his freedom to the Organization to fund it."

Taking advantage of the singer's talkative mood, Shinichi asks him in passing what SB means and only receives the flippant response that SB must stand for 'super-butchy' if the nickname has been chosen to reflect Tenoh Haruka's character. And Shinichi has already calculated the speed at which he needs to kick Seiya if he wants to propel the insufferable guy into the Canal (bored by his long convalescence, the Professor has created a new pair of power-enhancing kick shoes for Shinichi) when Ai, noticing his mounting frustration with her boyfriend, soothingly remarks that she doesn't know what SB means either.

"What did Stinger call you, by the way?"

"Sherry, or M."

The smile in her eyes looks so relaxed and genuine that Shinichi, taken aback by her answer, remains mute for a moment.

"M?" He grabs her by the arm in astonishment, forcing her to turn round to face him. "Why M?" It sounds too simple for Stinger to call Ai "M" just because her family name is Miyano if the madman calls Tenoh Haruka, whose family name and first name don't begin with either an S or a B, "SB".

"I don't know." She looks perfectly honest when she meets his searching gaze. "He said it's related to my code name and my personality. Back then I didn't have time to ponder over his senseless ramblings. And since we weren't close unlike Tenoh-san and him, he didn't tell me."

"'M' must mean either Manzanilla or Moscatel, two types of sherry." Seiya, who is still holding her in his arm, beams. "Manzanilla is poignant and bone-dry while Moscatel is floral and sweet—which is why I'm positive that 'M' either changes its meaning with your mood or stands for Manzanilla and not Mosca—"

She has rammed her elbow into the singer's side before he can finish the sentence, causing him to groan in pain and complain that he hasn't only become a victim of domestic violence but is also getting addicted to her abuse if she doesn't stop it. Why has he even paid attention to the nicknames the mad professor has given his students, Shinichi wonders in annoyance. The initials are just another distracting and whimsical detail slowing down his investigation like the Sherlock Holmes painting. In this instance, his obsession with minor details has proven to be a hindrance, and Shinichi resolves not to let these unimportant clues distract him from the case again.

x.


"You looked much happier…"

(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)

x.

"You looked much happier when you still had a girlfriend, Kudo," Ai observes. "Since Mori-san came with you to Venice, I'm sure the situation isn't as hopeless as you believe. You should hurry up and patch things up with her before she falls in love with someone else." She flashes Shinichi an encouraging smile, oblivious to the fact that she has just poured burning oil into his wounds.

How dense must Ai have become if she genuinely believes that his mood has anything to do with Ran, Shinichi wonders. She has interlocked her fingers with Seiya's again as if they were joined by giant neodymium magnets, which would unfailingly crush any luckless human being that—intentionally or inadvertently—comes between the two of them. In Paris, at Quai Montebello, Shinichi and Ai held hands as well, although the gesture wasn't laden with romance since they were only posing as siblings. Still, touching her triggered a wave of pure, intense euphoria in Shinichi, which he didn't want to analyze for fear that it would disappear the moment he tried. He can still remember the smoky clouds and the choppy water as vividly as if they had been in Paris only yesterday. She was wearing her new red coat and her favourite indigo scarf, which concealed half of her face and comically resembled a helmet whenever she drew it over her head. In the distance, a street musician was singing "Charade"—and the world appeared so marvellous for once that Shinichi could almost have cried for the simple reason that he wasn't accustomed to such flawless, absolute perfection.

Despite admitting that holding hands fostered a sense of belonging and trust, Ai hypocritically claimed that she had never needed the sickening physical display of affection even when she was a real kid, and let go of his hand to warm her hands in the pockets of her coat afterwards.

"Ran is wearing a white-gold ring with a heart-shaped sapphire in a perfect cut, which I haven't given her," Shinichi informs Ai. "It looks like an engagement ring although she is wearing it on the wrong hand, which makes me suspect that she hasn't accepted the proposal yet but has agreed to give the relationship a serious try. The gem is of a velvety cornflower blue—also called 'bleu de roi' or 'Kashmir'—and is generally valued as the most expensive of all sapphires. It's also so large and immaculate that it must have cost a tidy sum. Even though I try not to pry into her private life, I've come to the conclusion that she must have received it from Okita Soushi—the kendo prodigy who always beat Hattori during the tournaments—because (if you don't count me) he is the only young man among her acquaintances who can afford such a ring without going broke in the near future. Ran and he met in Osaka after Ran moved there to teach karate. She sometimes blushes when she mentions his kendo skills; and since neither Ran nor I have the motivation to destroy this budding relationship to resume what we once had before Pandora's Box, I think she will get married in one or two years at the latest—but not to me, as I once hoped."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Kudo," Ai murmurs, visibly distressed by the news and also bewildered by his attitude, as if she had expected him to fight for the past relationship although Ran has moved on. He isn't extremely unhappy about Ran's engagement, Shinichi laconically adds. While he can't deny that it was weird to watch Ran replace him with a kendo-champion version of himself (Okita resembles Shinichi so much that Shinichi has begun to wonder whether his father has a womanizing past), Shinichi has grown accustomed to the freedom the single life offers.

"The single life" might have been the wrong expression, conjuring up images of all-night parties, awkward sleepovers, and alcohol-induced, short-lived love affairs with shady strangers—none of which Shinichi has ever indulged in or even been interested in. Mercifully, Ai seems too shaken up by the realization that Shinichi no longer contemplates a possible future with Ran to pay attention to his unfortunate choice of words while Seiya is completely absorbed in a detail so minor and irrelevant that Shinichi is becoming intrigued by the singer's whimsical personality.

"A heart-shaped sapphire? Can the gem change its colour?" Seiya's curiosity, genuine and intense, has an innocent, childlike quality to it—a character trait Shinichi believes to be the reason why Ai is drawn to him.

No, it can't—Shinichi tells the singer—whose knowledge of gems is as limited as that of an elementary school kid. Sapphires come in all colours of the rainbow although they're usually associated with an iconic, intense blue, as sapphires of other colours like pink or yellow are rare and have often received a heat treatment. Sapphires can't change their colours, however. "The colour-changing gems are alexandrites and zultanites."

"Too bad," Seiya remarks, darting Ai a fleeting glance as if to gauge her reaction. "Colour changing or not, I've never cared much about sapphires, especially not when they're heart-shaped. It's so… sappy and ostentatious."

An odd remark from a man sentimental enough to propose to his girlfriend or fake girlfriend with a Cartier love ring… But since Shinichi has resolved not to let other people's relationships distract him again, he decides that this time, he will just ignore Seiya's comment since there is absolutely no rational reason why he should give a damn about the fact that Seiya Kou shows so much interest in engagement rings!

x.

"You seem to know Stinger well despite turning down his offer to study at Infinity," Shinichi remarks after they've crossed Canal Grande on a vaporetto, which was packed with Seiya's fans (all of whom were easily recognizable by their battered Three Lights Fan Club badge—a long-tailed shooting star on a midnight-blue sky). At the sight of them, the long-suffering actor promptly tossed Ai her sunglasses and her shawl, which he had fished out of her handbag, and altered his own face with a pair of glasses and a ginger moustache. At the same time, he also changed his demeanour and his gait; and Shinichi himself needed a few seconds of careful observation to recognize Seiya Kou behind the mask of the bookish nerd.

"I went to a few parties and visited most of the concerts and exhibitions before Tomoe burned down Infinity." The singer, who has removed his fake moustache and shed his disguise to return to his usual relaxed self, casts Ai an apprehensive glance when she gloomily adds, "I bet you've been loitering on our campus during the concerts and exhibitions because 'Michiru-sama' was there." But he makes no attempt whatsoever to defend himself, either because he knows from past experience that it will be futile or because it's the truth and he doesn't want to lie to her.

"Who else knew Stinger and hang out at Infinity although they didn't study there?"

"No one I can think of. Yaten and Taiki often accompanied me, but they didn't talk with Tomoe at all since they never stayed long enough to meet him."

They're going to arrive at La Fenice in a few minutes, and Shinichi mentally goes through all the possible tricks he can use to make Ai come with him instead of watching the musical. Unfortunately, nothing he can come up with sounds right or at least not outright evil, and he can't think of a sensible argument to make her have dinner with Hakuba and him instead of watching the musical if Seiya is really her boyfriend. Under normal circumstances (and if he were in Seiya's shoes), Shinichi would have thought her behaviour to be exemplary—the impeccable conduct of a woman who gets her priorities right and supports her celebrity boyfriend during the opening night instead of leaving him alone to run off with a male friend (and previous love interest, if there is a grain of truth in Seiya's throwaway remark that she was in love with Shinichi). In this case, however, Shinichi is seething with anger at Ai's grossly unfair distribution of time and effort. They haven't seen each other for three, almost four years—and she heartlessly turns him down just because she can't bear to leave her singer (who doesn't seem to need her emotional support and who can take care of himself during the performance!) alone.

"Why wasn't Stinger executed for incinerating Infinity?" Shinichi asks Ai, as he feels like provoking her a bit in revenge for her maddening nonchalance and her callous neglect when she consigned their past partnership to oblivion. "Was he the crows' backup option in case you failed? Was that the reason why they would have executed you when you refused to continue your research although you were the head scientist overlooking the development of APTX4869 and the only person who could continue your parents' work?"

Shinichi is only making an educated guess, as Pandora's Box didn't contain any useful piece of information on APTX4869. On the ship, Hattori and Shinichi speculated that the files on the "elixir of life" or the "Silver Bullet" must have been hidden and protected by the Night Baron but couldn't find it anywhere. While Shinichi was away and Ai was asleep, Hattori—who possessed more stamina than any other person Shinichi knew—must have continued the search.

From the sigh which has just escaped Ai's lips and the alert expression which has stolen into her eyes, Shinichi deduces that his guess about Professor Tomoe was right. Contrary to his expectations, however, Ai doesn't seem unnerved by his statement but immediately accepts his discovery, which is even more puzzling in view of her abject horror when they talked about Tenoh's motivation to stay at Infinity.

"You haven't lost your touch, Kudo." She smiles, giving his arm a fleeting nudge with the back of her hand when he catches up with her so that they can walk side by side along this lane, which is just wide enough for three people. "Stinger may have been unstable and far too immersed in his own prodigy project to care, but he was the only person who could easily comprehend what I did and analyze all of my experiments even without my help. In fact, he had his own ideas of how to develop APTX and also created several well-functioning modifications. If he hadn't been such a complete nutcase, the Organization would have made him their head scientist."

"Could Tenoh have died of one of Stinger's APTX modifications?"

"Impossible!" Her answer is immediate and confident. "All of Stinger's modifications would have lengthened her life by accelerating the regenerative process or caused instant death by heart attack. Her corpse would have shown all the visible signs of a heart attack, which would have been painful despite it's swiftness."

"Even if she had been given a pill or a capsule of the modified APTX in combination with, say, ten capsules of a powerful, undetectable painkiller?" Shinichi secretly observes Seiya's reaction while keeping his gaze on Ai's face as he moves in for the kill. "Tenoh complained of headaches and asked Kino for chilled natural mineral water although the backstage café had all sorts of beverages. Let's assume for a moment that she didn't care about mineral water and preferred hot beverages or alcoholic drinks but planned to take a drug whose effect would have been severely impaired by coffee."

Ai visibly pales although she stubbornly holds his gaze, and Seiya Kou looks suitably wary although he only squeezes her hand without saying anything.

"I don't know whether she could have died of it or not. In such a case, the different drugs might react with each other and cause side effects no one can anticipate," she coolly reflects, adjusting her mauve sunglasses on her nose with the automatic gesture of a person accustomed to wearing them. "I wouldn't ever recommend anyone to try this out without sufficient carefully conducted preliminary tests on rats and dim-witted humans who either don't value their health or don't have anything to lose in case something goes wrong."

Meanwhile, the warm, gentle breeze coming off the sea has cooled down drastically, so Shinichi has to zip and button up his jacket. Simultaneously, Ai loops her shawl once more around her neck and gestures for her boyfriend, who doesn't seem to mind the cold, to wrap his scarf at least once around his neck as well.

"Well, I suppose it's time for a confession," sighs Seiya, who has remained uncharacteristically silent throughout the whole exchange. "As you might have noticed by now, I usually tote Shiho's bag around for her because she already carries her small handbag and because the larger bag, where we keep her painkillers, our snacks, her paperbacks, and the wigs and scarves for our disguises, is too heavy for her. Last night, I gave Haruka-san a few capsules of Shiho's painkillers before the musical because Haruka-san complained of headaches while we discussed her worrisome inability to respect other people's privacy…"

Greedy and immodest as Tenoh Haruka was, she demanded even more than the few capsules Seiya had given her, claiming that her migraine was extremely severe. While the singer suspected that Tenoh had become addicted to Ai's painkillers, which he often stole for Tenoh whenever she had a migraine, he didn't want to be stingy. Noticing that Ai only needed one or two capsules every day, he ended up emptying the whole packet into Tenoh's palms and only kept two capsules for Ai, which he gave Ai during the first act when her migraines became unbearable. Unfortunately, Ai's migraine attack was worse than usual, so he had to ransack Tenoh's dressing room for the painkillers during the first act while Tenoh was onstage…

"She seemed to have kept the painkillers in her trouser pockets, though, which was why I had to leave the opera house to search for Shiho's painkillers at home."

"Couldn't you have waited until the first act was over?" Shinichi raises his brow in mistrust, knowing he has to take everything the singer says with a tablespoon of salt.

"Oh, I did," Seiya cheerily asserts. "But Haruka-san claimed that she had already swallowed all of them and that I was mean for reclaiming something I'd already given her. Then she threw me out of her dressing room—barking that she had to speed-clean it in the intervals now that I had dared to mess up her sacred refuge—and I had to leave La Fenice at once to get Shiho painkillers because Shiho can be scary whenever she suffers from a migraine."

"So you did steal my packet of APAH, after all!" Ai exclaims in fury and relief, pinching the arm she is holding. "You should have told me about it sooner instead of letting me fret about it all night!" This is going to have serious repercussions—she threatens—if he doesn't make it up to her after the musical.

Her wayward life partner endures her wrath with the patient, rueful smile of a husband who understands that he is in the wrong. However, his timing for the confession was so perfect and his words so well-chosen that he must have planned and mentally gone through this scenario in advance—most probably after the interrogations last night, hours before Shinichi posed the question. Taken aback, Shinichi realizes in grudging admiration that he has impulsively walked into the singer's trap when he challenged Ai with his deductions about Professor Tomoe and APTX. Seiya has given them a satisfactory, credible explanation for Tenoh Haruka's death, depicting it as an unfortunate accident which occurred when Tenoh experimented with Stinger's modified APTX to improve her recuperative powers while she was taking Ai's painkillers—thus turning what might have been a cold-blooded murder into an unexpected tragedy, whose cause can be blamed on bad luck and the careless victim alone. Slipping into Shinichi's mind with ease, the experienced actor has anticipated and used Shinichi's deductions to his good advantage, converting a defeat into a victory against an intellectually superior opponent in a seemingly hopeless situation.

If this were soccer, it would be a two-zero win for the singer, who hasn't done anything but beholding his surroundings while other people have done all the footwork for his acquittal in case he should ever be taken to court. Comparing Gin's cold predator's face and macho chauvinistic attitude to the intangibly attractive face and charming manners of Ai's current boyfriend, Shinichi can't help but think that she has replaced her menacing "common-law husband" with a far more pleasant but also far more dangerous man.

x.