It is roughly 4:30 in the afternoon and still a bit chilly outside on this thick full moon over the city. The park is empty for a change and probably because of the young Ahroun who is sprawled out on a bench with a scowl upon his face. He is wearing a pair of destroyed-repaired denim with a baja hoodie that is loose upon his lanky frame. He has a cheeseburger in his hand from Mickey D's that he works at, tearing hunks out with his fingers, then popping it into his mouth.

From the direction of the river, a young man approaches. From the way he looks at his surroundings, he's new to the area, uncertain of what to expect. He tugs at the hem of his hoodie and stuffs his hands back in his pockets, gaze cast briefly at the boy on the bench.

<OOC> Justin says "Nolan rocking any pure breed?"
<OOC> Nolan is PB3, Fianna-style.
<OOC> Justin says "Hooray! A plot hook."

The Galliard pacing along the fountain's rim probably isn't doing anything to make the place more enticing to most passersby either, really. Felix has a burger of his own, and is eating it while he wanders about halfway around the fountain, then starts retracing his steps backward, which is slightly more challenging. He's got a plastic Coke bottle shoved in one of his jacket pockets, and a cigarette in the hand that doesn't have the burger. "I'm just sayin', there's gotta be SOMETHIN' around here we can blow up without causin' some kinda national terror alert," he says, gesturing to nothing in particular. The movement toward the river catches his eye, given the present paucity of population in these parts, and he looks the approaching guy over briefly, then glances to the Ahroun. "Hey, J," he says more quietly, indicating the new arrival with a tilt of the head.

"If you want, we can eat a buncha chili and blow up the Starbucks bathroom so that all the hipsters can wreck their nose when they walk in." Justin offers as he gives a long stretch of his body on the bench, then glances over towards him, then follows the glance of his head towards the new arrival. He slowly pushes himself upwards, staring for a moment before he talks out the side of his mouth. "That pedigree is pretty loud, huh? I don't know him. You?"

The young man continues his approach, though he doesn't seem to be making a choice to head for the pair, so much as he is following the path as it leads in their direction. As he nears, the details of his features become clearer, pegging his age at somewhere around twenty. Green eyes find the two, giving them a more curious once-over, and a hand reaches up to stroke the edge of the obsidian stone that hangs from around his neck.

"Reeeally not the kinda thing I had in mind," Felix tells his friend, half an eye on the stranger, "...although it's kinda funny. But I'm pretty sure we'd be sufferin' at least as much. An' it wouldn't make any awesome explosions. Or if it did, we wouldn't be in the mood to appreciate 'em." Softer, "...and nah. Ain't seen him before." He flashes the new arrival a grin, and once it doesn't require actual yelling, raises his voice to greet him with a "Hey. You lost?"

"I have access to cherry bombs. We can make it a two-fer kinda explosion. We drop the deuce, then we drop the bomb." Justin insists as he gives a wink to his packmate, then rolls off the bench as he slides his hands into his pockets, eyeing the newcomer but lets his Galliard take point on the conversation.

The young man halts for a beat as Felix calls to him, and then casts a glance behind, as though to be certain the words are meant for him. "Pretty sure I'm not," he answers with a grin of his own and he closes the distance to something more conversational.

Felix gives a somewhat noncommittal half-nod to Justin's suggestion, more of a 'we'll come back to this' than a 'sold'. Strangers take priority! "Lookin' for anythin' in particular, then? Pretty sure I ain't seen you around here before," he says, still balancing on the fountain's edge.

Grunt. Justin stands behind Felix, looking imposing. (No, not really. But let's say for the sake of his ego he is.)

"Pretty sure I'm not," the man says again, this time with a laugh. "You two the self-appointed Protectors of the Park?" he asks. Once again, his fingers run along the edge of the pendant he wears, before falling to his side, his thumbs hooking into his pockets.

"What makes you think we're self-appointed?" Felix replies archly, quirking a brow, "Don't think we'd get the official nod? Maybe we just left our badges at home." The grin remains, but there's a touch more seriousness behind it as he asks, "An' why, is it likely to need protectin' from you?" He seems to note the pendant-fiddling, adding, "Interestin' necklace."

"I've been known to fuck a few shitheads up who come into the wrong neighborhood." Justin says with a grin on his face in a good natured tone. "Though, your pedigree is on full display, so it got us curious of course."

The man laughs at Felix's question. He gives Justin a glance, a quirk of an eyebrow, and then returns his focus to Felix. "I didn't say it'd need to be protected /from/ me," he says, but his hand returns to the carved obsidian at the attention is receives. "Family heirloom," he notes.

"Well, if you had, I wouldn't've had to ask," Felix points out, and finishes off the last bite of that burger, pulling the soda bottle from his pocket to wash it down. "Heirloom, huh? Nice; all anyone ever left me was alone." He still sounds pretty cheerful about it. "Like he says, though: we're curious. You remind me an awful lot of some of my relations, somehow..."

"I don't even like beating around the bush. You're obviously new in town and you got the look of the woof about you. This here is a safe spot for us so if you wanna do the butt sniffing now I'm fine with it or we can do it later." Justin is as subtle as Miley Cyrus swinging from a wrecking ball. "I'm Justin, this is Felix."

"Nolan," the man says, once again dividing his attention between Justin and Felix. The grin disappears and he squints a bit at the two. "I don't know of any relatives by those names, though," he pauses, and rubs at his chin with the back of his hand. "I do know there's kin of mine in the area. Just no one I'm particularly close to." His head tips to the side as his hand drops away, and the grin returns. "I can't say I've ever found it necessary to sniff anybody's butt, though."

Felix gives Justin a sidelong glance at the lack of subtlety, briefly looking like he can't quite decide whether he's amused or exasperated. Possibly the latter's winning, this time of the month, but if so at least it seems to melt away almost immediately. He flicks the ash of his cigarette in the general direction of the trashcan, and considers Nolan again. "Nice meetin' ya, Nolan. An' I guess it's fair, 'cause I dunno any kin of mine by that name, either. Don't mean there ain't any, though. So what brings you to the area, then? St. Claire, an' also specifically here."

Justin lets out a groan as he flops his hand against the top of his head, then ambles off from the pair of them to talk. He flops back down on the bench and snags his bag of food to fish out some fries.

Nolan gives a roll of his shoulders, not quite a shrug, his gaze following Justin as the youth wanders away. "Seems one of the cities the riots haven't reached," he says. "Needed a place to go. This one seemed as good as any."

Felix glances after Justin as well, before glancing back to Nolan. "From what I hear, they almost did a while back, but folks defused 'em," he says, "Looks like it might be rampin' up again, too. Was at a club a couple weeks back, DJ was talkin' things up. For a little, looked like things might be fixin' to kick off right there. You'll wanna be keepin' an eye out." He takes a drag off that cigarette, studying the new arrival. "Where was it you were before? Boston?"

"Born there," Nolan says, though his gaze remains on Justin for a moment more before he returns to Felix. "Been here and there, since. Don't really have a home, at the moment. Trying to decide whether to settle down, or keep on moving."

"Which heres an' theres?" Felix asks. "...an' I'm familiar with the no particular home situation. Went with the settle down option, myself. An' if you've even got kin in the area, hey, could be a plus. Even if you ain't that close to 'em. Anyone we might know?"

Nolan gets a distinctly uncomfortable look as Felix tries to pin down his previous locations, but he laughs it off with a shake of his head. "No place in particular," he says. "Don't know of anybody specific, either. Not really close to the family. Haven't been in touch. What about you?" he asks, turning it around without so much as a breath. "What made you settle down? What makes here better than anyplace else?"

Felix is standing on the edge of the fountain, smoking and talking to Nolan, who's standing down on the ground like a normal human being. Justin's flopped on one of the benches, eating some McDonald's fries. The Galliard's eyes narrow slightly at that uncomfortable look, but it only lasts about as long as the actual look does. "Well, seein' as you're in town, might be worth figurin' that out an' gettin' in touch. Me, well, this is where the Caddy broke down," he says, "but that's just why we stopped. Stayin'..." He glances toward the Ahroun, and shrugs, grinning again, "People, I guess. Prolly the main reason. People, an' it's an interestin' place. Decent amount to do. What're you lookin' for?"

Nolan's hands rest in the pocket of his hoodie and he gives another roll of his shoulders, though this time he ignores the ahroun on the bench. He also ignores the question aimed his way, tossing another back at Felix, instead. "What makes it interesting? What does 'interesting' mean, to you?"

<OOC> Justin says "I'm kinda dozing off OOC."
<OOC> Justin says "Just say Justin fell asleep on the bench XD"

"You know that sayin', 'may you live in interestin' times'?" Felix replies, and flashes Nolan that grin again, although this time there's a faintly more feral edge to it, "Dunno about you, but I hate bein' bored." He stretches, takes a last drag off the cigarette, and pinches it out in a quick, practiced move. "But enough about me, just monopolizin' the conversation here. What was it you said you were lookin' for, in deciding whether this's your stop or not?"

Zach enters the park from points east. The ne'er do well is dressed not inappropriately for a nightclub, but that's perhaps not so unusual as the fact that despite the presence of a substantial amount of Rage, he seems utterly unperturbed. It does rather mitigate the extent to which it's just SO easy to overlook him. Those gathered in the park don't draw more interest from him than a simple glance - keeping track of his surroundings in a casual (to most onlookers) sort of way.

Nolan gives another of those shoulder rolls, deflecting the interest with the simple gesture. "I'm not so sure you make it sound enticing," he says. "What some call boredom, others call relaxation. But you still didn't tell me what interesting means to you." If he notices the other approaching, he shows no sign.

Felix shifts his weight slightly, further to one foot, and pulls the soda bottle from his pocket again for another sip. "Am I supposed to be sellin' it?" he asks, "I like the place. Now, not to be unfriendly or nothin', but so far you ain't exactly put a lot forward on why I =oughta= want it to entice you. Or on anythin', much, Nolan with the family resemblances and family heirlooms but no contact with any local family y'might or might not have." He says it lightly enough, but the look is level. There's a flicker of recognition in his eyes as the movement of the latest arrival to the park catches his attention, but -- at least for the moment -- there's no other reaction to the man.

Zach's own attention only serves to meet Felix's gaze for a moment. The recognition there is mutual, and perhaps a wariness in how Zach's eyes narrow, but that's the extent of it, and in the next moment, Zach is back to walking along the park along his westbound trail.

Nolan keeps his expression light, a smile on his lips. "Never said you should," he says. "But you suggested settling is a goal to be desired, and that here's a place worth settling. You said it's /interesting/ here, and I'm really curious what that means, to you. A book can be interesting. An amusement park ride can be interesting. A view out the window can be interesting. Professional wrestling can be interesting. But probably not all to the same person. What's /interesting/ to you? What's /interesting/ about here?"

"A lotta things are interestin' to me. Hell, all the things you mentioned, at least sometimes. Some views're more interestin' than others, for instance." And he doesn't seem a particularly bookish type, but hey, impressions can be deceiving. Possibly. "Interestin' to me is not borin'. Shit goin' on, shit to do. Week or so after I got here, saw a guy run outta the sewer at top speed with a gunshot wound. Now, what was goin' on there? Dunno, really. But it ain't borin'." Felix pauses. "Oh, an' not that it's on most people's to do list anyhow, but don't go wanderin' the sewers. Just advice. There's also the fact that the riots ain't been able to get the same foothold here they did a lotta places. That's interestin', to me." He takes a couple steps along the fountain and puts a foot experimentally on the trashcan; when it doesn't break, he steps up and moves on balancing on the edge of that, instead. More challenging. "Plus there's some pretty decent clubs, the parties over by the uni don't suck, an' past the river you got all kindsa wide open spaces. All interestin'. What's interestin' to =you=?" A couple glances track Zach's path now and then; perhaps he's at least somewhat interesting as well.

Maybe it's the mention of the riots. Maybe it's the semantical discussion centering around the word 'interesting.' But what Zach find's interesting, is the pair of them and their conversation. He's shaking his head as Felix talks about the riots, as if he doesn't really agree - but he's not rude enough to butt in. He does, however, turn to walk backwards (albeit a little more slowly) so that he can keep paying that attention.

"Interesting to /me/?" Nolan says with a smirk that suggests he's suppressing a laugh. "Interesting to me is people, people and the decisions they make. What goes into those choices? What do they pay attention to? What do they find important?" His hands go wide, a gesture intended to encompass the park and the city beyond. "All of this is interesting."

Felix gives a little exhale of a laugh. "Well, there y'go, then, we're more or less agreed. People's interestin', all of this is interestin'. 'course, there's people just about everywhere, so if that's what'd make a place enticin', you got yourself an awful lotta places to get enticed." There's a faint narrowing of the eyes again when Zach entirely turns around, making his listening in quite so blatant, but the tone's nothing but friendly when he addresses the guy, "Evenin'."

"Sup?" Zach says, lifting his chin towards Felix. He slows down even further, his backward pace barely at a crawl now. "You really think the riots are done here?" It's a hint of a challenge, but mostly curiosity.

It's when the exchange, brief as it is, between Felix and Zach takes place that Nolan finally seems to notice the other man. "I wouldn't think so," he says in answer to the question, but he doesn't seem inclined to offer more, instead looking from one to the other for their thoughts.

"Ain't what I said," Felix says, with a crooked half-smile, "I just said it's interestin' they ain't been able to get the same foothold here. Don't mean it ain't possible they still could. Shit about the bankers an' politicians an' general fucked upedness ain't any less true here'n anywhere else, an' things're still simmerin' here an' there like everywhere. But here, so far, it ain't quite boiled over. Nearly, from what I hear. But not quite." He shifts his weight, curling one boot up to rub the back of his other calf, and balancing one-footed on the can; precarious as it is, it seems to be working out.

"Yeah?" Zach says, coming to a stop. "You think it's really about bankers and the structural evils of 'capitalism' that have been with society since the 17th century? 'cause I don't. Funny, ain't it, how the riots seemed to sweep... slooooowwwwwlllly from one coast to the next? You know, Twitter being what it is and all that."

Nolan is silent for a moment as he looks between Felix and Zach and the smile on his lips disappears. "What do you think?" he asks, the question meant for each. "Bankers? Politicians? Something other than money? Something other the balance of power and the evils of modern society?" By the end, the grin is back, but it's more of a feral look, now, hungry rather than humored.

There's a dark flash through the redhead's eyes, the impression of gathering thunderclouds. "Fuckin' well =should= be," Felix says, sharper and more intense than what seem to be his usual, more laidback tones, "an' I reckon for a lotta folks actually riotin', it is. Lotta shit's changed since the 17th century. The existence of all the people doin' shit now, for one thing. Ain't gonna claim history's my strongest suit, but how long you reckon various evils were with France before their revolution?" Both feet on the trashcan again, now, one to either side of it and stance much more solid and balanced. "Now, other shit involved, people manipulatin' things, stirrin' it up more for their own ends? Yeah, wouldn't doubt it, that's the kinda shit people do. But yeah, I think what's there to get manipulated an' messed with, that's really about that shit."

Zach's hands open, and spread to either side of his hips. "I'm all for some rage against the machine," he says, "but it matters, if it's actually about people being pissed off by how the society they live in treats them - on a structural level - or if it's someone else reaching in and fanning the right flames to get folks to be a smokescreen for them. There's a difference between using your agency, choosing to disrupt the status quo; and having someone else co-opt your agency and make you into a catspaw."

Nolan gives Zach a bit more intense scrutiny. "How can you tell?" he asks. "When there's so much to be angry about? When there's so much injustice, and so much worth fighting for? How can you tell if those caught in the middle are acting on their own desire, or caught up in something created for them?"

Intense scrutiny is apparently Zach's lot, just at the moment, as he's getting it from Felix, as well. "Yeah, it matters," he agrees, "folks gettin' fucked around shouldn't be gettin' their bein' pissed about it fucked around as well. But let's say there's someone pullin' strings -- how d'you work out where the borders are between inspirin' people an' co-optin' shit? If you got folks bein' used, but those folks're genuinely an' logically pissed off about the shit they're protestin'? Do they lose the right to their own anger?"

"'course not," Zach answers Felix first, "If the anger's justified, the anger's justified, but the actions? If they're not yours, they're not about /your/ anger." His hands come up, forming a box in front of him. "This careful sweep across the nation's not about anger - though it /is/ about the status quo. But societal, revolutionary anger? That sweeps like wildfire /before/ the internet. Remember Rodney King? That was sympathetic riots all over the nation, /simultaenously/. It's not like the idea moves at the pace of someone consolidating gains. That slow, deliberate progress? That's a controlled burn. That's someone so sure that everyone will lose the forest for the trees, that they don't even try to hide it. The pisser of it all? They got almost everything they wanted... except here." Zach shakes his head. "This ain't over. Not by a long shot."

Nolan shakes his head. "That's how we know that the whole is being designed. That's how we know that the story being told is exactly that." He points a finger at Zach and then lifts it in the air to count the unnamed individual. "How do you know that one person is being controlled, being guided? That someone is being pushed to do something outside their own realm of decision making?"

"Only the way I remember JFK gettin' shot," Felix says a touch dryly; there's no way he could've been more than an infant in 1992, and even that's definitely stretching it. He listens, though, taking the argument in, and Nolan's question as well.

"People aren't like gasoline," is Zach's answer, "one spark's /not/ as good as the next. They don't have to control at the individual level," he stays focused on the riots, rather than the larger question. "The fact that people who think they're on about /their/ anger jump in with good intentions doesn't justify, nor exonerate, the whole enterprise. It just changes the calculus at the individual level."
Then he does address the broader scope, "As for determining if someone's patient-zero? The ones they /actually/ control? It depends on how directly they're doing it. Tracing it to the source is the best way, find the original lie, and you know what you're dealing with."

Nolan's smile slowly returns as Zach speaks, and he nods as though satisfied as the man comes to his conclusion. "Rodney King was at the center of a truth," he says, gaze flicking only for an instant over to Felix and then returning to Zach. For all that Felix might have been an infant, Nolan looks as though he probably wasn't yet born. "Watching the anger flare, the fire take hold and flash. It was big, too big to contain. Too big to control. This is controlled. This is /contained/. It simmers, the embers of truth are there, but where the fire ignites there's something more going on."

<OOC> Felix says "...and just for clarity, it's pretty certain Felix wasn't born either. ;)"

"What pisses me off," Felix says, "is if an' where it's gettin' fanned by some nefarious force, they're doin' a =better job= of it than anyone else." A very slight pause. "A'right, it ain't the ONLY thing that pisses me off. Even about specifically this. But assumin' the bad kinda manipulation settin' shit off... it's really fuckin' annoying." He hops down off the trashcan, and thunks down to sit on the edge of the fountain, feet on the bench. Justin's still sleeping on the next one over; this is apparently not near enough to disturb him.

"What should piss you off more," Zach offers, pocketing his hands in the leather jacket he wears, "is what they're after. What they're winning. The truth of that is all around you." He smirks, as if admiring his craftwork on some private joke just then. "Now /that/, that's interesting."

The smile cracks for just an instant, a flash of rage visible in the green eyes, and then it's gone. Nolan rolls his shoulders and the grin is back, though the perceptive might notice that it's a little forced, this time. "All right," he says with a nod to Zach. "I'll grant you that's interesting." His gaze ticks again to Felix, watching for the other man's response to those words.

"Did say it wasn't the only thing," Felix says, pulling the soda bottle from his pocket while studying Zach. "So, what would you say it is they're after an' winnin'?" He has a drink, settling back a little to more easily watch the standing men.

"Resources," Zach says, shrugging. "Places where the breath of the earth is close." He gestures around at the park. "You like parks like this?" His expression darkens just a moment, deadly serious. "So do they. A lot." He swings that gesture towards the city, "They want what you want, only they're pulling it out from under you - and what they'll do with it, is turn it to ash right in front of you. That's the beauty of riot as a screen. It does a part of the heavy lifting for them."

Once again a flash of rage is seen in Nolan's eyes, and it smolders for a moment before he's able to hide it. His expression turns more curious and he looks from Felix to Zach and back. "They want. You want." His lips curve upward and he fixes his gaze on Zach. "What do /you/ want?"

Having woken up after crashing out on the bench, Justin lets out a loud yawn, then swings his legs over as he rubs a hand along his face. "Ugh." He mumbles to himself. "No more binging on Taco Bell on no sleep." Letting out a loud belch, he squints his eyes at the trio of people, then frowns visibly. Hopping up, he ambles over to Felix's side.

Felix's eyes are the mirror of Nolan's, that flash of fury, and the impression before it's damped down is that it's in serious danger of boiling over. He's back on his feet, then, and back on the edge of the fountain, pacing it, and the sound as he stands is of plastic being crushed. He drains the last of the bottle and crushes it the rest of the way, pushing it into the pocket of his coat again. He's still listening, particularly for the answer to Nolan's question, but he doesn't chime in past a sharp nod to Zach's reply. When Justin wakes and heads over, he gives the other teen a chin-lift of re-greeting, but his mouth, for now, still stays shut.

Zach was, perhaps, waiting for Felix to respond. Nolan's newer to him, after all, than Felix and Justin. And again, if the rage in their eyes deters him from anything, he gives no sign of it. When he speaks, there's a twist to his mouth, a grin that tugs at the right corner of his lips, threatening a smirk that his speaking disrupts. "What do I want?" He repeats the question rhetorically, he isn't actually confused about the query. "Everything. You're going to have draw me a system boundary here."

Nolan also gives a nod at Justin's return, but the majority of his focus is now on Zach. His arms go wide in answer, and his smile grows more secure. "Goals, aspirations, desires," he says aloud and then lets his hands drop to his sides, his expression growing darker. "You talk about the ones behind the riots wanting resources, wanting to destroy them. What do you want in all this?"

Justin reaches up to brush his thumb across his nose. He squints his eyes at Zach, recognizing him, then squints one eye. "What are we all going on about?" He asks to try and catch up to the conversation. "What's this about the riots?"

Felix pulls an Altoids tin from a different pocket, but for the moment, just turns it over a few times in his hand while he walks the fountain rim. Zach's reply draws a slight smirk. "Bullshit, no one wants =everything=. Ebola, a punch in the throat, a tall frosty glass of nuclear waste, Necco wafers... an' anyway, like the man said: where would you put it?" The tone is lighter again, the pacing settling down to just restless. "We're just discussin' 'em," he adds to Justin, "...whether they're bein' manipulated, what people doin' that'd want, shit like that. By rights we oughta have beer an' pizza to go along with it, but... I guess you can't have everythin'."

"When you have everything," Zach opines, "nuclear waste is a nothing-thing. Ditto ebola. You don't have a throat, and a punch is an empty gesture. But I repeat myself." He gestures towards Nolan. "In all this? What the riots? I want the ten thousand things to not be a pile of ashes. Call me a materialistic bastard but all my stuff is here. Plus I love watching a bully forced to eat humble pie. It's the American in me."

"Oh." Justin says as he cracks his knuckles of his left hand with a round of pops. "Fuck those assholes." He wrinkles his nose up.

Nolan side-eyes Zach and tugs at the sleeve of his hoodie. He pulls one arm free and then starts on the other. "Everything is an awful lot," he says, though the words are muffled a bit as he pulls the hoodie over his head. Straightening it where it started to turn inside out, he holds it out toward Zach. "But here's a start. Not sure where you'll put it all, when you have it."

"Yeah, I notice you ain't mentionin' the Necco wafers," Felix retorts, pointing a finger at Zach. "And anyway, that's more or less where all this shit started. People wantin' more'n their fair share keepin' other folks down so they get mad enough eventually they're down to riot, other people wantin' more'n their fair share aimin' to manipulate that to help 'em get it."

"That's beautiful thing about actually having everything," Zach says, in response to Felix. "It's non-rival, non-exclusive. My having everything leaves everything else to everyone else." Maybe it's a koan? "But in the meanwhile, co-opting folks' anger so that you can try to interrupt the process of everyone getting everything?" He clucks his tongue. "That's a thing I can't have." Have, in this case, meaning tolerate.

"Hey, if you don't want that hoodie, I'll take it." Gnawers, right? Justin sloooowly reaches out with his hand towards Nolan. "But hey, dudes like Felix and I are used to living with nothing, so everything almost seems ridiculous. I'd be cool with ten bucks and a gift card to QDoba."

When Zach doesn't take the hoodie, Nolan puts it back on, a smirk on his lips. Justin, though, gets a bit of a roll of the eyes as the man pulls the pendant free of the fleece, and settles it again around his neck. "Co-opting anger," he says, as the sarcastic smile fades. "That's an interesting choice of phrase. The anger's real, someone else is using it for their own ends?"

"Maybe he ain't into baseball," Felix suggests to Justin, with a shrug, "...although if he's aimin' for everything I guess he better start bein', since he'd own all the teams. An' stadiums. An' hot dogs. Hey, we got anything left over there?" He gestures to the probably-empty McDonald's bags on the bench Justin was flopped on. "So if you have everythin', how can everyone else also have it? I mean a sunny day, I guess you could argue a lotta people're havin' that, but a hamburger? Even if you go all loaves an' fishes on it that's not near everyone." He glances to Nolan, tilting his head slightly. "Ain't that what we were sayin' before? People got plenty to be pissed about for real. Tell you for a fact it's a shitload easier to get someone doin' shit about what they're already pissed about than to whip 'em up from nothin'. ...an' it ain't even always that easy to get 'em doin' shit about what they ARE pissed about." Which HE sounds at least mildly pissed about himself.

Zach gestures back to Nolan and his Hoodie, "Look, you don't want that hoodie," he says, as if it were plain as day. "You want the comfort it provides. It's not a thing, it's a means /to/ a thing. You want the attributes of the platonic hoodie, if you will. The object of hoodie-ness. That's why your wanting of it is fleeting. When it's cold out, your body is uncomfortable and you want the warmth. There's nothing about you having the warmth that's rival or exclusive. Warmth is a public good."

"I meant the phrase," Nolan says to Felix. "It's a new one for me." His arms fold, and he rubs at his biceps through the fleece, as if punctuating Zach's mention of cold versus comfort. "You want--" he starts and then breaks off, half-squinting at Zach. "The idea of everything. Not each material thing, but what they... represent?" He's testing the words, even as he says them.

"Yeah, but the phrase came up earlier..." Felix says, then pauses, "...well, co-optin' agency did. 'spose that ain't =precisely= the same." He slides the mint tin back into his pocket, unopened. "...Platonic hoodie. I'm assumin' that don't mean it just wants to be friends. So, yeah, you want every... =idea= of a thing? Or every attribute? 'cause I reckon you're pretty well on your way to havin' all the ideas of things you want. But you wouldn't need every kinda actual thing to have every... provided aspect, or whatever that'd be. So that wouldn't be everything, unless you define thing that way, an' that'd make a weird definition."

"Maybe so," Zach says to Felix, smirking. "I'm fine with being a little weird." He nodded to Nolan when he mentioned the phrase, and again when Felix repeated it. "And yeah that's what I've been saying. I can respect the anger, and still recognize that the actions it's being directed towards aren't the original idea of the holder of the anger - but are triggered deliberately and with the specific intent to create certain conditions, conditions which give rise to certain mindsets, mindsets which don't question things clearly. The mob mentality is a very powerful thing. With grasp of it, you can have a whole crowd agreeing with you in the same instant; that's powerful stuff."

"So how do you cut the cord?" Nolan asks. "If the people are being used, treated almost as puppets? How do you cut the strings? You do that, you take away the power of the people fomenting the riots, and whatever they're trying to do gets a lot harder."

"'s pretty nice," Felix grants, "...not that I ever been stirrin' up =mobs=, exactly." He sits again, the same place as before, and looks thoughtful. "Well. I reckon you can make 'em not mad anymore, actually fix the problems. Or you can redirect it, if you can get folks listening to you instead. Sometimes showin' folks they're bein' manipulated might work, 'cept people ain't often real pleased to face that kinda thing. 's embarrassing."

"And," Zach adds, agreeing with Felix, "when they're in the thrall of something like that, they're not really processing. Fixing what's wrong is only going to get you so far when a huge part of what's wrong is their priorities, and a lot of the rest is systemic and as a species we haven't demonstrated that we know any better. So what's left?" He turns his gestures towards Nolan's suggestion. "You cut the cord, as it were. But usually it's too damned late by the time they're all wound up. Which leaves you the Zombie Solution," he taps a finger-gun to his temple. "You go for the head."

Nolan points a finger at Zach and then slides it toward Felix. "You said they tried and failed here, but you don't think they're done. People aren't rioting, now." He opens his hand to gesture around the park, palm up. "So how do we cut the cord, /now/." The open hand closes into a tight fist, held for just a moment. "Because the Zombie Solution leaves the puppeteers still winning."

"Not if they're the head," Felix says, adding with a fleetingly feral grin, "or if it's their heads. Or both. If it was a story, you'd get the crowd turnin' on the folks what got 'em hyped up for it in the first place, but stories're more stylish than reality. Usually." He pauses, studying both of them for a moment. "I know at least temporarily, if you get it at the right time an' the right way, you can get it back down from startin' to boil to a low simmer. But that ain't a long-term or overall kinda solution. Band-aid, maybe, I guess."

"As long as you keep being around, keep playing watchdog?" Zach shrugs. "You can play whackamole. But meanwhile, they've won in basically all of North America. So they'll wait, if you've stiff-armed them. And they'll consolidate their gains." And now his tone is deadly serious, no humor left in it. "And they'll bring everything they've got left to bear on you. So yeah, you need to find your puppetmaster and you need cut the head off this thing before they move again. Because if they do? It's because they /know/ they can win it."

"No more band-aids," Nolan says to Felix. "No more whackamole," he adds for Zach. "How do you take the puppeteer's power? How do you cut those strings so that they /can't/ move again? Whether or not you can find the puppetmaster, whether or not you're ready to remove that figure from the table? How do you take that power away, take that weapon out of his arsenal? Because if you can do that, first, the rest of the game will be much easier to play." He shrugs. "And if it can't be done, then you're right. Find the puppeteer, and take that head shot, now, before he has a chance to run his game again."

"Can't assume one puppeteer," Felix says, and the other two both get studied again. "Y'all been in town how long, again? Few weeks," a glance at Zach, "few days?" One for Nolan. "Only been here 'bout half a year myself. Now, given they =ain't= managed to succeed here, I think it's prolly fair to assume there's already folks around been workin' on the issue, an' that they got as far as 'find an' do somethin' about the controllin' folks' and 'find a way to break their power' in their thinkin' an' plannin'. 'cause =I= can get that far, an' I'm pretty sure ain't no-one savin' me a spot in the Plannin' Hall of Fame. So, I ain't sayin' either of you're wrong. You're right. An' I'm down with brainstormin' shit. But this's the easy part."

"Maybe," Zach says, shrugging. "And if so, great. Iterate on that. Get enough heads off the thing and maybe you're in okay shape. But I don't have the same faith, and the devil - pardon the pun here - is in the details. Most of the time, people pat themselves on the back for the small victories. They see the superficial stuff. I don't even think they'd really know who to look for. Puppeteers like this will have layers and layers of proxies and simulacra."

Nolan spends a moment looking back and forth between Felix and Zach, some thought forming, but it goes unspoken. Instead, he wrinkles is nose and says, "Okay. If there are already people working on finding the apex of this thing, that's great. Fabulous. Wonderful." He straightens, drawing in a breath. "Who's looking at the ground? Who's looking at how to protect all those angry people from having their angency usurped?"

"Do you?" Felix asks Zach, "Really know who to look for, I mean, not have layers an' layers of proxies an' simulacra, although that sounds interestin' too." He looks at Nolan, "An' do you have a plan for how you think that oughta get done, or just the questions? Ain't insinuatin'; they're good questions. But answers're a shitload easier to implement, so if you got some, that'd be pretty awesome. 'cause I already pretty much covered what I got. That an', y'know, kinda livin' on the ground. As it were."

Zach shrugs, not answering the question directly, but he doesn't dodge Felix's question. "You put the guy - and it's nearly always a guy - in charge, in front of me? I can sniff him out. Give me some time people he's touched directly? I can recognize him even faster. I'm looking. Don't worry about that." He has less good news for Nolan, putting his hands in his pockets. "The problem with the crowds is that there is no 'ground.' The metaphor falls apart. Now you're talking about a cancer. Find the root tumor amidst a thousand angry, malignant cells. At the end of the day, we all interact at the lowest common denominator. You wanna chat with me? We chat." He gestures towards Justin's inattentive presence, "You wanna fight? Well then I got no choice but to fight you." He gives a shrug. "I'm sure we'll keep running into each other, though, if that's actually your jam. The best thing you can do, though, is innoculate the people you want to protect. And watch 'em."

Nolan frowns at the answer from Zach, in part it's an expression of disappointment, but it's a thoughtful look, too. "I'm new here, like he said," he says, nodding toward Felix. "But I don't have any plans to be anywhere else." He, too, looks to Justin, and then shifts his focus to Felix. "No answers. That's not my job." The grin returns, then, nearly a smirk, and he, too, turns to depart.

"I like chattin'," Felix says, and adds with just a hint of that earlier feralness to the grin, "Like fightin', too, though. Anyway, you get inclined to look for me, I ain't that hard to find. 'less I got a reason to be." Nolan's remark on answers gets a breath of a laugh. "Mine either. Don't mean I never got any. ...an' say hi to your family." He digs in his pocket for that tin again as he watches the pair leave, thoughtful as they make their separate ways across the park and away.