[Open] People Watching

[fallensun]

With this much upheaval in the city and an election on the way, you can bet all the fringe candidates are starting to come out of the woodwork. On a wall near the barrier (that has acquired somewhat of a trellis of outrageously colored flowers due to the dispersion of the barrier), handbills are starting to be pasted up. Some are the usual political nonsense you'd expect, some are screeds against the current regime (or lack thereof), some are just plain nutty, blaming the current situation on some sort of vast platypus bear conspiracy and calling people to rally in the park in protest of it. Among all the various papers is some graffiti of an eight-petaled lotus with an eye in the center. Is it a portent of things to come, or did someone get bored and decide to leave his personal mark on the wall?

Maybe both.

Judar has parked himself at the street corner with an armful of fruit and is watching traffic go by and the occasional unlucky soul get latched onto by a spirit. He's totally not paying attention to conversations about the various postings on the wall. Not at all. Just having a snack. Listening to people talk is Lau's job anyway.

Comments

What is it with all the lotuses over here?

[windfire_donuts]

If there's one thing Nezha doesn't care about, it's politics. You'd think he would with his father being a politician, but he never did grant much thought to his father's business, especially with two older brothers to worry about it instead. So while he didn't pay any attention to the propaganda papers pinned to the wall, the unusual graffiti did draw his attention.

Not that he really cared what it meant, it was mostly just the design that intrigued him.

[fallensun]

"See something interesting?"

Judar didn't even turn around, just leaned backward until his head was almost hanging upside down and looked back towards the wall. He paused like that for a moment, then it occurred to him that it would probably reveal the elaborate third eye tattoo that took up his forehead, so he gathered up his snack and dragged himself to his feet.

[windfire_donuts]

Shrugging, the brown-haired boy looked over at him. "I like lotuses." An innocent enough statement, they were his favorite flower, after all (if the lotus designs embroidered on his clothes were any indication).

[fallensun]

"Even creepy ones with eyeballs in the middle?"

He took a bite of his peach and munched on it as he wandered back over to the wall and looked at the drawing. It was at a rather convenient height for him, right at his eye level. Well, for good reason, but there was no reason to announce that to the world just yet.

"You'd think those would be a little controversial these days."

[windfire_donuts]

"It's just a flower." Oh, Nezha, it's so much more than just a flower. Even if he is aware of the Red Lotus, it doesn't change his opinion on the flower itself. "Even if it means something bad, I still think it's a neat design."

"Does the eye mean something?"

[fallensun]

"Maybe. You'd have to ask the guy who drew it."

He traced the outline of the flower, then the eye. It wasn't the standard Red Lotus symbol, which was really the White Lotus symbol, only red. That would have taken far too long to draw and wanted something a little more personal, anyway. He didn't like having to lay low and keep things under wraps, but until he had a better idea of what he was going to do while he was trapped here in Republic City, this was the closest he could come to announcing his presence.

"What do you think it means?"

[windfire_donuts]

Again, the teenager shrugged, looking back to the emblem on the wall.

"Graffiti?" No one ever claimed Nezha was particularly bright.

[fallensun]

"You're kind of stupid, aren't you?"

He took another bite of his peach and stared at Nezha with renewed interest. There were two kinds of stupid and he had time enough to kill, so he might as well figure out which kind he was dealing with. It wasn't that he expected people to run screaming when they saw the picture, but he was hoping at least for some sort of recognition. If people weren't going to play along, it sucked all the fun out of the game.

[windfire_donuts]

Though the comment did irk him somewhat (and his frown showed it), Nezha nonetheless remained calm. "Should it mean something to me? For all I know, some kid might have painted it there because they thought it looked cool."

[fallensun]

"It doesn't have to mean something to you for you to be able to figure out what it could mean. Or are you one of those types who needs someone to do your thinking for you?"

There were too many of those in the world and he hated it. No wonder people clung to society and order and government. Most of them were cattle too stupid to make their own decisions and reshape the world to make it give them what they want. People like that weren't even worth a second of his time, though sometimes he deigned to give it to them.

[windfire_donuts]

"I'm not sure why my interpretation is so important to you." Nezha let out an irritated sigh, lacing his fingers behind his head as he studied the design on the wall through lazy eyes. "I don't really care what it means."

[fallensun]

Cattle, plain and simple. And not even the fun kind that might get in on some stampeding if the situation called for it. Well, if he had to spoon feed information to light a little spark of inspiration, he would. Occasionally.

"If you ask me, it means there are members of the Red Lotus trapped inside the barrier here along with everyone else. But why do you care, right? It's not really important."

[paishodown]

"Oh, like that's a message you really want to send out right now," Asami murmured with a small note of disgust as she eyed the graffiti among the multitude of political ads and posters. She stayed out of the political eye as much as she could, not that that was saying much for a woman in her position.

But why would you even want that association right now?

[fallensun]

"What, the platypus bears?" He hopped to his feet and wandered over, still munching on a peach. He was pretty sure he knew what she was referring to, but it looked like he'd caught himself a pretty big fish this time. Revealing his hand right away wouldn't be fun at all.

"I was thinking about going to that."

He stopped right at her shoulder and pretended to try to find what exactly on the wall she was looking at.

[paishodown]

"Try all the Lotus propaganda," Asami replied as if it were obvious. No, she didn't care about some show about platypus bears.

"After the Red Lotus threw the entire Earth Kingdom into chaos, adopting a similar symbol now is outright crazy." Of course, she knew that there were still other members out there. That made the whole thing even more suspicious.

[fallensun]

"It's not crazy if you're actually part of the Red Lotus."

He took another bite of the peach and traced the outline of the flower as he chewed. It was simplified from the original Red Lotus symbol, of course, but it was high time someone did that, anyway. Taking the White Lotus symbol and painting it red probably made an impact when the Red Lotus was founded, but the connection between the two groups was trivial at best at this point.

"Or if you're trying to make a point."

[paishodown]

"No, then you're even crazier." She wasn't even going to tiptoe around that.

"There's a difference between making a point and trying to get a rise out of people." Like herself. Which it was.

[fallensun]

"You can do both at once, though. People get more done when they're angry about something. If you don't care enough to get angry, you aren't going to care enough to do anything about it."

That was how he saw things, anyway. He was tired of watching people twiddle their thumbs and fret about what to do. He was pretty tired of sitting back while other people got to do all the work, too. No, as far as he know, there were only two members of the Red Lotus in Republic City and that was one more than was strictly necessary to bring the whole place to ruin.

[paishodown]

"But then that's completely counterproductive. The people you're getting a rise out of are the ones who are going to actively go against what's being propagated." There couldn't possibly be a great number of Red Lotus supporters, could there? They had flung the Earth Kingdom into chaos and nearly killed her best friend.

Asami wasn't budging, on this.

[fallensun]

That earned a laugh. It was sort of amazing how naive people could be, even people who were older than he was. How little did you have to know about people to come to a conclusion like that? Sometimes his job was way too easy.

"That's even better! Give people a common enemy to fight against and they get very determined! Really, you don't even have to do anything after that point. They'll take care of everything."

[paishodown]

"Take care of everything? What's your goal, then? Chaos?" He sure was a smug one, wasn't he?

[fallensun]

"You really are the brains of the Avatar's little team!" He clapped his hands in delight. "Not that that says a whole lot, but I'm impressed! Of course it's chaos. Rip all this down, throw it out, and see what happens. No more government, no more Avatar, no more fate, no more destiny. Nothing but the world returned to the chaos it sprang from. It should be even easier to bring about now."

He sounded downright gleeful about it, despite calling for the destruction of all human society as it currently existed.

[paishodown]

That earned an outright glare. There was no point in arguing for her friends' sake when the media was already busy coloring their every public action over the past several months.

"You're talking about supporting the people who tried to brutally murder my best friend. I don't even care about your insane political agenda. All you care about is getting a rise out of people." A threat is on the tip of her tongue, but she managed to keep it to herself.

[fallensun]

"What's your point?"

He tipped his head to side, grin still not leaving his face. There really wasn't anything she said that he could argue with. Well, he certainly cared about more things than getting a rise out of people, but on a day to day basis that was indeed what he busied himself with. He wasn't crazy enough to start causing wanton destruction on his own without a plan, but he could definitely stir things up here and there to see where he could go with it.

"And anyway, you make it sound like I'm some casual fan or something. Did you think the Red Lotus was gone just because Zaheer is out of commission?"

[paishodown]

"No, we know that there are more of you. And when I march up to Lin Beifong and tell her that you're part of an underground extremist movement determined to destroy civilized society through murder, who do you think she'll believe?" In all honesty, he just sounded like a stupid kid to Asami.

But she did wonder.

[fallensun]

He laughed at that. Was she trying to scare him with the threat of the chief of police? Like he cared. If he wanted to lay low and not draw attention to himself, he wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. And he'd probably have gotten a haircut at some point in his life.

"Like I'd deny it! I might even go with you if I didn't have anything better to do. I'd like to see that old hag's face, anyway. Is it true she's physically incapable of smiling?"

[paishodown]

He was just a stupid kid. Asami made a scoffing noise and turned to continue on her way, ignoring his comment about Lin.

Of course these types would start popping up. It was just going to become one more thing to deal with in the city. Maybe they would all get lucky and the Triads wouldn't like them and they would just fight each other into extinction.