The molotov cut through the night air, turning on its axis, spinning through space. Like an embarrassing confession shouted in a nightclub, the bottle had picked a moment of silence to make it’s journey. To sail over the heads of those assembled. To land behind the line of shields.
The prelude of shattering glass was followed by a movement that touched the pyromanic in all that heard. It was answered by the cheers and cries of the mass as they pitched against riot police, armor, and baton.
The thick blue line moved steadily forward, leaving the cracked skulls and bleeding faces of the foe; and injured officers, in its wake. Inexorably dispersing the crowd, dismantling burning barricades and disarming would be assailants. It mattered not that the kids were right; that the cause they fought for nightly was just. They were outside of the law.
That was all that mattered.
And so the nightly news broadcast to a nation of children, violence done to them with abandon, and bred the next night’s warriors.
