"So what do you use your voice for?"

Odeon - Lobby(#4049RJ)
The Odeon's lobby is testament to a faded and perverted glory. The deep crimson carpet is thick in places but in others stubbly as velveteen, and the rich pattern of tangling flowers is everywhere marred by dark stains. The walls are clothed in kingly purple tatters of wallpaper, and covered with faded posters featuring women and men in various states of undress, posing with various degrees of tastelessness, and screaming out titles like "Male Service", "Bang Bang: a Sexual Explosion", and "A Slip of Her Tongue" in garish lettering. There's no light in the room but what comes in from the street, and during the day the actresses look grey and ghoulish, and the bright reds and purples of the room faded and dusky; and at night, the place might as well be covered in thick black paint.
Immediately in front of the entrance is dull matte turnstyle which no longer turns, where once tickets were taken. To the right are a pair of doors which some joker has labelled "Pimps" and "Hos" with red spraypaint: these are the washrooms. To the left are a pair of doorways which lack actual doors, and opposite is a grand set of boarded doors which lead into the theatre proper.

The derelict cinema's front doors are rattled back and forth, and a few bangs come from outside, the usual signal that somebody who knows it's not as deserted as it seems wants in.

After some time, the door creaks a little way open, revealing one wide hazel eye and part of Giles beak-nosed face. "Um... yes?"

Outside is a face which may or may not be familiar to Giles, depending on what kind of attention he was able to pay to the guy who saved him from a watery death in Harbor Park Fountain recently. "Is Basil... oh, hey, it's you," Kevin says, obviously recognising Giles whether or not Giles knows him.

Giles stares at Kevin for a few more seconds, then nods and moves back, opening the door further to let the track-suited teenager in. "The ants are sweating," he tells Kevin, vaguely.

Kevin slips through the door quietly. "If that's half the code phrase I don't know the other half," he remarks. Once he's inside he speaks again. "Man, are you okay? You could have drowned in that damn fountain."

Giles frowns as, slowly, he closes the door behind the Glass Walker, and then gets distracted by the surface of the door itself, which he prods gingerly with fingertips. "I don't... She, she calls, and she was angry, very angry, screaming. Indemandant." He presses his hands flat against the door.

Kevin seems at a loss for words to reply to that with. "Well, anyway..." he eventually says. "Miss Kaz told me about you after. Didn't know you were one of us, now what are the odds of that? I was here looking for Basil, do you know him?"

"No Basil," says Giles, still studying the door. "Know Kaz." (Know Basil, No Kaz? No or Know?) Giles' right hand wanders back to his head, and long fingers tangle into the hair at his temple, tugging lightly. He half-turns back to Kevin and stares at him with those vaguely unfocussed eyes of his. "What does she scream, when she falls you?"

Kevin still looks puzzled, and also not a little regretful that he's locked out of Giles' world by the barrier of inadequate conversation. "She never screams at me," he says, "assuming you mean Kaz and not, say, Vera or Natalie..."

Giles shakes his head, then walks away from the door, one hand tugging at his hair, the other clutched close to his chest. "Kaz rings. Like church bells. Solid as the Great Wall. No, not the ears, I mean what I say, *her*." He pauses to look upward at the ceiling and then, quite intently, at Kevin. "She who screams, demands, sleeps, wakes, dances, screams again, white as shadows. *Her*."

One of Kevin's eyes narrows slightly. He makes a gesture (a non-threatening one, or at least it's intended thus) at Giles' head. "Her? She up there, man?" he says gently.

Giles gives Kevin a strange look, like *he's* the one talking crazy. "Gosh, no. Too big. Far-far-far too big." Even so, he folds both hands over his head, one on either side, and fingers his own scalp, looking vaguely worried.

"No no, man," Kevin qualifies. "Not inside your head. You hear her in your head, I mean. Course she wouldn't fit up there!" He grins disarmingly.

Giles pauses, jerks his shoulders in a bit of a shrug, then folds his arms and curls his hands close against his narrow chest. He fidgets, starting to pace again, walking with an odd, awkward gait, as though most of his weight was on the balls of his feet. "I hear her," he says, with a kind of mournful pride. "Clear as whistles."

Kevin walks along with Giles, keeping pace with his steps. "Hear her now? Right this instant?"

"Muttering," Giles says, "mumbling, nattering, snattering, snagging..." He trails off, though continues to walk.

"She ever give you any peace?" Kevin asks, still following Giles wherever he's going. "Does she let you sleep?"

Giles stops abruptly, but doesn't exactly stand still. He swivels to peer down his patrician nose at the teenager. "We dance, sometimes."

Kevin gives a little laugh. "Dancing's cool. You ever DDR, Giles? Keeps you fit, hones your competitive edge and sharpens your reflexes. All good stuff for garou."

"Stuff for Garou," Giles echoes. "Stuff for, for Garou, Garou, Garou, Garou..." He puts a hand over his mouth, biting down hard on his middle finger. The other hand starts tapping its fingers against his chest, in sequence -- pinkie, thumb, ring, index, middle, repeat.

"Oh, hell, Giles," Kevin urges, "don't do that. You're as bad as Morgan, damn it..." He reaches out gingerly to take Giles' wrist and ease his hand away from his mouth if he can.

Giles lets the other lay a hand on him and releases the finger docilely. "Galliard," he says wearily.

"Yeah?" Kevin says. "Me, I'm a ragabash. Miss Kaz, she's a galliard, though."

Giles nods slowly. "The ear has a voice, and I do, too." His fingers keep tapping against his chest.

Kevin releases his grip on Giles' wrist. "So what do you use your voice for?" he asks. "Miss Kaz, and Morgan, and Dillen and the other galliards I know, they go round and about passing news and messages."

Giles sighs and, quite with ceremony, sits down crosslegged on the floor. "Music, song, singing... The muddy blue man calls copper, and..." He shrugs, fingers twitching, his eyes fixed at some faded porn poster, not quite seeing it. "*She* understands, at least. Least. Least. Least." He continues saying the last word on slow repeat, like a broken record.

Kevin waits politely till Giles starts repeating that word again and again, like some character from an Edgar Allan Poe story who's forgotten that the word has a meaning. He coughs politely. "Anyway, there's a guy named Basil who's based here. Little guy. Only one eye, got a patch on the other. I need to find him. He's my alpha. If you see him," he goes on, with a dubious look at Giles as though he realises the message is probably rather complex for Giles' mind, "can you tell him Kevin's looking for him?"

Giles claps his hand over his mouth as Kevin starts speaking again. And again, he's biting down on the inside meat of his middle finger, but at least this stops the meaningless, helpless repetition. Looking up at Kevin, the Bone Gnawer nods.

Kevin gives Giles a hopeful smile. "Good man. Thanks. Anything you need, meantime? I can go get you stuff, if you're short of something."

Giles shakes his head, still self-muffled.

"OK," Kevin says. "Please don't chew at yourself like that, man. There's enough bad critters of the Wyrm to do that for you without you helping them." He laughs at his own joke, then sighs. "Tell Basil I'll be at home for the rest of the day, probably."

Giles nods once again, not laughing at Kevin's joke, but looking more weary than offended.

Kevin looks as though he'd like to pat Giles on the head like a dog, but refrains from doing so. Instead he turns and heads for the exit.

Giles remains seated, watching him go with those bruised hazel eyes of his. As the Walker leaves, the Gnawer starts rocking back and forth slightly, mumbling into his own hand.