((Obviously, the lyrics Coin is singing aren't my own. Well, semi-obviously. This is the quest thread for number four on the Wall, and is currently open to anybody. I have some helpers on the way, but I'm more than happy to meet some people from around here in character.

I'll follow up with something more useful shortly.))

Sweat running down his face, the pale man pushed himself to his feet and faced the crowd.

His sharp green eyes burned with an almost unnatural fire in the dim room, as though lit from a jaded fire inside his skull that nothing in this world could hope to extinguish. Swaying absently to the distant strains of the music a set of local players had been press-ganged into playing, the lithe singer bared his flawless teeth in a mad grin to the crowd that filled up the bar. His close-fitting clothing seemed altogether out of place in such an atmosphere, where even appearing half-dressed and half-clean were considered to be a bit posh, but he hardly cared...they existed for his sake; not the other way around. Tugging on the loops of tattered black cloth that coated his right arm, he turned his back to them, raised the projector to his lips, and breathed in.

He screamed.

"This is, for you and I your hopeless case,
You never were, you never were!
Leave me in your words to fall every time,
Every time I try, Every time you...
Talk about talk about it!
At least it makes you feel so bad, inside!
Here is where we stand, Feels like we stand!"

Whipping across the raised stage, snakelike, the singer howled for the audience; drank of the emotion that bled so openly from their bodies. These men-all of them thugs, brutes, and bastards to the core-were mindlessly giving him their still-beating hearts without a single thought or care, if only he would never, ever stop.

He was their idol; one carved out of nothing more than screaming flesh and bone.

"Oh god!
Everything everything, all around me is dropping, in my fate;
Everything everything, all around me is crumbling at my feet!
I stare so delicate and saved,
Everything I saved myself from!
I stare so delicate and staved!
This is for you and I, your hopeless case."

Snapping his head to the side, he spat a thin wad of saliva into the depths of the assembled lowlifes. They loved it. Raising the speaker to his lips, the man offered them a brief wave and a smile.

"Thanks very much. My name is Coin. Goodnight."

Dropping the device, he hopped off the platform and, with as much grace as one of his station was entitled to in the moment, legged it up the back stairs to his room.

He had their attention now, at least, and that was a good thing. With the brief hero-worship that would come after tonight's performance, it would be the easiest thing in the world to milk information on the new organization from the patrons. A pack of any-dirty-job marauders like these were usually smart enough to be tight-lipped, but (to his decided advantage) too dumb to understand when they were being greased up with anything but hard, cold cash.

Besides, if the men weren't willing to talk about it...well...women had a soft spot for men who could sing.