Rhiannon didn't so much as bat an eye at the haughty behorned girl's rebuttal; she merely inclined her head in a sort of, "Well, what're going to do," gesture. Without a word to her ill-mannered bird, she bade him go with a wave of her forearm, and turned toward her companion. Her brows raised loftily by mere millimeters, while one arm folded gently over her ribs, providing a rest for the opposite elbow, the adjoining index, middle, and ring fingers of which laid demurely over her lips.

"Oh, my. Did you hear that, Mr. Bell?" she asked just loudly enough to be heard, exchanging a pitying look with the boy she addressed, then adding with a shake of her head, "Most unfortunate."

Feeling empowered by his ploy, and encouraged by Rhiannon's participation, he only barely kept a straight face—but he did! For the moment.

"Really, it is," he affirmed through a sigh, as if it was indeed absolutely frightful, then addressed the imp again. "What a strange thing to happen to you."

He folded his arms and tsked once.

"Well, good luck with your... issues," he said and cleared his throat forcibly, and slowly began to continue walking.

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean!”

Her voice lost its acidic edge. She looked at them, entranced.

“You—do you remember who you are?"

Phantom remained quiet through the whole exchange, blending in as well as a man in purple snake pajamas could given the circumstances. The whole thing was incredibly amusing to him, especially when it came to seeing the shorter of his new acquaintances flustered.

"Yes, it would be most helpful if you knew anything about yourselves or what is happening."

Not that he believed either of them for a second.

Winn stopped and glanced knowingly at Rhiannon again. His resistance to smirking was faltering, and his lips were beginning to pull tight. He couldn't do it anymore.

"Actually, we only know our names," he replied, lofty and smug. "I just don't like rude people!"

Somehow, he did not stop to consider that he was teasing a monster-girl riding a giant. It had the potential to end very poorly.

The girl’s face contorted into some unreadable expression. As if on cue, the monster put her down on the ground.

She stalked towards Winn, fists balled. Behind her, the massive behemoth hunkered down to bring his head closer to street level. He watched quietly as she advanced.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve!” she declared, “Yeah, I guess you all think you’re pretty clever, don’t you—with, with your lies and everything,” the word ‘lies’ fell out of her mouth like ash, as if she found the sound of the word personally distasteful. She waved her hand around at the group in a big, sweeping gesture that included the ninja on the roof, “like, just because the world’s suddenly ended, or whatever, that you can just go around saying whatever you like!”

“Or maybe everything that happened is all a big joke to you. Do you think this is funny?” she asked, hotly, “because I think it’s terrible."

"Not particularly," replied Rhiannon blankly, briefly drawing her shoulders up to her neck. "But for the record, we never lied; we didn't say that we weren't affected, we merely said it was a shame that you were, and it is."

"It's all in good fun, though," assured the witch airily, with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“That’s worse,” said the imp, of Rhiannon’s explanation on the exact form of their deception, interrupting before the witch could claim that it was all a tremendous joke.

"How is it much worse than huffing about tersely, and calling everything and everyone stupid just because you don't know precisely what no one else knows?" queried the human girl, genuine curiosity inclining her head, as she stared quite piercingly, quite unabashedly at the Sau.

"Forgive me," she continued without pause, as if never intending to let the imp reply, "But of all the sentient individuals I've yet to cross paths with since awakening, you're the most wantonly foul-tempered. I was just curious as to what special circumstances you were roused to, which entitle you to such conduct? I'm sure it must've been dreadful."

“Hey,” she said, hotly, “hey, there’s no need to get all personal. Jeez, get over yourself.”

“Anyway,” she said, “I don’t see there’s any reason I shouldn’t be in a crummy mood.” She kicked a piece of garbage on the ground as she began.

“I wake up in this weird place I’ve never seen before, and I don’t know where it is and I don’t know why I’m here, and-and there’s no-one around and it turns out that I’m stuck in this stupid human town, with no-one else except my Sunmate—who I don’t remember having, and who doesn’t even remember me—and a bunch of creepy dwarf people who all lie their faces off I guess, apparently, because that’s what dwarves do? I don’t know—“ she shrugged incredulously, "and I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t know w-who I am, and I cut my foot and it won’t stop bleeding and I want to go home, except I don’t kn-know where that is! Why shouldn’t I be mad?!”

She breathed heavily as she recovered from her tirade, staring around at the group defiantly and puffing through her nostrils, like a bull, challenging them all to contradict her claim to crummy-moodedness.

Then something changed in her attitude. An internal realization caused her to turn inwards in thought.

Then her jaw dropped.

She stared around her in dawning horror.

“Oh, no,” she said.

“What if I’m dead?”

She clapped her hands to the side of her head.

“What if this is hell?"

Winn's reactions to the spectacle basically ran the whole gamut from amused, to offended, to incredulous, and back to amused again.

"Good grief," he sputtered at last, "it's not Hell, it's — gosh, is she always like this?"

The question was addressed up to her boulder of a companion. It was weird, being kind of frustrated but also wanting to laugh about it.

White Whale looked at Winn for a few moments before offering up a slow and surprisingly loud shrug. Tremendous leather bands and links of chain creaked under the strain. About a thousand even kilograms of luggage shifted.

“He doesn’t know,” said Tiny and Loud, returning fairly quickly from her panic attack at Winn’s reprimand, but no more happy for it. “Nobody knows anything. That’s kind of the point,” she added.

She stopped clapping her hands to her head.

“Anyway you don’t know this isn’t hell,” she said, but without much conviction.

Throughout the little demon girl's retaliatory temper tantrum, Rhiannon registered precisely all of the expression warranted of filling out particularly lengthy paperwork, in that if especially stimulated at any point in it, she may have blinked once or twice. Oddly, upon Winn's incredulous intercession, a grin of thinly veiled amusement flickered across her face along with excessively truncated, might-have-been-laughter which amounted to a mostly noiseless, but succinct puff of air out her nostrils.

Quick to recompose her features into something suitably grave, she shrugged impassively, as she turned to the mousy-haired youth, adding in a not-so-quiet aside, "You know she's right, Winn..."

"Perhaps it is her own personal hell -- That is, since she seems so convinced that's her destination."

Unnoticed by the group, a blotch appeared in the sky somewhere in the distance. Its trajectory appeared to be heading straight towards the town, its direction not wavering. Over the next few moments, it would continue to grow larger, starting to glide lower and lower, aimed right at the street they resided in.

"Hey, guys?"

Winn, suddenly distracted from the amusing argument, was squinting skyward and making a gingerly effort to interrupt.