The girl tossed her head.

"Right!" she said, with a derisive laugh, "like we'd tell you anything."

"Anyway," she said, and propped a hand on a hip, "it looks kinda suspicious for a guy to be up here, in the middle of the day, climbing through people's windows dressed like he's a stage-hand in a bad play!"

"And it seems pretty suspicious to see you doing it so confidently!" she said, "I mean, building inspector, huh? I guess you just woke up without a clue, saw you were a building inspector on your scroll or whatever and thought, 'Huh! Yeah! I'll go make sure someone's house is safe' instead of acting like most people around here and running around like a chicken with your head cut off."

It's a good thing his mask hid how completely rankled being called a stage hand made him, because it really did not go over well with him. The fact that the girl was surprisingly insightful for a whatever-the-hell-she-is didn't help matters much either. Still, it wasn't an impossible to salvagea situation.

"I can't help the way I'm dressed. Perhaps my past self simply had eccentric taste." Phantom gave a little shrug. "And is it so unusual? After all, you seem very calm yourself. I don't find it very suspicious."

"...yeah well," she retorted, "that's my business. And maybe your past self," she added with withering scorn, "was a big fat stupid p—"

A sepulchral boom rolled up through the air and the structure of the building the Phantom was standing on. The huge creature who had been standing serenely underneath, silent to this point, had squeezed up its eyes and bent back its ears, and—for a brief fraction of a second, revealed from behind its upturned collar a mouthful of teeth that would not have been inappropriate to find on something deep, deep under the ocean somewhere. The creature had, apparently, roared, or grunted, or something. Some kind of noise had escaped it, to signify displeasure.

The imp girl looked down, shocked.

“Wh—b—but he—" she protested.

Another, much quieter, oscillating sort of a rumble rose up from beneath.

"Fine," she said.

She straightened up, and settled her arms out at her sides, and began to speak in an entirely different manner. It had a lyrical, up and down cadence to it, but seemed limited in its range to three or four semi-tones. It carried with it the gravitas of the trained oral story-teller, as if she had practiced for days until she could recite this exact sentence, word for word, intonation for intonation, ensuring its exact transposure to the ears of whoever heard it, and through all of history. It also contained no warmth what-so-ever. She stared at him with a look that seems to consist of equal parts anger and haughty superiority as she began to speak.

"It seemed," she said, "when you were on that rooftop, that to us you were some kind of thief or rogue, breaking in to see by what means you could take advantage of the Common," she delivered the last word with a sort of exacting precision that let everyone who could have heard it know that not only were these Common demonstrated to be such by what had happened to them, but that they were common in their souls and that there was basically nothing anyone could do about it. In this one word was the sound of a society, and a class structure, and a firm and rooted opinion that the Common were some necessary functionary, like chickens or worms or whatever it was that turned milk into cheese when you put a calf's stomach in it, but that besides that, they were unpleasant and gross and should just go about their business of being Common somewhere where they wouldn't bother anyone else.

"We conferred, and we approached," she said, still speaking formally, "and when we found you commencing your egress, determined to stop you. Well," she said, suddenly disaffected and lackadaisical, "he wanted to," she jerked her chin down at the tremendous mountain of a being underneath, “I thought that if you—" she stopped, and glanced down at the monster's face. He craned his head up carefully, managing to return the gaze without knocking her off.

She sighed, and an expression flitted across her face for a moment. It was fleeting and unstable, but for a fraction of a second, she looked slightly abashed. One of her flat, goat-like ears twitched.

"Look," she said, "we think you look like you know what you're doing, a lot more than most people around here. Even us," she added flatly, "and you're just wandering around, breaking into stuff like you were looking for something, or had some job to do, so we think: maybe you're supposed to be doing this. Maybe you're looking around the city while everyone else is confused, you know, and you're trying to find—like, you know—whatever. Maybe you're just some nasty little thief, but maybe you're not, and maybe you know why this happened."

She swiveled her head around and looked at the Phantom sideways, glancing at him askew, and once again fiddling with the handle tucked into her belt-sash thing, as she added: "maybe you did it to us."

After her last failure to gain air, the siren had decided to instead just attempt to calm herself. She rested atop a building overlooking some kind of...gathering place? Crouching at the edge of the structure, she surveyed the area. The smell that filled her senses still unnerved her, yet she was far less panicked. They weren't like her, she mused as she watched one walk beneath her, then again she got the feeling this was a good thing. Still, she almost wanted another feathered creature to appear just to see if she could find out who she was. Or at least help her get the thing from her back.

Her stomach growled loudly and awoke her from the fleeting daydreams. Food. Nothing else really mattered in the long run did it? Food was what kept her alive and food was what she needed. Leaning further over her perch, the female picked apart the crowd. In her state taking down something big was out of the question. Besides, she didn't even have a place to store the remaining carcass. That was next on her mind to do. Building a new nest would be something that had to be done before nightfall. Craning out her neck, she searched for something more her size.

Lo and behold, a plump crow was right below her. It was almost too good to be true. The meal was just sitting there starting intently at a boy nearby. Glancing at him, she saw he was occupied with some girl. Perhaps luck was blessing her. Moving forward, she inched herself over the ledge till she was near tipping over. There was one chance to get this right.

All she needed was to grab it and snap its neck. The thought of fresh blood trickling down her throat made the pains in her stomach all the more aware.

Taking in one last deep breath, she took the plunge down towards the crow.

Winn smiled weakly at her joke, and bobbed his head in a sort of yeah, well, I figured expression of resignation and understanding. "It was worth a shot," he jested quietly, oblivious to what was racing in and about to strike from just outside his field of vision.

Maybe it was the swoosh, the fast-moving shadow, or something else, but the hair on the back of his neck stood up and he tensed, albeit far too late to actually recognize what was going on in time.

Rhiannon's attention abruptly diverted from her company.

It a flurry of tweed and satin, the wispy blonde spun on her heel, and lunged purposefully for the closed parasol hanging off her cart. She whirled smoothly about in the same motion that she unfurled the canopy and lifted it in a forceful, but controlled swing. Its ferrule fell on Cross not a moment too late; as his attacker closed in, the bird was instantaneously swallowed up by an invisible orb with a burning white halo, that would feel not simply solid, but rather repulsive on contact.

Cross turned a bored eye to the pouncing harpy milliseconds before impact. Somehow, he looked just a little smug.

Stunned out of words by the sudden appearance of the predatory creature, Winn nearly fell down as he scrambled back. Thinking fast, he reached for the first thing his mind compelled him to instinctively: his artificer.

The small device was comprised of two parts: one like a coin, with an etched, almost rune-like polished stone at its center, and worn, old leather straps coming off that connected said coin to a rectangular, multiple-slotted, slightly-tarnished gadget. The straps were such that the device could be worn neatly around the glove with the rectangular part on the back and the coin-like part fitted into the palm. He wasn't sure why, but he innately knew his was a rather outdated industrial model ill-suited to the fabrication of especially small objects.

No time to think about that, though. He had to make something useful! He slapped what looked like a crude little metal badge into one of the slots and held his hand out, palm down, fingers flared. A long, narrow, wispy form spread out from beneath his fingertips, emanating a pulsating white glow. His hair blew upward dramatically and his eyes widened. Fabricator-Assembler at work.

Except, his mind blanked. Of all the things he could have produced to help himself in that moment, all he got was... a metal bar. And it wasn't even perfectly straight.

Winn frowned and fretted and clutched his pathetic four-foot bar of steel defensively.

Now this was interesting. The way the larger creature intoned its desires to the girl in the form of bellows than words, the complete change it caused in the smaller of the pair, and the air of nobility that suddenly appeared made Phantom even more curious about exactly who and what these two were. Until the last line, at which point he became much more concerned with not getting his legs chewed off by Large and Toothy down there. Part of him, likely the part left over from before his amnesia kicked in, was telling him to run or attack, but reason prevailed.

"If I had the power to wipe the memories of others clean, would I be here talking to you right now? Or would I have used my unimaginably powerful magics to turn you into a frog or whatever." Phantom held his hands up, not defensive but in a more exaggerated shrugging posture. Something to show that he wasn't going for any weapons, or that there weren't any up his sleeves. "I am only slightly less lost than the rest of the people here. I simply know better than to panic in a crisis."

“W—well...” She said. She looked at him, momentarily unbalanced.

“Well,” she said, rallying again, although with marginally less force than before, “maybe you’re just some flunky, sneaking around while the real boss sits behind the scenes, watching everything."

"Perhaps," Phantom conceded. "But if we were to levy that suspicion at anyone who looks out of the ordinary, then we would be here all day. After all, the two of you look rather strange as well, yes?" He looked down at the larger one of the pair at the end of the sentence, as if trying to drive the point home. "And I'm sure there are many others in town who are even stranger. More to the point, if I was a "flunky" then what would I accomplish by having this conversation while exiting through a stranger's window?"

“I don’t know, maybe you’re mentally ill,” she said, suddenly cross. She punched her fists into her hips and stood contrapposto on the greater creature’s shoulders.

“It doesn’t take a lot of brains to be a flunky, does it?"

Phantom smiled behind his mask. This was easy, and it felt good. He wondered for a second of there wasn't a terrible mistake and he was actually some kind of politician in a past life instead of an assassin.

"Have I given you good reason to doubt my intelligence?" The snark was creeping into his voice. "After all, I seem to be making most of the good points in this conversation. I'm not expert on myself or anything, but I seem bright enough to know better. Even for a flunky."

“Well—well—well,” she sputtered, clenching her fists, “m-maybe I should just, just go over there and m-mash your stupid point rig—”

The creature underneath her emitted a cavernous booming sound. A hand like a farmer’s cart swept up from street level, on the end of an arm as long as a telephone pole and thick as a centuries-old oak. The monstrosity cupped its hand over the smaller creature’s head and gently compressed her down into its shoulder.

“Hey, stop it!” she said, “what are y—“

The larger creature’s immense hand descended further, forcing her into a sitting position and gently separating her from the outside world. Then it was removed, and dropped with surprising grace and weightlessness down to street level.

The girl blinked crossly in the sunlight. She scrubbed her eyes with her fists and slumped down lower on its shoulder, then folded her arms and stared down at her feet.

The huge mountain of a creature leaned in towards the Phantom. The girl reflexively grabbed one of the ropes and straps that adorned the mountain’s clothing, but did not say anything.

The mountain blinked, slowly, with a faint slicking sound as its eyelids folded down and then back up across its eyes’ expanse. The mountain's fur was snow white, and set in the bright white fur the huge eyes looked like giant, glossy obsidian domes. Somewhere in their depth was a hint of a layer of another pigment, a deep, deep chocolate colour, but it was dark enough that it was almost impossible to tell where an iris might have begun and where the sclera ended.

Bending forward had exposed its mouth from behind its collar, and it was open now, revealing a sprawling, thorny tangle of mismatched teeth. Set in distorted gums, teeth of varying length sprang every which way around its mouth. Behind the teeth, a beet-red, shiny cave of a mouth yawned open.

ooawehhy, the mountain boomed, ghuuhhh ahh aaahheeehy

That wasn't hard to understand.

Phantom gave the two a slightly exaggerated bow before leaping into the air, backflipping to the edge of the roof and then leaping off with such speed that he more resembled a purple blur than an actual humanoid figure.

The world had never seen such a super-humanly agile building inspector before.

“No, wait—I’m sorry, you dumb brick! Come BACK.”

The imp girl's words echoed, unheeded, into the streets.

The phantom would soon feel vibrations pulsing under his feet. The white mountain was making chase. Moving at a even, brisk canter, far removed from the running sprint the ostensible house inspector was adopting, it—or he—nevertheless managed to keep pace with the smaller man. His legs ate up the street by the metre.