Tumbling back from the magical flames, the siren bit back a scream from the burns. The furs she wore began smoking and more than a few feathers were brunt. Eyes red with fury, she beat her wings and rose a few feet in the air. Whatever sparks were left were bown away by the gusts; furthermore, she could use the height for an advantage as to what would come next. Her thin chest expanded almost twice fold as she drew in a large breath; for a moment, she held it inside her lungs before releasing it into the air. The scream that came from her was solely focused at the witch and the volume was damaging to those who heard it.

She hoped it would at least give the magic user some pause.

Her lips tightened and her pupils shrank, retreating into pools of blazing green. As the Siren drew in her uncommonly deep breath, Rhiannon knew what was coming, and something imbibed in the deep recesses of her memory produced a response both apt and timely.

The tip of her parasol, still closed, lunged toward the avian woman, reprising the very same haloed sphere that had shielded her crow moments prior. This one was considerably larger, and the fierce focus of her countenance implied a heavy effort, as rather than protecting a chicken-sized occupant, it would instead contain a harpy-sized one... along with her shriek.

Thrashing in her prison, the woman slashed at the barriers with her talons. Though the touch was repulsive she barely felt it register in her adrenaline fueled body. Throwing herself against the walls, she put all of her strength into breaking it. The only thing that filled her senses were anger against the two below. It mattered little that just a moment ago she was almost willing to walk away. Pain was what she wished on them both. To know that any blood that flowed was their own and not hers.

Though no one could hear it outside her scream reverberated in the sphere, sound bouncing off the walls. It was starting to even cause her pain in its intensity.

The orb was not completely soundproof. The Siren's maddened fit within -- though likely hurting her exponentially worse -- carried uncomfortably outside, and Rhiannon was not one to suffer such tantrums. Though the the shield pulsed and burned with each slash and strike, it endured the tirade of the bird monster admirably.

The witch took a single step forward, leaving one foot behind her, with her body facing sideways. Abruptly, her free hand snapped clean upward and overhead, and, without ever having touched it, fired the harpy-ball straight up, maybe a hundred feet in the air, before it began to plummet back towards her. As it approached, her parasol swung forward from behind her in a tidy backhand stroke that connected with nothing physically, but jarringly altered course for the Siren, who was suddenly sent sailing over the rooftops, and out of sight.

Winn just blinked at the remainder of the spectacle. His head slowly lulled to one side, and his jaw hung just so that it parted his lips and left him mouthbreathing for a few seconds.

... Blink. ... Blink.

"Daaag."

His posture relaxed, arms dropped to his sides, and steel bar's tip clanked against the stony path. He eventually turned to look at the girl more directly.

"Well... thanks for that," he said as thoughtfully as he could muster while still overcoming the general shock-and-awe of the supernatural encounter. He found himself fiddling anxiously with the pathetic makeshift weapon, clutching it close near his waist. "You're the,... th'real deal, I guess. Top notch witchcraft, there."

Top notch witchcraft, there. Oh my gosh. Good grief, agh, geez. GEEZ. I can't believe I actually just said that. Maybe I should pretend I'm mute from here on out and just use this notebook to communicate so I don't reveal what a giant tool I am to the whole world.

Phantom made a mental note to not underestimate the intelligence of large monsters in the near future. Still, this was helpful. He knew more about them than he did before, like 'Sau'. That was new and potentially handy information. Still, he had kind of been pressed against the wall - not literally. He could still totally escape if he wanted to - on the lie had started this whole conversation off. Surely he could make something else up, like that he had lost the scroll, but that wouldn't go over as well.

Nah. He had a better idea.

Phantom calmly drew the scroll out of its pouch, crouched down, and offered it to the horned girl.

"Here you are. This shall suffice as evidence I am who I say I am, yes?"

It was almost as though someone had gone and turned off the serious.

Breathing a little more deeply than she had been prior to the encounter, Rhiannon turned back to her company, while some distant, far-off part of her mind nudged her towards asking if the lad was alright, but the impulse had not yet reached her synapses, and she instead just stood in place, silently staring at, or possibly through Winn.

She blinked once in response to his praise, as though slow to comprehend, but her lips eventually spread, while a quiet mirth bubbled in her eyes. "You're funny," she chirped appreciatively to the boy, whose head Cross suddenly seemed to fancy for a perch.

"Do you know your name?"

She had leaned over, shuffling forward on the shoulder of the white whale to reach the scroll, when the immense, farmcart hand sailed up from street-level again, and offered her a stepping-stone to the roof.

“Oh, th—thanks,” she said. She jumped on and made her way to the waiting scroll. She took it, she examined it critically. She squinted. She turned it around. She tilted her head sideways.







“What the hell is this?” she demanded.



She threw the scroll at the Phantom, unceremoniously. It began to drift down to the street below.

“Deal’s off, you crook!” she said, with all the affront and vehemence as if he had just spat in her face.

“I don’t even—I don’t even know why—” she added angrily to the white whale, fighting for appropriate words to express herself.

The immense creature made a rumbling noise, almost like a sigh, and returned her gently to his shoulder. He tilted his head to look at the self-proclaimed building-inspector.

“There’s no way you’re a building inspector,” the smaller one said, “no. way. This guy,” she jerked her thumb at her companion, “wants to know—if you don’t remember who you are—and you’re not a building inspector—then why are you out here? You’re either a thief or something worse, and we—“

The gigantic boy blinked and shifted slightly. The girl stopped talking, abruptly, and clamped her mouth shut. Anyone taking the care to notice would have made note of the fact that these two events happened almost simultaneously, and neither one of the pair had been looking at or directly able to see the face of the other.

Winn's head seemed to want to retreat between his shoulders when he first felt a pile of talon-y, fat bird on top of his head, but he got over it and suffered the crow's presence with rigid posture and without complaint, for the time being at least. It distracted him from his own "funny" foolishness, anyway. (That was the best answer he could have hoped for, truly.)

"Winn," he replied just a tiny bit nervously, narrowly restraining the urge to nod with his new hat-bird. "Winnston Bell," he restated more completely and confidently a second or two later. "People call me Winn," he noted in addendum. (This may have been true if only he could remember anyone ever calling him by any name.)

That went about as well as expected. There was no shift in Phantom's demeanor, though. He remained as calm, conversational, and curious as before. Just now fully aware that there was no point in lying at this juncture.

"Well," He scratched the side of his face through his snake mask, still crouched down on the edge of the roof. "I'm as lost as any one else here. Maybe if I find a certain man with white eyes I'll get some answers. Maybe not. But having an idea of where to start looking is better than being wandering aimlessly like so many others, hm?"

The smaller one looked at him accusatorially.

“Man with white eyes?” She asked, wrinkling up her flat, featureless nose in either disbelief or distaste.

“What makes you think he’ll know anything?"

"I do not know." Phantom shrugged again. He did that a lot. It was his universal 'Everyone has lost their memories and the world is a huge mess but oh well what are you gonna do' pose. Luckily this happened to be the absolutely perfect situation for it. "It's likely he won't, but no one seems to have any better ideas about what to do with their time.

He slowly rose to his feet.

"Regardless, he has something that should belong to me. And I intend to collect it." Something about the idea of not getting paid for an accomplishment really bugged Phantom. Another leftover from his past life.

"Oh, how nice," she replied in complete and utter sincerity, with a cant of her head and a subtle warmth to her voice. She was apparently apathetic or oblivious to her bird's rude imposition.

"I'm Rhiannon... I think." She turned back towards her little cart, though kept her eyes on Winn as she pointed it out. "The sign was in my bag when I woke up, but I suppose it mightn't have been my bag, now that I think of it."

The crow cawed boredly, and took a seat.

Winn huh'd thoughtfully at the suggestion of uncertainty, following her gaze to the sign.

"Well... you seem to remember your magic," he noted. "If you remember how t'make potions, too, then it's probably yours. That's what I would think, anyway."

"I suppose you're right," Rhiannon replied with an air that suggested it didn't particularly matter either way.

She seemed to consider something in silence for a moment, before directing the tip of her parasol toward her cart. With an understated snap of her wrist, the cart collapsed and folded itself up, zooming past the mouth of the open bag (which continued to sit undisturbed on nothing at all) along with the sign. The witch then stepped up to the bag, snapped it shut, and took its handles in both her hands, before turning expectantly back to Winn, smiling politely, and staring in a mildly invasive way, yet saying nothing.