The pigeon-faced monster clutching the ball of purple energy landed on the street, spinning its head this way and that while its walnut brain burned black trying to remember where it was supposed to go. Another one with a crow's head swooped down behind it, smacking its fellow upside the head with one clawed hand and scolding it with loud, angry caws. The pair bickered in the street, the pigeonhead nearly dropping its cargo in the scuffle, before the crowhead finally won out, forcing the stupider of the two to head in the right direction. 

It fluttered clumsily down a separate street before turning into an alley leading behind the storefronts. This area would ordinarily be used as a loading zone for product delivery or staff smoke breaks, but now it lay eerily silent, its only visitors the bird-headed aberrations attacking the neighborhood. Sitting in the center of the lot, out of place in both location and time, sat a large pithos urn, glowing unnaturally from inside. The monster approached the vessel with its loot, holding it at nearly eye level to clear the rim of the five-foot urn. 

Footsteps drew the pigeonhead’s attention back toward the entrance of the lot. It had been followed? It was so clever and careful though. What trickery they must possess! It squawked loudly, flapping its wings hard enough to kick up the dust around it as it forgot all about what it was supposed to be carrying and got ready to attack. 

“What the hell are you doing, idiot? Don’t drop the anima.”

The pigeonhead started at the sudden rebuke, scrambling to catch the ball of energy before it hit the ground. Mina looked to see where the voice came from, resting her sword back on her shoulder. Halfway down the lot squatting on the edge of the roof above them was a young man who seemed to be about their age - Mina assumed the viking guy was around her same age, anyway. He wore beach sandals and jorts, and a tacky neon green and yellow windbreaker left unzipped to show off the mesh crop top underneath. Around his neck he wore a sharktooth necklace and a plain iron crucifix like she vaguely remembered being fashionable when her mom was in high school. A piercing glinted in his navel, and two more at the end of his right eyebrow. When he spoke an additional piercing could be glimpsed on his tongue, and his hair, though bleached aside from the roots, had been anachronistically tied in a traditional Japanese topknot. His right hand rested on a katana which he used to support himself as he squatted on the roof, and the trio of phone charms he’d tied to the hilt - a dog, a bird, and a monkey - clattered lightly against each other in the breeze. 

“Two… no, I can still here someone fighting,” he mused to himself, looking up at the sky thoughtfully as he did his mental arithmetic. “At least three of you, then? Man, how annoying.”