text, @TARANTO, day after the saloon fire

[heavyhitter]

hey guys guess what: blankets!!! me and TF to the fucking rescue, we rustled up like 40 of these bad boys
super cozy, some nice patterns. one of them has a robot wolf on it
it was also all entirely legal

they're ALMOST free, all you gotta do is tell me a story then come get one (i'm by those spiky ass fat plants that bleed if you knock them over)

also since i have 40 and there's more than 40 of us, i guess also pick someone to get cozy with

Comments

[digiorno]

I didn't realize you liked kittens so much.

Do you prefer stories with happy endings?

[heavyhitter]

cats are okay, i'm a dog person
but i'm also a great and considerate girlfriend who puts up with a lot of cat-related nonsense, so

that depends, do you have a good one with a bad ending

[digiorno]

You are a good person. I hope you get an award.

I have a good one with an ending that's open to interpretation.

[heavyhitter]

thank you, that is 100% true and i appreciate your earnesty

hit me

text ➥ voice

[digiorno]

All right.

[There's nothing else for a bit as he gets his thoughts together. Then he switches to audio. His voice is fairly quiet and even for storytelling, his words lilting and gentle. The contrast of that to the content is . . . probably a little unsettling.]

Once, the devil had a daughter. Her mother loved her more than anything in the world, so she stole him away from the devil, because she knew that he would eat his daughter alive. Her mother wrapped her in magic that made her look like just any other girl, not the devil's daughter--that hid her from his sight, most importantly of all, and that was a feat.

Because he had eyes everywhere. On every corner, every lamppost, every doorway. In every alley, on every windowpane, in the palm of every hand. And the optic nerve of every eye snaked through the world to find its way back to the devil, and he saw everything.

Except his daughter. She was hidden as long as her mother was alive, and so she grew up normal. Happy, healthy, strong, determined. She was a girl with the fears that girls have, that children have, but she could weather those fears, because being a normal girl made her so, so strong.

Then her mother died. Just like that, the spell evaporated, dissipated like dew in the morning, and there she was: exposed. And every eye strained on its stalk to get a look at her, and the sun shone in her hair, and the devil saw her.

Hands grabbed her arms and her ankles. They pulled her down into hell, and nothing could stop them, nothing, because there were so many of them, and they could never be outnumbered. Only fools would dare to cross the devil, and the demons who served him were cowards. They wanted to live. They wanted to prosper. They did not want to chance his wrath. And so they tugged her towards him, pulling and pulling--and she screamed--and then, just for one moment, some of the hands began to pull in the other direction.

Back towards the surface. A few demons' hands with white knuckles bleeding from dehydrated cracks and bruised palms. It wasn't enough to pull her back to the surface. She knew, even as she felt herself ripped in two different directions, that she could never go home again. Her home was gone. Her mother was gone. She, as she had known herself, was gone, because now she knew that she was the devil's daughter. But if she could keep away from him for just a little longer, she might survive.

The moment she decided that survival was the only thing that mattered in that moment, the devil's power found her. Wrapped around her wrists and poured into her open mouth. Or at least that was how it seemed at first. Those few demons who resisted, hiding behind their lies, were terrified, waiting for punishment but unwilling to let go just yet. The power was red, like blood diluted in water, drifting and solidifying like smoke into form.

But it wasn't his power. It was hers, coming out rather than going in. It spoke to her, a confident and compassionate whisper in her ear: You are not alone.

It didn't make her brave. She was already brave. But it let her fight. So she fought. She found the devil. She brought him to his knees. The other demons wrapped their hands around his throat along with her, but it was her father. She was the one most influenced by his destruction--most torn.

She was strong, afterwards. She was healthy. She was confident. But she never went home again.

[heavyhitter]

oh
damn, that's a good one

i mean not kittens blanket good but i could part with the robot wolf one

[digiorno]

I definitely want the robot wolf one.

[heavyhitter]

sold to the guy with the devil's daughter story
hey did she have a name?

[digiorno]

Yes. It was Una.

[heavyhitter]

nice
where'd you hear that one?

[digiorno]

Some terribly unsavory character told me, a while ago.

[heavyhitter]

better thank thank terribly unsavory character, they got you a sweet ass blanket

[digiorno]

Terribly unsavory characters are often very helpful when it comes to entirely legal goods and services.

[heavyhitter]

you know what i've found the same thing
how weird
come get your cool robot wolf blanket

[digiorno]

grazie grazie
my legally obtained robot wolf blanket

[He may or may not also pester Ramir for a return story. Or talk shit about other people's stories. Either way: zoom.]

[heavyhitter]

[ Ramir is seated on top of a mountain of blankets over by, as promised, a crop of spiky plants that presumably bleed if you knock them over. She's mostly dedicated to her magitek bracelet, but glances up to see Giorno, and offers a lazy wave. ]

You ready for this shit? It's a good one.

[digiorno]

Mmhm!

[Ramir is pretty lucky. She gets to see him actually smile like a kid--which is in part because he's got to tell an important story without actually giving too many details away, and in part because he just likes Ramir a lot. He comes and flops down next to her, folding his legs under himself and looking up at her curiously.]

[heavyhitter]

[ Man, this guy's adorable. She's glad he was the one with, at least so far, the best story. Italians (and Italian colonies) represent, right? She hops up, takes a few seconds to dig through the folded blankets, and pulls back with one in particular in hand and a pleased smile. ]

Here we go!

[ She flaps it out and turns to show it off: a robotic wolf howling under a moon, which actually appears to be a circular satellite, surrounded by quilted desert. It's all done in a lovely shade of salmon pink and lilac purple. She bunches it up to hand it over shortly. ]

All yours.

[digiorno]

[Ah. This is . . . the best blanket he's ever seen. Admittedly he might not think that if it wasn't coming from Ramir, given that his tastes usually run to one bajillion thread count nonsense, but the robot wolf moon blanket is objectively pretty cool in a weird way. And it is coming from Ramir, which makes it the best thing ever.]

[He takes it with deliberately exaggerated reverence and wraps it around his shoulders immediately.]

This is the best blanket in the universe. [A beat.] Universes. Grazie.

[heavyhitter]

[ That gets a laugh, as she plops back down again next to him. He's precious, what a top notch recent addition to the team. ]

Don't worry about it. [ She's switched to Italian, just because she can, and pauses just long enough to pull off her magitek bracelet and toss it away, to kill the auto translation function. Her various storytimes on the network can take a break. ] Anyway, makes sense you'd get the best one, right? We know our storytelling shit.

[digiorno]

[Ah. A good idea. Ramir is a genius. But he knew that already. He pulls off his bracelet as well, tucking it away in a pocket before snuggling back into the blanket.]

Well obviously. Nobody else should have even tried, really.

[And then Giorno gets a look that is fairly infamous in the shady corners of Napoli by this point. It's the Nosy Look™.]

Who gets the kitten blanket?

[heavyhitter]

[ Oh, she definitely knows a look like that; she recognizes it from the mirror. If this kid is a fellow gossiper, she's gonna love him just that much more. ]

Sigma. He's... [ She glances around, looking for the familiar silhouette, and... fails to find him in the immediate area. Oh well. ] He's somewhere around here. Tall, dark hair, incredibly American but still really easy on the eyes.

[digiorno]

Oh, well. That makes up for it.

[The American-ness. It makes up for the American-ness. Which is nearly a deal-breaker.]

Point him out to me sometime. Unless I see him first because he's wearing a kitten blanket as a cape. [That's a thing Americans do, he's pretty sure.]

[heavyhitter]

[ She snorts. She wouldn't put it past him, which is one of the reasons she likes him so much. ]

I'll tell him to make himself obvious. And honestly, he usually is -- if he's not in the cape then just look for the guy taking orders from Pepper, the fat tabby cat.

[digiorno]

. . . That's cute.

[If he didn't approve before, he does now. Not that it's his business, but also: he doesn't care if it's his business.]

You can take a cat around with you?