divinetree | ⬢⬡⬢GLUTTONY RING⬢⬡⬢

[He really should learn to snap better pics, but it doubly wasn't helping that he was busy bopping and swaying to something funky that was playing while holding his phone to get a picture. This hive-dive had a color-changing ceiling and he wanted to get a little bit of video to catch the effect.

Okay, he holds down the button for a few seconds, get a few colors... Bingo. With a contented chuckle, he went through what he'd gotten so far, tongue poked out in focus. His drink, kneeling in prayer next to one of the hive kegs for the poor fucker who tried to clean it out in an attempt to beat Bee, Bee during a performance, the plants outside, a really dorky selfie... fuck yeah, let's put 'em all up. The atmosphere was making him super buzzy, who cares?

He'd noticed he was getting tagged in stuff lately. Huh. ...Wait, whoa, this picture came out really good... His first time havin' cotton candy!

Denji's ear twitched and he turned his head. Oh... that's a wobbly person. Recalling how even that special brew from Ozzie made him feel the day after- he should have known it'd have some boozy effect but that's on him for not bein' more careful- he snatched up his unopened water bottle.

He leaned and gave the girl's elbow a little nudge with the water bottle before handing it to her. She needed it more than he did.]

Heh... I feel like Queen Bee drinks should count as normal drinks times five or somethin'. Seen a dude twice my size get coldcocked after a cup! Poor bastard.

Hmm? Oh, thank you!

[Poppy will take the bottle, focusing long enough first - yep okay the seal wasn't broken, it's party safe! She'll take a sip. "They really are sipping drinks if you don't have the liver for it!" the dane friend laughed.

When Poppy finally turned to look at her generous helper, she nearly spit out her water in excitement.]

--MM! Oh! You're chainpaw! On sinstagram, right?

[Bless him, he wagered she was checking to see if he drank from it not to get germs or something. Understandable. Then again, he could scarcely parse what he got up to at the last party to really make any calls on mouths sharing spaces.

He sat up straighter at the name. Oh! Social opportunity!]

...Oh! Yeah. I like horror movies n' stuff.

[And that... other thing.]

I'm Denji.

[She waves her hand at him. Hello!]

I'm Poppy! It's just my name on my sinstagram. I'm glad you liked the photo I tagged you in!

[Her tail wags - she definitely was relieved to see that alert.]

[The light of realization flickered in his eyes.]

Oh shit, that was your pic...! It came out awesome!

[He looked down at his phone briefly.]

I'm still gettin' the hang of all this phone n' internet stuff, I only got into it recently, but everything's so colorful and it takes fuckin' everything in me not to just stand around with my mouth open, I dunno how people don't get knocked out from all of it...

[He paused. Oh. Uh. He was supposed to be native here.]

I-I... lived up in Pride until recently, so I was used to nuthin' but red.

Oh, definitely! The lighting is a big different between the rings. There's usually filters on your camera app that can help with that. I made custom filter settings for this lighting specifically actually, I wanted to show a bunch of the party with as little motion blur as possible.

[She retrieves her phone, opening up her apps. The dane friend scoffs an amused laugh because of course Poppy is getting into it, she'll take the rest of the drink and saunter off for a bite.]

I can show you how to make filters and what all the terms and stuff mean!

[Lighting he got, but filters? He remembered those settings that made stuff change color and look, but it was... confusing to someone who was diving headfirst into that whole deal.]

Yeah? Sure, if that's not a bother. I'm just super outta my element here.

[He turned and shifted closer, offered his phone for reference.]

No way, I could talk about photography until I lose my voice if no one stops me!

[She'll wave at him to follow her just a short hop away to the bar, since it's just a smidge quieter and easier to chat. She has to toss her purse up and hop up onto the bar stool, but with how her tail's wagging it looks like she's more than happy to sit and chat, holding her hand out for Denji's phone.]

[Her friend wasn't kidding. She really was so small... Hellhounds he was accustomed to were like, Loona, and he would see bigger breeds all the time since coming to Gluttony. But smaller dogs did exist, little like Pochita, so why shouldn't hellhounds be petite too?

He followed after, and after having a seat on a neighboring bar stool he passed his phone over. It contained the bare minimum when it came to apps, most things set to their absolute factory default down to the background. Either he got this phone literally days ago, or he absolutely had no fuckin' clue what to do with it. The bartender had walked over, seeing new faces at the bar, and Denji- with zero experience with this sort of thing- pointed to one of Bee's GIGANTIC sangria punch bowls and asked for something like that. Just. Y'know. Drink-sized.

He looked back.]

So like that dark room, red light stuff from the movies! Whadda you focus on, like, nature stuff, landscapes...?

[The artist types never really seemed to want to talk about things with people like him. But he was a hellhound now! Maybe he looked less dumb and easier to talk to like this. This is his chance!]

Depends on my mood! Really, just anything I think looks pretty. Sometimes it's my food, sometimes it's someone's pet, and yeah, sometimes it's nature!

[She'll set her phone next to his - hers has all kinds of cute colors and backgrounds and stuff, and when she opens her sinstagram, she's got her favorite pictures all uploaded!]

I've also done the dark room film photography, but my camera for that is a little heavy so I only bring it out for special occasions.

[She starts tapping through his camera app, looking at some of the filter settings and deleting a few of the crummy ones.]

What kind of pictures do you think are fun to take?

Oh yeah, I've seen those fancy ones in the department stores- you could kill a fuckin' tiger with 'em. Nnnnot cheap, neither.

[But... what kind of pictures sounded fun? He offered a nod to the bartender as his sangria arrived, and realized it was a small mistake as he smelled alcohol. But... a little? That should be fine. Of course, it was served in a fucking bowl, because Bee was Bee. He wasn't about to turn down her generosity.]

Uh... everything? That I wanna look back on to remember later, I guess. Oh, like food! If I eat good food, which is, damn, everything I've had since Demon-Dad took me in, I take a picture of it so I can look at it later and remember how good it tasted.

I'm good at it, too. If I think really hard about somethin' I ate, I feel like I can taste it again.

[He rubbed the back of his neck.]

But I'm not like a food critic or somethin' like that. Maybe I should get more pictures of places or maybe people, too, so I don't give off that impression.

[He smirked.]

I'd be a shitty food critic. Everything's good!

[She giggles at his comments about food - that'd track with the expression she caught in that picture and how excited Bee-zelbub had gotten around him!]

I mean, if you can describe the different and unique things you like about each thing, maybe it could be interesting! But doing it to scrapbook or keep memories makes a ton of sense, no one has to "get" what you're doing if you're doing it for yourself, right?

There's a lot of smells I remember really well! Different candles, some flowers, my favorite movie theater, makeup, hair dye - all kinds of smells always remind me of all kinds of things, like friends or family. Taste isn't that different, right?

[That's... that's right! Who needs to get it if it's for himself, anyway? But being able to put better words to what he gets out of things he eats sounds interesting, too. The only hangup he had was how he remembered reading reviews from critics and all those words they used just made 'em sound like assholes. That... and yeah, he just liked food, now that it was in abundance and he got to experience it all.]

Huh... it sounds kinda similar, actually. I, uh, don't have any good smell memories myself, but maybe I should start payin' attention to it.

Heh... let's see.

[He took up that bowl of sangria and tipped his snout to have a smell. The fruit, the wine he didn't quite realize he was smelling as he'd never had it before, and the subtle fizz of the soda.

He thought of his day at the beach, playing in the water with Power and Kobeni. They were having a water fight before they went to shore for some sodas. It was back when he was kind of getting started killing devils, before... everything.

...]

Ahh, this place is too busy smell-wise. I'll go for taste!

[DOWN THE HATCH. Don't mind him as he takes a moment to just... down the fucking thing. Congratulations are in order, Denji, for his (accidental) first drink! But this was weird, it tasted like a syrup soda with some fruit thrown in. Didn't he smell something before...?

Either way, he could pack it away and let his brain process that later. But he held up a finger and smacked his lips, putting on a show.]

Juicy... sweet and tangy, like biting into a pineapple...

[Denji, nobody bites into whole pineapples. ~~But nobody taught him how they were eaten, neither.~~]

Fizzy and dancy, that's the soda. So it's kind of like this party: Fizzy, dancy, bright, sweet n' tangy. So kinda like... whoa...

[He slowly blinked. That was... that was a wave of happy right there, slightly sleepy happiness. The alcohol had absolutely kicked in, the product of sneaky red wine and not quite having his fill of food just yet.]

...No, wait, better words. Bright, colorful, dances on the tongue... tingles, like a firework made of pineapples n' oranges.

Oh... oh, you need to try whatever this is...!

[She giggled at him, beaming and clapping at him downing the whole thing. WOW.]

That's sangria! It's a boozy punch. A firework of pineapples and oranges... that's a really really fun description!

Excuse me! One more sangria - just a glass, please!

[It's still a huge ass pint glass that she gets, but hey, fair enough. Poppy picks up Denji's phone, fiddling with the settings a little.]

Let's see if I can take a picture of it to go with your description.

Sannngria.

[Sounded fancy. Spanish? Definitely fancier than saying booze-punch, though that sounded like a kung fu move. But it sounded fun, huh? That's cool... he knew a lot of people that would have said that sounded stupid.

His eyebrows raised at the pint glass. Then he smirked her way and shrugged. Nothing was allowed to be small here, but if she couldn't finish it, he could absolutely volunteer to polish the sucker off. Denji was practically bottomless.]

Oh, sweet! The master at work!

[Hold on, hold on, he scooted his stool over. He needed to see the process through the screen.]

[Fine by her!! She'll take her time, adjusting the color filters, trying to pick a good angle...]

If you take a picture straight-on, it looks a little boring... but if you change the composition, it can look more interesting! I thiiink... since there's fruit and stuff, let's try looking at it from below, like we're tiny.

[Tiiilting the camera for a cool shot!]

And the warm kind of... pinkish orange, like a salmon color on the filter, makes it look even more sunny, right? Just gotta turn it down so it's only a hint of color and it doesn't change the colors of the drink itself too much. What do you think?

[She was right... it did have another interesting pop to it when you tried a different angle, instead of just trying to get it into the frame. But the color stuff he had zero clue about. But he could see it was making a huge difference, giving it more of a professional look while not letting the drink itself change colors entirely.]

I can see that "sunny"! You weren't kidding about the right filter thing makin' a huge difference. I like that.

...Damn... so much happens in thirty years...

[She'd been all smiles, but it finally drops for a moment. Tilting her head, her long ears flopping a little, she made a slightly confused but curious sound.]

Huh? Thirty years?

[You don't look THAT old...]

[He'd... thought out loud. Fuck. Uhh... "Hey, Poppy, I'm actually a human from the mid-nineties who escaped from his home world and became a hellhound" was a little much. "I'm from the 90s" just made him sound like an old man.

...Wait. Oh, hold on-]

I didn't have a lot growin' up, but everything I had was seriously outdated.

[Whew. That works. He didn't need another talk with Lucifer. That was terrifying. No wonder people thought clowns were creepy.]

I, uh- So I'm a fan of 90s stuff! Technology, pop culture, the... aesthetic. It's my kinda 'cozy hobby'. Seein' how far stuff has come like tech, movies, video games... the fuckin' internet...!

[Oh, fuck! He looked a bit surprised, actually kind of scared-- did she accidentally hit some kind of sore spot? Turning a little red, she quickly shook her head.]

No, sorry, it's okay, you don't have to explain if you don't want to, Denji! I think 90s stuff is kinda fun, though. The disposable cameras are some of the coolest and weirdest things.

[ahahaha SHE'S NOT AWKWARD she's not making this weird okay, okay!!]

[He'd faced a whole hell of a lot of terrible things back home, but this was... weirdly making his heart race, like he really didn't want to fuck this up. Maybe he was finally having a string of good things happen and was terrified of it coming crashing down.

It didn't help that he was now visibly sweating as he raised his hands a bit.]

It's cool, it's cool! You're fine. I'm a bit buzzed so I think my mouth's just gonna be stupid tonight. ...More than usual.

[A carefree shrug and a crooked smile.]

But... disposables, yeah! I dunno how many of those I lost at an arcade or in an alley somewhere. I actually always wanted those ones with the instant picture that spits out. Then the other day I was told about how I can put music in my phone, too... like a walkman, only it won't skip if ya shake it. Or sneeze.

[She sighs a little in relief - phew, she didn't tread on anything too sensitive, looks like! She'll just go ahead and dive into the conversations again.]

Wow, that really is retro! And you mean polaroids!! I had a polaroid camera when I was a little pup! Did you know that shaking the picture once it printed out actually didn't help it develop any faster? I learned that from my uncle, since he was the one who got it for me!

[He gestured forrr... hmmm. Maybe something yummy with midori. He was feeling like a melon soda with a kick. Oh, and some cotton candy! But he soon snapped his gaze back, like he'd just been informed of some world-bending fact.]

Whoa whoa, hold up- You didn't need to!? Seriously? So what was everyone doin' it for? Friggin'... outta peer pressure?

[Laughing jubilantly,]

My uncle always said it was because people felt like they had to be doing something instead of just waiting patiently!

Well yeah! What else are you gonna do? Talk to the family you just took a picture of? Like a caveman?

[He grinned, then propped an elbow on the bar.]

...Hey, so, sorry if this sounds weird and outta nowhere, but... I like your laugh. It's nice.

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