Darlene knocked on the door of the hospital room. A nurse opened it, looking her up and down. "Hello. Are you Daisy's mother?"
"That's me. Can I see her?" She tried to peer into the room.
"Sure, madam. Come this way." The nurse led Darlene into the room, over to the large bed with lots of equipment surrounding it. Darlene hurried over, and saw her beloved daughter, her spindly arms and legs secured. One arm was hooked up to an intravenous drip, and the other was firmly stuck into a packet of crisps.
Daisy looked up, her sunken cheeks writing in an attempted smile. "Hello, mum. How did it go?"
Darlene sat down, tearing up a little. She understood what had put Daisy in this condition, but she was still horrified seeing just how bad it was. "Anna-Rose won your lawsuit. That man who broke in has to pay your medical bills for you, and there's a criminal case following up in a month."
"Great. I'm glad we won't have to pay for this." Daisy tilted her head up a little, eating a mouthful of crisps quickly. "When are you heading home? A couple of days?"
"That's the plan." Darlene sat down, looking around the room. The nurse left to give the two some privacy. "Can you walk yet, darling?"
"With crutches, yes. My strength is coming back now, at least. I should be up and relatively recovered before school goes back in September." She chuckled. "Well, my face will still be a bit thin, but that's going to take some more eating to fix."
"Don't eat too much. Look at you. Your belly's growing way too much." Darlene prodded Daisy's stomach. It was true, most of the body mass that she had to put back on was going to her gut.
"Tell you what, I'll start going to the gym once I've got myself sorted out." Daisy sighed. She wasn't in pain, she just felt light-headed constantly. The last two weeks in hospital had been quite the problem for her health.
Darlene looked over, to the second bed in the room. "Who's that?" Sat within the bed was a person bandaged head to toe, only their eyes visible. They were moving around, but it looked like it was painful and encumbered.
"Apparently, they're a burn victim. Some messed-up person set their whole body alight, and they suffered grievous burns to 80% of the body." Daisy laid her head back on her pillow. "I get a weird feeling from them, as if…"
"As if they're a Stand user?" Darlene butted in. Daisy sighed.
"Speak quietly about that stuff." She lowered her voice. "They stare at me a lot."
The person in the bandages sat up and stared at the pair. Darlene looked back, and saw some "potential" in them. That potential showed her an image of Daisy being strangled by bandages. She immediately stood up and faced this person properly, catching a sudden lash of wrappings. "Nice try." She smirked.
The bandaged person stood up, and revealed her nose and mouth from under the bandages. Other than a few scars on her left cheek, the woman's face was rather spotless. "Why would you have her saved? She will be here forever. I am simply putting her misery short." Darlene scowled.
"You think death makes anyone happy?" She sighed. "I've lived longer than you have. Trust me, death does not make anybody happy at all."
"I lust for the day I die. Ever since I was burned, I have." The woman stood, getting out of bed. "She is a ruined person. A shell of what she was. I am doing people like that a favour."
Darlene grumbled, walking over to her. "I will not let you touch my daughter."
The burned woman chuckled. "I won't have to." Her bandages shot out, flying past Darlene, who used her Stand to grab one of the strands and tear it off. The bandage, which had been so firm just before, became flaccid.
"Ah, I get it. Your Stand can't possess bandages that aren't attached to you, right?" Darlene smirked. "That makes this a lot easier." She turned around to check on Daisy, to see that she was being choked by another length of gauze. Quickly, she broke the bandage with I Think I'm Paranoid and sprinted over to undo the choking hold. She listened to Daisy's chest for a moment afterwards. "Thank God. She's breathing." She turned back to the burned woman. "You heartless bitch."
"Oh, look at mommy with the hard-hitting words. It doesn't stop the fact that I'm helping your daughter be freed from the hell she has to live in now." She chuckled, undoing a few more layers of bandages to show the horrible burns on her body. "Her condition is worse than mine has ever been. For the last two weeks, there's rarely been a time where she wasn't sobbing, or attempting to wobble out of her bed. Look at her. Can someone in that condition really recover?"
"You don't know her. She will do whatever it takes to get where she wants to go, just like I would do anything for her." Darlene's face grew more and more serious as she stared down this woman.
The bandaged woman simply chuckled. "My name is Tania Del Caliente. Go and look me up when you get the time." She began to cry. "My father did this to me. My mother always told me she would protect me, and I know how upset she was when she heard what had happened, but the truth is that she lied. You say that you will help your daughter reach her goals. Think about this, though. You aren't from this country, so would she have been hurt like this if she was at home? You sent her here, didn't you? So then, isn't her condition your fault?"
"You've been in here too long." Darlene was starting to tear up. "You've lost any decency you had before you were sent here."
"Of course I have! I've been betrayed by everyone!" Tania chuckled. "Do you want your daughter to end up like me? I'm doing her a favour, I've told you this before!" She shot off a few more threads of bandage, binding up Daisy's frail body. "So, I'll give you a choice. You either let me free her soul, or you will have to save her body from me."
"You…" Darlene looked back at her daughter. Daisy was weakly laughing. For a moment, Darlene thought she had lost it, but then began to laugh herself. "I choose neither, I choose neither." She wiped her eyes from tears of laughter. Tania was concerned.
"What the hell? Why are you two laughing?"
Daisy chimed in. "You thought I didn't have a Stand, did you?" She sliced open her bonds with mantis scythes. "You'd think a crippled little girl would be more afraid if she didn't." Bullet With Butterfly Wings manifested, and drove Tania's bandages against the wall with its stinger. Tania's concern grew to fear.
"Wait, hold on! I was just trying to do you a favour, please! Don't… don't hurt me." She began to cry. "Not again."
Darlene grumbled, walking up to her. "See? Death makes nobody happy. You might think you want to die, but when confronted with it, you suddenly change your mind. Like I said, I've been alive a lot longer than you, so I know these things."
Tania looked directly into Darlene's eyes. "So… you won't kill me?"
"There's potential in you, Tania. Potential to do good, to spread awareness. Not everybody is inherently bad. You just need to open your eyes."
Tania nodded, pulling the bandages off of her head. Her hair was a little patchy, but the short rough hairdo she had managed to regrow was almost a style. "Maybe I should try and leave this hospital."
Daisy smiled a little. "It'd do you some good, probably."
Tania hugged Darlene, sobbing. "Thank you so much. My poor mother… my condition drove her to do something horrible… I assumed that being in hospital made that happen to all of your loved ones. Thank you for showing me that I was wrong."
"Oh…" Darlene hugged back, a little teary-eyed. "If you have nobody left, I'm heading back to Australia in a few days. You can come and stay there with me until you get back on your feet."
"No. I'll make it. Don't worry." She smiled weakly.
After a few weeks, Daisy was discharged from the hospital. She grabbed the small amount of flab that had gathered around her stomach and sighed. "Man, this sucks. I guess I really am going to need to start working out."
Anna-Rose, who had come to discharge her, chuckled. "Well, I have a plan to go biking in a few days. You can come with."
Daisy thought for a moment, before nodding. "Sure. Although, maybe I won't go too hardcore on it. I suppose I could have used a little extra weight on me."
Anna-Rose looked her up and down. "If you don't mind me saying, you are just fine as it is." She blushed a little. Daisy was confused.
"Jeez, you don't have to be so embarrassed when you compliment me. We're both girls." Daisy chuckled, as the two walked over to the footpath, before being ambushed by a slightly familiar face. Anna-Rose jumped into a fighting stance as the rather tall Spanish-looking woman tapped Daisy on the shoulder.
Tania, now wearing frilly casual clothes over the masses of gauze bandages that was her Stand, smiled awkwardly. "Uh, excuse me? I... kind of need a roommate."
Daisy sighed. "If you really have nowhere else to go, sure. You can stay with me."
Anna-Rose looked at Daisy with a confused squint. "Daisy, you know this woman?"
"It's a really long story." Tania walked over next to Daisy, chuckling awkwardly. The other two joined in on the stinted laughter, and they giggled away as they walked back to Daisy's apartment.
Stand Name: "Unravel"
Stand User: Tania Del Caliente
Power: D
Range: B
Speed: C
Durability: E
Precision: B
Potential: A