First Impressions Matter

Author: B.H. Ramsay

Disclaimer: I own nothing, and I claim nothing, which is what YOU'LL get if you sue me; nothing. Consider yourselves disclaimed.

Rating: Mature

Dedication: Thanks ever and always to Reikson and Drakependragon

Summary: When Cereza met Xander

Jeanne smelt the musty odor when the door opened.

Neither the short and stocky man, nor the pungent cigar that he was chewing on, seemed the immediate source.

"I want Bayonetta," Jeanne announced.

"Nothin' doin'," the stocky man growled, blowing a defiant cloud of smoke at her. "You Umbra bitches only tried to kill her a bunch of times."

"We Umbra Witches…" Jeanne shot back, "…try to kill each other more times than you could possibly imagine."

"You say that like it's a good thing." The little man… Enzo, that's what Cereza had called him, snorted.

"Competition is our way, bloody… violent competition. We push ourselves to be stronger so that our order becomes stronger."

Jeanne poked an aggressive finger into Enzo's chest.

"That, little man, is why our order still exists, despite the plots of the Lumen Sages or the witch hunters that your own people unleashed upon us. Our order survived; we survived and became stronger."

Enzo snorted, "Lady, I hear that I-am-special-hear-me-roar crap, and my dick shrivels. It's one reason why I like hanging out with HER;she don't bend my ears with bullshit justification."

Jeanne spat out an annoyed grunt. "Fine; we Umbra Witches are the closest thing to family that some of us will ever know. In her case, we're the only family she's ever known. Now where is my sister? Please."

Enzo paused for a while, and then jerked a thumb up the staircase behind him, which had only one door on its second floor.

"She's been squattin' in there for days ever since the kid got jumped."

"All this over that boy, Luka?" Jeanne snorted. "The sex had to be good to justify all this fuss."

"I'd avoid cracks like that if I was you." Enzo shrugged, fiddling with his paperwork. "She's been little miss bitchy-pants for a while now."

Jeanne pushed past him, striding up the staircase and opening the large door.

A fireplace roared at the far end of the room. The flames burned hot, hotter than inferno's tormenting environment. Cereza was staring blankly at the magically-enhanced flames, watching as all her pictures of herself and Luka were quickly consumed.

"Luna's light, Cereza," Jeanne sighed. "You seem less like a powerful Umbra Witch and more like a heart-sick teenage girl."

Bayonetta frowned. "What would you know, you soulless bitch?" she sneered. "You probably never loved anyone or anything besides yourself in six centuries."

"Well, you can still be a catty bitch; at least, that's something." Jeanne just rolled her eyes.

Bayonetta snorted, and went back to tossing all those pictures (how many had they taken?!) into the flames.

Jeanne watched her for a while. Finally, she asked, "How did you think this was going to end? Did you really think that you could defy one of the oldest and most sacred of our traditions?"

"I wasn't teaching the boy magic or telling him our secrets."

"He's a journalist who was obsessed with you." Jeanne spat.

"He thought I'd murdered his father to hide the secrets of the Umbra Order."

"If that man had minded his own business, maybe he'd still be alive." Jeanne snorted. "What did they do anyway?"

"They must've waited until I was distracted, luring me away, and then snatched him up."

"What then?"

"Every conceivable indignity a motivated witch can visit upon a mortal and a few I think they dreamed up just because… hey, how often do you get chance to play with the great Cereza's boytoy and get away with it?"

"You suspect someone?"

"The Order, one of The Elders perhaps; who else could attack my home? Who but another Umbra would strike when I was unprepared? Who else would take such great pains not to physically hurt him?"

"You were warned that there would be consequences for taking a male and a reporter into your home and confidence."

"There was a fire in him, Jeanne. Defiant, stubborn… by the time they'd finished with him, he… he wasn't the same. They'd broken him, broken so that he'd never be whole again."

"Not dead? Honestly, girl, the way you were talking..."

"They broke his mind and his spirit, Jeanne," Bayonetta snarled. "The Luka I knew would spy on me in the bath, act like a complete lecher, and hit on anything with a pulse. He was fun and funny and interesting. After they'd hollowed him out, he'd have agreed with me if I said the grass was blue and the sky was green."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"If I want something that comes when I call and does what I say, I can get a pet dog."

"Dogs can be trained to be loyal," Jeanne shot back. "If i don't feed a dog, it'll stay loyal. If I hit a dog, it stays loyal. A dog understands that a little discipline is for its own good. Show me a mortal that intelligent."

"…and the glimpse into your dating lifestyle that comment provides me is a scary one." Cereza commented dryly.

"We're powerful people, Cereza. Not many people are going to understand what that means or be able to deal with it if they could understand." Jeanne sniffed.

Bayonetta saw something in Jeanne's eyes that had her wondering, and not for the first time either, just what role her fellow Umbran witch might have played in that attack on Luka.

Cereza's relationship with Jeanne was far from harmonious. While they had been friends and allies over the course of Bayonetta's six-century lifespan, they had competed with and contested against each other just as much.

The modern world had invented a word that described their relationship perfectly; frenemy

Bayonetta found herself liking that … Jeanne was her frenemy.

"By the way, where is the little prince? He's easy enough on the eyes; if you don't want him anymore, I'm sure I can find something to do with him."

"I sent him away." Cereza said with a sigh, she turned back to the fire. "I wiped his memory so he doesn't remember anything beyond our first meeting."

"Well, that's inconvenient," Jeanne smirked. "Rude, too. You finally have a housebroken man to play with, and you ditch him."

Bayonetta was certain now. Jeanne had been aware of the attack on Luka, maybe even instigated it.

"I'm sure you'll find something else to amuse yourself with," she shot back coldly.

Bayonetta definitely suspected her, but suspicions meant nothing to the High Council. It's what you could actually prove that mattered.

"Speaking of; someone in Intel has it out for me. They've dumped a recon job on me, and I was hoping that you could take care of it for me, that is if you are done crying like a little girl."

"What's the job?"

"You remember the Sunnydale Hellmouth?"

"I remember that it was destroyed; sank the entire town into a pit. There's a rather large lake there now."

"One of the people involved recently posted an online dating profile, and get this; he used Enochian runes to make the profile only noticeable to people like us."

"So he's a witch hunter or an inquisitor?"

"Whatever he is, the old hags are worried." Jeanne sniffed.

"You know, he could just be trying to get laid."

"With a dating profile using Enochian in the border of his photo page?" Jeanne snorted. "Just make sure some stupid young witch doesn't fall into his clutches."

Bayonetta looked at the boy he seemed pretty enough. The eyepatch was a nice touch. Still he was a young man, and young men were pathetically predictable.

How will you trap him?"

He's a boy looking for love on the Internet," Bayonetta replied, "I'll need some pictures taken."

8

9

8

"You did what!?"

Bonnie, one of Willow's research monkeys flinched.

Xander tried to remember that as powerful a technopagan as Bonnie might be she was still basically a kid.

"Sorry, " he said at a slightly lower volume, "explain to me again what you did."

"We're trying to weave Enochian code into the technomancy it enhances the spell work without frying the tech running it. "

"...and why a dating profile?" Xander asked, "besides the whole gross violation of my privacy thing."

We needed to test our theory, something like IPartner is perfect.."

"And you coded this thing so only Witches and demons can read it? "

Bonnie nodded, "it seemed the perfect way to control traffic to the page, that's until today."

She gestured at the monitor, Xander saw a woman. She wore skintight leather encasing an impressive and athletic figure Xander would have said glasses and a beehive hairdo wasn't the most intriguing of combinations but damn if the woman wasn't pulling the look off.

Her flirtatious pose in her pictures had her beckoning at the camera while flowery writing proclaimed her as "Mistress Bayonetta-just what you're looking for."

"Links to her page popped up anywhere you've been known to web surf in the last year..., Tin can, Youtube, Demons-Demons-demons," Bonnie paused obviously wanting to be delicate, "some other sites"

Xander caught the tone of her voice, "What I do during my off hours is between me and my soon-to-be-erased browser history." He snapped.

There were several pictures of Bayonetta posed coquettishly, seemingly randomly. One shot, featured her in a typical fetishized cheerleader outfit- a Sunnydale High cheer squad outfit. Another had her posed as a librarian, several books were piled up beside her. It took a keen eye to spot that each had the same theme, vampires, the supernatural and the occult.

"I give her this much, she's done her homework." Xander snorted dryly.

"She's calling us out." Bonnie muttered.

Xander shook his head, "She's calling me out." He turned to Bonnie, "What do we have on this chick?"

"Her picture features the symbol of the Umbran Witch Order." Bonnie pointed to the prominently displayed chest piece adorning her leather catsuit.

"Subtle...really, really subtle." Xander muttered.

Bonnie pulled up another screen, "They were a powerful clan of witches until they were hunted to near total extinction five hundred years ago."

"She seems not so extinct." Xander remarked looking at the pictures of the witch.

"That might be because they're one of the first magical sects to embrace the use of martial combat including modern weaponry."

"How bad are we talking here?" Xander braced himself.

Bonnie pulled up the last photo showing Bayonetta sitting regally in a chair. Xander gaped. She had no less than four guns including two strapped to her boots. Her seated pose was casual but Xander quickly noticed; three of the weapons were almost but not quite pointed at the camera.

While the intent of her message couldn't be clearer, more flowery writing slammed the point home. "Don't disappoint me." It read.

"Should we put together a strike team sir?"

"-against a member of an order of Witches that has survived every attempt to destroy them for five hundred years?"

She obviously wants a meeting."

With me," Xander insisted, "if I show up with Slayers or God forbid Willow in tow, she's going to go DEFCON one and I'd rather not find out out what being hunted for five centuries does for your combat skill set."

Xander reached for a phone, dialing a number that was included in her profile.

It rang twice.

"Hello Xander did you enjoy the pictures?" A husky voice on the other end of the line asked.

"My compliments to your tailor, nobody's even seen a Sunnydale High cheer uniform in forever."

"I wanted your attention, and your...interests are public record."

"I'm curious, how come you aren't being swamped by phone calls, those pics are pretty hot.

"Thank you," Bayonetta replied, "the spell you used to make your page visible only to our kind can be focused on a single person."

"So I'm the only one that can see the number."

Correct," Bayonetta replied, So hunter, how are we doing this?"

Doing what?

"Given your...propensities, I assume you want a showdown under cover of night? Will I be getting a small squad of Slayers or will it just be Miss Summers and Rosenberg who are joining us."

"None of the above," Xander replied, "I was thinking dinner at Angelo's. It's a nice restaurant in town."

There was silence from the other end of the line then, " The witch finally asked, "Are you asking ME out on a date?" The witch asked, "if this is some kind of trick..."

"There could be date type activities" Xander replied.

"Why Angelo?" Bayonetta asked suspiciously.

"The food's decent, you don't need reservations and the building sits on a ley line nexus point so if stuff goes pear shaped you'll have the advantage."

"You know what I am and what I'm capable of and you're not only not intimidated, you're going to give me a decided advantage?"

"You said you did your homework, you can't be THAT surprised. " Xander replied, "How's eight o'clock?"

"Works for me. You've got my attention Mister Harris, don't be boring."

"I don't do Boring. What do I call you?

"Bayonetta will do for now, if you're interesting I may have other titles I'll allow you to use."

Xander snorted, "if I end up in a Gimp costume in your basement a week from now, I'll be very upset."

"How quaint." Bayonetta laughed.

"Hey Pulp Fiction is still totally relevant."

"That's not what I mean," the witch explained, " What's quaint is the idea it'll take ME a week to get YOU into a Gimp outfit."

She hung up .

"What happened? " Bonnie asked.

"You know those jokes you and the girls like to tell about my dating habits that you think I don't know about?"

"I never heard anything about that." Bonnie lied.

Xander snorted, "I think it may have just happened again."