Author's note: I own nothing from Bayonetta.
Chapter 2: Reprive
Even though the Gates of Hell was packed with customers, a fact that would normally make the bartender and his patrons joyous, the mood was sombre. No one was laughing, no one was talking aside from the hushed whispers directed at the mourning witch in the centre of the room. The others were paying tribute to the fallen witch in the casket near the left wall.
"When a witch dies, their soul is taken into Inferno." Rodin began, wiping a glass clean as he did, his voice easily carrying through the room. "If they had a patron they had made a pact with, then that infernal gets first pick of the meal. Then the soul is tossed aside to any demon that they had summoned in the past."
"Why are you telling me this?" Bayonetta slurred. In one hand was Luka's as she leaned against him, taking comfort in his body and arms. Her other clutched a half empty wine bottle. "I already know this…"
Luka gently pried the bottle out of her hands. "Come on, you've had enough to drink."
"No! Lemme drink more!" She snatched the bottle back and emptied it. Several patrons winced at the aggressive drinking. "It helps! Helps with the pain…"
"Bayonetta, I would prefer it if you didn't get wasted in the bar yet. Your past drunken sprees have been a little less than… destructive. They definitely do not help my productivity." The bartender set down his glass and gestured to the door. The other patrons nodded at him and left. "Do not let her get drunk until I shut down the Gates."
Bayonetta burst into tears as the last one left. "She's dead! And I could've saved her if I was more vigilant!"
"No, Cereza, you did everything you could." Luka whispered to her, his hands rubbing her back, trying to offer any sort of comfort. Turning to the man behind the counter, he grew serious. "Do you know why Gommorah broke free?"
"No clue. But I bet you a thousand halos that it has something to do with her Eye." He answered. Walking into the main room, he walked over the casket that contained Jeanne's body and stood by it, gazing at the serene face of the witch. Enzo was already there, looking at the witch with repulsion.
"You know, I always thought she was the ugly one." The short man mentioned. "But now that she is dead? Nah, still not feeling it."
"Enzo, she ain't dead." Rodin shook his head, and the sobbing stopped.
"What?" Bayonetta whispered, appearing to sober up, her voice filling with hope. Luka frowned, but his eyes were shining with hope.
"Do you remember how someone truly dies?" He turned to the pair, crossing his arms.
"They leave the trinities for good." She replied, her mind whirling. "But Jeanne is in Inferno! I can't get there!"
"Your friend Damien can potentially get there." He answered. "But I am assuming he won't be coming, since it's been three days since I talked to him. Stubborn, deadbeat motherfucker."
"That helps us how?"
"Fimbulventr…" Luka stood up and looked over at a painting. Walking over to it, a realisation went off in his head, and he clicked his fingers. "I've heard rumours that that mountain holds many secrets. Several beyond the comprehension of man."
"That mountain is also where…" Bayonetta turned to the Italian still perving on her Umbran sister. "Enzo? Do you still have that jet?"
"What? No! You still owe me for the car again!" The fat man waved his hands frantically. "I'm not letting you ruin my jet, or any other vehicle I may have!"
"The Gates of Hell. The actual gates, the only way in or out of Inferno normally." Luka turned to her, his mind clearly whirling with plans. "I'll research Noatun. You can use the lore of the land, and I want to know what the exact deal with Fimbulventr is."
"Bayonetta." She turned to see Rodin carefully handling a platinum watch. "Here; this will tell you how long you have left until she is gone."
"Three days." She took a note of the number. "Three days to break into the Gates of Hell, storm Inferno, find her and bring her back."
Rodin walked back to the counter and flipped a switch. The bar retracted, revealing rows of weapons.
"Take what you need. It's on the house." He gestured to the racks. Both Bayonetta and Luka gave him a look of suspicion.
"No drawbacks?" Bayonetta looked back at the weapons. "This is awfully out of character for you."
"If I let Jeanne die, I lose my second-best customer." He answered. Luka rolled his eyes, but smiled. "And besides, if she does die, I'll never forgive myself."
"What do you mean, never forgiv- oh, you care? Aw, Rodin, you big softie." Bayonetta smiled slightly.
"Shut up. If you tell anyone…" He threatened. "I'll tell the world what you and Luka did last month!"
"Deal!" Luka ran forward before she had a chance to respond, grabbing the man's hand and shaking it furiously. "We'll take that deal."
Rodin smiled at his eagerness. "Now, choose wisely. You shouldn't linger, you have better things to worry about."
The pair nodded. Luka turned and look at her. "I'll leave now; I'll need all the time I can get before I join you in Noatun."
She pulled him close and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. "Thank you, Cheshire. For everything."
He grinned at her as he turned and ran out.
"Now, I guess you're gonna fucking try to convince me that you desperately need my jet. Well, guess what? The answer is no! And that is fucking final!"
Both Rodin and Bayonetta stared at him with narrowed eyes.
"Well, if you promise to rip his balls off, he'll agree to anything." Rodin casually mentioned, and Enzo went pale.
"No! Don't you fuck- aww, this is why I can't have fucking nice things!"
"At least take care of his family while he is gone." She turned back to the bartender. "I do hear that Mrs Enzo makes a mean casserole, one to die for."
"So I've heard. Don't worry Enzo, your family will be in safe hands. Relatively."
"Oh no, you don't! You can't do this to me! I have to f-" Enzo's cries were abruptly cut short as Bayonetta dragged him out of the gates.
"Well, looks like I gotta close shop for a while." Rodin put his hands on his hips and looked around in satisfaction. "I'll put you on ice, rebuy the presents that were destroyed…" He began to mentally create a list.
A knocking interrupted his thoughts. Frowning at the door, he almost forgot that the bar was now closed.
But hell, it was a chance to make some halos. He hoped that the person didn't mind the corpse in the middle of the room.
"Alright, come on in." He gestured to the door, letting it unlock. "But you are my last cus- oh. Shit."
"I'm here." A beat up, but mostly clean, Damien walked in. "Sorry for being so late. I had to tie some loose ends up before I left for good."
"Well, you chose absolutely the fucking best time to come back." Rodin drawled as he tried to figure out how he could delay the winged man and move Jeanne out of the way.
"What makes it – Jeanne?!" He half screamed and choked out, running up to the casket. Rodin closed his eyes, readying his patience and calming himself down.
"What is the meaning of this!?" He turned around, tears in his eyes. "How is Jeanne dead!?"
"Well, fuck me."
…
Jeanne awoke in a familiar, yet unrecognisable hellscape. It was red. Very red. Blood red. A rocky red.
Infernic red.
"Oh no…" She heard her disembodied voice cry out. "Fuck! This isn't real!"
"Welcome to Inferno, Mademoiselle Jeanne." A voice taunted her. "The realm of demons, and the place where souls of the damned wander for eternity. Shitless, as I've heard it be described."
Her head whipped around to see a blue spirit, dressed in a blue cloak. It seemed to be smiling at her, taunting her to make a move.
"Who are you?" Her voice was beginning to hurt her. Swallowing in pain, she awaited the answer from the man.
"I am you." It answered cryptically. "Well, in a really cryptic, stupid, out of this world round-a-bout sense. You really have to understand the nuance before you can figure out the joke. Ha ha!"
She stared in confusion at the spirit. "What?"
"That's right!" It clicked its fingers, shaking its head at itself. "You know nothing. Aside from the fact that you are going to be the lucky one, you will not need to know anything."
"The lucky one?" She couldn't speak anymore. It was too painful.
"Oh, yes. Since you'll die before my plan is complete. It saves you the trouble of dying later." It appeared to think. "Although you being alive would be more beneficial to my later plans potentially, the Left Eye can't be delayed from its calling. Don't you agree?"
Reality shimmered, and a masked and cloaked figure appeared beside the spirit. Jeanne's eyes widened as she realised what she was looking at.
"This is an Umbra Witch, as you promised. The daughter of that monster, the Umbran Elder." His voice was muffled and distorted. "She deserves nothing but pain for a millennium!"
"Pain for a millennium? That's an awfully long time." The spirit argued. "But I do see it's fitting, considering we both need to get rid of her."
"What?!" Her voice rasped out.
"Oh, yeah. That's right. You need to die. Sorry." He clicked his fingers, and she felt Inferno itself latch onto her. "Well, not sorry. Not in the slightest. But anyway, come, my Sage. We have a boy to kill, and a witch to collect."
Bayonetta…
Jeanne screamed as she was absorbed into the ground, watching helpless as the Lumen Sage watched her apathetically.
…
The boy held his head with pain as the voice continued to ripple through him.
The mountain. Come to the mountain. Fimbulventr. Come to Fimbulventr. Rejoin. Come to rejoin.
Sovereign One.
"Stop!" He cried out in pain. "I just want to go home…"
Mountain is home.
"Shut up!" Curling into a ball, he wished someone could see him. Someone who could relate to his problems, instead of being Acceptance's or Affinities. "Just shut up!"
Come to mountain, Sovereign One.
"Please…" He was begging now. "Just stop…"
Collapsing with exhaustion, the boy fell into a fitful, restless sleep, as he always did.
…
She was back on the Umbra Clocktower face.
Affinities were swarming it, screaming and hissing at her.
"This is a dream." She noted. One jumped forward, and she grabbed it and tore it into two, relishing in the violent act.
"A perfectly good dream, because now I get to let off some steam." She smirked. "Come, let's dance boys!"
"Let off some steam?" A familiar voice to her left teased. "Daughter of mine, you shouldn't have to."
"Sometimes you have to." A male voice to her right answered, and she stiffened as she recognised it. "Pent up emotions will destroy you."
She turned around to see an Umbra Witch dressed in a black and red body suit, with chains connecting her ankles and wrists together, and a winged man dressed in white, both staring at her with an expectant look.
"Mother, brother." She greeted them both with a strangled voice. "Why are you here?"
"You mourn, do you not?" Her mother replied. "For her."
"You should take it out." Damien gestured to the angels behind her. "Destroy them all, let them feel your wrath."
"Why should I listen to you, less take advice!" She jabbed a finger into his chest. "You left me! You betrayed her! You abandoned us!"
"You should listen because I am right!" He answered, his golden eyes glowing slightly in anger. "You know you are hurting; it's time to release some of the pain!"
"Don't listen to him. You are the Left Eye of the world." Her mother stepped forward and took her hand. "You can save Jeanne; no need for vengeance."
Bayonetta looked down. "It hurts, Mummy. I lost two of my closest friends and family so quickly, one to nothing and the other to a sneak attack from my own. How can I be the Left Eye if I can't see the problems before my own?"
"Because, daughter, it takes a failure to teach." Her chin was lifted up, and her grey eyes met her mothers own. "You are the pride of the Umbra. You are destined for greater things; Khepri has told me so. Believe in yourself, for we"
Her resolve hardened, and the two figures faded away. Turning around, she glared at the angels, expecting them to leap.
She didn't expect a man to slice at her.
Twisting and flipping away from his swings, she summoned out a gun and blocked an overhead strike. Staring at the golden mask with confusion, she recognised her assailant.
"A Lumen Sage?!" She started in surprise. "How? No one bloody bothered told me your kind was still alive!"
The Sage was silent as he clicked his fingers, and Fortitudo descended from the skies behind him.
"Umbra Witch; defiler of Jubelius. We have come to take vengeance." It calmly spoke, its voice sending a tremor through the clocktower face. "You will suffer for your deeds!"
"Well, you fucking turkey, come and get it then!" Bayonetta summoned the rest of Love is Blue and took her stance. "The Left Eye yields to no one!"
The Sage flinched at the sentence, breaking off her and retreating back to the other side of the clocktower.
"What? Cat got your tongue?" She placed on hand on her hip and regarded him with curiosity. "Never seen an Umbra before? Wait, you are a Sage; have you even seen a woman before?"
The Sage reached up to his mask and pulled it down.
The only thing she saw before she returned from the realm of Morpheus was the bright blue light of the Right Eye of the World.
…
Bayonetta awoke, this time remaining calm from the dream. Opening her eyes slowly, she noticed that they were nearly at their destination.
Fimbulventr stood indomitably in the background, encompassing the landscape.
The dream was weird. The last one she had was an alternative future; was it possible that this one was an omen? Impossible. Her mother was still alive. And another Lumen Sage existed. Both of which could not exist in the future, unless…
She shook her head. The only person powerful enough to send people through time was potentially Damien, but she felt that he couldn't do it without someone already boosting the spell. And Balder was dead, and he had been the one to do it, albeit slightly unsuccessfully.
"Well, you owe me again for paying out Alex the Kid for his plane. You better not fuckin' skimp out of it this time." Enzo had noticed she was awake. Oh, joy. "And why the fuck do you me for anyway? We both know you can fly the damn thing."
Crap. He was right.
"Enzo, has it occurred to you that I might have been lonely?" She answered, telling a partial truth. "And no one else was availab- focus on flying the plane!"
Enzo snapped around and gripped the controls tighter as he readjusted their course back to Noatun.
"You? Lonely?" He began to laugh. "Gee, don't make me laugh!"
She ignored his jab and stayed in silence, staring out of the window morosely.
"There it is! That's Fimbulventr." He pointed out the mountain in front of them. Bayonetta rolled her eyes; how could anyone miss the fucking thing? "Not such a bad place when you look at it."
She ignored him, returning her attention to the mountain ahead of them. According to what Rodin had told her, the Gates of Hell were only accessible from the top of the mountain, and to reach it she had to travel from Noatun, the bridge of destiny and up the mountain itself.
What a fitting name, she reflected to herself. Something tugged at her senses. Frowning slightly, she looked into Purgatorio briefly and froze.
A flight of angels was heading their way. Dozens of the new centaur variant and a giant serpentine shaped laguna were flying at them from the mountain, and Bayonetta knew she couldn't fight them without killing Enzo.
Well, not on or in the plane, at least.
"Hey! Where did those clouds come from?" Enzo asked,
"My apologies, Enzo." She clicked her fingers, and a purple mist surrounded the controls.
"Hey! What the f- oh, don't fuckin' tell me they found us already!?" The mortal screamed, turning to her in panic.
She gave him a wink and smirked. "Be a good boy and fly home."
Shooting a window, she rose and threw herself out of it, letting Malphas's wings spread and hold her aloft, floating her down to the ocean beneath her. Opening up a portal to Purgatorio, she was relieved to see that the host had followed her, and not Enzo.
That was part one.
Transforming herself, utilising snake-within, she sped towards the water like a bullet. Smirking to herself, she knew she had finally lost them. Cutting into the water like a warm knife through butter, she swam with haste towards the shore.
Angels couldn't swim, after all.
…
The masked Lumen reflected to himself on the dream.
The Prophetic One had told him that two Umbra witches were still alive after a catastrophic event that killed most of their clan. He had witnessed the death of one of them; Jeanne De'Arc, if he was remembering her correctly. A good person, he had once thought, but one responsible for many deaths of Lumen; a crime that until now, had gone unpunished.
The second witch, he wasn't so sure of.
She looked familiar. She sounded familiar. Paradiso above, she even acted familiar to him. But he couldn't place where or why. She was beautiful, and someone he would've liked to know her if his heart was already taken by someone else.
She was also the Left Eye.
That was unexpected. He knew that the reason that the war had begun was due to the Left Eye becoming held by an impure witch, but as far as he knew his daughter was dead. The Prophetic One had told him that his wife and daughter had been executed by the Umbra not long after they had been separated. How dare they! Rosa had understood the risks, and was willing to take the fall if they were discovered. He understood why she was gone, but his daughter? She was innocent! A child! If they weren't already dead he would go back in time to kill them him-
Deep breathes. Calming himself down, he replaced his mask on and stood up.
The hour of reckoning for the Umbra was at hand for the murder of his family, and for the murder of his clan. They would pay for his suffering.
He would make sure of it.
"My, what troubles you?" The blue apparition appeared in front of him, startling the Sage slightly.
"Nothing of your business." He replied curtly, still talking in Enochian for the time being.
"Good. She has come, and so has he." The spirit smiled. "It is now time to put our plan in motion. Well, my plan. But you are involved, so it is our plan!"
"Let me kill the boy first." He looked at the spirit with a glare under his mask. "He deserves to die for what he has done. Then the girl."
"Don't you remember our deal? The boy and the witch delivered to me, then you may take your vengeance after I am finished with them." It shook its head in shame. "I understand your plight. I emphasise with it. I feel it. But not until their purpose has been met. You can't kill them yet"
The Sage merely grunted in affirmation.
"Go down to the city. You'll be bound to run into them eventually." It began to fade away. "Remember, I want them alive!"
The Sage was left alone with his thoughts.
"I will give them to you alive." He snarled. "Whether they are dying as they arrive is another question entirely."