When I wake up, the first thing I notice is that I seem to be resting in the fetal position for some reason — my legs are drawn almost all the way up to my chest, with my crossed arms resting on top of them. It's actually rather uncomfortable, and I'm honestly not sure how I even managed to fall asleep this way.

The second thing I notice is that I'm floating.

Floating inside some sort of large, semi-transparent reddish sphere, the surface of which is intermittently pulsing with arcane-looking symbols.

Outside of which is outer space.

I blink rapidly, my mouth falling open slightly in utter bafflement.

What... the...?

My gaze shifts downwards, and my confusion only mounts further as I realize that my skin has somehow turned pure white, though it's shot through by several snake-like lines of red running in undulating waves up and down my curves — curves I don't exactly remember having last I checked. On that note, I also don't appear to have even a stitch of clothing on, my only apparent concession to modesty consisting of a pair of bracelets, anklets, and thighlets each, along with some sort of beaded necklace thing encircling my waist. Why the hell am I practically naked?!

I pull my legs even tighter to my chest in reflexive embarrassment, only to realize that my upper arms appear to have wings sprouting from them, matching my knees, which are covered with similarly feathered ornamentation. There's also a semi-translucent red ribbon draped just above both my elbows, and I can feel a weight on my head and a mask on my face and there's some sort of golden disc set into my collarbone-

"—I'm off to get that black cat."

Startled, I glance past myself and down at the source of the voice — at the bottom of the sphere, a woman with a complex hairdo that literally fades into her tight black outfit is standing with a gun held out in front of her. Though I heard her voice just fine, she looks absolutely minuscule to me, barely more than a few inches tall... but that's not enough to stop me from recognizing her.

I gape openly. That- that's Bayonetta. As in Bayonetta the Umbra Witch, the protagonist of the video game series that shares her name. And this sphere — this is from the final stage of her first game, where she fights...

I look down at myself again, the motion of my neck causing the seven huge, hair-like ribbons attached to my headdress to ripple out and encircle me on all sides. Each one of them shines like gold, backlit by the brilliant light spilling forth from the enormous, impossibly intricate halo hovering behind me.

Jubileus...?!

"Shall we get this started then?" Bayonetta quips from far below, staring up at me with an almost amused expression.

I don't answer, too staggered by the apparent situation to even process the question. How am I- how did this-?!

Bayonetta shrugs. "Well, if you're not going to take the initiative, I suppose I will."

In the next moment, she's turned into a panther and is sprinting forward up the right side of the sphere, gravity a clear non-factor here. Before I can so much as react to this, she leaps upwards and comes out of her transformation already swinging, punching forward towards my face.

Feeling threatened despite her relative size compared to me, I recoil backwards — just in time to dodge the considerably larger fist of Madama Butterfly, which forms in midair and copies Bayonetta's motion. She's attacking me-!

Bayonetta falls from the air and back to the bottom of the sphere, landing on her gun-heels without any apparent trouble. Wanting to stop this before it goes any further, I open my mouth.

IAIAL
(Stop!)

The word twists in my throat as I attempt to speak it, taking on an entirely different sound before exiting my lips in a high, screechingly loud tone. I cringe slightly at my own volume, while Bayonetta herself barely flinches.

"Hmm, no, I don't think I will." she casually replies, transforming back to panther mode and beginning to run up the wall again.

Not wanting to actually get punched, I try to move away, and end up instinctively floating towards the opposite side of the enclosure from Bayonetta, positioning myself on the "ceiling" relative to the part of it she's currently using as the ground. Then I move again as she sprints to where I just was, and again, and again, initiating an unending game of keep away as I desperately attempt to gather my thoughts.

Okay, just- just stop panicking and think for a second. This is the final fight of the first game, right? Which means that Balder just resurrected... me, and is currently in my- erm, eye. Presumably with Loptr in tow in fact, assuming that the events of the second game still happened/will happen as well. Which is... bad, but also the only reason I/Jubileus isn't still sealed away, I think?

I curl in on myself even further. Damn it, I wish I remembered this series' plot a little better! The story of the first game was confusing to begin with, and the multiple out-of-order time travel events in the second one didn't exactly help matters — though, hell, I don't even know if I didn't just dream all that up to begin with now. I mean, I'm apparently Jubileus, AKA God with a capital G-

Bayonetta suddenly transforms back to human form and skids to a halt, evidently having gotten fed up with orbiting the interior of this sphere like a cat chasing after the world's largest mouse. The guns in her hands vanish, replaced a moment later by a glowing red longsword I recognize as Shuraba. What is she-

Bayonetta looks up at me before rapidly swinging her new weapon at the air in front of her. Upon the fifth slash, an ethereal blade ten times the actual one's size manifests near the bottom of my right-most hair-ribbon, which swings forward and bites deep into the statue-like face embedded just above the ribbon's tip.

Despite appearing to only be part of my headdress, I guess the hair-ribbons are also physically attached to me, as a sensation like that of a bad papercut runs through the pseudo-limb and channels its way back up to the rest of me. I let out another screeching cry — more out of surprise than from actual pain — and follow it up with a second deafening protest.

POILP TGETA
(Cut it out!)

Once again, my words seem to morph midway between my brain and mouth, to the point that by the time I actually get the sentence out, it doesn't even sound like it's composed of the same syllables anymore. Okay, what is going on? Why is everything I try to say turning to gibberish as soon as I- wait, am I speaking Enochian?!

"For something that claims to be a God, you're awfully whiny." Bayonetta comments, apparently understanding me regardless as she resumes her attack.

I glare down at her and coil my ribbons in on themselves to defend their vulnerable "faces", even as several more energy blades appear and swing at them in rapid succession. Thankfully, the attacks seem much less effective against the outside of my ribbons — in fact, I can barely even feel them impact, the cuts sliding off my pseudo-limbs' feathered exteriors like rain off a roof.

OI GNAY GEGIL DEARPG
(I don't want to fight you!)

To my annoyance, this time Bayonetta just flat out ignores me. Hey, I was being sincere! I don't want to fight you; hell, I don't even want to be here!

My lips curl into a frown. Maybe I shouldn't be so concerned about Bayonetta's efforts, what with my current status as a literal deity, but given how the game version of this fight ends with Jubileus getting punched into the goddamn sun by Queen Sheba, I'm pretty sure Bayonetta could in fact still actually kill me if this continues. There has to be some way to get out of this situation, right?

I glance around at the ethereal sphere encasing and shielding the two of us from the vacuum of space. Not that I expect it would matter much for me if it wasn't present, given just who and what I currently seem to be — in fact, maybe I should just get rid of the thing, since that means Bayonetta won't have anything to stand on, thus forcing her to stop attacking me by default. Although, she'll then go plummeting back down to Earth, which I can actually see below and...

...and uh... wow. That- that is the planet. This is actually a pretty awe-inspiring view, now that I look — and a similarly awe-inspiring prospective drop, which is kind of the problem, as I imagine a fall from the near-literal heavens might actually be enough to kill Bayonetta. Since she's kind of necessary to fulfill the various time travel loops that happen in the second game, and I don't know how this universe handles paradoxes, I'm not sure I want to risk that. Although, she does survive the same fall in the original game, and she can also just flat out fly by turning into a crow, so maybe that's not a problem? Or maybe this is a stupid reason for me to even be hesitating in the first place-

"You know, I never imagined fighting a God could be quite so boring." Bayonetta suddenly comments, ceasing her slashes. "If you're not going to cooperate, then you really give me no choice but to force the issue."

With that, she begins to perform a rapid series of dance-like motions, finishing with an echoing chant.

AFFA TADAAG NAPTA
(Sword of Dust!)

Just as I realize that was also Enochian — the words of which I somehow implicitly understood — Bayonetta strikes a pose, and about nine-tenths of her outfit suddenly flies off her body, becoming a whirling tornado of black that immediately tunnels into the nearby air. Wait, what?! She can't possibly have built up to a climax move yet, so how-?!

Six circular portals abruptly appear to my right, from which countless black tendrils begin to sprout and rapidly coalesce into arms. As soon as they've fully formed, the bodiless limbs surge forward and grab hold of my own arm, squeezing it tightly and holding it in place. Despite being considerably smaller than my own limbs, I can't seem to manage to pull away or dislodge them, their strength seemingly neither limited nor determined by their size. Get off!

"There we go." Bayonetta says, smirking.

The arms begin to drag me down towards her, even as I struggle to tear them off. With my free hand, I pry one of them loose and squeeze until it comes apart, and the edge of an unconsciously lashing ribbon swipes another one in two — but another pair of hands just forms to replace the destroyed ones a moment later, which grab hold of me again and continue to pull. Damn it-!

Below me, Bayonetta leans forward, Shuraba glowing brightly as it gathers power. My eyes widen behind my mask.

No- no, this needs to stop! I don't want to be here, I can't be here, I NEED TO NOT BE HERE-

*!-!-OOOOOOOM-!-!*

-and then the light of my halo engulfs me, and suddenly, I'm not.


AN: This fic is based entirely off an inside joke that does actually not exist on fanfiction dot net (only on Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity, where you can find a much better version of this and all future chapters), and the formatting gets seriously screwed up because the symbols I'm using to represent Enochian can't be used on this site. However, I figured it was still worth putting up here anyways, if just because it's kind of the direct result of one or two of my other SIs. In any event, I still plan on writing and plotting this semi-ridiculous premise the same way that I would any of my other fics, so feel free to decide yourself just how much of this to take seriously. ;)