#Stretch of glowing blue path with weird plants that monsters try and attack you on as you run past

[phoenixcatch7]

Omg you're too kind I'm so excited -

So my main overarching plan is based on a fusion of the two games that's basically as close to their own respective canons as possible, where the world building sort of grows around it rather than shaping it. In this, persona awakenings happen basically the same - at least to my understanding!

In Third Eye, personal personas are pulled from the sea of souls to bond with and reflect their user - they're not created from the users soul but are more akin to Bayo's demon summoning, where powerful and exclusive contracts can be forged where both demon and witch can be called upon by the other at their will, their magics entwined.

But bayonetta has multiple contracts, though they're weaker and less loyal than her main with Madame Butterfly, from whom she can use her limbs to attack and her wings to fly. Advanced rituals allow witches to take on halfway forms of their main demons, which may put you in mind of the fanart of joker in arsenes outfits :D. This is actually pretty similar to the wild card ability, where joker has his main/true persona Arsene, but can still form contracts with and use other persona he finds along the way!

Speaking of his persona, though, one of the things that I struggled with was what to do about his own demon contract. I spent ages trying to work satneal being half demon half persona into the world building somehow, but it just wasn't clicking, because I had three slots that needed filling but only two things to fill it with.

But then I found out about that one p5r dlc, which has akiras THIRD freaking awakening: Raoul, the false alias of Arsene Lupin. Sometimes lover, sometimes ally, sometimes the false name he disguised himself by. But his design is giving yellow Sci fi street thug who thinks he's all that compared to Arsene and satneals gorgeous black and red prince vibes ToT. Anyway, the fact that the other personas have actual upgrades, but Akira just has a false identity, that was actually really interesting. So, as long as we can overlook the yellow, it occurred to me that I might change it up.

What if this joker, with his secret identity of being an immortal gun slinging witch in training hiding from the government, awakened to raoul instead of arsene? And only after growing to trust his friends, his new family, and being able to open up to them about his past would he be able to awaken his true persona, the unmasked and unrepentant Arsene.

Because in canon it's the other way round, isn't it? Joker arrives as a kid who has nothing, a kid who got caught for doing the right thing regardless of the government, and it's only later that he builds a second life and learns the deception and subterfuge necessary to being a phantom thief.

And then satneal, the whole actual demon lord, could be his demon summon!! And his shadow would turn into a six winged bat demon hehe.

And the best part is there's a whole secret back story in bayonetta about how the current world began - there was a huge war aeons ago between the forces of heaven and hell that I think killed all of the Actual Universe Creating Deities, called Dea (bar one survivor who fell and now runs an underground weapon shop/bar that a xenomorph wouldn't look out of place in. As a piece of furniture). So both inferno and paradiso are notably lacking their bosses while earth still had Aesir (the guy who later split into loki and loptr). The angels wanted their boss back (who btw is a girl) but got tricked (by evil loptr) alongside the humans into basically an armageddon situation to resurrect loptr in his full power instead. Bayonetta teams up with Jeanne to summon the mysterious demon boss (?) queen, who then throws him into the sun before it gets to that point, destabilising reality. Basically in this au satneal is both very, very old, very, VERY powerful, and has been missing since the universe began. Him showing up to contract with Akira would be a HUGE issue in the bayonetta world, and I'm all for it. Let your kid out of your sight for less than a year and he summons the presumed KIA devil.

Man, I haven't even actually talked about the whole overarching plot. And why it's called Third Eye.

Right, the whole deal is that the trinity of realities are rapidly destabilising after the bayonetta games. Two magic cores called the left and right eye of the world (belonging to the sages and witches) got nuked. Demons are escaping summons, angels are going crazy and failing to pick up souls destined for paradiso, there's freak weather events, earthquakes, that sort of thing. Eventually the whole thing is, within the next millennium or so, going to shake apart completely and then we'll all be back in the primordial soup.

Loki tried to prevent loptr from making it worse (stabilised, yes, but much worse for humanity) by using humanity's free will to establish the meta verse and persona, so that humanity might have guardians of their own immune to the corruption that befell the sages and witches (persona users being immune to the mental corruption that would lead to forming Palaces). He hoped that by returning magic to humans the flow of energy would once more stabilise.

UNFORTUNATELY loptr caught on while he was making his own plans (involving possession and giant statues and I kid you not capitalism cults). And managed to break into the velvet room. Whether ol' yalda (aka demiurge) is loptr reborn or just his special minion idk I'm still working on that. But he finds akechi.

Akechi, who is a distant descendant of the sages on his mother's side. Who is almost unnaturally tall and beautiful and capable of the immense magic needed to be a wildcard, although his non-fool arcana limits him. Akechi would be perfect to sow the fear and destruction he needs to win humanity's thoughts and thus, their minds.

There's always something juicy about a 'last of their kind' finding someone like them, and I think it'd really enhance the tension between Akira and akechi. Akechi, who never knew why he and his mother were so different to everyone else, who could never have gotten the training Akira did. Who grew up having to conform and perform to public scrutiny in ways that Akira needed to reject in order to fully grow into his abilities. And the inevitable tragedy of his death, how he was already too far lost to ever be safe to tell, but he knew Akira knew something anyway. The rage of never being told. The guilt of never telling, even as it keeps your family safe.

But anyway. This story ends with the stabilisation, not destruction of the meta verse, that humanity can forever dream of bigger things than they will ever see. The phantom thieves of hearts might be young, but they have proved the strength of their very souls, and should the day arise that they are needed, they will be called upon once more. Though the two eyes of the world are long destroyed, the third eye, the third path has opened, and as one, humanity shall finally pave their own way.

Basically thank you so much for asking @thegarlicthief 💖💖💖💖

Y'know what my knowledge of bayonetta may be limited to badass witch lady but I'd still like to hear about your Third Eye crossover thingy

Omg what a thing to wake up to thank you so much :D!!!

To quickly summarise, Bayonetta is an unhinged fast paced fighting game (trilogy) about an immortal witch with demon summoning gun wielding powers, who hunts angels for their halos to earn money and feed the demon contracts so they don't eat her instead. It's incredibly campy and shameless, but behind the scenes it's got some seriously well researched lore and a wealth of world building that drew me to writing for it. It's visually gorgeous and amazingly cohesive.

So what started it all was a meme going around the smash bros community a few years ago when joker and bayonetta joined, about how she was joker's mother. And I, having played both games (but not smash, ironically), was instantly hooked. I really wanted to see a story exploring that, but there was only a handful of fics or comics that, while good, weren't what I was looking for.

So I started writing my own. It's a story about joker (I'm using the name Akira for him) being the blood son of bayonetta, and his life being raised by her and fellow witch Jeanne, who in this fic is living with them and co-parenting hehe. It's following him through his trials and tribulations of being the son of the last witch (they were all killed off in a very violent war with their counterparts the sages), his own training to be a witch via time travel (it's a whole thing) and - in the second half - the circumstances around being forced to leave his small circle of protection and being pulled under government scrutiny after saving shidos victim, where any wrong move risks exposing the last dregs of the supernatural to people who would want to ruin everything.

I'm purposely keeping it unclear how Akira was conceived/born, or who the other parent is (if there even is one), because it's not really relevant and I like the mystery! It's also unclear if Jeanne and bayonetta are in a steamy relationship or just doing a besties cohabitation thing for the sake of the kid, but again it's on purpose ;). And lets me avoid writing romance LMAO.

Unsurprisingly, it's the world building that's really making me struggle, but the general gist is that the afterlife is VERY convoluted.

So, in p5 you've got the meta verse and the sea of souls, which is where persona come from. Persona, who are mythological, literary or historical figures. You can summon persona and kill them to make weapons and accessories. Though you don't lose your persona upon entering reality again, it can't manifest.

In bayonetta, there's three planes of reality. You've got the obvious paradiso and inferno, and then purgatorio, a second layer of earth's reality where the games all primarily take place, where living things become faint shadows oblivious to your chaos - though they will freak out when you blow up their car! Angels and demons alike can be summoned to this plane, (though they often show up regardless lol), being sometimes mythological, literary or historical figures but usually just generic mob enemies (hey, just like persona!). Certain enemies can be taken to a guy to be killed and turned into weapons and accessories. There's a lot of similarity!

So, in Third Eye, the sea of souls that living humans cannot reach is referring to the three planes of reality, where angels, demons and human souls can be pulled into the meta verse to become persona. Awakening a 2nd tier persona is an evolution of the user's soul, strengthening it and making the magics easier. It's a third equivalent to the witch/sages, which is going to be VERY relevant in the second phase.

Also, in the second game, spoilers, there's a blue kid called loki who uses tarot cards to fight, who ends up being the amnesiac god of free will trying to save humanity from his evil counterpart loptr who wants to take control of humanity and remake the world in his image, and eventually he sacrificed his life to do so, with a promise to one day be reincarnated.

So that's where philemon was while Igor was taking over his velvet room :D.

Thank you so much for asking ^u^! If you're curious about more I'd be delighted to talk about it, especially the details of jokers altered persona ;)...

[roseamongroses]

W.A.L: “The Last Supper” (28) (ii)

s u m m a r y

Eden was the lowest of the low, a monster, hardly human, and was set to be executed. Roman was on trial, perpetually stuck in time until it was time to atone for his families sins.Neither cared much for staying trapped.So when a Stranger offered freedom, offered peace, offered power, it was hard to say no.Even if it put them on the wrong side of history.

v i b e s

time is irrelevent, homophobia who?, magic and beasts, demigods

w a r n i n g s

Imprisonment, Mentions of execution, Blood/ injuries,  Mentions of past Death, repression, cursing, some  dissociation

c h a r a c t e r s

Deceit(Eden) Sanders, Remy Sanders, Logan Sanders, Virgil Sanders, Patton Sanders, Roman Sanders, Emile Picani, Elliot, Kai, Lauren, Dot

Ship: Roceit

1) (2)   (3)  (4) (5)

(6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

(12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17)

Everything was too loud and once again Roman felt like it was completely beyond his control. The forest’s weight was an oppressive entity, seemingly outside of normal nature’s reach. Everything either felt as if it was moving too fast for conscious comprehension or that it didn’t move at all.

He didn’t need to ask to know that this forest was older than time itself. And while plausibly Roman knew that nothing was too beyond a Sanders’ control, something deep within him said that he shouldn’t even try it here.

Even before when the tree-like beast attacked, he knew he had done something unspeakable when he ordered it to unmake itself. At the time he was too confused and panicked to care about the consequences but now...He's still confused, and still had that constant growing panic that made his hyperawareness a curse in itself, but at least he now had a goal.

Several in fact.

Most of which involved him burning The Stranger and The Council to the ground and getting his family away from all of this bullshit. But the key point of that was he had to get to Janus--he had to find Janus.

Larry carried him through the forest rambling about nothing in particular to no one in particular and Roman ignored Dot’s heavy stare. He tried to somewhat memorize where they were taking him, but the forest didn’t make any sense. It was made long before sense was even a concept, but eventually Roman caught on to how it worked.

Even if there was no distinct landmarks, there was an undoubtable heaviness that increased the closer they got to wherever they were going. Roman could feel the magic laying dormant become more and more unbearable, he could feel even his own magic being dwarfed as he realized just how big this “forest” was.

The long branches of the trees seemed to cluster and tangle together locking away the sky until even the faint twinkling of stars seemed to meld into the darkness. And yet they continued forward, seemingly unphased or alarmed by the complete darkness.

Only it wasn’t dark for long. Slowly, but surely, dots of glowing red started to line their path. The unblinking eyes swooping above their heads just out of reach or scuttling just out of view into the hearth.

At one point, Roman felt the pressure increase and realized they were going underground, deep underground--all the while the glow of the Misrae’s eyes grew steadily around him. All attentive and completely soundless aside from the beating of wings. It got to the point where the glow was enough to illuminate the caverns walls and the deep etchings and carvings that swirled across stone in a deeply familiar yet foreign language.

At a certain point a thought came to him that maybe this wasn’t a weird forest or a cavern. Another thought followed with such clarity that Roman flinched at the intrusion.

It wasn’t a forest or a cavern.

It was a tomb.

---

Roman tuned out most of The Stranger’s speech.

It was some long, drawn out thing about his many woes and how the Universe continuously stripped away everything he cared about and how he needed to fix it. At first Roman didn’t understand what “it’ was exactly because while the Council sucked ass, it didn’t seemed like The Stranger was only fixated on that. Some of his issues had to do with the decaying world while others dealt with the fuckery that was human society and how magic folk were being systematically destroyed.

So Roman assumes that fixing it, meant well fixing everything. It meant reconstructing how existence worked until it was all this perfectly oiled machine. And The Stranger planned to do it by bringing back the goddess and some-fucking how Roman was suppose to wake her up.

At that point in the speech, Roman was less bored and more tired because it was absolute bullshit.

“That,” Roman picked at his nails, “Is absolute bullshit,” he said, relishing in how he can audibly hear the bastard's blood spike.

Dot’s wings stretched to curl around The Stranger, but they jerked away, scowl firmly in place, “Of course you wouldn’t understand,”

“Oh I understand,” Roman sighed, leaning back against the makeshift bed, “You’re some old, sad, crusty man who likes taking his shit out on my boyfriend because no one likes you,”

The Stranger had an interesting vein popping in his forehead now, his blue eyes wild under the faint haze of the Misrae’s careful gaze, “I detail a plan constructed over centuries and you trivialize it to loneliness? This is not about me, this isn’t about you, this is about fixing this world and--”

“Are you done?” Roman groaned, hands tapping impatient, “Because I don’t fucking care. You’re holding my loved ones hostage and you want me to revive the fucking goddess so I’m going along with this shitty plan--what else do you want?”

“I want--” The Stranger snapped his mouth shut, a strange flush settling over his face. He cleared his throat, turning to Dot stiffly, “Get him ready,” he gritted, turning on his heel and disappearing to the shadows of the tomb.

Dot exhaled, turning to Roman, “I know you’re upset, but that doesn’t mean you have to upset him,”

“Upset him?” Roman scoffed, “He’s older than dirt he can deal with it,”

“He really can’t,” Dot said. She maneuvered about the room with an uncomfortable ease and grace, sidestepping the oddly place crates and horrifically sized spider webs.

Roman attempted not to flinch as she hefted up a large, wrapped, thing, that, if the smell was anything to go by, was most likely dead.

“What are you doing with that,” Roman said with a grimace, curling himself further against the wall.

Dot hummed, the air stirring with the noise, “Don’t you trust me?”

“No.”

“I…” Dot dropped the dead thing on the crate next to the makeshift bed, “That’s ...unfortunate,” she finally said, wings curling about her waist, “It isn’t personal, I’m just returning a favor,”

“I. Don’t. Care,” Roman said, still eyeing the thing with caution.

“Roman don’t be--”

“Don’t be what?” The air became ice, Roman’s eyes trained on anything but Dot, “Because I know my reaction is reasonable and I don’t appreciate you trying to convince me otherwise-- as if you being nice makes this situation any better,”

“It could be better,” Dot reasoned, slowly unwrapping the thing, “He has no ill will of you as far as I know and if everything goes right, you’ll be safe,”

“It doesn’t matter it’s still fucked up,” Roman felt the makeshift bed crack and he could hear the tomb stirring and it made him al the more uneasy, “And the thing is I know fucked up--Annaliese wouldn't even call me by my name for years and yet somehow you’re even worst,”

At that, Dot had stiffened, her wings dropping at once, “Roman--” she reached out.

“Don’t,” Roman gritted, the command rushing out all at once. Dot’s hand had frozen mid-air, her wide-doe eyes blown wide, body frozen, “I trusted you,” Roman finally said, voice small.

All at once Dot’s body relaxed, as if the taunt string had finally been cut loose.

She didn’t try to touch Roman again.

---

Waking the dead was sort of like reading.

It was picking apart at the layers of a life that wasn’t his and trying to decipher a meaning--trying to reason with the bits and pieces the life had left behind. The coaxing was the easy part, the magic of the dead still lingered in some way. Sometimes returning back to nature, sometimes laying dormant, other times well…

Roman let the smile on his face linger at the thought, memories of Remus’s laugh a comforting relief that was only interrupted by the brief twitching of the creature’s corpse in front of him. He frowned as he watched the brief flickering of life slip away all at once.

He had done it before successfully, sometimes accidental sometimes on purpose. But even the successes weren’t...right. Even though he had never seen the creature in life, Roman felt the wrongness wash over him as they twitched and writhed in their own juices, the stink of their magic flooding the room before quieting--taking their life with it.

“So who’s going to tell the ass that I suck at this,?” Roman grumbled.

“You don’t suck,” Dot said leaning over Roman’s shoulders,” You’re progressing well for such little time,”

“Um... well it's still dead,”

Dot sighed, “It is,” she said, “Technical ability only get you so far, especially with the dead--and they’ll only get more uncooperative if we place it in a vessel it’s unfamiliar with,”

“So how do I make it cooperative?”

“Convince it that this new life will be worth living,” Dot said as if that was easy, “It's fairly similar to how you grow plants, only more complicated, so the energy you’re putting in will affect the outcome,”

“Dot I really hope you aren’t fucking suggesting I think good thoughts to revive a corpse cause that’s pretty fucking hard to do when my family’s being threatened,”

“It would speed up the process,” Dot shrugged, “And you’ve done it before,”

“But before I at least had J- Deceit--” Roman snapped.

Dot didn’t say anything to that, her stare far too heavy so Roman fixated on the corpse in front of him, pushing himself to try again--at least the failure would distract him. The corpse crumpled into ash in front of him and Roman felt his irritation spike--hating himself even more when he instinctively looked up for Dot’s commentary.

The only thing was that when he looked up Dot wasn’t there, and then she was, drifting back into the room as if she never left, a single key hanging from her fingers.

She tilted her head, staring at him expectantly before turning on her heel.

Roman scrambled to follow.