[C] An Unbidden Guest [Closed, Janus]

If Janus was a young woman, this, was more of a young man. The other "Janus" flexed his hands and shifted, much for flamboyant in his bodily movements than Janus was herself.  "Correct, I am clearly Janus, call me Janus." The body said as it continued its half-cry half-laugh.  "Rather good namesake for her, don't you think?"  He said with a soft giggle as he moved around the shinigami slowly, careful to shift the chain so he didn't accidentally hit Merrick with it.  "Let's get semantics out of the way, I died, she lived.  We were still connected so I just, decided to stay with her."  The man said said.  Where Janus was very good about walking with neither an air of dominance, this man flaunted it.  "Mostly I'm quiet, but some, what does she call them?  Broken-mask had to go and wake me up by infecting Janus' soul with it's energy.  Needless to say I wasn't happy and woke up annoyed.  You, kind sir." He said cackling.  "Just gave me the 'key' out."

"Janus" was rather happy with his comments obviously as much at playing up the pair's namesake as Janus was about playing up the androgyny.  "Janus" turned his hand and tapped it against Merrick's chest a few times.  "You don't have a body, do you?  Are you dead too?" He asked crying, before stumbling lightly.  "No, stay asleep sis, I haven't had time to repair your mind yet! Stupid girl!" He said as he started to twitch, and the paint began to slowly run from his face.

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"Janus" took the wrist grapple as a personal attack, though it appeared, this version of Janus had absolutely no knowledge of the future.  It however, seemed to have a much better grasp of Janus' more fine ability to control its body and soul than Janus did.  The moment it was being held by the extremely strong Merrick, it simply looked confused. Janus debated lifting itself and slamming its feet into the Merrick's chest, or trying to put him in a choke hold but seemed to know it would do very little considering its grasp of Janus' wrists.  "Note, people aren't supposed to be this strong." Janus said as the paint finished melting away from its face before cackled again.  "Wonder how you'll explain this." it said as the chain began to reel in, slamming Janus' body into the position it was in as the bangles and earring stopped glowing.

The traces of the being vanished and Janus heard screaming.  It took her a second to realize, she was the one screaming.  Janus' wrists were viced to Merrick, one of them buckled and broke under the obvious force as her body reattached to her soul.  Her eyes suddenly refocused in anguish as she looked really annoyed, down at her obviously broken wrist.   She would have noticed the headache but the pain in her wrist was far too much for her mind to realize she had one. She wanted to ask why, or move or do something but the man was literally a good four times stronger than her from what she could tell.  She writhed and squirmed in agony as she shuddered, stopping only for a second as her divination went back up as well as her mental barriers and she bit her own tongue, forcing it to bleed and keep her from going into shock and overloading her body's production of adrenaline.  Janus wanted to know what was going on but between pain, defending her own mind from her gift, and trying not to go into shock she had her hands full.

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Janus looked at her wrist and shook it after she stopped screaming.  "That's.... wow that's pretty cool." She said rotating it a few times.  She flexed her fingers as well to make sure it was alright. All check, and that was still pretty dam awesome.  There were apparently even superpowers to heal.  More and more Janus wondered how the hell she was even supposed to do anything, much less keep up with things like this.  "Thanks for fixing it at least." Janus said with genuine grace.    Janus stood for a second and shrugged as she worked her fingers to make sure she was less crazy than she currently thought she was.

"I was path walking?" She said in response to his recollection comment.  "And getting displaced, kept thinking I was one of my divinations and not me.  Swapped between a whole bunch of mes before I managed to ground myself back to the present." She said, obviously unaware of what her soul was doing.  "Found a structure about a kilometer or so away in one of my paths.  Other than that, just was doing things for the sake of making different decisions."   The woman said as she scratched the back of her head.  "If you don't like to be touched, I wont touch you, definitely do not remember a future where I did but sorry I guess."  She said and started walking, obviously set on avoiding any confrontation with the much larger and obviously stupidly strong person. 

Janus ran through the motions of why or how she was going to speak up again but avoided saying anything as she started heading towards the odd structure she had seen in her divination.  Though, she was just about ready to be done with all the things going on around her, she wanted to crawl into a hole or something, at least there she might have a much lower chance of dying no matter how stupid it would be to be inside it.  Plus, her chest hurt for some odd reason, in a way she had never felt before.  Too many bad signs at once, she thought as she walked on.

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Janus waved her hand at that thought.  She had not seen anything like that in her divination and honestly, how would another something fit in her body.  That made little to no sense at all.  She flexed her wrist again as she wondered why he would say something like that?  Did not seem like the type to lie, but you never know.  Maybe he had done something to her when she was focusing on path walking or something.  Janus listened to the explanation but was unsure of what to actually say aside from something along the lines of 'and Grizzly Adams had a beard'.   Her comments would not really be warranted at the moment.    "I figure you're probably not lying, though that just goes to reassure myself I apparently am bonkers to the highest degree.  You don't seem like the kind of person who would make something up like that."  She said as she pushed her arms out in front of her and stretched them.

"Mind collapses caused by seizures are a normal thing, I probably suffer from some form mental dislocation, as I literally move through time without time occurring on a regular basis."  Janus pointed out as she booted up her mind again.  She thought about what kind of things a different type of her would be like.  As for Merrick, she would leave the theories to someone that was not her.  "Sure, what is your theory, Mister healbot."  She asked him looking back at him over her shoulder as she kept following a path in the future that did not have her run over or hit things.  Janus was not entirely sure what she expected to hear about this other her.  As far as she knew, her soul seemed to have a lot of issues sitting still, she had always chalked it up to the psychological and spiritual damaged caused by actively viewing the future or at least, the potential to become the future.  One of Janus' least favorite things about her gift seemed to be the fact that looking at some futures, had a tendency to make them no longer the future.

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Janus shrugged at that, she doubted she had split personalities, that was not a psychological issue that would be brought on by her gift.  Not as she saw it anyway.  So if there was another "Janus" chances are, it was not in fact brought on by dissociative identity disorder.  After all, she could see the future.  If she could see the future she would see the future in which her split personality did something.  That seemed much less logical than the first idea.  Maybe she was just lying to everyone and everything?  No, Janus did not enjoy lying and that was nothing like her at all.  So, the third option, this person was toying with her.   That seemed a little more realistic.  He had simply answered the base of all of her questions and that was about it.  To be honest, she had learned very little about him aside from he did not like being touched and he was willing to break her wrist for whatever reason.

She let her mind dwell on the different things that could have happened for a moment as she kept walking and looked to the future to realize she was still a fair distance away from that structure she had seen earlier.  The black-robe seemed to have issues with what he was after or doing and Janus was more or less thinking a bit too much to figure out what had happened to be too concerned with his wants or whatever.  Look into it, how the hell do you look into a split personality.  Though, based on psychology papers there would be a trigger, overuse of her gift maybe?  Or had a Janus that she had not watched simply thought it was funny to do that and just gone off on a tangent.  No, cause she would have seen him breaking her wrist and would never have been that stupid.  So, he was obviously covering something up.  She thought before answering his question.  "I dunno, I saw some kind of structure this way, I want to look at it." Janus said as curiosity kept drilling into the back of her mind between the black-robe and his new theory.  "But I severely doubt I have a split personality, such a thing is uncommon and no personality of any kind of mine using my gift would touch you, I would have seen you break my wrist and therefore would not be caught dead doing it.  I happen to have a decent string of self-defensive conditioning in my sub-conscious."  She pointed out.   "Plus then hypnosis, would usually cause a severe change in thoughts, which I would see via divination as well.  This, I did not see, which makes me think the easiest explanation is most likely wrong.  But I haven't lied to you either, I don't lie.  I don't have to. Nor care too, it makes keeping track of the future too difficult."  The diviner added as she shifted.

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Janus thought about that question for a few steps, wondering how to answer it without sounding stupid and suicidal, but she could not come up with anything that actually would sound less stupid than the actual answer.  "I'm addicted to seeing futures and finding things out, curiosity will probably kill me to be honest, if some Invisible doesn't manage to take my head off first."  She said before thinking about how to elaborate.  "Most people see a red button that says don't push and usually have the intelligence not to push it.  My divination just makes me push it in some futures, and do hundreds if not thousands of other things to it for fun or to learn why.  Sometimes I don't actually learn anything from it or whatever but for some reason I always want to know more.  No matter how much I learn or know."

She said as she kept walking.  "For instance, I am going to spend the next few weeks trying to figure out why I touched you and why I didn't see it.  Simply because I'm curious about it.  It's kind of a dumb flaw but I can't seem to stop it.  I just want to poke and prod at things." She said as they got closer to the place.  "If you know what this place is, is it trapped, should I not stand anywhere near you, will it explode?  Also, what is it, was this the reason you were out here in the first place, is this your job for the black-robes?"  Janus said looking back at Merrick.  They were only about fifty meters from where she had seen the entrance and she was more or less ready to hear the explanation of why she should not go first so that she in fact, could go first.  Though as little sense as that would make to everyone else in the world, it worked for her.  Janus considered her curiosity a side-effect of her gift, like the displacement, and word-vomiting.  They were there as easily as everything else and just seemed to naturally coincide with her abilities and how they work on a regular basis.

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Janus shrugged at the mention of addictions, hers came from her gift, she was pretty sure about that.  She shifted her weight and rolled her shoulders at the comment, the healthy dose of caution and another side of common sense was something she could have used years ago but had always seemed to elude the Diviner at the worst possible points.  Though she was still alive, so there was that.   Balance, there was not much balance when you believed you had already lost or had no use or function.  That was her biggest problem, Janus could never bring herself to care about herself as much as others because to her, she did not have a puzzle she fit into.  No sense dwelling on it, she thought as she rolled her shoulders.  She listened to Merrick speak, if for no reason than to have something to listen to.  

Janus shrugged and decided that she'd let the guy with the strength of ten of her go first then, and let him stride right past her, obviously having no want to get her head lopped off for no reason.  Though he let the fact that some things black-robes do was not in fact part of his job.  She waited for him as they finally got to the downed trees, mainly deciding what was relative, she wanted to see.  She looked at the hidden path and looked down towards the stairs and realized, this was getting a little close to a horror movie and the dumb girls usually died first.  That was not the best thought she could have.  Janus thought about it as he asked her about what she could do.  "If I path walk I don't touch anything anyway, unless you think my energy will ruin it?  A mage told me that I release energy or something when I path walk." Janus said not knowing how her path walking images worked because she could not actually sense reiatsu and reishi like other members of the spiritual community.

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Janus could not exactly see what was there, but she had issues dealing with dead bodies.  Though she was more or less going to avoid them and not directly stare at anything that she did not need to and forced her body to stay on a track that did not involve hurling her guts up as she walked down the stairs.  The smell hit her like a truck, the smell of meat and decay, horrifying her as she managed to barely keep it together.  She started path walking for a second before she saw the switch to the power, that was about the most she could do before her mind went back to the bodies and her stomach almost dropped again.  She headed over to the power box and flipped it quickly.  She knew that the computers were all fragged but the lighting turned back on with the LEDs that had not been damaged in whatever had happened here.  

Janus then huddled her nose into her shirt and began to path walk around the place, making sure to keep it a small amount of time ahead but more or less slower.  What she did manage to find was a pad.  It was cracked and the liquid crystal screen did not turn on.  No batteries or wiped.  That did not bode well.  She walked over to where her path image had seen it and pointed to it.  "Might work, or its already wiped." She said to Merrick as she went back to looking around for anything that could matter.  She was not really sure what she was looking for, after all she couldn't sense energy like others kept telling her could be done.  She figured that would have been a really useful skill right now.  "There's lots of body parts, no traps that are easily hit." She stated, wondering what he was hoping to find in here, this place was repulsive.

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Janus shrugged as she looked around and kept trying to avoid sights and futures that had her losing her stomach, though she was finding that was extremely hard to do considering the circumstances.  Whatever this place was it was entirely terrifying.   "No, using my gift to any decent degree will probably make me throw up to be honest." Janus said in response to Merrick.  She had no clue of what anything or anyone could do in here much less what they wanted to do.  This was definitely not her department.  "Theory, this place is creepy, unsanitary and full of dead bodies."  Janus said as she looked around but stopped at a small piece of metal.   It looked like the broken piece of armor or something and she decided to look into a future of her touching it.  

Janus was probably the worst choice of companion for something like this.  Her limited knowledge and spectrum of being unable to sense energy like other super-powered or spiritual-based people was kind of inhibiting.  That and she was not exactly used to seeing this much death and rot.  She wondered what kind of person Merrick actually was as he seemed way too used to traveling down spooky labs with dead bodies.  She stopped again after a few steps and looked through the hole as she thought about it again.  She could tell there had essentially been, whatever had attacked the place, then the attacker, which she had not found scorched yet, and probably the victims.   "Trying to turn humans into masked monsters maybe?"  She pointed out as she forced herself to take a bit of a closer look at some of the bodies.  The stench of death was overwhelming and Janus was going to admit that was probably the worst part but she managed to choke her stomach into submission again and shift.  "Whatever killed everything, doesn't look like it's here now."  She said.  "Or we would probably see a mangled corpse with less precision to its death.  Everything more or less looks like if it attacked it was trying to hit something.  If it wasn't, it was probably a victim of the things that were." 

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