So I heard from a Friend... [closed/Janus]

Janus had spent the entire morning reading every magazine that she subscribed to in the matter of about twenty seconds.  A definitely fun ability that went with her gift, mainly to find the recipes that she cared about as a type one diabetic.  She was wearing a vest and a button up, looking her usual half between male and female.  Her slacks were tight but luckily her body was rather bad at showing what it was probably because she had nothing of actual point.  She played with some of the magazines as she rolled her shoulder as her divination pinged... something.  She turned back to the lobby and stood up, walking by her young working friend who called himself "snow" which was quite funny to her.

The young gentlemen was sitting on the couch with the television on some Football game between two European teams that Janus knew little about.  She pointed out that the whatever United team would win by a goal and he looked up at her with an annoyed look on his face.  "That's, really creepy." He said pointing at the even score before a few seconds later, the team in away colors scored one final goal with only a few seconds in regulation to go.  Yuki looked at Janus and flipped her off, in a rather annoyed way.  Janus yawned and told him to ditch the place.  He got up and wondered out of the building and made his way to his car.  He passed a single car on his way out, but thought nothing of it.

Janus, on the other side of the railroad, cleaned a few things up as she waited for the new arrival.  There is a subtle monotony to having the ability to sense and see potential futures.  It was like someone who had manipulated worlds and thoughts and ideas as she flexed her shoulders.  Eventually waiting and starting to speak.  "Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four." She said as she put up three fingers and then put one down every second and pointed at the door.  "Yes I know who you are." She said as Raphael barged into the door with his announcement.  "Can I help you?"  She asked with a rather confused sounding voice.  She looked into a few potential futures and she shifted behind the lobby desk lightly.

Her greeting was a bit…less than what he’d been hoping for. It seemed a little…hostile wasn’t exactly the right word, blunt would’ve been but he almost felt like there was a bit of animosity behind her tone. He watched her shift a bit behind the desk, almost uncomfortably, it seemed.

“Well,” he said as he shut the door behind him. “I was actually hoping that I could help you.” He watched her momentarily, waiting on her reaction before reaching out for a chair. It glided across the floor to him and he sat down. “Freylief told me that she tried helping you to understand your abilities, but met with…less than success. She wanted me to come here to see if there was anything I could do to help you understand your abilities better, especially seeing how similar our situations are.” That was something that she might deny, he knew. Many people often felt like no one could understand the situation they’d gone through.

“Now, the problem as I see it…” he muttered to himself as the chair began to float with him in it. “And as I’ve always known it, tends to be one’s mentality. The way that you think about yourself and or your abilities often effects how well they work. From what Frey said, you sound like a skeptic, and while in many cases, skepticism is good, in your case I think it’s the thing that’s holding you back the most. It’s keeping you from really accessing your abilities.”

The chair levitated to the ceiling, and came to rest there, whereupon Raphael stood up and started walking around on the ceiling. “I’m not saying that getting over something like an anxiety, or skepticism is easy, but we need to find someway to get you over it… Hmmm.” He looked down at her. “Where do you think this all started? Is there any way that you can take me back to where this happened in your life? I might be able to understand."

Words: 337

Janus stared at him with some interesting skepticism as she unhurriedly decided to test his theory.  "You suffered displacement and mental breakdown for three years as well?" Janus stated as a matter of fact as she shrugged and stretched her arms in front of her and wondered how much he was going to talk.  It was like a machine.  Janus hoped she would word vomit so at least she could put her thoughts back in order.  Though she watched the levitating chair and the fact Raphael could WALK ON THE CEILING with great interest.  "Wow."   Janus said suddenly dumbfounded and confused.  "Wait wait, you think telekinesis and LITERALLY BREAKING GRAVITY, is the same as my gift?"

Janus paused for effect.  She couldn't do, either of those things and none of her gifts worked the same way.   "I'm not sure but I don't think my gift can let me breach all forms of reality and physics, with the exception of my toss, but that's still prone to GRAVITY."  The Diviner said as she looked through some potential futures and then walked over to wave her hand under Raphael.  "But that's pretty dam cool."  She said poking at him from below.  "I'm not a skeptic, my power is to see potential futures, hundreds if not thousands of them, if I were to see them all, even for an instant, I'd probably have my mind wiped by the information overload.  I'm skeptical that it's useful. I can't walk on ceilings, burn entire city blocks to the ground, hurl energy blasts, magic, bolts of light... and everything else seems to want to kill me."   She said still poking at him.

"My gift?"  She said when she shrugged.  "I got it almost fifteen years ago, now,  I was displacing myself because I couldn't figure out what was going on or how to control it, ended up hearing conversations that hadn't happened, doing things that I hadn't actually had my body do, eventually suffering a mental breakdown and getting locked up for a few years while I figured out that I was seeing potential futures and keeping enough of them out of my head to not be screaming in agony while I searched them."   Janus said and sat back down at her desk.  "I have no delusions about the fact that I have a gift, and I'm not skeptical about the fact I can Divine things, but god forbid some Invisible, black-robe, wanna-be god, or mage looks at me too hard and I explode."

He shook his head a bit as she spoke. One thing at a time then. “No, I didn’t suffer any kind of displacement, nor did I have a mental breakdown for several years. But when I did, my powers had long since awakened and had disastrous consequences.” He was slow to respond, listening to her. “No, I’m not saying that our abilities are alike.” And then he pouted a bit. “And I’m not ‘breaking gravity’! I haven’t used gravitokinesis to lift myself. I’m just holding myself up here!”

Slowly, again, he listened. “Well, first, you’re already breaching part of reality by seeing multiple possible realities. That’s a giant break of time-space.” She waved a hand under him and then poked his cap. “If you saw them all at once, then yeah you probably would be broken, which is why ya focus on the ones directly in front of you.” Then he slowly walked back to the chair and sat down on it, still upside down. “Maybe…” he started. “You seem like you’re fine enough to tune out only the ones that you need.

Again he went silent, listening to everything she had to say, before suddenly waving his hand. Janus, a chair and a table all rose, followed by a small bottle of wine and a few glasses. “Don’t worry about falling. I’ve got more than enough mental control for this.” The wine poured out into the two glasses. “No doubt this will be strange for you, but I tend to talk like this a lot, so sorry if it’s a little disorienting.” It was a red wine, a bit sweeter than what he’d been hoping for, and he laid a fifty down on the table that slid over to her. “For the wine,” he said.

“Now… Let me start by saying, it doesn’t matter what you do. You’re always going to be hunted,” he said. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I really do, but you will always be hunted. I hope you’ve had a little bit more experience, but those black robes are called Shinigami. Masks are called Hollows, and you remember that woman that was here last time I was? She’s what you’d probably call a broken mask, or an arrancar.”

He took a small sip of the wine. “We’ll get to training in a bit, but first I wanted to talk to you. As you stated earlier, my power is telekinesis. I didn’t go to an insane asylum, as I didn’t see many different timelines. I’ve nearly died several times. I’ve seen others die or sacrifice their lives. I even accidentally killed my own best friend when my powers went out of control.” He watched her, swirling the glass around. “But I’ve kept going. Even with everything that happened to me, I’ve managed to stay me. Plus there are things that you can do, that I know you can do, cuz anyone human I’ve known that had spiritual powers had the ability to do these same things. I’m not part of the KSN, I just want to help you learn to defend yourself.”

Words: 517

Janus grabbed her chair and freaked out.  "Please don't drop me!"  She said and then grabbed at her tummy to make sure her insulin pump was still going and using her gift to divine a future where she looked at her continuous glucose monitor.   Though, she was still holding her chair and freaking out as much as anyone who was able to literally move things with their mind and was now at their whim could possibly be.  "Broke-masks, I like them, most of em are pretty nice.   Two have saved my life."  She said looking over her chair and divining falling a few times, she was only a few feet up but she did not want to fall to be honest.    "My best friend is the teenager you drove past on your way in, he used to have powers but something happened to him."  She said looking down and twitching.

Janus could mention one thing, she did not kill her best friend.  After all, she could not hurt anything, and that had always been her problem since everything started exploding and trying to stab, pierce, bludgeon, burn, electrify, freeze, and generic bodily harm that may or may not include death and dismemberment on a very regular basis.   She grabbed the wine and sipped it seeing her numbers were fine for drinking anything.  "Really, there's things any human has the ability to do? Do they include surviving things that can hurl literal thermonuclear blasts, and I don't break reality, as 90% of Invisibles seem to be immune to my gift, two of three no masks, two black-robes out of three, and one mage, were all completely immune.  But they could, burn down blocks, throw energy beams and giant balls of death."  Janus said with increasing sarcasm.  "Plus, the other things I can do I'm told will just kill me."

“Calm down,” Raphael said. “I’m making sure that your insides stay completely unaffected. I have to do it to mine to, otherwise I end up puking.” She liked the broken masks…the arrancars. “I’m glad they’ve saved your life then.” He said almost bitterly. “They act on their own whims.” He wouldn’t tell her what. She didn’t need to know. If they came for her, then she wouldn’t have any defenses.

He noticed that she kept glancing at down from the chair. “Like I said, relax. I’m not going to drop you. I’ve eaten full meals upside down before. It’s not that bad. Gets a little disorienting at first, I used to keep forgetting that my right was now on my left.” He chuckled a bit and spilled some wine on the table, but quickly pulled it back off and dropped it back into the glass.

Her question only elicited a curt, “Mhm,” from him as he took another sip of the wine and then he sat the glass down. “If you can get your soul strong enough, then yes. You could survive what are the equivalent of such attacks. Also, you’re wrong if you think that they’re immune to it. Remember what I said about mindset? Some of them might have abilities that make it harder to see the futures with them in it, but you need to understand that they’re only numbers. Statistical probability of the futures that you find yourself in when in contact with them. Mentality is one of my main strengths.” He said tapping his forehead. “I’ve been dealing with the cerebral for a long time.”

A sigh escaped his lips as she got more and more sarcastic. “And you’re right, they can. The masks and broken masks can fire beams of energy that could devastate the majority of a city. Fighting them in populated areas is a huge risk when trying not to involve civilians. You saw what happened to downtown Karakura years ago, right? That was them. The devastation.” He stopped. He was getting off topic.

“Do you know what the weirdest thing I found out about my telekinesis was?” He watched her with a hand upheld. “The better I got with it, the more I could do. And that might seem obvious, but its what you can do as you learn more and more about your abilities.” A fork floated up to them from the ground and twisted and rearranged itself until it resembled a human being. Just a man in a business suit, nothing special. “I can tear apart street blocks, I can shatter buildings with a thought. But I don’t. I have more control over myself. If I got powerful enough again? I could probably go Kaneda on a town. I just chose a different road.”

What she’d said though confused him, and the business man stood in front of him looking up. “What do you mean other things? What other things can you do and how could they kill you?”

Words: 500

Janus slipped out of her body and down to the floor as her body continued, sipping the wine and her soul, connected by its chain, was now back on the floor walking around. She waved at Raphael, then grabbed her chain and pulled a little more length from it and wondered over to the wine cellar to grab another bottle.  She closed the door behind her on her way out as her body just sat blankly, occasionally sipping at the wine.  Though, if he looked close, a tear fell from one eye, and one side of Janus' lip curled into something like a partial smile, opposite of the tear.  If he was really focused, he would have known it felt oddly like things that were not human.  Eventually she wondered back to below her body and grabbed on her chain to pull herself up and back into it.

"I can also throw myself, and pull myself if I feel like it, but compared to the fact that everyone seems to move faster than the speed of light or sound.  It's pretty useless.  Told if something cuts the chain, poof dead good game." Janus stated as she started looking into futures again.  She was pretty convinced that most people did not understand how her gift worked.  She missed Mine, she had a full conversation with the thing by simply speaking while Mine thought of her questions and made the conscious decision to ask them.  That was fun, she shook her head at the thought and sipped her wine again.  "I remember the city blowing up, my place got half the rooms blasted by a stray explosive.  So, why does any of this matter then?  I can already view the future, even though it doesn't seem to work most of the time.  I seem to think everyone likes telling me I'm not useless, until my wrists are broken or I'm stabbed in the gut then realizes.  Oh wait, Janus can't actually do anything anyway."  She pointed out.  "Are you like them, can you run at the speed of sound and even light? I mean, just with my gift I know you can basically deconstruct me over and over with your ability.  Now imagine feeling like that whenever you meet or see anything like you.  Imagine, being only human, in a world of superpowers, things that fancy themselves gods and monsters.  Just because I can see someone do something, doesn't mean I can react or do anything at all.  From what I get told everyone seems to think or say everyone in the Invisibles and Spirit world gets a weapon, I'm proof that in fifteen years, that's bs." 

His eyes went fairly wide as she suddenly became…a spirit connected to her body by the soul chain. The body continued to drink some of the wine as her soul walked around down below, waving and grabbed another bottle of wine. He watched the body as a tear formed in one of its eyes and the mouth twisted into something of a smile. That was when he felt something…peculiar, something not human. It gave him the creeps and he quickly dismissed the feeling as she pulled herself back into her body.

“You are correct,” he said, albeit slowly. “If something were to slice that chain from you while you were like that, you would indeed die. You would become a soul and then either food for a hollow or sent to the Seireitei.” He listened, slowly.

“First off,” he said. “I can tell you that my power wouldn’t allow me to deconstruct you. The most organic matter that I can even touch are trees. Otherwise its rock, cement and steel. Second, yea I can imagine being only human while beings ten times your own power run amok throughout the world. Believe me. I’ve been there. During that giant explosion? I was at the epicenter, trying to help people escape. I watched a titanic battle between two superpowers that nearly destroyed another section of the city. I watched people get eaten by the monsters, I was taken into the world of the masks and broken masks.” Then he held up his hands. “And if you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have a weapon either. Instead, I have to channel my own power through everyday items. This, by the way, is what I’m referring to when I’m saying that every human can do at least something. Any spiritually aware human has the capacity to pour their energy through mundane objects in order to use them as a weapon. Don’t get me wrong, its not perfect, but its better than nothing. As for your reaction time, physical workouts might help with that. Grow your soul and all that.” He picked up the fork person and he suddenly went stiff, before glowing with something of a purple light. “This is what I have to do.”

Then he put the forkman back down. “Now, I can tell you that I don’t fully comprehend how your powers work, though I can tell you that they are mathematically founded. You are getting fed information through your eyes, which your brain can process to see what’s going to happen in the near immediate future. You’re seeing probability and statistical data, and you’re seeing all the potentialities of the data that you’re receiving. Am I correct in my assessment? What kind of futures can you see from me, as I’m sitting here now?” He wanted to address her soul chain walking, but at the same time that was a very…interesting subject. He needed more information as to how her abilities worked.

Words: 493

Janus wanted to keep the spoon figure.  That was the coolest thing out of this discussion by a long shot.  Plus it looked generically interesting and she thought it would look good sitting over the edge of the kitchenette in restaurant.   That was the extent of this, she was still not entirely sure how or why any of this mattered to her.  She could not in fact fuse things with energy as that seemed like a really good skill to have.  To make matters worse, Janus had never understood how or why energy existed.  She had her gift and to her, that seemed to be the extent of it.  Just because other people could use mundane objects against Invisibles, she had hit things with them before and they did little more than bounce off.  Though she was pretty sure that was the same for any human, hell some of them had simply looked at things too hard and they evaporated.   How do you end up with that power?  She thought to herself and she rolled her shoulders and sipped at the wine again.

Janus shrugged. "So the way it works, from what I can tell, when you consciously make a decision to do something, the future becomes more prominent, and they're more like numbers for me, it's why one of my favorite tricks is to ask people to pick a number and find the future where I get it right.  The more adamant about the decision someone is, the more clear it is.  So my gift works very well when there are no outside decisions.  On quiet and calm days I can literally read a book in seconds by simply, looking into the futures where I read it.  As for the whole me mistaking your power, its because I see you and the ability, not them in use.  You, telekinesis, not how or why it works, just you moving things with your mind, how I process that came out to, oh god he can deconstruct everything.  Most of the information I processes is in fractions of a second, so I keep it limited to a few seconds or so ahead, otherwise there would be too many to handle.  I can also path walk, or that's what I call it.  An army of Janus, I simply send out future versions of me to do something and wait for my divination to ping something.  Right now I can see you listening to my jargin, though I have met someone who understood my power better than me.  She would simply make a decision to say something and I my divination would see it.  Then, because I would respond before she actually started speaking, she would change her mind and decide to say something else."

Janus said with a breath.  "So I can see you listening, or lecturing me, fiddling with different objects with your telekinesis, but until I finish speaking most normal people would simply wait to decide what to do or say, though the more likely something is, the easier it is for me to Divine it.  I've been told that other seers and diviners have visions, but I don't really have things like that.  I can also do small tricks by simply following a future where something specific happens.  I can bowl a perfect game by choosing to follow the muscle movements that would give me strikes each time.  I don't know why those futures are the ones but it's a neat trick that has very few other practical applications.  It's a shit show in combat, as everything and everyone change their minds in fractions of seconds, and the wider I open it, the more damaging it is on my psyche and mind."

The small spoon figure walked over to her, at the behest of Raph, and then he released his control, the creature was about to fall when suddenly a small chair came up from the wood and it sat down. He thought for a moment, watching it curiously puzzling over what it was that could possibly be making her so inert.

“Numbers. The future becomes more prominent once someone has made a conscious decision…” He thought for a few moments. But when she commented on his powers commented on his powers he did grin. Slowly he nodded, as she talked about everything, and his eyes widened at the thought of sending out future selves into different areas until she got one right.

“The way you say it, it feels more like whoever you were speaking to was cheating,” and starting to chuckle a bit, he added, “Still its impressive that someone was able to circumvent it.”

Every word seemed to make Raphael curious. Listening was certainly going to happen, lecturing…nah he wasn’t all that good at that, and then…fiddling with objects… He wanted to laugh, but didn’t. He had more things to show her.

The moment that she had finished he smiled. “Fiddling with objects?” Her entire inn began to shake, even as they sat upon the ceiling. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. This is just a small demonstration.” He squeezed his hand shut and all the tables and chairs in her inn shattered like glass, turning into thousands of splinters.

“I can give you a bit more of an idea of the true scope of my ability. You weren’t entirely wrong I can shatter just about anything with enough concentration.” The splinters slowed down and suddenly turned into a wooden statue of Janus herself. “My power isn’t just full deconstruction. I can take things that I’ve deconstructed and reconstruct them. My power, in essence is like a flame. This is why I’m saying that what you see of your powers might not be necessarily the full story.”

Raph smiled at her and then again shattered the statue reforming the tables and chairs. “See?” He said smiling. He watched her for a few minutes. “This is why I want to try and help you learn as much as I can about your powers, they’re not always what we think that they are.”

‘I’ll flick this coin from back behind her, and hit her in the back of his head, show her what I mean.’

Words: 413

Janus sighed as the coin neared the back of her head.  "Really?  If I move my head left or right you hit it anyway."  She said with a rather odd attitude and looked at the statue of herself.  It was not that bad, he could even probably use his gift to make quite a bit of money,   That seemed very useful and helpful.  As for full story, Janus was pretty sure herself that she had seen the full story, it would just get slightly better and longer for the most part.  She was a diviner who could leave her body.  That was pretty much how it worked, maybe she was just a little bit less interesting than everyone else.  Or whatever she wanted to believe.  Janus shifted her hips and sipped at the wine.  "If it's not the full story, how would I ever find out what is?"  She asked as the coin hit her in the back of the head.

"That's odd." She said out loud as one of her divination lead nowhere, she was not used to that, but it was gone as soon as it pinged her so she decided to ignore it.   She moved back to wondering if he was going to fix all the tables that he had so gladly dismembered on Raph's own time.  That was kind of mean but hey, to each their own.  Which brought Janus' mind to another corner, did he know about her real gift?  Janus may be a diviner, but she was also a dam good chef.  That was a joke, she was more concerned with the things that went bump in the night and wanted to blow everything to kingdom come.  "So, teach me how to disembowel entire buildings, and if you can do it with objects, you can probably disassemble other people's weapons, that seems pretty useful.  I'd rather have that than seeing my own face burning off over and over."  Janus finally added.  "So where too then?  What's next?"  Janus asked.

She shifted in her chair and Raphael nodded, slightly. “What you’re asking about is the hardest part about one’s powers. You’ve gotta learn about them. They evolve. They mutate. They expand. The more you utilize your powers they become greater and greater. Expanding and ever shifting and changing.” He watched her slowly. “I wish that I could explain this in greater detail…” He’d always been bad at truly explaining what it was that he was trying to say, especially when it came to things like powers, abilities, the spiritual world as a whole… He kept thinking about what he could say next… How could he explain it next?

Slowly her tables and chairs reformed back into tables and chairs from when he’d made them into a statue, splinters slowly coming back together and regluing themselves. “Sorry about that, by the way. Just a small demonstration. I’m more of an exhibitionist about these things, to be honest. I’ve never been the best at explaining.”

He nodded. “It can be pretty useful, but… there are things that if you aren’t careful can make it worse. Your actions with your power are always the most important things to consider.” He paused for a second. “Where too?” A slightly long pause. “What next… I had a thought. I’m going to connect our minds for a bit. It will briefly transfer our consciousnesses between one another, allowing us to share some of our experiences. I’ve done this before with Freylief, but since we aren’t as close it will take a little bit more concentration.” He watched her carefully. “Just let your mind go a bit. Not too much, of course. I don’t want to cause painful experiences with probabilities.”

He opened his own, the beginning of the bridge building and slowly extended the bridge of energy to her own. If she accepted, if she opened her mind as well, there would be a moment where she would probably felt, as if she had seen a new future, before her mind would begin to siphon through a few of his experiences, while he went through a few of hers. From her he caught an escape from…an asylum… the destruction of her business… And poison…that same poison… that he felt too.

From him she would get the memories of his love for Freylief, fragments of memory to flash through her mind, albeit briefly. Then she would see his friend Mike dead by an explosion by the resulting mental instability that had happened years ago. Finally she would see his mother, experimenting on him as well as the realization that she had been doing so practically since he and his brother had been born. She would see how little control he always felt he had, and how little he felt like others understood him, further driving home just how important Frey was. He poured more and more energy into this bond, his energy flowing into her, so that he could maintain this bond between them, so that he could help her to understand the powers, and spiritual world paradigm. Raphael was teaching her as much as long as their minds remained joined.

Words: 524

Janus saw different things and ideas from Raphael and quickly her mind began to buckle, her mental barriers could have stopped a nuclear explosion if it had come from inside her mind.  She was stopping about everything associated with her gift by miles and miles, not by inches.  The numbers that were able to get through were basically one to around one thousand, but there were billions hammering against her barriers at any given point in time.   Though, eventually Raphael would notice the fact that all the barriers looked like mirrors and there were different Janus in each mirror.  To be exact, there was Human Janus, Hollow Janus, Viazard Janus, Arrancar Janus, Shinigami Janus, and Quincy Janus.  The were all looking much more manly than normal Janus, who was standing at a set of monitors divining.

Janus' mind, buckled at some point.  Realistically about ten or twenty seconds as she began to see into Raphael's mind.  Then, it all stopped, the divination, her memories, everything.  "Janus" rolled his neck with a soft gasp as Janus' soul receded and for the first time.  He looked confused.  "Get out of my head, please." He asked the man standing across from him and shrugging.   Sharing his only memory, a soul, awakened dead.  Inside his twin's body.  "Janus" reached out towards Raphael, he balled his hand flat and pressed to Raphael's chest.  He then pulled his arm back, in soul form, and left his physical body touching Raphael.  "Music moves my soul..." He said softly in a more masculine voice than Janus.  His arm was hyper accelerated and the scream of death metal music could be heard as he slammed his open palm and soul directly against Raphael.  The first of his "gifts." "Janus" was different than his sister and reacted based on the future presented to him as any energy coursed through the twins.

He hadn’t realized just how unprepared for this joining Janus had been. For a few moments it looked as though she would be fine, he was certain that her mind would be able to handle running through his head. As he went through, her head, he could see numbers, these must’ve been what she meant by the multiple probabilities, and was thankful that he couldn’t see them all running past his head. There were multiple…beings that looked like Janus, but they all looked a bit more masculine than the one that he was used to speaking to. It seemed strange.

As Raphael kept traveling through her mind there was a sudden stop to everything. Almost like someone had turned off the electricity in a room and groups of monitors where Janus had been, just vanished. Slowly Raphael looked around when suddenly he heard someone ask him to get out of their head. Looking around, he suddenly realized that it was outside of the mindscape, not within it.

His eyes opened wide, though the link of energy remained even when he was surprised by Janus’s body suddenly open palming him in the gut. He kept his eyes opened as he watched the body moving.

“Music moves your soul, does it?” he asked linking it in some way to the soul like power that had struck him. He raised his head. “So… Would you do me the honor of telling me who you are? You seem to be different than her in some way that I can’t exactly place…” he looked down with a smile. “That was a good punch, as well. You’ve got some strength to you…” Though he was no longer forcing his way into her head, the bridge of energy had been redoubled. “You seem to only come out under duress… Or other circumstances. So I’d like to experiment a bit and have a bit of a chat. Is that alright with you? What should I even call you, in fact?”

Words: 332

"Janus" looked at Raphael as he leaned his head slightly.  Only came out under duress?  What an idiot.  "Janus" came out all the time, he just would not wake up.  "Music is beautiful!" He said bowing graciously.  "Salutations, my name, is Janus, and I am, Janus." He said in a masculine voice.  "Of course I have strength, it belongs to everyone but me."  He said cackling lightly before suddenly crying.    "You're the one who wanted me out here, so now I'm here."  He said as he flexed his arms and shuddered, as his arms moved and as they did, his body flexed and followed it, each movement having his soul move before his body.   He reached up and slicked Janus' hair back as he rolled his neck.

"So, what the hell do you want.  I think the next time I wake up Im just going to kill the idiot that does it.  All of you are high and mighty aren't you?"  He said extremely annoyed and swapped the song leaving his soul for About that Bass as a way to troll this idiot. 

Raph sighed as this new, and slightly flamboyant being appeared from within Janus. Who the hell did he think he was fooling? Simply reaching out with his sensing abilities, told Raphael that this wasn’t the Janus he’d been talking to minutes ago, that this wasn’t the same Janus who’s head he’d been diving through. Leaning back, and folding his arms slightly annoyed, he tapped his foot on the ceiling. As the song, About that Bass, began playing, Raphael felt the lightest bit of annoyance creep down his back.

“High and mighty?” Raphael asked both incredulously and in disbelief, “Look here asshole-!” But he stopped and calmed himself with a few breaths. “There are a few things that you need to know. I didn’t ‘want’ you out here. I was trying to help Janus to understand her abilities, and don’t try to bullshit your way into an ‘I am Janus’ scenario. You aren’t her.” He watched the being, annoyance clear on his face, but his voice retained a more cool and calm tone. “I was going into her mind to find out what I could glean about her abilities from some of her memories.”

Realization struck him. “In fact, as I descended in, I saw some very strange images on mirrors. They looked like Janus but were more masculine. There were more certain definitions.” He leaned forward on the table, took a sip of the wine and looked up at the thing in front of him. “Tell me, was that you? They were all different but shared the same body type, build and same definitions.” He paused for a moment and watched this thing. “So, care to have a civil discussion? Care to tell me who you really are?”

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"Janus" laughed at the idiot in front of him.  These... Invisibles as his sister called them, or he guessed this idiot was a "Mage" all seemed to believe they were better and knew what to say.  He stood there looking after the asshole comment, as if he was more than willing to wait for whatever definately not witty comment the man would make.  "I'm looking." He said before crying a bit in hysterics.  "You were going into her mind, look, kid, I've been in her mind since day one, and my sister is forgive my french, BATSHIT." He said as he picked at Janus' nails for a second, his movements still completely displacing the soul and the body as he waited to make his next comment, obviously to simply be an asshole.  This "Janus" had the pompous feeling of someone who knew at his core, he was better than everyone around him.  Simply, to him, because he had already died, his job was to protect his little sister, and he was going to do it no matter what anyone said. 

"I am the reflections in her mindscape yes.  Allow me to reintroduce myself, my name is Janus, and I am Janus' dead twin brother.  I died at birth, we were identical.  Split off the same egg, same soul, same person.  She made it, I didn't.  But sadly, I was still chained to her.  What you saw were my ability, not hers.  She is an honest pathetic little girl.  She can only Divine, she is a diviner.  I'm not." He said picking at her fingernail again before shifting and looking at the wine.  "Why does she drink this stuff, bitch knows we are diabetic."   He said shaking his head and shrugging.  "As for a civil discussion, don't honestly know how, I don't interact with people often, and when I do, they're usually assholes trying to tell my sister how the world works, just not very good at it. Cause they only talk with what they know, they don't want to learn."

The being’s comment about his sister made Raph shrug. “Doesn’t matter whether she is or whether she isn’t. She can only gamble with the hand she’s dealt. Once you’ve dealt with the arrancar and their problems you start to become a little less critical of humanity.” Not to the point of pure forgiveness, though he could certainly understand this spirit’s intense desire to protect his sister. What fascinated Raphael the most was that this was a case of two souls joined in one body. Not to say that it wasn’t possible, as clearly this was an example of the fact that it was, but it was an avenue of research that Raphael had never considered before. Probably best to not mention this to Frey. Or at least to Frey only.

Raphael nodded listening and maintaining the bridge of energy between them. He was indeed the mirrors, but he’d seen many and it made him wonder if each one was a separate catalyst. Janus’ dead twin brother; that was a shocker and made him let out an audible “Hmm…” as he thought. The older twin had died, but had remained chained to his sister… Fascinating quandary… All sorts of implications too.

“Yes,” Raphael began, “I assumed that what just fractured my lower left rib was indeed your abilities and not hers. I believed her that her only ability was divination but, as I suspected, there was indeed more to the story. Though that story has now taken a turn that I honestly wasn’t expecting. And I wouldn’t say she’s pathetic. She just needs a catalyst.” Raph smirked. The male soul was frank and blunt, yet in the end still had something of a good heart. “A tiny drink now and then wouldn’t kill you. If she was an alcoholic then there would be room for concern.”

Raphael smiled warmly and gestured to the chair behind the man had just rose from. “Then please, have a seat and I shall reintroduce myself in turn. I am Raphael Laurent, a telekinetic and close friend of Freylief, Queen of the Quincy.” How accurate was the last part of that statement? “Many, especially those that have achieved a great amount of power, will attempt to give their interpretation of the world however, much like your sister’s divinations, the world is open to interpretation. In this case, I believe that we have much to learn from one another, if you would be willing to listen to me, as I am to you.” He took another sip of wine.

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