[C] Quid Pro Quo [Closed, Janus]

Janus ignored the black robe's first comment because she was looking at something in the future.  She had learned a lot about the culture of the society of black robes from the healbot, it was honestly too bad he did not seem to trust her at all.  To each their own.  She waited for him to give him a phone number of some kind and not just continue with the long winded nonsense but it was not something she was going to or tempted to point out.  He could still kill her with fire again and again.  "Yea, telekinetically disassembled and used as a weapon to kick my eye in."  She said referencing her destroyed business.  She missed it but she guessed she would apply somewhere as a cook in the near future.  That or just stick to her investigation and gambling, both of which were lucrative. 

She waited for a second as she rolled her shoulders again. "I live with a former employee on his couch at the moment, in Karakura.  I'll get my own apartment soon.  Or I'll travel some more." She said before staring at him.  "Number?"  She asked as she looked him over and wondered why he was so enthralled with giving away information on everyone but himself.  She did not really mind, but she her mind went off on some tangent about how much she could make if she was trading information with everyone instead of just this particular black robe.  That would be quite the gig especially in supernatural hot spots that seemed to be appearing so much.  She looked at the timer on her phone and wondered what he was going to do.  Janus definitely needed more time to get enough information that she could hold something over his head.

Give and take was a fickle thing, mainly because in reality Janus could just start probing everyone's futures for information if she really wanted to.  That was a scary thought, the things she could do if she just gave up on being somewhat human and abused her divination like it probably was designed to be.  No more of this random changing hands and so on and so forth.  That gave her a few more sinister and less, productive ideas as she nodded and yawned. 

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381

Janus handed him a card with with her phone number and then walked towards the fire escape.  "I'll find a place we can do stuff."  She said.  "And Ill get some practice swords, I already know I won't touch you."  She said shrugging.  "See you in six hours ten minutes and forty three seconds." She said starting a clock on her phone.  "Good plan."  With that, she stepped down the fire escape, heading to street level.  She would have painted more of a reason or idea than that but she had some stuff to do.  Janus made her way back to the train station as quick as she could, and took the train back to Karakura.

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In Karakura, Janus stopped by Yuki's place, though the bastard was missing.  She looked into the future and set another alarm on her phone for two hours.  She had a good five or so to go and managed to go get some more food.  Her shopping trip, was confusing to her as she had only seen his sword, not like she knew if he was  decent at using it.   She grabbed one that was just under two feet long and about ten that looked like Merrick's sword.  She did not have a katana, either sword she had.  Which was probably a really good thing because Janus did not understand swords.  Elegant weapons for a more civilized age.  She was not civilized when it came to combat, more wishing she could just, shoot thing.  That idea was funny because the woman was more or less terrible at shooting and swords.

After about an hour and a half she finally headed back to Yuki's apartment, he showed up, looking as obnoxiously annoyed as ever and let her inside.   They exchanged small talk about the fact that life pretty much sucked to every extreme.  Eventually she took a nap on the couch and woke up three hours later.  She packed a gym bag with the few things she had left, and headed to the local athletic center.  

Janus grabbed a coffee next-door as she looked at her phone, she had about twenty minutes left until her best guess.

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Janus' phone played the twilight zone theme, she liked sticking to the classics as she pulled it out of her back pocket and answered.    She was late, when she was usually on time picking up the phone, on account that the moment someone had made the conscious decision to call her, she would pull it out, because she was checking her timer.  She was still a good number of minutes off, but she had said see.  Janus chalked it up to guessing rather than divination, which is realistically what she had done.  She sighed and listened to him speak.  Her mind wandered because she had already heard it all as she sipped at her coffee.

"Hello O'Connor, the athletic building on the main city drag.  Depending on what part of the city you are on, head towards the Karakura hospital, it's down the street from it with a dome over it.  You can see the hospital from just about anywhere in the city if you get on a rooftop or just look around a bit.  I figure you'll be fine dealing with that." She said before putting her phone away.  If he was coming from the shopping center, he was only a few blocks away.  She put the phone away and grabbed her gym bag and the golf bag she  had stolen from Yuki.  He did not even play golf, so she wondered why he had it anyway.  She shrugged at that thought.  "Anyway, see you in a few minutes, appreciate it." Janus said as she looked at some things on her phone.  

Janus liked coffee, it kept her calm, though she had no idea why.  She looked at the skyline and put her phone away, she figured he could to her when she got to her.   Janus wondered how far away he had to be to sense her power.  She kept her mind straight for a second and stepped out of her body.  She proceeded to ask her brother a few monotonous questions about the different potential futures he had chosen to peruse.   If anyone was listening, they would have heard the more masculine voice from the body talking to her invisible soul, making Janus look crazy, which she was.

"What the hell do you want?"  "Janus" asked his sister as he looked at the cup of coffee she had left.  "I don't need to drink, I'm dead." He said and tossed the half filled container away.  Janus looked cross with her brother. 

Janus grabbed the coffee out of midair and put it back on the table with an annoyed look on her face.  "Tell me why you didn't want to talk to me before?"

"Cause your mind is already fractured, half the time you can't even tell at what point you are actually at you moron."  "Janus" said obviously annoyed at his sister's inability to learn anything, ever.  He wanted to break her, but he had no real way to do that.

"Then why now?"  Janus said as she got angry.

"Because they're designed to be used with your gift, If we weren't like this, we would have less of a problem." "Janus" said looking down his nose again like his sister was absolutely nothing to him.

The next minute, the conversation became one sided as the siblings began to argue entirely using Janus' divination.  Her brother would think of something to say, and actively decide to say it, and she would interrupt him.  This lead to her brother changing his mind about what to say, and continuing.

"Why didn't anyone tell-That's not a good excuse!  Go die in a fire. Yes, we get it you're dead.  No, I don't.  Just tell me how to use them all.  Why can't you do it all the time?  You mean I have to be near someone with the power?  Are you kidding me, that's friggen useless!  You're mother!  I get it you're dead, seriously  lay off.  Oh, mister holier than you can't realize when I'm being sarcastic.  Really, we couldn't come up with a new phrase, that's the same thing in a different language.  What?  No, I don't want to be one of them specifically?  I don't know want to try dying and see if we manage to split up?  That seems like a bad idea.  You can't just become an invisible by hanging around, that would be really stupid.  That was you?  Who then-  We could not win.  Of course he wasn't trying, the dude could fire SUPERLASERS.  Yes we were trying?  I wasn't?! Are you kidding right now. You're impossible to work with.  No,  I think you're an idiot."

Janus finally decided she had enough of arguing with her brother and jerked the soul chain in her chest to pull her body back over her.  Her brother's actions were promptly ended as she did so and she looked even more annoyed than before.

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815

Janus grabbed her bags after she had finished her coffee and  wondered into the sports complex about two minutes before the six hour guess she had made six hours ago.  Though she was off by five minutes when O'Conner walked into the building.  People, seemed to watch him walk by.  That was, the freakiest thing she had seen in the past few days.  Was he not Invisible.  He also was not dressed in black robes.  This was all extremely confusing to Janus.  "Umm, people can see you, and you aren't wearing your robes."  Janus said looking over him a few times.  "I didn't know black robes could do that."   

Janus stared like a deer in headlights for another few seconds and wanted to make a comment about the trench coat and the nineteen nineties but she was too confused by the fact that he could be seen.  Hell, if black robes could be like that then why not just do that all the time.  Janus, who's divination prompted her curiosity once again went up and poked him.  When she was sure he was solid, and that other people could see him, she looked more confused.  Janus thought she could have chalked that up to insanity or some kind of displacement, but nope.  "Oh right time, my guess was off by-" Her alarm interrupted her.  Well she had been kind of right a she turned it off.  

The lobby was rather large and had two sets of double doors in either direction, one towards the more common indoor soccer fields and indoor tennis.  The other lead to the locker rooms, which Janus had no intention of dealing with at the moment. She headed left towards the common areas and wondered past the indoor soccer field and tennis court to the kendo rooms a bit further down.  She opened the door for O'Conner and shifted to get out of the way.  The room was rather large, and from the odd time of day, it was empty, there was a small locker room in the back for actual Kendo gear and such, a few dummies and four kendo squares set up on the floor.  She put her gym bag down towards the back, opening the one with all the different practice swords she had picked up and offered it to O'Conner.  "So, how long have you been a black robe?" She asked.

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399

Janus fiddled with the different things in the bag to find the two small straight katana.  She grabbed one of them and pulled it out.  She was much smaller than O'Conner and the blade made sense for her size.  Plus, it was the closest to what she could actually use.  She would not exactly tell him that right off the back as it would probably just serve to confuse him more than anything.  If black robes had this kind of power after just one year, she was really far behind considering she had been using her divination since she was eight.  That was a scary thought.   To be honest as she looked at the practice sword in her hand, it was not a chef's knife, and a Chef's knife would have felt better to her.  

Even if she would always suck at spiritual stuff, she always had her cooking.  She thought to herself and nodded.  "So, how does this work.  Do I just like, swing it around?" She asked confused.   Janus was starting to realize that weapon trying was a little beyond her.  She liked fists more, learning mixed martial arts was relatively easy.  That was repetition, and muscle memory.  Janus shrugged and looked over at O'Conner who had his ponytail back.  He had longer hair than she did, and the worse part was it seemed to be taken care of better too.  "Thank you again, by the way." She stated as she waited instructions, with the blade not pointed near or around anything.  Janus knew basic weapon safety from being in the kitchen a good portion of her time.

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271

Janus wanted to reiterate the fact that without trying he had broken her wrist before.  So the chance of just wood, killing her in some fashion was pretty much a very real threat.  Janus thought about her gift and how the future of her being a black robe worked.  The fact was she had no idea how to translate that worthless ability into power.  So she did what she always did, Janus fell back on her divination, relying on it to swing in different motions attacking O'Conner over and over and over.  Nothing did anything to him, nothing at all.  If he was moving at any semblance of a normal speed she looked like she was in slow motion, in stereo.

Janus decided that it was not going to work that well and decided  to spread her legs so she had a better center of balance, one thing she understood from street fighting, though explaining that knowledge was something she did not enjoy doing.  The blade moved up between her shoulders as that would provide the most coverage for her to strike and parry with.  It meant, little, in the grand scheme of how good she actually was with a sword but in her mind it probably looked decent enough. 

She struck out against O'Conner repeatedly, obviously with no semblance of skill or knowledge, relentlessly attacking for no reason than to see what worked and what would not.  She already knew it was fruitless, but getting her body to follow her divination was a trick she had been using for the better part of a decade and a half.  She was giving herself practice for if any of the muscle motions mattered later.  She struck out at him, repeating different movie looks and other things, with very little information about what she was doing.  Her mind finally realized this was probably a terrible way to do this, she was losing breath too quickly.  After a good minute of obviously not hitting O'Conner at all and random, monotonous swings that had done little more than make her need a quick breath.  Janus was panting at this point and obviously competely out of her depth.  "How do you guys do this on a regular basis." She panted, mixed martial arts took a lot less out of her, that was for sure.

Janus was patient though and waited for some better instruction after getting slapped around for a while. 

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Stamina 9/10

Janus decided when he asked her about her goal, that it was probably time to show him.  Maybe O'Conner would understand her predicament better.  "My goal remains the same as when I started, I just want to be able to survive.  The problem is my power, if that's what you want to call it.  Has components I don't know how to use." Janus noted before pointing out.  "When black robes change their swords, they're extremely strong, though most of them could smash me without doing it.  Now I have one, and as we both can see, I suck horribly at it."  Janus said as her foot began tapping to an imaginary song.  

Fall out Boy's Immortals began the instrumental lead in as she kept tapping her foot.    A few seconds later the song played gently as she held her arms out.  "We could be, immortals." She said on queue and grabbed her earring, her brother infused it with energy.  Janus' body suddenly had her weird body following her soul thing she had on occasion going.  A set of black robes, still awkward and half see through, showed over her body.  The small earring became a piece of a small blade that was barely longer than a wakizashi.  "Supin, Kurokku." She said and the small clocks on the side of the blade began to spin.  She looked down at it.

The music kept playing as she gently offered the sword to O'Conner.   "See, just like you. Pretty sure I'd kill myself if I even tried to use it."  Janus said to O'Conner.  "Honestly, I'm just sick of being beat to hell every other time I meet something magical, or spiritual if you want to use that nomenclature."  That was probably the most true statement Janus had said ever.  People told her over and over, you can do things, then she would get her ass kicked.  Just once, she wanted to be the other person, that was not getting her but kicked.  She waited patiently for O'Conner to give the blade back and wondered what kind of response that would solicit.  When he did, she would turn off her Fullbring in order to avoid wasting it's "batteries."

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Janus let her release die as fast as it had shown up and took stock of how long her brother had stored up, which was honestly not much.  The then put the earring back into her ear.  She had no intention of getting into a fight with her ability at all.  "Straight Wakizashi, I'm tiny, using a big sword would be stupid." She said with a shift and picked up her small wood stick again.  Janus waited for a second before continuing questioning.  "Is there a reason most black robes use Japanese-style swords?"  She asked as she took a sip of her water bottle.  "Or is that like some kind of weird standard?"    The Diviner asked as she stretched again.

"Though, using a gun and just shooting things would be a little easier, and much less likely to cause self-harm.  Why do most of you use swords, Blue Mages use projectiles, so do, broke-masks and monsters.  Seems like it would be useful to carry a firearm."  Janus asked quizzically.  That had always bothered her, well that and getting shot at by death lasers.  Whoever taught things to death laser was bad and should feel bad in her opinion.   Unlike O'Conner, who Janus was pretty sure could, destroy the city like some of the other people she had run into.  Janus did not have any form of overwhelming power, she had not even hurt anything as far as she knew.  

Jeremy had shrugged off her attacks like they were second thoughts, and the monsters she had tried to punch.  Well, they did not exactly do anything besides use that weird scream they always do.  In fact, Janus had burned her hand before just because she touched one of them.  That was complete nonsense!  Everything seemed a lot bigger and badder than her, and she was also pretty sure that they did not have to work towards their goals.  Janus had to work towards her goals on a completely regular basis.  Which was funny cause it got her nowhere.  On general principles she should have just been attacking anything and everything.

"So are your transforming swords unique, or do they give you them?"  Janus finished her current line of questioning.

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Janus looked blankly at O'Conner, his comment about having more tricks basically fit her like a glove.  Her power was quite literally, a LOT of tricks.  They all had uses, sadly in very specific situations, but uses none the less.   She listened and paid attention, as any information would seem relevant to her at this point. Though she was still confused about the Katana thing but that could be looked into later.   "I got stuck in the middle of some black robes fighting some monsters, got my butt kicked, nothing new.  Anyway, the black robes seemed to, ask a name to do something and their swords would transform.  Then they spit fire, and burned down city blocks, and reduced monsters to literally paste."  

Janus said to O'Conner and then she wondered how they decided who's sword belonged to who.  That seemed like it could be really confusing.  Did they know what the sword did?  If so how did they know if the person would benefit at all?  This seemed really convoluted and terrible in her opinion.  "So, how can you tell the difference?  If they can transform, and who gives the swords to people, how do you even know it will be useful for you?  Why not give a sword that works better for someone else to someone else?"  She kept her mind asking as she was finally done catching her breath.  "Man black robe society seems really confusing."

She really had no clue how it all worked but that seemed odd.  She got back up and swung the wakizashi-like wooden sword a few times, and realized that was a bit closer to what she had, but it did not have the subtle intricacies of her sword.  Probably because it did not have a spring.  Which, to be fair was a little abnormal and she would never have thought about that.  "Anyway, now that I have a weapon that fits.  Shall we continue beating using it into my skull?"

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