The Marshal of the Fullbringers [Marshal]

There had been some mention of the woman in his meeting with Raphael. Her name was Janus. She was a mortal, like the two of them had been before he'd disappeared like so many others had before him. He couldn't recall what her powers were or if they were even mentioned in the encounter. In the end it didn't really matter, he supposed. A pair of feet in unassuming shoes carried an unassuming man toward the destination that was the aforementioned woman.

Like most everyone, he could feel her long before he could see her. Wherever she was it was among plenty of normal humans. The fullbringer thought, briefly, about waiting for her to emerge from the building she was in and come to him but decided against it. He'd waited for too much for too long. It was time he made more of an effort. His encounter with Raph had taught him that much at least. Having stopped on a corner, the blonde carried on across the street and moved closer toward where he could feel the woman.

The rest of the walk went fairly quickly, not that there was a whole lot of it to do. The series of buildings he'd passed countless times faded away from his perceptions until he was standing before a sushi restaurant. He recognized the place, if only vaguely. If memory served, he hadn't ever actually been inside the place but it'd been on his list of places to one day visit. Today it seemed would be the day that he finally did.

A small chime alerted the staff to his arrival as he opened the door and he offered the young hostess a smile as he slid passed her. With a bit of reiatsu curled on his tongue, he apologetically explained he was meeting a friend. The woman was sitting alone and like so many others he'd met, looked on the surface like himself. Unassumingly normal. She easily could have been another faceless 'somebody' in the world but this close to her, he could see that she was very much like himself.

"Hello," his words were just loud enough to carry over the few feet left between them as he finished crossing the restaurant's dining room. "is this seat taken?"

He sat before she could answer, letting a bit of his soul slip out and press down on her. Not enough to hurt. Never enough to harm. In some cases it was enough to stop someone in their tracks but that was as far as he'd ever let it go. This much was just enough to maybe cause her to stiffen but she'd still be able to move freely. If she looked close enough she might even find the similarity he was already aware of. "My name is Marshal. Do you have a minute to talk?"

[WC: 474][TWC: 474]

Janus chuckled at the comment, it was the first time someone had ever gotten her with a pun before they had met her.  "For a blonde gentlemen like yourself, I have five."  The diviner had already pulled the seat next to her out.    She was getting used to being approached by strangers that could feel her finally.  Though the feel thing she still had somewhat issues with.  She took another bite as she slogged through Marshal's reiatsu.  "I'm Janus DiNapoli, pleasure to meet you."  The diviner said before looking over at him.  "Please put your energy away." She asked him politely and shifted.

"Mage or Blue mage?" The diviner asked Marshal as she tried to size him up and sipped on her water.  "Judging by the fact I don't see the blue, probably a normal mage."  Janus said as she rolled her neck towards Marshal.  "And a lot stronger than me to boot."    The diviner was obviously less than cautious.  She would have gone straight into asking him a million questions but decided that opening with that was what got her in trouble the last two times.  Janus still was curious but she could afford a tiny bit of patience.  She nodded politely at him as if expectant of some vivid explanation.  "Next question, why can't I sense you? Well not really sense but you get the point."  The diviner made a note of.  It was true, she had felt nothing as Marshal had approached her.

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246

"Mage?" his lips crooked into a slanted smile and he let out a chuckle. He supposed when one didn't know any better that's what most of them boiled down to in a sense. It would seem that she was good enough at perception that she could at least tell he was human but not good enough to sense that they were the same sort of human. Knowing that much now, Marshal returned his soul to the state it'd been before he had let some of it slip out. "You're correct in a sense I suppose."

A waiter passing by asked what he wanted and the blonde requested a glass of water and a bowl of white rice. He wasn't all that hungry but if he was going to be here the least he could do was order something. Looking around, the restaurant seemed relatively busy. Enough that he felt like they could stay for a bit without it becoming too awkward, not that what they were doing was anything illegal or immoral. He just hated the idea of drawing more attention to himself that what was necessary.

"I'm what you might call and expert at sensing." he turned himself to face Janus again, forgetting about the rice and water that were coming for the moment. "I take a lot of pride in being able to hide myself from others while still being able to sense them. It's how I found you, actually. With a bit of practice and some dedication I'm sure most anyone can get to that point but I think very few have tried."

"Janus," his eyes narrowed a bit as he mentally dissected her soul to be certain she was what he thought she was. In the middle of it the waiter came back with his rice and water, breaking his concentration but not before he got the answer he was looking for. After thanking the man, the fullbringer looked back at the woman. "has anyone told you exactly what it is that you are?"

[WC: 338][TWC: 812]

Janus looked back up at Marshal, she had been told a lot of things.  Janus was in no way a fan of the naming scheme everyone seemed to have for things, though.  "Everyone seems to have an opinion on it."   She responded and took a sip of water with her hand before looking back over at him.  Rice, was not something Janus had ever eaten, for good reason if anyone noticed the small tube from her sternum to her pocket.  She ran over different thoughts and ideas of what to say and just rolled her shoulders and prodded at her sashami.  "Sasha said I was a seer, Phoenix said I was odd.  Yuki says I'm crazy, Johan says I'm dangerous.  The Queen of the Blue Mages said I was just like her, Zero said I was innocent.  Mine said she had seen others just like me over the years.  What else?"  Janus said as she shifted her weight.  "The black robed doctor wondered why my ability was self-destructive, and Raphael blew up my bed and breakfast in a fiery tornado of flames then shot a super laser at me and turned half my face into wax. Though, at least he thought I was cool."

The diviner stated as she took another sip of water and looked over at Marshal.  "Everyone seems to have an opinion of what I am, and what everyone else is.  I'm just trying to stay alive.  Not very good at that, either.  I mean, I lost a fight to a wall."   Janus joked before eating a a piece of sashimi from her plate and looking over at Marshal after being focused on the food.  "People keep telling me there's things I can do, or get stronger, I'm pretty sure that's all bogus though.  I'm a diviner, a probability mage, seer, oracle, whatever you want to call it, just not a good one." Janus said with a shrug.  "Unfortunately, seeing potential futures is worthless when every monster is a bunch of different souls trying to make instinctual decisions.  Every broke-mask can't make up its mind, every black robe can incinerate me and everything near me.  Every blue mage can spontaneously create matter, and every possessed can fire super lasers."  Janus pointed out.   "So what do you do, Marshal?  Fire balls?  Reality warping, wind magic?" The woman asked in her masculine tone.

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394

"I suppose most of them are right in a sense. I don't know you well enough to definitively say if they all are but," he shrugged as he reached for the soy sauce. Shaking just the right amount of the condiment into his rice, Marshal set the bottle back down and looked back to Janus. "there is a name for what we are. Have you heard the term 'Fullbringer'?"

He watched the woman out of the corner of his eye as he moved to eat a few bites of rice and drink some of his water. After taking a drink he frowned slightly, it was tap water. A small disappointment but not enough to make him lose his concentration on Janus. He wanted to see if there was a spike of recognition in her soul. She might lie and try to say that she was unaware of the term but her soul couldn't fake ignorance. 

"It's what you and I are." there may have been a bit of disturbance but nothing that told him she knew what it meant. The disturbance could have been something like he'd experienced when he first heard the term. A sense of belonging, an answer to a question he didn't know he'd been asking himself. A kind of coming home. "We're humans who are able to draw on the souls present in objects in the world around us. Though there's one item or object we have a specific affinity to that awards us with power specific to each fullbringer. From what you said, I gather that your powers have something to do with discerning the future. Am I right in saying that?"

"As for what my own are," he took a deep breath, glancing at his hands despite his best efforts not to. There had to be a way forward. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? If it was, he couldn't be so afraid of the past and what lay behind. "the object I have an affinity for is the nail polish on my thumbs. Silly, I know, but it's the last thing I got from my sister before she died. The power I have is to take away my own fears in battle and redirect them to whoever touches the substance my fullbring produces."

Holding his right hand in the space between them, he let his fullbring unfurl up to his wrist. The normally pale skin seemed to decay as it turned an ashy grey, his nails growing from their bitten-to-the-quick state to something akin to talons. It stayed long enough for her to see before he pulled the power back into the polish. It was getting easier to use. The weight it left on his chest, even as a demonstration, was smaller. Less like a ton of bricks and more like a few large stones. "Do you have any idea what object you might have an affinity for?"

[WC: 486][TWC: 1,298]

Janus looked at the last two pieces of sashimi as she went over the things that Marshal had said.  "Black robes aren't gods, so shinigami is a bad term.  Never seen a Quincy destroy anything.  The Arrancar I met didn't take off their masks, they broke them.  I don't think I fully bring anything anywhere, but I know the general nomenclature people use even if it seems incorrect." Janus pointed out with a chuckle.  "Maybe the spiritual community should come up with a new naming scheme, their old one seems pretty terrible."  The diviner said as she watched him with the rice.  Janus had always wondered what rice actually tasted like but she was smarter than that.  She liked having her limbs not amputated for internal damage caused by diabetes.

She sipped at her water again as she thought about the object nonsense.  "My powers are definitely for the future, just not too useful when people shoot death beams like candy.  I can punch stuff pretty hard, but that was more or less just the boss teaching me to do the same thing I do when I move fast when I punch."  She said poking at her last piece of hamachi.  Discerning the future was definitely an oversimplification but it made more sense than how Janus would describe it.  Nail polish, that was definitely an odd one.  The only other human with abilities she had met just, had telekinesis, and a monster possessing him that could shoot super lasers.

The diviner watched as his hand turned grey and Janus made a disturbed look as he suddenly grew talons.  Well that seemed pretty useful.    The young woman turned back to her food and took one of the last two Sashimi and devoured it quickly.  Object, nope, not really.  Janus had gotten off with punching things, after all Rick taught her how to punch things with her soul defending her body like when she used to hurl her soul.   "Nope, I have an affinity for leaving my body, but under the fact that everyone told me it was dangerous and I would die if someone cut my chain while I was doing it, I stopped.  Objects and I don't get along, the last time I hung out with them they tore my body to shreds.  How would I know if I did?"  The diviner asked unhurriedly.

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394

The blonde nearly choked on his rice as the woman began speaking of the other races. She knew their names, which was more than he expected, but her views on their namesakes were slightly off. Though he was more upset about her own misinterpretation of their own races name. He supposed he'd become a bit defensive of it since he'd learned of it though he couldn't place why.

"The names the races were given aren't without reason. I haven't the reason for all of them but for our own," he washed a bit of rice down before he continued. "we bring out the full potential of an object. That object can be anything from concrete, to a more personal object like my nail polish, to even our selves. It's not about being able to bring something somewhere. I wouldn't take things so literally if I were you, it might wind up causing you more grief than you'd think."

He frowned as the woman mentioned leaving her body. Certainly, the idea was unusual but in the world they were a part of it was far from the craziest thing he'd heard. From his own understanding though it was as dangerous as the other people she'd met had told her it was. The chain, presumably, was the chain of fate that bound a soul to it's body. Or, as a plus, the soul to the Earth. If hers had been severed she'd have likely become a hollow in next to no time at all. He was pleased that someone had had the sense to tell her about it. "It's hard to explain. It's more than the cliche and simple 'you just know' answer, so don't expect it. My own experience is... a bit strange."

As the waiter came by again, Marshal politely requested the check. After assuring the man that he didn't want anything more the waiter was off to tend to another table that had just sat down not far from himself and Janus. "The first time I used my powers, it wasn't me who did so. They came out kind of warped. Impure, I guess, would be the right sense of it. It took a long time for them to be fixed and longer still after they were for me to use them."

"One thing you'll have to understand about me is that I'm scared. Less so now than I used to be but I'd be crazy to live in a world where people can do the impossible and still not feel any. When I first got to use them of my own accord I was terrified. I was faced with a hollow far more powerful than myself who would have eaten me alive for his own pleasure if I hadn't used them. As my powers took hold, though, I felt like my sister was with me again. Almost like she was taking my hand and telling me it was okay. I began to recall memories of her and I when we were younger and how I had always taken care of her. Before I knew it, my fullbring was active and I used it to get myself out of that situation." it had been a long time since he'd recalled the whole scenario with Iko. To his memory, Marshal didn't even remember telling Alex, Raph, or even Freylief about it. He should have, he thought. "I guess the way I knew was though feeling that connection with my sister again but that's just my way of knowing. Yours might not have a familial tie. You could feel a sense of self worth, or a sense of nostalgia for someplace you'd always dreamed of. I know it sounds silly but that's the best I can give you. Only you can tell when you find what the object is. It's likely already in your possession though, I can tell you that much. You wouldn't be able to use your fullbring without it."

As the waiter passed by again he dropped off the check and Marshal busied himself with filling it out as he let Janus digest the information he'd given her.

[WC: 690][TWC: 1,988]