Let The Games Begin;; Jiyu's Arrival;; Open

Marschal had only ever known Bosco as his true home, after having been displaced from his home village many years ago. He didn't know what had drawn him here to this specific nation out of all the other nations available for living. Something within the boards of this place had brought him here to join Black Rose, and he couldn't be anymore happier. Not many joined the guild though, which was highly disappointing for the young mage, as he liked to terrorize the newcomers some. Rile them up a bit to see what they would do and if they were worthy of joining the guild or useless like that Suzuran had been. Mostly, it was for his own entertainment, as he liked scaring the people and got a kick out of their reactions. Today... well.. he was out scoping for another victim of his pranks, and he happened upon a woman with beautiful, long, black hair.

Quietly, he would slink down from the rooftop he was standing on, and land in front of Jiyu with a blissful look in his eyes. He would stuff his hands into the pockets of his black jeans and relax back into his stance, looking down at her. A single strand of white could be seen among the midnight black of his hair, the hair that flowed down past his butt, to the backs of his knees. It was neither braided nor placed in a pony tail to keep it from getting entangled on things, but somehow remained untouched by nature.

"Hey there, pretty, little lady," Marschal spoke in a flirtatious tone, eyes narrowed to give him a more sensual look. "You look to be a little lost... need help with anything, m'dear?" He would cock an eyebrow at her, intense red eyes watching. She appeared to be of foreign nature, much like himself, what with how she wore no shoes, despite the wintry look she gave off.

His feline ears would swivel forward as he realized he had not introduced himself to the fair maiden before him. In return, the mage would bow slightly as an apology to her, then correct his stance as he established who he and what his name was.

"I go by Marschal Leigh, and I am a mage of the resident guild, Black Rose," he announced to Jiyu in an apathetic manner. "Are you here on a visit or are you looking for the guild hall by any chance? If so, I can take you there right now. I'm sure the guild members would be delighted in seeing a new face after the first had been run off, scared." He should truly shut up now; it wasn't necessary for Jiyu to know that their guild had run off a potential member. At that moment, he thought that maybe asking for her name would be best, so he would inquire to her, "by the way, what is your name?"

Behind the scenes, Marschal had been abused and tortured, when he was younger, by the children of Mountain Village. They would throw rocks at his head, call him names, try to tear down their house he previously used to live in, all to make him miserable. It wasn't just the children that would make him doleful, it was the adults of the village that really had hurt his ego. His mother had been the victim of their brutality, in which she had been stoned to death trying to protect him from the villagers. At that point, his father had barred him inside the house, so that he wouldn't be hurt by the villagers anymore. That didn't much work; Marschal had always been terrified to be on his own whenever his father left for a fishing trip. Eventually, he had to be taken on the trips with his father, and afterward, he would come to be living here in Black Rose.

When Marschal had slung himself down to stand in front of Jiyu, he hadn't taken into thought that he would run into her. Unfortunately, the woman had bumped straight into his chest and had stumbled backward several steps before catching her balance. He would've helped her, but by the time he had reacted to her stumbling, she had already since caught her balance and called him a jerk for stating she was lost. Well, he had only been calling as he had seen it, and from what it had looked like to the young mage, she had been lost. On top of that, she didn't look like she was someone who familiar with area, and that's why he had offered his help to her. She had every right to deny that help if she wanted; she could have easily gone around him and continued on her way. It wasn't like he was blockading her way anyway, and she could have just ignored what he was asking of her.

He wouldn't stand there and take the shit she was giving him though, and a bored expression appeared on his face. Marschal ran his fingers through his long hair as he brushed it out of his face, flicking the ends off the tips of his fingers. His mouth would stretch open in a gentle 'o' shape, giving out a yawn before he would look back to the orange-haired woman. She couldn't have been anymore dumb either, not with how she had slipped out the little "huh" in his presence. Marschy rolled his eyes and dropped his arms to his sides, cocking an eyebrow at the woman with a bit of curiosity. Perhaps she didn't understand that there were guilds around and that she would be able to join one if she wanted to. Well, he supposed he could inform her about it, but she was starting to look a little grouchy with his sudden appearance.

The mage had been unlucky enough to have slipped off into thought and hadn't noticed that Jiyu had gotten closer to him. In fact, she had gotten so close to him, that she was able to reach up onto her toes and play with his ears if she wanted. What did she do? She did exactly that. By standing on her toes, she would reach up to his ears and rub them lightly.

"Oi!" Marschal would bark out, stepping away from her with disgusted look on his face and flattening his ears against his head. He didn't like having his ears touched, by anyone, and she had just violated his privacy bubble that he greatly enjoyed. "Don't touch my ears! I said I'd take you to the guild if you wanted, I didn't give you permission to touch any part of my body!" His stance would soon relax though and he'd stretch out the tension that had gathered in his muscles from Jiyu's attack.

Marschy would reach up to the top of his head and grip his ears, rubbing at them slightly to get red of the strange sensation. He was angry now, but he knew the rule of Black Rose, that he shouldn't pose as a threat to a potentially new guild member. So, he would keep his distance from her for now, crossing his arms back over his chest to at least look slightly intimidating.

"So, you're here to just grab some grub?" asked Marschal, feeling like her just getting food to go was the oddest thing. Actually, he couldn't remember the last time that someone had only stuck around for a fleeting moment and not to join. Of course, that was excluding Suzuran that they had managed to run off on their own, but that was a story for another time. "Well, we have our own personal chef back at the guide, he's an Ace of the guild as well, and he'd be delighted to make food for you, I'd believe."

Extending a hand out to her, he would wait for the woman to take hold of it, saying to her, "well, what do you say?" If she took his hand, he would pull her along to the guild and into the guild hall; if not, he would turn on his way and hope she was following him. Besides, he didn't want to stick around in the town for too long or else things would start to get awkward for him. Anyway, the others would like to get to know her as well, and a guest was always welcome here in the town guild of Black Rose. Perhaps he would even show her around the guild some, but that was only if she confirmed that she wanted to join.

A stone cold look would still be plastered on his face as they entered the guild hall, wondering if anyone else would come to greet them. If not, that didn't bother the man so much, it meant a new member all to himself, and he could have a bit of fun.

While Jiyu could easily move onto the next piece of her life, Marschal's past was something that had slowly corrupted him. The early death of his mother was beyond anything that a child of six years could easily handle, especially one as brutal of a passing as hers had been. His mother, while protecting him from the onslaught of derogatory terms and stones to the head, had been stoned to death, herself. Bloodied, beaten, a little child terrified to death standing behind his fallen mother's body... nobody wanted that. Yet the villagers, they had been cruel enough to leave him as a motherless child all because they hated his kind. Hated his kind so much that they would have done everything in their power to make sure he didn't leave the village alive. He had made it out of that village alive though, and it was all thanks to his stepfather that he barely even liked... pitied, actually.

Should he have been grateful toward Fumishi in getting him out of that hellhole after six or so years of suffering? Maybe. However, he had been so attached to his mother that he didn't once want to leave the deceased woman's side. In fact, he had hated Fumishi even more for leaving their mother behind; he didn't understand that she wasn't coming back. He wanted his mother... wanted her so badly that he fought tooth and nail and screamed to get away from his stepfather. A life on a fishing boat wasn't so bad though, he had the chance of being able to see places he would never have dreamed to see. That lifestyle didn't last for long either, at least only for a couple more years before the ship was destroyed in a storm. Along with that ship, Marschal could remember seeing the fearful look in his stepfather's eyes as he went down with it.

That was the last of his family that he knew of, and the traumatic event of losing both his parents in a short span of time was hard on him. Fortunately for Marschal, he had washed up on the shores of his real father's homeland, and would be found by him shortly after being washed up. From there, he would be raised by him for several more years, until one day, Inteus would simply disappear from his life. No recollection in his mind, besides glowering golden eyes and hair as blue as the cerulean waters of the ocean. Now, Marschal wanted to remember more than ever who his real father was, and ask him why he disappeared that day. He doubted though, that he would ever get to come across that man again, like that of "once in a blue moon." A phenomenon never to actually happen, only to be fabled by legends and tales from those around him.

For all those years after the disappearance of Inteus, Marschal had no intentions of finding him, but to first prove his strength. He wanted his mother and his stepfather to know that he was a lot stronger than he had been at the age of six. It was this reason alone that Marschal had joined Black Rose; he trusted that this guild could make him stronger. Maybe that was the reason why he was so intent on showing the place to Jiyu because he loved this guild with all his heart. Marschy wanted people to see that they were just some mysterious guild of bounty hunters, that they were actual people. Jiyu was his first step into making that possible, but if only he could convince her to join the guild in the first place.

His red eyes flicked toward Jiyu, then to the guild hall that they had entered after their little argument beforehand.

Black Rose was a massive guild, itself, designed to look similar to a tavern on the first floor, with its wooden floors and walls. That wasn't the tavern, however, it was a stairway to the right that led up to the Common Room, more precisely known as the tavern. Tables cluttered the room, but somehow this place still had tons of it to spare, and even a bar made home in the back. Not far off from that bar? Well, there was an entryway into a large kitchen, where Kakuma typically stole food from. Marschal hardly ever went in there, though the enticing scents of fish and meat really called out to him. He would beckon Jiyu along to the right stairway, and lead her up into the tavern, where the rest of the guild was. Except, most of the guild was actually on the first floor, busy looking for jobs or conversing with each other.

"Hey! I don't have a stick up my ass! I just don't like my ears being touched by people I'm not familiar with," Marschal pointed out to Jiyu. "Actually, I don't like any of my appendages being touched by anyone other than Kakuma, now that I think about it..." Kakuma was his beloved, the woman of his dreams, as well as the first and only guildmaster of Black Rose. However, her appearances were so sporadic that Marschal couldn't say for sure she would come around and greet Jiyu. For now, he would only hope that some of his guildmates decided to be nice and come out to greet her. "How would you like it if some stranger decided to just up and touch your ears without you giving them permission to?" A grouchy frown would appear on his face and he would cross his arms over his chest again, taking a seat at his table.

"And my hands are not big! They are a normal size for someone my height!" Marschal whined out defensively to Jiyu. He was staring at his hands out, scrunching his fingers into balls and uncurling them as he decided on their size. Nothing was wrong with his hands! They were perfectly okay, he assumed... or maybe they only looked normal to him? Jiyu had pointed out that they were quite large, but she was also quite short, too, definitely a foot smaller than him. So, maybe her bones were tinier than his; plus, he had more animalistic features built into his masculine body. "You're just tiny anyway, so I can see why you think that they're larger than what a normal person's is." Marschy shrugged his shoulders and let his clawed hands drop back into his lap, and he looked back up at her.

He would motion to the back of the tavern then, saying, "there's a kitchen back there if you want to go order them around." Otherwise, he wasn't moving from the place, and would kick back and extend his legs, placing his hands behind his head. Marschal wiggled around in his seat for a second, getting himself comfortable, and closed his eyes partially. "No one's going to stop you in getting something to drink anyway, and dehydrated food sounds quite familiar to me. I think I ate it a lot on my stepfather's fishing boat whenever we went out on the ocean for a few weeks or months. It wasn't the most disgusting of things, but it was definitely food that I could care less in having to eat at times." His eyes would open up again, red meeting red, curious to know what Jiyu would say about this place now that she was in it.

"Now, I don't know if anyone's going to come around or not, so if you want, I can just show you the place," Marschal spoke. He would bounce his leg some and stare at her, waiting for an answer, and also watching any of her reactions.

Jiyu was right. Her hair was an entire rat's nest now that he was able to get a good look at the calico-haired woman. The knots in her hair that he saw deeply disturbed him, and he wanted to reach out and comb through it. By the looks of it though, there was absolutely no way that he could get a comb through that hair so easily. It would take him all day to even get a single knot out, but in all honesty, Marschal would literally sit there if he had to. At least it would be something entertaining for him to do, while everyone else was out of town doing jobs. Oftentimes, he got lonely here at the guild, especially if Iza was not around for him to pester and annoy when he was bored. So, Jiyu would have to be the replacement whenever he couldn't find his half-sister milling about the guild hall.

The new guild member would mention about going into the kitchen to grab something to eat, and that was the last he saw of her. His eyes would follow the retreating short form of the woman into the kitchen, but float over to Kistiñe, who had just exited. While he knew that had once been Tomás the Toucan, Marschal had barely ever talked with the former bird of paradise. So, he was quite unfamiliar with the fact that he had been turned into a woman just recently, and from what he could tell, he was not liking it. Shifting his position as the Spanish woman settled down at the table that Jiyu and he had been at, he'd look her over. Unfortunately, the male caught himself staring at the former male's breasts, which made everything that much worse for him. To know that she had once been a he, and he was now staring at her boobs, was the strangest outcome to have occurred for Marschal.

A heavy blush would fill his pale cheeks with color, and he looked away from the large cotton-robbed area of her chest. "Uh... how have you been, Kistiñe?" the mage inquired, though trying to keep his gaze away from the woman. He was only trying to make conversation while Jiyu was away and getting food for herself, but this was proving to be difficult. "I see that... uh..." Marschal couldn't finish his sentence, so he would quickly shut himself up and think of something else. His red and gold-flecked gaze shifted down to his clawed fingers, that were picking at the skin of another finger. Keep himself busy... keep himself busy, that's all that mattered, or he would be staring at the former toucan again. Marschy swallowed a lump down his throat, and just as he was about to look back at Kistiñe, Jiyu had graciously returned.

Quickly, his eyes would dart away from his guild mate to the new one, watching her carry out a plate of raw meat. At the sight of the bloody meat, Marschal ran his tongue over his lips and thought about stealing a piece or two. His eyes would go back to that mess of hair though, and the thought of meat soon slipped from his mind. He scooted over to Jiyu's side and lightly grabbed a chunk of the messy hair, looking it over with great disgust. "This will not do, never," the half-breed mumbled out, gently combing through her hair with the claws of his fingers. "Please, let me brush this hair... I cannot stand looking at this knotted mess that it has become... it has so much more potential." He wouldn't wait for permission though and calmly whipped out a brush, like he carried it with him wherever he went.

Quietly, the alcohol mage would run the brush through her hair, picking at the snarls until they started to come out. After a few moments of working on just one side though, Marschal would shift his gaze back to Kistiñe. "You ever brush hair before? Want to help me out with her hair? It could use the help in getting all smoothed out." He would watch the woman precariously, but soon turn his attention back to the bird's next of hair Jiyu had. "I don't know what you did, but you should really keep up with this hair of yours, or it just won't be as beautiful. I mean, look at mine, it's absolutely wondrous!" He would reach for his own hair then, running his claws through it. Though he would quickly return to brushing her hair, ignoring any groaning and threats that she would throw out at him.

Eventually, he was able to get that one side done, then moved to the backside of her hair, which looked like she just got out of bed. Marschal grimaced at the sight of the tangled mess of calico hair, and got off the bench to get a better view. He was bending over her now, a good sized chunk of her hair in his hand and began to brush that section of it. Marschy hummed quietly to himself, thinking of things that he could say to the two woman that were with him. Hell, it was like he had grown his own harem already, and he didn't have to get Kistiñe to sit by them.

"So, Jiyu, tell us a bit about yourself," Marschal finally decided on something to say to the new member of Black Rose. "Where do you come from? What kind of magic to do you have? Anything you want to know about either of us?"

He was giving her options to answer to or things to ask them if she didn't feel comfortable enough to answer the guideline questions he asked. Marschal was only curious to get to know the new member better, as he felt a subtle connection with the woman. "Hm... I suppose that I should that I came from Mountain Village... well, sort of... Mountain Village was my home. I have a few relatives in Peace Village as well, but I hardly ever go out there to see any of them, since most are dead. Uh... My magic is alcohol-based if you haven't already discovered that yet, and if any of you feel a bit woozy, I apologize for that. That's uh... my Intoxication Aura, that I, unfortunately don't know how to turn off, so you're stuck with the effects." After saying so much about himself, the young mage would pipe down and continue to silently brush Jiyu's hair.