Marcus Black – Maiming (speculation)
My headcanon:
Marcus Black’s Semblance offered him no power except for the ability to deny others the ability to use their own Semblances. The exact mechanism is unclear, save that it is clearly not an effect that Marcus needed any effort to maintain, since it apparently did not end when he slept, and which definitely persists even after he died. This suggests the effect mutilated a part of someone else’s soul, like cutting off an arm or leg. Or perhaps the wound might prove less permanent.
Marcus made sure his victims never found out, since he murdered them immediately after targeting them. They died, ambushed and alone, in a time and place they would not expect to fight, confused and panicked by the loss of their Semblance, unaccustomed to fighting without it, and faced with an opponent whose entire fighting style revolved entirely around killing disoriented human victims more accustomed to fighting Grimm than other humans.
Thus Marcus made a professional career of hunting and killing other human beings, even mighty huntsmen. Perhaps especially huntsmen, as a way of reinforcing a superiority complex against those who relied upon Semblances to fight as powerful warriors, as well as to ignore an inferiority complex for lacking his own wondrous and heroic power.
Backed by the pride of a lifetime spent dragging huntsmen down to his level and killing them with experience, it’s no wonder that Marcus might convince himself that his son’s Semblance would only become a crutch that would prevent Mercury from attaining true skill. Because that would be easier to think than admitting he envied his son for having a Semblance like the hero Marcus believed he never could have been.
Certainly easier to admit than the fact that neutralizing his son’s Semblance would deprive Mercury of the ability to defend himself from beatings disguised as training sessions, or the power to flee to freedom. Also the fact that Marcus could lie about having the power to return his son’s Semblance at any time, thus giving his abuse victim a reason to stay rather than run away, and obey rather than rebel.
I admit that there is another possibility for Marcus’s Semblance, but it doesn’t seem very consistent with the facts.
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