Following the battle, Wilhelm expected there to be more commotion. Discussions about what happened, curses, high-strung emotions, anything. Instead, the ship fell into a state of hungover withdrawal. Every person turned inward, antisocial with a cloud of grim sobriety Lakitu-ing nearby each and every sailor. There were no lighthearted jabs or smiling faces, but neither were there faces darkened by grief or cheeks wet from tears. Numbness was the chief feeling that permeated the ship as Wilhelm sat alone at the stern on a reed mat, shivering despite the warmth that coursed through his veins.

“Fitting.” He mumbled at the grey clouds rumbling overhead, but there was no anger or annoyance among the crew. Only resignation.

A brief funeral was held for the men who fell in the fight against the pirates. Only two were killed, the ones who foolishly attacked the pirate Captain deep in his crusade against Jieming. They lay wrapped in black tarps bearing the naval insignia in stark white, a dove crossed by two swords. Under those tarps were not only the corpses of the fallen, but also heavy stone attached by chains. He knew because he’d been conscripted to help assemble them.

The crew stood by the railing in a semi-circle around the tarps facing out towards the sea. Captain Absalom was placed with his back to the ocean before the tarps, Calypso and Jieming flanking him, each a step behind.

A couple sailors approached, and Absalom nodded to each in turn. One by one they gave small speeches – words about the men who had fallen. Stories about their bravery, their stupidity, stories that made them laugh, stories about what brought them to the crew, and a few terse words about the pirate captain who killed them and subsequently fell.

One man spoke tonelessly, deep bags clearly shown under his eyes while they were glued to one of the two tarps. They had signed up for the navy together, eager to escape the trappings of the small town that seemed to befall everyone around them. He described their eager visions of the high seas filled with treasure, glory, and adventure, and vengeance against the kinds of pirates who had raided their village in days past.

They’d found none of that. Placed into a crew of detritus with a Captain corrupt enough to sell his fellow navy men out to pirates, they were slowly drawn down the rabbit hole of duplicity until they were indistinguishable from the men they’d sought out to fight.

“Soon enough, we’d look in the mirror and not recognize the men that looked back,” Ash explained, “We did things we never even considered possible in the runt of a town we came from, but for ill. We thought we would be the knights in shining armor, saving the maiden from the raiders, but instead we became the raiders ourselves.”

“Then, a fateful day, Drake and I watched our tyrannous scum of a leader get cut down in front of us like it was nothing by an unknown naval Captain. We were rounded up not long after, and he picked us out specifically.” His gaze turned to Absalom, for the first time with life in his eyes.

“You gave us a new life, one bereft of crime, one where we got to fulfill our naïve dreams from our childhood. Drake has now passed, yes, but he lived more in these years on your crew than the previous ones put together. If you had given him the choice of dying in an attempt to kill a powerful pirate in return for being pulled from the hellhole we’d found ourselves in, he’d have accepted in an instant. As would have I.” He turned back to the crowd at large, his eyes locking onto each member one by one.

“This isn’t Drake’s first foray into the realm of death. He died once before when our Captain took us into this crew, giving us a new life and killing our old one. I’ve lost a brother today, but the realm of Ronin has gained a great man. A trade we all must accept, one day.”

Ash’s eyes lingered on the tarp for a moment longer before stepping away, joining the crew’s somber procession, hands clasped behind him.

At this, the funeral came to the last rites, administered as tradition by the deceased men’s Captain.

Jieming handed Absalom a pair of spears with the tips removed, replaced by what looked like damp rags wrapped around the top.

He stuck one spear in each tarp, rags upward.

“The navy gives you a new life.” He reached into the inner pocket of his coat.

“It doesn’t matter who you were before the navy. You could have been a criminal, you could have been a poor street urchin barely scraping by, you could have been nobility. None of that matters anymore once you don the blue. You surrender yourself to a power greater than your own – the collective strength of the naval branches across the world, all in the service of doing right. You fight monsters and pirates, defend against raids, escort important merchant and political vessels, explore uncharted islands, and more.” He finally pulled his hand out, holding a lighter that was oddly similar to the kind from Wilhelm’s world. There were some differences, though – this one looked more industrial in a way, made of hard iron instead of plastic like most that he had encountered. It looked heavy, though nothing about the ease with which the Captain handled it would tell you that.

Absalom flicked the top back and the flint was struck, newly obscured by the orange flame that wavered gently in the wind as the ship moved ever-forward. He raised it to the top of each spear, the fire leaping to the rags easily. The top flicked back, and the small flame was gone as fast as it was created.

“But the source of this new life doesn’t come from the navy. It goes deeper than that - the navy needed their own source of life, after all. Our life comes not from the blue coats we drape ourselves in, but the blue that stretches infinitely around us.” He gestured to the ocean behind him, barely blue from the reflection across the waters from the setting sun.

“The ocean gave us new lives, ones fraught with danger, but ones also more rewarding than anything else you can do in this world. That is the secret that wont be told to you by the navy themselves. They want you to believe that the source of your reincarnation is them, the organization you signed up for, not the sea you sail upon. Do not be deceived.” There was a trace of bitterness to his voice, one that gave Wilhelm the impression of an old scar, one that still flared up with pain, never truly healed. A few of the sailors’ eyes flicked down as he spoke, but most continued looking on.

“But just as the ocean gives us new lives,” he said, the bags under his eyes becoming more pronounced, “It just as easily snuffs them out. Such is the way of our line of work.”

Multiple men stepped forward at this point – including Ash and the other speech makers from earlier – and each lifted one tarp. They walked slowly to the railing, careful not to tip anything.

“Now, we return these fallen sailors to their home. Not the one they were born in, but the one where they were born again. May they find safe passage through Ronin’s Current, and may he have mercy on their souls.” Absalom finished, and the tarp-covered corpses were dropped overboard with a splash. It was only Wilhelm’s imagination, but he thought he could hear the sound of the twin flames being snuffed out as they struck the water.

Nobody looked over. He didn’t know if it was due to some kind of superstition, or if they were worried about the state of the tarps following their collision against the surface of the sea.

There were a few coughs and sniffs, but the sailors around him were almost entirely stoic. The concepts of masculinity and the navy were connected even in this world as well, it seemed.

After the funeral, there was a large feast with uncharacteristically good food, and lacking the usual boisterousness that Wilhelm had become accustomed to. Instead, men and women looked to the friends they had gained with a newfound appreciation, savoring them in the moment. The death of those two sailors served as a reminder of mortality, of the dangers they put themselves in day after day.

Soon after, Wilhelm lay in his cot, staring up at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep. The words of their Captain rang in his head, the motifs of reincarnation disturbing him for reasons he couldn’t entirely articulate. He was committed to joining the navy now, but what if he had made a mistake. Was he really so ready to abandon his previous life like Absalom described?

What if he found a way home?

For what was probably the millionth time, he thought back to the pirate captain that Jieming killed, and the beam that was fired at him with his dying breath. It contained a staggering amount of power, enough to kill him hundreds of times over. If that random pirate captain they stumbled upon by chance could have that much power, what about the real powerhouses of the world? How powerful were the leaders of the navy, or elites among the pirates?

He got a pang of grief for his old world, one deeper than they usually came. He missed it of course, but he’d been so overcome by wonder at the world he found himself in that it hadn’t really set in. He was probably thought dead at this point. His friends and family would never know what happened to him. He was only glad that he had nobody that relied on him, no child or pet that would be affected by his disappearance.

Wilhelm rolled over, trying to get to sleep. That kind of power falling into the hands of someone with ill intentions was terrifying. How could the average person defend against that?

He knew the answer already. They couldn’t. That’s what the navy and similar entities were for. Despite the problems he knew his world had, Wilhelm yearned for the lack of such tangible power. There were terrible people to be sure, some of them even had guns that could do terrible things, but none of them were walking nuclear bombs.

The primal fire locked in his soul felt like more of a burden with each passing day. He updated spreadsheets – how was he supposed to fight sea monsters and pirates?

At the same time, how could he not? He was given this power through some means he didn’t understand, and whether he wanted it or not, it was his now. How could he do nothing with his power when there were people in need with none? If he asked any person regularly attacked by monsters, targeted by pirates, or worse, they would all agree to take his place in a heartbeat. They would have the power to change their own fates, and to protect themselves from the powers that once terrorized them. What kind of person would he be if he didn’t use his aspect for the same? Logically he felt it wasn’t his duty to protect those in need, but his gut told him that he was no better than the pirates if he didn’t. Ash’s story echoed in his mind, the terrible deeds of the man who called himself their Captain on their previous ship.

Wilhelm finally began drifting off, the brainwaves becoming slower and slower. The last coherent thought his brain produced was of raiders laughing while they set a village ablaze, tormenting men, women and children who fled the smoke-filled homes, cutting down those who resisted, and himself, standing on the sidelines, motionless. Watching.