Half the crew had gathered around to watch Wilhelm’s aspected training, only heightening his nerves. After Calypso had told him she’d begin training him the next day he was elated, but a familiar sense of dread set in as the day went on. What if he messed it up? What if they were all wrong, and he somehow couldn’t use the abilities that came with the shard?

What if he hurt someone?

For the first time, he truly understood how Aang felt when learning fire bending. The more he thought about it, the more he cursed whatever force shoved the shard within his body. Fire was destructive and dangerous – there was literally an occupation called firefighters. Their entire job was to fight the very thing he could now produce, because it ruined lives and took them. Wood or person, fire didn’t care, it consumed it all without sympathy.

That wasn’t who Wilhelm wanted to be. He hadn’t been the greatest person on his own world – he hadn’t been a bad one either, he had been somewhere in the middle. Living in greys like everyone else, he had strong opinions but never the power to do anything about it. Now he did, but the power he dreamed of wielding for good was the same thing given to villains to make them more menacing. Fire Lord Ozai wasn’t exactly a progressive fellow.

There’s something primal in a human’s brain that fears being burned. It’s surpassed by curiosity an early age leading us to do stupid things - Wilhelm had touched the stovetop himself - but from then on, it’s a boogeyman. Cooking food becomes an exercise in subliminal caution to avoid burning yourself or your house down, and the moment you touch something hot your brain floods your system with pain chemicals, and you pull away faster than you thought possible off instinct. A red angry mark is all that’s left behind; the mark of humanity’s greatest fear.

Then again, he wasn’t human anymore, apparently.

“This is Quartermaster Jieming,” She gestured to a man wearing a similar uniform to her own. He was tall with black hair cut very close to his head, and on first impression intimidated Wilhelm greatly. He had a gnarly scar on the left side of his face crossing over his eye, while the other side was covered in an intricate web of tattoos forming a strange half-mask reminiscent of some sort of demon. Upon interacting with him though, he was a very affable man, quick to joke and easy to make smile. The podao he carried on his back was a bit ominous, but Wilhelm liked him, nonetheless.

“I mentioned him to you yesterday. He’s bound to the aspect of the ocean, and so should be able to counteract whatever mistakes you inevitably make.”

A little spike of anxiety shot through Wilhelm, but he forced it down as much as he could.

“Do you really have to say that? Maybe I’ll be perfect on my first try.”

Jieming snorted, eliciting a sharp look from Calypso to which he raised his hands in capitulation. Wilhelm smiled. It really was a universal gesture after all.

She turned back and put her hand out, palm pointed upwards.

“To start, envision the shard of the aspect within yourself. It is a wellspring of power – your power, now – that you will draw on to-“

“Do magic?” Wilhelm interrupted.

“Utilize your aspect.” She finished and sighed deeply. “But yes, in the most idiotic and rudimentary terms possible, do magic.”

“Envision yourself drawing the power of the aspect – in your case fire – up through your body. It runs along the same paths as your veins. Imagine it building up in your palm, and slowly allow the pressure to grow.”

Wilhelm was hesitant. “Uh, I already had the aspect’s power running around inside me, I’m not so sure if I want to invite it to do it again.”

She opened one eye. “Are you questioning me?”

He shook his head. “No. Well, yes technically, I guess, but not in a disobedient way. I’m just nervous, is all.”

She blew a strand of hair from her face. “Fine. Fire is more dangerous than sponge or ocean, so your caution isn’t unfounded. That pain was when the shard was still a part of the aspect. Now, you’ve made the power your own, so it will be far gentler. Plus, your body undoubtedly went under changes to acclimate the new shard, which will also help. Don’t worry. If you catch on fire. Jieming will put you out.”

“Probably.” The man cut in from the side, laughing at Calypso’s withering glare.

Wilhelm closed his eyes and attempted to do what she described. It was surprisingly easy; it felt natural, like he knew how to do it all along and only needed to remember. The aspect’s power was a gentle heat slowly working its way towards his palms, nothing like the angry sensation that scorched his insides before.

The heat began building in his palms just as Calypso said, growing hotter and hotter until it became discomforting.

“Okay, now what? This is getting a little uncomfortable.” He said, wincing at the stinging.

Calypso opened her eyes to watch him with her full attention.

“First, point your palm over the railing towards the ocean. Next, you’re going to perform a basic attack. This is nothing exotic; Jieming can do the same thing, as can I, but don’t confuse simple with weak.” She lectured.

“This really starting to hurt, so more timely instruction would be appreciated.” He said, voice strained.

“Right. Next, you’re going to push the built-up fire out. Don’t be discouraged if the resulting burst is weaker than you hoped, power will come with-“

Fire blasted from Wilhelm’s palm, shooting out at least twenty feat overboard like a juiced-up flamethrower, lighting up the overcast sky and producing a wave of heat that caused a few extra-sensitive sailors to step back. Others rushed to the railing, eager to get a better look. Steam rose from the sea where the fire touched, and Wilhelm had an unassailable grin on his face.

“-time.” Calypso finished, still looking overboard. “Well, you won’t need to work very much on quantity, it seems.” She said with a small frown.

Wilhelm moved his hand away from the railing, only to be shocked by how quickly it moved. His elbow shot a small spike of pain up his arm in the process, making him stop everything and hold his strangely warm arm.

Jieming noticed and chuckled, leaning on his podao. “Every aspect gives a different physical characteristic when running through your body. Mine makes me much stronger and heavier, while it looks like yours makes you faster. Running it through just one part of your body was just for demonstration purposes; most of the time you’ll be pushing your aspect through your entire body to avoid situations like that.”

Wilhelm rubbed his elbow with a scowl, glaring at Calypso and Jieming, whose eyes sparked with amusement.

“Thanks for warning me.”

Jieming brightened further, “Of course!” he said with a big smile, only making Wilhelm scowl more while nearby sailors laughed at his misfortune. Still, it was hard to hide his excitement and a wide grin spread back across his face while he looked at his hand, and back out to the ocean, where remnants of steam still rose.

“Don’t get cocky,” Calypso warned, noticing his expression, “Your base strength is good, but raw strength isn’t everything. Control is equally important when it comes to being an aspected. More important the stronger you are, even. The more powerful you are naturally, the more you need to keep yourself in check so as to not harm your allies or cause unintended issues. Especially with an aspect as dangerous as fire.”

Wilhelm nodded, the words taking him out of his reverie. He had figured as much, and while it was satisfying to flood the sky with fire, it certainly wasn’t safe. He was already weary of the impact his aspect could have on the world, and Calypso’s words were more evidence to proceed with caution. Besides, attacking with that much power didn’t seem practical. He already felt a little light-headed from the exertion of just that simple burst - trying to make that a common strike would be foolhardy and dangerous. They may be surrounded by water, but the vessel they sailed upon was as wooden as they come. Jieming might be able to counteract whatever accidental calamity he brought upon the ship but forcing another aspected to exert themselves equally as much just to fix the problem he could have avoided through greater control seemed like a bad idea.

“At least you seem to understand.” She said, rolling out a pair of mats on the deck and sitting on one and closing her eyes. She gestured for him to do the same.

“What now?” Wilhelm asked, eager to continue his training.

“Now, you will work on your control, which has the added benefit of making you more familiar with your aspect. Fire is destructive, so we’ll have to hold off on combat training until our next stop. Until then, you’ll be running through various control-based exercises, so you don’t set us all aflame.” She explained. Her eyes snapped open, the sapphire blue irises bearing into his very soul.

“You do not use your aspected abilities outside of training until the Captain signs off on it. Not in combat, not to warm your hands, nothing. Am I clear?”

She spoke with such intensity that Wilhelm temporarily didn’t respond, barely computing that she asked a question of him under the pressure she exuded.

He coughed once and averted his eyes. “Yes.”

She closed her eyes once more, the pressure of her gaze abruptly leaving causing him to take a few deeper breaths than what was necessary, and his training began in earnest.

* * *

The next weeks blurred together as Wilhelm threw himself into every facet of his life as a sailor. He was determined to not be a liability, and he spent practically every waking hour dedicating himself to improving, whether that meant improving his control over his aspect, or menial tasks across the ship. He measured his progress through the number of curses the sailors he was working with strung together in once sentence in his direction. Gradually, the number almost imperceptibly decreased, but Wilhelm listened with rapt attention every time, smiling as the tirade ended a wonderful few syllables short of the one the previous day.

“What in Ronin’s name are you smiling about?” An angry sailor named Judge demanded, “If you weren’t an aspected I would have thrown you overboard already. Look at this!” He held up the truly terrible knot he’d just finished making, which visibly loosened as Judge moved it.

“Do you expect this to hold up in a storm? Forget a storm, do you expect this to hold up to a gentle breeze?” He shook the rope, unfurling it completely and dropping it at his feet.

“Tie it again, and if it’s as bad as the last one you’re getting fed to the next pack of swarmers we stumble across.”

Judge continued grumbling as he walked away, leaving Wilhelm holding the limp rope in his hands, desperately trying to remember the way he’d been shown to tie it. He was worried if he asked again the rope would be tied around his neck next, aspected or not.

Jieming approached, whistling as he used his podao as a walking stick. He tapped Wilhelm on the back of the head with it with a little more force than necessary, causing him to rub it while scowling back at the smiling man.

“Training time,” he turned to Judge, “Sorry Judge, have to borrow your helper for a while. Captain’s orders and all that.”

Judge shook his head vehemently, “Keep him for as long as you need. And then, keep him even longer; and I thought you were bad the first time I had you working the rigging.”

Wilhelm perked up, “Jieming was bad too?”

“Don’t get excited,” Judge said with an eyeroll, “He had the capacity to learn from his mistakes. You do too, but every time you shore up one shortcoming, you create a dozen more. You’re like a hydra of mediocrity.”

“Alright, alright, I get it.” Wilhelm stood and walked with Jieming to the front of the ship, eventually sitting on a pair of reed mats set out for training. This was Jieming’s favorite spot to train; as waves hit the hull they would get sprayed with the salty mist of the sea, and few people ever bothered them unless they needed to specifically ask something.

He ran Wilhelm through the training they’d been working on for the past few days, one Jieming called The Aspected Halo. It was simple enough in principle; make a ring about the size of your head from whatever aspect you were bound to, and slowly move it until it was horizontal, and then hover it over your head without looking, and hold it there.

In practice however, Wilhelm was struggling. Holding control of the fire outside of his body felt futile – it was almost like it had a mind of its own, constantly railing against his constraints while he desperately tries to hold on. Forming the halo without it exploding was enough to have sweat streaming down his face already, and manipulating it further was agony. So far, he was able to make it quiver for a moment before it exploded, causing his perpetually singed appearance. Wilhelm couldn’t remember the last time the tips of his hairs weren’t burnt; he looked like he worked in a defective explosives disposal center where the method of removal was detonation. Paired with Jieming’s over enthusiastic drenching every time he barely caught fire; he preferred his training sessions with Calypso, which were extremely insightful without the drenching. They were still somewhat hostile, though.

He cleared his mind and closed his eyes, picturing his soul and the power inside. Slowly, he drew the strands of fire out, setting them on the paths that lead to each corner of his body. They hardly needed encouragement, seemingly being sucked through predetermined paths in a circuit, as if eager to escape the prison of his soul. He rapidly warmed as the hungry flames bounded through his body, and he had to forcibly grab onto the reins and slow it down as it reached his hands. He felt like he was grabbing an eel made of lava with his brain, but he forced himself to continue. The fire emerged from his palms as a trickle, two crescents meeting one another into a vertical halo in front of him, though they were not perfect. He slowly had to coax them together with small adjustments, until abruptly they snapped together in accordance to the image in his mind. What was left was a flaming halo, burning with more intensity than he’d intended.

Wilhelm grimaced, knowing that would only make the next part harder, and the subsequent explosion all the worse. He steeled his mind, envisioning two spectral hands pointing the halo down until it was perfectly horizontal. The flaming circle trembled for a moment and began to slowly drift down as if on a hinge.

Wilhelm smiled but didn’t let his mind wander. The halo drifted a little bit more, pushing passed the little progress he’d made before, and his heart beat faster and faster.

Then, his mind slipped. The halo grew distorted for a moment, one side becoming much thicker while the other became wispy thin, and he knew it was over. He quickly stabilized it, but the damage was done. A moment later the fire shot out in every direction, though he managed to push most of it towards the ocean before it lost stability.

Jieming opened an eye, casually twirling half a dozen oceanic halos around him as he sat. The water rippled and twisted, folding in on themselves to fit through another ring or rotating wildly without spilling a drop.

“Don’t get discouraged,” he said, unintentionally discouraging Wilhelm through his actions, “It will come eventually. Fine control is possibly the hardest thing to accomplish as an aspected, but also the most rewarding. The best and worst part about it is that in order to achieve another level of control, you must constantly practice, all while feeling like you’re making no progress. Think of it like a dam: your practice increases the water pressure bit by bit until one day the dam bursts, and what once took you intense control now comes as easy as breathing, and you will never lose that progress.” The halos of water congealed into one massive sphere and exploded out into hundreds of tiny water droplets, all reflecting in the sun.

“How did you get so skilled?” Wilhelm asked. Jieming didn’t look much older than him, but he was incredibly skilled, even more so than Calypso, who admitted the fact freely. He knew comparing himself to someone who likely had their aspect for years instead of the scant few weeks that Wilhelm did was folly, but Jieming’s strength still seemed incredible even in the context of normal aspected in the world.

Jieming twirled his podao while he thought, “I was in a bad situation for a long time before I joined this crew, and it was either get stronger to pursue my goals or die unhappy. At that point in my life, I wasn’t content to let bygones be bygones, and so I threw myself into training.”

“I wouldn’t recommend this method to getting stronger. It’s dangerous, and unfulfilling.” He added after a moment, looking out across the sea, his gaze distant.

“Does that have something to do with that?” Wilhelm pointed at the prominent tattoo that covered half of his face.

“It does,” Jieming nodded, “When Captain Absalom found me, I was…a mess. He heard of a vigilante aspected causing mayhem in the underworld of the city I was in at the time and offered to the captain of the guard to take care of it. The captain didn’t believe him at the time, thinking him just some backwoods aspected captain who would be another victim.”

Jieming shook his head with a small smile. “I thought I was invincible. At that time, I didn’t have this tattoo, but I did wear a mask identical to the pattern you see. My heart burned with vengeance, and our Captain found me washing the blood of another grunt off my podao in a back alleyway. He came alone and told me I had two options: join his crew and the navy under him or die.” He shrugged. “Long story short, I was cocky, attacked him, and next thing I knew my mask was shattered clean down the middle beside me while my back hit the cold stones of the alley. He repeated my options, and the ember in my soul went out. I accepted, and here I am today.”

Wilhelm listened with rapt attention, eager to hear any details about Jieming and the Captain’s past. Internally, he agreed with Jieming’s earlier statement. He wasn’t sure if he had the stomach for what he described, even if it could lead to rapid improvement in one’s aspect.

“Why did you wear the mask?” Wilhelm asked.

“To hide my identity, and to hide my shame. The reason I was terrorizing the underworld was to find a pirate, one who killed my previous captain and most of my crew. He wasn’t content with leaving us after the slaughter, and instead branded me. He had the aspect of heat, and horribly burned half my face.” He tapped the side covered by the tattoo.

“When I lost the mask and joined our Captain’s crew, I made a decision. I got the burn scars covered by this tattoo as a reminder of who I was before he saved me, and now leave my other side barren as a show of who I am now.” His hands absentmindedly brushed the scar as he spoke, and Wilhelm wondered if the fight between the Captain and Jieming was as cordial as described.

Wilhelm was frozen. This pirate used the aspect of heat? That was disturbingly similar to his aspect of fire, and if Jieming had such terrible things happen to him from that pirate…

He noticed Wilhelm’s expression and waved a hand with a melancholy grin.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve gotten over that a long time ago, and I have no issues with the path you’re walking. If anything, I’m glad I can be here to help shape who you will become later down the road. And as for the pirate, forget about him. He’s long gone last I heard, got caught up with one of the Noble Captains from the mainland. He was good, but he wasn’t that good.”

Jieming looked at the horizon and stood, rolling his mat up.

“That’s enough for today. Meditate on your aspect. I know it feels stupid, but it really helps with control and more. Think about the different ways fire can manifest itself, and the different concepts it embodies. I won’t lie – you have it harder than most, with fire being a simpler aspect than something like Justice, but it can’t hurt.”

“I’m hoping we can get you passed that first barrier of control before we drop anchor, and I’ve put a non-inconsiderable amount of money on that against Calypso, so don’t let me down.” He said with a wink, patting Wilhelm on the back before jogging away.

Wilhelm sat for a few minutes looking out at the slowly setting sun, thinking about Jieming’s story. It was a sobering reminder of how cruel the world he found himself in could be, and how privileged he was despite his situation. It obviously wasn’t great – being probably presumed dead back home and all, but he’d never gone through anything a hundredth as horrible as what Jieming described. All things considered; he’d lucked out with where he was left in this new world. Being immediately murdered, robbed, enslaved, the list goes on with the horrors he could have experienced. Instead, he was briefly imprisoned, and given the keys to his own autonomy.

Wilhelm looked down at his still-red hands. He had real power now to change things the way he saw fit, he only needed to work hard enough to get there. He could become powerful enough that no pirate could threaten him or the crew he found himself a part of, powerful enough that he could end any indignities and horrors he stumbled across instead of keeping his head down and walking past, a bystander, complicit. It was a sharp difference from his previous life where he cast a vote every couple years that meant practically nothing because of where he lived and went on with his day.

But where there was opportunity, there was danger. He was in the navy now – or would be soon – and that meant standing on the front lines where others couldn’t and wouldn’t. Pirates, actual real-life monsters, and more. They all fell under the purview of the crew he stood side by side with, and it was less of a maybe and more of a certainty that he would find himself in mortal danger frequently.

Thankfully, he thought, he still had time to train before that moment came.

As if conjured from his mind, a call came from the crow’s nest:

“Ship rising to the east! Embrasures down! Flag unknown!” the balding man yelled down, and Captain Absalom appeared at the top of the stairs with an air of calm despite the growing mayhem on the deck. All sailors looked to him with rapt attention, some with eyes filled with fear, others fervor, but most resigned anticipation. The moment his boots hit the deck proper, he spoke.

“Prepare yourselves for a fight, men. This is no merchant vessel.”