Fi sat with her back against a tree trunk. On the Dream, she summoned the manual and read it through.

Seeing the text she turned her head towards the sky and closed her eyes.

This wasn't a manual in the traditional sense, but it held all of the scientific data Pruet had gathered.

In essence, the contents held the way to forcibly train silver exhaust, with numbers and jargon.

Fi started sieving through the data, trying to find any idea how to improve on silver exhaust.

The gist of her understanding after many hours of labor was that you needed to fold the silver exhaust energy in half.

Everything else seemed to be documented her except for the actual method to learn. Fi closed the source material and started a new document with the relevant information.

There were only a few lines of text on the document, she didn't have much to go on.

At least she had a direction to work towards and it would take her mind off everything else.

She slipped out of her bruised, but still whole, jumpsuit and glided into the water.

First things first she gathered as much water as her inner crystal could hold. She sensed that inside the inner crystal was one more drop than before, her capacity had increased.

Fi didn't dare to go far and stayed within ten meters of shore. She was quite sure she could run away from any trouble unless it was a creature with powers similar to the one she was eaten by.

The lake wasn't as clear as the lagoon, but you could still see quite the distance away. The fish she saw wore a light green color, it seemed to be the dominant species.

Their length varied from half a meter to two meter long giants. The fish had three dorsal fins, sharp as a razor. Fi saw two of these fish fight it out and the loser got cut in half.

She recorded them and sent in an application for a new creature. Fi named it 'Tridorsal Swordfish'.

With the scouting finished, she sat on the lake floor and activated silver exhaust.

Silver smoke covered her, forming the fluctuating crown and awakening her silver eyes.

Fi furrowed her brow, how was she to fold energy in half. She had five minutes of testing before needing to take a long break.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

The water shimmered around her and the Tridorsal Swordfish gave her a wide berth.

First Fi had to find out how to control the silver exhaust. She spent the whole five minutes trying every which way of manipulating the silver smoke but to no avail.

Her silver exhaust timed out, returning her appearance to normal. She pursed her lips and glided for the surface and with a wave of her healthy hand, one of the smaller Tridorsal Swordfish was caught in a strong current.

The fish thrashed about, in every direction, but couldn't escape. Fi and the fish surfaced at the same time. The fish slammed to the ground and scales scattered about. Fi sent a drill of water, finishing the fish off.

Fi sat down, drenched. She raised her eyebrows and ran one hand over her body. Like she thought she could gather the excess water, drying her instantly.

She was dry and had some food to prepare. This day could yet be saved.

Fi concentrated on gutting the fish as clean as possible with her water manipulation. It was good training for fine control and would make her more accurate.

Fi's hope for a good and restful evening was ruined by the fact that she had no equipment to start a fire. She had been grabbed from inside the pod-doc, she didn't carry survival equipment into the medbay.

She tried doing like Blue taught and get a fire going some alternate method. Many hours of fruitless work later, she had a cold fish, an unlit fire and a ravaging hunger.

Fi yet again leaned back on the tree, pulled her legs up and hugged them. Her stomach demanded food, yet raw fish wasn't a thing she wanted to try. The empty black eyes of the dead fish looked at her accusingly.

"Why did you kill me if you aren't going to eat me," Fi said using her hand as a puppet. She sighed, it didn't bring her any mirth.

"I don't have it so good either, little fish. At least I should be immune to rain, instead of getting drenched like the miserable heroine would in a movie." Fi said looking at the fish, her hand returning to hug her legs.

Like on cue the skies opened up. Fi laughed and all the water droplets avoided her.

"See little fish I am not as unfortunate as the heroines, drenched in the rain, waiting for prince charming to save them," Fi said. Her manic laughter competed with the raindrops falling on leaves.

In the middle of laughing, she felt something hit her nose. She looked around but didn't see what it was. Thinking it just a freak occurrence she laughed again.

Another prick on her skin and she had been hit again. This time she saw what it was and her laughter stopped.

Fi stood up and screamed at the skies.

"Hail! What kind of tropical storm are you that showers me in hail? Do you want me to be a miserable heroine that bad?"

She shook her hand angrily. The storm of hail became more fierce as she spoke and another one hit her. Fi let her hand fall to her side dejectedly.

"Fine. I'll be your miserable heroine. I'll sit right here and wait for my prince or princess charming." She said and sat with her back against the tree.

Fi sat there hugging her legs. Her empty eyes peering over her knees at the unforgiving world.

She sat there without moving, pelted by the hail.