Hi guys! First of all, I'm sorry that this is a week late! I just haven't had the time or inclination to write in the past week. However, all being well I should be back on track to resume my the weekly schedule that I seem to have fallen into :)

Massive thanks as ever to PrincessShotgun and Varjotin for your reviews on the previous chapter :)

.

Hana groaned as a persistent thudding at her door pulled her from her turbulent sleep. She had done well to avoid Cooler on their first day aboard the small ship, which comprised of a large training room, two bedrooms, a kitchen area and some sparse living space towards the front of the ship where the control room was located. Not to mention, of course, the small holding cell stowed in the lower levels of the ship, where the various engines and systems also were.

Hearing another barrage of banging on her door, Hana rolled over, grabbing the spare pillow and dragged it over her head, growling out a not so quiet "fuck off" as she did so.

"What did you just say!?" Cooler yelled through the door. Great. He'd heard her.

"Oh shit.." Hana mumbled under her breath, pulling the covers up over her head just before the door swooshed opened and Cooler stormed in. She didn't move, choosing instead to remain hidden where she was under the blankets, but she didn't need to look at him to know that she'd pissed him off. She could feel the rage and annoyance radiating from him.

As much as she knew this was kind of her fault, as they had previously agreed to be up early for her first training session, but Hana had had an awful nights sleep. Whereas back on the main ship she'd managed to get by sleeping on the small sofa, however, she didn't have one in her room on this smaller vessel and had needed to make do with the far too squishy bed. She'd tossed and turned all night, and just ended up pissing herself off until she'd finally managed to doze off just a few hours ago.

Hana hissed as Cooler turned on the light and ripped the pillow from on top of her head, dumping it on the floor. "Your training starts in 20 minutes. Don't make me come and get you again!" he roared as he stormed back towards the door. He paused for the briefest of moments, as if he wanted to add something, before changing his mind and storming out leaving the door to swish shut behind him and plunge the small room back into silence.

Signing begrudgingly, Hana dragged herself out from under the warmth of the covers and got dressed, cursing Cooler as she did so. They had an entire week before they were set to arrive, and she'd already proved herself stronger than the being they had been sent to collect, so what was this urgency to train?

Making her way out of her room she slunk quietly past the door to the training room towards the small kitchen. He'd said 20 minutes, that meant she had time to grab a quick coffee before she had to be there. Downing half of the hot liquid almost immediately Hana scurried back up the hallway, mug in hand towards the training room, entering quietly and taking another sip of her much needed caffeine.

Cooler eyed her drink with an irritated expression but didn't say anything, although she was pretty sure he wanted to. He seemed to be trying to reign himself in, but it was very clear she was pushing her luck already this morning. Setting the coffee down on the floor next to the door Hana made her way over to him. She wasn't entirely sure what to expect, having never had any kind of formal training in her life. A part of her felt almost excited at what she might learn.

Her red eyes shifting towards his hands, Hana noticed that Cooler was holding the file given to him by Dr. Jaeger, and he was reading what appeared to be a large amount of text. Curiosity eating away at her she moved closer to take a look, slightly surprised when Cooler didn't move it away from her or out of her view.

"This file is everything we have on file about the Extrasensory race" Cooler explained as he scrolled through the wall of text. "I read through it yesterday while you were sulking in your room," he ignored the dejected look Hana gave him and continued, "seeing as you are rather... unusual for what is considered standard your race, I wanted to see how well your abilities matched to what is in here."

Finding the section he wanted Cooler stopped scrolling turning the tablet slightly so that Hana could see it. She scanned the holographic list, recognising only a couple of the abilities from her own arsenal.

"My logic is we work out what we know you can do, and then start going through the things we aren't sure about, and see if its something you are capable of learning. Then we can focus on plugging any gaps in your combat abilities" Cooler explained as he glanced over at her. It made sense. Glancing to the top of the list Hana smiled.

"I can do that one," she said, trying to hide her excitement as she pointed to the first item 'Ki detection'. Cooler nodded, scrolling the hologram further down the list. That one had been obvious to both of them.

"Great. What about this one?" he pointed to the next item, 'empath' which held a small description below. Hana paused, her previous excitement suddenly overshadowed by a feeling of caution. Was she sharing too much? Cooler knew she could detect Ki, it was fairly standard, and not entirely unique to her race, but that was pretty much all he really knew at this point. Was it really safe for him to know more? After all, the more he knew of her, the more he could exploit her weaknesses.

Then, if she didn't cooperate at any point, they had Zee, in a location she didn't know. Her compliance was crucial to making sure he stayed safe. That was of course assuming that King Cold had even kept his word, she hadn't spoken to Zee since they had been separated.

Biting her bottom lip and glancing briefly at Cooler she became aware that he hadn't interrupted her thoughts. Hadn't snapped at her or pushed for an answer. Instead he seemed to be patiently waiting, as if he already knew that she was apprehensive.

Memories of their interactions so far flitted through Hana's mind. If he'd genuinely meant her harm he'd have certainly done so already, he'd had more than ample opportunity. In fact he wouldn't have even had to do it himself. He could have let the rock creature and the red skinned man 'take her to the medical wing', and he hadn't, choosing to take her himself instead. There was no doubt that of all the things those two would have done to her, and it probably wouldn't have involved getting her injuries treated.

"Yes. Yes to that one too," Hana confirmed keeping her head down, avoiding eye contact until Cooler lifted his gaze to survey her.

"So you can read emotions? My emotions too?"

"Yeah. Most of the time. Sometimes its hard if I'm tired or there's a lot going on"

"So that means you know when your being a pain, but you do it anyway" glancing up at him Hana caught the corners of his mouth lift in the closest semblance of a smile she had ever seen from him. Did... did Cooler just make a joke?

Snapping her eyes back to the list Hana quickly pointed to the next item 'phantom' with a shrug. "I don't even know what that is," she confessed, watching Cooler scroll further to bring the small description into view.

"From what I can gather," he started, "the phantom ability is a quick burst of speed. Those that can do it move so fast that they leave an image of themselves behind for just a few seconds, hence the name phantom."

"So... we're doing that one first?" Hana questioned, excited at the possibility of learning such an interesting and useful technique. Cooler shook his head slowly.

"We'll bypass that one for now, from what I've read very few of your kind can actually execute it successfully, and even then they don't have the Ki reserves to do it more than once, and even then they're left drained. It doesn't sound like it's particularly practical"

He scrolled on a little before stopping to point at another technique that Hana didn't recognise 'fire hands'.

"This should be a good start. By holding the Ki within the hands, I would imagine it's intention is to favour those that would use their Ki too quickly if they just blasted it all over the place.."

Hana glanced at him, but didn't say anything. He'd clearly been doing his research, but she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about it. On the one hand it was obviously good for her. She'd never have known there was even a chance she was capable of any of these techniques. On the other, the thought that Cooler had in-depth knowledge of all her strengths and weaknesses was still slightly unnerving. Even if she was starting to surmise that he didn't intend to harm her in any way.

He seemed to pick up on her concern as he closed the devise, placing it off to the side before looking her in the eye as he spoke "if I wanted to use this information to harm you, you'd be none the wiser that it even exists, and you certainly wouldn't be reading it. Now, lets get started."

.-.

Page break

.-.

Hana fell to her knees as she desperately gasped for breath, sweat dripping from her hairline, down her face and onto the cold floor below her. She clenched her eyes shut as Cooler came into view, moving slowly towards her. They had been training for hours, and she was starting to get frustrated.

She'd managed to gather Ki into her hands and expand it so that it flickered around her fist like a flame, but she was struggling to sustain it. As soon as they tried to spar and she had Cooler to focus on, her concentration and the attack had dissipated and she hadn't managed to land a single hit on him with it.

In fact, she hadn't managed to land any kind of hit on him at all, even without the fire hands, and that was even more infuriating. What had happened? Sure, she'd come off badly last time they had fought, but that was mainly down to her already existing injuries. When they'd had their first encounter, and even when he'd come to retrieve her she'd managed to at least land blows on him.

Still on her knees, Hana gathered her Ki once again into her fists, the red glow flickering briefly before it quickly died. Clenching her jaw she tried again, but this time barely got a soft glow before it disappeared. Screaming in frustration Hana slammed both of her fists into the floor, letting her tired body slump forward until her forehead rested against the cool metal.

"I think it's time for a break." she heard Cooler state plainly from somewhere above her and couldn't help but feel even more irritated.

"Why the fuck can't I do it!?" Hana screamed as she smashed a fist into the floor again.

"Don't beat yourself up, you're doing fine," Cooler assured as he held out a hand to help her up, which Hana ignored as she pushed herself to her feet instead. Seemingly not caring about her rudeness, Cooler turned and walked towards the door, Hana trailing slowly behind him.

Hana clenched and unclenched her fists before her, a deep frown etched into her face before she looked up and realised they had already reached the kitchen area. Collapsing into a chair at the small table it suddenly hit her just how tired she felt. Pushing her hair back with her hand, Hana paused when Cooler dropped something onto the table in front of her.

Without saying a word Hana picked up the nutrition bar in front of her and ripped it open with her teeth, spitting the wrapper back onto the table in front of her and taking a bite of the bland food. Considering all the work that must have gone into creating a bar that could meet so many nutritional needs, you'd have thought it wouldn't have taken too much effort to make it not taste of stale cardboard.

She was still fuming with herself. If she couldn't get this technique down, then there was no point in even looking at any of the others. Had King Cold been incorrect when he saw potential in her? Maybe she had only been impressive as a big fish in a little pond, and now that she was out in the ocean, she was just another minnow. Glancing up Hana realised that Cooler was observing her, a thoughtful look spread over his face, and found herself torn between being somewhat uncomfortable and just plain annoyed.

"What?" she snapped, tearing another mouthful out of her food. Cooler raised an eyebrow and waited a few thoughtful moments before answering, clearly thinking over his words before he said them.

"You're being too hard on yourself. Stop being grumpy about not getting it the first try, this is exactly what this training is for."

Hana glared up at him but didn't say anything. As much as she hated to admit it he was probably right. She was just tired and frustrated. She'd managed to get it right the first few times, but the second she tried to put it to any kind of practical use, she just couldn't do it. If she couldn't work out how to use the technique in combat it was totally useless to her.

On the positive side, as bland and tasteless as it was the food was at least helping somewhat. She could feel her energy levels starting to pick back up and as she finished off the last of the bar Cooler rose back to his feet, looking down at her, his expression impassive.

"Lets get back to it"

.-.

Page break – Later that evening

.-.

Hana sighed as she rolled over again, trying desperately to ignore how strange the bed felt to lay in. She had already tried moving her bedding to the floor, only to find it was too far the other way. Plus the cool metal flooring had radiated cold right into her bones.

With a huff she sat up. She needed to find a solution, soon. She'd been particularly snappy with Cooler through the day and whilst he'd seemingly been in a strangely patient and forgiving mood, that could only really last so long before he bit back at her. Throwing the covers off of herself, she got up and wandered out into the empty hallway.

It must be about 2 in the morning by now, so at least Cooler should be fast asleep and out of the way. Creeping along the corridor towards the front of the ship Hana made her way into the control room. There was a sofa area in there. A horrible, slate grey, hard sofa... but it would no doubt be just about perfect. Just as she started to sit down Hana quickly rose back up again.

She couldn't allow Cooler to know that she was having such a stupid problem with sleeping, so she'd have to make it look like she had spent the night in her room. Creeping back along the corridor and into her room Hana ruffled her bed sheets and got dressed. She would just have to sleep in her clothes, if Cooler happened to get up before her she could pretend she'd got up and fallen back asleep in the living area or something. The ship was generally warm enough that she hopefully wouldn't be too cold through the night.

Laying back on the small, bench like sofa that splayed across one wall of the living space Hana allowed herself a small smile as she at last found herself drifting off to sleep.

.-.

Page break

.-.

Cooler frowned as he heard Hana's door open across the hall for the third time that night. What was she doing? It must be the early hours by now, what was she still doing up and about. He listened carefully as he heard gentle footsteps disappear towards the front of the ship. Waiting for a few moments, it soon became apparent that she wasn't coming back to her room. How strange.

It didn't particularly matter anyway, as long as she was rested enough for training the next day he couldn't say he really cared what she did in her free time. Moving back to his original trail of thought, he mulled over the various events of the day.

He'd tried as hard as he could to humour her, to be patient with her, but she was still being extremely abrasive with him. It was very clear she was still unsure about him, and he couldn't help but think that hesitation had contributed massively to her lack of progress that day.

He hadn't noticed in the past, but from learning more about her, he'd noticed today that she was constantly focused on him. It wasn't clear whether she was even aware of it herself or not. However, with her concentration pulled away from what she was learning, and on him instead, it was no wonder she hadn't managed to keep it up when they had switched to sparing. Knowing that the problem was didn't necessarily make it any easier a problem to overcome.

This was going to take some work.

.