Dragon's life in college

Ch 31

I apologize for forgetting to update. College has been busy for me and the author. Please feel free to remind me if I forget again.

All right, Nigel,” Ryu said as they walked out to the Incineration grounds. “Your issue, as we established last semester, is that you can’t control your fire.”

Nigel nodded as he hurried after Ryu. Despite being the smaller of the two, Ryu walked extremely fast and it was sometimes a chore to keep up with him. As Nigel had discovered several times, usually on this exact same path, Ryu could easily leave him behind if he paused for anything.

“So, instead of trying to tackle the obvious problem and teach you how to control your fire, we are going to find out what causes you to not have control of it at all.”

“But, Ryu, I haven’t had control of my fire for as long as I can remember.”

“I’m not talking about when you’re standing in front of a class or your dad. I’m talking about when you’re doing it on your own.”

“But I don’t practice on my own,” Nigel protested.

“By practice I mean just breathing out fire on your own. I don’t expect you to paste targets throughout your house and make a game out of trying to hit a specific spot on a specific target twenty times in a row.”

“Did you do that?”

“Yes.” Ryu turned around. “For me that was normal.”

“And by specific spot…?”

“A minute dark mark on one of the targets that was roughly half an inch wide and my range to hit it was within a quarter inch of it.”

No wonder he is so good, Nigel thought as he scrambled after Ryu.

“So our plan is what?” he asked.

“Trying to figure out what exactly causes you to have control over your fire.”

“So…”

“So you are going to stand at one end of the field and try to hit a target set at a distance you choose. And while you do that, I am going to sit under a tree and work on my assignments.”

“That’s your plan?”

“Yes. And don’t start calculating all the different ways it could go wrong or all the things I’m missing. The only thing you’re going to calculate is how far away you need the target.”

And that is what happened. Ryu sat under a tree and worked on Evil Overlord assignments while Nigel stood and tried to hit a target set three feet in front of him. After a few tries and some calculations, perhaps more than necessary but it was normal for him to overcalculate when nervous, he had decided that three feet was a workable distance for him. Although so far, the best he had been able to do was singe the outside corner of the target.

After about forty-five minutes of practicing, Ryu finally rolled up his homework and called it quits. He took a brief look at the slightly singed corner and shrugged.

“Better than what we managed to do last semester. You’ll get there.”

Oceania and Ryu had discussed his plans for Incineration class. After a while, they had all decided that it would be better if Nigel waited until he had more control over his fire before taking the class again. Although Nigel had originally planned on taking the class every semester until he managed to pass, the others had eventually convinced him to wait until he was better prepared. He had agreed, but the possibility of never being able to pass the class was a very scary possibility to him.

In the meantime, Ryu and Oceania were determined to help him improve, although so far he had little faith in their ideas. Not that he didn’t trust his friends, he just didn’t trust their ideas. So far, all the ones that had been suggested, had all seemed to involve just having him shoot his fire at various targets and hoping that that something would happen that would help him learn to control his fire. So far, that seemed like an impossibility, although Nigel would admit that they were better than the ones Turtle had suggested.

“If you say so,” Nigel replied.

“No, not if I say so, if you say so,” Ryu replied. “Come on, we have to go met with the others. Oceania wants to talk through a couple of her ideas for your fire.”

Nigel hurried after him. Oceania’s ideas were all more, less claws on than Ryu. Mainly she was concerned with what specifically caused him to lose control of his fire (everything) and what caused him to be able to control it (nothing).

They were a couple of weeks into the new semester and the two of them were determined to find something that would work. Nigel thought they would be fortunate if they could fine something before the end of college, let alone the semester. Fortunately, helping him with his fire was not the only ideas they had going. The other main idea thread going on between the friends was how to keep Turtle from going crazy.

The usual Turtle trouble of him just being clumsy and uncoordinated always spawned its fair share of ideas, although nothing was ever done on them. As they had all learned very early, trying to keep Turtle from being clumsy was impossible. So far, the only thing they had done was to make sure he never did any projects alone and that he kept away from anything too dangerous. Unfortunately, they now had more things to worry about. The first being Turtle’s idea to enroll in a rock carving class.

As soon as Oceania had seen the class on Turtle’s schedule she had immediately rushed out to purchase as much padding and bandages as possible. Anyone watching would have thought she had lost her mind, but Nigel and Ryu, who had trailed after her, had understood the worry. Afterall, Turtle had almost managed to drown himself while blowing bubbles, above water. How in the world that happened no one was certain of, but the general takeaway was that Turtle was not to be trusted with potentially dangerous objects.

Turtle would have been in for the scolding of his life as soon as the three of them returned from their impromptu shopping trip, except for the arrival of even more concerning news.