Jake stood in the back of the shop with Fu, watching as he poured one ingredient after another into the pot.

"Fu, how long is this going to take?" Jake asked.

"Awhile, goblin hair and pixie dust don't mix well together, so it is going to take some time for the bond to form, in the mean time, you should really get on that dragon training."

Jake was annoyed, "Fu, we are not starting that again, I'm finding Rose."

"Look kid," Fu said, "We don't know what kind of danger Rose is in, it might not be a bad idea if you got a little training in before you try and tackle it."

"Fine," Jake replied, "If that's what it will take to get you and Gramps off my back."

Jake walked out into the front of the shop. "Alright G. what are we working on today."

Gramps hadn't finished his paper yet. "Today we will work on awareness of surroundings. As the American Dragon, you will face situations where not everything is as it seems. You will need to use your dragon senses to determine what is around you, when your eyes cannot be trusted."

"Alright G. I'm on it." Jake assured him.


They went to their usual spot in Central Park. It was relatively isolated, so they never had to worry about being seen. It was also just the right time of Saturday morning where a lot of people were either at work, going to work, or still asleep, yet even with that the regular areas of Central Park were still crowded. The place and time gave them the best balance of amount of room to practice in, time they could spend practicing, and the lowest chances of someone accidentally stumbling in on them.

Jake stood in dragon form with a blindfold over his eyes.

"Remember young dragon," Gramps said to him, "You will not always be able to rely on your eyes to detect opponents around you, use dragon ears to hear changes in your surroundings, smell out your opponents with dragon nose, feel the movement around you."

"Right, feeling." Jake said, as he started concentrating on his surroundings.

Gramps snuck around behind Jake and snapped a twig. Jake instantly turned and faced him. He moved to another side, time for something that wasn't as easy to hear. He dropped a pine cone down to the soft grass. To a human ear, it would've been almost undetectable, but to a dragon ear, it may as well have been a car horn. Jake turned quickly and hit the cone with a breath of fire just as it hit the ground.

"Good, now you must feel the movement in the air, and take out all the targets before they pass you." Gramps said.

He then opened a large box of Frisbees, and tossed them at Jake, who took them all down with an assorted selection of dragon claws, fire, and tail whips.

"Now, we will test your nose." Gramps told him, reaching for 6 pizza boxes, "In 5 of these boxes are pizzas, and in the 6th box, is an apple, you must use your nose to track the apple over the smell of the pizzas as they move around you."

Jake sniffed the air, he could just barely pick out the smell of an apple over all the pizzas. As the pizzas moved around, he focused on the direction he was smelling the apple from. After moving around for 5 minutes the boxes stopped.

"Now young one, with the blindfold on, you must find the box with the apple." Gramps said.

"Right G. No prob." Jake assured him, as he walked to a nearby box and opened it.

He removed his blindfold to see if he chose correctly, and was disappointed to see a pizza with apple slices as toppings.

"You need more focus." Gramps told him sternly. "You need to be able to identify the exact scent of what you are searching for, and not be distracted by similar scents in your environment. Work on it in your free time."

"But Gramps," Jake said, "Where did you even get pizzas with apples on them?"

"44th st." Gramps answered.