Private Training Arc!

Titus was in his office, not working or making lesson plans. He was just kind of relaxing, smoking his pipe as he often did when he had the chance. Just relish the relative quiet in the house before the animals came home to make noise in his general direction. Given another hour or so, and he'd probably nod off.

This was not what happened.

His quiet was interrupted by the familiar sound of Ava calling out to him as soon as she came in the door. Probably more stuff about the ocean incident. And to his predictions he was right. She wanted training. More intense training. He looked at her inhaling deeply through his pipe, then exhaling.

"That was my general plan, yes. Give you as many available tools as I can so when things like this happen, you're more prepared. It ain't gonna be easy though."

"What you're about to learn is something you're going to keep learning over the rest of your life. It doesn't just stop when I teach you everything I've got," he answered and stood up and stretched. "Sheesh, you had to be loud and impatient though. I was gonna take a nap and everything..."

Titus was being cheeky for the sake of it. Most people were aware of his nature in general. He made his way down the hall and into the kitchen.

"Pretty sure you're fairly aware of your shortcomings. There's no need to go over them since you've been beating yourself over this. No one's mad at you, you did what you knew. Never in a million years did I think you'd wind up fighting underwater. In a lot of ways though, the same rules apply there as they do on land."

He rubbed his chin and opened up a the refrigerator and began pulling out food. Then he opened a rather large box he'd left on the counter, revealing a large portable oven.

"You're gonna make yourself dinner using this. The recipe is on the paper I taped to the top of your oven. It should be simple enough, but you only got one shot at this, just like a real fight with real stakes. This thing is pretty simple, just put your hands on the metal handles on the side and heat it up. But it's tricky, and you'll have to get your timing right too."

It was a simple enough exercise, though Ava would find that the device would increase her heat output in proportion to how much she was actually putting in. Between that, maintaining the temperature, and the timing Ava was likely in for a frustrating night.

"I want you to master using this thing, got it?"