One Piece: Overlord Buggy

We spent several weeks, a little more than a month, just travelling around the South Blue. It felt random, but was not. I didn't exactly understand why, but Rosalina was the only one who knew where her home island was. Me and Taki didn't have any idea, so it really just felt like wandering the ocean, even if it was controlled wandering.

During those several weeks, I was able to reclaim my room, but felt a little empty, so I mostly slept in Taki's room. We had started to share the room again, since I kind of planned out what I wanted to do in the future.

Since we were going to have Vipeba back on the ship after we were done with Rosalina's visit to her home island, I then decided to move my stuff into the bigger room that Taki, Alice and Mariga once shared. It became split in two, and I took my time moving things from my old room to my half of the room.

The floor, we had decided, needed to be comfortable as well, so we had a couple rugs and mats stacked on top of each other, covering most of the room, and the floor became almost like a firm mattress, which we were fine with, as I had engrained comfort into Taki's mind as well as my own.

The layout of the room was simple. My side had the door to the room itself, I had shelves with suitcases, the same ones from my previous room, along with the blanket chair of mine with the desk, and a crude safe. How did I lock it? The only way I could was using none other than: Surya. It acted as a way to keep the door on the safe closed, since no one else could wield Surya without issue. I had completely overlooked and forgotten about getting a real safe on Batarilla, so I had a crude version of a safe as a consolation.

Another event was Taki asking me something. One day, she came up to me while I was concentrating on my own Haki, and asked "Bugs, can I learn whatcha doing?"

I was in a partial state of Zen mode, and when I opened a single eye to look at her, I had said "Taking into consideration of how much training you've been doing, and the fact that you're trying your hardest to become stronger, I can at least teach you the basics of what I'm doing. Come, sit, I will give you a quick lesson."

I watched as Taki came and sat in front of me, copying how I was sitting, which was almost as if I was meditating, and failing at it a couple times. She only failed because it was the first actual time I remembered seeing her attempt it, but thanks to my training, I had mastered the meditation pose to concentrate on whatever I wanted.

I closed the single open eye and spoke "You don't have to try to be perfect. It will help, but perfection takes time. Just trying once is good for now."

I felt Taki relax using a new type of observation I was testing: a mix of Empathy and normal observation. I could tell that Taki was relaxing only because I could sense the feelings of others, as well as what they were doing. It was a little hard, but Haki was very unlimited in what it could do. I was testing within the limits of observation, and had plans to continue to work with Haki more than just growing how strong it was.

Still sitting in front of me, Taki asked "Bugs, what were you going to teach me about?"

I quickly checked using Observation the position of Rosalina, who was at the helm of the ship.

"Taki, I would like you to imagine your soul. A.. combination of.. your heart.. your mind.. and your body. The soul is what you are entirely. It's what controls your body."

I just sat their meditating while I could feel the confusion from Taki. It felt like she was trying to force something to appear.

I still had my eyes closed at this point, and articulated: "Taki, you can't exactly force it to appear. While you can try, it won't do anything. It's not a physical thing you can just touch, it's more like a ghostly thing that doesn't physically exist, but very much does exist."

Taki tilted her head and question marks appeared over her head.

"Hmm. I don't actually know how to put it. Um.. it's you.. it's a.. um.. spirit. Yes, spirit! That's the word! It is your spirit, which is what encompasses all of what you are. I'll say the spirit is the combination of mind, soul, and..... Heart. It's your feelings as well as your thoughts. It's your entire being, just in a non-physical version."

I could tell I was just confusing Taki even more, giving different versions of what I had said, and changing what I had said in the first place.

"*Sigh* Taki, forget everything I've said before, and just listen to this: The spirit, which I am training right now, is you, in your entirety. No exceptions. Now, I am going to task you with trying to find your own spirit, imagine it, hold it if you need, just try to find it using any method you want. I'll check on your progress every little while, so don't mind making a mistake during it."

Taki came out of her confusion, and changed to a state of eagerness, saying "Yessir!"

"Don't copy Vipeba!"

During the rest of the day, I had some thoughts.

'If Taki can learn Haki, she may be too strong for even some of the people in the New World. That would be awesome, but I want an adventure. I'm already struggling a little to get to this point, in the constraint of time, since my workout and training takes what feels like forever. Taki may take longer than even Luffy to learn Haki to my current level, but I can't rush her to learn. Man. I'm bad at teaching, just barely being able to teach Taki anything was harder to do than even fighting.'

I shifted a little.

'Although, now that I think about it, Taki is going to become strong, no doubt about it, she just needs to take into consideration her own devil fruit ability. I took mine into account, when training, and have a little experience with how to balance strengthening both of them at the same time, even if one was started later than the other. But Taki should balance them out from the beginning rather than the middle or the end, otherwise.....'

I frowned while still being in a Zen state of calm.

"Otherwise what? Taki just needs to start close to the beginning of her power's growth. It's not hard to figure out that she may become incredibly powerful with enough training. She IS the only one I trusted with coming along, since she could flatten anyone with a moon and be considered strong. Only when she awakened all of her Haki abilities, can she truly be strong. I don't know why that's important anymore, but that's how my minds going.'

I tilted my head a little.

'What was the thing I was talking about? Oh yeah, I'm not a great teacher, nor am I stopping my own growth just for her training.'

For a week, Taki tried to find her own soul or spirit forcefully. It did almost nothing, since it was still struggling with just finding out what her spirit was in the first place.

The struggling was aparent to both me and Rosalina. Rosalina didn't know what Taki was doing, but assumed she was training, and didn't ask really. Her personality changes were weird.

Taki wandered the ship, asking what her spirit was to absolutely no one. I did slightly suspect someone could have been there and listening, but with a thorough look using all types of observation Haki, even my experimental Haki, I could find nothing. I did become a little paranoid because of that, but the paranoia surrounding Rosalina was more evident than the paranoia over someone being there when no one was.

It could have been a ghost.

Or a deity.

But I didn't do anything else since I couldn't sense anything at all.

After that week, I decided to give a hint, sharing what I had done before.

"Taki, I know I told you to figure it out yourself, but I'm going to tell you how I felt my spirit. Although it happened instantly for me, I want you to imagine your spirit as water. Imagine the flow of your own spirit through your own body, touching every nook and cranny of your body. Your fingertips, your knees, your sides, and even your hair. Your spirit is you, I hope the trick I have to using it helps you out." And I walked away, observing Taki from a distance.