With a mighty yawn I began to stir under my sheets while my groggy eyes peeled themselves open with excruciatingly slow speed. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes my sight began to sharpen up and I finally arrived back into the land of the living.

The last couple of months had been nothing but training, training and more training. It was, to say it mildly, hard. Lockhard had us train from morning till evening in nothing but strengthening our muscles, enduring hits and, to my surprise, in meditation.

Meditation was, honestly, a gift from god when it comes to our training regime. As far as I can remember I've had some experience with meditation in my past life but my memories had become so blurry that I really couldn't say for sure if that was true.

I had kept up with my routine to read my written down memories every evening after training but the pictures and scenes in my head, belonging to the words on the sheet of paper, slowly disappeared behind a veil of fog. I had been scared shitless the first morning I couldn't remember the faces of people I had loved in my past life and was, unsurprisingly, a little unfocused that day.

Lockhard of course had gotten wind of that rather quickly and told us to sit down. That was when he had introduced us to meditation, to focus our minds through clarity and stillness in our thoughts.

It had, at first, been a little difficult to get into meditation but in the end I had come to love the practise. Whenever I focused on nothing but my breathing my thoughts, fears and worries simply disappeared and left nothing but serenity behind.

This caused me to mediate as often and regularly as I could, whenever I had the time, and soon my diligence bore fruits.

I had learned to accept the fact that I would soon forget my past life's memories and did not need to fear something I was uncertain would happen to begin with. After all, I now had this life to compensate my past life with and whoever I had been in my past life had obviously influenced who I was today.

I understand that I was still me but with new memories. A fresh start. A reboot of an old classic. A new beginning you could say.

That night I had had this experience I finally arrived to 100% in the here and now, and with it, in this world.

The following day I felt lighter, as if a weight had been lifted of my shoulders, and I thanked every deity that I had been given this moment of peace and clarity. It was, undoubtedly, badly needed.

From then onwards I had only become better and more steadfast in who I am as a person, which in turn of course reflected in my training and my execution of the Tekkai.

Lockhard had been 100% correct when he had said that the mental component was the most important in said technique, which I had had problems with before I had been reminded/taught about meditation.

Besides my training in the Tekkai I also had discovered something phenomenal about my devilfruit, and when I say phenomenal I actually mean fucking awesome!

My devilfruit, besides enabling me to turn my body into a living weapon in the form of blades, also gave me another ability I was, until then, unaware of. Like I was walking through a forest but didn't see the trees in it.

Now, what do blades do? They cut. Turns out, devilfruits aren't as specific about their powers in some cases as I thought they were. Due to me being able to turn into a blade I also gained the obscure ability to cut through things, even without turning myself into a blade. It was fascinating and confusing, I tell you.

When I had discovered this little fact about my abilities I had been training in my room. At that time I sat on the floor and played around with the speed of my transformation. While I was doing so a small fly began to buzz through my room, which got onto my nerves rather quickly.

I had not transformed my hands into blades and was simply sitting on the floor while staring at the bloody fly at that moment when it dove down a began to buzz around my head. In annoyance I tried to swat said fly out of the air but instead of just smacking it away, like I thought I would, my annoyance must have triggered something inside of me, which instead cut the fly in half. And I didn't even directly touch the thing! It was like a few inches away from my hand and was still cut into pieces!

You can imagine I was pretty gobsmacked and still am at times when I try to train this aspect of my powers.

Anyway. That's all that I had accomplished regarding my abilities. Mediation, a small progress in the Tekkai and my devilfruit powers.

But that is obviously not all that had happened in the last few months. Once I had gained some psychological stability through rigorous meditation and self-reflection I had decided to engage it little more in socialising.

Don't get me wrong, I love my solitude more often than not, but it becomes boring only thinking about training and more training all the time. Thus, despite being surrounded by mostly kids, to try and forge some bonds with at least one of them.

My previous connection with Robb had dissolved quite a bit since we were trained separately and I honestly made no effort to keep it going or repair it a little. Instead I turned into the direction of Brueno. The guy was stoic but had a wicked sense of humour for someone his age, something I could appreciate in a person.

Thus, I began to interact more with the dude, whenever we weren't training together of course, and slowly, but surely, we warmed up to each other. We were not friends mind you, but that had never been my objective to begin with so I didn't mind that.

Besides Brueno there was the little girl that had ambushed us a few months ago in the mess hall, the one with the blond pigtails, and Brueno had connected with her in some way. Weirdly enough, as I found out later, the girl, despite looking like a toddler, was actually our age, meaning she was around 13 years of age.

If you ever need a definition for a late-bloomer, congratulations, you just found one.

Though, Brueno told me she was rather self-conscious about that fact and got stern and mean once you brought it up. A bitch in the making, if there ever was one…

Anyway, today was going to be a special day, one I had been looking forwards to after training nonstop in the Tekkai for months on end. I would begin to learn, drumrolls please, the Shigan!

Not a very impressive technique when compared with the Geppo, I know. But still, learning the Shigan meant I would get some verity in my training regime and I couldn't help myself but grin at the prospect of learning how the Shigan worked.

Now that I had discovered the more obscure ability of my devilfruit the Shigan looked even juicier. The Shigan would help me refine said ability, no doubt, and once I had sufficient control over it I could supplement the Shigan with my devilfruit's ability to cut shit, which may enable me get even through the Tekkai with the Shigan, once I had mastered it. And who knows, maybe I could even twist the ability to cut into the ability to pierce? It would only require me to tighten the point of impact into a small enough spearhead… in theory at least.

Honestly, I felt giddy only thinking about it! But first, I need some breakfast. I'm of no use before I've had something to eat in the morning. Even if it is oatmeal. Ugh, oatmeal…