A Training Arc?

Rayleigh simply watched me for a couple seconds before saying "It seems you just awoke Observation Haki. Most people would take a couple months at the least, and you awaken it the first time you use it. Are you sure you didn't have any training before this?"

I was surprised too. 'I already awakened it? I really only just started trying to use it, and now I actually have it? What is this?' "Um... Yeah, I don't remember ever having previously learned how to use Observation Haki, so no." And continued to blankly look at him.

"Do you know what awakened it perhaps? If you didn't have any training, and knew all about Haki, then do you know what might've caused it to spontaneously awaken?"

I thought for a second. 'Could it be my visualization method? It worked for my devil fruit power, so could it actually be the reason why I could awaken it that fast?'

"I think it's how I went about trying to actually make it work. I remembered all of my surroundings, both where and what things were, in my mind, then using my hearing to try and find where you were. Then I kinda just focused on trying to find where you were while visualizing you walking around me, listening for your footsteps, which were very light by the way, and ended up actually seeing where you were for a second, grabbing the leg I'm still holding." And I let go of his leg kinda quickly, still looking at him.

'This growth is crazy, no wonder captain asked me to train him.'

"So that's how you did it, it now makes much more sense how it happened. That doesn't mean you can slack on learning it fully though. So, starting tomorrow, I will be training you in fully comprehending Observation." And the evil smirk engraved in my mind appeared on his face.

'Oh Director, no! Please no! Not that smirk! I'd like to keep my life!'

And I relaxed. For the rest of that day. THAT DAY. For about two months, I was still doing the daily double one punch workout, but near the end, being able to do all of that in about half my time awake was great, until Rayleigh happened. Every single day, I was working on my observation, honing it to the point that I would call "Immediate-Post-Timeskip Luffy". What does that mean? It means I was able to actually use Observation Haki like everyone else, dodging like it was almost nothing.

But I didn't say what happened to make it "not relaxed", or how "Rayleigh happened". What wasn't relaxing, while I did learn how to use Observation properly, I didn't actually have any fighting knowledge. So Raleigh learned really quickly that I needed to be taught at least basic combat abilities, and he trained me, saying "You'll keep on training with me until you can land a hit on me. By then, you will have become ready for Armament."

And by "trained", I mean absolutely beat me up every single time, and I did use Observation during my time fighting him, while I was running around trying to hit him. But guess what? He was to fast for me to even react to him. After a couple days of doing that whole thing, I thought to myself: 'I really should learn how to see the future. That way I can beat him up instead.'

Also turns out that while my training did make me faster, stronger, and increase my stamina, it didn't make me fast enough to even come close to fighting Rayleigh. So when I ended up being able to finish my workout in only around 5 hours, I decided to double my workout again, this time to 400. 400 gruelling pushups, 400 gruelling situps, 400 gruelling squats, and about 40 deadly kilometers, if I knew how long I was actually running. But it was better than being beaten up. So the process of workout, then Haki training and combat training continued until a third month hit.

And then, the fateful day arrived, close to the beginning of the fifth month of being in this world happened.

The day started out as normal, with me doing my "quad punch" workout starting a little early in the morning, and ending a little after lunch. Then, the training with Rayleigh started. Over the past few months, people on the crew bet on who was gonna win, either me or Rayleigh, and it happened almost every single day. Some did get bored of betting over and over again, knowing the outcome, being that Rayleigh would beat me up. The other option to bet on was me hitting Rayleigh once, since the news had been spread around the crew about the whole fight.

To start the training, Rayleigh simply asked me while I was standing across from him "Are you ready?"

I was beaten and bruised before, and today I was unwilling to give up until I landed a hit on him. With a bit of an angry face, I answered "Today is the day I land a hit on you."

He had that evil smirk on his face: "Aren't you a bit unprepared to say that? You've only ever had some combat training from me, I hope you aren't being overconfident in saying that."

And soon after he said those words, we made direct eye contact, and the fight started.

I ran towards him, ready to punch him in the side, but he deflected it with one hand, causing me to spin around a little. While spinning, I tried to hit him with my legs, lifting them to kick him, but that effort was in vain as well, and he moved out of the way, and I barely missed him. Noticing I was still spinning in the air a little, Rayleigh decided to kick me away, and the only way I could notice that was with observation, still not being able to fully react to what he could do at any given moment. I ended up feeling a pain in my chest, seeing his foot planted on my stomach while I was still in the air, and I was flung to one of the walls on the ship, partially demolishing it with just force alone.

'That really hurt, even with muscles building up on my body as a natural armor, I still couldn't defend against it. I'll have to try that, maybe it will work in my journey to become strong.'

Standing up out of the rubble of the ship, I touched my lip and noticed I had a little bit of blood dripping out of my mouth. 'What? When did this happen? Has it happened before? Oh. If I wasn't so focused on training I probably could have noticed if he did before. Guess I still need some mental work.'

"Hey Rayleigh, I've got somethings I've been working on in secret, you wanna see them?" I said with my head hung down and a hand on my hip.

I heard him say "If you want to hit me once, you should probably use whatever you can. Otherwise you'll end up like this forever." I swear I could hear his face contort into that damn evil smirk. 'That smirk is starting to piss me off. It used to scare me, but now it's just a motive to wipe it off his face. I really need to go all out on this.'

One of the things I've had in mind since I started to fight against Rayleigh was to use one of the six powers, Soru, but thanks to the overabundance of training I've been doing, I couldn't do much. All I could do was kick off the ground three times, but it's enough for now, since as soon as I did it, everyone on the crew was shocked that I actually moved quicker than before.

Rayleigh was shocked, but it was only slightly noticable, being that he squinted his eyes slightly before looking at me normally again.

As soon as I got near him, I closed my eyes, and focused my observation Haki to the maximum I could, trying to see what he was gonna do the moment he started to move. I started to punch towards his face, only to notice Rayleigh's hand start to move and cock back for a punch.

'So, where you gonna hit me, Rayleigh? You better hope to hit, I've got a path to victory here, and you may not like it. But I won't care, I will land a hit on you before the end of the day if it takes that long.'

Using my observation, I simply did what I did best, visualize what could happen. I viewed his arms trajectory towards me, and it could literally hit me anywhere, but the only thing I could do was visualize. It felt like time slowed down, and I thought about every single place he could hit me, and every possible placement of both his arm and fist. It looked like I was tripping in my thoughts, and all I could see was Rayleigh's fist.

I readied myself for every possible movement while still going with the motion of trying to punch Rayleigh, and readied all my body to move out of the way of the oncoming fist of doom.