A figure stands under the moonlight. The silhouettes of two swords, stuck in the ground, a distance away, and a second figure on the ground, a boy, join the first on a grassy hill.
"Damn! Shit!" the boy on the ground curses, a wail in his tone. "I can't accept this!"
The figure standing appears to be a young woman, with a guarded look on her face. "I'm the one who can't accept this," she says. "I should be crying."
The boy looks up at her with interest, but also disbelief. She had just bested him for the 2,001st time- why on Earth would she be crying?
"Did you know that the female body gets weaker than the male body when it grows up?" she begins. "And I, with this female body, will probably be overtaken by you soon. You always said you'd be the greatest swordsman in the world, and that's- that's not possible with this female body. I already knew that, and yet... yet I cannot accept this."
The boy sits up, and she looks off across the moonlit plains.
"Zoro, I also want to be the world's greatest swordsman, but this chest of mine is growing out. Do you... do you understand how much I despise this body?"
Zoro is silent.
"I feel like... I'm not a woman. I feel like this body is a stranger. This isn't me. Zoro, I feel so lost. I tried asking my father about this, about what I feel, and he told me I was mistaken."
"Mistaken?"
"He said I couldn't feel this way. Zoro, I don't want this. I'm running away tonight."
"Running away?!"
"Yes, I'm running away. I've packed some provisions. I'll run somewhere, hop onto a ship, do something. I'll leave this island. I'll leave and find a place that will accept me as what I am: a boy. And when I find that place, I'll train and train and train until I am strong, and then I will visit my father and tell him that I'm not a woman again, and he'll have to believe me."
"I don't want you to run away!" Zoro cries out.
"It's for the best," she- no, he- continues. He looks down at the blade clutched in his hand. "Zoro, take this." He extends the Wado Ichimonji to the younger boy. "When we meet again one day, on the ocean, let's fight again. I'll use the sword that I will have achieved with my own strength, and you will use this one to remind you of your losses. Is that okay?"
Zoro nods slowly. The older boy hands the sword to him.
"When we meet again," he says, "We'll be strong, and I'll beat you again, but it will be a long, hard battle, and we'll both be scarred, and we can tell all of our friends the story of how I beat you two thousand times." He smiles.
Zoro smiles with him, and stands. The two boys face each other, Zoro holds his new sword, and they don't worry a bit about how the elder's father will react to this all, because for now, everything will be okay.