Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece or any source material.

Chapter 1: Nice to Meet You

"— my name will reach the heavens!"

How surreal.

Awakening to those words . . . I'd heard them just before, in a dream. Or maybe it was years and years ago? Dreamtime was . . . erratic. Although that dream was so lucid, so constant that perhaps I'd really . . . no. Unlikely. But given what I was, saying anything was unlikely held very little weight.

Perhaps I was still dreaming then, to be hearing the same impassioned declaration in that same voice. Dreaming of a dream about an illustrated, animated epic . . .

Had thinking always been such a struggle? Had focus?

Potential.

Oh. I was wakening.

Potential. It breezed through my hazy, scattered thoughts again, a whisper. Will you manifest?

Hmm yes. Yes. I wanted to see if I was truly awake.

And I was.

With new eyes to see I looked upon my physical body and to the hands that gripped me tight. No dream could replicate the duality of being both sword and spirit, the simultaneous sensation of floating outside my body watching this child hold my scabbard while also feeling the desperate grasp of those tiny hands.

How surreal indeed.

This was the exact scene I'd read during my dream: the beginnings of the future Pirate King's Greatest Swordsman as he makes such a momentous promise. Something about that . . . didn't sit well with the heavy voice of Duty that wavered in and out of my thoughts like static behind a revolving door, but I ignored it because I'd never tested positive for prophecy in my human life. And if Luffy's story included the Red Line and 'Devil Fruits', and if this child's name was also Roronoa Zoro – well, the simplest explanation was that my dream, as all dreams do, borrowed from my experiences, and this Zoro who was strong enough to wake me probably had a spirit strong enough to affect my dreams. So my Purpose, adrift and obscure as it was in my current mind, was under no threat from a fanciful story I'd conjured during my sleep.

And what a long sleep it was. Nothing of my original mountings remained. New hilt, new wrappings, new scabbard, and even new washers to bracket my new guard. Just how long was I asleep? We were crafted to endure, those of us who were chosen to . . . to what?

I tried to pull the thought back to me, but like all my other pertinent memories it slipped from my fingers to eel around in the dark waters of my subconscious. Instead I got to remember the silly things like my horse bullying the palace stable-boys for the pears grown at the summit of the Red Line, or how my mother, on hearing of my selection, traded her Sea-stone earrings away to gift me the ornament that I used to adorn my hilt. Oh! Or the coordinates where —

No. Focus. Here, in – I drifted closer to a plaque – Isshin Dojo.

I was awake, I manifested, and I was going to be wielded by a boy (Potential) who hadn't even noticed me hovering around yet.

And he would continue to not notice me for two more days.

It was the grief clouding his clarity of purpose. I couldn't think of any other reason he'd fail to see me. When he finally did notice though, it was a grand spectacle that made up for the frustrating hours of unsuccessfully wrangling my mind and testing the distance I could travel from my body.

Because nine year old Roronoa Zoro was subtle like a brick to the face.

When his casual scan landed on me for the third time that morning and he actually saw me drifting backwards several meters in front of him, he seized to a full stop in the middle of the Monday market. Mid-step with his foot frozen centimeters from the ground. His eyes widened then narrowed and his hand dropped to my hilt, and then – like dominoes – the man walking behind him with a teetering stack of pastry boxes plowed into Zoro's back, knocking Zoro over while the boxes showered down around them and under the foot of a granny who flailed at the sudden change in terrain and flung her cane through the window of the hatter's shop, spilling the displayed hats into the square and causing the blacksmith's apprentice to swerve wildly away from a rolling feathered derby and into the ladder supporting the farrier who was trying to coax his wife's cat down from the sign proclaiming Shimotsuki Village. There was moment of shocked (and a little awed) silence, then the cat stepped down from the clawed-up heap of farrier to daintily pick her way around various secondary casualties and glass and hats and tongs and dentures to lick the custard from the strewn mille feuilles.

Zoro picked himself up, dusted off his knees, sent a filthy glare to the man who ran into him and, of course, was baffled by the rest of the scene. He frowned and turned to me.

"Are you following me?" He demanded. The threat in his voice and his belligerent stance alarmed the onlookers who'd been moving in to help the victims. Several looked in my direction then turned back to Zoro, confused. Neither of us knew it then, but this was the start of a significantly different reputation than the one he'd had in my dream.

I swept my eyes over the chaos of the square – the dirt stains on knees, the bits of icing on elbows, the violently mad hatter swatting helpers away with his measuring tape, children pointing and laughing, the general detritus of people and things in surprise disarray – this was a market-time thoroughly interrupted of its normal bustle and hum. Such moments of harmless ridiculousness had been rare even in my childhood and were absent entirely once I'd reached the earliest value of adulthood, whereby all I lived was war.

I answered him with a happy laugh that I couldn't help and a wink.

He didn't appreciate that. Zoro's mounting anger and half-drawn sword were drawing concerned attention; I could hear several whispers of, "poor boy" and "the stress of loss is getting to him" and "it's obvious he dresses himself – wearing shoes like that, his mother must be rolling in her grave". But he continued to stare at me, waiting for clarification I suppose, despite the impending mothering that I could sense building up in one or two of the women.

"We can talk," I offered, "after you finish your errands." I indicated the list poking out of his pocket and the temporary stalls that lined the square; then, before he could argue I drifted behind a cart as it rolled by and ducked into the alley between the mayor's office and the pet supply store.

It was cute to watch him interact with vendors who were clearly used to him; they all greeted him with fond smiles and concluded their business with calls of advice as he ran off, "the other way Zoro" or "toward the sun Zoro" among others. Despite his naked anger and curiosity, Zoro's errands didn't go any faster – the boy couldn't get from point A to point B without first touring the entire alphabet, even with the friendly help. It was an eerily accurate mirror to the Zoro from my dream. In fact, over the last two days, everything about Zoro's personality was turning out to be an eerily accurate mirror. Something to think about . . . later. Later, when introspection didn't bring simultaneous memories of inconsequential things like embroidery lessons from my human life and the roaring scream of landing airplanes from my dream and . . . and . . . just – just a bit more . . . no, it slipped away. It was something new, unfamiliar. Something that triggered an old and out of place disappointment.

I snapped out of my musings when I was tugged along in Zoro's wake as he ran his purchases home. He barreled into the front door, I heard the murmur of words exchanged, and then he shot back out to take up a fighting stance in the front yard. I glanced at the windows and saw his guardian peek curiously outside, so I tilted my head toward the tree-line of the forest and then started moving in a different direction, hoping we could save time by him getting 'lost' in the correct direction.

Lost, yes. Correct direction, no. But I noticed from the attempt that he tended to either continue hurtling forward, or veered to the right – which made a teeny bit of sense given that he could potentially add centrifugal force to his left-handed attacks by always angling toward his non-dominant side. If anyone cared to make any sense of his internal compass at all.

"Ok, answer me," Zoro threatened, pointing my blade at me when we (finally) reached the forest's edge, "Why are you following me?"

"I would never voluntarily follow someone who gets as l lost as you do."

"Who would get lost in their own village?" He yelled, then shook his head to ask me again, "That's not important, why have you been following me all morning?"

Yes, why? I knew that diamond-hard ambition and vast strength of will were required to wake me, but there were additional criteria . . . I was sure. And it just seemed so unlikely that this tiny little Zoro would have developed so far yet, despite how my dream version of him ignored the boundaries of human limitation – and how, so far, this living version was a facsimile. There were reasons at work that I was missing here, and I knew that he wanted to know why I was following him, not why I was following him . . . but if I could just make a connection, I'd have it . . . we – we were chosen to . . . to wait and to . . . what? To wait and to—

A snap and then I felt a lance of burning agony in my mind before a cataract of memories blinded me,

. . . learning the constellations in the Yuban night sky from my uncle's back yard . . .

. . . riding a water elephant for the very first time . . .

. . . picking sunflowers for my fifth birthday from the fields that stretched to eternity in Sebiola . . .

. . . my first pony . . .

. . . the sketches and diagrams and stories that my tutor showed me of a fantastical ship . . . it all seemed like . . . like just yesterday . . .

And then, overlapping the others, came the scenes from a life I'd never lived, only dreamed,

There were so many,

. . . dawn from the top deck of a trans-pacific 747 . . .

. . . the jewel-scape of an iced-over Paris at night . . .

. . . flying down I-70 at dusk through the cornfields turned faerie wood by the thousands and thousands of fireflies . . .

. . . kittens tangled in Christmas lights . . . thick fuzzy socks . . . families . . . children . . . husband . . . this seemed too detailed, so real . . .

Why!? All I wanted was an answer to the why! What was the point of this . . . this deluge of memories from a childhood I'd already left behind and this . . . this sickeningly halcyon fairy tale? I didn't need a bunch of irrelevant whats, I wanted a gods-be-damned answer to the why! WHERE WAS THE CLARITY?

There was a grunt.

"Look . . . j-jus—" Zoro stopped to gulp.

I looked around me,

"Just s-stop following me ok?"

There were squirrels, birds, and all manner of forest critters out cold on the pine needles and undergrowth stretching a half-kilometer around us,

"You, uh, don't have to tell me why . . . but stop!"

In the distance a few deer and a fox were sprinting away, heartbeats wild with panic,

I looked at Zoro,

The whites showed all around his eyes, his heart was jackhammering and fit to explode, his legs had fine, invisible tremors running up and down them, and his echoes showed an even chance that he'd try to run me through or fall to his knees. But. But he was still standing, one breath away from pissing himself, but he hadn't and was still standing.

He was so achingly young to have such an immutable sense of self. Potential indeed.

There was no fate in any iteration of existence that would let a steadfastness like that go untested. He was already familiar with loss, so the trials coming for him would only get harder, crueler.

Truly, my Purpose mattered little right now, Zoro's youth meant I had years to figure things out. Trying to force my memories and then the tantrum that caused had been unnecessary and weak. The fact that this child weathered a blast of Symphony and still had the balls to think of attacking me reminded me what the most important thing had always been: action.

Zoro had woken me, which meant he was now my responsibility to train, to teach. And pupils never got answers just handed to them.

"Zoro," I soothed, "that won't happen again, I apologize. Now, tell me, was that all you noticed today? Just me following you?" I asked in my General's voice, the one I had used on brash officers new to my command. While I wasn't running a full Symphony now, I was using Sense and could see that as Zoro's expression firmed and he stood straighter, his body obeyed his recaptured grip on himself and stopped its trembling.

He gave my serious tone the consideration it deserved; his eyes darted around the tree line, across the sleeping squirrels, over my form, into the distance as he reflected, and finally back down to my feet. He chewed on his lip and tilted his head, then looked, presumably, in the direction of the village (it was actually ninety degrees, give or take a few, to his left).

Zoro scratched his temple then used that forefinger to list off his first observation, "Your feet don't touch the ground."

I nodded.

"You said you would never voluntarily follow me," He watched me while holding out two fingers.

"Correct."

"The villagers, they didn't seem to notice you, not when you were . . ." he looked down at my feet again, "floating around backwards, or when I confronted you. And you can, um, knock out squirrels with your mind?" He had his ring finger half uncurled.

"Something like that yes."

He nodded and an eyebrow rose curiously, but he continued, "And you didn't want Old Lady Hanako to see your power!" Zoro thrust his fully spread hand in my direction.

Well . . . I hadn't been intending to show anyone any power, but sure, I nodded.

"Then you must be that ghost from the legend; the Carpenter's dead girlfriend that haunts the eastern well! I'm sorry I took the coin from the bucket – I didn't think the story was true! That's why you're following me right? And even though you're an ancient, powerful ghost, you're a peaceful one? You didn't want to hurt the old lady and your laugh wasn't evil like bandits this morning at the market. Would you like me to throw the coin back?"

He looked so smugly pleased with himself that I actually thought about letting him believe that for a few hours. But strong fighters didn't have gentle teachers, so: "Completely wrong."

Tightening his hand back into a fist, he looked like he was about to argue. The cheek! I'd just nearly scared the piss out of him.

"Actually," I allowed, "you are correct about me being tied to an object."

Zoro cupped his chin to think about this and then turned out one pocket to dump the coin, some twigs, and a sharpening stone onto the ground, then turned out the other one and found some lint. He raised his eyebrows at the lint and twigs, giving me an incredulous look.

"No! Gods! Neither of those. Think. What do you carry for which it would makes sense to have a powerful spirit attached?"

And perhaps because it was still newly his, it took him a few second to finally look at his sword, after which he exploded, hurt, "But why didn't Kuina say anything about you?"

"Kuina? Why would she? I woke for you."

"For me? I don't remember asking you to wa— . . . I didn't even know about you!"

"That's not how it works. I wake only for my wielder and only if they have tremendously strong spirit and ambition." I knew that wasn't the whole of it, but if I couldn't remember everything, he didn't need to know that. I was about to elaborate on my manifestation and his contribution to it when I felt little twists of killing intent licking around me.

Zoro looked incensed and growled out, "Kuina's spirit and ambition were just as strong as mine, you should have woken for her!"

And saved her somehow, went unsaid.

It's possible she was his equal in matters beyond physical strength, but I doubted it: if the wielder was strong enough, their determination lingered in the very atoms of my blade, whether they managed to wake me or not. I'd have felt her as I could still feel the others who'd fought, heart and soul, with my blade, but didn't meet the waking requirements. She could have grown to be strong enough, yes, but was she at the time of her death? No. And, again, there were other factors that went into it.

"No, she wasn't as strong as you in that regard . . . yet. I'm sure she could have been with time, but it's you I've woken for and it's you I will help." Gentle teachers and all that. "Now, the power you saw me use takes years to develop. Meditation, which is probably your weake–"

Well. The hard truth was too soon apparently. I could see Zoro's echo slashing into me and bisecting me from hip to shoulder; I didn't bother to move.

"Don't say that about her! She was stronger than me!" Zoro howled like a feral wolf down one leg and then tried to kill me.

When he ran right through me and stumbled into the bush beyond he turned with vehemence, ready to try again. But then he stopped himself, took a slow, deep breath, and I could see the rage in his furrowed brow and feel the confusion and impotence he felt over Kuina's fate by the spasms in his grip on my sheath.

"She was stronger than me," he repeated, "and I don't want your help, I have to do this on my own." With that he turned and walked away.

Deeper into the trees.

What an amazing kid. I would have to make upward adjustments to my expectations about what he would be capable of at various ages – starting with age nine: can walk away from a fight while still experiencing potent emotions.

Zoro was going to be unstoppable without any help from me, that much was clear. But this much I remembered: for the fates, being even-tempered or self-assured or strong and powerful via honest means was to also offer temptation for them to meddle – being all three together was like tossing down a gauntlet forged of good intentions and declarations that things couldn't get any worse.

He'd need to be more than unstoppable; luckily he had a soul-forged sword whose driving directive – despite not knowing why – was to train him to be better than the best. I'd do if it killed me. With, maybe, a little extra payback, the little shit tried to eviscerate me with my own self.

Thanks for reading, let me know how you like it :)

This is short, I'm aware, but when looking through my outline, this was the best place to stop or else it would get unwieldy.