"Do you know what the spirit is, Zoro?" Koshiro sat back, watching the thousands of lights in the night sky twinkling brightly. He sat with his most promising pupil while watching the skies, lightly fingering his weapon's handle with one fond hand. They could hear the sounds of the nearby city, but were oddly secluded from the bustling metropolis.

Zoro looked up at his teacher in confusion. "What do you mean sensei?" he asked. "The spirit?"

Koshiro breathed in deeply. "It is said that the spirit is something that carries on generation after generation, even after the body has long decayed and disappeared. It may be reincarnated, or simply lives among the cosmos as something…special," he said vaguely. "Have you ever thought about what makes you Zoro?"

Zoro grunted in displeasure; he had discovered how to make the sound not too long ago and had found that he liked it. "If my body's not here anymore, then I don't care about my spirit," he said disdainfully. "My strength is carried in my body. Without it, I'm nothing."

Koshiro sighed gently. "Perhaps one day you will understand what it means for the will of your spirit to carry on, from one body to the next, as I hope Kuina's spirit has." He stood, dusting himself off lightly. "Shall we go for a midnight training session?"

Zoro jumped up excitedly. "Yeah!" They went into the dojo.

Koshiro drew his sword, and the light saber flickered into ruby brilliance with a single click. "En guard, Zoro."

Zoro pulled the two battered light sabers he had scrounged from the streets of Edo and banged them against his hips; they seemed to falter for a moment before deciding to come to life with a crimson and violet flash, respectively. He drew another light saber from his hip in far better condition than the others; it gleamed with a soft, white light not unlike the most luxurious illumination seen shining from the highest windows of the tallest skyscrapers. He stuck this light saber gingerly into his mouth. "I'm ready when you are, sensei."

Outside, the thousands of lights in the skies that were space satellites moved slowly around the earth while blotting out the shimmering stars, and the Edo night scene slowly started to rev up.

In the outskirts of the city, deep in the mountains, the two swordsmen did not notice; they were caught in another time, fighting with techniques that had long become obsolete with weapons that seemed to be far too modern for the art they practiced.

Yet, somehow, they found themselves unable to let their swordsmanship go.

It was as though…something in their spirits called them, from another time, from another place, whispering of silky petals falling from extinct sakura trees; warm sake while watching the now-terraformed moon; sailing on a peaceful ocean, the likes of which had not been seen since the toxic spill of the year 5039; of bushido and nakama, of honor and traditions long lost.

Of a time when a man fought carrying his rival's spirit for the title of the greatest, with an indomitable will and crew who conquered the Grand Line.

Unaware of all of this, they fought on.

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A/N: Just a little idea I had ruminating in my mind for a while. So, I tried to make it clear but I'm not sure if I succeeded. This little drabble is set in a futuristic Japan/Grand Line, sort of like how Gintama's universe is in a futuristic Edo. So…a few thousand years ahead of the current timeline, in Japan—Edo, to be exact, whose name has not been changed.

And terraforming is deliberately changing a planet's composition to make it habitable for humans.