I kept thinking about how we really only know two important facts about Zoro before he wandered into Shells Town and ended up tied to the post where Luffy found him. He went to a school for swordsmanship and the daughter of the school's master beat him in 2001 duels. That would take awhile, wouldn't it?

I followed the canon of chapters 5 and 589 of the manga, which is even sparser on details then the anime.

Zoro and Brook stand a couple paces apart, feet in a ready stance. Brook starts to bring his sword around in a slow thrust toward Zoro's head.

'Ok, pay attention to how I redirect your blade,' Zoro instructs as he brings his sword up equally slowly. As the katana and cane sword meet he twists his arm and shoulders in a subtle motion that travels down into his footing. Brook's blade is pushed sideways.

Brook cocks his head to the side inspecting Zoros stance and the positioning of their blades. He lets out a self-deprecating chuckle and takes a step back lowering his sword. Zoro steps back as well and takes up his beginning stance again. Brook begins, 'I'm sorry Zoro-san, maybe if we just…'

Zoro interrupts drawing his blade back, 'Now you try.'

The skeleton starts and yelps in panic, but brings up his blade trying to imitate what the other swordsman just showed him. Zoro doesn't move as fast as he normally would, but the motion isn't exactly slow.

When they stop Wado Ichimonji is stuck through the space between Brook's ribcage and pelvis.

Brook manages to look sheepish, 'Ah, Zoro-san you appear to have gutted me,' he pauses and Zoro gives him an impatient look, 'except that I have no guts. Yo ho ho ho.'

Zoro smirks at him and pulls his sword back, 'We'll keep practicing. It's a complicated technique, took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out.'

'It's hard to imagine you would have much use for it,' Brook comments, glancing over at the several multi-ton weights spread around the floor of the crow's nest.

'Yeah, but when I needed it I was damn glad to have it,' he shrugs, 'I also incorporated it into my methods for fighting large groups of weaklings. Makes all that boring cleanup work go a lot faster.'

'What do you call it?'

Zoro blinks at the question as if it never occurred to him before. 'Kuina never gave it name and nobody else at the school knew how she did it. That's part of the reason it took me so long to figure out,' there is a slight pause as he looks off to the side, 'she died before I managed it.'

'She must have been a brilliant young woman. I wish I could have met her.'

Zoro straightens up at Brook's consoling tone and shakes his head giving his crewmate a half smile, 'She would have decapitated you for asking to see her panties.'

In Shimotsuki, every year after the harvest is in, boys and young men from the nearby villages come to stay at the school until it was time for them to return to their farms in the spring. Men learn swordsmanship to defend their homes and families when the need arises.

Koshiro, Kuina's father and the school's head teacher, starts teaching her the sword almost as soon as she can walk.

At six she takes classes along side the boys.

At nine she is practicing alongside the advanced students.

Her father starts to call her forward for a duel when one of the boys starts getting too arrogant or complacent in their accomplishments.

Kuina knows her part in this. She practices every day because it would be intolerable if one of the arrogant little braggarts ever got away without learning their lesson. She always beats them easily.

After every fight she stands over them sword in hand, puts on her best arrogant smile and says, 'you're weak.' The shame of it would often have them nearly in tears.

Her father doesn't say anything, but the message is clear, 'How can you brag about your talents when you can be beaten by a little girl?'

She rarely spars with any of them more than once or twice. They take their lesson and move on, vowing to work harder to avoid such humiliation in the future.

There is never any doubt from either her or her father that she will beat the boys he sets against her. It is her family's duty to make sure the students grow up to be strong and able to defend their homes. She is proud of that work.

For a long time it is enough.

The whole island is rural, small villages with large families, each with their own reputation and share of gossip.

So she knows who each of the boys are when they show up, but there's nothing worth remarking on in this latest group. They are the sons of fishermen, farmers, and craftsmen from the nearby villages, just another dozen eight year olds ready to spend their first winter in training.

At ten years old Kuina helps supervise the new students in the afternoon as they do their daily chores. This involves helping with almost anything that needs doing around the school. She teaches them how to scrub the stains out of clothes, sweep a floor properly, and peel a potato without wasting too much.

Although none of them are enthusiastic about this work, most of them understand this it is part of the price paid for the lessons they are receiving. Her father explains to those that try to shirk their share that he does not teach people who do not value the school enough to take care of it.

About a month after winter practice starts she is running through her forms with the older students when her father calls her over to the room with the beginning students for the first time.

One of the boys has been bragging to the others that the lessons are so easy that Koshiro would no doubt move him to the more advanced class before the winter was even over. So father has offered to let him prove what he had learned.

She draws the duel out a bit, just to see if he has any basis for his claim. Although he shows decent improvement after being here only a month, he still had a long way to go before he is ready to move past the basics. She knocks him on his ass and gives him the standard grin.

He gives the required bow and slinks back to the other beginners. The jeers and consolations of his peers swallow him up as they go to clean up before dinner.

This is the usual pattern, but lately watching the rowdy group of boys head off makes her feel slightly tired for some reason.

She comes out of her distraction to realize one of the other boys, Zoro, has come back and is now standing in front of her.

The boy always does his chores without chatting or complaining much, although he tends to look at the broom or potato peeler as if it had insulted him somehow. He hasn't given her any trouble, so she hasn't thought of him much.

He is still clutching his practice sword and there is a determined, almost angry look on his face, 'Fight me.'

Kuina blinks. Nobody ever asks for a duel of their own accord. She might suspect Zoro of some kind of trick, but she knows the boy well enough to know he doesn't think that way. Everything is always as straight forward as possible with him.

She glances over at her father. Koshiro merely smiles and waves a go ahead at her before strolling out of the room. So he's leaving it up to her then. She raises her own wooden sword and takes a beginning stance, 'Let's go then.'

Zoro carefully places his feet as he's been taught and raises his own blade, brow furrowed even more deeply in concentration.

He charges straight at her.

She redirects him around her and lets him turn around. She allows him a couple more charges before she twists her blade and lands him on his back. He's strong for his age, but his straightforwardness is reflected in the way he fights. Out of habit she smirks at him, 'You're weak Zoro.'

He stands up, still frowning, and bows perfunctorily, as basic courtesy requires.

For a moment Kuina assumes that that is the end of this anomalous little situation.

'Show me how you did that,' he demands.

She frowns at his rudeness, 'You should have paid better attention.'

He seems to struggle with himself for a moment, like it might actually hurt him to say, 'please.' She would be even more offended if she didn't know that this is how he behaves toward everyone.

He settles for, 'Duel me again. One more time.'

This time she slows down slightly as their blades lock together, wondering if he will be able to pick up on how the movement of force through the blade tells her everything he is going to do. It's probably too advanced for him.

Just to emphasize it a bit more, on the third pass she rocks the blade back and forth a bit before flipping him on his back this time. 'Still weak,' she says, 'that's two losses for you.'

He lies staring at the ceiling for few seconds, stunned from the fall, before standing up and bowing to her properly this time.

Then he smiles at her, open and cheerful, as if she's just shown him something amazing, 'Next time for sure.' And with that he runs off after the other boys, wooden sword resting on his shoulder.

And it continues on this way.

The younger class usually gets out first. He's not the only one who comes to watch older students quietly from the sidelines, but when all the other students leave he stays behind and demands a duel.

Over the course of less than twenty minutes they go through three or four rounds.

After a month she's still barely trying and she often teases him, maneuvering him around the classroom.

When he growls at her in frustration, she smirks, 'Don't like it?'

He glowers. She smiles and takes up a starting stance, 'Make me try harder then.'

He gives her a flat smile, knowing he won't prove himself with talk.

He still charges straight at her, but he's starting to pick up on things, he's learning to block and maintain his balance. She can't simply throw him with his own momentum. She reserves calling him weak for when he does something particularly stupid.

He seems to take her challenge to heart and starts spending the hours between dinner and bedtime, which the students usually have free, practicing his forms and doing extra exercises. He's still miles behind her, but he starts improving far faster than the other beginning students.

Kuina realizes that she has gotten complacent.

She may be one of the best students at the school, but a true swordsman is always seeking to improve.

The worst thing is that if she lets the little shrimp catch up and beat her, no one would be surprised, except maybe her father, because that's the way things are supposed to be.

Victory after victory and it would all be erased with one loss. It cannot be allowed. She starts practicing in the evening too.

When spring comes around all the boys go home to help with the planting. Zoro has 463 defeats to his name. The other boys console Zoro for his losses, although none of them seem to understand why he keeps allowing himself to be humiliated in this way.

Whatever his reasons, Zoro doesn't bother to explain to them or her.

In late spring and through the summer he shows up almost every day, jogging the three miles from the next village to the school so he can spend the afternoon practicing with the other students.

In the evening he waits for the advanced class to finish and they go through 2 or 3 rounds before he heads home.

He stacks up another 247 losses by the time fall comes around again bringing the total to 710.

By next winter session Zoro is showing enough mastery of the basics that he's moved to the intermediate class a year earlier than usual.

A single katana can normally be wielded with one or two hands, but Zoro chooses to focus on learning to fight with two swords at once, giving up the option of using two hands for extra strength. He's already unusually strong for his age, so the increased flexibility of having two blades makes sense for him.

Kuina wonders if that flexibility will change his insistence on charging straight at his opponent and just trying to bull his way through.

Probably not.

She's only mostly right. He still disdains to circle or feint at all, but at least he's getting better at blocking. This allows their fights to last longer. Three or four rounds may take an hour now. They have to wait till after dinner to fight, so they aren't late all the time.

'I can see your thoughts going through your head,' she teases Zoro, exaggerating a little; 'You keep looking exactly where you're going to strike.' He huffs and adjusts his gaze toward the center of her body, looking without staring so it not immediately obvious where he wants to strike..

She knows that he's learned better than to narrow his focus so much, he just needs to try harder not to forget.

Afterwards they both wander off to their separate evening practice. She's starts spending some time meditating after their duels and before her solo practice.

If a fighter is strong they may wield a sword like an axe and prevail based on force alone, but the true art of swordsmanship lies in making a single perfect strike. This requires ever widening circles of awareness: knowledge of herself, of her blade, of the opponent, of the environment. Her father sometimes speaks about the voice of the world, the ability to take it all in and know where the strike must fall to cut precisely and only what is meant to be cut.

Nothing seems to come to her while she's meditating, but it does make it easier to focus when she's practicing.

By the end of winter Zoro's dueling with boys 4 or 5 years older and winning on a regular basis.

She swears that if he brags about his accomplishments she will make him regret it.

He doesn't though. In fact, the praise of the other students doesn't seem to mean much to him. Apparently, whatever he's after, it has nothing to do with them.

Zoro has accrued another 527 defeats for a total of 1,237.

As spring comes around again she spends the morning working in the large vegetable gardens that help supply the school. After lunch students trickle in and train for a few hours before trotting home for supper.

They have their bouts after class. If they run on a little long her father might bring out some rice balls or something else they can sit and snack on before Zoro makes the trek back home.

The view from atop the broad hill across the fields and over the village and harbor of Shimotsuki is pleasant and familiar. Neither of them is talkative by nature, so they often sit quietly eating and cooling off as the sun starts to lose its noontime intensity.

Sometimes one of them will bring up a match that happened that day and they will hash it over for a bit, discussing methods, strengths and weaknesses before falling naturally silent again. Zoro is far less experienced then her, but he's developing a keen eye.

It is the last day before all the students go home to help with the harvest. Kuina brings a book to the classroom with her and leaves it off to the side till their practice and dueling is done. She sets it beside her as she and Zoro sit to eat their rice balls. The fields are shining yellow with drying stalks and the trees are turning crimson. The air is starting to get cold with evening.

'Have you read this?,' she asks passing the book to Zoro as he sits beside her.

He examines the sturdy cover and runs his finger over the edges of the thick pages, before shaking his head.

'It's the Tales of Ryuma,' she explains pointing at the title, 'He was the greatest swordsman in the whole world. Ryuma travelled all over fighting bad guys. No one could ever beat him. This traveling monk gathered up stories from all the people he helped and put them in this book. He's the first that everyone agreed was the best. You should read it.' She stops realizing she's gotten a little carried away.

Zoro studies her for a few seconds eyes widened slightly in surprise before letting out a huff and giving one of his rare broad smiles. He stands and nods as he tucks the book under his arm. He turns and starts to trot down the hill, 'See you in a few weeks,' he calls out over his shoulder.

The pace of his losses has slowed down somewhat, since their duels are taking longer, but he's still added another 213 to his total, bringing it up to 1450.

Kuina turns twelve over the course of the fall break. That evening after dinner her father invites her upstairs to the school's formal sitting room and opens a decorative cabinet sitting along the back wall.

She takes a deep breath and holds it for several seconds, trying not to start bouncing and ruin this incredibly important moment with childish fidgeting.

He lifts the katana protected in the cabinet off its rack using both hands and turns to hold it out to her. She lets out her breath slowly through her nose before stepping forward and imitating her father, using both hands to take the white and gold sheath katana.

'Wado Ichimonji, the straight path of harmony,' her father states, 'This blade has been passed down in our family since before our ancestors left Wano almost 300 years ago. It was gifted to our ancestor in acknowledgement of his service as a guardian of that realm. Its name expresses the wish that its wielder will seek to bring balance to the world around them. Its care is your responsibility now.'

She pulls the sword reverently from its sheath. The guard is a simple oval. The hamon, the hardened edge of the blade, melds smoothly along the length, following the curve of the blade. The balance is perfect, the blade moving easily around the pivot of her hand.

She resheaths the sword and moves to put it back in its case, then turns and gives a formal bow, 'Thank you father.'

He chuckles and pulls her into a hug. She wraps her arms around him in turn and feels tears sting the corner of her eyes. It's not just the blade, which is amazing; it's the affirmation of her father's faith in her.

If you have any comments, I would be happy to hear them. Thanks for reading.