Haruta's a division commander. She uses a sword.

Of course. You don't get to be division commander without being as strong as a hundred men.

There's 1600 of us altogether and only sixteen commanders. Only the strongest and best leaders can become commanders.

You've been in this village before, but when you're a lot older than you are now.

[Seriously, people should never ask Marco the truth, when will they learn this? His truths are always a thousand times more ridiculous than the lies.] What's your name kid?

[Uncaring shrug.]

Because they did the same thing to me last month and have done it to my brother, and a bunch of others here. I did try to warn you that it might not be very comforting to know.

[At least he wasn't all "Oh and your Dad died."] Tell you what, ask me what you want and then you can go verify it with other people, eh? If I'm lying, you lose nothing and gain the information that I'm extremely untrustworthy. [Which he is when it comes to telling the truth, but not on this.] And if I'm telling the truth, better that you know right away, right?

This place is Luceti. You're not from here, but you've been here before. The organization of people that brought us here, called the Malnosso, conduct some experiments every now and again. One of them being turning people back in years, memories and physically. Arguably so that they can learn more about the effects, but I'm convinced they're just sadists.

[It doesn't help Zoro that he's a skeptic gosh.] You probably have friends here who can help explain the situation better, but I don't know you are so I don't know who they are.

Does your village have a lot of ninjas? [He's figuring he's from Itachi/Temari/etc.'s world.]

[Zoro. Pirates, dojo.... Hm. Marco points to the katana.]

Do you use three of those?

[But then it might be something only older Zoro uses.]

I know your crew, though I don't think we've ever met even when you're older.

[Rubs the back of his neck.] Admittedly, I'm kind of bad about getting to know swordsmen from other crews. I usually rely on Vista or Thatch and the others for it. I should definitely stop that by now since they're not here, eh.

Mah, well, have you ever heard of Nico Robin? [The rest are much too young for Zoro to know by now.] She's a friend of yours. There's also Luffy, your captain, Sanji, your ship's chef, Nami who's brilliant, and Vivi who's a feisty blue-haired princess. And I think Miyabi counts as being part of the crew here. Oh, and there's an afro-skeleton musician. I swear, your captain is actually trying to outdo my family in collecting freaks. [But he still has a fishman and okama and nearly everyone is over eight feet tall in his family, so take that.]

You're from the East Blue, right? I know Nami and Luffy are too.

[There's a wry grin at that. He's really quite glad that when he was shrunk and time-smooshed, they Malnosso had the decent courtesy to leave him as having already met Whitebeard and a few of his brothers, or that would have been a big headache on everyone.]

Sometimes life has a funny way of surprising us. The destination can be the same, but the paths we take wind up much more different than we could ever have expected. [Random cryptic shit a kid is unlikely to get. Good job Marco. Oh well, he's been completely spoiled with having Sabo around.]

What's your goal as a swordsman?

Guess we'll be seeing you at the top then, eh?

Okay, work with me on this. In order to become the world's best, you have to meet all the best swordsmen in the world to defeat them, right? Or at least enough that the others don't debate your reputation and instead now come to you instead of vice versa, eh? [He assumes it's like being the world's strongest, but with swords.]