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After I had died in my second life Being X put my soul in the equivalent of a sensory deprivation chamber. There was nothing to look at and nothing to listen, when I waved my hand in front of my own face I couldn't feel it move, when I clutched my head in my hands I didn't know if my head was resting on them or if my hands had gone through it and were resting behind my eye sockets. There was nothing and I was nothing. My thoughts bounced around in this claustrophobic emptiness until they faded in the distance.

My body was only what I imagined it to be and its detail faded whenever I concentrated on something else. It was the picturing of what I thought I should look like but from a different perspective. As if I was creating a vessel and stood apart from the body my soul should inhabit. I wasn't moving my own body, I was creating a sculpture of flesh to move about as my disembodied self desired. With a thought the illusion placed itself over where I should be. Only I didn't recover any sort of sensation, we were merely overlapping, sharing the same space but in different layers. With another thought I moved my disembodied self away and then I realized the problem.

This was all make belief, I was not here nor there, I was everywhere that I chose to be. This was my imagination and I wasn't so gullible as to believe it real.

Was this Being X's plot? To deteriorate my sanity until I was naught but a gibbering mess ready to eat up any slop he served? I had no doubt in my mind that with enough months spent confined like this I wouldn't recognize the person I would become yet at the same time I at least imagined that he had basic standards and some degree of self respect. The power of a world at his fingertips and he would settle for the prayer of a broken man he couldn't even recognize?

I'd keep myself sane long enough to spite him if he were to appear and if not then the person I would become wouldn't care about it.

With a goal in mind I focused on the one skill that could postpone my descent into madness. Illusion magic.

From the Mondragon I had cleaned every other day to the Sig MKMS that I took from colonel Anton. The images came unbidden to my mind, they flowed with such ease that separating them into their constituent pieces before putting them back together was but a thought. When I ran out of weapons I had personally handled I moved on to artillery pieces, trucks, pillboxes, dragon teeth, bombers, fighters, ships, trains, tanks, radio stations, relay equipment, anti air guns, magical detectors, anything and everything I could think of was replicated in as much detail as possible.

There was a difference between having memorized an illusion spell of my own shape and form that I could just duplicate and having to make something that I wasn't intimately familiar with. Which is to say that I spent a lot of time visualizing how defensive fortifications and logistical infrastructure should be placed. I didn't know how much time passed until I grew bored and how much time passed after that as I trudged on.

Whatever zen mode I had achieved slipped through my fingers while I formed a dreadnought's keel inside the void.

Sensation returned to me, pressure on my chest, some sort of wet sludge receding from my body, the joyful sobs of whomever was hugging me.

"You're awake. You really woke up. You idiot. I told you not to go out with Erika, I told you." The sobs emanating from the raven haired boy intensified as he tightened his grip on me. One of my hands hesitatingly wrapped around his back to reciprocate, the other one splayed its fingers to the ceiling, twisting and turning them this way and that. I had never noticed how nice it was to be able to see my own body move and feel it at the same time.

I was laying in some sort of vat or tube, and there was something plugged into the base of my skull. A Medical procedure perhaps?

When his breathing finally calmed I spoke.

"...I don't remember, I'm sorry."

"It's okay Miyuki I" He said pulling back.

I clarified what I meant, interrupting him.

"No, I mean that I don't remember you." As I sat up, cables disconnected from my neck with a quiet hiss and were retracted back into the vat. "I don't remember what happened, I don't know who Erika is and I don't know who I am." And I wouldn't be able to pretend to be a girl who I knew nothing about, moreover I would be usurping whatever life she led. I murdered someone's soul and took over their body, however unintentionally the Miyuki he knew would never come back.

I'd have to find somewhere to stay and obtain gainful employment. Hopefully I wouldn't be disqualified from jobs due to my age, a fear my previous life had done well to establish, although I was unsure of what my current work history looked like or if I even had one at all.

He pulled back looking lost and alone. He held my hand in his seeming to draw strength from it. "I knew there were risks for the operation you went through. I decided to go through with it anyway. I… you don't have to be…" he paused, taking a moment to search for the right words, "it was selfish of me, I didn't want the last memories I had of you to be a scarred corpse with a broken body struggling to breathe through a tube! I couldn't… I know I shouldn't have, I know."

He let my hand go and used both to swipe at his red eyes that seemed to brim with so many tears. He looked downwards seeming chastised as he awaited some form of judgment. There was nothing I could say to him. No words that could explain that I wasn't some identity-less version of the Miyuki he had known, no words to comfort the pain of losing a loved one while a different person wore their face and used their body.

I rose up and stepped over my vats glass wall. When I came within a step from him I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him. I had no idea how to comfort someone but enough experience at the orphanage to know how the sisters comforted crying babies. Maybe it was a bit different with a more grown example but the same fundamentals should apply.

It was a stiff affair but eventually he collapsed after sobbing some more and passing out. From the way his fingers dug into my back with their long nails I would have expected some level of discomfort, instead there was pressure, the moist feeling of his sweat and tears coating his palms and a sharper, less blunt, sort of pressure where his nails were making indentations.

Spotting a bed tucked into a wall I laid him down. There were deep set rings around his eyes and as I pulled the cover over him. I noticed his ribs protruding. I idly traced a finger over them, having it brush over each one. Definitely malnourished, yet in a room like this?

With minimalist furniture emerging from the walls themselves in greyscale hues, drawers and closets blending into the walls with no discernible way to pull them open. No messes on the ground, no dust anywhere. Even the vat I had emerged from seemed to be the centerpiece of some queer painting rather than medical equipment placed in a house to care for a loved one's health. In a house like this, why wasn't there enough money to eat? Did he not have parents to take care of him or was I the one responsible for the house finances?

And then it hit me, we were in debt. Being X wouldn't just place me somewhere I could work myself out of. He would remove everything I could cling to in order for me to come crawling back to him, whether that be by being conscripted as a soldier for the losing side of a war with an elusive victory being dangled over high command leading them to commit blunder after blunder or my current situation having to navigate debts and financial responsibilities in a system completely foreign to me. I was certain that something worse lay behind these debts. Being X would allow for nothing else.

I let out a sigh, I could only hope to obtain a cushy job and a cushier retirement in this life instead, somehow.

As I shot a final look at the room I had woken up in I noticed that at some point the vats glass ceiling had closed, changing its image from some sort of capsule to something more akin to a coffin.

I stared vacantly at the vat for some time. My own reflection stared back at me in the nude.

Maybe it was my height or the black hair I'd have to comb but for some reason it didn't click. I was a prepubescent, short, curly haired, blond and blue eyed girl. Not a post pubescent ravenette with hair that came down to the hip, callous less hands and legs for days.

If I were to remain myself in this body as well, would I be shunted off to a new one when I died? How many times would I have to adapt? I am more than just my physical representation yes, but to say that I was apart? That it hadn't influenced the development of my mind? That if I were born, diabetic or paraplegic, in a different country, with different parents, I wouldn't recognize myself? Moreover if my mind had already finished developing and my identity and sense of self was firmly established by now then would It shift with the passing of time. Would I consider myself to be some disembodied sphere that had a series of physical avatars or incarnations? Or would each and every one be as much of myself as the previous one?

All the answers that I arrived at were unsatisfactory, ultimately I was myself and I would continue to be so even if I could not recognize my future or past self. The only way I could see that changing was if my experiences were taken from me, if my memory was wiped and I had no recollection of myself. Even then there were still arguments to be made that I did not wish to entertain.

I finally figured out what had been bugging me about my reflection. Muscles atrophied with disuse, it didn't make sense for my body to be lean and svelte. I twisted this way and that, searching for any scars or any signs of discomfort. Apart from the psychological kind I was in perfect health.

My hands eventually wandered to my nape and hit upon metal. It felt more akin to a scab that my finger nails ached to scratched at the point it connected with my skin. There were no button or protrusion I could press to slide it out and reveal a cable port.

Gemini and you, what you need to know about your new body.

And then came words.

More specifically a detailed breakdown of what my body could and could not do (a list much smaller than what I now could do) the whys and hows behind such technology as well as what damage I had gone through before being moved to a new body, the miracle of their advanced technology, the ease of recovery and rehabilitation after such a traumatic event, a user's manual, basic maintenance tips, recommended follow up dates, locations around me that could service me, and that this body had been bought by one Erika Watanabe, had been previously unused and was being held as collateral for 517,354.04 Euro Dollars worth of debt with a 50 percent interest rate due in a year of the which three months had already passed without the possibility of paying off the debt early and in such an event that I were to default on a payment then my body would be repossessed at the owner's discretion.

I resolved to arrange a meeting with Erika as soon as I found some clothes to make myself decent.

[AN] In 2020 cyberpunk a Gemini is worth 55,000 Eddie's, assuming inflation from 1967 to 2024 would apply from 2020 to 2077 with it being the same as dollar inflation (cumulative inflation of 840.6%) it is then 517,354.04 Eddie's that Tanya would owe. For some reason my mind went ah yeah that was in dollars you have to convert to Eddie's where 1 doller 4 Eddie's it would then be 2,069,416.16 Eddie's that she would owe. For some reason my mind went where did all that money co

me from and I double checked my fictional numbers to get the correct ones.

I hope someone enjoyed the intro. If for some reason you didn't and then read the story below I would be very interested in knowing what compelled you to continue reading, thoughts on both would be appreciated. : )

Ahem, apparently thread header is not where you drop story, it kept asking me to kindly reduce to my value to less than 2,000 characters. I spent 30 minutes of my life on this.

I shall now see myself out...

Why are you viewing this! I just posted it 3 mins ago, it says so at the top. You move too fast.

Ahhhhhhh, sleep, go sleep.

Ahem, future me here. Fixed triple spacing format issue and got rid of the intro. Ignore the previous section regarding the intro and feel free to speak on solely the story instead.