"Is that... my body?" Micheal wondered, confused to see the body of Iron Beard, which he for some reason believed was his.
Cautious, he stepped closer, his steps uneven, fatigued from the intense pain he had woken from.
Yet...
He continued forward, his gaze sharp, teeth gritted as he ignored the pain.
He took off the headgear.
"Is that me... But how?"
Perplexed, he touched the iron jaw of Ironbeard, then his own jaw, a jolt of pain shooting through his face.
Micheal's jaw was still broken.
"What is going on..."
He felt the rest of his body, squishy, without an ounce of cyberware.
This wasn't the body he was used to: his hard exoskeleton, hidden weapons, and cybernetic tattoos.
All gone.
"How did this happen?" He browsed through his memories, though his, they felt foreign.
" This ain't my memories" he thought, confused.
He remembered so vividly, from the day he took his first breath to this very point in time: his struggles, joys, betrayals, relationships.
A tragic life, but none of it was his...
"What's going on?" He grabbed his head, electrifying pain pulsating through the veins in his head.
Other memories, ones he recognized, surfaced: fragmented, broken like shards of glass, yet they felt real, felt like the real him.
"I am Ironbeard... I am Ironbeard," he screamed, trying to hold on to the fragmented memories of his real self.
The fragments, reacting to his will, merged, several pieces missing, yet it was enough to keep his sense of identity.
"Haaa, haaa!!" He took in deep breaths, trying to calm the pain.
"This guy is really something; he reversed the transfer," he browsed through both of their memories. The events leading to his current circumstances made known.
Most would have cussed Micheal, but he only smiled.
"It seems victory is still mine."
As long as he was the one inhabiting the body, he believed he had won.
"The C.C?! " A name flashed in his mind.
He didn't know exactly what it was, but he knew it was important and somewhat related to the body he now inhabited.
What its functions were, he couldn't remember, but he knew he needed to acquire it.
He drew his attention back to his old body.
Turning it's head to the side, he lightly tapped the side of Iron Beard's temple, and a narrow metallic slot slid open.
"It's not here."
There were chips on it, but none resembling the C.C. chip he had in his memory.
"..." Pondering where it could be, he touched his bruised jaw.
"Yeah..."
That seemed to have triggered his memory as he pried open ironbeard's mouth, and to his relief, underneath his tongue was the chip, meticulously—almost naturally—fixed to the base of his metallic jaw.
"Found it." He took it out, elated.
Now it was time to get out of here. He didn't know what was going on, but the place was too quiet for comfort.
He stepped out onto the deck.
The aftermath of the battle in its full glory: large craters, spider-like cracks running across the deck, mast broken, sails burnt, the smell of gunpowder, burnt flesh, and hot metal in the air.
Several disfigured bodies of his crewmates littering the deck, blasted by the attacks of the cyberpunks.
"Trijack, Red Marrow, Avery!!..." He moved from crewmate to crewmate, his face ashen.
Shock, grief and rage.
"Who did this?" He gnashed his teeth, his broken jaw sending ripples of pain up his face, yet he didn't care.
The anger, the fury, and the sadness he felt were greater than a mere flesh wound.
He couldn't remember, as neither he nor Michael knew of the battle; his encounter with Heavenly Monkey too trivial a matter to be remembered even then, and now that his memories were fragmented.
"Who the fuck did this to my crew?" he roared, his bloodshot eyes scanning the vicinity for a culprit.
Finding nothing but the aftermath of battle—and beyond the deck, heaps and heaps of scraps.
"I will fucking kill you! I will fucking—" he roared, gripping his head in agony.
"Argh!"
The intense surge of emotion made his head ache, his consciousness fading, the barely stable fragmented memories tearing apart.
His consciousness seemed to shift, seemingly pushed by another—the owner of the body, Michael.
"What's happening?" He feared the unknown, unsure of what was going on.
Whatever it was, there was something he needed to take care of now.
Though he couldn't remember what had happened for his crew to end up like this, it meant others were after his prized possession—either the Lucy or the C.C.
"I can't let anyone have it." He walked weakly toward the edge, grabbing his head in agony.
His consciousness faded in and out of existence, switching between an micheal and his own.
He stood at the edge of the deck, his gaze scanning the piles of scrap around.
He didn't know what happened—why his precious Lucy was in the scrapyard—but whatever the reason was, it was sure to be chaotic.
Struggling to his feet, he gathered all the strength he could muster and threw the CC chip into the heaps of scraps, his exhausted eyes following the flying chip, watching as it disappeared into the heaps.
"I will come for you later." With those as his last words, his consciousness couldn't hold on any longer.
It faded, replaced by the owner of the body.
Micheal 0015.
"Did it work?" Micheal thought to himself, standing at the edge of the Lucy, looking over the heaps of scraps around.
"I am alive... I guess it did. But..." He paused, an intense pain assaulting his body.
He was already wounded, the neuro transfer adding to it.
Standing should have been impossible with the intense pain in his head—for some reason, the rest of the body shared in it.
Iron Beard, with his strong will, had been able to keep standing despite the pain, but Micheal, a model student, didn't have that kind of mental fortitude.
Before he could ponder how he survived the cyberspace, his vision blacked out, luckily falling on his back, onto the deck.
He collapsed