Lab Days - Wild Cards: Pretty Oni-hood. (Or: Lies become her). [Episode 13411]

"Genma Saotome, prepare to die!" Oni-chan screamed as she flew off the handle.   "This is all your fault!"

"I didn't do it!" Genma blubbered automatically.   "It wasn't me!   Nobody saw me do it!   Whatever it wa-wa-wa… Wait.   What the heck is this all about?"

"Exactly!   Because of you, I'm a thing from hell!"

"You can't prove… Hey!   How is this my fault?"

All the answer he got was a cry of, "chi chi no baka!!!" accompanied by a sledgehammer blow.

"So what do you think happened?" Akane asked the golden girl as they wandered into the house.

"I dunno," Nabiki responded to the blur with a shrug.   "Maybe Uncle Genma sold Ranma's soul for a spring roll or something?   Oh my!" Nabiki winced at a particularly brutal piece of character bashing involving trademarked righteous indignation and copywriten blunt implements.   "That's got to hurt!"

"Yeah.   Lots," Akane winced herself, then nodded sagely.   "Uh.   I guess he deserved it, though."

"Uh, probably," Nabiki agreed doubtfully.   "On general purposes, anyway."

Actually, there was no demonic influence at work, nor any supernatural agent, and it certainly wasn't Genma's fault at all, whatever Ranma's insane raving might imply about the matter.   There was a simple scientific explanation for it all, although it was a mad scientific explanation.   It was something of a pity that the heroes hadn't had an opportunity to listen to Moreau gloat or his villainous exposition might have told them the truth.   Instead they had to accept a convenient lie, and just let her bash Genma for it.

It was a form of therapy, although it didn't really help matters.

Victims of Moreau's virus manifested their deepest fears or fondest dreams, although many people might have required a pop psychologist to identify their changes as such.   Most people merely found these manifestations vaguely disturbing, or oddly satisfying, to a greater or lesser degree.   However, most people were not Ranma and Ranma was not like most people at all.   Except in one way.

People are stupid, you see.   They'll believe a lie just because they want it to be true, or simply because they are afraid that it is.   This is how voodoo curses and self fulfilling prophecies often work, and sometimes less superstitious things as well.   Ranma's life should have made him intimately familiar with the principle and let him avoid being as stupid.   Some lessons, he just never learned.

Ranma was also, among other things, an aluriphobiac whose response to overstimulation was to develop a multiple personality disorder and use it to retreat from reality.   Had he been under the influence of these combined symptoms when the psionic infection broke, things may well have developed differently.   However, the mere existence of such pathological problems in his psyche did not bode well for how he would handle what actually had happened.

Ranma had once been lied to as a child.   His ego had dismissed that lie at the time, as it had been a sane and rational thing to do even for a small child, for it was a very fantastic lie and told in spite.   His father wasn't a really an ogre, nor would he grow up to be a demon like him.   However, since then he'd seen some rather freaky things which had eroded his skepticism.   He'd also heard the lie repeated, in one form or another, often enough for self doubts to bring it back to haunt him.   It had preyed on his id at night and provided fertile ground for Moreau's virus to turn the lie into physical truth.

In the light of the new day, Ranma's tortured psyche had done the rest.   Faced with the undeniable evidence that she looked like an oni, flew like an oni, and coughed up balls of molten copper like an oni, Ranma's fractured psyche decided that she really was an oni.   And would act like one too!

Ranma had gone bye-byes to la-la land, and Oni-chan took his place.   Her fear twisted mind modeled her new persona upon all the available role models of how an oni should behave.   She would be as evil and heartless as the real oni that had once possessed Kasumi.   Though she would also be as lazy and greedy as Genma.   Also, of course, she would be as perverted as Happosai.   That was a given.   She had simply to become every vile and amoral thing anyone had ever accused Ranma of being.

"Feeling better, Oni-chan?" Nabiki asked snidely, having no idea she'd given Ranma's new persona its name.   "Got it all worked out of your system, yet?"

"Oh, I'm feeling much better now, thank you," Onichan purred and stalked over to the golden girl.