RiW: Getting with the spirit (animal) of things. [Episode 5647]

The lab was quite amazing.   Nurse Nanako lead Ranma and two other kids deeper into its labarinthine depths; passed all the computers and hubs, passed the banks of tubes of jelly with creatures floating inside, passed the vital snack machines and water coolers, passed the exercise equipment, passed the kennels and cages, and even passed the machine-that-goes-ping, until they reached the room where Professor Oak was fiddling with the controls of a eerily green glowing machine until it emitted a satisfactorily ominous hum.

“Well, kids, today is the Big Day,” the absent minded Professor congradulated them when the nurse caught his preocupied attention.   “Are you ready to bond with your first spirit animals?”

“Sir, yes, Sir!” they agreed, nervously eyeing the ominous device.

“That’s the spirit, kids,” the Professor approved, then hit them on the head, one by one, with a rolled up magazine.   “But you’re not in the army yet.   Anyway, as you know, few people understand how magic works, and even fewer can perform the required rituals on their own.   The rituals are complex and have to be performed with such precission that it takes years to learn to cast even the simplest spell.   Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Ranma agreed, “I guess it’s like the way a martial artist has to practice a kata over and over again until it becomes ‘action without thought’ before moving onto more advanced techniques.”   (Of course, it used ta take me only a couple of hours…)

“Mmm… Yes, exactly, Ash,” the Professor agreed, wondering when the kid had become interested in anything remotely resembling exercise.   “That kind of magic is powerful, but not really practical.   Technology, on the other hand, can be used by anyone even if they don’t understand how it works.”

“Like, you don’t need to know anything about capacitors, resistors, or transistors, just to turn on a light switch?” interupted the girl on Ranma’s left.

“Just so, Misty,” confirmed the Professor.   “It was the genius of Professor Sukebe to realise that spells are a lot like computer programs, they are just very, very detailed instructions.   People have trouble learning to follow complex rituals, but computer circuits are very good at it.   Professor Sukebe thought that it should be possible to combine computers and magic in this way.   His learned peers at the time ridiculed his notions and called him a mad scientist, but he wasn’t mad, just really pissed off that nobody beleived him.   He ignored their mockery to persue his theories on his own.   He worked tirelessly without funding to develop a magic circuit, fueled with determination to prove his detractors wrong and, in the end, he couldn’t bloody do it!”

“Ahem.   Magic and electronics just don’t mix,” Professor Oak appologetically explained.   “What the revered Professor settled for in the end was a technique to imprint his ‘magic circuits’ directly into a living creature’s aura.   This would enable someone to channel their personal energy into prepared paterns so they can cast a spell without performing a lengthy ritual.   There were a couple of problems with this technique, though.”

“Firstly, only a limited number of such patterns can be placed in any one aura, and all such had to have a similar theme.   Thus someone would be able to specialise in a particular type of magic, but wouldn’t be able to change their focus later on.   Trying to change an already imprinted aura tends to make it really, erm, messed up.”

“‘Messed up’?” the boy to Ranma’s right repeated in disbelief.

“Er, I could tell you the proper scientific term, Brock, but that’s essentially it,” the professor explained airily.

“You don’t really know, do you?” Ranma interjected.

The Professor glared at him, then hurumphed.   “Anyway, the other problem was that there were side effects.   Changing a creatures’s aura this way changes something called their ‘morphine field’.”

“You mean their ‘morphic field’, don't you?” corrected Ranma, who’d had reason to research the subject of morphic resonance in another lifetime.

The Professor paused to hit Ranma over the head with the newspaper and chastised, “that’s enough out of you, Ash.   Pretty mouthy for a kid who almost failed his written exam, aintya?   Now then, what I meant is that when someone channelled their magical energy through a pattern imprinted in their aura, they were slowly mutilat– mutat– ahem, changed physically.”

“Told ya he didn’t know the term,” Ranma stage whispered and earned another whapping.

“Ahem.   The solution to both these problems was to buffer the user from the effect by imprinting the spell onto another creature.   Which is where the spirit animals come in.   They are artificial creatures imprinted with various types of modular magic, thus allowing their owners to safely use their abilities and even combine them into more complex spells.”

“Now, are there any more questions?” the Professor asked, and glared challengingly at Ranma.

“Uhm, yes, sir!” commented Misty.   “What was the lengthy exposition for?   We already know all this.”

“I dunno,” the Professor admitted with a shrug.   “It just seemed appropriate for some reason.   Anyway, moving on.   All we have to do is imprint your auras with a circuit to enable you to exist in a symbiotic relationship with a ‘spirit animal’.”

“Wait, I thought you said imprinting someone like that caused a somatic mutation,” Ranma protested.   (Well, you didn’t use those terms but…)

“Well, Ash, there is a slight risk,” the Professor admitted, “but there is just no other way to establish a conduit.   Without it you would have no way to control your creatures and they would just suck the life out of you instead of just leeching enough to power their abilities on demand.”