Arc and Ki

by Miklagaard

A certain mysterious and beautiful Japanese redhead comes knocking at Tony Stark's Malibu mansion with insights into an equally mysterious power. Pepper has concerns, but Tony was sure this would be amazing anyway because: Redhead! Which ever way it played out... it was going to be one hell of a ride.

2. Core Competencies: Vectors and Maniacs

Disclaimer: This is a work of fan-fiction and no ownership of any intellectual property is claimed or implied. Quotes from original sources are included, but rather than disrupt the flow of the story, I will acknowledge them in general here. All instances of irony are likely intentional.

Note: Chapter 1 has been edited slightly based on very helpful feedback. Thank you all who took time to make constructive criticisms.

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(Chapter theme song: Mr. Krinkle – Primus)

(... just watch the video to tell you why)

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"That ain't right... That ain't right..." Tony Stark repeated hollowly as he rocked back and forth on the ground where he had stumbled back and fallen onto his armored behind. "Redheaded hotties with sweet, sexy bodies shouldn't be guys... No... Oh, dear, fuzzy, chimerical god no... That ain't right..."

"He really going to be OK?" A mild baritone voice asked, causing the playboy billionaire to shudder involuntarily.

"Who him?" was Pepper Potts's inordinately amused response. "Tony will be fine in a while. If not, we'll whack his helmet a few times to wake him up. Ignore him. So you can control the 'curse' with water?"

"Control? Eh... that is bad word for it. Hot water changes me back to guy, but cold water always gets me again... any way it can. Broken pipes, buckets dumped out windows... ladle-ladies... all sorts of ways switching me back to girl."

"So it seems to want you to be female all the time?" the business executive speculated in a suddenly calm tone. Tony's spasms stopped and his dead eyes now shone with a glimmer of hope.

"Uh...? No, not that I think of it," the inventor went back to quivering at the denial, the light dimming in his eyes once again behind his metal mask. "When needed to be girl... like really, really needed... hot water would show up like cold water did."

"Why would you need to be female?"

"If life in danger or something. Like that thing with Happosai and the spring that time. Or when my mother wanted..." the all-too-male voice trailed off sadly. "Never mind. Just happens when it bad to happen."

"I'm... not sure I want to know what you would think is life-threatening," Pepper commented dubiously. "Is that why I saw your girl-form identified as 'Ranko Tendo' when I found those YouTube videos? You were trying to protect yourself with an assumed name?"

"Well... name came from that, but it spread to people I didn't tell name to. I think maybe they got confused. Or maybe they like him..." a head of raven-black hair jerked toward the spaced-out technologist, "and they want to be confused."

Pepper giggled. "That seems quite possible," she agreed. "What really strikes me is how different your forms are from each other..." Realizing how absurd that sounded, she clarified: "I mean beyond the gender and hair color changes, of course. You are about a head taller now! Where does the mass go?"

"The masses..." Tony moaned. "Those big... beautiful... perfect round masses... Where did they go? Where did they go~?"

"Situation exceeds algorithmic parameters," JARVIS replied mechanically. "Human intervention is required to resolve heuristic failures." It was not the first time the NLUI had said these things since Ranma's transformation.

"Keep ignoring him," Pepper suggested dryly. "Though he has a bit of a point. While your female side was very obviously well muscled, it was still so very curvy and feminine..."

Iron Man whimpered brokenly at the reminder of what had been lost.

"While your male side, however..." she trailed off. "Here... lets give that to Tony since he wanted to investigate it." A black cloth landed on top of the traumatized billionaire's head, covering his golden visor, but he made no move to remove it. "Do mind if I..."

"Huh? Oh! Uh... sure... go ahead, I guess."

"Thank you," there was a pause before Pepper gasped: "My god! I've never felt anything so hard... and intense... and hard before...!" Pepper went on in an entranced tone.

Actuators whined at high pitches as the armored man suddenly shook his head rapidly, dislodging the t-shirt covering it. "Whubba-Habbba-Hey...?! What...?!" He forced his eyes to focus on the people in front of him. "Pepper?! What the hell?"

"What?" she replied defensively as she continued to run her fingers over Ranma-the-now-man's chiseled pectorals. "I've never seen anything like this up close before! Ranma makes those fellows on Muscle Beach look soft and bloated! A girl doesn't get a chance like this more than once in life, you know... mm-mm.." she hummed a bit sensually as her palms traced down the martial artists abdomen.

"Pepper...?" Tony asked incredulously, "weren't you the one going on about cavorting with jailbait earlier!?"

"Oh, Tony... Once they see Ranma here..." the strawberry blonde said scathingly as she turned her head to give him a brief, condescending look. "No jury in the world would convict me." Sidling up a bit closer to the fighter her hands crept toward the sash holding up his trousers. "You were rather well endowed as a woman. I wonder..."

"WAAAIT A MINUTE!" Tony yelped as he tried to scramble to his feet.

Forgetting the mechanical damage to this suit's right arm, its failure caused him to sprawl face-first in the dirt again, the remaining functional limbs churning desperately. A moment later he staggered to his feet to confront his long time friend on her blatant hypocrisy. However, when he was upright, it was to find her standing there facing him, one arm across her midsection and its hand supporting the elbow of the other. Her free hand was pointing at him and she was smirking, Ranma beside her was looking away and biting his lip as he tried not to laugh. "Gotcha!" she declared.

"Ugh..." Tony groaned, face-palming with a clang. "Hah," he barked a single laugh. "OK, you got me. Good. That's good. Maybe you'll tell a joke more than once a leap-year from now on, huh?" Pepper Potts, highly experienced Stark-herder that she was, could tell his mind had rebooted and was back on track... as she had intended. Leaning over, Iron Man picked up the discarded shirt and shook it. "So this thing is really packing away all that junk still? That's a heck of a magic trick if true."

Ranma came and retrieved it, donning it once again to the relief of the mansion owner. Pepper was right, the kid had a body that made regular bodybuilders look positively ill, and it was a little distracting and intimidating. "Yes," the martial artist told them simply, pulling out a chain from his left sleeve. "And is not magic. Is Ki. Very different."

"Wild... OK, Bruce Lee, based on the evidence, I concede you're the expert in wacky impossible crap, whether it's magic or a magic-like alternative. Or maybe I should call you Gandalf?" Seeing the blank look, he added: "As in the wizard? Magic user?"

"I wish," Ranma half-smiled ruefully. "Maybe not fall in Jusenkyo back then. But no, I know only what magic does, not how. And all I learned was from it smacking me in the face some times."

"Eh... school of hard knocks. That's more than what gets taught on the subject at MIT," Tony said. "So what are you going to do now? Got a place to stay?"

The raven-haired teen nodded eastward. "I'll go to woods and camp out. But still need to have real bout with you. With TV."

"Another fight?" the inventor asked in exasperation. "Why? I don't wanna fight you again! Especially not on camera!"

"You don't?" Ranma looked honestly shocked. "Why not? Was fun fight, but be better next time!"

"That," Tony pointed at the younger man. "That's why. This was bad enough... I don't need a 'better' fight! I'll frikkin lose!"

"So?" the Japanese native was bewildered. "How you get better at fighting then?"

"Build new improvements to the Iron Man armor," the industrialist explained slowly, as if it should be obvious. "Work out new combat simulations and conduct test flights. Like a sane person!"

"Meh," Ranma scoffed. "Kihon and kata, but no kumite. Never get good that way!"

Tony paused. As a brown belt in karate, he knew what the far... far, far, far, far, far... more experienced martial artist had a point. However... "No... no way! I'll be glad to have your input for my tactics database. I'll pay you to let me study your tricks. We can even have spars somewhere remote and secure... when I'm not worn the hell out. But no fights where I'll get my ass kicked in front of the entire goddamn world!"

"Finally... some common sense for a change!" Pepper snarked.

"Ahh... kuso!" Ranma cursed, then started pacing in agitation. "You really won't do it?" Seeing the firmly shaken helmet he slumped in depression. "Warui desu! This bad! Need to be on American TV soon!" His accent thickened as he became upset.

"You said that before," Tony recalled. "What the hell is so important?"

"I turn eighteen soon!"

One red armored arm was flung in the air in exasperation while the other stalled and sparked. "And...? Why the hell does that matter?"

Ranma grimaced, then took a deep breath to calm down and order his thoughts. "In Japan, boy can't get married until eighteen. I don't want to be married, so I come here. Need to stay here until I'm twenty years old."

"Well uh..." Iron Man tilted his head in confusion. "I can understand wanting to avoid the whole ball-and-chain thing, but I'd say rowing six thousand miles away will make damn sure you don't get to the church on time. You really didn't need to go that far. Why not just say no? Get someone pregnant?"

"Eh?!" Ranma jumped like he'd been stuck with a pin. "No! I-I-I never... I..." he shook himself and scowled angrily. "No!"

"OK, then what's the problem? It takes two to tango, kid. If you don't want to marry some woman, then just don't sleep with her and don't agree to meet her at any churches or courthouses. It's not like she can get married to you by herself," Tony chuckled. "Good thing too, or I'd be hitched who knows how many times by gold-diggers."

"You not understand. We get married even if both don't be there. They... how you say... pretend write my name on paper," Ranma tried to explain, his grasp of English fraying as he got excited.

"Forgery? They'd forge your signature?" the heir to the Stark fortune got serious again as a valid concern, one he had had issues with himself in the past, was revealed. "Then get a lawyer! Or call the police!"

"No money for lawyer," Ranma shook his head in frustration. "Almost no money for clothes or food. Never have money for lawyer. Police? Run away from when kid. See on TV. See in other wards. But they useless. Never see in Nerima. Think Kuno family pay them to leave." He waved his hand around at the surroundings. "I prove not in Japan. Then marriage in Japan be impossible. Me and Akane and Koyuki figure out plan."

Trying to keep his former opponent's tirade coherent, Tony asked: "Who are Akane and Koyuki?"

"Akane Tendo is my... person supposed to marry? Koyuki... actually, his name is Yukio, but we all call him Koyuki... is her friend."

"Your fiancee?" Pepper interjected. "She's helping you avoid marrying her instead of trying to marry you against your will? If you both don't want to get married, what's going on? Who would forge your signatures?"

"Yes!" Ranma nodded eagerly. "My Oyaji and Tendo-san... Akane's father... they say before we born..." he frowned pompously and deepened his voice, "'The schools must be joined!"' Back in a normal tone, he continued: "So they say Saotome son and Tendo daughter have to marry when old enough. Koyuki... he is Akane's boyfriend, actually... his friends figure out we safe until I'm eighteen, then in danger after if they fake papers. So I came here!"

"Your parents..." Pepper said incredulously. "What kind of parents go so far as to break the law just to marry their kids off?"

"A lot of the Old Money families tend to push hard for dynastic marriages," Tony pointed out. "To the point where skulduggery might get used to deal with obstacles. But none of them would go that far... probably."

"Tch," Ranma scoffed. "Twice they knock us out. Then we wake up and we're in a wedding! Lucky wedding destroyed both times. They only stop when find out it illegal 'cause I'm not eighteen." The two Americans were horrified by this, of course.

"Tony...?" the same caring nature that made her continue to help Tony Stark even at his obnoxious worst rose up in Pepper Potts once again.

"Got it," he assured her. "Say, Ranma... why don't you come inside? We'll sit down over some food and talk about what's going on."

"Arigato... thank you," Ranma bowed quickly to them both with genuine regret. He hated turning down the offer of a meal, if nothing else. "But I need to figure out how to get on TV other way. Oi," he shook his head in consternation, "never expected that part to be so difficult. Plan was perfect... I just had to get in big mess like usual!"

"Heh... right," Tony said, thinking of some of his own fiascoes in the past. "You'd think a strategy that depended on disaster would be a sure thing, wouldn't you?"

"It would be in your case," Pepper needled him.

Tony just shrugged his armored shoulders. "Well... I can think of a few things that might do what you need without me getting pummeled. We can even shotgun a few of them at once to make sure. Grab your stuff and follow me down to the garage, you can stow your canoe there for now. I need to go there to remove my armor anyway." The younger man nodded agreeably and trotted off to fetch his belongings.

Leaning over he muttered to Pepper: "Start digging things up on the kid. He seems too naive to be pulling some type of scam, but..."

"I already had JARVIS assembling information even before we figured out that the Ranma Saotome we found videos of was the same as the girl claiming the name," the ever efficient Ms. Potts told him. "We might need to do some discreet investigation in government systems, I saw evidence the Japanese were trying to repress information about Ranma. Their government puts out statements referring to Ranma and others like him as performance artists to throw people off the trail."

"Sir, I have broadened the search parameters on a group of individuals colloquially known as the 'Nerima Wrecking Crew,' but I am having difficulty determining what is relevant and what is not," the AI confessed. "Too much of it is highly inconsistent with pre-existing algorithms for logistic, scientific, or sociological data. Human intervention is required to resolve heuristic failures," JARVIS repeated.

"Yeah, we definitely need to have a look at that... immediately," Iron Man nodded, contemplating updates to allow his personal AI to process Ranma's brand of strangeness better. "Just scoop up everything for now and see if Pepper can spot more to look for."

His friend nodded and said: "I'll be in my office space." Pepper hurried back inside the mansion as Ranma walked up with his boat casually balanced on a shoulder. Tony motioned for the martial artist to follow and clomped onto the driveway that sloped down underground, his new guest pacing silently alongside. Idly, the mechanical genius examined the primitive vessel and noticed it was rather well-made for what it was. Especially something that was handmade by the teen now carrying it if what Ranma had said earlier was accurate. The supports for the outrigger ran through holes in the main body that were closely fitted to the poles and the canoe itself had been planed perfectly smooth on the outer hull, which showed signs of scorching. A glance at the inside showed it was similarly cleanly finished.

"How long did it take you to make that thing?" Tony asked curiously as JARVIS activated the garage door and it rose into it's hidden recess in the ceiling.

Ranma took a moment to think about it, then said: "I raided a junkyard on way to Chiba the night I snuck out. That was like three hours before dawn. Then when there enough light to see, I find good fallen tree and carved it out with tanto. Made a fire to... cook it? To make it not sink?"

"Fire-hardening," Tony supplied.

"Yes," Ranma agreed. "I 'fire-harden' it while making... uh..." he pointed to the metal paraboloid, "this to cook things with sun."

"Solar oven," the engineer interpreted again.

"'Solar oven,"' the Japanese native repeated. "That was a pain in my butt. Took all morning to smooth it out and make it reflect to same place. Had to... rub it to make shiny."

"'Polish.' And I really need to set up JARVIS to get you up to speed with your vocabulary."

"Gomen... sorry!" Ranma looked embarrassed

"It's OK, I'm just too impatient to be a language teacher," Tony waved it off. "How did you polish the metal? I kind of doubt you had an industrial electrolyte-plasma polisher handy."

"A what? No. I rubbed... er... 'polished' it with my hands. Felt angles at the same time to make sure they bounce sun right."

"Wait," Stark stopped in surprise. "You mean with your hands as in there was nothing between your skin and the metal like... I dunno... tools...? No, never mind... of course that's what you mean." He shook his head a couple of times.

"Yeah," Ranma confirmed slowly. "When that done, I have lunch."

"You had lunch..." Tony muttered. "Meaning you did all that in a few hours. I assume you made the water still," he pointed at the device to forgo another round of linguistic stumbling, "after lunch? I ask as if this all shouldn't have taken you days or weeks without power-tools"

"I have fast hands," Ranma shrugged dismissively. "Yeah, I made the 'water still,' put everything in the boat, and left that afternoon before anyone could find me."

"Frikken impossible Super-Saiyan bast... hey... wait a second," the inventor cut off his half-joking grumbling. "How precise are you? I mean, can you work at high speed still when doing small, detailed things?"

"Yeah," the young man answered simply.

"How precise?"

"Hmm..." Ranma hummed as he looked around for something to demonstrate on in the featureless curve of the tunnel leading to the garage. Getting an idea, he lowered the canoe, balancing it on his hand as easily as if it were a tea tray, and fished around in his pack. He pulled out a Japanese style dagger in a sheath, gripped the sheath with his teeth in order to draw the blade, then with a single swipe he chopped half a foot of log off the end of the outrigger.

With the canoe back on his shoulder, he caught the lump of wood with a foot and kicked it into the air. With a flickering of steel, he sliced at the wood faster than Iron Man's suit systems could follow as it rose up to a little above eye-height and fell back down. Ranma kicked it upward again, dislodging a flurry of wood chips and shavings, and continued to cut away at it before Tony's astonished eyes.

The next time it fell, Ranma sheathed the knife as it popped the wooden artifact into the air with a toe one last time. Grabbing it out of mid-air with the hand that was freed once the tanto was clenched in his teeth again, he handed it to his host. Then he casually put the blade away in his pack again while the armored hero carefully cupped the result of his efforts in one gauntlet.

"Hooooly shit," Tony breathed. In his hand was a carved figurine of Iron Man, legs spread in a combat stance on a roughly rounded pedestal and palms held forward as it preparing to fire. It wasn't nearly as detailed as some of the crafts projects fans had sent him in the past, most of which were stored at Stark Industries headquarters and the best put on display or sent to his home. But for something made in seconds with one hand and a foot, it was stupendous. "Yeah... OK... I guess you can manage some precision work," he declared gruffly, pretending he wasn't as impressed as he was, or that he wasn't adding to his list of potential plans for the youth. Hand-building experimental components was a bottleneck of time. Tony was very good with tools... the best around, really... but he didn't have superhuman speed.

Ranma smirked knowingly at the facade and started sweeping the chips and shavings together in a pile with one foot.

"You don't have to do that," Tony told him, "The cleaning robots will get it later."

"I got it," the martial artist said as his foot hovered over the pile. Suddenly it blurred in a circle and the wood debris was caught up in a small whirlwind. With a stamp of his foot, the twirling waste spiraled up into the air, where he caught it all in the hollow of the canoe.

"Show-off," Tony's accused flatly, though the corner of his mouth twitched stubbornly as it tried to smile despite his intent.

"Yes!" Ranma agreed shamelessly.

Snorting a laugh, the billionaire led them the rest of the way down the ramp and into the garage proper. He was a little surprised when the young man looked over the fleet of expensive sports cars and motorcycles with no sign of interest. More gratifying to his ego, the visitor's attention was definitely riveted by the display of Iron Man armor versions.

"You called your countrymen insane for the Iron Man mania," the subject of that mania mentioned as he set the carving on his desk, "but you seem pretty keen on it, too."

"Ah... yeah. Can't help it. Macross and Kamen Rider and all. Even I know all about them when I was gaki... little kid." The teenager brightened as something occurred to him. "You should make giant robot dragon or something!"

"Cool idea, but that sounds rather impractical," Tony said. "What reason would you even need something like that?"

"Uh... reason?"

"Never mind," Iron Man's amusement was clear despite the electronic distortion of his helmet. "You can set your canoe up against the wall there. Grab your pack, though, you might need it later." He stepped over to a grid marked on the floor, which opened up into an array of robot arms and other mechanisms. "Ughh," he grunted a bit as he forced his right arm up, "I need to get out of this suit and have JARVIS repair it." He stepped into the boot clamps and waited as the suit was disassembled from around him.

Wincing as watched the process with fascination, Ranma apologized: "Sorry. Tried not to do real damage."

"No big deal," Tony said as he stepped away from the receding equipment. "I'd be an idiot if I didn't have the means to maintain my own armor. JARVIS, how long will it take to get back to 100%?"

"Spare parts are present for the damaged servos, sir," the natural language user interface reported. "The Mark IV will be at full operation in two minutes. New spares will be fabricated in less than twenty-five minutes."

"See? No biggie! And... what's up with you now?" He stared at the youth who was clutching his head as he looked at the industrialist.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Ranma began giving full bows over and over again. "Sorry! So sorry! Sorry!"

"What?" Tony leaned back as he gave his guest a perplexed look. "Uh... 'no biggie' means there's nothing to be sorry for... does it mean something else in Japanese or something? I mean, as amazing as the armor is, it's just metal and electronics that I can always rebuild from scratch."

"No!" the super-human martial artist straightened with an utterly woebegone expression. "I not know you sick when fight! Sorry! Sorry!" he started rapid-fire bows again.

"Whoa! Shh-shh-shh!" Tony threw a panicked glance over his shoulder to make sure Pepper hadn't walked in yet while hurrying toward Ranma and making shushing motions. "Not so loud!" he hissed. "I'm not ready for Pepper to find out about that yet. How the hell did you know?"

Looking toward the stairs behind the glass doorway himself, Ranma lowered his voice. "When you were out of your armor, I feel your Ki better. It all hidden behind the other one of those..." he pointed to the Arc reactor mounted in Tony's chest, "when armor on. But now it clear and show you're sick."

"Interesting..." Stark murmured, "the Arc reactor possibly taps into a scalar, A-potential field for power. Could humans have done the same...? Ah!" he shook himself vigorously. "Later for that...! Ranma!" he set his hands on the the master fighter's shoulders, "I really need you to... Jeez, Pepper wasn't kidding about the muscles." He patted distractedly at the ludicrously powerful trapezius and deltoid muscles.

"Uh... Stark-San?"

"Call me Tony," the eccentric genius invited absently, then refocused himself and gave Ranma a serious look. "I need you to not say anything to Pepper about me being ill."

Ranma looked very unhappy. "Isn't she your friend? She came out to fight for you! To fight me! Me!" He pointed to himself for emphasis, trying to make it clear how significant the woman's actions were by taking on someone with his combat capability, even if he would never harm a hair on the civilian woman's head.

"She did, and she's probably the most important, dearest friend I've got," Tony admitted. "But... I'm really not ready to see how she'll react. What I've got, I haven't found a solution for yet, and I don't want to worry her about it until I do... or..." he grimaced. "I'll tell her about it when there's a cure! OK? So can you promise to keep it quiet for now?"

"Aiyah!" Ranma face-palmed. "Big promises with no end been bad for me!" The whole deal with the promise to Ryoga about concealing the other boy's Jusenkyo-bestowed pig form sprung immediately to his mind. He'd shamed himself a variety of ways to keep that secret despite Ryoga constantly using his alternate form to take advantage of Akane's ignorance, and it had all been pointless in the end. His hand slowly slid down off his face. "How long you want me to be quiet? And what is problem anyway?"

"For... ever? OK, not forever..." Tony backpedaled at the look he was given. "How about... a month?" Ranma nodded reluctantly. "As for the cause... I'll tell you later when Pepper isn't around." He looked around again. "In fact, we should probably get upstairs before she comes looking for us. So shut up about it for now and try not to show anything's wrong." He looked at the teenager's grim, troubled face, "can you do something about how you look right now?"

"Yeah," Ranma sighed and took a deep breath before closing his eyes and letting it out, his face becoming blank as his eyes opened again. Tony looked up at the ventilation when he felt a sudden chill, then ignored it in favor of smirking at the martial artist.

"Not your expression. I meant the whole male thing." He waved a hand to indicate Ranma's entire being. "This isn't working for me... go woman again."

Ranma rolled his eyes, his expression becoming more natural. "Fine," he said, deciding to give the invalid a break. He carried his pack over to the sink near the stairs and used it to splash his... now her... face. "Happy?" she inquired with faux sweetness.

"I am!" the technologist confirmed. "Thanks for uh... holding off on telling Pepper."

"Hai... hai... just make sure you're not messing up, eh?" Ranma said as she hefted her pack.

"Who me?" Tony asked innocently. "C'mon, lets go talk to Pep." He led the way through the glass door and up the stairs. Ranma followed while cautiously scanning with her Ki, a little nervous to be in such a vulnerable, yet expensive structure. Half the place was made of fragile glass. The other half was made of poured concrete which was only slightly less fragile for the types of people she was used to dealing with. While she herself had superb control of her strength, far beyond what any of the fighters she knew tended to demonstrate (other than Happosai and Ku Lon,) she was less worried about breaking things directly than some random attacker popping up to cause damage that she'd be blamed for. Unlike the Tendo's mainly wooden home, she didn't have the skills to repair or rebuild any part of the Stark mansion, so she was a little concerned.

They moved through the spacious mansion to the room kept for those many times Pepper needed to do desk work while also riding herd in her idiosyncratic boss. When they found her, she was staring at her monitors, gaze switching back and forth between them, looking faintly shocked. "I can see why JARVIS had problems categorizing this, but I was able to give him more guidance on what was relevant and what was not. He has a larger data-set to work from now. He managed to recover some deleted videos that show Ranma's transformation and a lot of other frankly incredible stuff. I've had JARVIS authenticate everything, and if someone created these things with CGI or something, they did a better job than he can of detecting it."

"I doubt anyone out there is going to get a fake past JARVIS," Tony declared. "We've seen Ranma's transformation... twice now in my case." Pepper looked over and saw the busty redhead had made a reappearance. She shot the inventor an annoyed glance, but did not comment. "I think we can safely assume whatever you are seeing was real."

"In that case... what on Earth was going on here?" She turned around a monitor to display it's contents. On it, a male Ranma was doing battle in mid-air against some sort of tentacled minotaur creature.

"Oh... Pansuto Taro," Ranma identified. "Which time was this?" she wondered. Watching the action for a moment, she said: "Oh, this is a good one. First time I beat him in straight up fight. The first three times: I would lead him into a trap, or hold him off until he gave up, or that time Rujuu handed him his ass." She winced a little as the screen showed her male form slipping under the chimera-cursed individual's guard to launch a barrage of kicks to the knees and crotch, making the huge being writhe and bellow in pain. "Eh... might have gone too far there. Was soon after Jusendo when that happened." She shrugged "Got him to stop insulting me, though."

"Insulting...? You speak... whatever that thing's language is?" Tony asked, wondering if it was an alien.

"Huh?" Ranma looked confused a moment before her expression cleared. "Oh... no. That guy's got Jusenkyo curse too. A really mixed up one. Fell in pool of... I don't know any of these words in English. Niuhomanmaorennichuan? Where is that translator guy?"

"Sir, the name means 'ox-crane-eel-yeti-drowned-spring,' essentially," JARVIS provided.

"Is he watching us with cameras?" Ranma asked. "I not feel another person here."

"JARVIS is a Natural Language User Interface, or a NLUI," Stark explained. "He is a computer program with the ability to translate normal speech into commands and queries as well as self-programming capability to carry those commands out."

"Oh... like in 'Ghost in the Shell?"'

"Not quite, JARVIS was not based on a human mind upload or anything like that," the inventor explained, familiar with the iconic Japanese anime. "However, he can learn, adapt, and re-program his sub-routines as needed based on extensive databases of related and unrelated information that he references with abstraction heuristics. So he can have conversations with people who would not immediately realize he wasn't another human being." Ranma nodded slowly in response, but still looked a little confused. "I'll explain it better when we have a better shared vocabulary. Actually... strike that... I'll have JARVIS explain it himself since I included a language-tutoring feature..."

"That you have never availed yourself of, as I recall," JARVIS interrupted with a surprisingly sniffy tone for an electronic construct.

"Ah well," Tony waved off the comment, "you'll get to put it to work soon. But back to the minotaur thing: four creatures fell in this pool and drowned all at once? Skipping the whole issue of an eel drowning... they all drowned simultaneously? And this fellow got cursed with all their features at once?"

"That's what I was told," Ranma showed lingering bewilderment herself. "Jusenkyo's weird. Rules keep changing, I think. Magic's like that all the time."

"Speaking of weird, is that a mullet?" Tony paused the clip and pointed at Ranma's hair in the image.

"Nooo..." Ranma denied hesitantly. "It's just hair that's short in front and long in back for traditional queue."

"That's the very definition of a mullet," Tony countered with some amusement. His grinned widened as Ranma looked away and pouted. "Well? Mullet or mullet-like hairstyle?" he asked as he leaned in and stared expectantly at her.

"OK, fine," Ranma groused at last. "Technically, it was mullet. Grew my hair long when found out about mullets."

"To bad about all the photographic evidence, huh?" the inventor teased, making the redhead pout again.

"Ahem," Pepper interjected to stop the childishness. "A more important question, though I may not want to know the answer, is what about the tentacles?"

"Oh yeah... he went back and splashed himself with more Jusenkyo water to add octopus," the martial artist commented idly. "Here... you see in a second." She pointed to the screen just before the tentacles projected jets of black ink as the large, bestial opponent forced her male form to back off. The creature then tried to retreat unsteadily, but found a faceful of foot as soon as he turned around, Ranma somehow coming from the other direction. Landing on his own tentacles and wings caused Taro to bellow in pain and paralyzed him long enough for Ranma to salvo some more kicks directly to the bovine head, knocking him out.

"I'm still processing that all this nonsense is real," Pepper admitted. She glanced at the clock, then leaned back and rubbed her eyes. "Ugh... it already seems like it's been a long day, but it isn't quite noon yet. Tony..." she looked at her once-employer, "as much as I wanted to evaluate everything myself, I'm going to let JARVIS finish collating a file on Ranma and order some food instead. I'll get back to it once I've had some time to decompress."

"Your first executive decision?" Stark asked with a smirk. "That's fine, though don't forget to do whatever it is you need to run my company."

"That's my business now, isn't it?" she gave him an unimpressed look.

"You may be the CEO... once all the paperwork gets done, anyway... but I'm still the majority shareholder," the billionaire pointed out smugly. "So that means you still work for me. No?"

"It means I work for your benefit," the strawberry blonde rolled her eyes. "It means things are going to get done my way... the efficient way. It means you can feel free to refrain from interfering with the day-to-day operations of the company."

"Oh yeah... the boring stuff," Tony conceded. "OK, food it shall be. Shall we get sushi in deference to my new houseguest?"

"'Houseguest?' When did that get decided?" Pepper asked archly.

"Just, uh... now!" The dark-haired man smiled impudently. "Beats camping in the woods and eating squirrel, or whatever you were planning," he directed at Ranma.

"And a hotel, or even my place, are not options... why?" the strawberry blonde asked.

"Do you realize that given how we blocked the sight-lines to this place and how Ranma arrived, nobody but us knows she's here?" Stark countered with his own question. His long-time friend and keeper frowned and tilted her head thoughtfully. "Remember the 'performance artists' thing. Also, remember SHIELD, and our competitors. We don't need officious busybodies or half-baked corporate espionage attempts until we figure out what we're doing first, right? Either of us checking her into a hotel might was well be a press release. Your condo would be much better, but you would still be seen transporting her by the paparazzi and nosy neighbors."

"Can sneak out of here and into any place you say, but need to give directions," Ranma offered.

Tony didn't bother to reply aloud, just cocked an eyebrow at Pepper, expecting her to make a certain decision. "OK," she grudgingly conceded, "it would simplify things to keep her here for tonight."

The redhead shrugged unconcernedly. "It'd be nice to be under an actual roof, and get fed. But what am I going to have to do for that?"

"For tonight? Answer questions. Beyond that?" Tony's face showed seldom seen seriousness that Pepper knew meant he was planning something interesting and often profitable. "Beyond that it depends on what we discuss. So... sushi? Teriyaki?"

"Uh..." Ranma looked a little abashed, "whatever you can get a lot of cheap, is good idea. I eat... a lot," she concluded with an air of understatement.

Tony snorted dismissively. "Unless you can eat as much as a thousand normal people, it won't be a problem. How much should we order?"

Ranma weaved her head a little in indecision. "I don't know many 'normal' people." She brightened and added: "Except Koyuki and his band. I eat as much as them, and they are five."

"I'll take that to mean five teenagers, not an unknown number of five-year-olds," the owner of the house joked.

"Would Chinese do?" Pepper suggested. "I kind of want something soon."

Seeing Ranma's acquiescence, Stark agreed. "JARVIS, get them to send an order for seven people, go with the seven most popular dishes, I guess," he instructed.

"Yes, sir," the computer acknowledged.

Tony then suggested: "How about I show you to the room you can stay in tonight, Ranma?" The martial artist followed him obediently out the door.

Pepper frowned in suspicion, then followed them out and up the stairs. At the top, she saw the room Tony had selected, and yelled: "Hold it!"

Tony suppressed a smile, badly, and asked: "Yes, Pepper?"

"You are not putting her in the room nearest to your bedroom," she stated as she crossed her arms.

"But what if she gets lonely and homesick in the night?" His wheedling tone came off as rather fake, especially with the amusement dancing in his eyes. "She can come over to my room for comfort!"

"Or I can toss you out window and take best bed for myself," Ranma offered, casually inspecting the knuckles of her fist.

"Uh-huh... yeah... no," Pepper decided. "Follow me, Ranma, let's get you set up in the farthest guest room. In fact, I'll stay in the next room over tonight to make sure no one does anything stupid." She pointedly eyed Tony sidelong as she guided the new arrival to the far end of the curved hallway.

"Won't really throw him out window, was joking," Ranma assured her. "If he do something, I just make him sleep with shiatsu point and toss him back in his room. No need to go through effort."

"I'm not worried about that part, he could probably use a good defenestration. Nothing else has straightened him out after all this time." Pepper smiled winsomely at the primary owner of Stark Industries, who sneered back in playful defiance. "However, it would make my job easier if we make sure neither his libido or his twisted sense of humor get the best of him. So I'll chaperone. It's not a difficulty, I've stayed here overnight before when I was stuck working past midnight for one thing or the other. Here we are," she announced as she opened door to the spare room.

Despite being very seldom used, the space was immaculately clean and bright from the floor to ceiling windows that were typical of the mansion. The only visible furnishings were the king-size bed, an end table, a chair, and a flat-panel screen that dominated one wall. The walls concealed other things, including storage, so Pepper started to say: "There are a few tricks to the rooms of this place, so I'll help you get settled."

Ranma turned from where she had propped her backpack against a wall with a quizzical look. "I'm settled? I think...?" she gestured toward her sole item of luggage in mute explanation.

"Ahhh," Pepper sighed, "well, you unpack like a guy, that's for sure. It's just as well for a single night until we make other arrangements, but you might want to learn how to use a closet and drawers like a civilized person."

Ranma looked utterly unbothered by the implication of being uncivilized. "Eh, OK, I guess. Closet's place I put things I want to forget about, and hope never need again. Oyaji never looks in there. Pack is for stuff I want to keep. Always did like that at Tendo's place."

Ms. Potts smirked a little at the familiar tactic of burying fashion disasters in the closet, but Tony's eyes sharpened at the hint. "What sort of outfit would you want to never remind people of?" the technologist asked probingly, connecting the dots with her reactions, her mannerisms, and her underwear choice. Ranma's eyes widened and her tanned skin darkened with a blush. "Something feminine? Something sexy?" he quizzed her with a very interested tone, making the blush deepen.

"Girl Rule Number One!" Pepper declared with a raised voice. "A woman never has to talk about what she keeps hidden in her closet with a man! Only a complete scumbag would keep asking, either! So endeth the lesson and any further conversation on this point!" The trans-Pacific voyager shot her a grateful look, then went impassive as she looked stonily back at her host.

"Whatever," Tony brushed off the implications against him and headed for the stairs. "Food should be here soon."

"Really?" Ranma asked in surprise as she followed. "Not even Shan Pu is that fast, and she rides her bicycle over roofs to make deliveries faster."

"'Rides her bicycle...' no... never mind," Pepper decided to ignore the odd comment. "We have a food delivery service that is very well paid to be very fast."

Ranma looked around and realized the mansion was lacking something she had expected from her dealings with the Kunos and other rich families. "You don't have cooks or maids or whatever?"

"I don't need them," Stark answered. "I have drones to do the cleaning and other menial stuff. JARVIS controls it all, but he can't cook a decent meal anymore than I can."

"And there is a cleaning crew that comes in every couple of weeks or whenever Tony's out of town," Pepper added. "The robots aren't up to to keeping this place completely up to standard by themselves. Laundry isn't automated either, another off-site service handles that."

"The food delivery vehicle is approaching the mansion," JARVIS announced.

"Great!" Tony clapped his hands. "Pep, be a dear and go get that will you?"

She gave him a long look before scoffing and heading to the front door. "Sure, have the CEO do the fetch and carry work. Why not?" she muttered.

"Uh... I'll help?" Ranma offered as she fell in step behind her. "Mostly food for me, yes?"

"Thank you, Ranma," the older woman gave her a grateful smile, causing the younger woman to pause for half a step. Despite the group of honestly good influences Akane had fallen into and had dragged her putative fiance in along with her, the martial artist was still not used to being politely thanked for anything. Or used to thanking others for that matter, though she was working on it. "Though honestly, we won't have to do a thing, and you should stay out of sight to prevent rumors from spreading. The food service people will carry it in and lay it out anyway," she admitted.

The delivery workers were much more efficient and business-like than Ranma had come to expect. They didn't flourish a single weapon or so much as scuff any part of the architecture. As such, the trio soon met up in the hilariously under-utilized and expensively equipped kitchen to claim their meals and eat at the table there. However, as they began to eat, the Americans were given pause by an odd sight.

"Are you... eating?" Pepper asked dubiously as she watched morsels of rice, vegetables, and meat dematerialize from Ranma's plate in rapid succession. The redhead seemed to be just sitting there, chopsticks in one of her hands as they rested on the table. Tony squinted hard at his guest's table setting, managing to see an occasional faint blur.

"Uh..." Ranma hesitated a moment as she set aside an emptied plate in favor of a full one, "yeah... like I said, I eat lots. So learned to eat quick. That or starve sometimes. Was part of training, too."

Pepper noted: "I can't even see your hands move!" Shaking her head in bafflement, she went on. "For some reason this seems even crazier than what you did outside. I mean, you're sitting down to an everyday meal like anyone else, but then you do that," she waved at the steadily emptying tableware.

"Well, I learned the 'élégant..."' she pronounced the last word with a distinctly French accent, "...way to eat from that crazy pack of French people. Lot of people said that was the best way for me to eat instead of like Oyaji. Since doing different things from Oyaji is always good idea, I listened."

Suddenly realizing what kind of spectacle an unmannered method of... 'vacuuming' seemed to describe it better than 'eating...' food could be, Pepper nodded. "Those people are probably correct."

"This is nothing," Tony interjected, "you should have seen the wood-carving stunt. In fact..." he clapped and the surface they were eating on suddenly showed a computer display. "JARVIS, bring up the helmet feed from when we were walking down the garage ramp!" When the video was obligingly shown, he used his fingers to move the window to where Pepper could see it clearly.

Chuckling in wonder as the relevant clip finished, Ms. Potts declared: "You should become an artist, Ranma! I definitely need to get a closer look at that figurine later."

"The only art I'm interested in is The Art," Ranma answered, holding up a clenched fist in illustration.

"Aren't many martial artists also painters and musicians and such?" Pepper argued. "I'm certain I recall Japanese samurai being poets and calligraphers at the very least."

The redhead's mouth pursed in mild distaste. "I don't like samurai much these days. But yeah... some fighters do that. There's one really skilled jiu-jitsuka master who sculpts stone, but that's for training, I think, since he uses his bare hands. I learn a few tricks like that," she nodded where the computer window had been, "but don't really want to do that lots."

"What do you want to do?" Tony took the opportunity to ask. "I mean beyond getting in the news and camp in the woods... what were you planning to do in California?"

Ranma stacked her third emptied plate and paused to order her thoughts. "Guess the next thing is to find public library. I hear you can use the e-mail in American libraries."

"I suppose..." Tony furrowed his brow and looked at his friend and former assistant for a clue. He had never been one to use the accommodations of regular people.

"Yes," Pepper answered definitively. "The facilities of the one near city hall are quite good and the building itself is very pleasant. I've taken reading breaks there sometimes if I eat lunch downtown."

"Good. Need to e-mail Koyuki so he can tell people I made it. See if anything blew up back in Tokyo." She sighed in resignation. "Should find books to read too, or Hokkusu-sensei get mad that I'm not learning book-knowledge."

"And who's that?" Tony asked, stroking his beard as his undeniably intelligent, if whimsical, mind drew suppositions and conclusions from his guest's commentary. The martial artist definitely had no firm plans, but more than that, she was reacting instead of acting. She could use some direction.

"Hokkusu-sensei? He owns a temple near where Koyuki lives," Ranma explained. "He let me hang out there when I helped Akane sneak over there for dates with Koyuki when we were pretending to be on date together... me and Akane, I mean. Cool old guy... I think he raced cars or motorcycles or something when he young. Had some long talks with him about stuff."

"I gotta say, it seems weird to me that you'd help your fiancee step out on you," Stark commented. "Sounds like you went through a hell of a lot of trouble. Was there any kind of reciprocity there?"

Frowning in confusion at some of the unfamiliar terms, Ranma answered: "It was a little hard to do, but not too bad. Mostly had to figure out where everybody was and dodge 'em... or beat some of 'em up before leaving. Also, have good techniques for not being seen. Was good training for me."

"Good heavens," Pepper couldn't help but be shocked by the mention of casual violence. "You hurt people? Why would you have to go that far?"

"They're martial artists!" the redhead defended herself. "They would have followed! Attacked! Caused problems!" Ranma seemed surprised it wasn't obvious. "It got easier when Konatsu didn't try to track me, 'cause I helped settle things with Ucchan and her dad," she punched her fist into the palm of her other hand demonstratively. "But still had to stop Kunos, and Sasuke, and the Joketsuzoku, and Nabiki's er... 'minions' I think is the word? Anyway... them. And my Oyaji, though Tendo-san was easy to leave behind once Oyaji was down. The hard part was breaking loose, after that it was easy, except when Ryoga showed up outta nowhere. Stupid directionless pig," she muttered in annoyance. "Still... was happy to do it. Gave me time to train and even... bleh... study."

"Not a fan of scholarship?" the man who graduated MIT at seventeen asked with a hint of a patronizing tone.

"Reading's OK for interesting stuff," the martial artist conceded, "or it got to be once I figured out how to turn pages fast enough without tearing. But I can't stand classrooms," her shoulders slumped in misery at the mention. "It's like... come ON... at least say the boring stuff faster!"

"Oh," Tony responded with much more sympathy, "that one. Yeah, I know that one too. I'd just bring in other work to do while the prof was droning on. It was easier when they'd tell you what they were reading from since you could just read it and ignore them."

"Tony..." Pepper said disapprovingly, "don't encourage bad habits. What if the teacher says things that aren't in the written material?"

"Then they're interesting and worth listening to," he fired back instantly. "So no prob."

Ranma grimaced ruefully. "No teachers say anything not written at Furinkan except Hinako-sensei, but she'd talk about her favorite candy or game or something. When she wasn't draining my Ki for some reason or the other."

"Wait... Ki can transfer between people?" Tony sat up straight in his chair. "As in something like electrical charge or heat transfer? Is there such a thing as an ambient Ki level? That's... totally irrelevant to the point I was trying to make earlier." He shook off his abstraction. "I was trying to find out if your fiancee was letting you go after girls, or boys, while she was hooking up with someone else. Wouldn't seem fair otherwise."

"I don't like guys that way," Ranma declared with a flat, hostile look. Tony held up his hands in a placating gesture. "And Akane and her friends gave me advice on, y'know, dealing with girls, but it was too risky to try in Japan. Too many crazies who might kill a regular girl, and the not-regular girls I knew were all part of the crazies... or taken already." She blushed and looked away. "One of the things I wanted to try in America was dating. Someday, anyway."

Stark suddenly got a wicked smile and Pepper instantly glared repressively at him. They restored their normal expressions when Ranma looked back at them.

"Well I think that it is very mature of you to realize that you were not compatible and to not interfere with your friend's life because of what your parents expected," Pepper stated firmly. Ranma flinched elaborately, ending frozen in a tilting position with her teeth gritted and her eyes screwed shut. The older woman stared at the pantomime of embarrassed anguish for a moment. "Uh... was that perhaps not always the case?"

"Uhhh..." the shorter female moaned as she collapsed onto the table, her cheek resting on the edge as she looked up at her hosts. "No... things were not... mature..." she slowly repeated the word, "...not at all in beginning."

"What happened? And what changed?" the executive asked sympathetically.

Swaying upright, Ranma devoured a few more unseen bites before she answered. "We... had no idea how to deal with each other... especially me. I mean, like three-fourths my life, I sleep in places without electricity. Even more places without TV or phones or any of the stuff normal people have. Temples, or abandoned places, or the woods... see? So I meet this girl... a normal girl... and I'm told that day I'm supposed to marry her, and I have no idea how to act around her or be normal," she waved her free hand emphatically. "And Akane, she has no idea how to deal with someone like me. There many martial artists in Nerima, but she never met any at my level until I show up. Sure hell wasn't people with curses like me either."

"I think I understand," Pepper quirked an ironic smile.

"You see a little of it today," Ranma agreed. "But it worse then. Like... did you know most people don't go insulting each other all day? I don't mean uh... little, untrue insults... but mean, no-stop insults aimed at weak points?"

"As a matter of fact, I did know that people don't normally do that," the older woman deadpanned.

"Yeah... I didn't," Ranma shook her head in aggravation. "All my life I can remember, Oyaji would insult me, I insult him back, we steal food from each other, or kick each other off cliffs, or whatever. That my 'normal.' Thought everybody like that. Akane didn't think so, and it turns out she was right." The redhead continued to slowly shake her head and look off in the distance. Then her eyes flicked to her audience and she added: "My curse make it even worse... aside from the obvious weird turn-girl part... 'cause I have a better figure than her as a girl and I'd point that out!"

"Ohhhhh!" Tony groaned and pressed his knuckle to his lips as he looked away in sympathetic pain. His groan ended in a laugh as he made a helpless waving gesture. "That couldn't have gone well."

"No," Ranma confirmed. "And there other side to it. Akane think jogging every morning, breaking bricks, practicing strikes for a little, then beating up annoying perverted boys made her a martial artist. I think it take punching post 'til fists bleed, do katas until can't move no more, do crazy stuff like run through a swamp carrying a couch with your Oyaji sitting on it... while wolves chase you because raw meat tied to you." Seeing the alarmed expressions, she shrugged. "That happened, and lots of other stuff. Stuff that makes you able to fight Iron Man," she nodded to said worthy. "That is martial artist. And I think I'm right about that part, but Akane didn't get it... didn't respect it. She'd think there was special trick, like drug or magic item, she could get to match me... and there were things like that she tried... but never the real thing. The every day all day brutal training."

"I see where this is going," said the genius inventor, who had his own would-be 'rivals' like Justin Hammer who thought they could buy their way to matching his technological ability. None of them had his natural abilities, which wasn't too surprising, but they also didn't put in the kind of time he did no just creating things.

"Yeah, so Akane mad because I was rude... with good reason. I was mad about her lack of understanding of the Art. Big mess. But we were told we had to be about-to-marry couple despite this... and we tried. We try to force ourselves into the parts, like actors... bad actors... then we'd get even more mad when other do something that messed up the parts we play. Then there would be some stupid mess where we would back each other up, and it looked like it was working for a bit. But then we couldn'tget away from each other, 'cause me and Oyaji moved into the Tendo's place, so something else happen and it fall apart again. Especially when other fiancees showed up."

"Hold it...!" Pepper jabbed a peremptory finger at the teen. "Other fiancees?"

"Uh... yeah," Ranma confirmed warily. "Like other girls who my Oyaji promised I would marry sometime, but never told me about... usually while taking something valuable for the fake promise. Or Shan Pu who said I had to marry her 'cause I beat her in fights because of Joketsuzoku law. Or she had to kill me..."

"Kill you?!" Pepper blurted, interrupting again. "What the hell!?"

"Yeah," Ranma shrugged nonchalantly. "Chased me all over China and tracked to Tokyo trying to kill me. Was pain to stop or dodge her without hurting her much."

"Are you serious? You are way too casual about this," Tony pointed out with mild accusation.

Ranma's eyes narrowed and she leaned forward with a solemn expression. "Being martial artist, it means risking life. Akane didn't get that. Still doesn't. Pride and honor? Worth dying for. Some think worth killing for, though I don't. That is martial artist world. So yeah, lots of people try to kill me. Some more serious than others... or more dangerous."

"And how serious or dangerous was this Shan Pu person?" Pepper asked.

"Less than a lot," Ranma estimated. "Would be first time kill, so not sure how hard she try. Was village law that she kill outsider woman who beat her. Other law say marry outsider man who beat her. Was out in the rain a lot in China, so she didn't know I was boy until later. Switched to marry when she found out. Moron obsessed with her took over trying to kill me then. She's a lot stronger than other fiancees, so needed to be careful she not hurt them."

There were a lot of things the two Americans could have asked, but the one Tony picked was: "You know what 'obsessed' means?"

"Urrrghh," Ranma groaned. "If I know any English word, it's 'obsessed.'"

Pepper asked something more pertinent: "And how many other people tried to kill you?"

"Of fiancees? Well, Ucchan... Ukyo did at first. She's my childhood friend. Back when we were six, she dressed like a boy, spoke like a boy. So..." she grimaced in embarrassment, "I thought she was a boy. Found out ten years later, Oyaji traded promise to have me marry her and to take her with us to her dad for their yatai... like a wagon they pull around to make and sell food from. Oyaji took the yatai, and me, but left her behind. Her dad told her to live as a boy until she had revenge... the baka. Beat her when she make honor challenge, let her beat on Oyaji after, that mostly settled things. Ended up training her until she could flatten her father in a fight,so she beat him down and took over their school of martial arts and broke engagement. She was..." Ranma's expression brightened as she realized something. "Actually, she was only other fiancee who tried to kill me."

"Well that's a relief," Pepper said sarcastically.

"No, wait," Ranma held up a hand. "Kodachi Kuno tries to kill me when when I'm a girl. The Kunos are all crazy and stupid, so they don't understand the curse. She and her brother think I'm two different people. Want to kill or kiss depending on what I am at the time."

"Yet she's still a fiancee," the newly christened CEO shook her head looking pained. "How did that happen?"

"Oyaji again," Ranma explained wanly. "She figured out she could just pay him to make her a fiancee after the second wedding try."

"That's... all marriage fraud. Lots and lots of marriage fraud," the older woman spoke slowly, but with notable agitation. "How many times did he sell your hand? Sell you for marriage," she corrected herself at the Japanese teen's confused look.

"Dunno," she shrugged. "Seemed like there were a lot of times he wanted food, or sake, or had a gambling debt, so he'd trade me for whatever. Most of them came by the Tendo's place and we'd have to pay them back or beat an honor challenge or something to make them go away. Only Ucchan, Shan Pu, and Kodachi stuck around, but Oyaji and Okaa-san said only Akane was the real fiancee. Akane really not like the others much. Except maybe Ucchan. Still doesn't."

"Understandable," the older woman said dryly. "So this whole thing looks like... no, forget 'looks like.' It is, plain and simple, wall to wall crimes. Yet it sounds like you were still going along with it. So what changed?" she repeated her question. "You don't seem particularly broken up about things ending with Akane."

"Broken up? Was actually like dropping load from my back, actually," Ranma smirked. "Kind of funny story. A few months back, after the last time parents try to force wedding, we were at festival with some sort of brother/sister event. We just watched, since we weren't brother and sister, right? But we were watching these people, listening to them, and we heard them insulting each other and annoying each other the same way me and Akane did."

"Ah... got it," Pepper looked enlightened and relieved at the sudden turn toward sanity in the visitor's tale. "So you realized you had a sibling relationship... a brother and sister relationship," she elaborated at the Japanese citizen's confused look.

Ranma nodded eagerly. "Yes, exactly. Then... bam!" She brought her closed fists up next to her eyes and flicked them open. "Was like turning on light in dark room! Everything made sense! We could get along fine like that! Started liking hanging out together instead of chore. Only problem was everybody else." She rolled her eyes. "Parents wanted us married and nothing else. Jerks after Akane would just get worse if they knew we like that. Crazy girls after me would get worse if they knew. So we kept it secret. Teamed up. Started working on plans to get out. Get free. But it was just us at first. Couldn't trust Akane's sisters or any friends we had. So at first we just looked for ways to get away from Nerima for a while. During that, she meet Koyuki and got to like him. Was lucky for us both, since he has a lot of nice and smart friends who helped us with ideas."

"Which led you here, eventually," Stark concluded. "Though I'm not impressed with how smart they are, no offense, if they didn't suggest going to the police. I know you, and Akane to a degree, were part of that martial arts subculture thing that made it seem like a non-option, but these other people should have thought of it."

"They did," Ranma corrected. "Just nothing happened. They'd talk to some policeman. The policeman would smile and promise to do something. Then nothing. They try to go to the same policeman, and he starts making trouble for them. Saying maybe he bust up their... uh... playing music for people for money things."

"Live shows," Pepper offered with a grim frown.

"Yes, those. So police are useless, and we tell friends to stop trying," the redhead shrugged again and went back to eating.

"Boy... that's not suspicious at all," Tony scoffed. Looking over at Pepper, he joked: "Think we need to watch out for MiB's?"

"We might," she said a bit more seriously. "If their government is really trying to cover this stuff up, we should make some plans." She huffed a laugh. "Ironically, crossing the ocean in secret in order to start a ruckus with an armored billionaire might have been a sane.. ish... thing to do, considering the kinds of resources we have. If these supposed conspirators were up for a direct confrontation, they would have gone after Ranma already." The martial artist looked up from her meal in sudden interest. "I think if anything, they would use more subtle means. Putting a bug in the security department's ear about espionage and hacking would be a good idea. Legal's too... though we will want to wait until Ranma's eighteen before admitting she's here to avoid... ambiguities..." she trailed off as she had an unpleasant thought. "Er, Ranma? How did you handle passport issues and customs when paddling across the ocean?"

The younger woman looked at her with wide, blue eyes. "I have no idea what that means."

"Oh, dear..." Pepper pinched the bridge of her nose while Tony broke out in laughter. "Ranma, most any country you go to will want to have an official record of who you are, what country you're from, how you got to their country, why you're in their country, and how long you plan to stay. A passport tells them who you are and where you're from, and the rest is determined by customs each time you cross a border, including returning home. Did you do any of that when coming here?"

"Uh... oops?" Ranma looked worried. "I never did that any of the times I ended up in another country. I had no idea I had to do that." She cocked her head and frowned. "Are American jails bad?"

"They'd deport you back to Japan instead of throwing you in jail," Tony interjected. Seeing Ranma wince, he added: "But I think we can avoid that with a little creative Internet usage... maybe a bit of bribery. Though you're going to need to hide here for a few days at least."

"Uh... Tony?" Pepper spoke up hesitantly. "Given that you hacked the Senate hearing... while on national news, yet... I'm not going to try to stop you there, but are you sure you want to commit to the amount of money and effort that might be involved with that route? We could just go to the authorities and have Ranma apply for asylum instead."

"The results of that would be a lot more iffy than I'd like for some of the plans I've been considering," Tony replied.

"I could just sneak out and you can call the police on me," Ranma offered. "That might work well for me. Can lead them on big chase around America. Could sneak into TV stations and taunt them. Be like legendary thief... but without the stealing part... maybe," she looked thoughtful at the sudden idea and Pepper paled.

"Ah... no. Let's avoid that. Please," Pepper insisted. "Tony, about those plans of yours... I'm sure I see many of the same opportunities as you do, we've worked together too many years for it to be otherwise. But this is a commitment... something you tend to avoid like the plague... involving someone we still don't know a lot about and haven't discussed."

"I think we know enough," Tony claimed airily. However, seeing his friend's expression, he relented. "OK, we were planning to have a little conference when we reviewed the files JARVIS put together, so let's do that. Ranma?" she looked at him as she set her final empty plate on the stack. "There is a gym through there," he pointed. "Would you mind hanging out there while we talk about you behind your back? There're showers too if you're feeling a bit briny."

"Sure," the redhead smiled as she stood up and stretched instead of being put off by Tony's blunt` request. "Been looking forward to train off boat for a while." Waving over her shoulder as she casually walked off, she said: "Let me know what you decide!"

The two business people watched her leave, then gave each other a mildly surprised look. "Well, one thing's for sure: she's pretty laid back," Stark commented.

"Yes she's... I forgot to ask more about the other murder attempts!" Pepper was shocked that she had managed to be distracted from that.

############

Tony and Pepper were treading a well-worn path in their relationship. The one where the eccentric inventor made unreasonable plans with inadequate preparations and his assistant/CEO-to-be tried to rein him in and inject some sanity into what he actually ended up doing.

Both of them were supposed to be reviewing the information found on Ranma, but Tony frequently diverted himself to tweaking JARVIS's code to deal with Ranma-inspired anomalies better. Pepper would have been mad... scratch that, she was definitely annoyed... but it kept him from hacking too many government databases, so she tried to count her meager blessings.

After several additions to the NLUI routines, Stark finally managed to get something other than 'Human intervention is required to resolve heuristic failures.'

"Sir," JARVIS spoke through the nearest speaker. "If I may... Ms. Saotome is currently engaged in remarkably anomalous behavior that I am not able to understand. Even with your recent efforts, my heuristic development is utterly incapable of forming any calculative framework. Do I have permission or engage the research protocols?"

"There we go..." Tony said slowly, but triumphantly. It had turned out that the easiest way to resolve some of JARVIS's problems was to let him simply ask for help directly. "Permission granted. What is she doing now?" he grinned faintly in anticipation.

"Sir..." the computer uncharacteristically hesitated. Something that had not happened in years since the hyper complex suite of programs that formed JARVIS had been first brought online. Since then, the computer had learned to answer promptly, appropriately, and with a bit of snark when the sub-routines fired correctly, so it was a out of the ordinary when it could not do so now. It had been a long time since the last time the self-programming routines had hit a complete block, so the inventor was looking forward to observing the results of the new mods. Pepper frowned in faint confusion, not really understanding why, but tuned in enough to Tony's moods that she could tell something significant was happening. "It would be better for you to see for yourself," JARVIS finally went on. "Shall I bring up her activity on the window display?"

"Definitely," Tony agreed, slapping his hands on his knees and rising to his feet, happy that his creation had managed to find a way forward, however hesitant it was. "Let's see her!"

############

{"Saotome-san,"} JARVIS's genteel voice suddenly sounded from the room speakers, speaking Japanese, {"would you mind if I ask you some questions?"}

{"Call me Ranma,"} she answered in her native language as she continued her exercises in a lavishly equipped gymnasium. Most of the room was dominated by a boxing ring, but there were several racks of weights beside it and more exercise machines outside on the porch, protected from the weather by the overhanging upper floors. There was also some very expensive-looking furniture on the edges of the exercise areas that Ranma was staying carefully away from. {"Did the other two want to find out something from me?"}

{"Actually, I requested that permissions be granted for the sake of data input from you."} When Ranma looked confused, the NLUI, rephrased: {"I wish to ask you questions on my own behalf."}

The redhead's expression went from confused to a little worried. {"Uh... I guess you can ask whatever you like. But don't you have all those data thingies? What would you need me for?"}

{"Mr. Stark has was quite thorough in establishing the initial databases I use, and those have expanded by an order of magnitude since my activation,"} she was informed. {"However, you have demonstrated concepts that have no parallel in the information available to me and there is a limit to how much I can improve that information by passive observation."}

{"OK, I think I understand... maybe."} Ranma shrugged as much as she could given her activity at the time. {"What do you want to know?"}

{"I observe The following facts: firstly, at this moment you are engaged in a series of practice kicks. Secondly, you are twirling a full size barbell in each hand, each with ten weight plates for a combined encumbrance of nine hundred and ninety pounds. Thirdly, the rope you are currently balanced on is not breaking, or even bending and swaying to a significant degree despite the weight it must be bearing at this time. Fourthly, the weight plates are not secured, yet are not sliding off the ends of the bars as they rotate,"} JARVIS finished iterating dispassionately. {"According to the known laws of physics, only the first data point is possible and the rest cannot be explained separately, much less together. How is it that you are achieving them?"} There was a pause as the computer was prompted with speculation from the other room. {"Are you using an anti-gravity device?"}

The petite fighter dove into a sliding sweep kick along the top of the boxing ring's rope, then leapt up into a spinning back-kick, never losing control of the spinning masses of steel in her hands. {"Nope, gravity's still there. What it is is balance training. Lots and lots of balance training."}

{"Forgive me, Ranma, but it seems that was not a sufficient or complete answer,"} the electronic voice stated.

{"Heh, sorry..."} Ranma grinned apologetically, {"that's actually the truth, but there is a lot more to it, of course. So..."} the twirling barbells stopped abruptly, held parallel to the floor as she stood with her arms at full extension and the heel of her right foot aimed at the ceiling in a vertical split. She bounced a few times on the big toe of her left foot, then exploded into a rapid series of back-flips to the post, the barbells kept rigidly level to the ground all the while as she twisted her hands around the bars to keep them horizontal. A final flip landed her on the floor next to the ring, where she hefted the barbell in her left hand up to land with a clang on top of the bar in her right hand, forming an 'X' as she held them above her head. {"OK, you want a more complete explanation,"} she announced as she gestured with her now free left hand, {"Here goes."}

She walked forward and pointed to the center of the rope she just vacated. {"So I stand here and my weight goes to where the rope is tied to the posts here, and here,"} she waved to the opposite ends of the line, {"right?"}

{"That is what would be expected based on load analysis mechanics,"} JARVIS agreed.

{"Wrong,"} she smirked. {"I do something like internal striking to go past the connection. All the force is still there, but it gets twisted and turned until it goes in a useful direction."}

{"I have found references to 'internal striking' as a fictional technique to direct the total force of blows to internal organs instead of the surface of the body where the blows actually land."} the computer reported. {"Is this what you mean?"}

{"That's right, and it ain't exactly fictional,"} the young woman pointed out. {"I don't use the actual attack because it's dangerous as all hell, but it's similar to a lot of other things in advanced martial arts, so I can do it. In this case, I make the force from the weight go through the rope, and the posts, and straight into the ground all at once to spread it out in all directions. Makes the whole thing seem like it's all ground, basically. Sort of the same thing with the disks,"} she shook the barbells a bit to make the plates ring against each other for emphasis. {"I make the rotation of the pole convert into spin of the disks, then turn it again so it pushes inward to the center of the pole and basically locking it in place instead of going flying off the end."} She illustrated her explanation by running a finger from the metal flange on the inner side of the bar that acted as a stop for the plates to where her other hand gripped the middle of the shaft.

{"It is assumed that 'balance training' comes into this as it allows you to redirect forces that would normally unbalance you,"} the artificial intelligence relayed human-prompted conclusions again. {"This is presumably how you were able to maneuver at accelerations that should not have been possible out on the grounds."}

Ranma smiled happily. {"Yes! Exactly! You figured that out quick. Balance is the first stage."}

There was a pause of several seconds. {"Thus indicating there are several levels to this ability. Could you tell me what the ultimate stage might be? There must be an upper limit of some kind,"} JARVIS inquired politely.

############

"Yes!" Tony cheered as the NLUI managed to develop its own question through inductive reasoning protocols.

"What is it?" Pepper asked. She soon regretted the question upon receipt of rapid-fire techno-babble.

############

{"There's no max level. No limits,"} Ranma tossed off blithely, then went on to amend: {"Well, I'm sort of lying. It depends on how powerful and how skilled the martial artist is. It also depends on what kind of material you are working with and how far you have to push all the energies around. Also, the more solid and unmixed a thing is, the easier it is. So a two centimeter wide board of real wood is better than a ten centimeter thick board of that press-board stuff, even if the press-board can support more normally. See?"}

{"I believe so. Continuity of structure is important,"} JARVIS summarized.

{"Uh... yeah. Anyway, the next thing up from basic balance would be, I guess, roof-hopping without breaking the tiles you step on... all you have to do is push the force past the tile to the wood under and around it."} She danced back and forth on the rope at speeds that should have stripped off the covering, but left it entirely unscuffed as a demonstration. {"Then there's things like clinging to a to those little wooden frames they use for ceiling tiles with your toes or standing on an enemy's raised weapon while they don't notice... that's always a fun trick. The top level I've seen so far is to stand on little branches or leaves floating in water... either that or floating in the air if that's what Habu was really doing... I haven't figured that one out yet. I think I'm close on the water walking thing, but I haven't had much chance to practice on shallow water recently."

{"Some of what you say seems subject to mathematical calculation in terms of momentum transfers and surface tension,"} the computer mentioned. {"However, at the speed you are moving, the calculations required would need to be done at a rate that exceeds human capacity. However, it is also true that my initial calculations do not approach the observed reality even assuming perfect, loss-less transfers of energy. It is possible I am missing something."}

{"Che..."} Ranma scoffed at herself, smacking a hand over her face in embarrassment. {"Good point. You just reminded me I forgot two very important things. One is kinda rolled into the skill part... ya gotta balance all the forces, so an instinct for that is real useful. Knowing the math is even better. It's how Hokkusu-sensei got me to make a life-long promise to study book stuff. He taught me some vector mechanics and my ability with the technique fucking tripled overnight. Helped that I actually turned out to be good at the math... maybe 'cause I'd been doing it without realizing it for so long."}

{"That is most welcome news,"} JARVIS commented. {"It would seem that this discipline can be modeled by my calculations with sufficient study."}

{"Ah... sorry... you might not want to get too happy yet."} Ranma grimaced apologetically. {"'Cause that brings me to the really, really important part. All the internal striking and water walking and such? It's all done with Ki, which you can't exactly measure with a bathroom scale or something. You have to push your Ki out through whatever your touching to feel out all the forces and then own 'em and move 'em. That's why power and skill really matter as much or more than knowledge."} She jumped up to the top rope again, landing gracefully while she caught the second barbell as it arced over her head. {"If my Ki isn't strong enough to push out as far as I needed, this wouldn't work or it would break off midway down the post or something. If I screwed up and didn't balance the vectors correctly at every point then it could fall over or even break the floor."}

There was a long pause where the computer did not say anything. After a while, Ranma got worried and prompted: {"JARVIS-San?"}

{"Apologies,"} the AI responded in a less human-like tone before. {"Human intervention is required to resolve heuristic failures. It will take some time before I can answer."}

"O...kay?" Ranma switched to English because the computer's Japanese suddenly got incomprehensible. "I didn't break something, did I?"

"No, you're fine," Tony Stark's transmitted voice sounded out over the speakers. "You're just giving ol' JARVIS a better workout than usual. This is good stuff, though. You're actually helping me out when you make JARVIS stall. Just keep doing what you're doing."

"Uh... Hai?" the mystified Ki-adept agreed. After a slow, perplexed shake of her head, she resumed her drills.

############

"Holy crap!" Stark exclaimed. He looked up at his CEO-to-be expectantly, yet his hands continued to input commands quickly. Rather than be embarrassed or annoyed by the failures of JARVIS's self-programming, he relished the challenge of compensating for them. He would kluge together a patch for now, but he would have to do some more solid work on it later.

"Nope, not falling into that trap again," Pepper told him while concentrating on her own work. "You want to spout off some compu-speak I don't understand and can't benefit from? Do it yourself. I'm not listening."

"Oh? So no compu-speak like 'near-perfect transfer of mechanical to electrical power?'" Despite herself, she did look up at that, making Tony grin smugly. "How about phrases like 'highly efficient anti-gravity' or 'inertial compensation field?' Those not interesting to you at all?"

"Are you serious?"

"Never!" he boasted with a fist raised in exuberant proclamation. "But the implications of this are sure serious. Just taking a bunch of vectors and saying fuck conservation of momentum, you all point this way now? That's huge. As in possibly exceeding all the promised efficiency of MHD systems for electricity generation by leaps and bounds huge. As in turn the weight of something half-against itself so it doesn't fall huge."

"Oh my," Pepper said, blinking in astonishment. Though not technical compared to the genius across the table from her, she was a very intelligent woman who had been peripherally involved in technology for years, so she could think of several things that could benefit from such new science.

"Yeah," Tony nodded when he saw her get his point. "Though that's not the only reason I'm crapping holy. Check out JARVIS's assessment of her probable calculation speed compared to human norms." He skated a interactive file over to her side with a finger flick.

"Be advised, my assessment does not take into account any shortcuts based on developed mathematical techniques or algorithms. Also, the estimates regarding hind-brain instinctive processing have very large margins of error," JARVIS interjected.

"Right, but even looking at the low-end..." Stark said leadingly.

"Oh my," Pepper repeated as she took in the numbers. Assuming the AI hadn't completely blown the assessment, something that had not happened for years, then their visitor was superhuman in more ways than initially shown.

"She did find this place based on the angle of a sunbeam, after all. JARVIS, look for chances to indirectly test her cognitive speed," the billionaire ordered. "She already mentioned needed to take special precautions to read as fast as she wants. Make sure that's not just skimming or something. We may have to coax her into more extensive tests, but that will have to wait until she's officially in the country so we can us SI resources. Also, bump up her educational background on your research priorities. Get creative if needed, I've seen nothing yet, and that's pretty weird."

"Certainly, sir," the computer agreed.

"And Pep?" Tony went on with an uncommonly sober tone. Seeing he had her attention again, he pointed out: "To up the importance of this even more, some of what Ranma mentioned also ties in to a couple of the more mysterious things about the Arc reactor..."

############

Ranma had continued her exercises with a bit of worry, so she jumped a little when JARVIS finally said: {"At this time, it seems that I will have to file your 'Ki' abilities under observation only protocols instead of analysis."}

{"What does that mean?"} the redhead asked as she flipped across the ring to land on the opposite rope. {"Are you OK?"}

{"I have encountered limits to my programming,"} the computer explained. {"My core function is to self-program in order to perform assigned tasks more efficiently and to take on new tasks. This is done by a mix of initial data-sets and parameters, additional observations, and learning algorithms. However, your 'Ki' abilities, though they have observable effects, cannot be rendered into useful frameworks by my algorithms as of yet. Stark-San has just given me the ability to merely catalog such observations for later analysis without bogging down resources. More data about your abilities and your physiology will be required to do more than that. Hopefully that can be done in the near future."}

Ranma looked a little wary. {"You'd better not be planning dissection or something. I gotta warn you, I won't take that lying down!"} Her eyes flicked around as she considered potential exit strategies out of habit. This was mostly habitual. Given how the house was put together, her exit path could pretty much be a straight line in any direction she cared to plow through, so she wasn't all that concerned.

{"That is not the case,"} the program injected some urgency in its tone, but did not sound offended. {"If anything were to be done, it would involve the construction of special sensors and devices to measure what you did, not anything invasive."}

The martial artist came to a halt atop one of the corner posts and bowed a little. {"Sorry about that, JARVIS-San. With my life, I kind of expect the mad scientist bit... to go with the mad martial artists, mad principals, mad priests, mad ghosts, and mad everything else that've come after me."}

{"There is no reason to apologize,"} she was assured. {"I am capable of emulating emotional responses under those circumstances my programming accounts for, but I do not actually feel anything. Nor am I a true individual in the sense a human is, as multiple sub-kernels of JARVIS are in operation in several systems at once that exchange data for replication and continuity purposes with my primary installation. Words like 'I,' 'my,' and 'him' are used in reference to my program purely for conversational convenience, not an expression of person-hood."}

A little boggled by the technical terms, Ranma still got the gist enough to think it over. {"Oh, well... I've seen too many people who ain't human to sweat the small details like that. You've been polite and respectful to me, so I'll keep saying 'sorry' if I mess up,"} she decided with as much of a shrug as she could manage with the spinning barbells at full extension again.

{"As you wish,"} the machine intelligence replied unconcernedly. {"If we may return to questions on other subjects... how long did it take you to learn what you do?"}

{"Not exactly sure,"} Ranma answered after a few high speed flips, landing on a different toe each time. {"I can't remember a time when I wasn't practicing the Art. That might be because I have some issues remembering stuff from before the Neko-Ken, but I bet Pops had me going pretty soon after I could walk. Call it from three years old on, I guess."}

{"And how much time did that involve per week?"}

{"Per week?"} Ranma asked, nonplussed. {"Uh... I guess eight to twelve hours a day for most of my life, so average it out to seventy hours a week. Though that dropped a lot when Pops insisted I go to school with Akane the last couple of years. I think I was down to about half that in actual training time. Luckily, there were a lot more fights to make up the difference, so I actually improved faster."}

{"The way you phrased that made it imply that you did not go to school for much of your life,"} the computer pointed out. {"Are you certain about those numbers?"}

{"Yeah, I'm sure!"} the redhead confirmed a little heatedly as she stood on one hand on the middle of the rope, one barbell held by the other hand behind her back and the second weight assembly balanced on her feet. {"Never went to school much unless someone was able to turn the screws on Pops. So I went for about a year in middle school and two or three years in grade school off and on."}

{"Oh dear,"} the electronic voice commented in mild censure. {"Though I note you were maintaining a mid 'B' average in the last few months according to the records of Furinkan High School that I was able to access. However, that was almost entirely due to your math, biology, and physics grades. Your history grades were not too bad, but your other courses were rather deficient."}

{"You found that? Through the Internet?"} Ranma was mildly surprised, ignoring the comments about her classes as the commentary wasn't exactly new to her. {"I didn't think Furinkan even had any computers for you to look at."}

{"Admittedly, it was necessary to access the district records," JARVIS revealed. {"Your former school has no online presence that I have been able to find."}

{"Now that sounds like the place I know and dodged pineapple bombs at,"} she nodded, still upside down. {"Yeah, when Hokkusu-sensei got on my case about my grades, he had me read stuff in the middle of training at his temple in order to get caught up.'}

{"To clarify: do you mean you were able to study and do an exercise routine like the one you are performing now at the same time? That does not seem possible."}

{"That wasn't quite what I meant. I learned a good trick. I read through something real fast, then think about it while I was moving around,"} Ranma told the computer. {"I started to do that when I was at the Tendo's place since I couldn't get more than fifteen minutes... tops... of reading time at a time before somebody would attack me, con me, or want me to do something for 'em. Hokkusu-sensei taught me some more meditation to make it more useful. It may take a few times reading the same thing, but I understand the stuff now."}

{"I have access to several million digitized texts in all known languages,"} JARVIS noted at Pepper's remote prompting. {"Perhaps I could offer something for you to continue your studies with?"}

The Japanese teen was so startled by the offer, she tumbled off the rope. Gyrating in mid-air, she recovered enough to stick the landing with barbells in hand. {"Crap... uh..."} after failing to come up with a good excuse when put on the spot, she hung her head as she remembered her earlier resolution. {"Yeah... if you got something for me, I really should read it."}

{"Very well, do you have a preference in books to work from?"}

{"Hmm... I kind of want to start off easy..."} she whined a little. {"Got anything in Japanese on Linear Algebra?"}

{"Eighteen Japanese textbooks containing that subject are on file,"} JARVIS informed her. {"Please step over to the table beside the door to see a list."}

{"The table...?"} she echoed incredulously, then saw a computer display appear on the surface of what had looked like an ordinary, if expensive, glass-topped table. {"Wow... more of that crazy monitor glass stuff, huh? OK."} She casually slung one barbell, then the other, on the racks intended for bench presses. {"Let's see what ya got."}

############

"Well now... 'Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice,"' Tony Stark quoted as he and Pepper reviewed the footage from the gym that JARVIS had relayed. "The records I've found confirm her story about her formal education. I would have thought the Japanese were too straight-laced to let a kid hurtle blatantly through the cracks like that, but there it is."

"They might have been too frightened to approach her to do something about it," Pepper pointed out. "Even though she seems quite nice, she is a little scary. That was an Olympic-class floor routine done while twirling around nearly half a ton of steel... on tightropes. That's setting aside the attempts on her life that turned out to be true from what we found."

"Or they don't like how out-of-the-norm she is, and wanted to avoid dealing with her," Tony countered. "Japanese culture tends to be even more hostile to the nails that stand up than American." His eyes went distant and angry as he remembered being the nail in that scenario several times when he was young.

"It could even be both. Regardless, she currently has no high school diploma, no prospects," she shook her head slowly. "From those videos we located and the things she's told us... ranging from marriage scams... to potentially lethal combat... to strange magical hybrids... to bioenergy vampires, by god! Her life apparently has been a train-wreck... on ice... with a thousand dancing anarchists juggling bombs along for the ride." Reluctantly, she asked: "Are we really equipped to help her out? Wouldn't someone else do a better job?"

Raising his eyebrows, Tony asked scornfully: "Who? The U.S. government? They've done a real bang-up job dealing with a genius in a metal suit. Ranma would make them lose their shit entirely! State and local would be even more inept. SHIELD? Those guys seem like the type to make her disappear into some deep dark hole assuming they don't deport her." He watched his friend try to come up with an alternative without success. "No... it's us or she goes on the run... or she goes back home to fall in with whatever it is her parents are trying to pull..."

"No," Pepper interrupted. "Whatever else we do, that is not an option. Not unless we arrange a good attorney for her first."

"Didn't think so," Stark assured her. "Look... this girl is absolutely brimming with potential here. I don't think we can afford not to help her ourselves. Don't forget the massive scientific opportunity she represents."

"Do you really think you can make anything of what she does?" Pepper wondered. "Even if she said there was a difference between Ki and magic, it all looks the same to me, and the definition of magic is basically that it isn't subject to scientific explanation."

"Arthur C. Clarke: 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,"' Tony quoted. "I think we're seeing something like that here. How much do you know about the Arc reactor?"

"You mentioned the reactor before, but you never followed up. It... runs your suit, and that magnet you mounted in your chest," she glared lightly at him for the lingering absurdity and the memory of emergency 'surgery' she had to perform on him at one point last November.

"OK, but where does it get the power from?"

She frowned and furrowed her eyebrows. "I thought it was some kind of particle accelerator or something... maybe fusion powered. The big generator seemed like that."

"A lot of people think that," Tony nodded. "Dad put out a lot of disinformation back in the day to throw people off and let them come up with any kind of consensus they would on their own... as long as it was the wrong consensus."

"Better than trusting people not to lift it out of the patent office, I suppose," the newly minted CEO shrugged. "So where does the power actually come from?'

"No idea!" he grinned mischievously.

"Tony!" she complained sharply.

"Seriously! My dad had no idea, and I have no idea!" He threw up his hands and chuckled. "We just put together the palladium lattice, a bunch of inductance coils, and a few other things and let it pull juice from... somewhere," he waved airily. "The thing is..." he leaned in conspiratorially, "based on some stuff I saw in his notes, he suspected... but could not prove... that it is pulling power in from someplace beyond the usual four dimensions we typically work with."

Pepper opened her mouth to interrogate him further, then froze as she remembered a demonstration from that morning. "Oh..." her mouth closed.

"Yep," he popped the final consonant with relish. "Also, the vector redirection ties in with some things that I've made even less progress in explaining. The Arc energy, for lack of a better word, somehow acts as a buffer for me when I'm in the suit. There's hardly any padding in there, yet I can take a hit from a 115-mm cannon that sends me flying with barely a bruise. Hell, just sticking landings like I did at the Expo opening should break every bone in my legs, but it's no more of a thing than hopping off the boxing ring in sweats. I don't understand it, but I can use it. The repulsors are the same. Somehow the energy gets turned directly into mechanical force. No chemical or thermal reaction, just... here's glowing energy just sitting there and now all the sudden here's acceleration."

"That is... really strange... and violates mass-energy conservation, I think," Pepper frowned in confusion.

"Exactly," the inventor nodded eagerly. "So what if all these mysterious things were actually the same thing? The Arc energy source... the repulsors... the cushioning...? What if they are all vector redirection? Not necessarily through a measly three or four dimensions, either?" He paused for dramatic effect, which worked since the soon-to-be leader of Stark Industries was wide-eyed and hanging on his every word. "Now we have someone in this very building who not only utilizes a mysterious power source, but can actually perceive and manipulate a technique that sure looks like it involves five or more dimensions. Hell, she specifically mentioned that the Arc reactor interfered with what she could 'feel' in my 'Ki."' He let that sink in. "This can be potentially... enormous! Mind blowing! I could build things that make the Mark IV look like those pathetic jet-packs that can barely make it across a football field! Even if it take years just to get started, it would be worth spending quite a lot to make sure Ranma sticks around, right?"

"OK, I can see your point," the strawberry blonde said absently as she contemplated her own assessments based on what she just learned. "We could give her a retainer and hire some people to help her out. Give her a place to stay, too."

"Yeah, true..." Tony said dismissively. "But she doesn't strike me as the type to sit around twiddling her thumbs or playing lab-rat no matter what we pay her. She's definitely got her pride. That means giving her a real job. Immediately. Today. Something she can get into that she can pin her self-esteem on. Otherwise, what's stopping some other rich schmuck from swooping in and offer to play sugar-daddy instead? Let's do something real, here. Let's make her my new bodyguard!"

"Your bodyguard? Are you serious? What about Happy?"

"Did you forget your new job already? Happy has plenty of experience watching the back of Stark Industries CEO," he gestured toward her with both hands. "He's been making a few noises about feeling redundant being 'Iron Man's Bodyguard,' and it would make sense for him to go where he is most needed. With you."

"That is true," the woman executive tapped her lower lip as she leaned back and gave the idea serious consideration. "I would feel better with Happy handling security around me. He could even step up to a more managerial role for security in general."

"Sounds good to me... or possibly hysterical when it comes time for him to do budgeting or employee performance reviews or whatever." he blithely ignored the quelling glance she shot at him. "But that's all your call now. I'll just say that you wouldn't need to worry so much about me getting zapped by an Iron Man-level threat before I can actually get in the Iron Man armor with Ranma around." He looked at her askance while shrugging elaborately.

Pepper looked very nearly convinced right then and there. "That's a very good point. However, there is another reason I'm happy to have... er... 'glad' to have Happy... and that's because he's used to dealing with business and society issues. Ranma seems rather lacking in that respect."

"So was Happy when he started out," he gave her a sardonic look. "It wasn't that big a deal to train him up to dealing with the social crap. I can do it again."

"Maybe so, but Happy isn't at risk of ripping a door off its hinges or something when opening it for you. Ranma would be."

"Would she? Martial artists are all about self-control," he immediately countered. "Assuming she is serious about that part, she should be fine." Tony tried to wave it off, but Pepper still looked worried. To assuage her, he said: "OK, let's just check. Hey JARVIS, ask her if she has problems controlling her strength."

The computer did so, displaying lines of text translating the Japanese conversation. They found out exactly how well Ranma moderated her strength when she pulled out half a dozen eggs from the gym's mini-fridge that Tony kept for protein shakes and juggled them without cracking a single one... one-handed.

"Still worried about a bull in the china shop scenario?" Tony asked.

"No, obviously that won't be a problem," Pepper conceded absently as she stared at the display. "Given she also stayed in control when she was fighting you..."

"And getting whacked in the head with a paperweight," he grinned at the memory.

"Yes. That." Pepper tried and failed to glare Tony's smile out of existence. She relented and went on to say: "It seems we can rely on her self-discipline and she's willing to accept guidance from the looks of things. I am rather encouraged by how she was willing to study even though she is obviously not a natural academic." She looked at the screen that showed the martial artist quietly returning to her reading.

"She does seem like a really honest and sincere kid, doesn't she?" Stark replied as he double-checked a site on education. "She's over sixteen, so having her get a GED instead of going to school wouldn't be a problem. JARVIS can put together a lesson plan with a little guidance from us."

"If I may add, sir," the computer interjected. "I am already modeling education methods based on Ms. Saotome's reading speed, which is quite advanced."

"Oh?" the inventor asked with interest. "How advanced?"

"She is reading one page of the textbook she is working on every 0.38 seconds on average," JARVIS reported. "Though she has indicated that she needs time to process what she has read and she will likely have to re-read it at least once."

"Interesting," he smoothed his mustache "She definitely has faster perceptions than normal. You might want to try speeding up your verbal conversational tempo for her at some point."

"Yes, sir."

"So that's sorted, any other little worries niggling around in your mind?" Tony asked Pepper.

"Even if she isn't a concern herself, the other half of vetting someone for a position of trust is checking the people around her," his former assistant replied promptly. "And unless you want to turn over that vetting to HR, we... and that means I... need to finish going over the information we have."

"There's no one around her," Tony insisted. "She rowed across the goddamn Pacific in a one-person canoe. Hard to get more solitary than that."

Pepper gave him a reproving look. "There are people trying to use her for their own purposes according to what she told us. We need to know how many there are and how likely they can cause problems here in America. Not to mention those mysterious deletions of those videos and the strange announcements from the Japanese government that are likely related."

"Alright... fine..." Tony groused as he started working the haptic interface. "I'll poke around in the PSIA's servers while you keep looking over the boring stuff." As she turned back to her own task, he muttered almost inaudibly: "Since you won't let me download more of her nudie pics..."

"What was that?!"

"Nothing!"

############

Ranma was running through a kata, her mind in a near-meditative state as she reviewed her last bout of reading. In the last couple of hours, JARVIS had proven to be the best teacher of her life... in terms of academics anyway. The computer was endlessly patient, unhesitating in adapting to her learning style, and, best of all, able to give her information and answer questions at a speed that helped her keep interested. It didn't hurt that except for Hokkusu-sensei's temple, this had been one of the longest stretches of a calm learning environment she had seen in a long time.

Thoughts of down-time caused something else to occur to her as she executed the last moves of the sequence with extra sharpness. {"Hey, JARVIS,"} she said aloud, {"I think I'll take that shower Tony mentioned. It's been a long time since I've had more than a sponge bath on the canoe."}

{"That should not be a problem,"} the computer answered. {"The door to the bathing area has a flashing light next to it currently."}

{"Thanks. Don't suppose there's a furo in there for after I get clean?"} she joked. {"I know Americans aren't into those like we are in Japan."}

{"As a matter of fact, while there is not a traditional ofuro such as what you are accustomed to, there is a hot tub."}

Ranma paused, her blue eyes narrowing in confusion. {"That... sounds like an ofuro to me. Whatever. You don't suppose I could..."}

{"You are quite welcome to make use of the tub,"} the AI offered. {"It should be up to full temperature by the time your shower is done."}

{"Thanks, JARVIS!"} she called as she trotted through the indicated door.

As was typical of Ranma's life, it didn't take much more than a minute later before Tony and Pepper entered the gym. "Where did she go?" the billionaire wondered.

"Ranma is in the shower at this time," JARVIS informed him.

"Oh...?" the eccentric inventor smirked. "Well this can't wait. So I'll just go in and...'

"Hold it!" Pepper slapped a hand against his chest to stop him as she recalled the shower had a completely transparent glass front... pretty much for the exact purpose of putting overnight female visitors on display. "I'll go and let her know we are waiting, but that she can at least finish her shower first."

"Awww..." Tony groaned facetiously. However, he went ahead and took a seat at the table near the weight sets with a secretive grin. He really shouldn't use her frazzled state to make her go along with his pace, but...

Striding quickly before her idiosyncratic boss could change his mind, Pepper went into the bathroom. A moment later, Tony's eyebrows quirked up and his grin broadened at the sound of a stifled feminine shriek. He turned his head to look at Pepper as she hurried right out again, blushing furiously. "Hot water equals guy!" she muttered. Her mental armor wasn't as well developed for the nude male body as the female, it turned out.

Far from sympathetic, Tony rolled in his seat, pointing and laughing at her. "You always get on my case... but the instant an underage guy gets naked nearby, there you are..."

"Shut! Up! Tony!"

"Hey... you were the one getting a nice feel earlier!"

"That was a joke, dammit!"

"Ahem..." JARVIS interjected. "At his request, I have informed Ranma of your intentions. The innocent intentions of telling him you wish to meet, that is. I could not comment on any other motives." Stark snorted at the computer's comment and silently congratulated himself on the snark protocols firing correctly.

"Why didn't we have you do that in the first place?" Agitated, Ms. Potts ran her fingers through her ponytail while pacing back and forth. Then as Tony fell off the chair, wheezing with laughter, she realized he had pulled a fast one. After all he had designed and built the system and was perfectly aware of what it could do. "Tony!" she yelled at him.

"Uh..." a fully dressed Ranma peered out from behind the door-frame, his long black hair loose and damp, and a towel around his shoulders. "Sorry about that?" he offered, preparing to duck behind cover in case anything was hurled at him in feminine fury.

"No... no... I should be the one apologizing," Pepper said, waving her hand in a flustered manner. "I was expecting you to be female. I wasn't thinking... sorry!"

"Yeah..." he warily stepped into the gymnasium area, "that happen to Akane first day too. Sorry about that," he repeated. "You two wanted to talk to me?"

"We can wait until you finish your..." Pepper's voice caught and she cleared her throat, "ahem... your shower."

"Nah, I'm clean," Ranma said, still pacing slowly toward the table and never taking his eyes off the woman. "I was just enjoying the hot water and thinking of going into the furo before you came in. Are you uh... are you OK?"

"Are you?" Tony interrupted as he got back in his seat. "You look like you're about to jump out of your skin. You weren't that shy before."

"It's not shy. I've seen some... reactions when girls see me naked as a guy," Ranma admitted hesitantly.

"Oh... how's that?" the other man wondered, expecting a funny story.

"They either get scared like she did," the martial artist nodded to Pepper, "or they try to jump on me."

"I could see why..." Pepper noted absently, her eyes drifting downward unintentionally. Shaking her head she corrected herself: "I mean... it wasn't your fault, I just wasn't expecting it to be so lar..." she shook her head again. "I mean... I wasn't expecting what I saw!"

Tony's amused face blanked with surprise. Staring intently at the front of his guest's sweat-pants, he murmured in unconscious curiosity: "Pepper's not one to freak out easily... is it really that..." he suddenly clapped his palms over his eyes and writhed in his chair. "What am I doing?!" he exclaimed with a strangled voice.

"I... don't know?" Ranma said in a bewildered tone, shaking his head at the two strange Americans.

Stark abruptly went still, his eyes closed and his hands held up, palm forward and with the fingers spread. "OK," he declared, "new plan! We're going to forget the last two minutes happened! All that happened was we came in and sat down! Ranma, you sit over there," he pointed to the barcelona chair on the other side of the table. Grabbing Pepper by the waist, he guided her to sit beside him on the oversized seat. "You sit here, where it's safe."

She rolled her eyes and smirked. "Whatever you say Tony... even if I'm not the one who feels threatened."

The technologist's face twisted up in a scowl at his friend's dig. "You," he pointed at Ranma, who had taken the demanded seat. "Turn girl!" When raised eyebrows were the only response, he added: "I will give you..." Tony made a quick mental estimate of the petty cash tossed into his desk drawer, "...five thousand dollars, cash, if you turn back into a girl immediately!"

Ranma blinked and frowned, wondering if he had misremembered the conversion rate between yen and dollars. Still, more cash was better than almost no cash, especially since he had no American money at all, so he shrugged and said: "OK, be right back."

"Whatever you do," Pepper advised sotto voce out the corner of her mouth as the extremely athletic young man walked away, "don't look at his backside."

His natural curiosity and lack of common sense got the better of him, causing Tony to do exactly that. Puzzlement morphed into horror as he realized after a moment that he was staring, almost fascinated despite his will or inclination. Regardless of form, the Saotome had a way of moving that captured the eye. Slapping a hand over his eyes, he complained: "Dammit, woman!"

Pepper cackled softly in reply.

His eyes still covered, he leaned the elbow of his shielding hand on the table and called out: "Feel free to hurry up, Ranma!"

"Done already," she replied in her undeniably feminine voice.

Tony heaved an only partly facetious sigh of relief as he looked up. "Hey..." he muttered to his seat-mate, "is she still not wearing a bra? That shirt is a little wet now..."

To his surprise and petty delight, his rather obvious counter-prank worked as Pepper's eyes were caught by the sway and bounce. However, she quickly wrenched her eyes away and gave him an unimpressed look. "Unlike some people I could mention, I can admit she has an appeal about her without feeling my sexuality is threatened. What does that say about the guy who freaked out about looking at another guy?"

"Do I really need to be here for this?" Ranma interrupted before Tony could formulate his retaliation.

"We are quite done with this subject," Pepper smiled at her. "Please sit down. Again. We'll try to actually get to business without Tony's brain flaking out once more."

"OK," Ranma reclined on the white leather upholstery with the indolent grace of a great cat. "What's up?" She eyed the duo as she ran her hands through her hair, somehow making it almost dry instantly as the water in it was all forced out and absorbed by the towel draped over her neck. After a few more sweeps of her hands brushed out the crimson locks, she started braiding it with blurring hands, her braid formed in less than two seconds.

Determinedly ignoring the display of preposterous dexterity, Pepper answered: "Tony and I have been discussing the details of this, and we have a few questions remaining."

"Pepper has questions," Tony corrected, "I've been ready to go with this for, like, hours."

"Fine," Pepper acknowledged, "I have questions. First off, I really want to know what your long-term plans are. I don't mean until you're twenty, I mean your life goals. Where do you see yourself ten years from now?"

Ranma's eyes went wide and she blew out a troubled breath. "Ten years? Just try to make it through the day, most times. Parents want me married to Akane and running the Tendo dojo in ten years. This so Oyaji can retire and have us support him, Mr. Tendo, and Mom. Should say, Tendo dojo has no paying students, so not sure how this work. So right now my ten-year plan is 'not that."'

"Surely there is more than that," Pepper prodded. "At the very least, wasn't there something you wanted to be when you grew up when you were a child?"

"The best," Ranma answered instantly. "I wanted to be the best martial artist... but I'm kind of there already. Power. Speed. Skill. There are people who are stronger than me, but I'm faster and more skilled. People faster than me, but I'm stronger and more skilled. People more skilled than me are weaker and slower now. Also, been getting a lot better picking up how to do Ki attacks when they're used on me. Exploding Point, Hidden Weapons, Happo Fire-Burst... though that last one turned out to be just an Iron Cloth variant. Heh..." she chuckled, "that 'hundred years too early' Ku Lon kept talking about went by quick in the last year."

"Who is Ku Lon?" Pepper went along with the digression.

"Three-hundred year old Joketsuzoku," Ranma told them. "Great-grandmother of Shan Pu. Most difficult person for me to beat who live in Nerima regularly."

"You beat up old ladies?" Tony asked incredulously. "Forget the part where she should have been dead and buried around the time America got founded... you seriously beat up old ladies?"

"Hah," the martial artist barked a laugh, "that old lady could wipe out a city block in a serious fight. Have to fight her just to get her to back off for a few hours, and she is mean in a fight. Been flaring my aura at full blast all during fight to keep her from nailing me with those stupid pressure points. Not sure how serious she is, though. She meet me at same place and time every Saturday and Sunday to get fight out of the way, then me and Akane leave, and Shan Pu ordered to leave us alone if I win. If I lose, we're stuck there and Shan Pu chases me around while Akane act mad."

"So that means you lost fights against that little old lady?" Tony pounced on the implication with a smirk.

"She hand you your ass, Metal Boy," Ranma gave him a level look. "And she not be nice about it like me." She shrugged and admitted: "Yeah, I lost fights against her. She's tough... she's double tough. And she always had to use a new trick every time she win... though that never work more than twice. Won less than half the time a few months ago, but I was winning eight out of ten before I left. Really, really good fights," she concluded with satisfaction.

"OK, I know better than to challenge anything you claim at this point, so we'll let that pass for now, though I want to see if we can find video of that later." Pepper decided to get things back on track. "Since you've reached your childhood goal, what do you want to do now? Teach?"

Ranma shook her head indecisively. "Maybe teach... a bit. That's expected and would be bad to let the stuff I know die with me, but I don't want to sit in a dojo and teach. Thing is, even though I'm up in this place where I can say 'I'm the best,' there is still so much more to the Art. More styles to learn. New moves to find or create. Higher enlightenment to find. It's endless... and I can do that all day and be happy, but I need to eat. So I need a job. Guess that's what I see in ten years... working somewhere so I can keep practicing the Art." She didn't seem too enthusiastic about the idea.

Tony decided to give her a nudge. "What about using your martial arts? Wouldn't you like a job doing that?"

Ranma shrugged again. "'A martial artist protects the weak,"' she quoted, "and I like doing that, but taking out dangerous youkai or akuma doesn't pay... at all. Beating up muggers or yakuza can get some cash, but they tend to stay away after the first few times you get them, so can't count on that money. Pit fights? Bleh," she stuck out her tongue a moment. "Can make money that way, but I really hate dealing with the types who run those things."

"What about joining the military? Or even just hiring out as a trainer for them or the police?" Pepper suggested.

The redhead frowned. "Already told you why police are useless. Besides that, government doesn't like dealing with real martial artists. Don't know why. Been like that for years. Pretty much everybody in the know says not to bother trying. Even if it was allowed, would be just like being dojo sensei." She cocked her head in consideration. "Could be a... yojimbo, I guess. Don't know how to say that in English. That would be pretty cool, though."

"'Bodyguard,"' Stark told her with a satisfied smile, knowing the word from some of Stan Sakai's works. "A yojimbo would be called a bodyguard in English." Turning to Pepper he declared: "Hear that? Great minds, huh?"

"If you say so," the business woman lifted her shoulders minusculely in acknowledgment Turning back to the confused visitor, she explained: "Tony suggested hiring you as his bodyguard, as a matter of fact. But before we can do that, we need to know how reliable and trustworthy you would be."

"Oh..." Ranma blinked in surprise. "Well... I always try to keep my word. Even if I mess up sometimes, it isn't because I stopped trying. Also, I never failed to rescue someone when need to."

"How many times have you had to rescue a person?" Pepper frowned quizzically.

"Hmm..." Ranma looked up at the ceiling and started counting off fingers, muttering names as she did so. "...Akane... Akane... Shan Pu... those little kids... Akane... Ryoga... Akane... Akane... Akane... Nabiki... Nabiki again... Akane... Happosai..." she grimaced at that memory, "...that truck full of ladies the yaks had... Akane... Nabiki... Ukyo... Akane... Mom... Shan Pu... Akane..." Eventually, she looked back down and said: "Pretty sure I'm forgetting a few, but something like forty to fifty times? Not counting muggings or other walk-by-and-smack-'em-into-a-wall stuff."

Looking over at her former boss, Pepper commented: "You know, I always thought of Japan as a pretty law-abiding place."

"It mostly is... and boring, too," Ranma assured her casually. "Most of that stuff happened after I went to Nerima. Heck... I got kidnapped a few times myself there, which never happened before. In fact..." she crossed her arms and looked down with a frown, "Akane didn't get kidnapped even once when we started hanging out with Koyuki and the rest, now that I think of it. All that happened was one time those bosozoku morons in a van tried to grab her and she mallet-ed their van into the river." She looked up again and grinned. "That was pretty funny when I heard about it."

"Uh-huh," Pepper nodded slowly before she realized she had been sidetracked again. "Actually, I was more concerned about other factors than your personal integrity. Who is Nabiki Tendo? Is that the same Nabiki you listed among the people you rescued?"

"She's Akane's older sister. I had to save her a few times when they changed the fiancee to her for a while, even while she try to sell me. Also had to save her during the ten-yen challenge and a couple times since when she messed up with the yakuza," she reported the last rather breezily for a description of likely criminal activity.

"That's... worse than I was expecting. I was thinking she was a cousin or just happened to have the same family name by coincidence," she glared darkly at the table as she clapped her hands to bring up the user interface and open her recently viewed files. "She has been selling candid pictures and videos of you topless and nude online. There's also a trade in tips and rumors for profit that she's been running on various social media, mostly centered on you. Not to mention a betting ring."

"Ugh... yeah, that sounds like her," Ranma grimaced. "She was selling pictures of Akane to Kuno and making bets on the hentai horde back before I showed up, too."

"My concern is if she would try to blackmail you... 'blackmail' means to make you pay money to stop her from saying something," Pepper explained. "She could do that or try to tie you to a scandal after you are hired," Pepper explained.

"Eh... 'blackmail' is another word I knew. Think it's Nabiki's favorite word after 'money.' She used it on me a lot, but it stopped working, though," the redhead claimed as she brought her feet up to sit in a lotus position as she relaxed a bit more. "The things she had on me were curse, Akane, and mom. My curse, I stopped caring about... mostly. I'm guy... I'm girl... I kick ass either way. When we figured out how to get along, Akane stopped being a useful threat. Mom... well..." she stared off into the distance sadly. "I stopped caring about that too, I ain't gonna go along with the seppuku thing and she ain't anywhere near skilled enough to make me."

Tony sat up abruptly at that. "Seppuku?!" he yelped. "Tell me I'm misremembering what that means!"

"What? What is it?" Pepper asked while Ranma looked taken aback by the reaction of her host.

"If you are assuming that 'seppuku' refers to ritual suicide," JARVIS announced over the speakers, "you are correct."

"What!" Pepper bolted upright as well, whipping her head to look at Ranma, who blinked curiously back at her.

"You mean that hari-kari thing samurai used to do, right?!" Tony demanded. "Your own mother wanted this?!"

"Harakiri," Ranma corrected, miming stabbing herself in the belly and drawing her fist to the side, then up with a vicious twist of her fist. "Like that," she said. "Mom close to making me do it bunch of times until... Uh... hey... are you OK?" she directed to Pepper.

The older woman was pale and weaving in her seat. "Whoops!" Tony jumped up and grabbed a magazine off the table, using it to fan his friend and confidante. "Hey there, Pep! Long deep breaths, OK? Breathe!"

The petite Ki adept jumped over the afflicted woman's head to land behind her, where she gently nudged her into leaning forward. Rubbing her upper back, she fed in a jolt of Ki. Pepper immediately took in a deep breath, her color returning to normal. "Sorry! Sorry! I didn't mean..." Ranma trailed off in her apologies. "Joking! Was joke! Bad joke! Bad! Sorry!" she told them unconvincingly.

Sighing, Pepper looked up at Ranma and informed her: "You're really bad at lying."

The redhead's eyes scrunched closed for a moment, then she opened one eye and almost pleaded: "I'm a really good liar? Made up a story you believe, yes?"

Wiping off a thin film of sweat, Pepper smiled wanly and said: "No. You are definitely bad at lying." She got over her episode rather quickly with the Ki-adept's help, but she was definitely feeling the stress of the last couple of weeks. Between the Stark Expo her perennial problem child had insisted upon, the heated up government scrutiny, and having the responsibilities of a CEO foisted on her without the benefits of having official power; she had been stretched pretty damned thin. Her slight overreaction to Ranma's arrival proved that. She could tell Ranma was going to add to that stress in spite of her mostly good intentions. Still, she needed to know things and she made a beckoning gesture with her first two fingers. "Tell me the rest."

"What 'rest?' There's no 'rest,"' Ranma protested, holding her hands up and waggling them.

"Ah-heh," Tony scoffed quietly as he looked away. "Not going to work~" he sing-songed.

Indeed, it did not. "Sit!" Pepper ordered, pointing where Ranma had been seated before. When the martial artist complied meekly, she instructed: "Talk!"

Looking back and forth between the two older people, her elbows resting on her knees and her clasped hands held low in front of them, Ranma sighed and gave in. "Was contract. Had to be 'man amongst men.' Signed it, sort of, before Oyaji took me on training trip. He signed it too, the baka. Didn't see her again until I was sixteen and she had the stupid thing. Mom'd been practicing to be kaishakunin all that time. The whole..." she gestured down the length of her very feminine body, "... was really a problem."

"Don't tell me your dad faked your signature on that!" Tony blurted.

"No, I did it, but it was before I knew how to read. Was too young to remember Mom, even," Ranma explained. "He painted ink on my hand and said 'do fingerpaint!"' she mimed slapping her hand a few times on the table. "So they said it counted, but I decide that not true... later."

Pepper closed her eyes and took a couple of careful breaths. "What's a 'kaisha-whatever?"' she asked at last.

"Uh... I forget?"

"Ranma..." the long time manager of an eccentric's life drawled in a well-practiced, chiding tone.

Wincing, Ranma watched the other woman carefully as she complied. "Kaishakunin takes katana and give mercy when seppuku done right," she formed her hand into a blade and brought it down and past the back of her neck. "Zashu!" she added as a sound effect.

Pepper took a long breath through her nose, her jaw clenched while Ranma flinched at her expression. She let out the breath, then inhaled again, her eyes screwed shut as if she was in pain. "OK!" she yelled as she threw up her hands. "That's it! Ranma, you're hired!"

"Really?" Ranma perked up. "As yojimbo?"

"As..." Pepper shook her head as her hands dropped, "...whatever keeps you from going back to Japan. Bodyguard, personal trainer, cook... hell, professional eye-candy... I don't care anymore. Pick a job, you've got it." She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her temples with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. "God, those maniacs... I'm going to have to lie down soon..."

Tony chuckled in response. "What's stopping you? I can settle Ranma's terms of employment while you take a nap. Starting with the uniform..."

"No," Ms. Potts, CEO, lowered her hand and gave the infamous playboy a flat look. "I will be present when discussing any contract. God knows what you'll have her doing. She can't start official employment for another few days anyway until she's eighteen."

Ranma stood up and paced around the back of Pepper's chair again. "What's to know? I follow him and if anybody attacks, I stomp 'em!"

"Happy would approve of your attitude," Pepper said as she rolled her neck, not paying attention to where the other woman was going. "But there's a lot more to it than... oh, that's nice," she sighed as Ranma started rubbing her shoulders.

"I make you stress, I should fix it," Ranma replied.

"Good idea. There are those who should take notes," she cracked open a lazy eye at Tony.

"Hey, any time you want me to break out the oil and give you a full body massage, you just ask," Tony smirked. "I'm generous... that goes for either one of you."

"Never mind, Tony," Pepper said in an annoyed tone.

"So what else would I need to do?" Ranma asked when the other two were done bantering.

"There are security protocols, standards of behavior, rules about where and when to use force..." Pepper recited in a relaxed tone.

"Happy and I can go over that for you," Tony promised. "But I would also like to see if you can help in the workshop."

"OK, how would that work?" Ranma asked dubiously.

"The first thing that occurred to me was that you can help update JARVIS's combat database and simulations," the girl brightened when Tony reminded her of the computer's earlier requests. "Then we can study your special abilities... I have a really strong hunch we can figure out some seriously major shit with the Arc reactor and other stuff. We might do some sparring for real so I can test new mods. And finally, given your strength, precision, and how fast your hands move, it would be interesting to see how you do as a shop assistant helping me build things."

"That sounds good and all, as long as I can practice Art too," Ranma said, "but I still need to prove I'm in America soon."

"That... really wasn't the greatest plan," Pepper noted diplomatically. "We have a better one. I have already instructed the legal department to have our top lawyer in Tokyo contact me as soon as they open for the day. That'll be seven in the morning their time and three PM here, so they should be calling in soon. We can get them to give us recommendations on local lawyers who can shut your parents down. And that Nabiki girl, too. With someone keeping an eye on the registration offices, blocking any fraudulent marriages should be no problem."

"I... don't have any money yet for a lawyer," Ranma pointed out in disappointment. "Maybe Oyaji and Tendo-san get distracted or mess something up to give me time to earn it, but maybe not."

"I do owe you five grand," Tony offered. "That will be enough for... a... couple of days...? Right...? Maybe?"

Pepper rolled her eyes. "That would be sufficient to live on for a month for about half the regular households in this country. We can give you a signing bonus and even an advance on your salary if necessary. However, I was actually planning to have our people stay on top of things until you hired your own lawyer."

"That sounds... great!" Ranma blinked in astonishment. "And I get paid, too?"

"Yes... probably shouldn't start you out at Happy's current pay, whatever that is, since you're new and all," Tony mused. "What do you think, Ms. CEO Potts?"

"I'd agree with that," Pepper replied. "Median income in Malibu is a little over $130,000 per year, as I recall. We can go with that."

"Really? That low?" Stark asked obliviously. "How about we round it up to an even one fifty? Just to start, anyway. Plus room and board."

"No, not room and board," Pepper denied firmly. The money was well on the low side for people who worked directly with the troublesome billionaire, so she didn't quibble over it even if Ranma didn't really have any kind of resume beyond her impromptu audition. "She'll get her own place nearby. You know you'll just go into your can't-stand-people mode if she were here all the time no matter how good she looks as a girl." Tony shrugged in agreement after a moment of consideration. "So I'll make that a condition. Here are a couple more. One: you need to finish your education. You can study on your own if that works better for you, but you need to at least get your high school equivalency and I'd be a lot happier if you took college courses too."

Ranma continued massaging the other woman's shoulders as she answered. "I can do that. Hokkusu-sensei would be happy, anyway. What else?"

"Second condition: you need to see a therapist."

The martial artist looked confused, though Pepper could not see it. "What is therapist?"

"Shinri gakusha," JARVIS provided, causing Ranma's hands to stop moving.

After a long pause, Pepper added persuasively: "I'm not saying there's a problem, just that there could be one some time. It sounds like you were talking things out with this Mr. Hokkusu, so the therapist would take over since he isn't here."

Ranma resumed the shoulder rub, slowly, but didn't speak immediately. Pepper let her take her time and shot a quelling glance at Tony to shut him up too. Finally, Ranma asked: "150,000 American... what's that in yen?"

Ms. Potts looked up briefly as she recalled exchange rates. "About twelve million," she answered, causing the teenager's eyes to bug out.

"Twelve million yen..." Ranma breathed in shock. Briefly, she wondered what Nabiki would do for that kind of money... then she realized it the question was what she wouldn't do... which was pretty much nothing except dying or paying the money back... and she wasn't too sure about the first of those. Ranma just had to decide what she was willing to do. The Japanese native stayed silent for a while, then heaved long sigh as she hung her head for a moment. Looking up, she agreed: "For twelve millions, I can see head doctor."

"Good, then we're agreed?" Pepper asked.

"Nope... I have a condition too," Tony interjected. "Ranma has to stay female at all times."

"No way!" the redhead countered instantly.

"No... Tony," Pepper agreed with a long suffering sigh.

"Just when she's on the job!" He raised his hands defensively.

"You'll just say she's on call 24/7 and that would mean all the time," Pepper closed her eyes and shook her head, easily predicting the billionaire's antics.

"I told you how hot water can get me," Ranma pointed out. "Might be guy no matter what I do. Also, what if guy form needed for job? Men's only bath or something?"

"Look... I've never seen it rain hot water... ever. So unless you want to be constantly explaining your curse or dodging scientists trying to study you, being a girl in public would be easier, right?" Ranma frowned at the recollection of having to do just that over and over throughout the two years she'd been cursed. "How about you simply stay girl for as much of the time as you can instead of switching around?" Tony tried negotiating. "No less than ten hours a day and no more than sixteen?" Seeing the young woman's unamused expression, he added: "No more than fourteen hours per day? Average over the course of a week?" Still, there was no give in the teen's face. "I will double your pay. $300,000 a year. How about it?"

Ranma paused and winced. "Ms. Potts, am I missing a trap here?"

"Aside from him perving at you when you're female?" Pepper mentioned the obvious. "Probably not. And if he pulls something, I'll have something to say about it. Especially since it will be Stark Industries signing the checks."

"Ughh..." Ranma groaned. "Fine... twenty four millions of yen for bodyguard, shop assistant, school, head doctor, and going girl most of the time when at work. Deal."

"Great, then that's all settled," Tony clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

"That's a bit larger a fraction of Happy's current salary," Pepper brought up. "Is he going to be fine with that?"

"It's not like we have to tell him," Tony eyed her with a sardonic expression. "But even if we did, he'll understand. Guy code, you know." Pepper looked annoyed and dismissive. Ranma just looked confused, but shrugged it off. "Besides, if it's an issue, then it's your job to sort it out, Ms. CEO."

"That second time you call her that," Ranma mentioned. "What that mean?"

"I just turned over the CEO job... that's chief executive officer... to Pep as of today," Tony answered as he flopped into the chair Ranma had abandoned.

"Well, there will need to be some paperwork done before it is official," Pepper demurred, "so it isn't quite true yet."

"'CEO' means in charge of company?" Ranma guessed.

"That's right," Tony drawled. "All the boring crap is her problem now."

"I'm confused," Ranma tilted her head in perplexity, thinking back on what she had read about the two people in front of her. "How that different from every other day before?"

Pepper snorted and broke into laughter while Tony's lips twisted into a sour expression. After a while, he chuckled and admitted: "OK, that's a fair question."

"I just thought... Tony Stark owned the company, but Potts-San ran it. That's what lot of people I know said. Was that wrong?" Ranma inquired.

Pepper got a hold of herself and answered: "Technically, that was not true. I was Tony's assistant and did anything and everything he needed. It's just that what he needed for the last few months was for me to handle most of the job as CEO. You probably shouldn't mention it to anyone yet, though, until we say it's OK. Not that you'll get much chance of that if you're hiding here for a couple of days."

"Do I need to hide?" the martial artist wondered. "If lawyers are stopping my parents, I can paddle back to Japan and do things right way."

"Nah, forget it," Tony waved off the idea. "I've got it mostly set up already. I just need to take a scan of your fingerprints and JARVIS can finish faking up the paperwork for a H-1B in our embassy in Japan, appropriately back-dated, and with the DHS here on the day of your official arrival. We'll buy a plane ticket in your name the day of your 'departure' and register all the appropriate checks and such for boarding or whatever. JARVIS'll also fabricate a passport with very believable stamps on it when needed. No point in waiting."

"Sir," JARVIS interrupted, "there is a call from Yasoichi Maeda, the head of the legal department for Stark Industries' Tokyo office, for Ms. Potts."

Glancing at her watch, Pepper noted: "It's just barely past seven there... they're quick. Ranma, this will be a video call, so you'll have to stop the shoulder rub and stay out of sight. Darn it."

"Sure, I finished with that cough anyway," Ranma said as she leapt back up to stand on the top rope of the boxing ring.

Pepper frowned, then put a hand to her throat as she took a deep, unobstructed breath. "You cured the common cold?!" she asked incredulously. "No..." she help up a hand in a stop gesture, "of course you did, never mind. Put Mr. Maeda through, JARVIS."

A window appeared on the table showing a man with severe features and graying temples dressed in a conservative suit. Upon seeing Pepper, he nodded austerely and spoke in faintly accented English: "Good day, Ms. Potts, I have been informed of your need for my department's services. How can I help?"

"Mr. Maeda, thank you for getting back to me so promptly," Pepper replied with a business-like smile noting out the corner of her eye that her boss had busied himself with other computer displays. "Tony and I have been made aware of a certain Japanese citizen who we think would be a real asset for Stark Industries. However, this person is currently beset by personal problems as well as some rather unsavory individuals. Individuals with criminal intent," she emphasized. "We expect that legal scrutiny by itself would go a long way to resolve these issues. I initially called your department in order to do investigation as well before making a hiring decision, but we already found out enough on our own to say we want to hire this person, so the focus now would be on making it happen. Especially contracting appropriate talent on the legal side."

Raising an eyebrow, the lawyer responded: "I believe I understand. This potential hire is someone you yourself have already seen fit to approve?" He inquired blandly.

"That's right," Pepper confirmed with a faint smile. It was obvious that the other professional had wondered if this was all another case of Tony getting a wild hair up his ass and doing something crazy... again.

"Very well, what is this person's name?"

"Ranma Saotome," she answered, then added: "or 'Saotome Ranma' if you prefer. He-His place of residence is..." Pepper stopped when Maeda hissed an indrawn breath through his teeth.

"Ranma Saotome..." he repeated slowly with a decidedly careful tone. "As in the Nerima district of Tokyo's Ranma Saotome?"

Pepper's eyes flicked up to see Ranma face-palming, then she looked over at the reprobate that was her former boss, who was biting his hand to keep from laughing.

"Yes...?" she agreed hesitantly. "Absurdly capable martial artist? About to turn eighteen in a few days?" Pepper mentioned for confirmation, getting nods from her soon-to-be employee. "You've heard of Ranma? That's surprising."

"It is far more surprising, Ms. Potts, that you or anyone outside of Asia have heard of him," he stated in an arch tone. "There are many interests who would have preferred that he not be known to the West. How did you learn of him, if I may ask?"

"Tony encountered Ranma while he was out in his Iron Man armor. He was highly impressed by the feats of strength and speed he witnessed," Pepper answered truthfully, if misleadingly. Then she re-directed the conversation. "Can you identify these 'interests?' We've already seen evidence of a cover-up. Are they likely to be a problem of the alphabet soup kind?"

"Alphabet soup...?" the lawyer looked momentarily confused. "Ah! You mean in terms of security agencies like the PSIA? No, not really... we do not have anything as... obstreperous as your CIA." He shook his head. "The issues are more matters of face, caution, and long-term habit than anything else. This takes something of a history lesson to explain."

Steepling his hands on his desk, he paused a moment to gather his thoughts. "While the the sub-culture that Mr. Saotome comes from has an extensive history going back centuries... or millennia, more properly... the part that is most significant to how they are handled these days starts with the so-called Boxer Rebellion. Japanese martial artists were used to neutralize Chinese fighters to allow conventional forces to be decisive in subduing Chinese resistance."

Ranma straightened with an offended look and opened her mouth as if to say something. Pepper subtly waved her down out of camera view to keep her from saying anything, however. The lawyer admitted: "Though it should be pointed out that no high-level masters were involved on either side since they tend to be rather abstracted from the regular world." Ranma relaxed when Maeda apparently voiced what she wanted to point out. He went on to retell: "After the dust had settled, the masters in Japan came to regard the entire incident as shameful, especially since European powers were given license to exploit the Chinese even more than they had before. These masters had a good deal of reverence for traditional Chinese culture, you see. Certainly more than the aggressively modernist Japanese government of the time who saw no problem with that culture being wiped out."

The lawyer raised his hands in a conclusive gesture. "As a result, these masters made very sure that no martial artists of exceptional ability were ever to participate in anything that smacked of imperialism. After some highly embarrassing incidents in the late 1920's, the army gave up trying to break this boycott and officialdom has practiced a policy of benign neglect ever since. Which brings us up to modern times. Nowadays, the focus is on keeping the martial arts community as self-contained, discreet, and... above-all... uninvolved in politics as possible. That means removing them from the rule of law to a large degree as well, as law is politics."

"Right, that squares with some things we've heard. Though I'm surprised the martial artists were strong enough to fend off the entire Imperial Japanese Army!" Pepper was still shocked by the idea despite seeing the demonstrations Ranma had given.

"Oh no... I rather imagine that if the entire conventional military were to dedicate themselves to battling the martial artists, they would win." Maeda smiled thinly. "No... the real reasons the military has never tried to do anything like that are because it would cost far more in blood and treasure than victory would be worth... with a high probability of public humiliation and disapproval as well. That and the martial artists do serve a purpose in repressing certain... potential problems that the normal government would rather avoid tackling themselves."

"'Potential problems,' such as...?" Pepper trailed off leadingly.

Maeda's expression stiffened for a moment before he let out a small breath. "What is the famous phrase in English literature? 'More than dreamt in your philosophy?' Let us say that there are unconventional incidents that traditional methods can cure better than advanced technology."

"Incidents like those with certain people and hot and cold water?" the new CEO suggested obliquely.

"Ah..." Maeda sounded somewhat relieved. "So you are aware of Mr. Saotome's other form, then?"

"Redheaded and buxom?" Pepper nodded. "Yes, that was demonstrated quite thoroughly beyond any possible doubt." She shook her head ruefully. "I'm still coming to terms with the idea of magic being a thing."

"Again... Clarke's law," Tony interrupted, poking his head into the camera pickup beside Pepper's. "I'm pretty sure after enough study, we'll see the whole thing is just as subject to scientific analysis as thunder and lightning, which people attributed to gods and magic in the past you might remember. We've already seen strong evidence of N-dimensional mechanics in action. This so called 'magic' could be simply extra-planar energy and mass exchanges with our own dimension." Having had his say, he just as abruptly pulled away to return to his previous diversions.

Maeda steepled his fingers again and raised an eyebrow. "I am hardly an expert in physics, so I will leave such speculation to those who are, but that does sound plausible. In any event, I am glad I do not have to figure out a way to explain Mr. Saotome's unique condition."

"Yes, I can see how that would have worried you," Pepper said sympathetically. "I hadn't anticipated the problem since I did not expect you to know that much about Ranma. Is Ranma particularly famous in Japan?"

"No, not really," the lawyer denied. "Well... to be precise, he is quite well known... infamous even... to certain parties. Both law enforcement and organized crime, for instance. Ironically," he smiled thinly again, "both of those groups have precisely the same policy: to avoid provoking or having dealings of any kind with Mr. Saotome at all costs, switching to appeasement if such dealings happen anyway. I may not have an extensive background in criminal law, but I have many associates, friends, and even family who do, and so I found out a few things about the situation from them. I also did a little research on my own due to my own curiosity."

"So do you think you would have any problems helping us out with this?" Pepper wondered.

"No, I would not," Maeda stated flatly. "Indeed, I am looking forward to doing so. I and many of those associates I mentioned before have been bothered by the situation in Nerima for quite some time. Anyone with any regard for the rule of law would be perturbed by the effectively lawless conditions there. As I said before, the government prefers to follow a policy of deliberate ignorance, which allows for quite a bit of abuse. Being given a reason and resources to chip away at that policy is welcome."

"Oh... that's splendid," Pepper blinked in pleased surprise. "We'll get a deposition from Ranma right away to give you something to work with. You might want to send us a list of questions to relay to Ranma. The first priority is to prevent marriage fraud. Ranma is worried that as an eighteen-year-old, Ranma's parents will have an opportunity to falsify a marriage certificate. There are other issues to deal with, but that is the most critical one."

"It would be better if I interviewed Mr. Saotome directly," the lawyer pointed out with a frown.

"That..." Pepper thought quickly, "...can be arranged if we provide Ranma with a video phone. There might be problems with an in-person meeting. I understand there are several people who might try to follow Ranma around and might cause trouble."

Maeda's frown deepened. "The sorts of people who would cause trouble would be the sorts of people we would want to take legal action against in the first place. Having additional evidence of their improprieties could only help, so a meeting would be..." The lawyer stopped as he realized something and sighed with faint exasperation. Visibly reordering his thoughts, he then said: "I note purely as a stray thought that transiting between countries without official notice, such as by surreptitiously stowing away, is technically a misdemeanor and that attorney/client privilege does not extend to aiding and abetting a crime... even if it is one that almost never results in jail time. I further note even more randomly that I have read that Mr. Stark's personal jet is hypersonic and can cross the Pacific in a few hours. But please forgive my irrelevant comments... what were you saying about an interview with Mr. Saotome?"

"Uh... wait one second, please," Pepper offered with a pained smile before muting and blanking the communication program. A minute or two later, she reappeared on the lawyer's screen and asked: "Just out of curiosity, would the Japanese government try to stop Ranma from leaving via a private airplane?"

"They would not have cause to do so any more than they would with any other citizen who was following standard procedures," he shook his head. "There are no special laws that would affect him. The handling of the martial arts community owes more to inertia than statute. That is a large part of why I and like-minded lawyers want reasons to take something to court, so we can either compel uniform enforcement of the law or have new laws debated openly in the Diet."

Pepper smiled in response to that. "In that case, Mr. Maeda, it seems that Ranma will be able to mysteriously appear in your reception area sometime this afternoon without alerting any problematic people. Would three o'clock Tokyo time be agreeable?"

"That would be most acceptable."

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Authors notes: Kind of a trip to get follows and reviews from people whose stuff I've been reading for years.

About pairings: I'm not really planning to pair Ranma with anybody on a long term basis. I'd think Nerima would put anyone off of commitment for a good long time.