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.
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(Chapter theme song: Existence is Punishment – Crowbar)
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"Are you hovering? Why are you hovering?"
Ranma glanced down at the tips of her toes firmly planted on a couple of the dimples of the giant donut sign she and her employer had taken up residence in as they munched on Randy's finest and Tony nursed an extra-large, extra-black coffee. While she wasn't actually in the faux-pastry's hole like Tony was, and thus did not have the benefit of a mostly horizontal surface, the footing she had on the side was plenty solid for her purposes. "I'm not hovering. I don't know how to do that yet. Stupid Habu was probably cheating with some dragon thing when he did that."
"That's not what..." The helmet-less Iron Man had a pained expression under his sunglasses before he frowned and asked: "Wait, that's actually a thing? No... never mind... I'm not getting into that with you now. What I meant was you staying only two damn feet away from me at all times since we left the mansion and looking at me like you thought I was going to shrivel up and blow away in the wind at any second."
"That's because you only had like an hour of sleep, maybe," Ranma shrugged, licking glaze off her fingers, "and I can't think of any other way to help you than to be ready."
"Yeah, well... looking at you looking at me may sound like a party most of the time, but it's bugging me right now and not helping. Can you just... disappear for a bit?" he asked plaintively.
Ranma examined him steadily for a while, then she shrugged again and leaned in toward him briefly. "Sure," she agreed, then she faded from view right before his eyes.
"Holy hell!" Tony exclaimed. "Did you just turn invisible? Or was that one of those after-image things?" In astonishment, he muttered: "Uh... yeah... totally belated question here, I admit... should have asked this ages ago... but Ranma... my loyal and benevolent employee... are you a ninja?" He looked around quickly. "Ranma?" he waved blindly at where she had been a moment earlier. Scooping up his helmet from where it was braced under one knee, he put it on over his sunglasses and activated the sensors. "Ranma?" he repeated as he found no trace save lingering thermographic imprints from where she had been supporting herself.
"Shit!" he exclaimed. "Don't that take the fucking cake!" He was pretty sure the martial artist was still around somewhere. Her now beloved SkyBuster was still parked in the restaurant's parking lot, after all. Still, he was already regretting giving the order he did. He thumped the back of his armored head against the doughnut.
Rhodey had done him the marvelous favor of flying relatively low and slow through a patch of sky that was visible from the breakfast nook window at Pepper's place, and she had nearly screamed Tony's ears off when she called him. Strangely, his new CEO was not at all calmed by Ranma's offer to steal the armor back no matter where the Air Force stowed it... actually, that just made her madder and looking for retaliation.
Happy was already following Pepper around before that day since it was his new job, but she made it very clear to the ex-boxer that he was to stay busy and near her at all times. Not sliding out to visit Tony. She'd also made a point of making Natalie her assistant instead of firing her, since that prevented him from simply re-hiring the attractive redhead on his own recognizance. Of course she made it clear the assistant wasn't going anywhere near him for a while either, so Ranma was all that was left for company. Right up until he just drove her away too.
He really didn't want to brood on his self-inflicted abandonment issues. Suppress, suppress, suppress... avoidance mechanisms are the best mechanisms. Or... quick and dirty solutions were. Since he was wearing his helmet anyway, he decided to try drawing his employee out in his own... unique... fashion and went straight for the nuclear option. Some might call it crazy, more would call it inappropriate, but common sense was for commoners. "God damn, Ranma's tits looked amazing last night! I wanted to suck her nipples so bad... put those magnificent mounds on extra-extra-extra-large ice-cream cones and lick and nibble at 'em all night!" He flinched with his arms half-raised over his head in anticipation of retaliation, then looked around at the distinct lack of impact on his armored cranium. "While she's dressed as a sexy pirate... not one of those lame ninjas..." he tried again to elicit an angry response to his blatant sexual and cultural harassment. And failed. "Nothing? Not even for pirates vs ninjas? Shit... she really did take off!"
Shrugging more offhandedly than he felt, the inventor gave up and took off his helmet. He opened the box to reach for another doughnut as a consolation prize. "Dammit!" he exclaimed. "How?!" Somehow, Ranma had snagged both of the remaining chocolate glazed through the closed box before she left.
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"Sir! I'm gonna have to ask you to exit the doughnut," a voice firmly in the law enforcement register called up to Stark as he was contemplating the last of the pastries.
Tony tilted his head to look down... then he tilted his head some more and lowered his sunglasses so that he could peer over the top of them in mild disbelief. "For fuck's sake," he muttered. Instead of the early morning gawkers that had all disappeared, he saw one Nicholas Fury, Director of SHIELD, standing with his hands on his hips and dressed all in really-totally-inconspicuous black, including a leather trenchcoat despite the warm spring weather.
"Ranma~..." the billionaire sing-songed quietly, "now would be a good idea to show you're here~! By ninja-ing this guy right in the ass~!" To his disappointment, no brutal martial arts display resulted from his request. "Damn," he murmured. "Pro tip... if you have a super-ninja working for you, don't tell them to disappear!"
"Now, Stark!" the demand echoed up from the street.
"Ahhh, fuck," Tony sighed as he grabbed his helmet and his trash. Showing off a bit, he descended using his boot-jets alone while his hands were full. Once land-bound again, he walked into the shop without a backwards glance, tossing the remains of his breakfast into the wastebasket. He noted all the shop workers had disappeared just like the onlookers outside. At a booth were two steaming cups of coffee. Sulkily he sat down in the booth. He kept his helmet off as he really didn't want to see the continuously rising numbers of complaining phone calls JARVIS was fielding for him.
The genius technologist glared tiredly at the spy when the bald man sat down in front of him. "I told you I don't wanna join your super-secret boy band," he reminded Fury.
"No, no, no," Fury protested sarcastically. "See, I remember... you do everything yourself. How's that working out for you?"
"It's- it's- it's..." he stammered as he tried to come up with something that would get the security director to leave him alone. "I'm sorry..." he headed off on one of his tangents, "I don't wanna get off on the wrong foot. Do I look at the patch or the eye? Honestly I'm a bit sleep deprived after a night of boozing. I'm not sure if you're real or if I'm having..."
"I am very real," the black man assured him firmly. "I'm the realest person you're ever gonna meet."
Tony scoffed with a genuine grin. "I might have taken that little statement a bit more seriously if it weren't for a new friend I made recently. I'd like to introduce them to you sometime," His sally earned only a stony glare, so he moved on. "So where's the staff here?" he looked around as if expecting them to pop up from behind the counter or something.
"That's not looking so good," Fury ignored Stark's maunderings in favor of staring at the dark rash starting to show on the inventor's neck.
"I've been worse," Tony claimed casually. The distinct clack of high-heels gained his attention and he turned his head.
"We've secured the perimeter," a redhead as memorable as Ranma announced, "but I don't think we can hold it for long. You know why."
Tony peered up at 'Natalie' over the rims of his shades. She was wearing some kind of combat bodysuit with militaristic patches on the shoulders. Not typical paralegal wear, and he needed only a fraction of a second to put the pieces together. He wanted to curse, but a halting "You're... fired," was all he went with.
"That's not up to you," she sighed and sat next to her true employer.
"Tony," the director started as if they were all friends now, "I want you to meet Agent Romanoff."
"Hi," the armored man greeted sardonically. "Didn't I specifically tell you not to join an evil secret organization?"
"I'm a SHIELD shadow," Romanoff explained, ignoring his commentary. "Once we knew you were ill, I was tasked to you by Director Fury." That was far from the only reason, but she felt no need to elaborate.
"I suggest you apologize," Tony started out sarcastically, then frowned and added: "Seriously, you need to apologize. To Ranma if nobody else. She was... really getting along with you."
The woman agent's bland expression twitched minutely, but Fury interrupted before Tony could probe further. "You've been very busy," he said bitingly. "You made your girl your CEO. You're giving away all your stuff. You hired a homeless person right off the street to take up the second or third most trusted position in your life. You let your friend fly away with your suit. Now, if I didn't know better..."
"You don't know better," Tony countered. "That was no random handout. He didn't exactly give me a choice."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Fury protested disbelievingly. "No choice? You're Iron Man, with Ranma, I-Wreck-Mountains, Saotome right there, and you had no choice!? What? The little brother woke up, kicked both your asses and took your suit? Came out of your place as shiny as a gleaming new chrome hubcap even though we know Saotome flattened him... in that same armor... just hours before?" He turned to Romanoff. "Is that possible?"
"Even if the superhuman martial artist was not a factor," her lip curled in contempt at the very idea, "according to Mr Stark's database security guidelines, there are redundancies to prevent unauthorized usage."
"What do you want from me?" Tony asked tiredly, throwing up his hands.
"What do we want from you? What do you want from me?" the spy-chief pointed to himself as the redhead stood up and walked away. "You have become a problem. A problem I have to deal with. Contrary to your belief, you are not the center of my universe. I have bigger problems than you to deal with in just the southwest region alone, forget the whole rest of the world." He nodded over Tony's shoulder. "Hit him!" he ordered.
Following her superior's command with a sense of foreboding, Natasha attempted to jab the injector into Stark's neck. To her complete lack of surprise, her wrist was grabbed in mid-motion and twisted behind her back as she was pressed inexorably, buxom-chest-to-buxom-chest, into the body of a smaller redhead.
"Stand down!" Natasha shouted to the room and over her radio earbud. "Nobody do anything!" To punctuate her plea, Ranma aimed her hand with a glowing ball of energy in it at Director Fury, who froze just before his fingers could slip into his coat where his shoulder-holster was.
"Woo-hoo!" Tony cheered, clapping his gauntlets. "Forget coffee! Now I'm awake! Go Ranma!"
"Helmet on, Tony!" the martial artist ordered. The force of Ki in her voice made him comply automatically despite his fascinated distraction. "You really need a HUD, or one of those ear-thingies, or something... I couldn't get through to you when the helmet was off to tell you about these guys!"
"Whoa! Uh, s-sure..." He grabbed the helmet off the booth seat beside him, and put it over his head to let the automatic coupling system attach it to the armor. "I'm OK here," his metallically distorted voice spoke up just after his facemask closed. "Please continue whatever it is you plan to do to her... or for her," he added suggestively.
"I'm totally fine with 'for her,'" Natasha quipped with a half smile, squirming a little in Ranma's hold.
"Let go of my agent and stand down, Saotome! Right now!" Fury growled. In contrast to the director who was practically quivering in the desire to attack, Iron Man was utterly relaxed as he leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head, projecting impertinent glee despite the blank mask and other metal enclosing him.
"Enough to smash you into the wall," Ranma stated coldly, twitching the hand with the un-fired Moko Takabisha for emphasis. Then the Ki-bolt expanded and brightened. "Enough to smash you through the wall." The globe of power expanded again, roiling with uncanny power. "Enough to smash you and the building behind you."
"Please, sir," Natasha implored, "let me handle this. You didn't listen to me about how the strong-arm approach would turn out. Listen to me now. Do not interfere. I've got this."
The chief spy glowered at the two women over the energy blast menacing him. "Thirty seconds," was his ultimatum, but he held still. As his agent said, she had warned against these tactics. Not that it mattered. The Council had prioritized getting some version of the Iron Man armor into military hands as a specific counter to Saotome and people like her. Or so they claimed. He had suspicions... but then he always had suspicions.
Whatever the real motive, the acquisition had worked... somehow... but the whole idiotic plan ignored the fact Saotome would win against even an experienced and fully upgraded Iron Man, much less the obsolete model Rhodes had made off with. It also stuck Fury with the unenviable task of preserving the strategic asset that was Tony Stark and keeping him and Ranma Saotome out of the 'Enemies of the United States' column. Natasha was not just his best asset for the last objective, but his only asset, and he needed time if he were to come up with a real deterrent.
"Ranma?" Natasha said gently in the face of the other woman's stony features and wishing they hadn't been doing this immediately after Rhodes had turned out to be a ratfink. "My real name is Natasha Romanova. I lied about my identity and whatever I had to in order to keep my cover. I hid my mission, which was to keep Stark alive. But those were the only real things I ever lied to you about."
The Ki-adept's aura lit up the restaurant as the Wild Tiger's Instinct Truth Sense sprang into existence and enveloped both women. Natasha could feel it thrumming through her, and she had to stifle a moan of pleasure mixed with awe. The sensation of Ranma's essential nature entwining with hers was absolutely and uniquely apparent to her despite having never felt anything like it before.
"Should have done this way before now," Ranma muttered in self-recrimination. "Tell me the truth now! What is this?" she demanded, wiggling the hand holding the syringe that was still wrenched behind the agent's back.
Natasha suddenly made an intuitive leap... realizing that she could feel exactly what Ranma was feeling. The anger, the betrayal, and the forlorn sadness at losing a friend. Quickly thinking it through, she assumed the link went both ways. She could not lie without the martial artist knowing it, not with her very being as thoroughly scrutinized as it was at that moment. Unlike what her normal reaction would be, she was actually relieved.
"Medicine," she clearly stated, certain that she would be believed with her consciousness under a supernatural magnifying glass. "It won't help much, or for long, but it will help Stark. Fury not only wants Stark alive, but wants him to have as long a life as possible. Therefore I want the same."
Ranma looked into her eyes for a moment. Then she canceled her Ki-blast and lowered that hand, but didn't release the older woman. Natasha raised her free hand in turn to halt her boss before he tried anything. "Ask me whatever else you want," she offered.
Ranma took a deep breath and let it out. "Are you our friend?" she asked.
"I'd like to be your friend. Not so much Stark's," she said bluntly.
"I'm totally fine with that, actually," Tony piped up with an amused tone. "Go ahead and kiss and make up if you want. I won't be the least bit offended."
"You have your answers!" Fury snarled. "Let her go! Now!"
"You're trying to break that up?!" Tony asked incredulously, waving at the two women. "A pair of redheaded babes mooshed together like that and you want to stop it? What's wrong with you?" The eyepatched man shot him a contemptuous glare in reply.
While the two men were distracting each other, Natasha whispered in Ranma's ear. "I disagreed with this plan. I want you to be friends with us. Close friends." To make herself clear, she surged her own feelings, especially the friendliness and the lust she was feeling for the martial artist. The conditioning inflicted on her by the Red Room had raised her libido to make her missions go more smoothly, something she had resented several times, but there were also times when it came in handy. Such as being genuinely able to wave it around while inside a glowing lie-detector. It certainly made Ranma blink. Her frown changed from angry to bemused.
Natasha rushed words into the opening. "I wasn't doing anything really bad. Just getting close to see what was going on and to give us options. Those were my orders."
Setting his libidinous interest aside for a moment, Tony asked: "Nothing bad? Why do I have a feeling you know a lot more about that hate campaign in the media than you said earlier?"
"I have no knowledge of anything like that," Natasha denied. Seeing Ranma's eyebrows furrow at the partial-truth, she added: "If someone if SHIELD did do anything like that, I didn't know about it. And what does it matter? It's maybe two weeks of scandal, then it's gone. You know how this works. You've lived down plenty of scandals before. People are just over-reacting for now... probably because of all those prior scandals wearing Potts down and she's winding everyone else up."
The expressionless mask of the armor studied the captive agent for a moment before turning to Ranma. "Are you buying this?"
"...Yeah," Ranma agreed slowly. "She's tricky, but I've got her aura."
"Like I said, you know how this works," Natasha repeated. "Or you do when you calm down and think about it. Some celebrity's sex tape will drop, or the British royals will do something, or a blonde college girl will go missing on vacation, or whatever, and this will all be yesterday's news."
"Ugh... right. Down the memory hole," Iron Man muttered in reluctant agreement.
"Right. It's a blip. It's nothing. I told you this specifically, Ranma," She reminded the teen, "don't get hung up in how the public opinion swings. Just do your job, do it well, and the rest will take care of itself. I told you this to help you."
"Hrn." Ranma didn't look convinced quite yet.
Natasha met her eyes squarely, then leaned forward to touch her forehead to the martial artist's. "Ranma," she said softly, "I'm sorry."
"Oh, hey... this keeps getting better!" Tony interjected. "Forgive her and kiss! Forgive her and kiss!"
The wealthy eccentric didn't have much time to kibitz, for Ranma's aura-technique winked out after judging Natasha's sincerity. The agent flinched a little at the abrupt loss of warm Ki, but held the martial artist's gaze as Ranma stepped back with a complicated expression.
As soon as his operative was clear, Fury finished drawing his pistol and shot to his feet, aiming it at the preoccupied warrior with a firm, two-handed grip. "Put your hands on your head and get on the ground!" he ordered. The other three people in the building just looked at him doubtfully.
"You're kidding, right?" Tony said as he casually rose to his metal-clad feet.
Natasha actually put her hand over her eyes as she pointedly sidled further away. "I don't know this man. I've never seen him before," she said faintly, shaking her head at her commander. Fury frowned thunderously at her for the comment and she lifted a palm in a helpless gesture.
"You can shoot all your silly little bullets at me and I'll catch them if it'll make you feel better," Ranma offered helpfully. "It was kinda fun when we did that in the basement that one time."
"I mean... your nice new clothes might get damaged if you miss a catch," Tony pointed out with a falsely solicitous tone.
"No they won't," Ranma denied flatly. "Iron Cloth." Her boss chuckled at how even the incidental problem wasn't a problem.
Nicholas Fury's face twisted in soul-deep irritation. This was why he didn't want to go overt with Saotome yet, but playing the heavy was the only way forward with Stark after fulfilling his other orders. It wasn't a great option, but pretending to some hypocritical good will wasn't going to happen after they had rooked the billionaire over as per their superiors' demands. It was particularly galling that they only learned the Japanese teen could literally shrug off repulsor blasts mere hours before. He made a mental note to order full implementation of Phase II immediately. In the meantime he angrily safed his weapon and put it away. "Where the hell is the perimeter team?!"
Natasha cocked her head thoughtfully in the momentary silence. Then she said: "Ranma, the perimeter team would be the squad of armed agents surrounding this place. Would you care to answer the Director's question?"
"Oh, those guys?" Ranma looked surprised that they were worth mentioning and making Tony start to laugh. "They looked tired. They're taking naps." Tony laughed harder as Fury dropped disgustedly back into his seat.
"I did submit a complete report of Ranma's observed abilities and tactics," Natasha reminded her boss.
Fury rubbed his eyebrow with a pained expression. "Yes, I realize that."
"And I specifically warned that we did not have the means to physically compel or intimidate Ranma, and that any such attempt could be disastrous," she added.
"Yes... I do recall that, Agent," the bald man replied testily. "You do not need to belabor the point. The timing and methodology was not left up to me entirely."
"No, sir," she agreed blandly. "Though I may never have another chance to say 'I told you so' to you for the rest of my life, I will refrain from doing so now."
"Thank you. Agent." He gritted out while glaring at her innocent expression. Deciding to preserve his dignity and move on, he turned to Stark and said: "The compound we will inject you with is lithium dioxide. It will counteract a lot of your problems so you have more time and you're in better shape to solve them. You would be well advised to let Agent Romanoff proceed... unless you want die of stupidity."
"Uh... t-that's what started this whole..." Tony gestured with a gauntlet to Ranma, Natasha, and Fury. "Yeah, surprise stabbings with needles are how people wake up minus a kidney. Maybe after my lab guys have a look at it, we can play doctor again," the gold mask showed no such thing as it turned toward her, but Natasha could practically hear the waggling eyebrows in his tone.
"Did you understand what Ranma did with the aura just now?" Natasha interjected. "She could tell I was telling the truth."
"When did you become a Ki expert?" the inventor asked despite Ranma nodding in the background. "Besides, feeling intents or emotions are one thing, but catching a stone-cold spy in a lie is another."
"Stark," she met his eyeslits levelly, "I could feel her Ki inside me..."
"Oooh... kinky..." he quipped.
"More like profoundly intimate," Natasha corrected. Though it was a little sexy too. Or a lot sexy. "Lying to her at that moment would be like someone telling you the bowl in front of you was full of potato chips when your hands were already in it and covered in jello."
"Mmmmm... redheads and jellooo..." the billionaire playboy sounded like he was drooling as his mind went off on a tangent. KLONG! Ranma smacked him upside the back of his helmet. "Ow! What?"
"Medicine," Ranma replied shortly. "Take it. That was the Wild Tiger's Instinct Truth Sense. I told you about it. I know for a fact she was telling the truth about this stuff."
"And whoever is in the technique can tell when you are lying," Natasha pointed out a weakness to calm her superior a little. "Not to mention the lightshow lets observers know something happened. It's a bit limited, but very useful for circumstances like this."
"Boy you figured that out fast," Ranma blinked at her with an impressed look.
"Identifying and analyzing facts quickly is integral to my Art," Natasha replied, deliberately phrasing things in terms that Ranma would appreciate. "I have been learning it since an age as young as you started in yours."
"Cool," Ranma nodded slowly in respect, though the corner of her mouth twitched up and down as she couldn't decide if she should allow herself to be impressed by someone who had just played them. "OK, gimme the medicine," she put out her hand, setting ambiguities to the side for now.
Natasha instantly handed it over. "Inject it here," she advised, pointing to a spot on her own neck.
"Agent Romanoff!" Fury exclaimed in an annoyed tone.
"We need to get the counter-agent into Stark as fast as possible," Natasha quickly explained. "This is the fastest way. Remember what I said about wanting Stark alive," she reminded Ranma.
"Yeah... yeah... I get it." Ranma knocked on the front of Tony's helmet. "Open up!" she instructed.
"Uh.. no?" Tony tried. Ranma crossed her arms and looked at him with an expression of tried patience. "Don't give me that look, young lady. Just because a sultry redhead rubbed up against you and told you... OK... that actually is a good reason for you to do this. Uh..." he shuffled exactly one step toward the door before something in the short woman's expression halted him. "Guess you don't need to be born a woman to learn that look... fine." He gave up and removed the helmet.
"Hang on," instead of sticking him immediately, Ranma reached a little ways into the Iron Man armor and touched a shiatsu point.
"Oh hey!" Tony said happily as he remembered his employee's little trick when the side of his neck went numb. He felt a bit of pressure and heard a hiss as the syringe was applied, then Ranma was rubbing the injection spot with a glowing finger, sealing even the small wound left by the needle. "Hot damn, I never thought of that application before. You're totally coming with me to all my doctor's appointments from now on. We'll need to find a naughty nurse uniform for you... Ow!" he complained when Ranma flicked his completely healed neck with a fingernail.
"The rash just shrank," Ranma noted clinically, "you'd need to get out of the suit for me to feel your Ki better, though."
"Yeah, lets go back home," Tony tilted his head from side to side, noting that he already felt a bit better. "I wanna see what a Reiki massage does when this stuff is in me."
"Not so fast," Fury interjected. "The compound will just take the edge off, it will not work for long. Not even if we inject you again. We're trying to get you back to work. In exchange for our help, we expect you to close yourself off from the world for the next few days and solve your damn palladium problem! This isn't going to be an easy fix!"
"Trust me, I know," Tony made placating gestures with his hands. "I'm good at this stuff. But I've been looking for a suitable replacement for palladium for weeks now. I've tried every combination... every permutation... of every known element."
"Well, I'm here to tell you," Fury said with a smirk, "you haven't tried them all."
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"Try to put your head in there!" Justin Hammer whined. "Go ahead, try to put your head in there!" His minion dutifully tried to wear the sensor module in his hands as a hat. "See, Ivan? He can't put his head in there. That's... That's not a helmet. It's a head," he continued to belabor the obvious in his obnoxious little voice. "I need to put a guy in there. I need to fit a person in that suit. You understand?"
"Drone better," Vanko rumbled.
"What? Drone better? Why is drone better? Why is drone better?" Hammer mewled piteously.
Internally Ivan shook his head at complete inability of the supposed 'weapon expert' to grasp simple concepts. It was the Arc reactor that made Stark's armor special, not the meat inside. "People make problem," he explained as much as he was willing to. And didn't point out how much the pathetic man was making his point for him. "Trust me. Drone better."
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"Good," the two-star general nodded, pleased, while surveying the newly-christened War Machine armor in its improvised bay. "Get Hammer down here to weaponize it!" he added.
"Sir?" Colonel Rhodes asked with a carefully hidden sinking feeling.
"Justin Hammer's making a weapons presentation at the Stark Expo. We'd like this to introduce it." That... didn't sound at all like the primary concern was to secure a deterrent against international terrorism. In fact, it sounded a lot like somebody aiming to benefit from the revolving doors of the military industrial complex by earning himself a lucrative job with a military contractor after retirement. Exactly like Tony had warned him.
Still, James Rhodes was a loyal soldier. He would follow the orders of his lawful superiors.
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Fury was helping himself to the contents of Tony Stark's fridge. Grabbing a bottle of sparkling water, he pointed toward his 'host' and said: "That thing in your chest is based on unfinished technology."
"No," Tony contradicted as he drank his own water at the counter of the kitchen, looking at the men in black suits and sunglasses standing obtrusively and pointlessly outside on the porch. "It was finished. It has never been particularly effective until I miniaturized it and put it in my..."
"No," the head spy denied in turn sitting down at the end. "Howard said the arc reactor was the stepping stone to something greater. He was about to kick off an energy race that was gonna dwarf the arms race. He was on to something big, something so big that it was gonna make the nuclear reactor look like a triple-A battery."
"Nukes scaled down pretty far even back when he died," Tony mentioned skeptically, "so that might not be saying much. Still, I get your point. Where was Anton Vanko in all this?"
"Anton Vanko is the other side of that coin. Anton saw it as a way to get rich. When your father found out, he had him deported."
"Bullshit. Dad was never shy about earning a buck. Try again," Tony smirked cynically.
Fury sighed impatiently. "Vanko was willing to sell to anybody. Soviets. China. Apartheid South Africa. Imagine any evil little shit dictator who could scrape together the cash using the reactor to power railguns. Or maybe hold OPEC hostage in exchange for not deploying Arc technology. Whatever put the most coin in his pocket. No appreciation for the stability or the welfare of the nation or the planet as a whole. That greed is what gave Howard the chance he needed to get rid of him when Vanko got caught selling military secrets." He shrugged. "Anyway, when the Russians found out he couldn't deliver they shipped his ass off to Siberia and he spent the next forty years in a vodka-fueled rage. Not quite the environment you want to raise a kid in, the son you had the misfortune of crossing paths with in Monaco."
"More like his misfortune," Tony scoffed. "Whatever. You told me I hadn't tried everything. What do you mean I haven't tried everything? What haven't I tried?"
"Howard said that you were the only person with the means and knowledge to finish what he started," Fury said solemnly
"He said that?" Tony asked dubiously.
Fury ignored the subtext. "Are you that guy? Are you? 'Cause if you are, then you can solve the riddle of your heart."
"I don't know where you get your information, but he wasn't my biggest fan."
"What do you remember about your dad?"
"He was cold, he was calculating," Tony declared with a bit more animation. "He never told me he loved me. He never even told me he liked me, so it's a little tough for me to digest when you're telling me he said the whole future was riding on me and he's passing it down. I don't get that. You're talking about a guy who's happiest day was when he shipped me off to boarding school."
"That's not true," Fury insisted.
"Well, then, clearly you knew my dad better than I did," the inventor grumbled.
"As a matter of fact, I did. He was one of the founding members of SHIELD."
"What?"
"I got an eight-thirty," Fury abruptly declared as he stood. More MiB's came in carrying a large, gray hardcase the size of a steamer trunk and set it down.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait," Tony objected. "W-what's this?"
"This is the first part of what we promised: every scrap of information Howard left with us that might be related to Arc technology," Fury explained.
"That's it?" Tony asked disdainfully. "Forty years? More? And this's all you got?"
Fury shrugged and smirked a little. "Well, there's some crates of old hardware we put downstairs, but no other recorded data. What can I say? Your dad was the kind of guy who'd help form an organization like SHIELD. Meaning he was a sneaky bastard. So!" He clapped his hands. "You got the goods from Howard. We'll give you the names and pertinent details on the generals who pushed for seizing the armor... that you actually gave away... and you'll get to work."
"Yeah, fine," Tony agreed ungraciously, shaking his head at the too-small container. "A deal's a deal."
"First time I had to negotiate so hard with someone to save their own miserable hide," Fury noted sarcastically.
"It's nice to have a mountain shattering trump card," Tony beamed nastily at him. "Not that you'd know how that is."
"Uh-huh." Fury looked to Natasha and Phil Coulson as they entered. "Explain the rest to him, then liaise with Potts, Agent Romanoff. You remember Agent Coulson, right?" he called back to Tony.
Tony nodded reluctantly. "Yeah."
"And Tony, remember," he said jovially, "I got my eye on you." As he turned around, a certain Japanese teen materialized in front of him. "Fuck!" he startled back. "Sonnuva...bitch!"
"And Fury? Remember," Ranma mimicked with a grin, "I got two eyes on you. But maybe you have no eyes to see me?"
"You'd be surprised," Fury growled. A bluff ...for now... but one he fully intended to make real in the near future... somehow.
"Uh-huh," she looked unconvinced. "Tony, you want me to make sure this guy leaves or stick with you?"
"Go ahead and leave him be," Tony offered generously. "You've got his Ki signature memorized, right?"
"Yep, anywhere he goes within... well... a ways further than he wants to believe," she smiled winsomely, "I'll know exactly where he is."
Silently, but with a final glare at the martial artist, Fury swept on out.
"Good work. How about you start the make-up make-out with Romanoff here as a reward for yourself?" Tony suggested as he nodded toward Natasha.
"Later. And not for your viewing pleasure," Natasha said coolly, making Tony grin and Ranma blink in surprise. "As planned, we've disabled all communications while making it seem like local provider failures in the cases of phones and Internet. There will be no interruptions from the outside world. Lucky for you, that means no more onslaught of whining from everybody and their mother. I will be returning to Stark Industries as 'Natalie'."
"Wait... why are you doing that again? That was never explained," Tony said as he opened the case he had been given.
"I'm to be on hand until you either heal yourself or die," she explained clinically. "As you know, Potts is depriving you of 'Natalie's' company as punishment, so I'll be attending her for now. Good luck," she nodded dismissively at Stark. Then she stepped up to Ranma and leaned in for a hug that Ranma returned after a moment of hesitation. "Sorry about all this. SHIELD's given me damn good reasons to be loyal, and the job we do is important. That means I have to trick good people along with the bad."
"It's OK, I get it," Ranma replied as she relaxed a bit in the older woman's arms. "I'm Japanese. We understand loyalty even to bad lords. And doing what it takes to win."
"Really?!" Tony griped as he flounced onto a barstool at the counter, completely ignoring the fact he was reversing his suggestion of less than a minute previous. "I get dumped on all day and Ranma gets all the nice-nice?"
"I'm better looking than you," Ranma answered simply.
Tony paused in his melodramatics and dropped his fake offense. "Right... can't argue with that! How about you walk Romanoff out? Take your time!"
"If you don't mind, Ranma," Natasha agreed with the idea. "There's something I wanted to experiment with real quick." The two women walked away arm in arm.
Tony enjoyed blatantly ogling the two backsides in skin-tight outfits as they made their graceful exit, going so far as to hang on to the counter and lean out to keep them in view that much longer. Sighing happily, he flipped through the random pile of items in the lockbox. After a couple of moments, he gave Coulson a fake-startled look.
"Oh! Hello! Right... you're still here, Agent Whats-Your-Face! Hmmm... how to make you useful..." the industrialist mused thoughtfully. "Tell you what! First thing... I need a little bodywork and Ranma-time. Then I'll put in a little time at the lab. If we could send one of your goon squad down to The Coffee Bean... Cross Creek... for a Starbucks run, or something like that, that'd be nice."
"I'm not here for that," the agent said with a bland smile. "I've been authorized by Director Fury to use any means necessary to keep you on premises. If you attempt to leave or play any games, I will tase you and HUUURRK!" Once again, Ranma appeared out of thin air, this time with Coulson's throat in her grasp as she lifted him off the ground, his hands clinging desperately to her wrist.
"'Tase'," Ranma repeated. "What is 'tase'?" She looked down contemptuously at where Coulson was kicking her thigh with all his strength, accomplishing exactly nothing.
Natasha came running back in. "Ranma?" She took in the scene and started taking slow, careful steps nearer. "What's this about?"
"Bland and Balding decided to threaten me in my own home," Tony reported cheerfully. "More precisely, he threatened to tase me. And~ I was just about to explain to Ranma that 'tase' means to attack someone with a device that sends a high-voltage, low-amperage current into their body. This causes pain, uncontrollable spasms, and temporary paralysis," he recited. "Unless someone keeps using it, in which case it causes lots of pain, impaired breathing, and possibly even a slow, painful death. Or it fucks up the field keeping shrapnel away from somebody's heart, and thus killing them instantly."
"It took... what? A minute for them to break the deal?" Ranma asked. "Oh well... 'easy come, easy go' is the term I heard." She walked through the door to the porch and made for the handrail. "Bye-bye!"
"Ah... Ranma?" Natasha hastily interjected as the purpling agent's struggles grew more frantic, fully aware there wasn't a single thing she could do except talk that would help. "You know ordinary people die if you drop them off a cliff like that, right?"
"Really?" Ranma stopped and looked back at her.
"Yes. Really."
"Are you sure?" She frowned in confusion. "That doesn't sound right to me. You'd barely hit terminal velocity in such a short fall. Have you tested it?" she asked as she eyed Coulson speculatively.
"I guarantee it."
"Huh... learn something new every day," she pondered. "Oh well..." she dropped the agent to fall to the floor and gasp for air. "If he's that weak, why'd he start a fight?"
"You know? That does sound like a really stupid thing to do," Tony said thoughtfully. "Maybe he misunderstood his instructions? The way it was explained to me, these guys were here to keep idiots off my back so I could get things done. What do you think, Agents? Does that sound more like something your boss would want? That would certainly involve less getting tossed around by people who can out-punch howitzers."
Natasha was quick to agree. "No. Threats were not part of the plan. Can we chalk this up to testosterone poisoning?"
"Hmmm..." Tony playfully hummed. "I suppose so," he conceded.
Coulson coughed and gagged as he struggled to his feet. "Well played, Stark," the rasp in his voice easing as he spoke and cleared his throat. Adjusting his blazer, he added: "Think I should go check on your... protective detail. Enjoy your morning's entertainment."
"You do that, thanks," Tony agreed in a friendly tone. After the agent left with what dignity he could muster, he muttered out the corner of his mouth: "You do know about cliffs and regular people, right?
"Of course," Ranma answered softly. "If I'd dropped him, I'd have jumped down in front of him to catch him. Knew how to grab him like that without killing him, too."
"Again, I'm very sorry about that," Natasha said as she linked arms with Ranma once more.
"You gonna do something to make it up to us, Mata Hari?" Tony wondered. "I think we're due a little something-something here..."
Natasha turned to face him and cocked her head with a scornful look. Then she rolled her eyes, grabbed the zipper at the front of her bodysuit, and lowered it two more inches to show off even more cleavage than before. "That should be enough for your tacky little mind," she declared before dragging the martial artist away. "I'll settle up with Ranma in a bit."
Ranma blinked again as she tried to parse the... whatever it was that was in Natasha's tone. She didn't resist, however, as the older woman led her out. The SHIELD agent wasn't in a hurry, taking the opportunity to brush up against Ranma as they strolled out of sight of the owner of the house. When they were near the foyer, she stopped and craned her head out to make sure Coulson or somebody wasn't peering in through the glass front door. Turning back to Ranma, she said: "Hey, fire up your lie detector again."
The request made Ranma scrunch her forehead in confusion. "The Wild Tiger's Instinct Truth Sense?"
"That name... do you have to say the whole thing every time?" Natasha shook her head. "Whatever. Just do it!" She threw her arms around Ranma's neck and pressed close while the Ki-adept's hands instinctively went to her waist.
"You don't actually have to be that close," Ranma advised her. "What do you want to tell me?"
"Nothing. I thought of something fun, and I want to see if it works. Light us up. Now."
"O...kay?" Upon surrender to the demand, silver meta-fire exploded into a swirl around them.
"Are you getting a good feel of me?" Natasha asks.
"Yeah..." Ranma reported slowly. "You feel... uh... um... naughty?"
"Perfect. Keep it up. Keep the feelings going back and forth." With that, she dove in for a kiss.
"Mmmph...mmmm!" Ranma's surprised, muffled shout quickly became a moan as the older woman claimed her lips. Perplexed, though aroused, she clung to her technique reflexively to try making sense of things. In doing so, she made a discovery that about the Wild Tiger's Instinct Truth Sense she had no inkling about until that moment... one that Natasha seemed to have anticipated. She could feel the woman's emotions, which meant she could feel her desires.
Prominent among those desires was how the kiss they were now in should go. Whatever else she was, Ranma was a girl with little romantic experience. Or none, if she discounted anything that involved some kind of abuse or other unpleasantness. Getting the equivalent of a map and thorough instructions plugged into her aura was everything a curious but diffident eighteen-year-old could desperately wish for. The opportunity wasn't one to miss, and she let herself be guided by the flow of life-force. The two women writhed against each other as the kiss deepened, mouths opening at Natasha's unvoiced request, and their tongues began to dance.
Ranma had no idea how long the breathless episode went on until Natasha broke the lip-lock. "Hwah...?" she panted for air despite having a lung capacity that could match well against a whale. Her technique failed as she tried to regain her equilibrium and take stock of herself. "Uh... sorry," she apologized, then moved her hands back up from where she had been kneading the assassin's pert bottom.
"Don't be," Natasha laughed throatily. She gave a squeeze with her own hands to bring attention to the fact she was still gripping Ranma's backside through the thin cloth of the bodystocking. She used the handhold to press herself more firmly against the Ki-user as she reached for her zipper. "You don't need to be sorry for any... thing... at... all..." she murmured seductively as she lowered the fly centimeter by centimeter. Ranma got an eyeful as she realized the spy hadn't come equipped with a bra. "Forgive me?" the older woman breathily pleaded.
"Ah... yes?" Ranma agreed, though she wasn't thinking too clearly about what is was that she was forgiving, exactly.
"Thank you," Natasha cooed. "I was worried you'd hold a grudge about this thing with Stark, even though I spoke up against it. Thank you for being so lenient."
"Wha...?" Ranma was very familiar with the sensation of being duped from her time spent around Nabiki, though this was a lot less bitter than those incidents. "Wait..."
"Too late! You already forgave me! No take-backs!" With a wink, Natasha let go and slid out of the Ki-user's embrace. Ranma stood rooted in place. "We should do that again sometime. Maybe with your male form. And maybe this..." she wiggled the zipper before raising it to her neck, "...can go the rest of the way down. Bye for now, though." She waved over her shoulder as she sauntered out the door, the ass Ranma had been kneading so recently weaving a spell on the Ki-user's riveted gaze.
Ranma stayed stock still until Natasha got into a black SUV and drove off. Slowly, her head tilted to the right and she asked aloud: "Male form?" She looked down. "Oh right... whoa," she said absently. Despite some speculation she'd heard from Akane's friends, she hadn't really considered the idea her first deep kiss would be as a woman before she came to America. Her eyes had been opened a bit wider since then, however. It... wasn't bad to be a woman. Not bad at all. Robotically she turned and went back to the kitchen she left her employer in. "Kuso..." she muttered.
When she entered the room, she took one look at Tony's face, froze in mid-step, and whipped her head around to look at one of the large displays. It showed a camera feed that was centered on the exact spot where Natasha had... furthered her education. "Kusoooo..." she repeated.
"Soooo..." Tony drawled amiably. His chin was propped on the heels of his hands, and he was rotating from side-to-side a little in the swiveling barstool he was sitting on. His grin broadened as he took in Ranma's rising blush and the expression of dread. He took a deep breath, and continued his question: "How long you been a ninja?"
The billionaire cackled at how his preternaturally graceful bodyguard fell flat on her face. Sometimes the teasing had to be spoken aloud, and sometimes the teasing was just self-evidently there.
############
Ranma snickered. "You were annoying from day one, weren't you?" she asked with indulgent amusement.
"I was precocious! And four!" Tony protested, his head propped up on his arms to watch the old-fashioned celluloid movie playing on the equally old-fashioned movie screen. To the accompaniment of the rattling projector, they watched as his younger self was being carted off by one of his father's minions after messing with the Expo model. Ranma had to relax her eyes and unfocus a bit to view the frames flowing past the light the same way ordinary humans would, but this was still easier than having to interpret the rastered images of the Tendo's old interlaced TV.
She was giving Tony his second Reiki massage of the day in the workshop. He had fallen asleep during the first one, and had insisted on another when he could be awake to enjoy it. Ranma, however, had demanded he go through everything his father left at least once first before getting the massage as a reward. Strategically, he pored over everything save the films first, then convinced her that he could watch them just as well from a massage bed as a chair.
Ignoring the movie now that it had descended into essentially a blooper reel, Ranma commented: "Seems really funny to me how your Oyaji said technology would bring peace, better living, and healthier bodies, but martial arts have been doing that for thousands of years."
"Yeah, but I remember having JARVIS calculate the probability of anyone surviving your childhood and it was below fifteen percent... and it was only that high because you kept getting stronger after living through the first couple of atrocities," Tony shook his head, "those are not good odds to apply in general."
"It was only that bad because my Oyaji is an idiot," Ranma countered. "Lots of people train up to be Ki-users with no more risk of death than just sitting around. I got Chiba, a friend of Koyuki's, up to roof hopping before I left and he was never close to dying... though he might have felt like he was after a training session. Other martial artists might not go as far as me, but they don't really need to for the healthy life/healthy mind thing."
"True, but who has the time to train like that? Martial artists only have enough leisure time to train because other people grow food, build houses, pave roads, and suchlike faster with better technology than they would with just sharpened sticks and rocks or whatever." He recalled the things Ranma had built to sail to America. "OK, OK... Ki can make the sticks and rocks thing a viable option, but you still needed the time technology gave you to work yourself up to that point."
"Eh... I guess that's true," Ranma conceded. "Not like I want to spend time weaving cloth or farming anyway. So you're a believer in the 'everything is achievable through technology' thing your Oyaji kept saying? What about pollution and stuff?"
"Yeah, definitely," Tony said thoughtfully. "Most of the problems we have that were supposedly caused by technology were actually largely political and social. Oil companies have been doing their damnedest to make sure every drop gets drilled and sold so they can profit from it without having to invest in anything new, so we've got wars in the middle east and global warming. Not enough people in control of the money wanted to pay working stiffs to do real recycling programs, so we got floating islands of non-biodegradable trash in the oceans. All these things can be fixed, but there are too many special interests stopping people from getting the job done. I've been pushing some of the fixes, but there's a lot of inertia."
"Hrn," Ranma grunted. She wasn't too interested in the subject, but she'd been rooked over by the wealthy and powerful enough that she was easily prepared to hold them in further contempt. Tony being a notable exception.
"Doesn't help that public investment in research got cut so much since the time Stark Industries was getting off the ground," Tony continued. "I can field pure research teams without worrying about money, but that wasn't true back in the day. Took all kinds of government money either directly in terms of cost-plus contracts or indirectly from government subsidies of universities and such. No matter what he boasted, old Howard wouldn't have ever gotten off the ground without the federal dime. Isn't that right, Dad?" he jerked his chin toward the image of Howard Stark on the screen.
"Tony," the projected image of the man said, startling both watchers into freezing as it seemed to answer the rhetorical question. Tony realized it was coincidence immediately, but Ranma peered suspiciously at the projector to see if it was haunted. "You're too young to understand this right now," the recording went on, "so I thought I would put it on film for you. I built this for you." He waved at the table that held the miniature duplicates of the Stark Expo. "And someday you'll realize that it represents a whole lot more than just people's inventions. It represents my life's work. This is the key to the future. I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is and always will be my greatest creation... is you."
Tony and Ranma stared blankly at the now-white screen as the trailing end of the film whapped over and over against the projector. Ranma went to shut it down after a moment, then returned to silently continue the massage while Tony processed what he had just heard.
"You know..." Ranma said after a few wordless minutes. "I kind of have... what did they call it...? 'Pops-envy' now."
"You're thinking of another 'P' word, but you don't really need to worry about the original version from how Pepper reacted that one time," Stark joked faintly. "Damn..." he sighed. "Damn," he repeated as he looked off into space for awhile. "Something like that... all that time ago. Christ."
"What?"
"He wasn't..." Tony gestured at the blank screen. "He wasn't like that with me. Not that I remember. Nothing I did was ever enough! He never said anything like that to me! Not to my face!"
"Oh... uh..." Ranma was distinctly uncomfortable. Not knowing how to respond to that, or really say anything about anybody else's parents. Not with the examples she had. "S-sorry?"
"No, it's... it's not something you need to be sorry about. I'm just struggling to get my head around it."
Ranma still felt compelled to say something. "Maybe... maybe it's like Japanese parents? Like... it's supposed to be bad to praise your kids..."
"I'd say something about your dad being a shit example, but I have heard about that with normal Japanese people too," Tony confirmed wryly. "My dad... the only time he had anything nice to say was about Captain Fucking America. Then again... that was true for everybody he talked about. Including Mom. But he didn't have to say anything, he could've just shown..." The billionaire trailed off as he remembered several times when his father had had set things up for his young son to be photographed with something he built, or given an award, or something that showed the world what Tony was doing. He'd thought it was just another way to promote the company or Howard Stark's own legend. He'd come to think that way because of all the times the man had disappeared for reasons that had nothing to do with Stark Industries. But now he knew about SHIELD...
"Sonnuvabitch..." Tony breathed as he connected the dots. "Sonnuva...bitch!"
"What!?" Ranma asked again.
"He... Howard..." Tony pushed himself up and dropped of the massage table to pace nakedly around his workshop, clutching the sides of his head. "Fury was right. Dad... he... he really did believe in me. He believed I could do this! And yet I'm nowhere with this!"
"Hey, hey..." Ranma said soothingly as she chased after him with his clothes. "You only went through the stuff once," she pointed out. "And you haven't given JARVIS a chance to look it over. It's too early to panic," she tried to persuade him.
"It's- it's- it's- I- I need to talk to Pepper," Tony said, waving his hands. Ranma was a fine companion, but he had an almost instinctive need for his long-time minder's support after the chaos his feelings had been thrown into by his father's long-delayed, postmortem validation. "My mind is going in all directions now. I need to talk to Pepper, but they shut off my cell!"
"Use mine. They never touched it," Ranma offered, handing it over. Specifically she offered it on a stack of his folded clothing in a less than subtle hint. She wasn't freaked out by nudity like most people, but that didn't mean she particularly enjoyed seeing it when it was a guy.
"Thanks," Tony said gratefully. "I'll just... shit!" he stabbed the button with a finger to shut down the phone in frustration. "They knocked this one out too! They did say they were messing with the phone company... knew I should have bought my own provider... dammit! This is starting to look like a really stupid deal!" He sighed and let his shoulders droop. "As pissed as she is... she probably wouldn't pick up anyway. I'll just have to drive over... could you...?"
"I'll go knock out the soldier-guys again," Ranma anticipated his request, striding toward the stairs.
"Thank you!" Tony called out after her as he started getting dressed.
############
Stark accelerated down the highway in one of his Audi sports-cars with the top open. Beside him, Ranma looked bored as the wind played with her crimson braid. She had kept the white tangzhuang from earlier that morning, but had added more business-like black slacks, so the view was not as good as Tony would have liked. Still, it was good to be on the road with a beautiful woman even if her interest level in him was zero.
"Pepper's going to be pissed!" Tony shouted over the rushing air and howling motor. "I should bring her a gift!" He pulled to the side of the road as he spotted a roadside vendor.
"Strawberries?" Ranma asked.
"Yeah, I remember Pepper has this big thing about strawberries." The car came to a halt next to the man. {"How much?"} Tony called out to the vendor in Spanish.
The solidly built, but worn-looking sixty-something-year-old man answered: "Six dollars! Six!"
"Uh, I don't have any dough," the inventor confessed, glancing at his watch speculatively.
"I got it, Rich Boy," Ranma smirked as she reached into her sleeve and brought out her wallet. "Make it two boxes," she requested at the prompting of the mass-reactor that was her stomach. She frowned as she realized she only had the hundred dollar bills that Stark thought of as petty cash, but shrugged and handed one over. "Keep the change," she said.
"R-really?" the shocked vendor queried. At her nod and shrug, he bobbed his head with an excess of enthusiasm. "Two boxes? That's all?" Ranma nodded again, looking a little impatient. "You got it," the strawberry guy finally said as he scrambled to fetch the second box after handing her the first. As he returned, he squinted at their faces. "Are you Iron Man and, uh... Ran... Ran...?"
"Ranma Saotome," the redhead introduced herself and corrected him at the same time while taking the packages of fruit. "Yeah, he's Iron Man," she jerked her head toward Tony.
"Sometimes," Tony confirmed with a complex tone. He hit the gas as soon as the other man stepped clear.
"We believe in you!" the vendor called out after them as they drove away.
Ranma met her boss's eyes with an encouraging look and he briefly gave a wan smile back. Not too keen on a potential discussion about his self-esteem, he changed the unspoken subject. "Hey, didn't you put a few things other than your wallet up your sleeve before we left?" he wondered idly. "How'd you get it out?"
"Yeah, I learned how to swap the last few things I put in Stuff-Space," Ranma answered with a shrug. "Damned if I know why, but I had a breakthrough last night."
"You have been training it up," Tony pointed out.
"Not seriously. Not lately," Ranma shook her head. "I only did two things differently yesterday. One was to read that stuff JARVIS gave me about that Tipler guy and his ideas about gravity-induced dimensional frame dragging."
"Interesting. What was the other thing?"
"Uh..." Ranma pointedly studied the boxes for fruit before slowly putting them away in the sleeve that was the subject of their discussion.
"Yes~?" Tony drawled as he sensed what he was coming to recognize as a typical Ranma-ism was about to drop.
Rubbing a finger on her temple, Ranma reluctantly admitted: "The other thing was using my cleavage instead of a sleeve. Gown didn't have sleeves, so I had to improvise. Didn't notice until later, so I don't know which one of those things was the cause."
Tony snorted a laugh. Sure enough: Ranma-ism. "So... Cosmology or Boob-ology. Hey... it could have been either... or both... so you'd better study both! Let me know if you want some help with the latter. I'm an expert!"
"Hai... hai..." Ranma replied with a roll of her eyes.
############
Tony and Ranma could hear Pepper's voice as they effectively stormed the office suite. "It was an illegal seizure of trademarked property!" she was insisting into the phone.
"Ms. Potts?" the new CEO's personal assistant called out in warning as she tried to intercept them.
"Relax," Tony tried to get the woman to calm down. Ranma just smiled charmingly at her and pushed into her personal space, making the woman halt her advance to avoid chest-to-chest contact.
"Mr Stark..." the assistant tried again faintly, though she wasn't quite able to look away from the tiny redhead. Tony was amused to see the usually stern fifty-something woman blush.
"Is here," he announced himself as he entered Pepper's office.
"He refuses..." the employee tried to protest, but got caught in Ranma's invisible ambiance again.
"I don't- It's fine," he promised, waving her off. "I'll just be a second." The woman returned hesitantly to her own desk and Ranma closed the door. "Flirt-Fu?" he muttered out the corner of his mouth.
"How the hell did you find out about that technique?" Ranma whispered back.
Pepper glared at them for a moment before focusing on her phone conversation. "Listen, it's our position that Stark has and continues to maintain propriety ownership of the Mark II platform. No... the suit belongs to us..."
Tony noticed Ranma was distracted and saw her leveling a flat look at the television. The inventor looked for himself and grimaced when he saw Pepper had Ratfuck News on. One of their vast stable of bloated, bigoted windbags was on the screen, and there was text on the side. He caught the phrase 'the whole world is in danger,' and scoffed at the blatant fear-mongering. The text switched to keep up with the televised moron's ongoing bloviations. "And now we learn that his secretary..." the man sneered the word as if it were 'syphilitic, under-age prostitute,' "a woman named Virginia 'Pepper' Potts, has been appointed as CEO of Stark Industries. What are her qualifications?" the jackass asked snidely. Another glance at Ranma showed a kunai was now in-hand. "And this new, so-called 'bodyguard' he picked up off the street of some third-world nation, I think we all know what she does..."
"Mute," Tony commanded, shutting off the sound. "Off," he added when he saw Ranma wasn't putting away the throwing weapon in her hand yet as she eyed the screen. Once the offensive TV personality was gone, however, the martial artist scoffed and made the blade disappear.
"No!" Pepper's voice was raised in annoyance. "Burt... Burt... Burt, listen to me! Don't tell me that we have the best patent lawyers in the country and then not let me pursue this!"
Tony looked back and forth between the new boss of the company and the pile of things in the corner from when he was the boss. "I'll get this stuff out of here," he offered a bit lamely.
Pepper pointedly ignored him. "Well, then, tell the President to sign an order! We'll talk about it at the Expo. Hammer's giving some presentation tomorrow evening. Will Tony Stark be there?" she repeated the question she heard with an arch tone.
Tony dropped the cloth he had raised to view the old Stark Expo model. "Will I?" he asked as he took a seat in front of Pepper's desk.
"No, he will not," she said firmly. "Bye."
"I would like to be. Got a minute?" Tony asked.
"No."
"I can still steal the stupid suit back," Ranma repeated her offer from that morning.
Pepper looked tempted for a moment... a change from her previous reaction... but instead said: "No stealing." Turning back to Tony, she added: "And no minute."
"Come on, you just got off the phone," Tony pointed out wearily. "You're fine. Thirty seconds."
"Twenty-nine... Twenty-eight..." Pepper pointedly looked at her watch as she counted down.
"I was just driving over here, and I thought I was coming to basically apologize, but I'm not," Ranma looked over at him incredulously, but the older woman just looked resigned... and pissed.
"You didn't come here to apologize?" Pepper repeated with an annoyed tone.
"Look, that goes without saying," Tony claimed breezily, "and I'm working on that. But I haven't been entirely upfront with you, and I just want to try to make... good..." he got distracted by the motion sculpture whirling in front of him. "Can I move this? This is crazy. It's like a Ferris wheel, going... I'm trying..." he was interrupted as Ranma reached over his shoulder and tapped a spinning metal rod. In about a second, the entire assembly came to a halt. "Thanks, Ranma."
Pepper's eyebrows climbed her forehead at the display of energy transfer but said nothing, continuing to frown at them.
"Do you know how short life is?" Tony resumed. "And if I never got to express... And by the way, this is somewhat revelatory to me. And I don't care... I mean, I care. It would be nice. I'm not expecting you to... Look, here's what I'm trying to say. I'm just gonna say it," he babbled.
The woman behind her desk raised her hand. "Let me stop you right here, okay? Because if you say 'I' one more time, I'm gonna actually hurl something at your head, I think. I am trying to run a company. Do you have any idea what that entails?"
"Yes," Tony answered.
"People are relying on you to be Iron Man..."
"I'm not," Ranma raised her hand. "Nobody back in Japan is... they just like the mecha 'cause it's mecha. We had mail-order mecha suits even before he started doing his thing," she nodded toward Tony. "No offense... just saying..." she shrugged when the two older people looked at her.
"Well, people in this country... 'mail-order mecha suits?'" she directed toward Ranma. "Really? No... never mind," she waved off the explanation and got back to her original thought while glaring at Tony. "People in this country are very worried and you've disappeared."
"Are you seriously buying into the group-think?" the inventor asked crankily. "No, wait... that was too confrontational... umm..."
"We're past the point where that matters," Pepper stated tiredly. "And all I'm doing is putting out your fires and taking the heat of it. I am trying to do the job that you were meant to do..." Before Ranma could interject to point out she was supposed to be taking over the Iron Man job now, Pepper looked disgustedly at the box of fruit and changed the subject. "Did you bring me strawberries? Did you know that there's only one thing on Earth that I'm allergic to...?"
"..Allergic to strawberries," Tony finished for her, kicking himself mentally for not remembering exactly why strawberries were important. "Uh..."
Ranma interrupted again. "I told you that was a bad joke," she scolded. "Hang on," she shifted from side to side as she tried to remember where she put things. Once she figured it out, She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a nicely wrapped basket covered in clear plastic and fancy bows and ribbons, setting it on the desk. "This is the real gift... cherry mochi. Very fine and expensive from a place in this city." She yanked away the box of strawberries. "These are a snack for me."
"Oh..." Pepper looked a bit touched in spite of herself. The displayed confections looked like works of art and she looked forward to trying them. "This is..." She reached for the card hanging by a string from the gift, only to see it disappear before she could touch it. She looked up with a severe expression. "What was on the card?" she asked the martial artist.
"What card?" Ranma inquired innocently.
"Uh-oh..." Tony slumped in his chair.
"The card I plainly saw before it was suddenly snatched by someone with hands that are way faster than normal eyes," Pepper said knowingly. "Hand it over."
Ranma looked around hurriedly, then focused on the windows with a calculating expression.
"No diving through the window," Pepper ordered. "Card. Now."
Wincing, Ranma handed the silver-gilt cardboard to her. Pepper opened it and read aloud: "Happy Birthday, Tony. From: Ranma."
"Aw man..." Tony groaned. "Nice try, though..." he muttered.
"That was very sweet of you, Ranma," Pepper smiled thinly at the shame-faced redhead. Then her smile suddenly widened and she motioned for the martial artist to come closer. She continued to wave the confused young woman nearer and nearer until Ranma was bent over with her head inches away from the CEO. Pepper used her fingertips to tilt the redhead's chin slightly, then kissed her firmly on the cheek, rather close to the corner of her mouth. The martial artist's eyes went wide as she struggled vainly against a blush at the second... though much tamer... kiss she got from a beautiful woman that day. "Thank you very much," the lady executive murmured.
"Uh... huh...?" Tony shifted in his seat, torn between confusion and captivation. "Are you... I mean...?"
"It's OK if it's Ranma," Pepper declared with a distinct lack of actual explanation. "I'm keeping this, by the way," she informed him, dangling the gift-basket a for emphasis before setting it on the floor beside her. Eyeing the bodyguard sidelong a moment she asked with some accusation: "You're making her stay female? After last night?"
It had flown out of her mind in the actual presence of the Ki-adept, but a new shovelful added to the steaming pile that landed on her was how Ranma had been forcibly stripped at Tony's party. Didn't matter how they had shut down any chance of photos or footage of the fiasco, the tale had spread far and wide. Nor did it matter how it really happened, there were still a lot of talk of sending people in to rescue the delicate, pint-sized juggernaut from the lascivious Casanova. Having her run around with Tony in public was asking for trouble.
"She's on the clock!" Tony protested, surprised that was being brought up. "Besides, we haven't worked out the secret identity thing yet!"
"Yeah... can't run around as 'Randall Lee' yet," Ranma confirmed ruefully. "Wouldn't be able to be seen with Tony like that anyway."
"Are we still doing that?" Pepper sighed with a defeated tone. All their plans were feeling a bit pointless at the moment. She looked Tony in the eye soberly and said: "I need you..."
"I need you, too," Tony hastily echoed.
"...To leave now," Pepper finished her thought. Ranma flinched as Tony slumped.
Tony rubbed his forehead in frustration. "That's what I'm trying to..."
The office door opened to show Natasha and Happy. "Ms. Potts?" the agent spoke up politely.
Pepper took a breath to restore her aplomb. "H-Hi, come on in," she invited.
"Wheels up in 25 minutes," Natasha reminded her.
"Thank you."
"Anything else, boss?" Happy checked
"No, I'll just be..." Pepper began.
"I'm good, Hap..." Tony started to say before he realized he wasn't the one being asked.
The actual current CEO finished: "...be just another minute."
"I lost two out of three kids in the divorce," Tony joked weakly, meeting Happy's eyes. The bodyguard shook his head at him in a mix of warning and a low estimate of his prospects. "Are you blending in well here, 'Natalie'?" Tony turned to the agent who was delivering some documents to Pepper. "Here at Stark Industries? Your name is 'Natalie', isn't it?" he asked with a faux absent-minded air. "I thought you two didn't get along?" he wondered as he dropped the transparent act.
"No. That's not so," Pepper claimed casually. As if she hadn't been tempted to strangle the other woman mere hours before.
Natasha had managed to avoid using Coulson's backup plan with some well-timed and strategic griping about the reckless lothario along with some subtle priming while she helped with damage control after the party. Pepper had fastened on the idea of punishing Tony by keeping the spy employed but occupied by helping the CEO instead. Best of all, she thought it was her own idea.
"It's just me you don't care for," Tony muttered, fishing for sympathy. "No? Nothing?" he asked when no sympathy was on offer.
"Actually... while you're here maybe you and Natalie could discuss the matter of the personal belongings," Pepper suggested acidly as she stood up and strode toward the exit. "After that? Go straight home. Bury yourself in your playroom and stay there! Preferably for a year or until you learn to stop causing scandals! Whichever comes first!"
"Yes, Ms. Potts," Natasha nodded professionally. Once Pepper and Happy left the office, she hissed at the billionaire: "I'm surprised you can keep your mouth shut. Why are you even here?!"
"Hey babe," Tony smirked, "I never agreed to helping you do your spy job. You all just decided that on your own. Maybe I should change that. I'm not sure it's a good idea to have an impostor near my friends and the CEO of my company, after all. Hey Ranma? Up for conking her out and delivering her back to Fury wrapped in a bow? Maybe make her faint the fun way?"
"Well..." a pained looking Ranma admitted, "I do know where he is." She looked off in a a certain direction that had highly disturbing accuracy from Natasha's certain knowledge of Fury's location in the city.
Natasha had no illusions that Ranma could do exactly as Tony suggested, but her read of the man indicated he was just venting. Though now that she wasn't needed to play vamp with him anymore, she was free to do a little venting of her own. "You can either drive yourself home or I can have you collected," she stated baldly as she also walked away.
"You're good," Tony answered sardonically.
"Why is everybody pissed at us today?" Ranma wondered plaintively.
Natasha paused at the door. "We aren't mad at you, Ranma," she said. "We're not even mad at him," she nodded at Stark. "Or at least I'm not. We're just sick of his bullshit," she explained before closing the door.
"That... that doesn't explain anything..." Ranma muttered confusedly, "why is anybody mad at anybody? People have been acting like this for days and it makes no sense. Just because of the Iron Man thing? Really? You only started a couple months back!"
"More like six months, but you have a point. Group think?" Tony suggested with a sigh. "Delusions and madness of crowds? Back in the days of the Soviet Union, people knew the propaganda was full of crap, but they were primed to think in the government's terms anyway because the propaganda didn't stop and most of them had no alternative sources," he pontificated. "These days, fluff-brains hungry for advertising dollars repeat whatever line someone feeds them just as endlessly as Soviet propaganda without ever trying to figure out what's real. And even today, people know the mass media's full of crap... but the mass media are still the ones who set the terms of conversation and not enough people know how to resist it. Most folks go all day being irrational instead of treating it as a hobby like I do. So... a little massaging of the facts... a little echo chamber work... and presto: 'everybody knows' something absolutely ridiculous. Even smart people like Pepper."
He idly poked and prodded at the pile of stuff he was apparently expected to truck out himself somehow. "I have to agree with something dear old... Dad... said..." He covered one eye and examined the Expo model, moving his head around. "Huh..." he murmured. "Say, Ranma?" he asked slowly. "How much did you say you can cram into your N-dimensional pockets now?"
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*** Fifteen minutes later ***
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"You think anybody's gonna get mad at all that stuff I had to empty out before the map thingy would fit?" Ranma called out worriedly as Stark's car accelerated. She hadn't expected to do anything but hang around the mansion that day, so she had just crammed her Stuff-Space mostly with random objects for the sake of practice. That policy was going to need a rethink later.
After triaging her load, it was decided to hang on to the useful tools, the weapons, her personal effects, and the several boulders she was carrying. But to make room for the model, the rest of the clutter of metal scrap and other odds and ends had been left behind in Pepper's office.
"Nah... that anvil's positively decorative," Tony declared. "I'm pretty sure people won't even notice with all the modern art crap Pepper insists on buying."
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Author's Notes: The whole thing from the movie about people panicking because Iron Man wasn't out and about with sufficient frequency was pretty strange. I suppose it was explainable when you consider how often the media winds people up about utter bullshit while studiously ignoring real problems, but we're still talking about people becoming thoroughly dependent on one man in only 6 months.
The timing of when SHIELD offered help was also strange, as they could have walked up in like scene two or three and handed over the goods. Or ratted Tony out to Pepper.
The bit where the Mark II was handed over to Hammer was really, really strange. How was that supposed to work? Pretend Hammer was as good as Stark? Cripple Stark, chain him to a post, and make him work to put out more stuff for Hammer to claim credit for?
So I crammed everything together and attributed it all to military/industrial complex shenanigans. Still doesn't make the assist of Hammer work in the long run, but I guess as long as the generals are getting their grift, they don't care.