American Wuxia

by Miklagaard

New lands, new jobs, and new purpose. Ranma Saotome has set foot out into the wider world as the new associate and teammate of Iron Man. And the wider world is NOT ready. Tony Stark, however, is perfectly prepared... the contract with the gourmet popcorn provider has been set up and he's reeeeady to spectaaaaate! (Sequel to 'Arc and Ki.')

1. First Alpha, Then Beta, Then---

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

First Alpha, Then Beta, and Then-

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(Chapter theme song: Clenched Fist – Sepultura)

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Additional note: I completely forgot to point out this is a sequel to my first story 'Arc and Ki' when I posted this the first time.

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"Holy shit... that chick is so hot!"

Ranma Saotome casually looked up from his tablet computer he was using for the educational assignment JARVIS had given him, not minding a distraction from the school-work. He'd prefer to use his Stark HUD, especially since it was finally set to adjust between his two forms, but the things had only been introduced to the public at the Expo a couple of weeks ago, and weren't generally available yet. He was trying to keep his male persona separated from Stark Industries for now, and getting early access would raise questions. Those questions could possibly lead to his female identity.

Not that Americans were too prepared to comprehend the existence of curses that changed genders... or more... with a splash of water. Still, having two Asian people with the same hairstyle and highly developed skill in the Art... even if he sandbagged as a guy... working for or with Tony Stark? That might just be enough to let someone draw the right conclusions and ruin his scheme to be able to slip in and out of public attention at will. A quiet, casual dinner of surprisingly good sushi at a place in the upper west side of Manhattan that Pepper had recommended would not have been likely for his female form, for instance. His... or her... image had been in the news too much for that to happen, and she had been mobbed a few times when trying before.

He followed the gaze of the overly overly loud speaker to the flat-screen television mounted on the restaurant wall. Ironically, he was disappointed to see the 'hot chick' in question was stock footage of his girl side and rolled his eyes. He may have looked damned good, but he'd much rather see some other exceptionally attractive woman than himself.

"You know that chick can break you in half with just her thumb, right?" the loudmouth's friend asked.

"Who cares? And it's all bullshit anyway. All that stuff was probably CGI or special Stark-tech stuff. No way a little Jap hottie would be that strong. Besides... as soon as she got a taste of me, fighting'd be the last thing on her mind." Noisy boasted. "Wish I was as rich as Stark to have a girl like that guarding my body! You know what he's gotta be doing to her every night, amirite?"

Ranma frowned to himself at that comment. He now accepted his girl side for several reasons, particularly to reduce his stress and as an exercise in mental discipline that enhanced his Ki, but that didn't mean he found men at all attractive and he didn't like how so many people assumed he was involved with Tony. Natasha proved once again that she gave good advice through her suggestion of being really obvious about only liking women when he was a woman. He could definitely see the effects, but there were still people who hadn't gotten the word yet or were just inherently idiots.

"Even if you were a billionaire superhero, you wouldn't stand a chance, dumbass," the other man scoffed. "You'd crash and burn in a big, messy, embarrassing explosion of stupid and pathetic in like seven seconds."

"Hey!"

Ranma tuned out the two bickering locals. He ignored the TV less successfully. As annoying as it was to learn to do the PR thing, it was now part of his job and he wanted to make sure he looked good each time his alter-ego was on screen. Currently, the news channel had started showing the interview done at the Stark Expo site a few hours before.

Just yesterday he'd been in Washington, DC to receive a medal for the whole Vanko mess, and it was the sixth day of clean-up of that incident, but it would still be another three days before the Expo opened to the public again. It had surprised him how long it took to repair things in America, despite how everybody he talked to saying things were proceeding remarkably quickly. In Nerima, they would have had everything fixed the next night at the latest. Part of the hold up was the lack of martial arts construction practitioners, but it was also a result of the amount of paperwork and caution Americans insisted on. They hadn't even started fixing anything first couple of days. Instead, they had focused on safety inspections and evidence collection for the police and insurance companies. Those safety concerns were part of the reason Ranma had been present onsite in female form and in her battle suit in the first place: to protect the crews while they worked.

Even if all the drones had been effectively destroyed, there were still worries about unexploded munitions or other unpleasant surprises. It struck Ranma as strange that workers wouldn't get right to it despite the possibility of taking an explosion or three to the face, but given the looks he received when he mentioned that it seemed he was in a tiny minority in America. So he and Tony had agreed that at least one of them would be on hand while people were working until there was zero chance of a danger remaining. Nothing problematic had been found and all dangerous components had been accounted for, however, so it had turned into more of a drawn-out public relations exercise.

Tony had put in exactly two hours on his first shift before he gave up and had Ranma take over entirely for the rest of the week.

"Hello, this is Chess Roberts," the attractive brunette reporter on the screen introduced herself as she walked toward his past self. "I'm with Ranma Saotome, one of the heroes of the Whiplash attack at the site of the Stark Expo, and an employee of Stark Industries. I understand you all are on track to re-open on Saturday, is that correct?"

"It is, Chess," the recording of the martial artist replied with thoroughly... he would say painfully... drilled geniality. Ranma himself grimaced a little. He had been praised for the job he did, but the professionally chipper tone coming out of his past self's mouth still seemed a bit smarmy to him. He was uncomfortable with how contrived the whole 'impromptu' interview was. Not only had he acted the way the PR people wanted instead of acting naturally, but when the reporter mispronounced his name the first couple of times, she had walked off and started her approach over.

Dear Kami, the things he did for enormous wads of money. And, more importantly, the approval of new friends.

When he'd asked if he'd ever be allowed to relax and do things his way, the PR lady's answer had been 'get good' first. He could understand that, skills had to be trained, but he wasn't looking forward to more of that training. Still, most of what he'd had to do that day was recite a prepared response composed by the press people at Stark Industries, secretly reading it off the visor's HUD. "We might open to the public earlier than that, but there will be an official ceremony Saturday morning along with several activities for kids and families and an outdoor performance from the New York Philharmonic. Our web-site will have details up later this afternoon."

"Glad to hear it!" the reporter exclaimed with a convincing emulation of sincerity. "On that subject, it was announced this morning that Stark Industries has begun litigation against Hammer Industries for their involvement in the attack. Do you have any comment on that?"

Past-Ranma looked grim as she replied: "Not only that, but Tony Stark has also given a law firm a retainer to start class-action suits on behalf of the attendees and surviving families of people who were hurt or killed by Hammer's drones. Mr. Stark has already made sure everybody will be fully reimbursed for damages and medical bills, but there's still the mental harm done and the fact that folks were on the wrong side of deadly weapons." She looked directly in the camera and said: "Anybody who's watching who was at the Expo should register with Massey and Sloan for that, whether you were physically hurt or not. That's also on our web-site."

"There have been comments that such actions will undermine or destroy an important defense contractor, thus making the USA less safe," Chess mentioned in response to some bloviating that had already appeared on other stations.

"That was defense? That was safety?" Ranma's image scoffed, and he himself silently sneered in agreement with his previous speech. "Gimme danger instead... it's more survivable. Look, the last I saw Ivan Vanko before the attack, he was in handcuffs and going to jail. It was only because of Justin Hammer that he got free, and at least two people died from that alone. We would have had a nice, boring night that night if it weren't for Hammer being a greedy idiot." She'd started to go off the bland PR script at that point, but nobody had complained later.

"That was Justin Hammer personally, not the entire company," the reporter pointed out.

"That was how much equipment? Over four billion dollars worth of Hammer Industries weapons that got launched at a bunch of innocent people? They didn't come out of the basement of Hammer's house or something. They came from the company factory," Ranma's recording argued icily, sounding a lot more confident than the martial artist remembered feeling. Reading those occasional prompts from the HUD as sent by JARVIS and the PR rep had really helped. "It wasn't just the big robots either. All those guns the little murder-drones were using? They all had serial numbers registered with Hammer Industries. The company should have made sure stuff like that couldn't happen, so they're on the hook. Still, that's why there's judges... to figure out what's fair. Let's put it on trial and figure out what's what."

"Fair enough," Chess said reasonably. The reporter was soft-balling the interview a bit, but there hadn't been much positive audience response to grilling the petite hero, and she had gotten good at ignoring obnoxious questioning by leaping up to stand on top of a streetlight or something. The one thing the modern news organization feared more than anything else was losing access... even if they had to shade the facts or lay off the inquisition to some degree. "There are reports that senior military officers are under review at Stark's behest. Can you tell us why that is happening?"

"All I know is they took the Mark II Iron Man armor from Mr. Stark, gave it to Hammer, let him bolt a bunch of weapons on it, and let Vanko program the thing into an assassin-mecha. I know things were a lot harder when dealing with the drones because of that," Ranma replied. "Colonel Rhodes was screaming at us when he was trapped in the thing to shoot him down to make sure it didn't kill anybody."

"Good god," Chess gasped, genuinely surprised. "No one mentioned that part before. That really happened?"

"Yeah," she nodded soberly. Ranma had lingering issues with the guy, but she had given credit where credit was due. "There's probably a recording of him saying that somewhere. Mr. Stark managed to draw the armor off so it didn't kill anybody... it just did a lot of property damage... but it was a close thing. That's reason enough to give those general guys a boot to the head the way I figure it. Setting up one of your guys to be in a situation like that stinks, in my opinion."

"Why do you think they were giving Stark technology to Hammer in the first place?"

"So he could make money," Ranma shrugged. "Hammer wanted contracts with the military, but he needed to show them something impressive to get them. So the people who he was trying to impress gave him somebody else's stuff for them to be impressed by." She threw up her hands in perplexity. "I have no idea why they thought that was a good idea. What was he going to do if he got the contract? Get Mr. Stark to make stuff for him to steal and sell? I heard it's more likely that Hammer was planning to just keep taking money without delivering anything useful for a few years. There are plenty of examples of that happening, and it wouldn't matter to him since he'd be raking in billions."

"I see, thank you for telling us that," the reporter said with a severe frown.

"A question I have is why generals were even involved in this in the first place," Ranma added. "I'm a martial artist, so I think like a martial artist. To me, a general's job is winning fights... not deciding who gets to profit. Maybe it's me being naïve or something, but who's looking out for making sure your guys can win if the generals are off doing something else?"

"That is an interesting question," Chess nodded soberly. "The initial justification for seizing the armor was that we needed some kind of replacement for Iron Man due to Tony Stark's erratic behavior."

Ranma really hoped nobody figured out just how much worry that question had caused, he had been told repeatedly not to make an issue of why Tony had been acting the way he did. Publicly getting into details of things that could have killed his employer was not something a good bodyguard should do. Nor was poisoning himself with a bizarre interaction with the palladium in the old-style Arc reactor a good look for Tony. Ranma watched carefully to see if his female form's acting ability had held up during the next response.

"Humans have been around for something like five-hundred thousand years without Iron Man, but all the sudden we couldn't go a day without him? No. I'll bet a lot of that worrying people were doing had was fake. Working themselves and everybody else up just so Mr. Stark would be pressured to turn over the armor. Which we now know was more about profit than anything else. He was making some changes in his life, and one of those was to arrange backup for Iron Man. Me." The image on the screen jerked a thumb toward herself. "You could say the military also was setting up more backup by getting the Mark II for Rhodes and turning it into the War Machine armor, but the problem is they want to run it completely themselves, and they can't."

"What do you mean?"

"The Mark II is the simplest of the useful versions of the Iron Man armor, but you gotta realize Mr. Stark's using the Mark VI now, four versions better. Yet even with the oldest, most basic armor, there's gonna be only so much they can fix on their own. They're going to need to go back to Stark to keep it running."

"Well," Chess said thoughtfully, "I would think they could back-engineer it."

"If they can, which we doubt, then that would mean they had to take it apart, not use it," Ranma said with a significant tone. "Wasn't it supposedly about making sure some guy in flying armor was always available? Right now... all the time... no delays... no downtime. Wasn't that what they kept talking about? Sure looks like that wasn't really the case, huh? They sure as heck weren't talking to me about being the backup instead."

"There have also been concerns expressed about your ability to take up the role of our protector," Roberts brought up apologetically.

"Yeah... I've seen some of those 'concerns' in comments on the Internet," Ranma said sardonically. "I think the nicest one was 'get your {bleep} *ss in the kitchen and make me some pie!"' The martial artist snorted at the censoring, then grinned as he heard laughter from some of the restaurant patrons. "There's a lot of guys out there who can't stand the idea of a girl being able to fight like I can. A lot of them don't much like the fact I'm Asian, either."

"You think racism and misogyny are a factor in the criticism?" the other woman asked with a dubious tone.

"From what I've seen, yeah," Ranma nodded. "They weren't judging me for how good a job I did. It's not like they were saying I should've kicked instead of punched. None of them are saying how I should use different gear or something. They just didn't want me out there at all. It's only a small amount of the total stuff people have been sending, but they're loud and annoying. Kinda like those small, yappy dogs you're not allowed to punt into the bay," she smirked. "They just stand out by being obnoxious. Way more people have been way nicer, and I really appreciate the support."

"OK, one last question," the reporter changed the subject. "There are rumors that Stark Industries plans to open a new headquarters in New York City. Can you confirm that?"

"Confirm it? No way," Ranma denied with a smile. "I'm definitely the wrong person to ask about business stuff. Heck, I only got a bank account for the first time in my life two weeks ago. All I can say is that some people mentioned it might be better to do more on the east coast of the USA because of the new medical and other civilian stuff Stark is getting into. If that would turn into moving everything into this particular city or any other? I would have no clue about that."

"How would you feel about moving to New York, if it happened?" Chess wondered.

"It would suit me fine," Ranma nodded decisively. "Everything in America is new to me, so poking around one completely unfamiliar city is as good as the other. I've met plenty of nice people both here and in Malibu and Los Angeles. Besides," she grinned, "with the SkyBuster, I can get from one city to the other in about an hour. People spend more time than that getting to work on the bus every day."

"That's true," Chess replied with a smile. "Thank you so much for speaking with us today." Looking into the camera, she concluded: "That was Ranma Saotome, a very welcome recent arrival in our country and in New York in particular. I'm Chess Roberts, WHIH News, signing off."

The show switched over to the newsreaders who started making some kind of inane commentary, but Ranma wasn't paying attention any more. He relaxed with a slow, quiet sigh. The nonsense on the TV wasn't exactly what he was expecting when taking on the job to punch people for attacking Tony, but it did look like he was getting the hang of it. Folks had been telling him that extra responsibilities like that would look good on his resume some day, but he really couldn't take that sort of thinking seriously yet.

He'd also asked around and found out that having like half a dozen job titles was not normal for a new hire. Not that he did normal. Though Pepper Potts had said that was a lot more common with people who worked closely with the rich. Pepper herself had been given numerous responsibilities as Tony's 'assistant.' Responsibilities that had ranged from taking out the trash... the bag out of the garbage can kind, not just the one-night-stand kind... to being the effective CEO until she was made the real CEO of Stark Industries.

Of more immediate interest was Pepper's mention that 'breadth' was helping with their negotiations to get him into college, even if he wasn't going to join the regular way. After all, it wasn't like he had anything from high-school he could point to that would make him look like a good prospect. Furinkan didn't exactly offer a debate team unless contending with Principal Crazy's plans to give everybody bad haircuts counted. A broad span of professional duties helped replace the lack, apparently. Despite the shortcomings of his academic history, Tony, Pepper, and JARVIS were saying he should be able to take the G.E.D. test in a few weeks. They'd been talking to some colleges about him starting at least with online courses and remote lectures in the fall that would accommodate his new profession.

Funny how knocking out terrorists on world-wide television seemed to make people really sympathetic to his weird life. Being able to finance a bunch of scholarships for other students who didn't have the resources he now had available didn't hurt, either.

Despite the new brands of weirdness, life was not only looking up, but also progressing... and he wasn't sure if he dared say this aloud... smoothly. It was one of the most surprising things Ranma could recall recently. Not one single study or training session had been blown-up, gassed, stampeded, or otherwise interrupted the last few days. Something unheard of back in Nerima. He had his new jobs and new responsibilities, of course, but Tony and Pepper were real good about making sure he had time for what was really important: the Art.

However, he still found himself in kind of an odd mood. He missed having Tony, Pepper, and especially Natasha around while he was in New York despite only knowing them a few days. Solitude hadn't been a problem for weeks on the ocean when rowing a canoe across the Pacific to get to America, but something like that was bothering him now even though even in a restaurant full of people. Maybe he was just feeling the lack of eye-opening exploration of sexuality now that Natasha had dropped off the radar? Then again he also found himself looking forward to watching Tony's antics and how Pepper responded almost as much.

Maybe it was just because there was nothing immediate to struggle for. Nerima had been a madhouse, but it kept him on his toes. On the sea, Ranma had to keep alert to keep fed, pointed in the right direction, and un-capsized by storm and wave. While hanging out with the Stark crew, the martial artist had been busy with all kinds of different things, especially new places and life-experiences. This low-tension stuff he had to deal with during the Expo clean-up was throwing him off his pace. Outside of work, the most exciting things he had to look forward to was food and playing around in the heavily equipped gym in the luxury hotel he was still staying in.

It was the life of a grown-up in the big city, he supposed. He had already used his Reiki to make sure people injured in the attack stayed alive, but maybe he would go back to the hospital to do more. He needed the practice for his Art anyway, and it wasn't as if he could expect a property-destroying punch-up or monster attack on any given day in a cosmopolitan place like Manhattan. Huffing a near silent chuckle at the stray thought, he resumed flicking through pages of text.

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*** Ten Seconds Later ***

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"Sir? Are you alright?" the waitress who had been staying in sight of him all evening asked worriedly.

Ranma stopped thumping his head on the table in front of him. He really should have known better than to think life had gotten boring. Sighing, he stood up and swept his computer into the backpack he carried to conceal his Stuff-Space ability. "Yeah, I'm fine," he told the concerned worker. "Here," he pulled a couple of hundred dollar bills out of his wallet and handed them to the server. Not really sure how much his bill was and unable to use his girl-side's credit card in this form, he just made sure it was completely paid off. No more dine-and-dash for this professional hero. "Thanks, but I got to get out of here!" he explained before briskly walking toward the exit.

"Sir? This is too much! Is there a problem?" the server asked as she tried to catch up to the deceptively fast Ki-adept.

"There isn't anything wrong with the food," he answered over his shoulder without breaking stride. "I just need to head north kinda quick-like."

"What?"

"Don't worry about it. Keep the change." He dodged around some people entering with a polite nod and stepped out into the night.

"Sir? Sir?" The young waitress followed him out, worried the rather handsome customer had been offended somehow despite overpaying by quite a bit. Looking around, she couldn't catch even a glimpse of his notable braid or his even-more-notable tight-fitting jeans. Disappointed, she went back inside.

Ranma leapt across the first set of rooftops before grimacing and pulling out a canteen of cold water from his sleeve. A splash later, and Ranma was a redheaded woman who did a series of long flips across the flat roof she was on, her civilian clothes removed in mid-air. The tricks involuntarily picked up from Happosai let her remove and don standard clothing instantly, but those were made of weaves of pliable fibers. Her much more solidly constructed battle suit prevented the use of her Ki-technique and required a more conventional way of getting dressed. For a given value of 'conventional,' as she continued to travel rapidly. Had anyone looked up at the right moment and been able to peer past the glare of street-lights, they would have gotten quite the eyeful as she vaulted over the gaps between buildings while shimmying into the outfit. Still, it was worth the inconvenience. She had a feeling whatever it was that she had sensed was going to turn into a public spectacle that she'd need her public persona for.

There had been a sudden surge of some kind of energy... almost like pseudo-Ki... powerful and twisted, if not particularly focused... that gave a strong impression of rage and murderous aggression. And it wasn't showing any signs of abating either. Putting on the Stark HUD, she asked: "JARVIS! Are you seeing what's happening about... three and a half kilometers ahead of me? Can you get the SkyBuster to me before I get there on foot?"

"Negative regarding the SkyBuster, Ranma," the computer replied immediately. "Estimated time for deploying it is 115 seconds, you will be at the conflict site in approximately 100 seconds. I am monitoring several 911 calls and police-band chatter indicating a violent disturbance near the corner of Malcolm X Boulevard and Dr Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard." A map appeared in her visor display, a chevron matching her movements and a red blinking square showing her target.

"Fly it over anyway! Any details about what's going on?"

"My apologies. The most coherent description I have been able to glean thus far is a 'monster' of some kind attacking. No useful details have been given."

"Figures. Guess I'll find out the usual way..." Ranma sighed as she cut across the corner of Central Park, flitting from treetop to treetop too fast for the city's occupants to see her even if they knew to look up into the darkness. As she cleared the park and took to the rooftops half a dozen stories or more above street level, she began to hear screams, sirens, and rapid gunfire ahead of her, flame-lit columns of smoke rising into the cloudy night sky. More importantly, her Dairokkan saw Ki-signatures winking out near the powerful whatever-it-was. People dying. Snarling with building rage, she wrung every bit of speed she could out of her aura-powered physique.

Cresting the top of the final building, she saw her target at last, but she had no time to pause and study it as it yelled out a boast. Her aura flared into the visible spectrum as she propelled herself down to land on the hood of an army vehicle just in time to catch a taxi cab, screaming driver still inside, that the attacker tried to slam down on the two pairs of fearfully shouting policemen and soldiers who were riding the jeep. The screams of the men stopped even more abruptly than the improvised bludgeon as Ranma's fingers sank into the steel bumper and brought the sedan to a halt with just a flexing of her elbows and knees. She glared at the abomination that had tried to kill defenseless people, seeing it was some sort of hairless oni with disproportionate limbs and sickly green skin creased and warped by grotesquely shaped muscle, bone, and sinew. Jagged spikes protruded from its elbows and from its hunched spine and it had an absolutely evil grin on its hideous face. She could tell in an instant the thing recognized her. "You want a real fight! You got one, you moldy piece of shit!" she yelled in response to the thing's earlier words.

"Interesting... Stark's little b-BLURRGLE!" The monster was interrupted in mid-taunt. Ranma's foot lashed out in a kick backed by preternaturally sharp Ki. A huge crescent-shaped gash was torn into its flesh, carving up its chest, its throat, its face, and one eye as the strike sent it flying backward, leaving the cab behind in Ranma's care. "NNNLLYAARRRGHLL!" it gave a burbling roar in rage with nearly-ruined vocal chords as it skipped across the asphalt, flailing blindly and sending empty cars flying as it thrashed.

"Yeah..." Ranma muttered grimly, "I'm all out of mercy for murderous shit-stains." The attack had been intended to cut completely through. Though that failed, lethal wounds were good enough, Normally she wouldn't go fatal on a first strike... or at all... but like she said, she was out of patience with murderers after the last few days.

As quickly as she could without further injuring the driver, she set the vehicle in her hands back on its tires in front of her. "Hey! You guys alright?" she called back toward the army guys and cops. "Get moving and help people! Or just get moving!" Shakily, the four men obeyed her tone of command, the police fumbling to release themselves from the seatbelts. While they did so, the martial artist vaulted over the hood of the civilian vehicle and ripped the driver-side door off. A flick of her finger cut the shell-shocked cabbie free and she yanked him out like a toddler.

"Oh shit!" Ranma shot a brief look to her right, then hastily pushed the man into the arms of one of the policemen. "Take him and run! GO-GO-GO-GO!" she urged as she flipped the taxi up on its side to clear it out of the way.

With the taxi tossed to the side, the wide-eyed men had an instant to see the green behemoth charging toward them like a runaway truck before the redheaded martial streaked forward to meet it. Catching an outstretched finger, which was one of the few things she could wrap her petite hand around, she yanked that hand down to the roadbed behind her and made it stick there for a fraction of a second with her Ki. Simultaneously, she kicked up a heel into the creature's sternum. The original targets of the attack only had a moment to scream in terror before their massive green attacker flipped over with a snap as abrupt as a alligator's jaws slamming on prey. A machine-gun crackle of gamma-powered tendons rupturing in the arm could be heard over the start of another roar of pain and hate before both terminated in a massive THOOM when the oni's body smacked into the street.

The force of the impact knocked the men off their feet, but they were quick to claw and scrabble along the pavement until they could get upright again as Ranma continued to scream: "GO! GO! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!"

Ranma let go of its hand and rolled to the side just as the oni's other fist pulverized the street where she had just been. The creature had further ruined its arm using it as a fulcrum to whip its torso and free hand around. Not that it seemed to matter as it rolled to its feet, the crooked and bleeding limb popping and sizzling as it straightened out and the torn wounds sealed themselves. The bestial terror grinned as agonized nerves soothed themselves in seconds. The previous wounds were also nearly wiped away as well.

"Fuck some fucking regeneration," Ranma muttered to herself after bouncing to her feet, kind of regretting switching to female as she suspected she'd need strength more than speed for this battle. She was not feeling good about this fight. She had already pulled off two decisive strikes that would have put any on her previous opponents except Safuran out of the fight, yet this enemy was still good to go. Not only that, but the strange energy given off by the creature blunted the Ki in her attacks and fouled the air with an insane, bloodthirsty aura. It was just as well regular people didn't have the Dairokkan of a martial artist, otherwise they'd probably be put in comas from the aura alone. Between the thing's crazy aura and the flaming wrecks around her lighting the smoke pouring into the sky with red and orange flames, it was looking a lot like the western idea of hell. "JARVIS? Any ideas what the hell that thing is? Is this that 'Hulk' thing from the news?"

"Unknown." The computer stated. "A mutated being is likely. It is emitting gamma radiation, but not to dangerous levels as long as exposure is less than a few hours.

"Sounds like the 'Hulk' thing. Knew it was gonna show up around me sooner or later. Anyway... it's some sorta atomic critter... like a mini-Gojira... got it."

"Shall I open fire with the SkyBuster?"

"Don't shoot, I want to keep it focused on me instead of jumping around trying to swat the Buster. Gotta keep it tied up so people can get away." Glancing around with both eye and and Ki-sight, she hissed: "Can't do the same like with Safuran... too crowded on the street."

"Looking a bit worried there, girlie," the oni sneered as it returned to full health. "I'm out to kill someone else and you're nothing but a distraction. Run away and I'll get back to my own busi-WHOOM!" The creature flailed its arms and stumbled backward as a supersonic Moko Takabisha detonated in its face.

"If your business is killing helpless people, mine is taking you out!" Ranma shouted as she leapt at her enemy. Dodging in mid-air around the wild swing of an arm bigger than her entire body, she connected with a double-legged kick to the creature's head, smashing it into the pavement once again. Abandoning the habits ingrained into her since before she could remember, she didn't hold back. For the last few days since the Whiplash attack, uncharacteristic rage had smoldered deep within, fueled by grief and frustration as she met the wounded survivors and the families of the slain she had failed to save. No one had held her failings against her, and Natasha had helped a lot for the too-brief time she stuck around, yet Ranma couldn't help but blame herself to some degree. This had lent a agitated urgency to her actions.

Her father would have told her to draw out the fight for the sake of improving her Art, but she was long past following his advice and planned to go for the kill as soon as she could. Her new enemy, however, had already tanked what should have been two lethal attacks and looked like he would force a long conflict no matter what she wanted. She would have to keep the pressure on until she found a weakness.

What followed was a vicious round of probing attacks as the martial artist re-mapped the usual weak-points of the human body, figuring out where they were in the misshapen form of the oni. His retaliatory strikes either missed completely or were knocked to the side by blindingly fast counters. She had taken plenty of time in the recent past to think over her fight with the Phoenix god-king, suspecting she would have to fight him all over again someday. Her plan for a powerful regenerator was to inflict persistent debilitating damage with minimal energy, making the opponent waste energy on constant healing and letting her outlast the bastard. Jagged protrusions of bone harder than granite may have protected many vulnerabilities... but not all.

Her brutal anatomy study culminated with a thunderous kick straight to the monster's crotch, lifting it into the air to land a few paces back. Grinning savagely, she streaked in to take ruthless advantage of the creature's debilitation. The complete lack of debility was so much a surprise she nearly took a retaliatory jab straight on. The glancing blow was still enough to send her careening into a lamppost that was clipped off its base like a stalk of grass before a lawnmower blade.

Unnoticed by Ranma, the thing had a triumphant look for only an instant before it was washed away by horrified realization as the being which was once Emil Blonsky finally understood that 'he' was now 'it.' Raising its fists and face to the sky, the oni bellowed out in absolute rage, shattering many of the windows up and down the block. "I WILL RIP YOU APART FROM THE CUNT OU-Kreeerk!" the titanic roar of primordial fury cut off almost comically as the creature was interrupted yet again, this time by a heel to the throat that sent it into a violent tumble across the asphalt.

Summoning up her Ki, Ranma prepared to unleash another salvo of preternatural mayhem when she paused and looked back over her shoulder at a distant roar. Eyes blazing with angry red Ki, she focused on her opponent again. "Coward!" she hissed, abandoning her plan to slowly whittle the beast down. It looked like it brought a friend.

Blonsky had no idea why it was being accused of cowardice, nor did it care. The new enemy happened to be between it and where it knew Banner was traveling, and that suited it fine at the moment. As soon as the sound of burbling pops from the realigning vertebrae in its neck stopped, it leapt at Ranma with both fists raised in the air. The martial artist's aura boosted her in a jump of her own, an elbow leading the way as she struck at the oni's neck once more. The behemoth flipped several times uncontrollably before it smashed into the shattered street, stunned by the displacement of its spine as much as by vertigo. The battle mistress held on as she continued to attack even through the collision with the ground, and nearly three hundred supersonic punches were directed just below the creatures left ribs.

The Fire Heaven Chestnut Fist was one of the more bizarrely named techniques in her arsenal. The silliness of the name belied the effectiveness as she switched angles and jackhammered several hundred more punches that was less a salvo of individual strikes than it was a standing wave lancing into the same point of her target's back in the space of a couple of seconds. The sound was drowned out by colossal lungs as the giant reacted with a bellow of pain.

A knife-hand strike prevented the bones of its neck from completely healing and another five hundred punches landed on a new, carefully calculated point.

A lightning fast kick nearly popped the kneecap straight out of a tree-trunk sized leg and six hundred more strikes targeted another spot under the ribs at an upward angle.

A vacuum blade annihilated the oni's eyes, eliciting a below of pain and frustration. And several more hundred hyper-fast punches relentlessly pummeled her target.

Misshapen arms flailed with enough force to flip a tank, only to be dodged or deflected. Still, the mach-plus-speed punches continued.

Blonsky did not understand what was happening, but an instinctive premonition caused it to try to break away. Each new angle was aimed to meet at the same point deep inside its body. It could feel, but not understand, the ominous vibrations that shook its very core. Yet there was no escape as a fumbling step back left an opening for a blurring sweep that sent the monster falling backwards. And still the kilohertz thrashing brutalized its body.

Just as gamma-mutated shoulders met the pavement, the five thousand, one hundred and seventy eighth punch reached a tipping point that only the martial could perceive. "Dokuja Tanketsu Shou!" she suddenly screamed, both hands stiffening into blades as she pressed them together and thrust them like a spear into the path she had been softening up incessantly. Green blood splattered, then erupted as a heart larger than the Japanese woman's head was ripped out!

"Hgggk... kkkkrr..." the 'Hulk's' unnatural vigor kept it awake and aware long enough to stare with wide, newly-healed eyes as the stolen organ began to sizzle and glow with a red nimbus between the Ki-adept's hands. With a convulsive snap of her body, Ranma turned and threw it down the street, an after-image of crimson energy trailing it on an arrow-straight path. The fleshy meteor exploded as it struck the chest of a second, smaller oni, whose aura Ranma had sensed flaring with rage-driven power just moments before.

The titanically muscled newcomer was plowed into the street by the explosion, forming a long furrow and knocking a few vehicles to the sides. Ranma flitted from car to car, circling around the new challenger. As soon as the not-so-jolly green giant pushed himself to his feet, screaming "Hulk mad!", she launched a sneak attack from behind. Hands gripping the roadway, both her feet snapped up at an angle like a steam-piston. Heels hardened by a decade and a half of training hit the base of the rage-beast's spine and launched him toward the epicenter of the catastrophe, his pained bellow rattling the frames of stopped vehicles as he passed until he crashed through a panel truck.

Ranma smiled fiercely as she ran with her body almost horizontal and close to the ground, zigzagging from cover to cover. The second 'Hulk' was obviously dumber than the first. Not only was he swinging his head and arms from side to side randomly, looking for his attacker when he wasn't beating his chest in a threat display, but her Ki sense could tell something else about him. Though his aura of fury was as oppressive as the first's, it did not have the same feel of sadistic cunning. Instead it was the frustrated, overwrought anger of a toddler. To a regular civilian, such power directed by an irrational tantrum would be terrifying, but to her it was an engraved invitation for a counter-attack.

The green monster looked in one direction and had an ear blasted off by a crimson Ki-bolt from the other. Clutching at the bleeding wound, he brought his free fist down on the street on that side, only to take a flying kick to the kidney from the opposite side. Roaring insensibly, the Hulk turned again with both fists raised above his head, then stumbled to his knees as the jagged post of a ruined parking meter speared into his hamstring. Yanking the sharpened steel out, he rose to his feet with a growl, then fell again as two dainty palms slammed together with the force of twin wrecking balls over his ears, setting his head to ringing and destroying his equilibrium.

In simian frustration, the Hulk beat his palms on the asphalt, his bellows almost becoming a wail of stymied confusion as his clouded mind failed to find the source of his abuse. Ranma smothered a snicker as she continued the disabling and probing attacks. Then that tinge of humor drained away as her Ki senses brought her some bad news. The original, taller 'Hulk' was getting back on its feet with a brand new heart beating in its chest.

Fucking regenerators!

Thinking quickly, she appeared in front of the greener goliath. "Hey! Ugly!" she yelled.

The Hulk looked utterly shocked to be confronted by a girl whose head would barely clear the waist of his stretched and ripped pants if they were both standing up straight. It took a couple of moments for the insult to register. When it did, a scowl twisted his features and his mammoth chest inflated with an outraged breath. "HULK NOT UGLY!" he bellowed back at the petite young woman, blowing back her crimson braid with cyclone-force wind.

Ranma's face puckered in disgust. "Fah!" she spat scornfully. "Your breath stinks as bad as you look!"

"RRRRAGGGH!" was the behemoth's well-contemplated reply as he beat his chest once more.

"'Rah'?! That's all you got?!" Ranma heckled, starting to edge backwards. "I say you're ugly and I say you stink like shit, and all you can do is yell about it? You too stupid to figure something else out? Whaddya gonna do, huh?" She popped him in the nose with a fast, light Ki blast. "Whaddya gonna do?" She zapped him again.

"Ranma... this is hardly appropriate behavior," JARVIS commented. The redhead shushed the AI subvocally with the throat-receptors of her suit.

Dazzled by the bursts of paranormal energy, Hulk shook his head and flailed his hands in front of his face. The befuddlement abruptly ended as he lunged forward with a roar. "HULK NOT STUPID!"

Flitting just ahead of the grasping fingers, Ranma called out: "Yeah... you're a regular Washuu-chan... not!" She punctuated her gibe by quickly jerking back into arm's length and slapping the giant before flickering away again.

"RRRAAAAGHHHH!" the Hulk repeated himself with even more volume.

"'Rahh!' again?" Ranma echoed mockingly. "Face it... you are sooo stuuuuuupid!" She raised her voice to be heard above the charging titan while still easily keeping ahead. "And you are soooo slooooow!" she called, not acknowledging that the oni was accelerating as fast as a pickup truck accelerating at full throttle as she ran backwards before him.

"HULK SMASH BULLY!"

"Heh... 'bully,"' Ranma muttered in amusement. "Sounds like Akane back during the bad days. He's got all the self-control she had too." With every step backward, she judged the mass and velocity of her latest opponent, feeling the force of his every tread with a touch of her Ki applied through the ground. She also kept track of the first monster, who was charging toward her just as recklessly.

Picking her moment, she raised her voice. "You mad? How 'bout I show you a neat trick to make up for it? It's called... Ippon Seoinage!" The newer oni was only about 275 centimeters to the original's 340, but the wrists were still too big for her to grip. So instead, Ranma sank the fingers of one hand painfully into the green flesh to grasp a tendon of the outstretched arm. Leveraging the handhold, she pulled the colossal humanoid off balance just before planting her free elbow inside the upper part of the arm she captured and rotating her body. Ki kept her feet planted as over half a ton of combatant suddenly went flying over her body at twice his original speed.

With the force of a cannon-shell, the creature hurtled straight at his buddy. Ranma leapt to follow his flat arc through the air, confident that 'Hulk'-Number-One would not be able to dodge. Either he would get tangled up trying to catch his fellow rage-monster, or he'd take the hit. Either way, she would take full advantage.

What she wasn't expecting was for the larger 'Hulk' to launch a titanic punch straight to the head of the smaller.

The impact of the vast fist rocked Harlem like a bomb-blast and green blood sprayed across the street as the second oni's face was flattened by the combined momentum.. The braced feet of the first were hammered several inches into the asphalt by the force of its own punch, transmitting enough force through the ground to cause a couple of fire hydrants to burst loose of their mountings with gouts of pressurized water. Worst of all, the smoother-skinned oni was sent rocketing back... right into an airborne Ranma.

"Kuso!" she shrieked in frustration and some embarrassment as shoulders that were nearly as wide as she was tall collided with her. Before she could extricate herself... "Ah, Shi...!" WHAM! The both of them slammed into an abandoned and fitfully burning SUV with a metallic crunch, causing the vehicle to roll over twice before coming to a halt against a lamppost, bouncing down on its tires again. "Ugh..." Ranma moaned as the screaming Hulk pulled himself free from the crumpled automobile, his voice becoming clearer with every bellow as his face healed. "Well, shit... I guess they aren't on the same side... that would have been nice to know earlier." Mentally, she decided the second oni deserved the name 'Hulk' more, since it was dumber and less vicious. The first was... rabid. Not a demon or youkai... probably... but definitely some kind of crime against nature. An Abomination in truth.

Before the young woman could extricate herself from the torn and bent metal clasping her, the now labeled Hulk in front of her swung at the obstructions around him. A car was batted away with his left fist, then a herculean right hand swung back behind him. Ranma brought her arms up in an 'X' in front of her to block the thunderous back-fist before it launched her and the motor vehicle that still trapped her in an arc over the street. A wet crunch signaled the breaking of her left forearm.

"Chikuso!" she snarled as she ripped at the clinging ruin of the SUV with her undamaged arm to free herself while the automobile sailed though the air, spinning from the impact of the Hulk's fist.

Before she could escape, the flight of the smoldering SUV terminated in a collision with a gasoline truck.

FWOOOSH! Flame gushed out as quickly as the fuel that fed it from the side of the ruptured tank. Blazing liquid washed over the martial artist, wiping the sight of her existence from the view of the brave, foolish, or simply trapped souls that still watched the conflict from shattered windows or concealing alley ways. Later, the video taken by a certain determined teen-aged girl from her apartment would show she dropped her cell phone with cry of concern and fear at that moment before snatching it up again. That recording would bring in enough money for the girl to put herself through college... but that's another story.

A second passed... Then another...

Suddenly, Ranma stood up amidst the flow of burning gasoline. Flicking her head and hair back as if surfacing from a cool, mountain stream, she shook her eyes clear of the fuel. Heat-devouring Ki coated her like a second skin, preserving even her hair from the fire except for the charred tip of her braid. She whipped her right arm in a circle above her head once, moved her head and shoulders along with her arm for a second rotation, then rotated her entire torso for a third circle before snapping her arm straight up. A brief, intense cyclone ripped the air and heat away from the lake of spilled gasoline, extinguishing the flames. A spin of her entire body turned the late-spring night into a polar winter, turning the combustible liquid into slush that spun around her to leave a divot down to her feet. A final spin induced a small, localized weather event never seen on Earth that froze the flammable fuel solid.

Blue eyes closed and a deep breath was taken, the petrochemical stench ignored in favor of a calming exhale. Ranma opened her eyes and solemnly examined the two green titans pounding away at each other a few dozen meters away. The one with hair had managed to wrap his fists with metal ripped from a car, making up for his initial disadvantage. "You still hanging in there JARVIS?" she asked.

"Yes Ranma. Permission to open fire?"

She looked and saw the two green behemoths. With the Soul of Ice going, she paid attention to the fact they were simply exchanging slow punches in the middle of the evacuated street instead of barging through buildings full of civilians who had evacuated the streets. A large helicopter was trailing smoke from where a thrown streetlight was embedded in it as it fled, but looked like it could land on its own. "No. We can't have them jumping after the SkyBuster and landing someplace worse. Use it and the camera drones to find people who need rescuing and guide them clear. Can you get in contact with the police and those army guys?"

"Ranma, this is Tony," her boss's voice broke in. "I'm on my way in the ThunderStruck, but I can only sustain Mach 6 for that distance without running the reactors dry. It'll be 40 minutes before I get there!"

"Thanks, Boss. Can you talk to the official people? I'm gonna have my hands full, but I got this!"

"Be advised: you have experienced displaced fractures of your left radius and ulna. You should retreat and seek medical attention," JARVIS urged.

"Wait, what!?" Stark yelped.

"My arm? Yeah, I know it's busted. I've fought with worse before. Mondainai," the martial artist stated unconcernedly as she started striding back to the fight.

"Whoa! Hey! Where you going!" the inventor protested.

"Ranma," JARVIS chided, "if you won't retreat, then the suit's emergency compression system must be activated. You would need to pull your arm to align the bones first."

"'Compression'? Oh yeah... the splint thing," Ranma commented with mild surprise. She had honestly forgotten about it. "That'll be handy." Without so much as a flinch, she tugged on her left wrist, jiggling the forearm a bit to make the broken ends line up perfectly. "Do it!" she ordered.

"Activating..." the AI announced. The blue sleeve hissed and shrank around her arm by means of some unknown advanced technology, immobilizing her wrist and elbow.

"Nice," the Japanese woman announced as she gave her arm an experimental wave. She could conceal her injury well enough to avoid her enemies taking advantage. "Nice feature, Tony!"

"Thanks, but that splint's not gonna hold up to any hits," Stark warned. "You should get out of there! Help people get away too, but you can't fight like that!"

"No, Tony," Ranma denied calmly. She took another cleansing breath. "What I should do is stop fighting like a pigheaded, fixated idiot. Who am I? Ryoga? I've been giving in to my drama... when what I should be doing is finding the center!"

"What? I don't get it," Tony complained.

"You will. JARVIS, keep recording for your battle database," Ranma instructed as a determined expression settled on her face. Ironically, her fiery baptism had ended up cooling her head through the reflexive activation of the Soul of Ice. As a result, she recalled her true nature. As she'd said, she was no Ryoga. Hers was the way of adaptation, misdirection, and the oblique approach that targeted the crucial weak point... not head-on blundering with sheer force. Power was subordinate to speed. Speed was subordinate to skill. And skill was subordinate to the perception and enlightenment of a martial artist's Ki-awakened mind.

Nor was she a killer who would seek to end a fight in death as her first choice. Death might be an option when there was no other way to protect the innocent, but not something to seek for its own sake. She had momentarily forgotten these things in her frustration from the Expo attack and aftermath, and it nearly cost her this fight. But she remembered now... and her opposition was about to get a crash course in the precepts of her Art.

"JARVIS... I need a clear area with no buildings or people... not too hilly. Needs to be... seventy meters radius, I think. And I need one with the clearest path I can lead these two oni along so more people don't get hurt. Might want to make sure no planes or more helicopters are going overhead either. Can you help me?"

"Yes, Ranma," the computer agreed. "There is a park beside the river that matches your parameters." A side window appeared on her visor, showing a map of the city and a green path tracing the proposed route. Her HUD also showed a glowing green line seemingly hanging in the air with occasional brighter pulses following it that led to the northeast.

"Ranma! Wait!" Tony yelled.

"Hang on a sec..." Ghosting forward the last few meters unnoticed, Ranma rejoined the fight in time to give the Abomination's left straight punch an unexpected boost with a strike at the bone-armored elbow. Not only was the Hulk sent flying, but the more sinister behemoth was off balance an instant before being launched past its enemy by a kick to the spine. "OK, what?"

"Jesus Christ, kid... it's too late now!" Tony growled in frustration. "Are you seriously doing this?"

"Hey," Ranma casually replied. "I'm kinda getting to like the hero business now. No way I'm backing off."

"Ranma..." Tony said with a quiet, serious tone. "Can you really handle this? And get out alive?"

"Yeah, Tony, I can," she promised solemnly. "My head is clear, now. I can see how to win."

"OK," she could tell he was nodding reluctantly even over the radio, but he sounded resolved. "OK, I'll coordinate with local forces to clear your way. Now kick their over-sized asses!"

"As you command, Boss," she acknowledged as she watched for her next opening as both oni's staggered upright.

That appeared immediately when the Hulk continued to ignore her in favor of the foe before him. This time as he went in for a punch, she gave him another dose of 'help.' Precisely timing her move, she lunged forward and tapped the improvised gauntlet still wrapped around his fist at the instant it made contact with the Abomination's blocking arm. "Bakusai Tenketsu!" she called out as she bounced away again, announcing to the world the technique that caused the steel to explode.

Both titans roared in pain. The Abomination clutched its arm just below where the flesh was flayed from the bone and the Hulk nursed the shattered and flensed knuckles of his hand. A chain glowing with Ki lashed out twice, striking both wounds, yanking agonized bellows from their mutated throats. Enraged, the enormous antagonists' glares followed the steel links to their wielder, who had gotten past them unnoticed again.. Ranma gave them the patented Saotome cocky smirk that had infuriated countless opponents before, her broken arm held behind her to conceal the vulnerability as the chain seemed to slide up her other sleeve of its own accord. "I guess it's good you're so good at screaming, since you both suck so much at fighting. Kind of embarrassing for such big beasties, though."

"Holy shit, Ranma... what are you doing?!" an utterly aghast inventor yelled over the communicator. As if to prove his point, both leviathans lunged at her with flailing fists, their wounds almost healed already.

Tapping her fingers against her thumb in a certain pattern, Ranma activated the subvocal system as she redirected one punch from the Abomination into the Hulk's face with a snap-kick. ["Pissing them off to make them even dumber than before... then sucker them into a trap. I'm leading them somewhere I can hit them with something big,"] she explained, her smug confidence somehow being apparent despite the toneless effect of the stealthy communicator.

She dove into a pinwheeling spin that mixed Capoeira and Taichichuan while keeping her injured arm carefully cradled to her chest. Her legs hooked her opponents knees just as they shifted their weights and sending them tumbling down the street. The luckless Hulk landed flat on his back, his head pointed back toward Ranma, just before the Abomination fell on top of him... face to crotch. The the Hulk's bellows suddenly took on a higher pitch as his other enemy decided to use its teeth. Panic and rage lent even more strength to the green ogre's limbs as he frantically tore the other giant away from his sensitive regions. A last-instant palm strike from the martial artist redirected the Abomination as it was hurled away, putting it into a high arc that ended with him planted into the street a block further toward her goal.

Standing just out of striking distance, Ranma looked down at the Hulk with a contemptuous sneer. "Feh... dickless too, now... not that there was much to lose," she derided scornfully, walking away without backwards glance. Subvocalizing, she requested: ["Can you get in touch with the cops or army or somebody and let them know what I'm doing? If they can make sure people are clear all the way to the target, it'd help a lot."]

"Jesus... you're one scary woman..." Tony replied with a mix of dread and awe. "I can't believe what you just caused... I can't believe what you just said! That was so wrong!"

Suddenly darting forward to avoid the sweep of green fists nearly as large as her torso, she prompted: ["Tony... focus..."]

Jogging at what was a slow pace for her, she kept just ahead of the pursuing Hulk, encouraging him to lumber after her as fast as he could run with a strange gait caused by intimate pain. "HULK NOT DICKLESS!" he screamed, speeding up again as his genitalia healed and the pain no longer hobbled him. Ranma, of course, easily stayed just out of his reach, a Ki-enhanced cackle reaching her pursuer's ears despite all the noise he made. Frustrated, the goliath gathered himself and jumped after his tormentor. Suddenly the master-class fighter reversed her direction with a backflip over his head. Both feet came down between his shoulder-blades with an explosion of silver energy, a modified Moko Takabisha from her soles adding impetus to her kick. Remnants of the spiritual energy traced a cyan trail at a shallow angle when the Hulk was rocketed back to earth, this time at a speed far too high for the Abomination to block or dodge as the two monstrous forms collided with an impact that rattled the structures around them.

["So... that police help?"] Ranma asked.

"I already made contact with the local law enforcement, military, and emergency services when you told me the objective," JARVIS interjected. "A General Ross wishes to speak with you, Ranma."

["Uh... I..."] Ranma really didn't want to talk to some military guy. Inspiration struck as her two opponents got back to their feet and blundered toward each other to resume the battle. "I can't take the call! I'm fighting two enormous green dudes!" she offered brightly, switching to regular speaking for a moment as she kicked the Abomination in the back of its head, smashing it into brutal face-to-face collision with the Hulk. "Tony can talk to them!" Despite speaking aloud, her pursuers did not seem to clue in that she was having a phone conversation in mid-fight. Which was too bad, as it would have made them that much more furious and reckless.

"Seems like you can talk just fine," Stark observed dryly.

["Oh... ummm... Oh no. I'm being chased by big, clumsy, dumb onis,"] she replied when the redirected ire of her targets caused them to go after her again. ["Woe is me. Help. Tasukete,"] her subvocal pleading sounding ridiculous in its requisite monotone. Not to mention the fact that she felt confident enough to bitch-slap both chasers with her uninjured hand made her distress less than convincing.

Watching the action from Ranma's visor-feed in a side window as he continued to fly eastward, Tony was able to let go a reasonable amount of his worry. When JARVIS had relayed the initial stages of the fight, even the inventor could tell that his young protege was not doing as well as she could as she lost her normal composure. Now she was back to being in control of herself and the battle. Still... she didn't need the distraction dealing with some blowhard general. "Fine... fine... I'll talk to him," Tony conceded.

["Great. Thanks, Tony,"] Ranma tried to project her genuine gratitude over the subvox as well as she could without speaking audibly.

Sooner than she expected, the martial artist saw the effects of Tony's and JARVIS's coordination with the authorities. The street she was following had mostly emptied as people figured out what was heading their way, but it was entirely clear now. She could see the flashing lights of police cars that blocked side streets well back from the moving threats. Confidently, she picked up the pace as her ability to adapt and overcome reaped dividends, making it easier and easier to manipulate her two over-sized adversaries into going where she wanted. Whether it was the dumb one, or the bloodthirsty one, leading them around by the noses was almost pathetically easy at this point. She smirked to herself as she thought how all the years of dealing with Ryoga had just come in handy.

"Just like leading a pig," she said aloud. Switching back to subvocal, she instructed: ["JARVIS, draw a circle on the map in the area I asked for... about fifty meters from the center. Let me know when I cross the edge."]

"As you say," the AI acknowledged. "You are four-hundred meters from your destination following the roads."

["Got it,"] Ranma acknowledged as she plied her Art. Lashing out with a chain again, she whipped the gamma-twisted faces of her soon-to-be victims, sending sprays of green blood flying from the shining metal links. At that point, both giants lost track of their surroundings entirely. She flitted in between them, attacking to throw off their balance and awareness. Before they knew it, they were drawn into a chaotic running battle where gigantic limbs flailed away aimlessly at each other... or only aimless from their owners perspectives, the small slip of a teen-aged warrior made sure each heedless blow landed where she wanted.

"Two-hundred meters," JARVIS advised.

The trio of adversaries went screaming through an intersection with the noise and potential devastating force of a runaway train. Ranma neatly redirected the high-speed scrum through the turn onto the last stretch of road, giving them a straight line at her planned destination. Elated, she laughed wildly: "You morons! You have no idea what you're dealing with! How the hell can anybody be so stupid!"

"Fifty more meters to the phase line."

In other circumstances, the Abomination might have wondered about her sanity, or even taken pause to consider if she knew something it did not. As it was, however, it could barely hear her yell over the ear-shattering bellows of itself and the Hulk and couldn't concentrate on anything but the need to destroy. The other behemoth, of course, never had a hope of spotting the trap he was just entering. Thrashing and stumbling, the group crashed through a low fence and up a shallow slope.

At the top of the small rise they reached a round, grassy area and crossed the line Ranma had been watching on the eNReal-Visor's display. "You're pathetic!" she continued to laugh as she abruptly redirected the fight to the right. "You're hopeless! Both of you! Shit-for-brains! Dickless Duo!"

As the abuse continued to be heaped on their heads, the mutated pair became even more blindly furious. The nature of the fight had changed again as Ranma guided them like a conductor of mayhem. No longer were the two ogres trying to strike each other, they only elbowed and pushed the other as they tried to be the first to lay their hands on the impossibly infuriating female, ever certain they were just one more step away from catching her and getting their revenge. Steam rose from their shoulders from the exertion and the rage fueling their auras. Obliviously they were led into a constant, counter-clockwise cycle. Around and around they orbited the center of the cleared area in an ever tightening spiral. With each rotation, hot and cold air swirled at an ever faster pace.

As they closed in on the center of the wheeling battle, Ranma's laughs and insults and devolved into capricious giggles. Despite the seeming hilarity, her eyes were glacier-cold under the influence of the Soul of Ice. She readied her final gambit as she skipped backwards through the last few paces. Suddenly she stopped and ducked under the graceless sweeps of gigantic green arms as the Hulk and the Abomination blundered into each other. Before they could get their balance back to attack their unexpectedly halted tormentor, she came back up with a dramatic uppercut. There was an instant of shock as the martial artist who had never failed to land a precision strike missed both enormous targets completely and the entire world seemed to hold its breath for that infinitesimal moment.

"Hiryu! Shoten! Ha!" Ranma's triumphant cry somehow could be heard from miles around. Many residents of the area could clearly remember the words, even knowing it shouldn't have been possible. Especially when an ethereal, serpentine dragon roared into existence around her and rocketed upward with exultant silver fury that should have drowned out any mere mortal's voice. Thousands of witnesses would have had cause to doubt their eyes and ears as the reptilian image gave way to the no less impressive sight of a Ki-fueled tornado... if it were not for the thousands more who remembered seeing and hearing the same things.

Both the Hulk and the Abomination were immediately yanked up into the howling air, roaring in anger and confusion. The suddenly frigid currents of air sapped the strength from their limbs. Spinning and tumbling, they spiraled skyward, their own internal energies feeding the impromptu maelstrom and drawing them into the technique like statically charged debris. Their redoubled efforts to wield gamma-ray-born power just made things worse and pulled them into the spiral that much more. Ranma, on the other hand, stayed firmly on the ground, her fist still raised to the heavens and her feet digging further and further into the ground as the cyclone raged on.

"Holy shit, Ranma! What the hell did you just do!?" Tony's exclamation was slightly distorted by static. "How the hell did you just do!?"

"Sir," JARVIS managed a tone of electronic astonishment, "I am detecting extreme temperature gradients, but no possible sources to account for them!"

"Five thousand years of martial arts supremacy," Ranma replied smugly, not bothering with subvocalization anymore. "Remember that good-bye fight with Ku Lon? I used a variant on her... I'll explain it later when I'm not in public." Suddenly, she felt a strange twinge that faded with pleasant warmth in her broken arm. Flexing her hand, she devoted a portion of her perception to the fractured bones... discovering that they had healed completely and far, far faster than normal. Absently, she added: "Keep recording though, looks like I'm still figuring out new things about this technique every time I use it."

"Ranmaaa~," Tony's sarcastic drawl sounded through her radio. "You've been holding out on me~!"

"Eh, sorry," she apologized lightheartedly. "Didn't think it would ever come up in America, to be honest. This only really works on enemies with strong auras. Otherwise it just sputters out quick."

"So it's not a weather-manipulation technique? We can't use it to make perfect surfing weather? Dude... total bummer," the engineer joked.

Unmentioned was that there was a deep secret to the Soul of Ice. As Ku Lon has described it, it was just generating cold Ki... but there's no such thing as cold energy. Something either added power... and therefore heat... to a system or else took it away. Things weren't frozen by shooting energy at them. She learned this from the books Hokusu-Sensei forced her to crack open, and it had taken some fast-talking from the priest to stop her from giving up on them then and there for contradicting her real-world experience.

He reminded her of an important truth: a high-level martial artist saw things more deeply. The universe was made up of harmonies and angles... waves and vectors... and Ki gave insight into both. The Soul of Ice was the ultimate form of force redirection, turning the chaotic vibrations of heat into chill order. It might look like it suppressed or eliminated emotions, but what it really did was control and align those emotions to the user's purpose, turning them into a channel. The technique required that stringent meditative state to draw in energy from the environment... or an enemy for preference... toward a conceptual sink formed deep within the martial artist's paraphysical being. Hence: Soul of Ice.

With her improved understanding of the dynamics of the Hiryu Shoten Ha, that heat-sink became a source of power as the stolen power passed through her aura. Leeched energy became fuel in a reaction to grab even more Ki. In its ideal form, the skill would let her gain more power than she expended, but she was not up to that level... yet. Instead she had to settle for mere mastery, and come very close to breaking even.

However, just the act of absorption seemed more significant than she thought. Apparently, the nature of the power she captured let her body repair itself at something close to the rates shown by her opponents. She wasn't sure if it was the sheer amount of power passing through her, or the nature of the energy of the regenerators.

Despite this surprise benefit, the process of diverting the raging fury of the monstrosities caught in her trap was no picnic... even if she was currently in a park. She might be getting nearly as much back as she was throwing in to keep the tornado going, but the fact of the matter was she had to shuffle around an oomphing huge amount of power. The two green goliaths together made Habu, the dragon prince, look positively sickly. They still fell short of Safuran, but she did not have the Gekkaja to serve as a crutch this time. The Hiryu Shoten Ha might cause little relative strain on her physical form, but her aura was being stretched and torqued by the torrential ebb and flow of energy.

On top of the metaphysical load was the mental one from the instantaneous calculations to balance constantly changing vectors she needed to perform to keep the entire system from flying apart from its own swirling forces. This wasn't like the first few times she'd used the technique in Nerima, when she could basically let the cyclone do its own thing. This was Mount Horai all over again... or Jusendo.

She gritted her teeth as she bore up under the pressure of mind, body, and soul. Focusing her senses on the drain of her opponents reserves, for a moment, she considered taking the Hiryu Shoten Ha to its final, lethal conclusion. Something she had only ever done before with Safuran.

However, since the very use of the Soul of Ice largely muted her anger, she was able to think it out rationally. After all, even if the technique failed, her opponents were drained enough for her to subdue them, and her identity was... and always would be... a martial artist. Clarity of purpose restored, she prepared several contingencies in the back of her mind to capture without killing.

By the time she was up to formulating 'Plan G: See if the suckers can breathe water,' she saw a light at the end of the tunnel. She could feel the first oni was almost tapped out. The second one still had fight left in him, but not much more. Jerking her shoulders to the side for an instant, she sent a ripple through the vortex. The disturbance shot up the funnel and pitched the Abomination out of the cyclone. A park bench was annihilated when its bulk crashed down and bounced once before splaying on the ground like an enormous sack of ground meat and shattered bone. Grunting with the effort, she rebalanced the technique to keep the last enemy in the tornado for a bit longer.

A flicker of motion out the corner of her eye caught her attention. Whipping her gaze around in disbelief, she peered through the swirling dust and trash to see a tall, brunette woman desperately clinging to a tree-trunk just beyond the effect zone as she waved and screamed at the redhead. Behind her, an older man with short, silver hair in military camouflage was trying to get to the woman while apparently yelling into a radio. "What the shit?" She was utterly shocked that the pair had gotten so close without her notice. "JARVIS, are you seeing this? What the hell are those people doing?"

"I see them," the computer responded while Ranma made shooing gestures with her free hand. Gestures the woman promptly ignored in order to make stopping gestures of her own. "Checking facial recognition and local signals traffic... matches found," the AI soon reported. "They are Doctor Elizabeth Ross and her father, General Thaddeus Ross." There was a pause that implied some significance. "General Ross is attempting to contact you."

"Yeah... he's pretty mad," Tony added. "I gave up talking to him a while back and let JARVIS handle him. Sorry, not sorry!"

"Okaaay..." Ranma drawled incredulously. "Put him through."

"Patching you in."

"...her on the line, now!" A hoarse bellow sounded out through the visor's sound system in mid-phrase. "I don't care what senators Stark thinks he has in his pocket... I'll..."

"Oi! General-guy! This is Ranma," the martial artist interrupted undiplomatically. "What the hell are you two doing over there?! These things are dangerous!"

Through the static and the transmitted roaring winds, she could hear the officer inhale an angry breath. "You...!" He visibly collected himself and set priorities. "You need to shut down whatever super-weapon you recklessly set off! A friendly is caught in the effect now!"

Ranma looked up and checked with her Ki-sense with sudden trepidation. The two normals had just managed to sneak up on her under the cover of the onis' auras and her own technique, so she couldn't immediately dismiss the possibility she had missed another weak life-sign like theirs. Yet a careful scan showed no random innocents had been sucked up by the Hiryu Shoten Ha that she could perceive. "Where?!" she demanded skeptically.

"The big green guy! The one with hair, I mean! He volunteered to fight the other one before you interfered! Stop attacking him, now!"

"Wow, OK," Ranma agreed dubiously. The kerfuffle with the US military wanting Tony's suit had not given her a high opinion of the institution, and this dink wasn't exactly changing her mind if he thought letting the over-powered lummoxes do their thing was a good idea. "We need to sit down and figure out where you military dudes get your ideas some time. You want him? You got him!" With that, she cut off her control of the tornado, causing it to disperse almost instantly and leaving behind a circle of churned-up grass and earth that she stood in the middle of. Her plan was to let her last opponent crash down near the idiot general and let him see how dangerous even a weakened oni could be before she put the monster down for the count. Crossing her arms over her chest and cocking her hips to the side, she looked up and commented loudly to be heard over the residual winds: "Well, this should be pretty funny. Let's see how long you can deal... uh... oh... whoops?" Ranma's eyes widened as she instantly grasped a new development based on her extensive prior experience with transforming people.

"No! Bruce!" the Ross woman shrieked in panic. In place of a gamma-charged behemoth, there was now a much smaller man falling out of the sky and almost out of his absurdly stretched-out pants. A flicker of his previously rampaging aura clung to him, but it was retreating rapidly into his mundane human Ki.

"Kuso!" Ranma blurted as she streaked toward the nearest street-lamp. Hopping to the top, she leapt off its lamp-arm and high into the air. Meeting the falling man in mid-flight, she wrapped an arm around his midsection while hastily pulling up his ruined trousers. She'd rescue the guy, but she'd be damned before being stuck with carrying him around while he was experiencing a wardrobe malfunction if she could help it. Doing something like that was how obsessive stalkers got made, in her experience.

Toting the full-grown man as easily as a purse under her arm, she alighted on the ground again, the energy of her and her passenger's fall being dispersed invisibly in a large hemisphere of dirt and rock as soon as her feet touched the surface. As a result, there was no more shock to the landing than an ant's footstep. She set the man with dark, curly hair with a few strands of silver at the temples down on the ground in a sitting position. Kneeling on one knee in front of him, she grasped the sides of his head and peered into his befuddled and bleary eyes, shooting a bit of diagnostic Ki into him. "Hey, Oji-San! You OK?"

"Wh... wha'?" the thoroughly discombobulated scientist stammered faintly with complete perplexity in his husky voice.

"Bruce!" the attractive brunette woman yelled as she fell to her knees next to the two former combatants and flung her arms around the man's shoulders. "Are you alright!?"

"B-Betty?" he replied with increasing coherence. After a couple of tries, he managed to wrap an arm around her. "Yeah, I... I think I'm fine?"

"Yep... he's fine," Ranma agreed dismissively as she released his head and stood up. Her senses showed that every muscle, sinew, bone, and nerve in Bruce's body had been strained rather close to the breaking point by either the fight or whatever it was that turned him into a big, green oni. But to her mind, that was just the typical result of an afternoon workout, and she thought little of it.

"Dr. Banner," the general officer interrupted with an urgent tone, "are you in danger of transforming again? While my daughter is right next to you?" Ranma looked back at the seated man with interest.

"What? Oh..." Bruce shook himself for a moment, then cocked his head and looked quizzical. "No... no, the other guy... he's... he's buried. He's buried deep right now!" he exclaimed with surprised relief. "What happened?"

Turning loose with one arm, Betty Ross reached out and touched Ranma's knee. Looking up with shimmering eyes, she said: "Thank you! Thank you for saving Bruce!"

"Oh, um... sure," Ranma rubbed the back of her neck with a little embarrassment. Despite the higher level of decency shown by the people she was dealing with these days, becoming accustomed to being earnestly thanked was still some ways off. That a pretty woman with such a sincere expression was the one to do so this time did quite a bit of harm to her composure. "No problem... look, uh... the police and ambulance guys are going to be here soon, and I gotta..." she jerked her head toward the broken heap of Abomination that was still oozing green blood into the dirt a few meters away.

"The police?" the brunette echoed with alarm and turned to look at her father. "Dad?!"

General Ross grimaced and glared at the younger, nervous-looking man for a moment. After a few seconds of seething he spat out: "Fine! Banner, get the hell out of here!"

"R-right," the physicist agreed and tried to rise, only to collapse with a groan. "Gonna need a minute, though," he rasped. Ranma's raised her eyebrows a little contemptuously at what seemed to her like a rather low tolerance for pain, particularly for someone who could do as much damage as Banner could. Not really interested in the conversation anymore, she turned away with the intent of securing the Abomination.

"Wait!" Betty called as she lunged from her kneeling position to grasp at the calf of the martial artist. "Please! Can you help Bruce escape?"

"Wha... help him escape? From the law?" Ranma demanded in consternation. "Are you kidding me? I gotta make sure that thing ain't a problem!" she jerked a thumb at Blonsky. "I gotta go see if I can help the wounded, too!"

Drawing his sidearm, the general took aim at the crippled and comatose form of his mutated subordinate. "The rest of my troops have been ordered to maintain a perimeter around this place. I can cover him while you 'search' for the Hulk," he offered with a faint smirk.

"Helping one of the ones giving me problems today is not one of my plans tonight!" the redhead protested. "I'm done with doing stupid crap like that!"

Surging to her feet, Betty spoke quickly while sending anxious glances toward the approaching strobe lights and sirens. "Please! It isn't Bruce's fault he's like that! It was a government project that they lied to him about, and it went wrong! My father's project!" She jerked her head toward the general then the Abomination. "That one is one of their projects, too! Now they want Bruce back as a weapon!"

"Ranma," her boss's voice suddenly interjected via the visor's comm system, "Bruce Banner has a brain that can match mine. You're the one who's there on the ground, and it's your call, but I'd say it's a waste to put a mind like that in an army brig. Or a weapon vault. You can get him across the river and get back pretty quick, right?"

"Haaah..." Ranma sighed loudly, taking in the pleading features of the other woman and mulling her employer's words. "Got suckered into this by the Army?" she asked in confirmation. The elder Ross scowled, but the daughter nodded firmly, and even the exhausted scientist his own weary nod. Seeing the consensus, Ranma hissed out an annoyed, reluctant breath. Suddenly, the Neriman emigre held a disconnected microphone that mysteriously appeared in her hand up to her mouth and struck a dramatic pose with her other wrist held to her forehead. "WHY AM I STILL SUCH A SUCKER FOR A PRETTY FACE!?" she cried piteously. Stark laughed unkindly at her antics.

"Whatever..." she petite young woman grumped as she dropped the pose and tossed the prop microphone over her shoulder. It mysteriously failed to land on the ground. Ignoring her employer's hilarity along with the wide-eyed looks of the other three people present, she casually hefted the half-naked man under her arm as easily as a civilian would bundle up a towel.

Realizing she was out of time, Betty managed one kiss on Bruce's cheek before the martial artist gave a jaunty wave and suddenly streaked streaked westward, the scientist's startled shout dopplering into the distance. The woman was able to follow the arrow straight path of the two as they skimmed across the water for a fraction of a second, before they were lost in the distance and darkness. "Thanks," she called after them with her hands cupped beside her mouth. "And thank you too, Dad," she sighed with a mix of fatigue and gratitude.

"Yeah, yeah," the old officer growled. Raising his radio once again, he switched it on and ordered: "Captain, bring everyone in to my position! Fight's over but we have a mess to clean up!"

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

The scientist's hoarse scream had faded out before the two reached to opposite bank of the Hudson, but he still clutched at Ranma's arm in panic. Rolling her eyes, she pointed out: "Your feet are like ten centimeters from the ground. Stand already!"

"Wha-? Oh!" Bruce blinked and set his bare feet on the cement surface of the alleyway they were in. "Err..." her peered out toward the streetlights, seeing a parking lot with several buses. "Are we in Jersey?"

"Huh? Oh yeah, we are," Ranma answered at JARVIS's prompting via the visor as she examined the scientist critically.

"Jersey. OK," the American sighed in relief and astonishment. "I, uh... I'm not sure what to do now... it's too close to where I went green to try pan-handling for bus money. Or clothing money..." Looking down at himself, he cursed: "Oh shit...!" He hastily twisted his pants to the right to shift the ragged hole the Abomination had bitten into the crotch to someplace less revealing. "That's if I don't get picked up for indecent exposure! Yikes! Sorry about that!" he apologized with a mortified expression at the teen-aged girl.

"Don't mind," the martial artist waved off his contrition with the hand that wasn't holding the stack of folded cloth that she now was somehow carrying. "Look, don't worry about it and hold still a sec," she ordered as she considered his frame. He was a bit taller and bulkier than her male form, but most of her Chinese clothes were meant to fit loosely. "No problem," she declared just before her arms blurred.

With a sharp fluttering sound, the cool night breeze Bruce had been feeling peaked momentarily before he suddenly wasn't feeling it anymore. He staggered where he stood in confusion as he abruptly found himself standing a fraction of an inch higher than he had been a millisecond previously. Looking down, he gasped to find his feet clad in slipper-like footwear. For that matter he was also dressed in a green Mandarin-style shirt and flowing white trousers. "How the-? What the-?"

"You can keep those," Ranma offered as she wadded up the destroyed garment he had been wearing and tossed it in a nearby dumpster. "I got plenty of money these days," she confessed wryly. The pay Tony was giving her had been increased by Pepper from the absurd beginning sum that had already been beyond her imagining. Then increased again. And again. Now it was whatever three times absurd was. The new CEO had claimed it was the bare minimum compensation for the duties the bodyguard/professional-hero/lab-assistant/healer/personal-trainer/spokesmodel was continually adding to her portfolio.

"Where did these come from?" Bruce wondered.

"Ki-pocket," Ranma explained unhelpfully and changed the subject. "So... Tony wants you to stick around," she pointed to the earpiece of her visor. "Hide somewhere until we can pick you up. He really wants to work with you... especially to figure out that whole green thing," she jerked her head toward Manhattan.

"Tony... Stark, right?" He had been a little preoccupied recently, but even he hadn't missed the massive media storm revolving around the young woman. So he knew who she associated with. She nodded at his guess and the scientist eyed her warily. He was very aware of the fact she had beaten the Other Guy and Blonsky effectively two on one... and she still looked a hell of a lot more energetic than he felt. So if she decided he was going somewhere, there wasn't a hell of a lot he could do about it. Even his alter ego didn't seem particularly inclined to break loose at the moment. "If I say no? If I want to go off on my own?" He did not want someone like Stark anywhere near the Other Guy. No telling what the allegedly former arms dealer would do with whatever he learned.

Ranma shrugged. "Then I guess you're on your own."

"I wanna leave then," Bruce announced. "I need to get out of here."

"You sure?" Ranma raised her eyebrows in surprise. "We're talking about Tony giving you a job here and setting up something so those guys don't come after you anymore. You didn't even have a wallet in your trousers," she nodded toward the dumpster. "Are you really going to be OK on your own?"

"I've been OK so far," Bruce said hoarsely while tamping down the surge of temptation. "I really need to go. Now." He started edging away. He stopped when Ranma held up her palm.

"No, Tony," she said as she shook her head, obviously carrying on a remote conversation with her employer. "I'm not going to stand here and try to convince him. There are still people needing rescue and medical attention over there." The curly-haired man flinched at that. "I've wasted enough time on this. Hang on..." she flicked her wrist and made a wallet appear. Opening it, she fished in it for the remainder of what Tony called pocket-change and pulled out eight one-hundred dollar bills. Another flex of Stuff-Space brought out a business card and she handed it and the cash over to Banner. Ranma told him: "That's my number. Tony wants you to call us when you get a chance. The government's been playing games with our phones, so make sure you pick something safe to call from or... what...?" She had a puzzled expression on her face as she tilted her head as she listened to her visor's audio feed. "Or 'bounce an IP-phone app through a few servers'," she quoted carefully, then shrugged at the scientist.

Separating the card from the cash, Bruce pocketed it for the sake of politeness, not tempted in the least to ever call the infamously eccentric inventor. "Uh, I'll consider it. Look... thanks for offering, but I can't take this much money."

Ranma smirked and asked: "What are you going to do? Hand it back?"

"Well, actually..." the tired escapee started before a sudden gust of wind distracted him. Blinking as he looked around, he realized he was now alone in the alleyway. "I... the hell? OK... maybe not?" Closing his eyes a moment, he heaved a sigh and pocketed the money. "What a strange night," he muttered. He raised his voice a bit and called out "Thank you!" to the dark night, not expecting to be heard.

"You're welcome," the soft breeze carried the words to his ears a moment later, startling him into clutching at his chest despite how quiet and distant the reply had been. Huffing one syllable of an exasperated laugh, he forced himself to calm down again.

"...And what a strange, scary, scary young woman," he added to his previous comment. Feeling an internal twinge at his own words, he paused a moment before raising his hands a little to stare at them in perplexity. "R-Really...?" he asked aloud in utter astonishment.

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

Many aggravating hours later, Ranma was puttering around his hotel room a bit aimlessly in the nude as he waited for the jaccuzi to heat up. He found himself in a strange state. On one hand he was still wired from the first fight in quite some time against opponents that were truly a match for him physically. Or much more than a match if he were to be honest... had he been stupid enough to engage in a toe-to-toe slugfest. On the other hand, helping hurt and frightened people, then going on to deal with yet more pretentious, self-important posturing and demands from a whole new set of military people... not to be confused with the first set of pretentious blowhard military types he had endured... had all worn him down spiritually.

As a result, he was split between wanting to go out and look for more action right then and there and yearning to just collapse into bed and turn off the world for a day or two. Sleep wasn't happening, TV and reading had already been non-starters, so he was hoping a bath would relax him. If it didn't work, he might give up and train instead. He wanted sleep, but he didn't really need it that much anymore and could skip it for a night.

In mid-pace, he stopped and a beaming smile appeared on his face. A familiar and welcome bio-sign had pinged on his Dairokkan, rapidly approaching the hotel at a speed that he thought was a bit faster than cars usually went in cities. Quickly, he grabbed his smartphone off the side table and hit the speed dial number Natasha had set up on his phone for him to use after her 'Natalie' identity was revealed to be a front. The call was answered immediately. "Hey... coming to visit?" he asked cheerfully.

Tersely, Natasha Romanoff answered: "Yes. Don't bother to get dressed." Then she hung up.

Ranma blinked and glanced down at the sweatpants and t-shirt he had already donned and shrugged. He was certain Natasha had already checked out of the hotel in her civilian persona and the ultra-fancy hotel Tony and Pepper had set them up in seemed unlikely to let random people go wandering around, no matter how beautiful or charming they might be. Decision made, he splashed himself female with cold water from the bathroom sink, picked up both of the key-card thingies (in case one broke or something, she still didn't totally trust them over a good-old-fashioned metal key,) and trotted happily out the door and to the elevator.

Up until Natasha had told her not to get dressed, she'd figured the older redhead was arriving to ask her about the fight, but it seemed the sexy spy had other ideas. Not that Ranma would even think of discouraging her. Sex had proven to be both a lot more fun and way less dramatic than she had been expecting. From all the big deal people had made over just kissing back in Nerima, one might get the impression that actual sex would cause the world to spin off its axis.

When Akane's relationship with Koyuki had gotten that far, she had told Ranma it wasn't anywhere near as life-altering as people made out, but the Ki-adept had not really thought things would be that low-key if she herself was involved. Yet... here they were. Ranma and Natasha had done what they'd done and nothing calamitous had happened. The walls had remained unshattered by jealous invaders, nobody dropped dead from some unexpected curse, there had been no sense that of millions of honor pledges suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced, the gravitational constant of the universe had not shifted... she knew, she checked... nothing. All that happened was two people enjoying each other's company. She'd say it was a revelation, but by the time dawn arrived it hadn't seemed all that portentous.

If anything, it was just another set of skills to master, just like the Art. Or maybe not just 'like' the Art, since Ranma had used Ki to make sure he acquitted himself well. Looking at it from that perspective, sex was like a sparring session where nobody lost and everybody was looking forward to the next round. Nobody lost, but it was still possible for one person to 'win' more. Who the 'winner' was depended on how giving or receiving orgasms was counted, she supposed. She totally objectively decided it was the giver that counted, since that meant she was the big winner of the last few bouts. Not that the 'lesser-winner' didn't get a nice second place prize. She hummed to herself in pleasant realization. Maybe that was why Natasha encouraged her to fine more 'sparring' partners? To increase her... or his... skills further?

Under the impression she had time to waste and absorbed with her thoughts, Ranma patiently waited for the annoyingly slow elevator to reach her floor. She dutifully entered it like a regular, everyday civilian the way Pepper said she should... instead of hurtling down 30 floors through the stairwell or out the side of the building like a self-respecting martial artist would. Her brief moment of self-congratulation at faking normal ended with a facepalm less than halfway through the ride down. Somehow, Natasha had already rid herself of her vehicle, bypassed the workers and security in the lobby, and was approaching the elevators already. The extensive bank of elevators would provide her a way up long before Ranma could reach street-level in the descending lift.

Scoffing, the red-haired teen utilized the thieving skills her father had trained her in as a child and popped the supposedly secure access hatch in the top of the car. Swiftly, she vaulted atop the descending box, only taking enough time to close the hatch before leaping down the shaft. Dodging steel beams, cables, and moving parts as easily as untrained people could navigate a sparsely furnished room, she streaked downward toward where she could feel her visitor stood.

Watching carefully, she identified the elevator car that would next reach the lobby. With barely a muffled thump, she landed on top of it and made short work of its trap door as well. Clinging briefly to the ceiling light fixture inside, she closed the hatch, dropped to the floor, and quickly dusted herself off just in time for a ding to sound and the door to slide open.

Poking her head out the door, she faced where she knew her friend was and waved while calling out: "Hey, Natasha! Over.. whoa!" She froze at the look in the redhead's eye as her head snapped over to fixate on her. Her eyes widened as the agent took one slow, sinuous step toward him, then another, her hips casting a devastating spell on the martial artist with their sway.

Those eyes nearly popped out of her head as Natasha shrugged off the straps of the black minidress she wore and showed she had found a bra to be unworthy of her time that night and her strides quickened toward her. Her glance flicked to the reception desk, wondering if anyone was going to cause a problem, but she saw none of the staff had noticed the other redhead's public exposure yet. Before they could, she reached out to wrap an arm around her friend and pulled her into the elevator.

"What...?" Ranma tried to ask, a little shocked at Natasha's behavior.

"Urusai!" the Russian woman growled lowly in Japanese and accurately swung her fist to mash the button for Ranma's floor on the panel behind her without looking.

Before the teen could reply, Natasha's arms were wrapped around her neck, her mouth had fastened upon the martial-artists lips, and her tongue had launched a writhing blitz on her own. As the elevator doors closed and the car rose, Ranma realized she had lost almost all control of the situation. Before she knew it, the hem of her shirt was pushed up above her similarly bra-less chest and her sweats were suddenly losing a struggle with gravity. Natasha's dress was also covering less of her form that it had before, and Ranma now knew she hadn't bothered with panties either.

Ranma struggled to not be swept away by the SHIELD agent's surprising passion, for while she was curious about how it might go, she wasn't quite ready to go much beyond kissing in her female form yet. Well... some bare-skin fondling would be OK if Ranma was the one doing the groping? She put her Reiki to work to distract and disrupt Natasha's attempts to strip her completely on the spot. Letting swirls of warm Ki out through her fingertips, she fought an erotic holding action until she could get to hot water

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

Quite some time later, Ranma finally got his bath. Somehow he had managed to get the two of them into his room without their activities being spotted and after a quick gender change, they managed to work off Natasha's scandalously urgent mood.

Fun fact: it's a lot easier for the concealment of the Umisenken to cover two people if the person using the technique had their fingers inside the other.

And yes, he'd used the Umisenken... it qualified as an emergency when things got that nuts.

Reclining in the tub, Natasha's head resting on his chest with her ear over his heart as she lay entwined with him, he softly inquired: {"So... how was your day?"} They'd spoken nothing but Japanese since Natasha arrived. She even kept speaking it even at the height of her releases, which had surprised him.

Natasha chuckled throatily. {"You mean... what led me to pulling my sex maniac act? You're complaining?"}

{"No! No!"} Ranma hastily denied. {"It's just... You seemed..."}

{"Desperate? Needy? Looking for comfort from a big, strong man even if he's seven years younger than me?"} the older woman suggested archly as she looked up with a deadpan expression, causing the martial artist to wince apologetically. {"Now, now... you only think that way because it's true. Except for the big strong man part, anyway. A tiny, strong woman would have suited as well."}

{"Ah... sorry... I just thought... wait... what?"} his mind caught up with what she just admitted.

Smiling with a bit of mischief at how he was thrown off by her honesty, Natasha laid her head down again and explained: {"Sex is my favorite way to cope with stress. Now I admit, I probably would have sought you out soon anyway. Not too many people can keep up with my... enhanced libido. Usually it takes a minimum of two partners if at least one of them is a woman to actually satisfy me. You, however, do quite well now that I've trained you up a bit,"} she editorialized with a smirk in her voice. Ranma shrugged a bit to concede he really had needed the instruction the first couple of times. Not so much with the dozen or so rounds thereafter, he thought smugly to himself.

{"Tonight? I just desperately needed the relief. And the life affirmation." } Lithely twisting her body against his, Natasha shifted position to straddle him and sit up. Looking him solemnly in the eye, she said: {"I'm someone who survives by making accurate threat assessments. Getting those assessments wrong is a quick way to die... or worse. Two days ago... my accuracy was off. Way off. It's kind of your fault, so take responsibility!"}

Her tone wasn't serious, but Ranma blinked with an offended expression. {"What the hell did I do?"}

{"You weren't scary enough."}

{"Wha...?"}

Natasha chuckled as she leaned down to press against his chest, slinging her arms to rest on his shoulders. {"When I took the assignment to check you out... to see if you were a danger to Stark, or the nation, or world peace, or whatever it was Fury was thinking... I was specifically warned that you were as potentially dangerous as Banner."}

{"Oh... err... you know about him, huh?"}

The spy gave him a patented stare with half-lidded eyes. {"Of course we do. Just like we knew things about you before we met you. So I was quite aware you could make me splatter with very little effort."}

{"I wouldn't..."} Ranma began to protest.

{"Not that you ever would,"} Natasha agreed. {"I knew that for an utter certainty just minutes after seeing you in that ridiculous resistance suit Stark foisted on you."} She smirked at his pout. {"The person who casually walked around wearing truck suspension springs just for exercise was also the same person who 'fought' me in Stark's boxing ring while doing less damage than an amusement park ride. Not to mention being the same person who was just so charmingly eager to make me meals just for the sake of my company. I knew I didn't have a thing to worry about with you. Yet I also knew you had the potential to be a Hulk-level engine of destruction. In fact, the Jusendo and Horai fights were more destructive than anything he ever did."}

{"Well, yeah..."} Ranma rubbed the back of his head as his face showed a strange mix of pride and embarrassment.

{"Not only were you not going to hurt me, but you were sweet, and fun, and fun to tease."} She huffed a laugh as he rolled his eyes. {"You feel pretty good too,"} she added as she ground against him. {"Anyway... unconsciously, I think I started believing Banner, the Hulk, wasn't really as bad as all that. Even if I knew different intellectually, there was a undercurrent of... perhaps wishful thinking? Then I encountered the real thing."}

{"You were there tonight?"} Ranma asked in surprise. {"How the hell did I not sense you?"}

{"I don't know."} Natasha shrugged, though she noted the fact for future analysis out of habit.

"Kusooo," Ranma growled. {"That's twice tonight!"}

{"What do you mean?"}

{"That idiot general and another person managed to get close without me noticing while I had the tornado going,"} Ranma explained with a frustrated tone.

{"They evaded your senses while you were in a localized storm of Ki?"} Natasha asked leadingly. {"I wouldn't let it bother me if I were you."}

{"Tch... you can say that, but I expect better of myself,"} Ranma said. {"And there's no excuse for missing you. I need to work on my Dairokkan more."}

{"I won't try to talk you out of it, I can tell that would be a waste of my time. So I'll just say yes... I was nearby tonight, but that's not what I was talking about. The Hulk made another appearance two days ago, I can't tell you why it happened or why I was there or even where it was. All I can say is Stark had better not investigate any places got mysteriously wrecked in Virginia. He absolutely shouldn't follow the money, either."} She gave him a look that made it clear she wanted him to take the clue.

{"Wait... you mean Culber University?"} he obliged her.

{"Culver University,"} Natasha corrected the pronunciation even though Japanese did not distinguish between 'b' and 'v'. {"And no, of course not. The official word is there was a freak bicycle accident that got the army involved somehow... or something absurd like that. All video and picture evidence to the contrary, I can officially assure you that was completely unrelated to Banner."} No, she was not being at all subtle, but the phrasing was enough to claim she had tried to stave off an investigation if there was any later inquiry. Not that there was likely to be. Her superiors in SHIELD were all convinced that General Ross was a loose cannon that needed to be strapped down, ASAP.

{"Riiight..."} Ranma drawled sarcastically. {"Just so you know... we were looking at those reports just so I could prove it wasn't me wrecking things. I mean... Tony wasn't serious about blaming me, but still..."}

{"I have no idea what you're talking about. I was talking about the completely unidentified other place the Hulk appeared at that had nothing to do with Culver University... we swear... and how I was at that mysterious place when he... erupted."} Laying her cheek on Ranma's chest, Natasha let out a long breath.

{"You OK?"} Ranma asked with a more serious voice.

Instead of answering directly, Natasha went on with her story. {"The Hulk was... I've never seen anything like it..."} she trailed off as she remembered that day. {"He tore through buildings and military vehicles like they were made of cardboard! He shrugged off auto-cannon shells like they were just spitballs! I... I've never, ever been so frightened... by anything... since I was twelve. I really thought it wasn't possible for me to fear for my life like that anymore. Death is death, and it happens to everybody, so between my conditioning and my life experiences, I thought nothing of it. But that... monster. When I saw him the first time I could barely stand, I was shaking so much,"} she confessed with a haunted look.

{"Hey,"} Ranma said softly as he gave the agent's cheek a caress.

Natasha looked up with a wan smile. Her education in psychology made her all too aware how much she needed to unload her thoughts and feelings, and Ranma was a safe confidante... regardless of what Fury might think. {"It was worse with Blonsky, or the 'Abomination' as they're already calling him in the press after they heard what you labeled him."}

{"Had to get help from JARVIS to come up with the right word for that thing in English,"} Ranma admitted, making her raise an eyebrow at the undertone in his voice.

{"Whatever you call him, I was buried under a wall he crashed through, helpless as a baby before an angry bull."} She shook her head. {"For a while there, it was tempting to just curl into a ball and just hide under there. I couldn't stand the thought of being out in the open with something like that out there. I've seen... terrible things in my career, but I never felt revulsion and horror like that before."} She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Letting it out, she calmed down and went on. {"Despite it all, I got up, I got my job done. But the entire time, until you defeated him, it was like I could feel him breathing down my neck, about to bite my head off at any second. And you just... beat him down. Him and the Hulk, both at the same time."}

{"Oh,"} was all Ranma could say, though he held her a bit closer.

A faint grin growing, Natasha pointed out: {"Good thing I relieved you of your virginity after the Expo. I was not in the mood to be patient tonight. I also thought you might need some stress relief after all that as well. How are you doing?"}

{"Well..."} Ranma said slowly. {"I was doing pretty well even before you came... not that I would have wanted you not to come by,"} he added quickly. {"I had a nice, challenging fight, which is always good, but now I'm feeling a bit guilty."}

{"Why's that?"}

{"Uh... because it sounds like you had a miserable night..."}

{"Oh it wasn't all terrible,"} Natasha corrected suggestively as she ground against him again.

{"Uh... heh... right. Anyway... most of your night was terrible, but I actually managed to clear my head on a couple of things."} Ranma shrugged almost apologetically.

{"That's good. That's actually the second part of my official reason to be here tonight,"} Natasha confessed.

{"Ugh... yeah..."} Ranma rolled his eyes before smirking sardonically. {"I figured out the first part: you wanting to ask me about what happened during the fight. Figures SHIELD would want you to get all nosy. What's the second reason, though?"}

Natasha turned so he could see her own roll of the eyes. "'Agent Romanoff, your task is to get an immediate psychological assessment of the subject Ranma Saotome,'" she quoted in English with mock pomposity.

Despite her attempt to satirize it, Ranma looked a little hurt. {"Is that the real reason...?"}

{"No,"} Natasha interrupted firmly. {"The real reason for me to be here is to fuck you, then check to see if you're doing OK, then fuck you again, get something vaguely like an after-action report, then fuck you some more after that, followed by more fucking, a little sleep, then a good-morning fuck before you go to work. Also... oral."}

Ranma looked at her incredulously for a moment, then snorted and relaxed. {"Gee... do you think we might slip in some sex during that busy schedule?"}

{"Maybe a quickie. I'll pencil it in."} Natasha smiled as he barked out a laugh. {"Seriously though... just to warn you... people who aren't me and don't get you like I do are a bit freaked out by the tornado."}

{"The Rising Dragon Destruction Wave?"}

{"Yeah, that one."} She shook her head with rueful amusement. {"And can I say how tickled I am that you used something with a name like that?"} She waved off his puzzlement. {"Never mind... just one of my more frivolous plans coming together. I'll tell you about it later when it's too late and really funny."}

{"Natasha..."}

{"Ooh look! Boobs!"} the lady agent cooed as she leaned back and hefted her breasts above the waterline. {"Ya wanna hold 'em? Ya wanna~?"}

Ranma hissed out a rueful breath and shook his head, but he gave in and replaced Natasha's hands with his own to fondle the offered globes. He'd used his Wild Tiger's Instinct Truth Sense earlier to enhance the techniques he used on his sex-partner, so he knew she had nothing but good intentions for him. However, there was no denying she could lead him around by the... nose... with only trivial effort. It was lucky for him that Nabiki was only a tenth as smart and a third as good looking as Natasha. {"So... freaked out about the Rising Dragon Destruction Wave?"} he prompted.

{"Right. So I know we don't have to worry about you, but some other unnamed individuals..."}

{"Fury,"} he interjected.

{"...Other unnamed individuals,"} Natasha repeated with humorous emphasis, {"are worried that you might get cut off in traffic or something and chuck a tornado at whoever did it."}

{"Seriously?"}

{"I'm not, but they are."}

{"Eeesh..."} Ranma groaned. {"Would it help if Fury knew that move only works on powerful things?"}

{"Not that I'm admitting it was the Director..."}

{"Uh-huh."}

{"...But it could help. Maybe."}

{"Feh. Annoying. Hey!"} A thought suddenly occurred to him. {"Didn't you all already know about Mount Horai? Which totally wasn't my fault, by the way!"}

{"As a matter of fact, we did. And about Jusendo. The second coincidental mountain destruction,"} she added archly.

{"Totally. Not. My fault,"} Ranma insisted. {"But anyway... if you knew about them, why get bent out of shape about tonight? All that got damaged was some grass and a bench! Just getting them in position involved way more destruction!"}

{"Did I say it was a rational worry? I don't think so,"} Natasha stated primly. {"Apparently what you do in Asia is one thing, but what you do in America is something else."}

{"Come on...!"} Ranma sighed. {"That's the problem? What patch of dirt I'm standing on at the time?"}

{"Yes, absolutely. Don't you know? American dirt is sacred dirt,"} Natasha stated with all the sarcasm of a Russian expatriate. As grateful as she was to be in the USA, she was not blind to the foibles of its citizens. Particularly the 'that could never happen here' mentality. {"For some asinine reason, it was shocking to them that you could whip a towering pillar of dynamic force out of your pants. Tch... they should've asked me,"} she said slyly with a shimmy and grind against his pelvis. Ranma scoffed wordlessly at the over-the-top flattery, but she could tell he still enjoyed it.

{"All stupidity aside,"} Natasha continued. {"You said you got your head straight about something. You already know about my bosses' agenda, so asking as a friend... do you want to tell me about it?"} She peered at him patiently when he didn't reply immediately, showing her strictly friendly concern.

{"Ugh, well..."} Ranma gave in. {"I went into the fight mad. Blind mad. Because I did, what I started with wasn't working. Once I calmed down, got my head straight, and started using my Art again, I won."}

{"Why were you so angry?"}

{"It was so soon after the Whiplash thing, you know?"} Ranma shook his head. {"Seeing something killing people for no damn reason again pissed me right off. That Abomination shitstain's aura didn't help any, either."}

{"They had Ki?"} Natasha asked in surprise. She immediately revised herself. {"Wait, no, I know what you're going to say. Everything that lives has Ki. But they had enough to be significant?"}

{"Eh..."} Ranma waggled a hand in the air. {"I said 'aura' because there was more than Ki. A lot more. Actually..."} he looked thoughtful. {"That's probably why I didn't spot you. That thing was pumping out a lot of crazy into the air, and it kind of drew my attention. That's also probably why you got so... er... bothered?"}

{"You can say I was scared,"} Natasha told him dryly. {"No fragile male ego here."}

{"Uh... right,"} Ranma agreed ruefully. {"Anyway, the reason you were so scared was probably because you picked it up, too. You started out with more Ki than most, and you've been doing those exercises I gave you, right?"}

{"Yes, but I didn't think I was getting anything out of them yet."}

{"You wouldn't notice... it's way too early for that... but I can tell your Ki was starting to get organized. You'll be training your senses for the rest of your life... I sure am... but awakening your senses is one of the first things that happens when you start to develop Ki. Even if they're kind of weak and fitful, they're still there. I bet you were reacting because of that,"} Ranma said seriously.

{"I've got Dairokkan? Already?"} Natasha was shocked.

He shrugged a little. {"I mean... once you start digging deep into the Art, you can't help it. But I wouldn't call it Dairokkan. You'll have to get a lot farther along before you get to that stage. But with those guys, you didn't need real Dairokkan. It was like standing right in front of a bright spotlight and feeling it with your skin instead of seeing it with your eyes. Their auras were powerful. Really, really powerful."}

{"Like yours?"}

{"Nah, not like mine,"} the black-haired youth denied wit a mix of irony and annoyance on his features. {"Theirs weren't anything like a martial artist's... no focus, no shape, no discipline. And..."} he sighed, {"their auras were both stronger than mine. A lot stronger. Again. Dammit."}

{"You're kidding! Really?"} Natasha asked with some perplexity. {"But you beat them both! At the same time!"}

Ranma grumbled under his breath a bit, then asked: {"Who's stronger? You or a bear?"}

{"A bear,"} Natasha instantly responded, {"and you're about to point out that I would win a fight with a bear due to my training. Which is true. So you won purely on skill? Is that what that was? You know... a tornado is something of a declaration of brute strength if I've ever seen one,"} she teased.

{"Hey, the Hiryu Shoten Ha takes a hell of a lot of skill!"} Ranma protested mildly. {"So yeah, I had the advantage of skill. And speed. And especially Ki."}

{"OK, I'm confused again,"} Natasha frowned. {"Didn't you just say they had more Ki?"}

{"Ugh,"} Ranma thumped the back of his head against the edge of the tub. {"I said they had more aura,"} he corrected. {"It's... like Ki. Sort of?"} His cheeks puffed out with a frustrated breath as he tried to put his understanding into words. {"It's really hard to explain. When you're using Ki... really using it... you reach out beyond yourself. Touch something mysterious and powerful and make it your own. But normally you still can't do anything with that big mysterious thing until you use it to grow your own power and make it a part of you. These guys sort of... skipped those steps? They had their regular Ki... maybe a bit more than most regular folks on account of their size... and they had the rest of their auras that just dwarfed the real Ki. Really bizarre. I've seen one other thing that's sort of like it, but also really, really different,"} he mentioned while thinking of how Tony's Arc reactors acted, especially the one in his chest.

{"So they're tapping into the same source of power as you, only more directly?"} Natasha asked seriously.

{"No! No! Uh... no!"} Ranma's quick protest soon faltered. {"Definitely... probably not... I think."} He grimaced in consternation. {"I mean... I want to say it for sure isn't... but what they were doing was so damn weird that I can't really be certain. It sure as hell wasn't anything a real martial artist would call Ki. I could feel it like I can Ki... but it wasn't Ki. Whatever it was, they didn't truly own it, right? It was attached to them, but it wasn't them, and they didn't really control it. So, if anything, their tap was less direct. Especially the way it would kind of... wobble?"}

{"What? Wobble?"}

{"Their use of their auras,"} Ranma tried to explain as he let out an aggravated sigh. {"It's like... I was playing this racing video game this one time back in Nerima. The stupid little cart thing kept not doing what I wanted it to do."} He held up a hand and mimed working a controller. {"It'd start sliding right, and I'd be trying to make it go left, left, left... and it wouldn't until suddenly it was going too far left and I'd have to go back the other way. Veering back and forth like an idiot. Even when I got it going the right way for a bit, it was like one little twitch and the whole thing would go out of control again. Their auras were like that. Veering all over the place."}

{"I saw video of the fight. They weren't exactly graceful, but it looked to me like they moved where they wanted to move and punched where they wanted to punch,"} Natasha argued.

Ranma rolled his eyes. {"Well, I'd say their balance, speed, and precision were all pathetic, but even those were just the physical. That's the simple part, so even they could get that part sort-of right. The important parts of their auras? Their minds and hearts? Totally out of whack. Like... stub your toe and have a nuclear meltdown out of whack. Veering all over and off the road, see?"}

{"Oh I definitely get that part,"} Natasha agreed. {"But you were implying that was because of how they connected to their power. Rather than being a bad connection to their power or whatever, isn't that just... how they are? Intrinsically driven by rage?"}

Ranma shrugged a little. {"Maybe a bit... maybe more than a bit... but it really seemed to me like there was more to it than that. Like me and that game controller. They twitch and their auras would go charging off in whatever direction. Like trying to ride a badly trained elephant or something. They can kind of get it going in mostly the direction they want, but after that things get way out of proportion real quick."}

{"And Ki is not like that."}

{"No,"} Ranma stated firmly. {"The closest thing might be like what me and Ryoga were doing when we came up with our Ki-blasts. We'd push our pride or depression way past normal to fire up our auras. But even that took us focusing on whatever emotion and as soon as something broke our mindsets the blasts would fall apart. With the oni, it was more like kicking a rock and suddenly getting caught up in an avalanche. Only it's their thoughts and feelings that go for a ride, not their bodies."} Bobbing his head from side to said in consideration, he added: {"I guess you can say their Ki harmonized with their power, but was the same kind of harmonizing you'd get if someone put a bell over your head and used your forehead as the clapper."}

{"It sounds like you are describing a sort blow-back effect,"} Natasha observed. {"Like the auras are reverberating with the trigger emotions to reflect back on the users. A positive feedback loop: Hulk gets mad... aura amplifies it and feeds some back... Hulk gets even more mad... and so on and so forth."}

{"Yeah, that's a good way to put it,"} Ranma nodded approvingly. {"That's also why you got shook like you did. That amplifying effect."}

{"I think I understand."}

{"Yeah. Though you have a point about them just being like that before the whole feedback thing. If you cut out the wacko extra aura part, I'd say Abomination's Ki was like a rabid dog and Hulk's was like a two-year-old brat throwing a fit."} Ranma shrugged helplessly. {"Not sure which of those was worse for freaking people out!"}

{"I'm fairly certain the Abomination's was worse,"} Natasha opined dryly. {"I hardly think a child's tantrum would scare me."}

{"Really? You sure about that? It's a screaming, kicking brat thrashing around. But something went: 'oh hey, let's just plug in the power of a volcano to boost all that and see what happens.' Still think it's less of a problem?"} Ranma asked smugly.

Natasha huffed a laugh. {"It does make disturbing sense when you put it that way. And it matches the Hulk's observed behavior, now that I think about it. There's also no denying my instinctive reaction to Hulk's first emergence, I suppose, but I can't say I had it together enough to make any nuanced assessments to confirm it."} After a moment of contemplation, she followed up with a non sequitur: {"So... volcanoes have auras? And those two were just as powerful?"}

{"Huh? Oh... no, no. Well... OK... volcanoes do have aura's, but I was just throwing that in as an example. They weren't nearly that strong. They weren't even as strong as Safuran... though they were close... and he wasn't anywhere close to volcano level."}

{"Didn't your fight with Safuran destroy a mountain?"} Natasha questioned archly.

{"It's not that hard to destroy a mountain,"} Ranma grumbled. {"The attacks in that fight were focused. Coherent, you know? Like one of those lasers? Volcanoes don't have control. No focus and nothing to focus with. They do what they do by accident. The onis' auras were kind of the same even though they weren't as powerful. A whole lot of energy just flailing around with crappy accuracy. Ki is a whole other beast. Focused. Precise. Purposeful. Most importantly: perceptive."}

{"What do you mean? I'm a spy, so I'm a big believer in perception,"} Natasha noted. {"But I get the feeling you mean more than just paying close attention."}

{"Yeah. Everything's got a tone... a vibration to it,"} Ranma explained. {"Things. People. Motion. And particularly fights. When your Ki is developed enough, you can look deep enough to see the vibrations. See all the angles and the turns. When you can see them, you can touch them. You can do all kinds of cool things with them. Gives you a huge advantage against people who are blind to it. That tornado? It was fed by their own auras. I've dealt with people who can counter the Hiryu Shoten Ha, as long as I don't whip out the revisions, but those guys had no chance. That extra energy of theirs couldn't be focused anymore than you could drink water out of a fork."}

{"Can they learn to own that extra power?"} Natasha asked soberly, worried about future increases to threat ratings.

"Fwah..." Ranma let out an uncertain breath. {"I don't know. Maybe? I want to say anything can be controlled if you train enough, but I got examples of stuff where that isn't true. My curse, for instance."} He cupped a hand and scooped up some water as a reference.

{"Can't you stop hot water from hitting you?"} Natasha pointed out.

{"Yeah, by making cold instantly, but I don't have anything good to deal with cold water yet. If that's control, it's a half-assed kind of control."}

{"Still better than nothing."}

{"Yeah, and I guess maybe half-assed control of the Hulk-power might be possible. No idea how it would play out, though. Is the power-tap like a fixed amount, or does it grow with Ki?"} He blinked as he recalled something. {"Hey, Hulk's power kept growing during the fight. He started out a ways below Abomination, but then was stronger right before I got him in the Hiryu Shoten Ha. Like that feedback loop you said. His Ki didn't change except to get angrier, though."}

{"Abomination's power didn't rise?"} Natasha asked.

{"Nah, it slowly dropped as he used up his energy and tired himself out. Then it dropped real quick when I got him in the spiral,"} Ranma smirked again. {"It's why Hulk lasted longer."}

Natasha chuckled. {"Fascinating. And strange that they are so different when they supposedly came from the same source."} She tilted her head and gave Ranma a sly smile. {"Also, you just justified me spending the day with you tomorrow. Or the rest of today, I should say,"} she corrected, taking the late hour into account. {"We're going to want to know everything you observed about those two. Blonsky is in custody now, but there's no telling if we will have to deal with him again."}

{"It."}

{"What?"}

{"The Abomination is an 'it,'"} Ranma said seriously.

The Russian-born woman giggled a little. {"That's not a very nice thing to say."}

{"No. I'm not joking,"} the Ki-adept emphasized. {"It is an IT. No gender in it's Ki at all."} He shrugged. {"Never felt anything like it from a living, natural creature. If it was a guy before, then that was some seriously bad stuff that transformed it."} Ranma shuddered a little. {"Really unnatural. I mean... I guess worms and stuff don't have genders, but I can't really feel enough Ki off them to notice. Something that big and thinking? No way. 'Cept maybe demons."} He looked down at her face and grimaced. {"You probably aren't buying the 'demon' thing..."}

{"Actually,"} Natasha interrupted. {"We are aware of... unconventional phenomena. We don't call them things like 'demon,' but I admit it isn't inaccurate as layman's terms go. Is Blonsky such a being now?"}

{"No, not at all,"} Ranma shook his head. {"It wasn't that bad, but Abomination's aura was pretty wrong. Rabid, like I said. You better warn people: whatever he got into, they'll want to stay the hell away from. Not unless they like foaming at the mouth and losing what it is that makes them a man or a woman."}

{"I... see..."} Natasha responded with appropriate seriousness. SHIELD would still investigate... they would have to as a matter of policy... but she was inclined to take the expert at his word on such an esoteric subject. So she would emphasize his warning. It wasn't like they knew even now what Banner had done to himself, much less Blonsky. The sudden mass gains they experienced certainly violated what they knew about physics. {"I'll pass that on."}

Looking Ranma in the eyes, she said: {"Though now we've earned some time together tomorrow, let's put the shop talk aside. Big, bad Ki-adept like you... you don't need sleep that much, right?"} she asked as she writhed against him with wicked purpose.

{"I ah... do have a technique for staying up... er... awake I mean,"} Ranma admitted a little breathlessly.

{"...But do you have one for staying up, too?"} Natasha asked suggestively.

{"I could figure one out? Maybe?"}

{"Hmm... time for training then, my young Dragon..."}

{"Your what?"}

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

Author's Notes: Yeah... I made the Abomination and Hulk a bit more gritty than in the movies. Hulk's healing factor from the comic books never really made an appearance in the movies in any significant fashion. Given Ranma's large agility advantage, sufficiently close relative strength, and absolutely enormous advantage in skill... it would have been a pretty short fight if they were limited to movie canon without more of their comic book abilities.

... And yeah, Bruce Banner is played by Mark Ruffalo from day one in my story. You'll find out what so surprised him later.

Oh, and I picked a "code-name" for Ranma. Because it's Marvel and it's really necessary. Take a wild guess.