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.')

3. Debauched Utility School of Architecture

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.

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

(Chapter theme song: I'm Too Sexy – Right Said Fred)

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

"Jaaaay-sus Christ!" the photographer muttered in awe with his faint Irish accent. "Shit!" he cursed as he realized what a golden opportunity he was missing. Diving for the case of his trusty SLR and scrambling out of the vehicle, he yelled at his assistants at the top of his lungs: "Go! Everything! Get everything out! Set it up! Set it up now! Now-now-now!"

"Where do you want...?" one of his people started to call from the driver's seat of the other van.

"Anywhere!" the excitable man nearly shrieked. "Have you got eyes!? Get everything that shoots shooting! We'll figure out the details on the fly!" With that, he rushed out of the parking lot and down to the beach, nearly shoving his way past several of the gaping onlookers. The rest of the crew hurried to emulate him as they unpacked their gear, his harried assistant in the lead.

Pepper furrowed her brows in perplexity as she saw the man's frenetic charge when Happy held open the door to the limo for her to exit. Leaning past his business-suited bulk, she saw the cause of the commotion. "Ah. Of course," she commented dryly.

"Good God," Donna Headley, the head of the PR team that had been organized for Ranma, murmured as she walked up to her boss. "D-Does she do that often?"

"That in particular?" Pepper responded. "First time as far as I know. Mind-blowing feats of strength, balance, and speed in general? Hmm... not that often..."

"Just every day ending in the letter 'Y,'" Happy rumbled.

"That's about right," Pepper agreed cheerfully, making the publicist chuckle faintly as she shook her head and stared with wide eyes.

They were about 270 miles northwest of LA at Carmel-on-the-Sea. A section of the white sand beach had been reserved by Stark Industries for the day to conduct a photo-shoot of their new spokesmodel and international hero: Ranma Saotome. The martial artist had flown ahead of them in the SkyBuster with JARVIS piloting the ThunderStruck behind her that morning rather than wait on the more conventional plane-ride to Monterey Regional and the subsequent caravan of automobiles. She had wanted to get in some extra training time, she'd told them, but they suspected she wanted extra time flying the Buster. It just seemed sensible to send the ThunderStruck with her at the same time.

They probably should have asked for details of her training plans, though.

Ranma was doing push-ups at the moment. Based on that minimal description, one wouldn't think such a thing worth mentioning. Not even the fact she was doing vertical push-ups made it much more noteworthy, as she was a short, slender athlete in superb health. The fact that those push-ups were done with the two fingers of one hand while the other fist was chambered at her side as if ready for a punch and one leg was bent as if ready for a kick was... still not too surprising for people who knew Ranma.

No, the remarkable fact that was causing such a furor was that her other foot was braced against the nose of the ThunderStruck... which was aligned vertically and blasting downward with all its main thrusters while being moved up and down by her push-ups.

Pepper took out her phone and hit a quick-access key. "JARVIS? Is what Ranma's doing safe?" she asked with speaker-mode on.

"Yes, Ms. Potts," the NLUI responded for them all to hear. "Secondary repulsors are charged for instantaneous retro-acceleration if needed, the ThunderStruck has no momentum to speak of, and power to the main repulsors can be cut within less than a hundredth of a second. Furthermore, there has been no instability in Ms. Saotome's form detected as of yet that would indicate such measures are necessary."

"Right..." the CEO sighed. She was getting used to the inadvertent chaos Ranma tended to cause just by being herself. "Well... I suppose it's OK if it's Ranma." Without further ado, she led the way down to the beach.

"Utter shock aside... this is gold! This is iridium!" Donna pointed out with incredulous enthusiasm as she kept pace. "I knew Ms. Saotome was going to be spectacular, but I was thinking cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition spectacular! Not... not... I don't have the words for this!"

"You'd think I'd be more mentally prepared by now, but I tend to agree," Pepper replied ruefully. She really should have expected this. Even when Ranma tried to obediently fulfill whatever mundane request she or Tony made, the Ki-adept would invariably give reality a gentle spin at the very least. Frequently it seemed they were just following along behind wherever the teen took it in her head to go rather than provide leadership like employers should.

"Uh oh, that policeman's stopping Adrian... no, never mind... Marina got them past," Donna interrupted Pepper's thoughts. They watched as the workers rushed to get their equipment set up while the lone local law enforcement officer continued to keep the spectators back.

"Oh dear... I should talk to that officer," Pepper realized. "The authorities couldn't have expected this. I'm glad he didn't kick Ranma off the beach."

"He probably didn't dare," her bodyguard chuckled grimly. The two women had to nod at that.

"Donna, should we stop these people from taking pictures?" Pepper wondered.

"Hmm..." the publicist looked around, then shook her head. "I don't think so. They're just phones and cheap tourist cameras. They aren't close enough to get anything good, and the hype they'll add will be worth it. We will want to keep an eye out for more professional rigs, though. We don't want anyone poaching shots."

"Good point." Using her phone again, she instructed: "JARVIS. Please deploy drones for a paparazzi sweep." There was a beep of acknowledgment, and the back of the SkyBuster parked near the path to the beach lifted up to reveal the six spherical tier-1 drones. They all launched with a faint buzzing that quickly faded away. Looking back, Pepper mused: "I don't think anyone went tearing out of here when we showed up, so it doesn't seem like it's too late."

"No one has left the site at all since Ms. Saotome started her demonstration," JARVIS reported.

"Perfect," Donna said.

"Huh... I can see her muscles actually straining," Happy commented. "Don't think I've seen her really push herself like that outside of a fight."

Pepper looked for herself. "So they are! Another good point. All to the better for the job today, I think."

"Definitely," Happy concluded emphatically.

As they said, Ranma's muscles were clearly defined by her exercise and easily seen due to the facts her back was facing the rising sun and she was wearing one of the planned outfits of the day: a blue thong with a matching string bikini top. Later, she'd admit her plan was to get used to wearing the most feminine and revealing thing while doing something impressive to show she was more than a pretty face. That resolve was a little tested by Adrian Walsh, who was already on one knee and taking pictures rapidly, but Ranma carried on.

Pleased at the show of initiative and enthusiasm, Pepper went into diplomatic mode to make sure things kept proceeding. "Hello, Officer," she greeted the policeman. "I'm Pepper Potts of Stark Industries. Sorry about this. Ranma seems to have jumped the gun a bit. I hope things weren't too confused when you were called out here."

"Not at all, ma'am," the policeman replied easily. "I was already stationed here. The chief expected there would be a need when we knew Dragon was coming. Though you can expect the mayor to ask for copies of some pictures to help boost tourism."

"A few pictures... that should be no problem," Pepper agreed easily as she mentally planned to pick out some stills that were decently impressive, but not the choicest ones which they would keep for themselves. "Still, I appreciate it. Again, I apologize if we made things more difficult than they should have been. Things seem to have snowballed a bit."

"A little," the man shrugged cheerfully. "No big deal for me, though. Dragon signed autographs for my nieces and nephew, so I'm happy to stick around all day."

"Excellent." Pepper smiled back. She stepped past him with the intent of approaching the photographer.

A nervous woman intercepted them. "Sorry! Hello, Ms. Potts! I'm Marina Novak, Mr. Walsh's assistant. Is there something I can help you with?"

"Hello, Ms. Novak," Pepper greeted kindly. "I just wanted to ask how things were going."

"Ah, well... Mr. Walsh is pretty occupied with creating, right now. It would be best not to disturb him," Marina said apologetically as she nodded at how he was directing his workers with urgent calls. "I would be happy to help you with anything, though."

"Ah... artists," Donna murmured as she exchanged glances with her boss.

"Right. Artists," Pepper agreed. Not that she hadn't been in similar positions as Ms. Novak when she'd been Tony's professional minder.

The assistant smiled apologetically. She certainly didn't argue, however. "Once he establishes the shots he wants, he should be more open to conversation."

"I understand." Pepper watched as Adrian had Ranma walk in place on her hands to rotate herself and the ThunderStruck so her back was at an angle to the sun instead of facing it directly. He consulted a light meter while having her make small adjustments, then nodded and let her go back to what she had been doing while he moved back for a wider field of view. "Would it be a problem if I talk to my employee for a moment, though?"

Marina glanced at what was happening and saw Ranma's face was not currently in frame. "That should be fine."

"Thank you." She stepped a bit closer and raised her voice to be heard over the whoosh of reactionless thrusters. "Ranma? Are you hanging in there?"

Ranma put her free hand on the ground, and both feet on the nose of the ThunderStruck. Still keeping the aerospace fighter balanced, she bent herself in a graceful curve so she could raise her head and face the CEO at least partially. "Hey, Pepper! Doing fine so far! It's cool that I can keep training a little even while working!" Ignored by both, the photographer went into a frenzy of activity in response to the new pose.

"Well don't hurt yourself," Pepper admonished.

"Nah, no danger of that," Ranma denied blithely.

"Are you certain? How much is that thing pushing down on you?"

"Hold it!" the photographer interrupted with a yell, making them look his way in surprise. "Before you answer! Ranma? Could you get rid of that visor first?"

"Huh? OK, sure," Ranma replied affably after a glance at Pepper to remind herself she was on the job. Bracing herself on one hand, she took off her Stark HUD and spun it toward her backpack farther inshore. The eyewear traveled like a frisbee until it was about to hit the pack, then flared up like a heron's wing to abruptly slow and land gently on the tough cloth of the pack.

"We're taking video too, right?!" Adrian shouted over his shoulder while eyeing what was, for Ranma, a minor feat of slight of hand.

"Yessir!" one of the assistants called.

"Good lad!" Shaking his head, he requested: "Ranma, can you spin yourself around while leaving that... vehicle facing the same way?"

"Yeah, no problem." With a smooth flex of her limbs, Ranma rotated and now had her face toward the camera. Though still upside down with her braid trailing in the sand.

"Perfect! Now go back to your one-handed push-ups, please!" Happy enough to do so, Ranma took her previous pose to maximize her workout. "Ms. Potts? Could you step closer so you're in the shot?" He waved her in while peering through his viewfinder.

"I'm sorry, what?" Pepper called back in perplexity.

"Please! Just indulge me! I want some perspective, here!" The photographer explained. "Also, keep looking up at that aircraft thing sometimes. Put your hands behind you and try to look curious! Then ask your question again!"

Now understanding a little of what he was planning. Pepper decided to trust Ranma and JARVIS to keep Tony's excessively powerful machine in check and followed the unexpected stage direction. "So, Ranma... uh... how hard is that thing pressing down on you?"

The martial artist had decided to ignore the crazy camera guy and do her own thing at the moment, so she just answered conversationally as she pumped out more repetitions: "About 57,114 Newtons."

"What? What is that in pounds?"

"Oh... sorry. Eh... call it 12,840 pounds."

Surprised by the quick and precise answer since the HUD was no longer being worn, Pepper wondered: "Did JARVIS tell you that?"

"Tch... don't need JARVIS to tell me something that simple," Ranma said scornfully.

"Oh? Huh." She knew Ranma was surprisingly good at math when it came to scholastics, especially with the astounding way she could take advantage of JARVIS's tutoring, but school work was very different from the current circumstances. It seemed there was a reason Tony was genuinely impressed.

"Perfect! Thanks!" Adrian yelled. Pepper took a moment, then realized he must have captured several interesting expressions on their faces during that exchange. Since generating interest was exactly why they were out there that day, the captain of industry was content as she stepped away.

"Alright. Carry on, then."

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

Pepper got a chance to check in with the photographer not too much later. Currently, the ThunderStruck was landed, and Ranma was posing atop it in another bikini... a silver one this time that stood out marvelously on her tan skin... with a light green patterned pareo around her hips. Her hair was unbound and fluttered freely in the coastal wind.

The decision to have Ranma feature in such pictures had been made back when Stark Industries' stock was tanking. That had been before they proved that there had been an underhanded, coordinated negative PR campaign launched by a coalition of a group of officers in the United States Air Force, Justin Hammer, certain politicians, and even an assist from SHIELD. She had been livid with the spy agency until Agent Coulson had shown her the written formal protest to his orders that he had lodged and told her Natasha had also dissented, as well as explaining as obliquely as he could that not even the director had a lot of control over what happened. She was still angry, but more at the UN World Security Council after that. Of course, Hammer was in jail... as were some of the lower-ranked officers involved, though no generals yet... and the Air Force was distinctly feeling her wrath as she used every contract they still had for IT, avionics, medical, and defensive technology to wring out some bureaucratic pain. Yet Pepper was not holding out much hope they would ever get to the absolute bottom of that mess. Certainly they would not do so fast enough to eliminate the potential future problems.

For no matter how bogus it all was, the aftereffects were still felt. While the press had reported that things were cleared up, and their stock price was currently rising, the same idiots in government that had been useful to Hammer had been a little too stupid to realize they had been snookered in the first place. They were still convinced they had some sort of mandate to evaluate Tony's and Ranma's emotional stability and reliability any time the heroes did something that made them nervous. If that had gained traction, it would have certainly screwed with their stock price again, and possibly kicked off another round of hearings and heavy-handed interference. Dr. Esposito's welcome intervention looked like it would take the wind out of the idiots' sails, but Pepper would not forget that the risk of a repeat was always going to be there. They were going to push every public opinion button they could and build up a levee against any future shocks.

That meant the plans to make Ranma the new face of Stark Industries were going full steam ahead. It did occur to Pepper that pictures of Ranma lounging alluringly atop a fast vehicle seemed to be of somewhat dubious value compared to, for example, photos taken during the push-ups stunt or of her doing katas. However, Donna had pointed out that there really wasn't a precedent for promoting a super-powered woman martial artist, or any other kind of female superhero for that matter. Things were different when it was Captain America or Iron Man. Men weren't held to the same standards as women. She cited examples of female actors, female singers, female musicians, and other female artists all posing for the same kinds of pictures Ranma was despite also not being models. All to make them seem more appealing even though looks had nothing to do with what they did. Though there was a benefit in terms of public perception by making the mysterious foreigner with mysterious, devastating powers seem a lot more accessible to people through aesthetic appeal. They wanted Ranma to inspire awe, not fear.

At least Ranma had actually been contracted as a model, even if it was only a legal dodge at first. From that standpoint, as crass as it was, sex did sell. Besides, the PR expert had been rather scathing of how boring prior Stark Industries advertising tended to be in the past... barring action clips of Iron Man, of course. Donna expected to change things up with the dynamic new addition of the Ki-adept to their public face.

Mentally, Pepper shrugged and decided that it was better to have the pictures and not need them than the other way around. They were planning other, more appropriate, pictures of Ranma in her combat suit with the SkyBuster anyway. They were also planning various other means of promotion other than photography. A web-site, social media presence, television appearances, interviews, and especially merchandising. Officially licensed action figures, games, books, DVD's, posters, T-shirts, cell phone fobs, stickers... etc, etc, etc. The market had been quite large for 'Iron Man' merchandise and the equivalents for 'Dragon' looked no less popular. It meant billions of dollars for Stark Industries and its affiliates, and millions for the people whose images were licensed. That might be chump change for Tony, but Pepper looked forward to what expression would appear on Ranma's face when it finally penetrated her head just how large her share would be. As it was, the teen had just given them a weird look when they told her what she was signing paperwork for and had visibly shrugged it off as irrelevant.

In any event, the the fact that they had moved on to more typical modeling meant the photographer was on far more familiar ground. Marina mentioned it would be a good time to discuss his progress while his mind was less occupied. "Hello, Mr. Walsh," Pepper spoke up politely. "I wanted to check in and see how things were going."

"They're going quite well, Ms. Potts," the man replied absently while continuing to work, something she expected and did not mind. "I'm not sure it's possible for Ranma here to take a bad picture."

"That's not a challenge, Ranma," Pepper announced, knowing the Ki-adept's proclivities. The teen smirked at her but continued to pose as requested.

"Er... quite," Adrian said. "She has fantastic skin tone, both surface and undertone, and I'd bet she looks good in pretty much any lighting you could name. Her athleticism lets her assume any poses easily and hold them far longer than anyone else I've ever seen. Her features are as attractive as you could ask for, but more importantly her charisma carries over to film very well. Very, very well," he emphasized. "It's almost enough for me to swear off men," he joked.

Pepper nodded knowingly. "Ranma can have that effect on people. Believe me, I know."

"Hey, Pepper!" Ranma piped up. "I thought something like this was more Tony's speed than yours! But maybe I was wrong? Maybe you just wanted to see me like this?" she asked suggestively as she stretched atop the hot-rod red of the vehicle's bow slope, sending a smoky look the CEO's way.

Happy whimpered beside her, and Pepper needed a moment to take a deep breath herself as a full-body shiver of warmth passed through her from head to toes. Adrian forgot about everything except the need to capture the teen's antics on film for several moments. "Very funny, Ranma!" Pepper replied. "Tony would have been here if I hadn't taken the simple expedient of lying and telling him the shoot started this afternoon. He worked late last night and is sleeping in." Ranma snickered at that. Pepper looked at the photographer, who was eagerly taking pictures, but looked a bit confused and off-balance. "That's just how Ranma is... you don't need to start rethinking your sexuality or anything," she told him humorously. "It's a Stark crew rule: temporary little bobbles in your sexual orientation are OK if it's Ranma."

Not knowing the flip side of that particular coin, Walsh shook his head and chuckled with some increasing understanding. "Alright... I'll take your word for it. We're going to get some amazing snaps today, that's for sure. We're working all day, right?"

"That's the plan."

"Fantastic!" He took a break from snapping photographs to wave at his assistant. Even without verbal instructions, Marina figured out what he wanted and brought over a tablet PC for him. "The weather has been excellent, and should continue to be all day. We'll take plenty of pictures here, but I want to move around a bit more. This region is packed with scenic areas." He brought up a map on the screen, and took it over to set it atop the ThunderStruck. Pepper leaned over with him to look at the display. "There's beautiful backgrounds facing in all directions. I'd love to take advantage of that and go wherever the ideal sun angles are as the day progresses. I've got lads scouting around, but I remember Pebble Beach, which is about a mile that-a-way," he waved to the northwest, "has some nice cliffs and promontories. They also have a pier I'd like to use during the blue hour after sunset. To the south is Monastery Beach, which has golden sand that would look lovely during the actual sunset. We'll have to scramble a bit, but they are close together. Do you think we can try this?"

"Hmm..." Pepper pondered. "So when you say 'all day,' you mean..."

"I mean until there's no more light in the sky... and then we can start talking studio shots," Adrian confirmed. "Sundown is at 8:30 tonight, and we can keep going outside for most of an hour after."

"That is quite a bit more extensive than I was imagining," Pepper pointed out. "But I agree, it seems like it's worth it the way you describe it. Though it really depends on our model. What do you think, Ranma?"

"You paying me to do anything else today?" Ranma quipped from where she had crawled over to view the map as well, perched delicately on her hands and knees like a curious cat. "Feed me, and I'm good to go all day."

"Hold that pose!" Adrian demanded. "And that expression." Obligingly, Ranma froze in place. However, as the photographer continued taking pictures with no end in sight, she entertained herself by playfully waggling her hips and smiling at Marina. Adrian had to snicker when his straight-as-a-ruler assistant started blushing and stuttering.

Pepper merely rolled her eyes. "Seriously though, Ranma. Are you OK working that long? I know modeling wasn't exactly your life's ambition, so it's not very fair of us to spring a 14-plus hour session on you. And we still have some more to shoot for the commercial tomorrow."

Ranma took a moment to give it legitimate thought. "Well, you got a point about the weirdness of this whole business. Being a model is a lot more girly than anything I ever planned to do."

"It's hardly a woman-only profession. There are male models," Adrian pointed out. He wasn't surprised by her attitude, though. As sexy as she could be, she was definitely a tomboy.

"Yeah, I've seen those guys," Ranma replied offhandedly. "So yeah, a very feminine job, this is." She smirked at how he photographer and CEO had such similar disapproving expressions. "Eh... it's fine though. I like to show off. I love to show off," she chuckled self-deprecatingly. "I can just show off while making extra money. Going all day won't be a problem, I'll just build up energy from the lack of activity and put it to work later. I'll probably work out all night instead of sleeping. Besides," she grimaced in recollection, "I've had people take pictures of me before. Adrian's been so much better than that, though. He's been letting me preview the pictures and I'll be able to reject any I don't like."

"He is the best in the business," Pepper said in agreement. "He won't pull any of that 'candid photography' nonsense like that Tendo girl did."

"Oh... that type," Adrian said scathingly while still taking pictures to capture more natural expressions. He didn't know anything about the saga of Nabiki Tendo, but he'd gathered enough to get the essence. "Those types of so-called photographers stay bottom-feeders all their lives... or they get ruined if they dare try to work with real professionals. Of course we're going to treat you right, Ranma. And don't worry about the time. You'll have plenty of chances to rest, mentally if nothing else, when we're setting things up on our side. If you need more of a break than that, just let us know."

Ranma shrugged. "Right now, I'm thinking to get as much done as done as possible today to make the most of this whole deal, but I'll let you know if I change my mind."

Pepper nodded at that, reassured Ranma genuinely had no problems. "In that case, I'll have Donna start negotiating to get that access you wanted, Adrian. I'm not anticipating any problems if people know what sort of pictures are being taken, since they'll want to see those pictures themselves. The town is already getting a picture for their tourist board."

"Uh..." Adrian stood up straight and turned toward her. "It might be better to offer money, if needed. I'd like to keep as many photos as our exclusive property as possible."

Pepper thought for a moment, then bobbed her head agreeably, willing to defer to the experienced person rather than follow her first impulse to save a little money. "OK. Though make a priority list to make sure we get the places you want most. We'll trade photos if we have to, but only if we have to. The low priority sites will have to be dropped if money isn't enough to persuade the owners of the properties."

"Reasonable. I'll have Marina relay site requests as they occur to me." He shook his head seriously. "Today is going to be fantastic. I can tell." He huffed a laugh. "We might even be reshaping the terrain of the fashion world today," he claimed semi-seriously.

"What do you mean?" Pepper wondered.

He turned and looked at Ranma. "Ordinarily, I'd be trying to de-emphasize Ranma's... less-than-towering height... with clever camera angles and backgrounds..."

"Oi!" Ranma protested with a pout.

"...But I won't be doing that today. Conventional wisdom says she's too short, too curvy, and too muscular to be a model, but Ranma flips the script! I remember The Gown from Mr. Stark's birthday bash! Even with that hack taking the pictures at that party, Ranma's potential was clear! Showing how diminutive she is will just make her abilities all the more startling." Rather than protesting again, Ranma looked thoughtful. "So small, so dainty, yet so very, very awe-inspiring! A hint of danger when you realize the implications..."

"That! We're going with that!" Ranma interrupted again with a sharp smile. "Dangerous is good!" She'd taken Natasha's advice about casting her femininity in a formidable or even predatory mold to stay away from the little-girly perceptions she hated. There wasn't anything wrong with being a woman, but there definitely something wrong with being treated like a helpless child or invalid. Which the agent has pointed out was something many people, men and women alike, tended to do to attractive females. Natasha's advice had been to project competence and some aggressiveness when she wanted to be taken seriously. The fact the photographer had come up with 'dangerous' on his own showed it seemed to be working.

Adrian nodded approvingly. "Indeed. Ranma, I'll throw out suggestions, but I'll let you have your head most of the time when we're doing action shots. You'll certainly come up with something I can't think of."

"Whoa!" Pepper interjected. "Let's limit that to anything that won't damage the terrain or public property."

"Oh right..." Adrian flinched at that and addressed Ranma seriously. "No tornadoes."

"Awww..." Ranma drawled mischievously. Not that she could kick up much of a tornado by herself, but it was always good to keep people guessing.

"With that firmly established, I've got a couple of meetings and errands in San Jose," Pepper declared. "I'll be back for lunch. Have fun... but not too much fun."

"Hai~."

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

*** A few hours later ***

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

Tony was giving Pepper a look like what she would normally give him: one of resigned exasperation. Coincidentally, she did not look any more repentant than he typically did when their roles were reversed. A fact that was amusing her quite a bit.

It had been immediately clear to him what happened when he'd gone looking for the ThunderStruck after waking up and finding it was missing from the garage. JARVIS had to fly it back to pick him up for the brief trip to Carmel-on-the-Sea. He hadn't said a word when he arrived, just tried to give his girlfriend the same kind of treatment she frequently gave him.

As if answering his unvoiced complaint, Pepper said: "Well if you hadn't stayed up so late tinkering, you would have known the real start time!"

Come to think of it, that was just the sort of high-handed justification he would use, too.

Tony scrunched up his face as he realized we wasn't going to get very far with his remonstrations. "So mean~!" he whined. "I wanted to watch Ranma posing and I missed it!"

Pepper shook her head. "You only missed the first part. They only stopped taking pictures because high-noon makes for bad light for photography." Due to daylight savings, 'noon' was actually a little after 1 PM, and they had stopped half an hour before that. "You're just in time for lunch. They'll start up again after that and keep going until nearly 10." She lightly slapped his chest with the back of her hand. "Even you will get bored with ogling after all that time."

"Do not underestimate me!" Tony declaimed with a finger pointed to the sky. "My powers of ogling are limitless!"

"Riiight," Pepper drawled. "Let's go meet up with Ranma. It looks like the caterers are almost ready." She led the two men toward the screens the crew had been set up on the sand as a combination of windbreak and privacy barrier.

"How are things going?" Tony asked.

"I just got back here myself, but Adrian and Donna were very pleased earlier, and they both still look excited," Pepper pointed out. "The photographer and the publicist," she clarified when Tony gave her a clueless look.

"That's good, that's good," the billionaire said dismissively. "But what I meant was, how does Ranma look?"

Scoffing, Pepper said: "We take pictures so I don't have to describe things for you. You can just see for yourself... in great detail, apparently," she added as they got close enough to see past the screens.

Ranma was sunbathing on a beach towel wearing her Stark HUD and nothing else. It was indicative of years of Tony's antics that none of the three did more than raise an eyebrow, and even that was mostly because of her pose rather than her nudity. She was lying on her back with her legs raised slightly and pressed together, her toes pointed horizontally. Her arms were also held off the ground at 45-degree angles and palms down.

"I take back all complaints! I've obviously arrived just in time! Hello, Ranma," Tony greeted very cheerfully. "Practicing your Martial Arts Sunbathing?"

Pepper's eyeroll at her boyfriend's dumb joke was interrupted when Ranma replied: "Hey, everybody. Yeah, that's right. I figured I'd get some training in while the camera people were busy with other stuff. Problem was I had to lie still instead of running around naked, so... Martial Arts Sunbathing."

"Wait, that's a thing?" Pepper had to ask. "Martial Arts Sunbathing?"

Ranma laughed and sat up, crossing her legs without a care for what she might be showing, though her heel fig-leafed her core a bit. "Yeah, sort of. More a meditation exercise than a combat technique."

"You haven't found a way to weaponize it yet?" Tony asked humorously. "Really? I'm disappointed in you!"

The martial artist shook her head and grinned. "Nah... there's no way to use this for fighting." She stopped and cocked her head as she frowned in thought. "Well... maybe. Maybe if I..."

"Get dressed, then tell us about it," Pepper interrupted her musing. "Lunch is about to be served."

"Oh yeah?" Ranma was immediately diverted as she craned her neck to look in that direction. "Awesome!" She reached into the backpack beside her and took out a white body-stocking. Rolling back onto her shoulders, she did a kip-up that started naked and ended clothed when she landed on her feet, making Tony chuckle appreciatively. "Let's go! I head they're serving my favorite thing!"

"What's that" Pepper asked.

"Food!"

The CEO snorted despite herself, then shook her head and groaned. "Come on, you walking black-hole." Ranma fell in line with them as they turned toward the folding tables. As they strolled across the sand, Pepper asked: "I should probably stop asking questions like this, but why would you be running around nude? And is that really a martial arts discipline? Tanning?"

"Heh. Not tanning. Sunbathing," Ranma corrected. "Getting a tan is kind of a side effect. It started out as a survival technique. I started figuring it out on my first trip to America."

"You first trip...? Oh... right," Pepper sighed at the reminder. "Of course. When you rowed across the Pacific Ocean in a canoe! That's right, you didn't have a whole lot of cover, did you?"

"Nope. Too much of that can be bad for a person, you know? Even me. I was getting worried I'd have to turn back and figure something else out. Except I have my Ki," Ranma explained.

"And that protected you from the sun," Pepper surmised.

Ranma started to nod, then shook her head. "Eh... not quite. Not protected... not like blocking it or something. I tried blocking, but it didn't work too well. So I thought... there's those that say Ki comes from the sun. Maybe it's true, I don't know. But either way, once I figured out how to cycle my Ki to work with the sun... taking it in... communing with it, it didn't burn me."

"Huh, interesting." Pepper was reminded of the impression she got from Ranma's pose earlier. "It reminded me of Yoga, the way you were positioning yourself, I mean."

Ranma nodded, her expression brightening. "That's a good point. Now that you mention it, it reminds me of Yoga, too."

"Then you should teach it to Pepper," Tony chimed in. "Iron Man-Fu for me and Ki-boosted sunbathing for her."

Pepper opened her mouth to say something scornful, then thought better of it. It wasn't a combat method, so it suited her sensibilities just fine. "Can you teach me that?" she wondered instead.

"Uh..." Ranma looked surprised by the question. "I don't know? My first instinct is to say you need control of your Ki first, but if you combine it with Yoga...? I don't know. I'll have to work on it."

"Make it your number-one priority!" Tony ordered stridently.

"What?" Pepper exclaimed incredulously. "Why are you making that big a deal..." she stopped and made an irritated noise when she noticed how he was looking back and forth between her and the redhead. "Ranma, do you need to be naked to do this thing?"

"Uh... that's another good question" Ranma admitted. "Naked was the way I learned it. You remember that swimsuit I was wearing when I arrived?"

"Ah, right." Pepper recalled how tatty the thing had been by the time Ranma arrived and how it had exploded to shreds under the strain of the Hidden Weapons technique soon after she showed up. "You needed to minimize how often you wore it because of the salt water ruining it."

"That still pisses me off," Ranma grumbled. "The damn thing's supposed to go in water, right? Anyway, that was part of it, but the other thing was tan-lines."

"What's so bad about tan-lines?"

"Nothing... as long as you only got the one body," Ranma answered with a little sarcasm.

It didn't take more than a second for Pepper to realize what she meant. "They transfer over to your male form, don't they?" she sighed.

"Oops," Tony snickered.

"Yeah," Ranma huffed an aggravated breath. "Shaped like a girl's swimsuit. Looked pretty damn stupid! I was lucky I was able to do something about it before anyone else saw the first time I realized!"

Tony laughed quietly while Pepper looked sympathetic and Happy smirked. "And you want to make sure you don't have that problem again, which means go nude. And since you can't run around nude, you held still to do your special sunbathing in the screened-in area. Got it." Pepper shook her head with a quirky half-smile at how something so off-the-wall could seem so reasonable. "Well at least Adrian's team was able to accommodate you with those screens," the older woman said.

"Why bother? If you got it, flaunt it, right?" Tony asked.

Ranma ignored him. "I guess they're used to models who don't want tan lines. The screens were already set up for the shoot, but they let me move them around afterward." They reached the row of tables and started grabbing food. Ranma took a large tray out of her sleeve and balanced it on her head before tossing up five plates to land in an array. Then she started lobbing whatever looked tasty to land perfectly on the plates. The people familiar with her skills enjoyed the boggled expressions of the caterers and photography staff who were getting their first Dragon-experience that day.

"You still gave at least some people a pretty good eyeful," Pepper pointed out as she made far fewer selections for her meal. "Though obviously you don't care."

"Nope. I did my part with the hassle of the screens. If people keep looking after that, that's their problem. Doesn't make any difference to me," Ranma confirmed while flipping a few bottles of water onto her head-tray. "Let's go over to that table when we're ready." She nodded toward a picnic table that was set off on its own, somehow making the tray stay perfectly horizontal despite the motion of her head.

"Suits me fine," Tony agreed, preferring some isolation. "Ahh... no beer!" he lamented while looking over the beverages.

"People are working for living right now, Tony," Pepper chided. "They aren't going to drink on the job. And you don't need more meat. Get some of the salad."

"Oh my god!" the inventor gasped. "Tyranny! Abuse of the proletariat! Help, help! I'm being repressed!"

"Shut up, you idiot," Pepper groused. "Here." She forced some of the recommended salad onto his plate.

"Ah man," he moaned. Though a corner of his mouth was twitching upward in a genuine smile at how domestic the situation was. "Why aren't you jacking Ranma up about everything she grabbed?"

Pepper looked toward the Ki-adept who was already casually wandering toward the table they picked out with her hands clasped behind her and showing not a single quiver in the tray resting on her head. Ranma glanced back over her shoulder at her, then put a wide, exaggerated sway in her hips that called attention to the complete lack of excess fat on her frame. The CEO found herself staring, then had to hastily grab at the free edge of her plate to keep from spilling her food. Shaking her head rapidly, she said: "I'm not qualified to say a single thing about her diet."

"Heh-heh. C'mon, Happy." Tony nudged his former bodyguard with his elbow to prod the larger man out of his own distraction and they all joined Ranma at the table.

"Should I say anything about how you knew about the Martial Arts Sunbathing, Tony?" Pepper asked archly as she sat down.

"I never mentioned it to him before," Ranma said. "How did you know about it, Tony?"

"Come now," Tony said condescendingly. "I am one of the foremost minds of our age! It was trivial to develop a predictive algorithm to determine what forms of martial arts Ranma would come up with!"

Pepper favored with a skeptical look. "You made a joke, and it turned out to be surprisingly true," she assumed with considerable precedent.

"I made a joke and it turned out to be true," Tony admitted with a grin. "That said, I'm totally serious about you developing this potentially ground-breaking technique." His widening grin didn't really indicate he was being serious. "Feel free to run around the mansion naked as much as you want to make sure you get good at it!"

Pepper groaned: "Of course even after swearing off the playboy lifestyle, you make arrangements for nude women on demand."

"Uh Pepper?" Ranma spoke up while checking around to make sure no one was in earshot. She leaned forward and asked with a lower tone: "Who said anything about it being a naked woman? I'd only be sunbathing on my time, right?"

"Oh! Right!"

"Whoops! Hang on! Time!" Tony held his hands in a 'T' shape. "You can only practice this as a girl! Because... you only figured out how to do it as a girl! Yeah!"

"But Tony," Pepper replied with an oh-so-reasonable tone, "doesn't that mean Ranma should practice as a man to make sure there aren't any differences?"

"No! Because... reasons!" Tony saw how Pepper was staring at him and winced. "OK, maybe... 10% of the time she can be male."

"Tony..." Pepper drawled warningly.

"80-20... that's my final offer!"

"80% man-time and 20% woman-time? That sounds reasonable."

"No! No! The other way around! The other way!" He made expansive loops with his hands to get his point across.

"Tony... you're in a relationship now. You have to compromise. That means it's 70% eye-candy for me and 30% for you," Pepper said authoritatively.

"What the hell? How is that a compromise?" Tony complained. "Compromise means balanced! Balanced!"

"Balanced? OK, fine... you win... we'll make it 50-50," Pepper declared victoriously.

"Ah...?" Tony stopped with his jaw hanging open, then slumped a bit in despondent defeat. Though the truth was it wasn't a serious negotiation and he was content to go along with the gag.

Ranma was just watching their back and forth with a jaundiced expression, her chin propped up on one hand even as one hand blurred and cleaned her second plate of food. "Pepper, you realize you're arguing about how much time you get to spend looking at me naked, right?"

The CEO winced and blushed. "Ah... shit."

"Hah-hah-hah-hah!" Tony pointed at his girlfriend and brayed laughter with very deliberate obnoxiousness.

Pepper ignored him and apologized: "Sorry, Ranma. I got carried away with the joke."

Ranma chuckled and waved it off. "That's fine. It just made it that much funnier. Besides... as long as you don't panic and whip out a mallet, I don't care if you look any more than I care if he does." She jerked a thumb toward Tony. She shrugged and went on: "I haven't seen Mallet-Sama in a really long time, so I've gone back to not giving a damn. Been plenty of times people have seen me naked because I changed at weird times. Also, on the road, you can't really care that much about what you are or aren't showing a lot of the time. Sometimes the only place to get clean is a stream or river where people can see you. If you think about it, it's kind of weird how people are so freaked out about it."

Pepper bobbed her head and conceded: "Well that's true. Arbitrary social taboos are arbitrary. Still, you have to be careful about how you break those taboos."

"You do remember I designed things at the mansion so there were no sight-lines on the pool from off the property unless someone was in a helicopter or an a boat way out to sea with a telescope," Tony reminded her. "It's completely private. All the better to support my... exuberant lifestyle."

"Ah yes... the Debauched Utility School of Architecture," Pepper acknowledged snidely.

"Exactly!"

"It would be nice to go swimming again," Ranma said candidly after gracefully inhaling her third plate-load.

Pepper looked at her in surprise, then realized why the pool at the sub-development they'd given Ranma a place to live in wasn't usable. "I should have realized... tan-lines aside, things are getting a little out of control over there. You can't freely walk around or use the use the pool there anymore, can you?" The place had been picked before Ranma became internationally famous, and it wasn't really set up to handle that level of celebrity. It was gated, but that didn't stop 'guests' from getting in, and what security there was didn't have the capacity to verify who might have snuck in.

Ranma shrugged with a sheepish look, not liking to bring up what seemed like trivial problems to her. "It's not a big deal. Just annoying that I can't invite any guests over. I've been sneaking in and out so nobody can see me. I can sneak someone in, but then they need to stay away from the windows and such. Too much of a pain to deal with. That's not counting what might happen if someone was visiting when some idiot tries to climb in the balcony again. I might be too... er... busy to notice."

"WHAT?!" all three Americans exclaimed at once, making Ranma blink in surprise.

Tony and Pepper tried to ask questions at the same time and stepped on each other's attempt to question their employee. When they sorted themselves out, the CEO asked: "Somebody tried to climb into your house?! When did this happen? I didn't hear anything about the police being called!"

"It happened last night. And police called for what?" Ranma wondered cluelessly.

"For the attempted break-in maybe?" Pepper responded with heavy sarcasm.

"Huh? Nobody called the police as far as I know." Ranma shook her head. "I was a guy at the time, but I felt the dude coming, so I was able to get to cold water quick enough. As soon as he got over the railing, I grabbed him by the back of the jacket, hit a few pressure points to paralyze him a while, and chucked him over the fence." She looked at the time display on her visor, then said: "He'll probably still be there a couple more hours before the points wear off." Misunderstanding the looks the older people were sending her way, she waved her hands and quickly assured them: "Don't worry! He's OK! I made sure he landed under some nice, shady bushes so he'd be protected from the sun!" She grimaced and admitted: "He might've had a childish accident by now, though."

"That wasn't what we were worried about," Tony told her dryly. Tapping his own Stark HUD, he said: "JARVIS? Put up a map of her sub-division on Ranma's visor so she can tell us which bush she stashed that idiot under and send that to Happy. Happy?" He looked toward the former boxer, who was already wolfing down as much of his lunch as he could manage while starting to stand.

"Yeah, I'll take care of it," Happy said while wiping his mouth with a napkin.

"Delegate, delegate," Tony said while waving him back into his seat. "Just get some of the other guys from the security team to handle it. Just make sure they handle it right."

"Right. Too late to bring the cops into it now. So sucker the mook into incriminating himself if he's just a fan, or remind him who's who and what's what if he's paparazzi," Happy confirmed while getting his phone out.

"Uh, whoops?" Ranma offered sheepishly.

"We told you how to bring in the police if there was an incident," Pepper reminded her.

"Well, yeah... but that was for anyone who went after you guys." She waved her hand to encompass all three Americans.

"And you thought you wouldn't get equal treatment, why?" Pepper inquired with an arched eyebrow.

"Uh... I just don't get equal treatment?"

Pepper shook her head. "Let's try to break all the bad Nerima habits of thought sooner rather than later, hmm?"

"Yeah... all the Nerima habits," Ranma said heavily. "I'm working on it. Sorry!"

"You just need to complain more. All we heard from you was crowds of gawkers are annoying, which is self-evident," Tony advised. "We knew it was getting bad from the media coverage, but not that bad.

"I really thought a gated community would be enough for a few weeks, and getting even that much took a lot of scrambling. We were looking for an alternate place for you already, but everything with sufficient security that's near enough to the mansion is locked up already." Pepper shook her head with annoyance. "The way things are going, it might be faster to build something than to wait for something preexisting to open up."

"Actually, there is one place available in the area that has equal security to the mansion," Tony mentioned thoughtfully."

"What's that?" Pepper asked with considerable surprise. Tony wasn't exactly the type to pore over real estate ads, certainly not enough to catch something she had missed.

"The mansion," Tony answered with a smirk. "Hey, Ranma, would you like to... hold up... wrong order." He stopped himself when he remembered some advice from Esposito. "Hey, Pepper," he started over. "How would you feel about inviting Ranma to live with us?"

Pepper looked interested in the idea, but then frowned. "I don't mind for myself, but weren't there reasons we didn't do that the first time you suggested it?"

"Do any of those reasons still pertain?" Tony challenged. "Ranma's a legal adult now, and now I'm in a monogamous relationship." He was amused at how Ranma unconsciously shuddered at the 'M' word. She was encouraging of his and Pepper's relationship, but she really wanted nothing to do with anything long-term herself. "There's a huge difference between just Ranma and me living in the mansion and you, me, and Ranma living there."

"That's a good point," Pepper had to admit. "However, there's still your little habit of getting fed up with people entering your space and dialing up the misanthropy." She noted Ranma was looking on their discussion with intent interest even as she moved on to the fifth plate of her lunch.

Tony shrugged and said: "It hasn't been a problem so far. Ranma's been at the mansion all waking hours of the day... for... reasons I really should have thought more deeply about earlier." He shook his head before adding: "Besides, she's an empath... sort of. Hey, Ranma... if you detect that I'm getting prickly, you'll do the ninja thing, right?"

Ranma shook her head. "That's impossible."

"What?" Tony looked confused. "Can't you tell if I'm getting all curmudgeonly during Reiki massages?"

"That part's no problem," Ranma breezily replied. "It's the ninja part I can't do."

"Since when?"

"Since there's no such thing as ninjas." All three of the other people at the table had to lean back and eye her incredulously while she dimpled. "I can see how you're confused. That Coulson guy was sending me questions about ninjas through Natasha, so I had to let him know they're imaginary. If a big-time spy guy can believe in imaginary people like that, it's no wonder you did too."

An impish grin was growing on Tony's face. "You're pranking him?"

"Ranma... that's mean," Pepper said. Though she was hiding a smile behind her hand.

Ranma put an overblown expression of offended innocence on her face, a hand delicately and gracefully held bent to touch her fingertips to her chest. "Of course not! I'm not pranking anyone! I'm just answering Coulson's questions with my extensive expertise! I'm definitely not holding a grudge about the taser thing!"

"Ah... right," Pepper put down her hand to stop hiding her slightly vindictive smile. She could absolutely understand why Coulson would threaten to tase Tony... god knows she was tempted a time or eighty over the years... but that didn't mean she was willing to let it pass when a little harmless payback was available. For his part, Tony's shoulders were shaking with repressed laughter.

"Really... he has nothing to complain about," Ranma went on. "When he kept sending me questions, I sent him a list of the secret ninja rules... which don't exist either."

"Let me guess... Secret Ninja Rule Number One is... 'Never talk about Secret Ninja Rules?'" Tony speculated.

"Noooo... that's Secret Ninja Rule Number Two... which totally doesn't exist." Ranma corrected him patiently. "I already told you what rule one isn't. It's definitely not: 'There's no such thing as Ninjas.'" I think rule three, which also doesn't exist, wasn't: "Iga basic is crap."

"Chuckling, Tony summarized: "So basically you gave him all the skinny he wanted, but in a format that looks ridiculous if he quotes it exactly?"

"No." Ranma shot him a strange expression. "Of course not. Because there's no..."

"...No such thing as ninjas," Tony finished for her. 'Right. Got it." He laughed a little bit more and sighed: "Hopefully that will get him to stop asking me to make stupid requests of stupid generals."

'What's this?" Pepper wondered.

Tony waved his hand negatively. "Actual SHIELD consulting, I can't tell you. Seriously this time. Just as well... hopefully nobody will ever say anything again about something that idiotic." Of all the things the agency could have asked him for, he couldn't imagine what they were thinking to have him convince General 'Fumble Dolt' Ross to turn the Abomination over for Fury's secret boy band project. Luckily it was easy enough to sabotage by just being himself a little more than usual. "Well, if nothing else, we can say Ranma is never gonna get boring as a housemate, so... any objections remaining?"

"I guess not," Pepper shrugged. "It will buy time to come up with something better, anyway." Frowning, she added: "We might have to extend that until after the headquarters move is settled. That'll be two or three years," she reminded Ranma apologetically.

Ranma made a dismissive flicking gesture with her fingers. "Mondainai. It really wasn't getting any less weird to have a house to myself. I've gone about fifteen years without, a couple more years is nothing."

"Great! So, to make it formal," Tony waved grandly toward his bodyguard, "Ranma? Would you like to move in with us? Be assured... mi casa es su casa! You can run around as naked as you want!"

"As long as I do the 50-50 thing," Ranma nodded agreeably.

"Urk! Uh... right... maybe I skip this whole deal to avoid dings on my ego inflicted by your male form?" Tony made balancing gestures with his hands. "Ego... or eye-candy? Ego? Eye-candy? Ahh! I'll figure it out later!" He waved his hands like he was wiping something in front of his eyes away. "So how about it? Place is plenty big, world's greatest workshop is in the basement, surf is almost always up, fancy doodads all over to impress dates with... wait... where have you been taking your dates if you can't take them home?"

"If it's Natasha, Mary, Cathy, or Olga? I've been taking them to hotels," Ranma started to explain, giving Pepper a worried look when she mentioned hotels.

"Olga? Who the hell is Olga? Or those other two?" Tony wondered. "Don't even bother mentioning Queen Viper Bitch."

"Uh... the real names of Trixie, Alexis, and Nichole?" Ranma replied.

"Who?" Tony was perplexed, while Happy sat bolt upright.

"Oh my god!" Pepper exclaimed. "How much of an asshole can you be? They're the strippers contracted for the Party Plane!"

"Oh yeah..." Tony said with a low, edified tone. Looking at Pepper's annoyed face, he continued with: "I've, uh, been putting any and all women like them firmly out of my head!"

"That would would be a nice display of devotion... if I believed it for even a fraction of a second," Pepper rejoindered sarcastically. "It sounds more like you couldn't be bothered to remember their names like they were real people, assuming you ever learned them."

Partially out of the habit of trying to provide cover for Tony, and partially out of real, envious curiosity, Happy asked: "You went out with all of them? All of them?"

"Yes? They asked me?" Ranma answered hesitantly.

"All three at once?" Tony surmised suggestively. "Just scoring with four women in a little over four weeks isn't too terrible... not even close to my old standards, of course..." a growl from his girlfriend inspired him to quickly move on. "...But doing a three-for-one more than makes up for it!"

"It's been six women, not four," Ranma stated, her pride a little pricked by her employer's comment. "And what do you mean 'three-for-one'? You can't do that on a date!"

"Yes you can!" Tony said emphatically, grinning at her naivete. "Trust me!"

"Not when they want to spend the night!" Ranma protested.

"Yes you can!" Tony repeated with even more teeth showing from his grin. "Trust me!"

"How would that even work?"

"Please..." Pepper raised a hand before Tony could elaborate. "Just... ask Natasha... or check the Internet... or... I don't know... try not to exceed Tony's antics, maybe?"

"Exceed the antics! Exceed!" Tony stage-whispered, getting himself a light slap on the back of his head from Pepper.

"Who are the other two women you've been taking to hotels?" Happy wanted to know, almost in spite of himself.

"Nobody," Ranma told him. "Tawni and Ashlee don't know about my guy side, so I couldn't do that. I just went on dates with them and left after dinner or whatever."

"Aww..." Tony groaned in disappointment. "What's even the point of going on a date if there's no sex?"

"Tony!" Pepper burst out with annoyance. "It's called getting to know each other? Being social? Sex is not a requirement!"

"You sure? Every time we've gone out on a date, we've had sex!" Tony countered.

Pepper's lips pressed into a very thin, annoyed line as she glared at him. "Don't count on that trend continuing!"

"Sure it will!" Tony claimed brashly. "You won't go out on a date with me at all until you forgive me! And by that point..." He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully.

"OK, I was convinced to move in already, though now it looks like I have to so I can keep Tony alive," Ranma joked.

"Yes! Right! Defend meee!" Tony responded with enthusiasm. "And you should bring as many babes home as you like! The more the merrier! Me and Pep have a look-don't-touch deal going, so feel free to enhance the scenery!"

"Do we?" Pepper shot the man-child she had somehow agreed to romantically partner with a jaundiced look. "OK, then... fair's fair... when did you say you'd be practicing Ki-enhanced sunbathing as a guy again, Ranma?"

"Uh..." Tony hesitantly started to speak, not quite sure how to extricate himself from the hole his mouth had dug.

"You all may be joking around about that, but I'm really curious to see if I can turn Martial Arts Sunbathing into something even an untrained person can use," Ranma said. "Even if I can't, it sounds like something I should pass on to Akane. If it means that much to you, I'll wait until you're around before practicing with my guy side."

"No, no," Pepper waved off the offer. "I'm just messing with Tony. I'm not really scheduling times to ogle a young man. My self-respect wouldn't survive it."

"My self-respect would survive just fine!" Tony piped up. "Er... for the female ogling... not the male," he quickly clarified. "Post some show-times! I'll get popcorn!"

"And now I feel like getting some retaliatory leering in," Pepper sighed while Ranma laughed. "Is the sunbathing thing really real? You have so many crazy techniques, I'd never be able to tell if you were making it up or not!"

"I have so many crazy techniques I'd never know if I was making it up or not!" Ranma laughed. "But, yeah, it's real. And maybe more than a survival technique according to Ku Lon."

"Oh, right," Happy spoke up, remembering the fight he had witnessed in Tokyo. "That super-old, shriveled up lady? She did say rowing across the Pacific was like a vision quest or something."

"Something like that," Ranma said while waggling a hand indecisively. "All I know is that I didn't lose any of my edge even though I went weeks without proper training. A martial artist has to train all the time not just to get better, but to not get worse. Tendo-San was a match for my Oyaji back in the past, but these days?" She shook her head woefully. "He stopped training. He's barely more than a civilian, now. I was worried what traveling like that for so long would do to me, but I kept my peak all that time and the only really new technique I came up with was Martial Arts Sunbathing. Oh... and ways to skip sleep, but I don't think that's it. Or... maybe it is, but I didn't think it would work that way."

"You mentioned the Ki-from-the-sun bit," Tony said seriously. "Did you notice anything in particular happening when you used the technique? If your reserves grew... that might prove it."

Ranma closed her eyes and thought about it. "I was using it constantly during the day on sunny days, so it's hard to tell. Rainy days were kind of annoying, so if I wasn't feeling energetic, that could be the reason. I don't think it made me stronger, not by itself, but by the time I made it to America, I could tell my Ki flowed better. Sustained me better. My senses seemed sharper. Maybe that was because of the sunbathing technique. Maybe it was just be because I was out there alone against the elements or something. Maybe it really was the lack of sleep. Or maybe it was all just getting the hell away from Nerima."

"How much have you been sleeping recently?" Tony asked.

"Eh... night's been good for training or... special training with dates." Ranma looked a little askance when she used the euphemism to avoid meeting Pepper's eyes. "With my meditation, I only need three or four hours of sleep to feel fully rested."

"You can say you've been using sex for exercise, Ranma. We're all adults here," Pepper said while rolling her eyes. "I'm more worried about the lack of sleep. Don't hurt yourself. We can get less ambitious with your schedule."

Ranma waved her hands in protest. "No, no... I'm good! I'm a hell of a lot better rested than I was in Nerima! The schedule is good! It's not boring, and I like pushing myself!"

"Were you better rested in the canoe compared to Nerima?" Pepper asked archly.

"Uh... well..." Ranma grimaced at the fact she had slept better in a crude, hollowed-out log than she had at the Tendos' place.

"Yeah. Comparing to Nerima doesn't prove much. You look energetic to me... too energetic sometimes... but I think we should check with a medical doctor just in case," Pepper advised.

"We are already. I get biometrics from Ranma all the time when we study Ki," Tony reminded her. "I've been getting them evaluated by experts. Her stressor indicators are all dead smacko in the middle of the green area. JARVIS is watching her all the time, too."

"Well that's a relief," Pepper said while relaxing a little. "I forgot about that."

"Yep. Hey!" Tony sat up with a gleeful look. "If I come up with a way to duplicate what Ranma is doing, does that mean the all-nighter moratorium goes away?"

Pepper gave him an unimpressed look. "You mean so you can make a gizmo that lets you abandon our bed and leave me alone? During one of the few times we can consistently be together for extended time?"

"Ahhh... yeaaaah..." Tony said slowly and cautiously. "Never mind then!" Grimacing, he went back to the original subject. "The reason I was asking was that if you are already doing the minimal sleep thing, and that hasn't been giving you the same benefits, then the part that's easiest to test now is the sunbathing, so that's what you should do," he observed. "All kidding aside, it's important for you to develop your Ki-techniques. The more you do, the more data I have to study. Don't hesitate to ask for anything you need for training. I've already come up with some stuff that would more than pay for anything you can conceivably ask for based on what I've learned so far."

"Got it," Ranma agreed. "It'd be great if it works well. One of the big tenets of the Musabetsu Kakuto Ryu is everything is training. Everything. That means sleeping, eating, and resting, though resting has just been training my senses before now." Looking at Pepper, she said: "If it makes it any better, I have no idea if being nude will be needed. For all I know, I can wear one of these." She plucked at her bodysuit.

"That's true," Tony said, abandoning his previous flippancy. "And you should test other materials you can wear. Test poses you can hold or movements that might help things along. You've got a personal supersonic aircraft assigned to you, so find out if the location matters. JARVIS can help you get stuff for experimenting, it'll go under the research budget we've set up. If you want more ideas for experimental protocols, let me know."

"And the mansion will be your home too for however long," Pepper interjected. "Do whatever you want to be comfortable and enjoy the place. I know training is your comfort zone. As long as you don't go breaking anything important... Tony."

"Are you ever gonna forgive me for that stupid piano?" Tony asked with a grin.

"Forgive? Maybe. Forget? Never." After sending him a half-hearted glare that bounced off his cheerful attitude, she said: "If you want to use the gym at all hours, go for it. If you want to listen to loud music, the mansion's got great sound-suppressing technology. If you want to empty the fridge for a midnight snack, JARVIS will have more food ordered and delivered by morning."

"And if I want to strap on a few hundred kilos of metal weights and go swimming?" Ranma asked. "'Cause they kind of freaked out at the sub-division when I did that."

"Do tell," Pepper eyed the martial artist sardonically. "But yes, you can do that as long as you don't damage the pool. And if you want to strip down where it's private, it won't bother anybody."

"I doubt I'll be shucking my clothes for no reason," Ranma said dryly. "Regular clothes are a pain in the ass, but these bodysuits have been great." Clothing tended to be something of a bane to people who fell in the springs of Jusenkyo. "Though I still don't like them for swimming."

"There are full-body swimsuits..."

"Dammit, Pepper!" Tony exclaimed, though he was still smiling.

"...And full-body wetsuits for that matter," Pepper went on calmly as if the eccentric billionaire hadn't said anything. "But you can do whatever you want. I will point out, though, that there are such things as boy-cut bottoms for ladies' swimsuits. You'd still have to go topless, but the tan-lines wouldn't be a problem for your male form. More like a European-style man's bathing suit."

Ranma shrugged, not too sure what she'd do yet. "I'll keep that in mind. I do like having a tan, though. As a guy, I think it's more respectable to be an outdoors type. As a girl, it gets away from the pale, doll-like ideal Japanese people have for women. As long as nobody thinks I'm trying to do the gyaru thing."

"Hey, what do you think the chances are the local town council will cancel all indecent exposure laws?" Tony commented out of the blue. "I mean if we point out that the world famous Dragon isn't a big fan of wearing clothes on the beach?"

"No. That's stupid. We're not going to push for that," Pepper told him promptly.

"I'm pretty sure we could get away with it..." Tony said slyly.

"Not happening." Pepper had a sneaking suspicion Tony was right, as big as the hype around Ranma was, but she had no intention of wasting PR capital on something so pointless, especially when it would be followed up with an inevitable backlash. Things were still too uneasy to allow that. "So it's coming up on decision time," she blatantly changed the subject. "Do you two want to keep with Dr. Esposito?"

"Are you blatantly changing the subject to stop me from pursuing the body liberation thing?" Tony asked with a great deal of amusement.

"I've been very impressed with her," Pepper plowed on, ignoring his question. "But it is up to you two, of course."

"You know when you get stubborn, it kind of makes me want to get stubborn too," Tony pointed out. "You also look really cute when you get stubborn, so it's not exactly dissuading me here."

"The doctor shut down that nonsense that was about to flare up with the politicians pretty thoroughly," his girlfriend continued to ignore his words. "We got a look at what she sent them, and it was everything we wanted, plus a lot that we could use to make them look like idiots if they decide to leak the report. They're stuck having to pretend they were only trying to be needlessly helpful." Pepper shook her head approvingly. "She even recorded her conversations with them and turned the audio files over to us. I think they overplayed their hand, there."

"Natasha mentioned thumbing some scales when it came to picking her," Ranma revealed.

"Ranma! Noooo... don't encourage the blatant subject change!" Tony's aghast plea was soundly ignored.

"Agent Coulson said the same to me," Pepper confirmed. "Setting things up so she was called in was an unofficial peace offering from what I gathered."

"I object to all this subject changing!" Tony declaimed while raising a clenched fist. "I want to discuss the global exposure of globes! Bare bazongas for all! Liberté, égalité, nudité! Take it world-wide!" He stopped and cocked his head. "Which would be hysterical when the campaign reaches places like Saudi Arabia. The amount we would have to fuck with those turkeys to make it happen is really appealing to me right now!"

"Tony," Pepper got his attention and held his gaze with a blank expression. "I know you don't care about my feelings and how much I worry about you every single day, but this is important."

"Whoooaa!" Tony recoiled with both of his hands held up wardingly and doing a full-face wince. "Jeez... going straight for the nuclear option? I thought the 'how dare you make me sleep alone even for a little' thing was bad! That was less a guilt trip and more a guilt-around-the-world-cruise!"

"That was nothing," Pepper assured him with a dangerous smile. "I've got a Jewish grandmother. You want to see a real guilt-trip? There's a lot of ammunition I've built up over the years that I couldn't use when we were boss and assistant. You want me to haul out some of Bubbe's greatest hits?"

"Ohhh no! No-no!" Tony waved his hands frantically and laughed. "I can't even remember what I was saying now! What did you want to talk about?"

"Dr. Esposito," Pepper repeated patiently. "We got ahead of this latest manufactured scandal before it could metastasize, and that's great, but we need to decide what to do next. I've had sessions with her myself, now, and honestly I can see myself going back to her again. Lord knows I've had some extra sources of stress land on me recently! I think you should keep going to her, too."

Tony grimaced reluctantly. "Ah... I don't know... that's such a California thing to do. The obligatory therapist. The whole touchy-feely for pay thing. Too granola-style, you know?"

"I only know what you're talking about because I've dealt with you so long," Pepper said dryly. "That's not a serious objection, but we'll come back to it. What about you, Ranma?"

The redhead shrugged and said: "Well part of the deal when you hired me was to talk to a head-doctor."

Pepper raised a hand as a stopping gesture. "You can forget that part." The older woman sighed and rubbed her forehead. "I'm really regretting adding that now. I threw it in because I was still reeling from finding out about that horrid Nodoka woman and that suicide pact she forced on you. What kind of mother wants to kill their kid? I assumed you would desperately need therapy." She saw Ranma smirk at that. "Paula won't tell me what you talked about, but we kind of have a responsibility for tossing a bunch of new duties at you just after you started dealing with a strange land with even stranger people." She pointed at Tony, who beamed with pride. "So I asked her if she thought it was OK if we kept going like we have been. She said she had to adjust her thinking to your unique outlook, but she had no concerns with your ability to weather shocks or handle the workload."

"Huh," Ranma looked a little surprised. "Maybe I spent enough time in the Nerima-crazy I looped back around to sane again?" She shook her head. "No... if that was possible we'd have seen it with the Kunos."

"Are they officially the looniest of the Nerima loonies?" Tony asked.

"Uh..." Ranma tapped a finger on the table indecisively. "Let me get back to you on that."

"Well, my opinion is you're one of the most well-balanced people I've ever met, when taking into account how wild the parameters of your life are," Pepper told the teen. Shaking her head, she admitted: "I'll admit I wasn't as even-keeled when I was your age."

"I sure as shit wasn't," Tony muttered, Happy nodding earnestly next to him.

Ranma smiled winsomely. "Of course I'm well-balanced!" While cradling her chin with one hand, she set the index finger of her other hand perpendicular on the table and pressed down, lifting her entire body while holding her pose as if she were still sitting. "I practice my balance every day!"

Pepper rolled her eyes as Ranma set herself down again. "And there are those wild parameters I was talking about... I completely understand where Paula is coming from when she talks about making adjustments."

"Sorry?"

"Don't worry about it," the older woman waved it off. "I guess I should ask to be certain: do you feel stressed or worried? You don't seem overwhelmed, but you also don't speak up about things we'd expect. Like that home invader for instance."

"I..." Ranma made a small helpless gesture with her hand, "I know this is kinda bad, but I've had people who were actually able to kill me try to kill me in my sleep and it didn't bug me too much. Everything I'm doing now? It's almost all fun adventure. Even the studying is... sort of... almost... getting close to... maybe being OK, too." She shrugged and added: "I like the gains, anyway, and I gotta admit a lot of the stuff you all have been showing me has been pretty cool. It's a slog, but it isn't stressing me out. I get something wrong? Then I try it again and again until I get it right. That's old hat for a martial artist. I can't remember a time when I didn't do that, so it's not a big deal."

"There's work as day-to-day work, but what about the new responsibilities?" Pepper asked sympathetically. "That's a subtle difference, but it is a significant one. One is just doing each task as it comes to you, the other is having people depend on you. It's the latter that can wear you down."

"That part's kind of tough, too," Ranma agreed. "It blows my mind that people are looking up to me of all people now. But I've had people's lives depending on me before coming to America, so it isn't all that new a thing. Besides, I can chuck it all for a few hours as 'Randall,' which is nice. I think I'm OK with it."

"OK, with what you're saying and what Paula's saying, I think you've kept your end of the deal the way I was envisioning it," Pepper told her. "So forget your obligation... that's been met. If I'd known then what I know now, I would never have written it in."

"We really need to figure out who leaked that," Tony grumbled.

"We really do," Pepper agreed readily. "And we need it soon. Get JARVIS on it. Break out your hacker hat."

"Really?"

"Yes, really," Pepper said firmly. "We should have done this sooner, but we were in reaction mode. We're at the point where we can get proactive now. This is worth risking some political capital on. In fact, I'll hit up our government contacts for information as well."

"So I'll take the high road and you'll take the low road and we'll see who gets to Scotland first?" Tony asked.

"More like we'll meet in the middle and confirm our information. But... why is my road the low road? You're the one who'll be doing something illegal!"

"Politicians. You'll be dealing with them."

"Ah... you have a point there," Pepper admitted. "Anyway, back on the subject of the sessions, there's still the question what you think will help you in the future... both of you. There hasn't been any action for Iron Man and Dragon since New York, but there will be at some point, I'm sure. Purely based on your opinion, would it help you to keep meeting with Paula?"

"I don't know..." Tony said while rubbing his chin. "It doesn't seem all that urgent."

Ranma looked at him and shrugged. "Paula's nice. She passed the Wild Tiger's Instinct Truth Sense test with flying colors every time. Hell, she insisted I use it again for my own peace of mind! I kind of like how she's outside of things but can still offer advice. Hokkusu-Sensei's like that, but he's back in Japan."

"That's just a four-hour round trip with the SkyBuster," Tony pointed out. "Three if I loan you the ThunderStruck. Or... you could pick up a phone?"

Ranma looked tempted, bobbing her head in indecision. "Yeah... those are true, though I'd like to fly out for serious conversations. Thing is I've already bothered him a hell of a lot. There were times he let me hide out at the temple for days. It's a fucking miracle nobody ever tracked me down and trashed the place!" A thought occurred to her and she scowled. "I'm also not too sure about going back to Tokyo too often. Especially if I do it on a schedule so I can get followed or ambushed more easily. I can sneak in, of course, but..."

"It's harder to manage that in a public space like a temple than in an enclosed private office," Tony completed the thought. "Pretty sure you can still pull it off, but it wouldn't exactly be lowering stress, would it?"

"Yeah, if he was out in the countryside, that'd be something different," Ranma said. "I can call him, but that would be more for letting him know how I'm doing and find out how he's doing... that sort of thing. More friendly-like, which would be cool too. Paula would get paid to put up with more serious stuff. That makes things fair. Though I should probably find out how much before I say anything, huh?"

""Don't worry about that part,"" Tony and Pepper said at the same time. Tony waved toward Pepper for her to continue, since she was the money person.

"I said you can forget the contract requirement, but it's still written in there that the company would cover therapy costs. Considering everything we have you doing for the company now, it's a legitimate business expense." Pepper shrugged and added: "Even if we weren't, trust me... you could have afforded it easily."

"If you say so," Ranma replied indifferently. "Uh..." she looked at Tony, "sorry, Boss. I think I'll continue with Paula. At least sometimes. I like how Natasha said it: the saner I get, the stronger I get. No reason not to keep pushing that."

Tony raised his eyebrows at the last observation. "How useful would that really be? Isn't there an upper limit to how sane you can get? It's pretty much just the lack of insanity, so once you've gotten rid of the insanity, maximum sanity is what you're left with."

"Is there a max limit?" Ranma questioned. "Crazy people are people who can't understand reality. For example... every Kuno ever. So more sanity would be understanding more reality, right? I'm damn good, and my perceptions are getting deeper, but I can't see myself understanding absolutely everything there is. That means no real end to this road."

"Good point." Tony nodded thoughtfully. "You've got your N-Dimensional senses, which is fucking huge compared to the rest of us, but it's still a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of reality in truth. Not to mention even the conventional four-dimensional universe is oomphing enormous beyond all comprehension. Forget about the other 22-some-odd dimensions bosonic string theory calls for." He shook his head. "Can't see a shrink helping with that, though."

"Don't know until you try," Pepper interjected.

"That seems a little trite when we're touching on the fundamental structure of the universe here, but..." Tony waved his hand in a yielding gesture, "I'm not an expert in the science of Ki-dynamics... yet... so I guess I can't say for certain one way or the other without empirical data. It wouldn't hurt for Ranma to try it for a bit."

"What about you?" Pepper asked.

"What about me?" Tony echoed. "As in me going to the Doc again? I agree with Ranma that she's good, but I'm aware of the stuff we talked about now, so I don't need to go over it again."

"For a genius, it takes a lot of repeating for ideas to penetrate that skull of yours sometimes," Pepper replied cynically. "And I seriously doubt you managed to review every possible neurosis you have... not in the time she had with you. Even before the palladium thing, you were getting pretty ragged from all the stuff you intervened in."

Tony honestly looked a little hurt at that. "You'd be surprised. She said I was doing pretty good... for... someone who's... been through the shit I have," he reluctantly appended. "But... doing just OK is actually OK! And I'm genuinely a lot happier now than I've been in a long time! There isn't all that urgent a need to take special action!"

"But if it doesn't hurt for Ranma to keep going, it won't hurt for you to do the same for a while longer," Pepper said persuasively.

"It might hurt!" Tony countered. "Stock price and confidence in the company and such!"

"Well it's not like we need to go telling people you're seeing the doctor," Pepper pointed out. "And even if we were... like you said, it's kind of a California thing to do. It would be easy to trivialize it from that angle. If you think about it, it's rather surprising you don't have a therapist and go around boring people by talking about your sessions already... especially with how much as you love to play into stereotypes."

"Ah... that's... a pretty accurate observation," Tony reluctantly admitted. "Sure... I can follow the stock script of the poor, unfortunate inheritor of fantastic wealth who is just misunderstood and needs to retreat to his marble-columned rotunda of despondency to have his delicate feeling expensively massaged. God knows there are plenty of people in the LA area who do just that. But would it be really useful?"

"When you have that attitude, maybe not," Pepper said sardonically. "However, until you give up the Iron Man role, you are going to see all-new reasons for needing to talk to a counselor of some kind with all the horrible things that happen in the world. And I don't think you want me or Ranma or Happy or Rhodey to be that person."

"Well, no, but things have been calming down on that front. There hasn't been as much call for Iron Man recently," Tony claimed. Seeing the incredulous looks from Pepper and Happy, he shook his head at them with an affronted look and added: "Whiplash and the Abomination and the Hulk were just outliers! How often will bizarre crap like that even happen? Remember how much we had to scrape the barrel to find one terrorist group at a convenient time for Ranma to do a demonstration on? There'll be more incidents in the future, of course, because people aren't gonna stop being assholes any time soon, but it's a downward trend! A slow downward trend, but still a downward trend! Even before I started doing my thing the amount of people dying in armed conflicts was falling! I don't see that changing! Not unless there's an alien invasion or something!"

"Ahh, kussssoooo," Ranma hissed despairingly. "Did you have to go and say that?"

"Oh come on! Memes aside, just because somebody randomly throws out a comment about some highly improbable disaster doesn't mean it will actually happen! That's ridiculous!" Tony protested. "Hey! Stop that!" he insisted when Ranma started banging her head on the table.

Pepper was laughing at Ranma's reaction, but she forced herself to be serious again. "Look, even if you're correct, Tony, that doesn't mean these conflicts can't be a problem eventually, lower frequency or not. A lot of the time, it's the straw that breaks the camel's back when it comes to psychology."

Tony rolled his eyes, but didn't really have a legitimate answer to that. "Are we even sure therapy would be a good idea for me? Being me means being seriously creative. It could be that a significant part of that creativity is being..." he gestured to himself with both hands before raising them helplessly, "hmm... eccentric?"

"I don't think you're in any danger of running out of unique perceptions of the world as inspiration," Pepper said while nodding toward Ranma, who raised an eyebrow at her. "There's 'eccentric' and there's letting yourself hurt for no reason."

"Hey, if you don't want to talk to Paula, you can talk to Natasha!" Ranma offered brightly.

"Oh-ho-ho... fuck no!" Tony chuckled mordantly. At Pepper's expectant look, he said: "Look... I'll think about it. Just... leave me alone about it for a bit. I'm invoking the mutuality clause of relationships for my own blatant subject change now!"

"OK... what did you want to talk about instead?" Pepper asked reasonably, letting him have the change to settle his thoughts.

"Uh... I don't know..." Tony cast about and the sight of the ocean waves caught his attention. "Surfing? Um... would you like to learn how to surf, Ranma? That would make some good pictures, wouldn't it, Pep?" His girlfriend looked like she was giving it serious consideration.

For her part, Ranma did not seem impressed by the suggestion. "That's the thing where you just stand on a floating board?" she asked dubiously.

Tony stared at her, baffled. "I mean that's... technically correct, but for once that's not the best kind of correct! You're leaving out the whole rush of riding along on a force of nature bit!"

Ranma stood up and leaned over the table to put a hand on her employer's shoulder. "Tony..." she said somberly, "...I am a force of nature."

The technologist had to snicker at her delivery. "OK, OK... that's fair. Alright, Miss Force of Nature, what would it take to make surfing interesting?"

Ranma cocked her head and considered it. "A school of trained, man-eating attack sharks? Is there a place like that around here somewhere?"

"Thankfully, no," Pepper answered while Tony chuckled, making the teen pout.

"Hey... I could build robotic sharks!" Tony suggested. "Just for you!"

"No!" Pepper called out. "No aquatic robot apocalypses! Christ... just imagine how much of a mess it would be if she used a tornado on the things!"

"No, no! It'd be OK! They'd only be programmed to attack Ranma!" Tony insisted. Turning his gaze back to Ranma, who was looking a little more interested, he asked: "How about it? We could even put frikkin laaaasers on their heads!"

"NO!" Pepper half-shrieked in indignation.

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

*** Video clip begins ***

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

"As a child, what did you think about when you thought about the future?" Ranma's female voice narrated over a black screen. "Did you dream of fantastical machines? Flying cars? Robot friends? Colonies in space?" A series of clips from children's cartoons flashed depictions of what she mentioned before going black again.

"Did you look at the future with a sense of wonder?" A blue dot appeared in the center of the view and started expanding. "When you thought about the future, did you look forward to adventure and discovery? Did the horizon look like a vast playground you couldn't wait to run to?" The dot became a disc that was quickly recognizable as the planet Earth, and the view of the world filled the screen. The view closed in and turned so the sun could be seen peeking out from behind the vast globe filling the screen. "When you were a child, did you think the sky was the limit?"

The point of view closed in on the west coast of the United States, getting lower and lower. "When you got older, did that limit get closer? Smaller?" Down and down the perspective sank toward Los Angeles. "As you grew up, did you put those hopes aside? Did it seem they would only happen long after your time? Or never?" The camera closed in on Ranma as she stood in the courtyard between two tall apartment buildings wearing a dark blue skirt-suit and silk ivory blouse with her hands clasped behind her. The buildings in the background were neither fancy or shabby, merely humdrum and her neutral expression seemed to match the venue. "As thoughts about the future turned from cities in the sky to careers and car payments and insurance policies, did you sigh with nostalgia for the wonder of your youth?"

Ranma shook her head, her expression becoming more sympathetic, and the camera zoomed in until it showed her from the waist up as she shook her head mournfully. "That poor, naïve little kid version of yourself?" The corner of her mouth quirked up in a smirk as her head stopped shaking. "They were right the first time!"

The camera zoomed out again and Ranma stepped to the left. A blurred, vertical line swept the background behind her, changing the view to a factory floor. Several workers in hard-hats were monitoring enormous robotic arms as they placed and welded pieces of a large pylon packed with circuitry. "This is Stark Industries," Ranma announced as she put her own hard-hat on. Then she turned and leapt to a gantry suspended high above the floor that was only in the field of view because of how far back it was from the camera.

The video cut to a shot of Ranma standing on the gantry. "Howard Stark, the founder of the company, had a saying: 'everything is achievable through technology.'" She turned her head and nodded toward the floor. The camera angle changed until it took in the entire factory, showing it was truly enormous and very busy with a multitude of projects. "Those naïve dreams? We're building the foundation for them right now. Today!"

Ranma vaulted over the handrail and let herself drop. Another cut scene switched to a chamber containing a large clear ring with actinic blue pulses of energy flowing through it. The martial-artist/spokesperson dropped from above to land effortlessly on the floor next to the early-model Arc reactor. "This is Stark Industries. Here we have the energy technology that will power that future!"

Ranma then looked around herself in some confusion. "I mean..." she took a wide step to the left, and when she was standing straight again the background changed again to show she was standing on a rise overlooking a vast circular field of solar mirrors focused on a pylon in their center. "...Here we have the energy technology of the future! Or maybe..." She side-stepped again, now appearing on the deck of a ship with a row of egg-beater-style wind turbines on wave-splashed pedestals stretching out over the ocean behind her. "Here? Or..." The video switched to a view of Earth's orbit, where a rather sizable array of solar panels stretched out of view. "Maybe it's up here?" Ranma's voice yelled as if from a great distance.

The commercial cut to Ranma standing in a laboratory where several people in lab-coats were working with test tubes and beakers. "Eh... dealer's choice," she said while she spun her hard-hat atop a fingertip, then made the protective wear disappear. "This is Stark Industries. Where we push the frontiers of chemical engineering and materials sciences. Advanced simulations, sensors, and cell culture technology allow testing of a wide variety of substances without the need for human or animal testing. Computer modeling allows perfect neutralization of hazardous waste. Sustainable progress." The camera panned around at the various workstations before returning to Ranma. As soon as it did, she did a back-flip out of frame.

When Ranma came down again, it was to land in the saddle of her SkyBuster high above a desert plain. A huge ring-shaped trench stretched out into the distance with a relatively small complex of buildings atop the near side. Several cranes and other building equipment were seen at various points on the trench. "This is also Stark Industries. Where we are building the next generation of physics research facilities in partnership with MIT, CalTech, and ESU: the Dark-Matter Collider."

The SkyBuster went into a dive, and the camera angle swooped around its back. When the other side of the flying machine came into view, it was over a new site. Spherical lattices of thin tubes made of green metal were suspended at various heights near industrial smokestacks. "This is Stark Industries. Our SyntheTrees take in carbon dioxide, methane, and plastic waste and produce oxygen, electricity, and recycled polymer feedstock."

Ranma leaned in the saddle to turn the SkyBuster toward the camera. When she crossed the frame, another new location appeared. Fields of golden grain waved in the wake of her flight. "This is Stark Industries," she called out over the sound of rushing air. "We make IntelliCrops that can grow all over the world. Too hot? Too cold? Not enough rain? Too much rain? Bugs or diseases? These crops can keep growing no matter what you throw at them! And they'll stabilize the local water tables and ecology while they're at it!"

Another swoop brought an airstrip into view with a jet liner with some unusual features taxiing along it. "This is Stark Industries," Ranma announced as she flew close to the plane and waved. There was a cut to the interior showing the passengers inside wave back as Ranma could be seen passing the windows. "We make technology for next generation civilian aerospace use," Ranma announced as the view returned to following her. "Faster, roomier, cheaper, and greener airliners than before. Plus..." she went into a barrel roll and came out facing a multi-stage rocket that was emitting vapor from its nozzle as it prepared to take off. "Cheaper, more capable satellites launched with lower costs in fuel!" As she finished speaking, the rocket took off, and she peeled away from the expanding exhaust.

The SkyBuster went into a climb, and kept going until it curved back in a loop. At the apex, Ranma gathered herself and leapt straight down off the seat and going into a graceful flip. When she landed on her feet, it was in front of a hospital. "Stark Industries also builds the latest in medical scanning, therapeutic, and prosthetic equipment. As in longer and higher quality of life to enjoy even more of the expanding future." The scene switched to professionals in medical scrubs consulting screens, helping a patient with machine-aided exercises, and with another patient as he took tentative steps at first then later running on a track with an artificial foot.

The view zoomed in on the foot and switched to a wire-frame diagram flexing on a computer screen. The camera faded back to show more screens of other projects and pages of rapidly scrolling code. "Of course, all of this is made possible with cutting edge computer and information technology," Ranma explained from off-screen. Then the view tilted and shifted away, showing the video was being shown on a handheld display. A flick of a thumb switched it to a phone display, then to a repeated view from the camera that was showing the phone, causing an infinitely receding array of duplicate images.

The phone was pulled out of view, and the camera moved back to show Ranma standing in front of the iconic (and fully repaired) Unisphere at the Expo grounds in New York City at night. The camera rose until it was pointing down at her at an angle, and it showed her making obvious gestures on the phone that matched the movements of the camera. A sweep of her finger sent the camera diving toward her and she smoothly stepped out of the way. There was a cutaway to another view that showed the original camera was a flying, spherical drone that swooped up to orbit above the redhead while onboard LED lamps lit up with a series of changing colors. She looked at the new camera, then sent it peeling off into a new flight-path with her phone and another transition showed a second drone following a rotating path counter to the first. She repeated this several times until a half-dozen flying robots were surrounding her and tracing glowing spirals in front of the darkened city skyline while she put her phone away and looked into the camera lens of the last motionless drone.

"This is Stark Industries. Where dreams of the future are given new life. We stand at the forefront of today's technology and also..." Her aura lit up around her, causing her braid and clothes to whip about in the paranormal blaze. With a whoosh, Tony came down to land in a crouch with a clang in his Iron Man armor. As he straightened next to her, Ranma continued with: "...Tomorrow's science! We invite you to join us on this exciting journey!"

Together, both Ranma and Tony chorused: "Step into the future!"

The scene faded back to black before a bright white dot of light traced across the screen to form the Stark Industries logo with 'Step into the future' below it.

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

*** At the Malibu mansion ***

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

"Good morning, Colonel Rhodes."

The deep voice was as posh as poshly Londoner could be. The man from whom that voice emanated was tall, spare, and older than Rhodey by a couple of decades with graying temples showing in his close-cropped hair and a skin tone a couple of shades darker than the Air Force officer's. He wore a bespoke dark-gray suit with what only years of association with Pepper Potts let him recognize was a glencheck pattern cloth, a lush silk burgundy tie, and a black waistcoat that made no concession to the early summer heat. The man who had opened the door to Tony's mansion held himself with a profound dignity that heads of state often tried to achieve, and more often failed.

"Holy crap, you're British!" Rhodey exclaimed.

That elicited a raised eyebrow. "I thank you for the compliment, sir," the stranger intoned urbanely.

"Wait... I mean... you're very, very British," Rhodey chuckled. "Too British for Tony to handle! Heh-heh-heh... let me guess, you're the new assistant Pepper hired? Lt. Colonel James Rhodes," he introduced himself with a hand outstretched, "but you knew that already."

"Indeed, I am Mr. Stark's new assistant, and I have been apprised of all his friends and colleagues, as well as those of Ms. Potts, and of Ms. Saotome," the other man replied as he gave the officer a firm handshake. "My name is Wallace Ainsworth."

"Very, very British," Rhodey repeated, still chuckling. "That's brilliant. That's genius. Shades of Edwin Jarvis. The one man Tony could never bring himself to go against."

The new assistant eyed him impassively. "You are expected, Colonel," he stated as he made way for Rhodey to enter. "Welcome to Casa de la Arrogancia."

Rhodey paused at the threshold, closed his eyes, and groaned. "Please don't tell me he actually went and named the mansion that."

"Mr. Stark did not. He merely instructed me to greet you in such a manner." Nothing in Ainsworth's expression revealed any hint of his opinion regarding those orders as he closed the door behind the pilot. "He and Ms. Saotome are waiting for you in the work room downstairs. Could I fetch you anything? Coffee? Tea?"

"'Ms. Saotome?' Okaaay. Anyway..." Rhodey sighed in exasperation. "Coffee," he decided. "Very strong coffee, please. I'm going to need it."

"Very good, sir." The assistant agreed and strode toward the kitchen.

Shaking his head, Rhodes descended the stairway to his friend's favorite playroom. Pausing at the glass door, he looked through and saw Tony and Ranma were sitting at their desks and peering with serious and intent expressions at something outside his view. They both were wearing 'Science-Fu!' T-shirts... Tony's was red and Ranma's blue... and they gave off an impression of perfect, sober professionalism. It wasn't the kind of look Tony wore often, and the last time he did...

This was going to be bad, wasn't it?

Mentally bracing himself, Rhodes palmed the biometric scanner and punched in his code before letting himself in. "Alright guys, what is it you wanted me to come over to... JEEESUS CHRIST!" He abruptly shielded the side of his face with his hands, blocking off the holographic display and its highly disturbing content. "What the hell is that!"

"That..." Tony drawled, "is a recording from the 3-D camera of the drone we sent into Ranma's Stuff-Space pocket. Well... the second drone. We kind of lost the first one when I programmed it to move around in there."

"So glad I made a new Stuff-Space pocket for that," Ranma interjected while smirking at Rhodey's reaction. "Would have lost some things I wanted to keep if I hadn't. Never seen a pocket just go away like that before. When I was learning, stuff would just pop out if I messed it up."

"It's... gah..." Rhodey peeked around his fingers and instantly flinched back behind them again. Squinting and contorting his face, he hesitantly tried again, blinking heavily to reduce the exposure to smaller increments as he took in the unearthly display. "Are those angles or curves?"

"A little of one, a little of the other... a whole lot of neither," Tony declared casually. "Fascinating, isn't it?"

"'Fascinating?'" Rhodey echoed incredulously. "It looks like an Escher painting molested a Mandelbrot set, then invited Cthulu for sloppy seconds!" His distraught description caused the inventor to break down in laughter. "Stop laughing and get rid of it! I swear my eyes are about to explode from looking at that shit!"

Ranma rolled her eyes and said: "Wimp."

"I'll be the wimp! I'm fine with being the wimp! Just get rid of it!"

Wiping tears of hilarity from his eyes, Tony agreed gracelessly: "Yeah, yeah, fine." Pointing at the hologram, he whipped his hand toward Ranma, causing the image to compress itself and zip over to her visor. "Here. You keep working on that, Ranma."

"Uh... right. I'll take care of it." Ranma looked determined, but a little unsure of herself.

"You'll be fine without my sticking my oar in for a while," Tony assured her. "Just keep doing what you've been doing and make notes of what you can observe. JARVIS will always help if you really need it." Seeing her nod more firmly, he turned back to his friend. "All better now?"

"Yeah," Rhodey agreed wearily as he rubbed at his eyes. "Christ. Is it really OK to leave it to her?" he asked while nodding at the martial artist who was making typing motions at high speed on empty air.

Looking offended, Tony stated: "Ranma has been picking up the lab-assistant routine just fine, believe me. She's doing a great job! Especially considering where she was starting from!"

"I actually meant the part where you set her to studying something that looks like it would put someone's mind through a blender," Rhodey corrected dryly. "Having someone like her have a psychotic break seems like a spectacularly bad idea."

"You really are a wimp," Tony sighed. "It's not that bad. You just need to be more perceptive and have some understanding of what you're looking at."

"Or start out crazy. I bet that'd help," Rhodes joked sarcastically. Then his brows furrowed and he asked: "Is she actually all that helpful? She was a homeless dropout two months ago."

"'She' is still here. And 'she' can still hear you just fine," Ranma stated warningly.

"Calm down. Calm down," Tony said soothingly. "He is being technically accurate. If obnoxious."

"Which I'm pretty sure is the best kind of accurate, Tony," Rhodes snarked.

"Well... heh... maybe so." Tony shrugged and addressed the martial artist. "What he doesn't realize... though he should, since I told him about this... is that your perceptions and reactions are about a hundred times faster than baseline human. What should then be obvious is that your thoughts are similarly a hundred times faster."

"I thought that was only when Ranma's in combat mode?" Rhodey asked. "Like how time slows down when an AAM is closing in."

"Tachypsychia," Tony said with a clinical tone, then shook his head. "No. I mean Ranma's a hundred times faster even when just sitting around being calm."

"More like I can be, but I don't usually stay that revved up all the time," Ranma corrected with what could have been a measure of humbleness... if it weren't for her smirk at the positive description her employer was delivering.

"OK, so you usually coast along at... what? A quarter your max?" Seeing her shrug in agreement, Tony turned a knowing look back toward Rhodey. "Riiight. So at a mere 25-times normal, she can effectively pack in a couple of years worth of reading and studying in a month." He shrugged himself. "As long as someone can keep feeding her information and responding to her learning needs at that speed anyway. Which JARVIS can do. Keeping that in mind, is it really that surprising she's getting caught up?"

"I guess not," Rhodes conceded. "Whatever. You all can do the mad-scientist shtick if you want. All I want is for you to never spring something like that on me again. Or at least give me some warning as if you had something resembling a shred of decency."

"I'd have been happy to tell you all about it in advance if you'd shown up sometime... anytime... recently," Tony informed him archly. "You've fucked off entirely since we told you about the Jusenkyo thing. You didn't even bother to come by for my Fourth of July party."

"Another big party in a month and a half?" Rhodey questioned tiredly. "Some of us have to work for a living."

"You didn't take Independence Day off?" Tony gasped in feigned umbrage. "How unpatriotic! Is that allowed?"

"Exigencies of service," Rhodey countered. "Not something you would know about." The billionaire waved off the dig nonchalantly. "Though I'm probably lucky I missed it. How drunk did you have to get before you thought that was a good idea?" he asked as he jerked his head toward where the display had been.

"I'll have you know, I barely had half a dozen beers the entire afternoon and evening," Tony retorted. "You should have come. We did all these repulsor-boosted fireworks while Ranma did a mid-air sword-dance in among the explosions. It was great!" She had used the SkyBuster to get altitude before hopping off, then stayed in the air by kicking off the pyrotechnics just before they exploded.

"You two are nuts," Rhodes told them flatly. "Exhibit A." He pointed at the empty holographic display again.

"Wimp," Ranma repeated idly.

"That..." Rhodes raised a finger in front of his face in protest, then folded it back down into a clenched fist that shook with indignation. "That thing was not meant for human eyes," he declared.

"Heh. Ranma kind of has a point." Tony smirked. "Pepper didn't have that much of a problem. Once we told her it was modern art, she thought it was great!"

"Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously," Ranma spoke up with a laborious tone. "Modern art really is that messed up. At least the Stuff-Space has an excuse of screwy dimensions. Dunno what those so-called artists were thinking."

Tony snorted a laugh. "Ranma hasn't been too receptive to Pep's little passion, much to her despair."

"Hey, I liked that Haggin Museum place!" Ranma defended herself.

"You mean all the stuff that was from before 1900?"

"Yeah! Back when art was good!"

Tony snickered at the brutally honest feedback. "Unfortunately, that doesn't count in Pepper's eyes. She just adores the newer junk. The uglier, the better."

"I remember you buying a lot of that junk," Rhodes pointed out. "Why'd you do it if you think they're ugly?

"Sure I bought 'em... to stick in a vault. Not to look at," Tony shrugged. "Not my fault other rich people think the sillier and more overpriced something is, the better. They're like the perfect investment. The more you bid for them now, the greater multiplier their worth is guaranteed to increase by later."

"There something wrong with making something with actual skill?" Ranma snarked.

"Now Ranma... only filthy, ignorant peasants think something is good just because someone with talent and expertise tried hard to make it look appealing or evocative," Tony explained pompously. "If you want to fit in with your betters, you need to learn to bullshit about the appeal of ugly, overpriced crap." Ranma shot him a look that showed she knew he was joking, but was tempted to wreak some minor vengeance anyway.

"I'm not getting into that," Rhodes waved his hands to try to head off that discussion.

"You haven't been getting into anything, recently," Tony criticized. "Not only did you miss the party, but you missed... wait, hang on," Tony interrupted himself and got up from his desk. He hurried over to the door where Ainsworth could be seen descending the stairs. The imposing assistant was carrying a tray that held a glass carafe of coffee in an ornate frame, a small cream pitcher, a globular glass bowl of molasses, some small pastries, and a sectioned bowl containing cinnamon sticks and other assorted spices. Opening the door, he took a deep whiff and said: "Oh, man, that smells good, Wallace."

"I am glad to hear that, sir," the assistant replied as he walked in.

"Whoa... that coffee does smell good," Rhodes chimed in when he caught the scent. He jumped a bit when he realized Ranma had somehow gotten past him and was standing with an eager expression next to the counters in the corner.

"Colonel Rhodes was the one to request refreshment, but I felt you and Ms. Saotome would appreciate some as well, Mr. Stark," Ainsworth explained as he set his burden down on a counter top.

"Definitely," Tony agreed as he and Ranma nodded. "Wallace makes a fantastic cup of coffee. Though he's Luddite as all hell sometimes." He nodded toward the frame holding the carafe which had a holder for a candle below the glass container to provide heat. As if to punctuate his employer's point, the assistant took out an old-fashioned box of matches and struck one to light the candle. "We've got electrically heated jugs to keep things warm already, but he insisted on that setup."

"Old ways are the best ways," Ranma stated. "A lot of the time, anyway."

"I do believe my results speak for themselves, Mr. Stark," Ainsworth said. He gave Rhodes a searching look, then set to pouring coffee and stirring in additives.

Rhodey started to offer: "I usually like my coffee with..."

Ranma interrupted him. "Don't even bother. Ainsworth-San's got this."

"You'll note that the formality-averse Ranma uses 'San' for him. There's a reason for that," Stark added.

"Colonel," Ainsworth spoke up as he offered a small dish with a mug and a fluffy little pastry on it.

"Thank you very much," Rhodes said as he accepted the dish. He immediately took a sip, then froze. Lowering the mug, he stared reverently at it and said: "Damn, that's good!" He had no idea coffee could taste like that... it absolutely blew the pretentious coffee shops he'd frequented out of the water.

"Yup!" Tony agreed. "Where's mine?"

"A moment, please, Mr Stark," Ainsworth replied even as he was working on the next mug. Soon enough he presented the treat to his employer. However, as Tony reached for it, he pulled it back, making Tony whine in the back of his throat, and said: "I just remembered, Mr. Stark. Ms. Potts asked me to remind you that you will need to meet with the EncounterSuit DFM at the office this afternoon." Rhodes snerked into his coffee when he realized what the new hire was doing.

"Ugh... EncounterSuits are so last-week. Can't they handle the fiddly little stuff themselves?" The reply was a censorious shake of the head from his new assistant. "Fine. Whatever... I'll be there, sure," Tony said distractedly and unconvincingly as he tried to reach for the coffee but was politely rebuffed.

"Mr. Stark..." Ainsworth remonstrated with a patient, yet firm tone.

Tony looked him in the eye and promised in a serious tone: "I'll be there, I swear! DFM meeting! Very important!" He made weak clutching motions at the drink. "Now gimme!" After a moment, the assistant judged him to be earnest and relented. As the inventor claimed his treat, his eyes opened wide while he hissed: "My precioussss..." His clowning ended with a blissful expression as he also partook of his new favorite caffeine delivery system.

Ranma looked nervous enough that it showed even with her visor down as her share of the brown nectar was being prepared. "Am I forgetting anything I need to do?" she wondered.

"I do not believe so, Ms. Saotome," Ainsworth answered. To confirm his words, he readily handed over her dish and mug. "The extra work requested by Professor Nokken has been couriered to New York and your EB-1 LPR paperwork is complete and submitted with Immigration. There are no meetings scheduled for you specifically until the interviews for your social media manager that start the day after tomorrow."

"Right. Thanks, Ainsworth-San," she said happily as she dunked the puff pastry into her coffee and took a rapturous bite.

"EB-1? That sounds familiar. What is it again?" Rhodes asked.

"'Aliens with extraordinary ability,'" Tony quoted. "Special category of green card for immigrants who have a special talent. Like Hulk-busting, for instance." His friend nodded slowly as he took that in. "We probably could have gotten her in just based on being employed in a high-paying job, like Wallace over there, but the lawyers say the EB-1 is better."

"Right... she definitely qualifies," Rhodey agreed between sips. "Though now that I think of it, maybe there should be a new category for her."

"Maybe," Tony shrugged. "But 'extraordinary ability' will do for now." He smirked and added: "I'd love to see the anti-immigration bigot who objects to it. We could ask him: 'have you punched out any gigantic monsters recently? Like... in this lifetime?'"

While they were talking, Ainsworth was rearranging the coffee service to his liking. "Lady and gentleman, please let me know when you would like a refill. I shall resume my other tasks in the meantime," he announced. Then he pulled out another Stark-HUD and a tablet computer the size of a paperback book from the inside pockets of his blazer and started working with them even as he stood at the ready next to the counter.

"And that's another reason Wallace fits in so well around here," Tony commented with a gesture of his mug. "Old school and high-tech."

"And able to lay down the law, too, I see," Rhodes tacked on with a smirk. "Where'd you find him? Supernanny?"

"He was in charge of our London office," Tony informed him. Seeing the surprised look from his friend, he went on: "Yep. VP of Operations – Stark Industries Europe. Has degrees in economics and management from King's College. He even applied for the job himself, we didn't headhunt him. He's a widower and all his kids have graduated to become doctors and lawyers and such, so he decided to get himself a change of scenery. Kind of a semi-retirement thing, I guess. He's been keeping up with us pretty well, though."

"Jeez. How much were you offering to make him switch from management to babysitting?"

"Hell, I don't know," Tony shrugged. "Whatever Pepper thought was fair for putting up with me."

"So... a lot," Rhodes speculated ruefully.

"A lot-a lot," Ranma contributed knowingly.

"Eh... probably," Tony conceded without a care.

"Anyway, what was I saying?"

"Rhodes missed something," Ranma prompted.

"Ohhh... yeah... heh-heh-heh," Tony chuckled evilly. "You missed the golf game I invited you to, too. You really should have showed up.'

"Uh-huh," Rhodey did not seem at all impressed for some reason. "You hate golf."

"Not anymore!" Tony insisted. "It's the best game I've ever played in my life, now!"

"Right, and what was your score, Tony?" the lieutenant colonel asked with a dreary tone to make it clear he wasn't at all interested.

"My score?" Tony laid a hand on his chest with a massive grin. "I have no idea! I stopped counting after I hit a hundred. I was laughing too hard to play right! The question you should be asking is: how did Ranma do?"

"Uh-oh," Rhodey's apathetic expression was washed away by trepidation. "What did you do?"

"I scored seventeen." Ranma shrugged nonchalantly. The corner of her mouth quirked up as she saw Ainsworth shiver a little at the reminder of her blasphemy.

"On a nine-hole course?" Rhodes frowned. "Wow. That is good. Damn good. So you managed a hole-in-one? I guess it's not too surprising with some of the stuff you've done."

"No, you're missing the point," Tony corrected. "She scored a seventeen on a full eighteen-hole course."

"Uh... what the hell?"

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

*** Two weeks previous ***

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

"You know... you're losing too," it was pointed out to Tony by one of his golf partners, a congressman from California.

"I don't think he cares," the other player, the CEO of a company that supplied materials to Stark Industries, pointed out.

"Oh, I definitely don't care," Tony snickered. He really did detest golf, but due to its popularity with the rich and powerful, his father had insisted he learn to play... which was a big part of the reason he detested the game. Pepper had coerced him into playing for the sake of the corporation... networking, lobbying, and all that rot... but that didn't mean he couldn't make it fun for himself when he had a chance.

That fun came in the form of a short, stacked redhead strolling beside him with her hands clasped behind her head, looking as bored as she was decorative. She wore a white polo and a plaid, pleated skirt that barely reached more than half-way down her thighs, along with white golf shoes. The ensemble evoked sexy catholic school girl as much as it did lady golfer, and he'd been a little surprised to learn she had picked it out herself. Appreciative... but surprised.

The other men in their group seemed to feel the same way. The congressman's comment was as close to a complaint as they got, even as she trounced them thoroughly. Her score currently stood at fifteen, having scored a hole in one every single time, and they were ambling toward the sixteenth tee. Ranma ignored them as she cast a lazy eye over the green and picked out the flag marking the hole. Then she frowned as she noticed a curiosity of the particular course they were near.

"Hey, the next hole is pretty close to that one," she said aloud.

"Yeah, that's how it works out sometimes," Tony explained. "The seventeen on this course is a little annoying the way you have to backtrack." Noting her thoughtful expression, his now omnipresent grin broadened. "What are you thinking?"

"Well... they're right next to each other," Ranma pointed out. "Might as well just get them both."

"You can't tee off on the wrong hole, and you definitely can't use two balls at once," the CEO pointed out.

"That's not what I'm planning."

"I think I get it," Tony cackled as he brought out his tablet from the golf bag. "Good thing I brought the extra drones. You need for me to remove the flags?"

"Just the first flag."

"On it." He punched in a few commands, and two of the drones that had been following them at a hover raced out, one tier-1 camera drone and one tier-2. The larger drone deployed manipulator arms to pull the sixteenth flag clear and fly out of the way while the camera drone went over to the seventeenth hole.

"No way... no way!" The businessman seemed to get an inkling of Ranma's intent. The elected official still looked confused.

"Hey Tony, can I borrow another club?" Ranma asked as she set her ball, the lone piece of equipment she had bothered to acquire, on the blue tee, infusing it with her Ki in a variation of Ryoga's trick with bandannas. She had not been too impressed when told she wasn't allowed to throw, kick, or punch the ball across the fairway, but she'd make do.

"Sure... here you go!" he offered with a smile.

"The putter? Again?" the congressman asked wearily. He shook his head and added: "And that grip?!"

"What's wrong with it? It's been working!" Tony replied gleefully as his employee held the golf-club like it was a baseball bat and gave it a few practice swings. "Besides, she's a foot shorter than me... she wouldn't be able to use it the proper way anyway."

"You guys might want to step back a bit," Ranma advised them. The men promptly gathered around where Tony was displaying video of the target green on his tablet, well back from whatever it was the martial artist was going to do.

Once she made sure they were clear, the Ki-adept sprang into action. "Hiyah!" she yelled as she flipped over the tee, striking the ball when she was upside-down above it. Thk-KOOOM! The backblast from the ball's passage ruffled collars and hair as it rocketed out in a wide curve that terminated directly on target into the hole. DRRRRRRRTTTT! They could hear the ball of in the distance, as well as watch it make a circular blur on the drone feed, as it orbited inside the cup at extreme speed. POW! After spiraling down to the bottom and back up again, it was ejected from the first hole with enough force to make the air pop. The white ball lofted high over the water hazard between the two holes and arced down to the seventeenth green.

Tony swiped at his display to bring up the video from the other drone. The three men watched with bated breath as the ball as it rolled steadily over the close-cut grass toward the hole. It was going fast enough that they were worried it would just bounce out, but instead it hit the flagpole to bounce up a bit, then roll down the shaft to lodge between it and the wall of the cup.

"Yes!" Tony yelled exuberantly as he threw his hands in the air, the other two men cheering as well. "Whoops!" he exclaimed as the portable computer went flying.

Ranma leapt to catch it and landed beside him. "Here's this," she said blandly as she returned the tablet to him. "And here's this," she proffered the club. "I'm gonna go get my ball."

"Right," Tony said absently as he instructed one of the drones still nearby to follow her with its camera. Something that proved worthwhile as she skimmed across the water hazard in three leaps.

"You know that wasn't legal, right?" the CEO pointed out. "It might have gone below the lip of the cup, but it never came to rest in the sixteenth hole." They watched as Ranma carefully pressed the pole of the flag to the side enough for the ball to fall the way down before she retrieved it. "And you really can't hit on the course from any old where."

"This is true," Tony snickered. "For that matter, I don't think flying camera-bots are in the rules either. But we aren't pros... we aren't even really betting. We all knew I was going to be paying for drinks in the clubhouse anyway. So here's what you gotta ask yourself: do you want to be able to go down to the clubhouse and boast about participating in history's first... hey, Ranma! Are you ever playing this game again?"

"I doubt it," Ranma said as she returned to the group. "Too boring. Hazards aren't hazardous. Need sharks with lasers."

"Heh... right," Tony smirked. "So make that... do you want to boast about history's first and only seventeen-stroke golf game? With video evidence?" He hefted his computer for emphasis. "For years? Or do you want to play rules lawyer? You know she's gonna nail the eighteenth too, right?"

The two other men exchanged a considering look, then directed bland expressions at the inventor.

"Seventeen it is," they agreed in tandem.

Later on, Pepper would sigh in exasperation, but she was still happy at how thoroughly the networking mission was accomplished.

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

*** Present time ***

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

Rhodey was giving the two miscreants a long-suffering look. Ranma ignored him as she went back to analyzing the probe results, but Tony just looked the more delighted the more his friend glared at him. When Ainsworth broke the standoff by offering a refill, the pilot gave up and rolled his eyes. "OK, fine... that was a little cool." He shook his head at how Tony snickered at the admission.

"So that's the sort of thing you've been missing out on," Tony told him. "You've stayed away ever since we told you about the Jusenkyo thing. Are you that freaked out about it? You did faint."

"I did not faint!" Rhodey protested with exasperation.

"If Ranma hadn't held you up, you would've been on the ground!" Tony exclaimed. "It took a couple light slaps to get you tracking! I know you're from the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' generation, but c'mon! Get a grip!"

"That wasn't the reason...! Wait... you promised you wouldn't bring it up again!" Rhodey protested.

"Bring up... what? 'Fainting?' I didn't... I don't remember anything about 'fainting'..." Tony muttered semi-coherently. He gestured at his new bodyguard. "R-Ranma... do you remember promising something about 'fainting'... no?" She shook her head absently without looking his way. "I don't... we don't remember promising not to say 'fainting' again. Sorry. And uh... in conclusion... 'fainting.'"

Tony was in rare form, so that meant Rhodes closed his eyes while counting to ten. Knowing better, he didn't dwell and pushed forward after opening his eyes again. "Uh-huh... well... for your information, I wasn't staying away because of Ranma's... gender issues." The hesitant way he expressed himself did get a raised eyebrow from the Ki-adept. "I stayed away, because you... Tony... had the same look on your face when you laid that on me as you do now!"

"You're... you're too suspicious," Tony said mournfully. "I just wanted to show you all the cool shit we've been working on. C'mon, it's literally in your job description as liaison."

Rhodey had to sigh at that. It was, in fact, true that Tony had snookered the brass years before into ordering the colonel to keep tabs on all the new technology the inventor produced. And no one had ever actually rescinded that order. On the contrary, his superiors were even more interested than ever in what Tony was doing. "Fine." Giving in once again, he followed his problematic friend over to the work benches, Ranma trailing behind them. All of them made certain to hang on to their coffees. "I hope you've come up with something a bit more useful than finding out what it looks like when the abyss gazes back at you," he quipped.

"Hey!" Tony whirled around and jabbed a finger at him. "I'll have you know we're doing some super-important science stuff with that!"

"What? Finding out how to administer an overdose of LSD through the eyes?"

"No..." Tony shook his head disparagingly. "Finding out how the superstructure of the universe works, thank you very much."

"Oh yeah? And what have you found out?"

"Well... we found out if you turn on a light inside Ranma's Stuff-Space, the photons travel in like curlicues," he moved his index fingers in crazy spirals, "while all the sub-atomic particles instantly accelerate to plaid while still maintaining their position relative to a fixed point." He took in his guest's incredulous expression. "I'm still working on the layman's description. It's a work in progress, OK?"

"It makes a bit more sense mathematically," Ranma offered. "Kind of? But... yeah... we're working on it."

"And she actually understands this stuff?" Rhodey asked skeptically while nodding at the girl who had been hired as a bodyguard in the first place before adding on spokesmodel. She narrowed her eyes at him, then scoffed and looked away disdainfully.

"More than you do," Tony countered. "She's got a special insight and she keeps learning. I'd say there aren't more than one or two hundred people in the world who understand it better. Of course," Tony buffed his fingernails on the front of his T-shirt in a self-congratulatory way, "there are maybe two or three people in the world who get this better than me! And they ain't building stuff like I am! Won't be long before I'm the uncontested number-one and I'll be damned if Ranma doesn't get up to being number-two in time!"

"She hasn't even graduated high-school," Rhodey pointed out.

"So?" Tony asked archly. "If anybody's proven how blinkered the modern educational system's ideas of advancement are, it's me! Trust me! She's got quite the multi-axis abacus in her head!"

"Is that even a thing?" Rhodey asked with a perplexed frown.

"It's just math," Ranma interjected. "It's easy! Are some things bigger than other things? Are there higher counts of some things than other things? Do you move? Does your heart beat? Does the world breathe? Math is easy!"

"Uh..." Rhodey aimed a raised eyebrow at his friend, "does that make any sense at all?"

"Yes," Tony said soberly. "Indeed, there are things that are larger than other things. I'm glad I was here to explain that to you." Smirking at the pilot's exasperated expression. "The rest of it makes sense too... to martial artists and high-level mathematicians. Ranma made up her own frame of reference, but it was valid. I'll explain that later," he said while waving his hands impatiently. "The thing you need to know now is we're dealing with stuff like what happened femtoseconds into the creation of the universe. Seriously weird shit," Tony said. "I'm looking in to poaching somebody from CERN to help out. There was this one dude from Norway I wanted to talk to, but he's fallen off the map after something SHIELD did in New Mexico. Plus the thing with Banner. I might have to do something someday about how the governments been scaring away all the big-brains recently."

"Well don't ask me," Rhodey held up his free hand defensively. "And please tell me you're working on something that won't abuse my brain like a taffy puller. Something useful?"

"Something more in your strike range? OK, uh..." Tony turned towards one of the clear glass walls/monitors he favored so much. It was showing something like a high-tech whiteboard with 'Projects' at the top and hand-written notes and doodles in glowing lines scattered all over. "How about an electrical cell that can run a car from one side of the continental United States to the other? Or power your house for a month? Or one of the bigger bulldozers for over twenty hours? And it can recharge from zero to full in half an hour with a special crash charging station I'm also designing?"

"Sounds kind of boring," Rhodey said honestly. "You've already given me an Arc reactor."

"Loaned you an Arc reactor," Tony corrected pointedly, "and you're not getting the point. This wouldn't be an Arc reactor. Vanko proved those are way too dangerous to leave floating around unmonitored. I mean a battery that can be used and recharged in the field. This came directly from the Stuff-Space study you were just talking down. While we were playing around with cathode ray scanning, we stumbled over an effect where two N-dimensional pockets arc over... as in electrical 'arc,' not my reactor... between each other."

The inventor strode over to a holographic display and started drawing two boxes with with his finger, one above the other. Then he drew a line from each off to the side where they intersected at an acute angle and drew a circle with rough impression of the North American continent in it. "Make two N-folds with Arc reactors... call 'em 'high' and 'low'... that almost intersect each other in real-space. Repulsor energy imparts force on baryonic matter already, so it can be tuned to zap some electrons over the event horizons of each fold..."

"Wait... so you would need an Arc reactor for this scheme anyway?" Rhodey questioned. "Assuming it even worked, why bother?"

Tony made a cutting gesture. "Only to build the folds in the first place. After they're set up, we can use a phase adjuster to bend the pseudo-angle and some seriously wild shit starts happening with them. Their effective electrical constants will change relative to each other and to the normal universe." He drew a few circles with minus-signs in them in each box, then grabbed the sides of the angle in the three-dimensional display and nudged them into a wider angle, causing the vertical distance between the boxes to increase. "Imagine that the 'low' fold starts losing electrons and develops quasi-fermion inversions, while the 'high' fold takes in the excess." Flicking his finger, he moved most of the minus-circles up from the lower box to the upper, then drew some squares with plus-signs in them to replace them in their original location.

"Just pointing out... this would be a lot more accurate if Tony sketched it in five spatial dimensions and one fractional spatio-temporal dimension... plus the usual time dimension, too," Ranma interjected.

"What she said!" Tony agreed while pointing over his shoulder at his lab-assistant. Getting more excited, he continued to explain: "This creates a potential differential... and here comes the cool part! If you create a circuit..." he drew a zigzagging line between the two boxes, "then the electrons flow from 'high' to 'low' and you've got current! Best of all, as the electrons move back over..." he pulled negative-marked circles down to the positive squares, and JARVIS obligingly made the squares disappear, "the fractal phase pseudo-angle shrinks back down to what it was originally! Like a cosmic spring made of pure space-time!" Cued by his voice, the computer display caused the boxes to approach each other again, narrowing the drawn angle.

Crossing his arms in satisfaction, Tony added: "At this point, the phase adjuster can use a conventional generator for power to open the distance again, but it's not actually pulling a larger total number of electrons into it's system, just shifting the numbers it's already got. Kind of like the weights in a grandfather clock. When not running a load, the phase adjuster runs on parasitic power to maintain the folds. So it will run out of juice eventually, but that will take years without recharge according to my calculations. Also, if the adjuster is destroyed, the folds just go ffffft." He waggled a hand in emphasis. "No big electrical discharge. No explosion. No fire. Just a whole lot of literal nothing as far as the sidereal universe is concerned. Not like conventional batteries or flammable fuel-powered vehicles. Just think how much safer that would be in the field!"

Rhodey rolled his eyes. As a fellow graduate of MIT, he followed the explanation well enough, but he still wasn't impressed. "That all sounds... vaguely nifty, I guess? How about you mention it to me again later? After you do the ten or twenty years of R&D you'll need to get it working. If you get it working."

Tony gave him a flat, disappointed look, to which the colonel did not look in the least repentant. "There's one sitting on that bench over there," the resident super-genius finally said, leaning around some of the equipment to point at the object in question. "15,000 kilowatt hours... ready to go. And that's just the smallest one we can make so far. They scale up real well."

"Seriously?" Rhodes turned to look at the power cell. It was about three times the size of a standard 12-volt car battery, but much smaller than the arrays of cells used in the electric cars he'd seen in Popular Mechanics.

"As it turns out, having someone ready and willing to demonstrate Arc-adjacent abilities at all hours of the day really helps when developing this kind of technology. Especially when the same person is rapidly learning the math behind it all. Go figure," Tony shrugged.

"And it works?" Rhodes queried. "I thought you were nowhere near storing stuff with Ranma's little magic trick."

"He's not," Ranma spoke up smugly. "Martial arts for the win. Still."

"Hey!" Tony protested as he sent the Japanese expatriate a wounded look. "It takes time to re-write everything we know about physics! Give me a few months, yeah? Besides," he slowly smirked back, "you're my assistant. If I'm not succeeding, that means you're not succeeding. So much for 'Ranma Saotome don't lose,' huh? Huh?"

Ranma twisted up her face in annoyance. "Dang it."

Chuckling at the point he scored, Tony turned his attention back to his friend. "She's got a point too, though. We..." he made a point of waving to himself and Ranma, "haven't managed to push actual stuff as in atomic matter through an N-dimensional interface yet with a machine. It might take a year or two to pull that off. But electrons? Those hop right on across! This setup is pretty robust, it doesn't look like regular users will have a problem with day-to-day operation. Quality control's been a bit of an issue though. We're having trouble making the units uniform. I think that's because we're using Arc reactors to make the folds... they're like using crowbars for hammers. That works, but there's gotta be a more elegant way. And I'm not happy with the efficiency of the charging cycle yet. Also, the voltage isn't constant as the phase-angle collapses, so good transformers are a must..."

"Tony!" Rhodes broke the impending flood of techno-minutiae with practiced efficiency.

"...Anyway" The genius got himself back on track. "I've got a few dozen of the N-Cells in a factory running the fabricators so I can see how well they hold up. No problems with degradation at all so far no matter how hard we work 'em or how often we go from 100% to zero effective charge. Regular batteries can't do that. The N-Cells weigh a lot less than regular batteries, too. I don't mean they weigh less than a bank of Lithium-Ion cells that can hold an equivalent amount of energy. I mean they weigh a tenth of the things they put in hybrid and electric vehicles, but store ten times as much power! Also they don't use much in the way of rare earths, so they're gonna get pretty cheap and plentiful once production gets ramped up.

Worried when the phrase 'cheap and plentiful' was applied to powerful new technology, Rhodes asked: "Can't someone weaponize them pretty easily?"

"More easily than gasoline?" Tony answered with a rhetorical question. "But actually, it would be pretty much impossible to do something like that. The voltage output has a max cap due to the phase adjuster, so if you break that regulator, all that charge you were trying to get at suddenly and silently vanishes away. Can't hack the control chip either, or the same thing happens when it loses the addresses for the folds. The best you can do is hook it up to something that lets you feed the electricity into a capacitor or Marx generator, or make it run a motor, or something, but a regular generator can do that too."

"I remember you mentioning 'crash charging,'" Rhodey pointed out. "That sounds a little dangerous."

"Annnd... it is," Tony admitted. "But that's only for the charging, and only if it needs to be done fast. Really fast. Most of the time, you'd just plug it onto a 220-volt bus and let it get topped off overnight. For the fast version, we may need to bring back the 'full service' service station where trained professionals operate the charger. Maybe. We'll see. It would also help a lot if we had some fusion reactors on the grid."

"You're talking fusion now?" Rhodey asked skeptically. "How does martial arts tie into that?"

"It doesn't. Don't look at me." Ranma was quick to wave a hand in front of her face to deny any responsibility.

"No, that's not a Arc or Ki project," Tony clarified. "Probably. It's just something that's not too far from my mind. It would make somany things so much easier if we had it." He paused thoughtfully, then shook his head. "Arc is good enough for my purposes now, but I need to focus on fusion one of these days. That would be something I wouldn't hesitate to release to the general public. Today is not that day, however. Something that is on the table is direct heat to electricity conversion if we can figure out another of Ranma's little tricks."

"And if I figure out the trick myself. Theory's good, but I haven't actually done anything but heat-to-Ki yet," Ranma admitted.

"Uh-huh," Rhodes failed to conceal his disinterest.

"Hmm..." Tony rubbed his chin musingly. "Tough audience. Well... being military, I guess you'd only go for the whiz-bang stuff. How about... Iron Man-Fu?"

"Iron Man... what?" Rhodes incredulously.

"Iron Man-Fu. Noun. The series of NLUI-assisted close-combat protocols using Arc energy and repulsor-boosted movements and strikes!" Tony explained cheerfully. "Useful for anything from rendering some random mook unconscious to going toe-to-toe with the Hulk."

"Oh!" Rhodey was fairly surprised by that. He'd honestly started to think he'd only been invited over to waste his time. "Actually, that sounds interesting. And fun. When are we doing that?"

Tony held up his hands in a stopping gesture. "Hang on, hang on... there's no way the War Machine armor would be able to pull this off."

"Then why even mention it to me," Rhodey asked with resumed annoyance.

"Why did I mention it? Why indeed?" Tony tapped his chin a few times, drawing things out. Then he snapped his fingers. "I remember! It's just the War Machine Mark I armor that has that problem! The Mark II is totally Fu-ready!"

"Mark... II...?" Rhodes haltingly asked in shock.

"Yeah, you know the one." Tony smiled winsomely while he pointed at a metal cylinder set in the wall that Rhodey hadn't noticed earlier. It obligingly rotated to reveal a new suit done in the black and silver colors the military had picked when they'd confiscated the previous armor. It immediately struck him as more finished and better engineered than what he had, and looked a bit bigger and more intimidating. "The one with twin Arc reactors... the SlyDr drive for ground movement... mini-missiles that actually work..." Rhodes flinched at the reminder of a tank-buster that turned out to be more of a tank-plinker at a highly inopportune time during a recent mission. It turned out there was a downside to keeping Hammer's tech after the billionaire defense contractor was arrested. His friend noted the reaction and his grin widened as he continued: "A far more secure electronics suite... better anti-tamper protocols... more powerful and more reliable guns than that crap Hammer tacked on~. You know... the Mark II."

Rhodey shook his head in awe. "You're giving us a second set of power-armor?"

"Give? No-no-no," Tony said with an irritated tone. "This is still a loan! And it's strictly a trade-in deal! Old suit for new suit!"

"Ah, right..." Rhodey realized that had been a bridge too far just after he'd said it. "I suppose that's... did you say 'anti-tamper'?"

"Yyyyep," Tony confirmed with renewed enthusiasm. "Bio-locked to be used by you only and resistant to any new hijacking attempts."

"And that would coincidentally prevent anyone from back-engineering the technology in order to duplicate it, huh?"

"Purely coincidentally, yah."

Rhodey leveled a deadpan look at Tony. Studying the technology had been on his superiors' agendas for a while, but they hadn't found anyone who could make much progress yet. He suspected, but could not prove, that they had tried to bring in Justin Hammer despite his felonious status, but of course the real person who had initially cracked the armor systems had been Ivan Vanko, who was very dead. It looked like the inventor was making a move to protect his technology in ways that certain generals would not appreciate. Then again, the official word was still that they only wanted the armor to have a reliable backup to Iron Man. So... "OK, I can swing a trade. I'll head out to base and fly the armor over today."

"No you aren't," Ranma said with a tone that was indifferent, but unwavering.

"Say what?"

"Now, now... let's not be too abrupt," Tony interceded. "Ranma just means there are a couple of provisos before a trade can be made."

"Ohhh... boy," Rhodey sighed in trepidation. "What?"

"The fact is, I wouldn't feel right if I let you use the Mark IIarmor without extensive combat testing in it. With my in-house close combat expert and developer of the Iron Man-Fu techniques," Tony nodded toward Ranma. The indicated Ki-adept was directing a gaze of aloof regard at Rhodey. Much like the lazy attention of a tiger idly considering whether to murder the absolute fuck out of whatever hapless forest creature had gained her attention.

"Ah... you know? Never mind, then," the Air Force officer tried to back out.

"Now, now... what kind of friend would I be if I left you out of such a... character building opportunity?" Tony crooned maliciously. "Especially since we'd get such lovely data from all the ways you got pummeled. Don't think of it as painful humiliation, think of it as a learning opportunity!"

"I think..." Rhodey started to demur again.

"In fact," the inventor steamrolled over his guest's words, "I'm absolutely certain that your loyalty to the brass would insure your eager participation, since that participation would be required to get your hands on a suit that is at least twice as powerful as the Mark I War Machine. Or so I'll point out the next time they whine about getting more gear from me."

"Oh my god," Rhodes groaned. He had expected some petty revenge when he had avoided the Stark household for so long, but this was shaping up to be a doozy. A trap he could clearly see, but not avoid. He knew what his superiors would order. "Fine... I'll do it."

"Excellent!" Tony cheered. "That's proviso number one out of the way. Proviso number two will be much easier." Ranma set a hand on Rhodey's shoulder and lit the both of them up with her aura. "We've got a tiny little question for you."

"Jesus! Hang on! Is this that truth thing?" Rhodey yelped. He tried to pull away, but couldn't budge the grip of the dainty hand. The Ki forced into his system was flavored with annoyance and faint contempt. He dropped his coffee cup and saucer, but Ranma grabbed the dish and caught the cup in mid-air without even a clink. She passed it on to Wallace, who took it away without even the merest hint of disapproval for her actions. "What the hell, Tony! You can't interrogate an Air Force officer!"

"Now that's a good point," Tony admitted, "But this is something of a gray-area. Because this isn't about official secrets or anything else that has to do with your job. Or it shouldn't. Because this is about strictly personal private sector stuff. Specifically, we found out where that nonsense about the part of Ranma's contract that Pepper put in for mandated therapy came from. Which just happens to be the office of the Air Force Chief of Staff."

"Sssshit," Rhodes hissed with a grimaced. "Can you be sure of that? Have you been hacking where you shouldn't?!"

"Hacking? Moi? Of course not!" Tony stated with an unconvincing smirk. "And am I sure that the highest reaches of military command decided to meddle in the private affairs of a particular helpful civilian again? Why, yes... I am in fact quite certain. Did you forget what committee the senior senator of New York, a state that is overwhelmingly holds us in high regard, sits on? Because it looks like the Joint Chiefs sure did!"

"Ugh. Yeah... that would do it," Rhodey closed his eyes and groaned as he couldn't deny facts to himself any longer. Opening his eyes again, he met Tony's gaze seriously and said: "Look, I had no idea they would do that..."

"...Again," Tony interrupted. "No idea they would do that again."

"Ah, yeah," Rhodey agreed heavily. "I mean... Pepper mentioned it because she was worried about what kind of effect Ranma's psycho mother had, but she mentioned it again later because she was impressed at how mellow Ranma was. I did pass that second part on when I heard people worrying about a foreign teenager running around with that much power! I was trying to make the point that it was handled!" Turning his head to face Ranma, he apologized: "I'm sorry about that causing problems, but you were freaking people out a bit!"

"Hrn," huffed Ranma with an unimpressed look, though the negative feeling in her aura eased. She let go of him and announced: "He said what he thinks is true."

"That was seriously uncool," Rhodey complained. His protest was somewhat marred by his gratitude as Wallace gave him and Ranma fresh cups of coffee. He realized he'd already fallen into a Pavlovian habit from the new assistant's reward system, but couldn't bring himself to care as he steadied his nerves with the amazingly tasty brew. Blowing out a happier breath, he said: "OK, fine. That's settled now, right? It better be settled!"

"Oh, you bet," Tony assured him. "Congratulations... you have earned the updated suit. So tomorrow we'll make the trade and fly out to the desert. I've already got the most recent version of Iron Man-Fu installed in the Mark II, so all we'll need to do is finish the calibrations for you. Then we can start your training. All kidding aside, you'll like what the armor can do."

"Tomorrow? Not today?"

"Not today," Tony confirmed. "Today is stun grenade day."

"Stun...?" Rhodey looked perplexed for a moment, then his eyes widened in alarm. "Nuh-uh! Nope! I'm out of here!" He dithered over his fresh coffee, then tried to polish the hot beverage off as fast as he could manage. Between slurps he said: "Mr. Ainsworth, thanks for the coffee, but I just remembered an urgent appointment in Baltimore..."

"Did somebody forget how he helped Justin Hammer with his hair-brained industrial espionage scheme?" Tony called out while elaborately studying his fingernails. Ranma leaned against a table and enjoyed her beverage while watching the little drama with interest. "Did somebody forget how they were suckered into helping some generals pad their retirement funds? Or how they helped over-promoted idiots do something stupid again with the revealing Ranma's contract terms thing?"

Colonel Rhodes stopped his escape and slumped his shoulders. "You're never gonna let me live this down, are you?"

"With modern advances in medicine?" Tony asked playfully. "You could be hearing it for a good long while. Hell, I've already been tapping into the medical industry with prosthetics and scanning tech. Stark Industries could go in even harder and push that science forward as well. Maybe double our lifespans! All so I can say 'I told you so' for decades to come!" Rhodey groaned and shuddered at the idea. "Also: War Machine Mark II," Tony added with a little malice.

A measure of mercy was provided by Ainsworth, who replaced his empty mug with a full one. Raising the mug, Rhodey contemplated it for a moment, took a sip, and let out a long, deep sigh, then turned back around. "So... stun grenades? And your penalty game involves human experimentation?"

"Luckily for you, I'd have to actually build the grenades before we can test them, but yes, you will be a test subject today. You are going to lie down on a nice, comfy lounge chair and Ranma here," Tony tilted his head toward his bodyguard, "is going to make you sleep and wake you up a bunch of times with one of her techniques. From what she tells me, it is totally harmless, but we're going to verify that before we get too far into this."

"Oh that doesn't sound sketchy at all," Rhodey said sarcastically.

"Look, I'd do it myself, but this thing," Tony pointed to the glowing reactor in his chest, "messes with the results. You're nuts if you think I'll risk the couch by asking Pepper to do this. As for Wallace...?" They all turned to look at the immensely dignified older man. "No. Just, no."

"Come on Tony," Rhodey pleaded. "Surely you can come up with someone better."

"Nope! If it helps, this is really important! Like... improve American society important! Think about it! A safe, non-lethal, area effect stun device! No chemical residue, no auditory damage, no electrical burns or cardiac issues. Got a hostage situation? Toss one of those babies in and zap... everybody's sleeping like babies. Don't like it when cops empty the clip as their first, last, and only option? OK... give them stun grenades and let them go to town with them. Speaking of... we might be able to make something for the medical industry right off the bat. A cure for insomnia? Better anesthesia? Actually..." he hastened over to the one of the screens serving as a noteboard and traced out 'Nerve block?' with the tip of his finger. Then he paused for a moment and added 'Life support module!' to the list as well. "Anyway... stun grenades... Point is, these could be big... life-saving... and here you are complaining about being made a part of it! What's up with that?"

"Oh sure, being a guinea pig was always one of my life's ambitions. What was I thinking?" Rhodes shook his head wearily.

"We're also going to test Ki-dar while doing this, so your superiors might have you shot if you refuse," Tony half-joked.

"Key-what now?" Rhodey groaned.

"Remember the scouters from Dragon Ball Z? I'm working on a suite of sensors to detect Ki when it's being used. After seeing what Ranma can do, absolutely everybody wants these sensors developed. Particularly the military and intelligence agencies. None of them want invisa-ninjas up in their business. Do you think your generals want invisa-ninjas running around NORAD?" Tony asked archly.

"No..." Rhodey sighed. "I'm sure they don't."

"Right. Air Force doesn't want 'em, Joint Chiefs don't want 'em, SHIELD really, really doesn't want 'em. Nobody wants invisa-ninjas."

"I... kind of do," Ranma said with her hand raised. She shrugged when they looked at her. "I could use the competition."

"OK, nobody but Ranma. She's weird like that. Though I don't care that much either." Tony shrugged.

"Uh.. Tony? I just remembered... isn't there no such thing as ninjas?" Ranma asked sheepishly, recalling her prank on Coulson.

"Ooh! Right!" Tony confirmed with wide-eyed agreement. Turning back to Rhodey with a serious expression, he said: "There's no such things as ninjas."

Rhodes gave them an unimpressed look. "I knew that already. Of course there's no such thing as ninjas. They were made up for movies and TV shows."

The duo looked at him with raised eyebrows and otherwise blank faces. After a moment, Tony nodded vigorously. "No, no... of course you're right. There's definitely no such things as nin-nnkh..." Tony stopped when his voice started to crack and turned into a snort. Turning away from his long time friend, he buried the lower half of his face into the crook of his elbow and his shoulders shook for a bit. Ranma wasn't losing her composure, but there was a chill draft emanating from her. Facing Rhodey once again, Tony's jaw worked as he fought to keep a straight face. "There's no such thing as ninjas," he repeated with a solemn tone. Dimples formed in his cheeks as he pressed his lips into a tight line.

Rhodey eyed him suspiciously. Obviously, the inventor was trying to mess with him, but he couldn't possibly think he could trick an experienced and well-educated officer with such antics, could he? For a moment, he doubted his conclusion, then quickly wiped the silly idea out of his consideration. There was absolutely no such thing as ninjas.

Right?

"Right," Rhodey said firmly. "If we could get back to something other than fantasy, please?"

"Right, right," Tony agreed patronizingly. "Since there are no invisa-ninjas, then the main thing I want Ki-dar for is all the science. I also think it will be fantastic if we can detect life-signs. Can you imagine how incredibly useful that would be for search-and-rescue? That's not fantasy, that's saving lives. All these benefits, and you still..."

"No," Rhodey interrupted. "I get it. I do. Just... aren't there people you can pay to take part in your experiments?"

"We'll do that later. After it stops being funny to mess with you," Tony claimed. "Now come on, enough of your loafing. We have work to do, slacker!"

"Excuse me?"

"C'mon. lazybones," Tony berated. "What am I paying you for?"

"You're not paying me at all, you maniac!" Rhodey protested.

"Awesome... I bet that's how I got so rich."

"Very funny."

"Anyway, we have history to make here!"

"Oh my god... fine, fine," Rhodey gave in gracelessly.

"Coolness. Now let's get these electrodes on you..."

"Electrodes? Oh my god..."

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

Janet Van Dyne did not know how long she had been in this place. From what she had managed to piece together, it could have been millennia or milliseconds on the outside, though it seemed like decades to her subjective time. Her hair had gone gray, anyway. Though that begged the question: how did she know what color her hair was when her pupils were supposedly far smaller than the amplitude and wavelength of visible light?

She was certain it had something to do with how she'd transmuted into energy as she plunged into whatever uncontrolled journey the exotic particle her husband, Hank Pym, had discovered had sent her on. She had transformed back... maybe? ...And she felt fine... but that was impossible. Her husband called this the 'Quantum Realm,' but it was clear it was something else entirely.

Whatever the reality was, she was calling the energy she'd been and been filled by... and which she somehow learned to manipulate out of sheer desperation to preserve her existence... 'Quantum Energy' out of habit and a dearth of alternative notions. The questionable name didn't at all explain how she was able to survive when she should have been far too small to use things like food, water, air, or several other biological necessities all this time... yet here she was.

It certainly didn't explain the dangers she'd found that made it necessary for her to haunt the peripheries of what she called the Verge. A borderland between what could be called the true quantum realm 'above' and the more ordered, yet impossible region 'below...' although 'outside' and 'inside' were terms that were just as accurate... or inaccurate. Even more bizarrely, it was a place she could reach on foot! Or at least by means of what fit her perceptions as walking. Regardless of the objective reality of ambulation, the Verge was a place where the physics she was familiar with before her little trip were far more arbitrary, and right on the edge of dissolution of her very being if she went too far into it. Yet it was the place she felt safest these days. She had even prospered in an odd way.

She'd even been able to salvage various mundane items from the Verge, as bizarre as that was. During her explorations, she had found strange, twisted warps that seemed to be made of structured matrices of the mysterious 'Quantum' energy. Her life-saving adoption of the energy gave her the ability to sense the things, but not really understand them. One day, she had been studying one of those structures when it had twisted in on itself even more, then... 'burst' for lack of a better term... releasing a pile of random items along with a pseudo-tone that reverberated through her like she was a tuning fork.

That first trove had consisted of numerous objects that she could recognize, but were noticeably larger than seemed proportional to her own size. Though she had to acknowledge that 'size' was also a questionable term in her current state. In any event, clothes, tools, scrolls, books, and weapons were all present, but the clothes were outdated, the weapons primitive, and the writings were all in Chinese or Japanese. Otherwise, she would have thought Hank was trying to send her a care package.

It was after tracking down the unique 'feel' of some more such failing storage warps that she figured out why they were probably appearing. Things like canes, dentures, ear-trumpets and suchlike showed the advanced age of many of the original owners. In one other case, she found bloodstained, battle-damaged weapons. She strongly suspected the people who were making the caches had to die for them to drop their loads into the Quantum Realm, making her glad she had only found a few such released caches over all the time she had spent. Still, she salvaged what she could. It was ghoulish, but she didn't have the luxury of being squeamish. The items didn't come out with proportions that matched her. Sometimes the things she found were too large for her to use, sometimes they were too small, but there had been several usable things she had managed to acquire over however long it had been.

Some of the objects would be valuable antiques if she ever got back to the sidereal universe. Unfortunately, there weren't exactly secure lockers for rent in the Quantum Realm, and she couldn't quite figure out how to make her own storage matrix. So all she could keep was whatever she could carry long enough until she could exchange it for something else, and the vast majority of loot had to be left behind.

She still had a few choice historical items in her bag, just in case.

'Today,' however, something very new had entered her peculiar world. And by 'new,' she meant 'modern.' An actual powered, electronic device now floated before her. The round machine was at least three times her 'height,' but it was clear from the size of the Torx-head bolts holding it together that it was supposed to be much smaller relative to the size of a human. There was a camera and other sensors, letting her identify the device as a probe. It also seemed to have reactionless thrusters, so she might be more correct to say it was a futuristic artifact... she hoped that didn't mean her husband and daughter were long dead.

'Walking' on a surface that wasn't, Janet circled around to get a better look. What she found gave her hope that she wasn't as lost in time as she feared, but at the same time made her worry about something considerably less urgent. Her husband might have been willing to work with Howard... he even respected the other inventor... but he had been adamant about keeping the secret of the Pym Particle away from his rival/friend.

"Hank's not going to like this~," she sing-songed softly as she looked at the 'Stark Industries' logo proudly emblazoned on the side of the probe.

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

Author's notes:

- Yes, I know the global violence trends escalated after 2011 in real life, but this chapter is set in 2010 with the inclusion of the Iron Man effect to calm things down even further. For now.

- There are a lot of plot holes when it comes to science in the MCU. Yes, yes... comic book science... I know. Still, I frequently forget to engage my suspension of disbelief when things get too blatant. The whole Ant-Man, Quantum Realm, Quantumania (gag) situation definitely qualifies. I came out of the third of those movies thinking... what the hell am I going to do with this self-inconsistent mess? This is my start at coping.