American Wuxia (Arc & Ki: Book 2)

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.')

5. Top Gun

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.

Another author's preface: Based on more feedback, I am altering the title to "American Wuxia (Arc & Ki: Book 2)"

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(Chapter theme song: Rebel Yell – Billy Idol)

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"Sit," Director Fury growled from behind his desk.

Well.. not really his desk. It was the desk he used for dealing with his agents, situated in a large room near the top of the iconic Triskelion building in Washington, DC, equipped with conference furniture and amenities. His desk was located someplace so secret even he wasn't prepared to admit he knew where it was.

Regardless of the intricacies of secret-agent-man furnishings, Agents Coulson and Romanoff obediently sat before the desk. Deputy Director Hill was already sitting off to the side in an observer position. The two experienced operatives were already directing micro-expressions at each other to communicate their mutual incomprehension for the reason for his more dour than usual mood. The head spy knew this, of course, but fully intended to enlighten them.

"A reassessment is past due," Fury stated without further preamble.

Coulson and Romanoff looked at each other directly this time, not even trying to conceal their cautious expressions. "The Stark and Saotome situation?" Phil asked for clarification. As typical, he had no problem asking the disingenuous question in front of their superiors.

"Yes... the Stark and Saotome situation. The exact situation I told you this meeting was about," Fury said slowly.

Coulson blandly raised his eyebrows. "It's always a good idea to reassess, but it seems like you've got elevated concerns. It won't be the first time you caught something I missed, boss, but I admit I have no idea what you're seeing. I honestly thought the situation was getting more stable, not less."

"My assessment has been that the head-spaces of everyone in the Stark circle are improving," Natasha noted. "I've been carefully documenting this."

"That may be... may be... but the stakes are rising," Fury told them. He stood up and went to the window to look out over the Potomac with his hands clasped behind him. "The Stark team is making much larger moves than we expected. Stark has abandoned his pseudo-hermitage and is making up for lost time. New technologies, new resources, new personnel, new contacts."

"New commercials, new comedy routines, new sexy photos," Maria Hill interjected with a tinge of mordant humor. The junior agents looked at her in surprise and she smirked. "I wasn't too concerned either, but then I don't know how really concerned the director is outside the requirements of his position. That said, there's no denying the costs of being complacent and later proven to be wrong are pretty damn high, compared to the other way around. After thinking about it more, it seemed to me the cultural impact of their new M.O. might be the most significant factor."

Natasha looked enlightened. "Ah... blue jeans and Mickey Mouse. Right. Far be it from me of all people to doubt the power of culture," said the Russian expatriate and victim of a Soviet-era secret program. A program that went mercenary when said Soviet Union collapsed due in large part to cultural pressure. "They are certainly taking pains to prevent being isolated and blindsided again."

"Exactly," Fury spoke up, still looking out the window. "Perhaps it can be dismissed as mere insurance against future moves against them, but they are building up something here. One man..." he raised a finger without turning around, "...is an outlier. Two people..." another finger was raised, "...are a side show. More people?" He flicked out all five fingers, made a fist, and flicked them out again and again to indicate rapid increases in numbers. "More people start looking like an institution. Or a movement. More people are more power. More popularity is more power. More money is more power. More physical power is... you guessed it... more power," he said with ironic emphasis as he turned back around to sit again. "And that power is in the hands of irreverent pranksters living rock-star lifestyles."

"With groupies even," Natasha quipped to acknowledge his point and some wry amusement at having arranged more 'groupies' herself. "They do have Potts as the responsible team-mom to rein them in, though" she mentioned. "And the recent addition of a responsible team-grandpa, for that matter."

"Let's not forget the new divisions of actual professionals who are paid by them to take things seriously 'cause Stark in particular don't wanna." Coulson then chuckled. "The roadies and the fixers and the promoters for their little band that can keep things running smoother. Though I suppose we're just making your point for you, as that's now a structured organization we're talking about. That said, as the most prominent butt of their jokes as far as SHIELD is concerned, I would submit that irreverent pranksters are the best types to hold that power." Seeing the glower aimed his way by his superior, he raised his eyebrows again and said: "No? Not so?"

"One of those pranks on you was brought up on national television," Fury pointed out archly.

"Well, yeah... but nobody in the public knows that," Coulson dismissed. "Besides, even if they did a full reveal, would that really be bad? There are advantages to being underestimated or dismissed."

"There are disadvantages, too," Fury said with annoyance. "Other than us, which intelligence agency tends to be the more accurate, INR or CIA?"

"INR, of course," Coulson promptly responded.

"And which agency is actually listened to by the US government?" Fury followed up.

Coulson waved a hand in capitulation. "The CIA. And you're about to say that the reason is because the CIA is more respected for some reason. I blame Hollywood."

"That is precisely what I was about to say. I won't bother to ask a rhetorical question this time, I know the answer. Stark and Saotome do not respect SHIELD," Fury said.

"Saotome respects me," Natasha offered. "And he's already developing respect for Sharon."

"Ah, yes. Your little end-run around the funding limit on training," Fury commented darkly.

"Hey, what consenting adults do in their free time is no business of ours," Natasha claimed insincerely. "Not my fault Ranma thinks martial arts training is a good date activity. I just offered them some... barely manipulative advice," she concluded with a faintly smug look. More seriously, she added: "Though the results I'm getting from my own training speak for themselves. We really should up the formal training arrangements sooner rather than later. I can get away with the unofficial freebies for a while, but this training is truly valuable and both Stark and Potts will put their feet down if it goes on for too long without recompense. For the principle of the matter if nothing else. Besides, without some sort of obligation, there's nothing stopping Saotome from giving equal priority to going out with some pop-tart as she would one of our ladies. Pop-tarts have the advantage of being able to pursue her openly, after all."

Raising an eyebrow at the sudden shift in gender pronouns and the less-formal phrasing, Fury said: "You're advocating more of our agents spending more time with a living lie-detector."

"Saotome can sense emotions, not compel anyone to speak," Natasha argued.

"That you know of," Fury appended with... an abundance of caution. It wasn't paranoia when there were all kinds of people legitimately out to get them.

Natasha had plenty of abundant caution herself, so she didn't readily dismiss the speculation. "That is certainly a point, sir. But that's when you get more data-points to check things out. That emotional sensing does go both ways, no doubt about it. Do you not want one, or two, or more viewpoints with direct lines to Saotome's psycho-emotional state?"

"Not at this juncture, no," Fury stated flatly. "Not in the numbers you're suggesting."

Taking note of the frustration his fellow agent was experiencing, Coulson interjected: "Saotome aside, Potts does respect and listen to me. And Stark respects both Potts and Saotome."

Fury gave Phil a jaundiced look. "Are you trying to convince me that translates into respect for SHIELD itself?"

"Heh. No. But can you think of anything that would ever change that?" The balding man shrugged apologetically.

"I cannot," Fury confirmed steadily. "So what we have here is a growing organization that doesn't respect us, doesn't respect the government, and to a degree is duplicating the functions of that government in terms of providing security to the populace. All while making themselves popular and richer in resources and power without the fragility Stark operating alone had."

Coulson frowned. "Your points are certainly correct, but I can't help but notice you're phrasing it in a way that it sounds like one of the essential stages of a successful insurgency. You can't possibly think they are planning anything remotely like that, can you? They don't even want to be in charge of as much as they are now, much less more."

Fury shrugged. "Are they are thinking that way in any shape or form? I seriously doubt it. Would they have the infrastructure to launch something if they ever did start thinking that way? That would most certainly be yes. Certain parties are taking note of this, so I want to talk contingencies. What can we do to contain them if they go too far? "

"Ugh..." Coulson grimaced and groaned. "I assume you mean more than them being mere rogue operators and catapulting straight to hostile adversaries. I hate to say it, but that seems like it would be a Hulk scenario to me. The amount of military force needed to take them down would have completely unacceptable consequences. We would have to be facing an absolutely clear and even more unacceptable present danger before we could use that option. Especially when it might not work."

"It's hardly Hulk-level bad. You can walk up to those two and scream in their faces that they're being assholes and they'll either take your concerns seriously or just laugh it off. Can't do that with the Hulk. Still, social-engineering would work far better on them than force," Natasha contended soberly. "Just like we use light-touch environment priming to nudge Banner toward less-bad areas. Stark still has mental vulnerabilities to exploit if needed. Those might lessen or go away if he sticks with therapy, but that will just mean he's becoming the kind of person who is less likely to cause problems. And Saotome? Trust me, the world is only slightly less likely to spin off its axis than he will go megalomaniac."

"You could say the pranks are a result of them being even more chill than before," Coulson chimed in whimsically.

"So you hope," Fury argued pessimistically.

"So we assess. Professionally," Natasha countered. "Again, if you doubt us, more evidence is on offer," she suggested, not willing to give up on advocating for more martial arts training.

"By increasing exposure to possible compromisation."

"That is really less of an issue than we would normally think," Natasha protested. "Saotome does not have the same priorities as we do. Things that are important to us are pointless bullshit to him.. and vice-versa... and he has no political convictions at this point. Nor is the direct tapping of his feelings the only source we have to show that. I know what books Ranma is reading. I've listened in to his discussions with Stark. I've sat down and discussed heavy topics with him myself. I've read every word his psychologist has published and listened to everything she has ever publicly said. I even went to Japan to talk to his 'Hokkusu-Sensei'... real name: 'Tohru Takeda,' by the way... to find out what kind of philosophies he's a proponent of. Saotome may have a bad opinion of the government after the incidents he observed, but he's already a big fan of America as a country. That can be nurtured and extended to more tolerance of government institutions. It is my firm opinion that long-term, persistent soft-power is the way to go here and will be far more effective than any kind of hard-sell."

"We want more options than that," Fury informed them. "The higher ups will want a viable force option." Seeing his agents expressions tighten, he held up a calming hand. "Yeah, yeah... I know. But that's what they want. And they do have a point. Monopoly of force is a key component of the legitimacy of a government, and those two are undermining it regardless of what their intentions might be just by existing."

"Sir, the Avengers Initiative was the viable force option for dealing with this kind of complication," Coulson pointed out, some exasperation showing through his typical mask of geniality. "Now we're talking about how to neutralize our primary candidates."

"We would have been coming up with contingency plans for members if the Initiative were active anyway," Fury noted, though he did share some of Phil's frustration. Enough that he and the other man paid no attention when Natasha and Maria gave each other some side-eye at the mention of the zombie program. "Now do we have any ideas on a hard option?"

"After the palladium scare, Stark is keeping an eye out for radiation hazards, so polonium poisoning or something would be too chancy," Hill contributed. "Assuming that would even work on Saotome."

"Cruise missiles, I suppose. Possibly nuclear-tipped," Coulson added dubiously. "Again, the literal and political fallout would make that viable only in the most extreme circumstances. And again, Deputy Director Hill has a point about detection possibly preventing the strike and if it would even be effective."

Natasha rubbed a temple tiredly, "They are already playing around with Ranma's early version of Martial Arts Sunbathing for radiation resistance. That was only a reject initially because it was too short term, but 'short-term' meant hours instead of weeks, and Stark was eager to investigate when he figured that out. So I don't have a lot of ideas from my usual arsenal that would do for more than taking out Stark himself, and only out of his armor. Poison, guns, knives, explosives, defenestrations... those aren't problems for Saotome. They have all literally been parts of his wake-up routine at times." She winced and admitted: "This is on me, but I actually suggested Ranma learn to sniff out explosives with her enhanced senses when doing anti-terrorist field work, so..."

Coulson nodded in commiseration. "That was a good suggestion. As much as I like dogs, there's no denying a person with that ability is going to be exponentially more effective in the field. We may get a chance to take advantage of that someday. Let's not lose track of the fact that these two are on our side at the moment. It may be a loose alliance, but it is still an alliance. The chances of that dramatically changing are nowhere near high enough to justify sustained efforts to weaken or sabotage them. We saw how that played out with the Hammer and Vanko incident."

"You know why we made that call," Fury said warningly.

"Sure, sure," Phil bobbed his head. "I'm just saying if the Council had been patient and let us do our jobs, the result would have been better. Rhodes was obviously being groomed to take over as Iron Man before he was compelled to shoot himself in the foot by his superiors. If that had not happened, he might be flying around in his own version of the ThunderStruck right now, and that thing is definitely a better vehicle from a warfare perspective even if it is not as generally utilitarian as the suit. Natasha had the profile update that explained what Stark thought he was doing on file when we got our own shoot-ourselves-in-the-feet orders."

"That matter is closed," Fury said firmly with a stony face.

"It's only really closed if we learn all the lessons from it," Phil insisted.

"Coulson..."

"From my side," Natasha interrupted to play peacemaker, "I've got nothing. Not for an assassination. The one and only method I'm familiar with that Saotome would hold still long enough for would be a try at death by sexual exhaustion. Which isn't gonna work either. I don't think we have enough seduction-trained women to manage it on Saotome, and he's not adventurous enough for the seduction-trained men to add to our forces." She paused, then appended: "For that matter, I doubt we even have enough numbers of men and women combined to manage it either. We definitely don't if Ranma doesn't make the mistake of insisting on staying male."

Fury looked like he wanted to object to her contribution, but... he had files on her actually killing people that way. It was one of a long list of reasons why SHIELD had wanted to cross her off when she was still with the Red Room in the first place, and why Barton had covered himself in glory by bringing her in as a defector. From that perspective it was a legitimate suggestion.

He still really, really wanted to object, however.

Hill ended the silence before it could get too awkward. "We can consider more esoteric tools. One of Pym's devices could be used."

Fury was quick to wave that idea away. "You should be actively terrified of the idea of a bug-sized Saotome running around with all his physical strength and abilities intact. It took repeated uses of that technology in rapid sequence for Wasp to eliminate herself. That is assuming we could put such a device in contact with Saotome in the first place. It would take hypersonic speed to score a reliable hit, and that could destroy the device before it even touched him."

Hill shrugged. "Well even if that particular bit of tech won't do the job, we have others. Cataloging the 0-8-4's to see what might be viable would be worth doing. In fact..."

Fury now looked interested as he broke into her audible musings and anticipated what she was about to say. "That is certainly worth considering. In terms of power levels... and history... weaponizing PEGASUS seems like the obvious route."

"Yes, exactly."

"That does sound doable," Coulson added with caution. "But let's make damn sure anything that comes out of that is only deployed for fully rational reasons, not just 'Ooh! Shiny!'" It didn't make him happy to do so, but Fury grudgingly nodded to acknowledge the concern. The higher ups really had a bad 'ooh, shiny!' habit.

Coulson and Hill obviously knew what the director was talking about, but Natasha certainly didn't. She sure wasn't going to ask, either. "Without inquiring as to the details of whatever that project is, I would strongly urge that my investigations into high-level martial artists be carefully reviewed. I also recommend in the strongest terms that we devote more resources to gathering additional intell."

"You're persistent. I want to point out your recommendations look suspiciously like recreation using agency resources," Fury told her sardonically, knowing she was leading up to pushing her agenda again. "Partying on the company dime."

Natasha leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms with an unimpressed expression. "I'd say to tell me that after finding out how it feels to be functionally paralyzed by one of those training sessions, but I imagine you're talking about what I do outside of training time. Let me point out that I'd be socializing with Saotome even without the training or an assignment." She shrugged and confessed: "The lines do blur between work and fun, but that's more about convenient scheduling than any quid pro quo. I do have personal time, and I do have needs, and Ranma has quickly gotten damn good at my favorite form of stress relief. That he's already outgrown insipid notions of romance is a nice bonus."

Fury and Hill didn't blink at the last comment, they actually preferred it when agents and had that attitude. Coulson, however, did blink. Twice. He also decided he might needed to put a bug in Agent Barton's ear later.

Smirking, Natasha added. "Let's not forget that I've done snorting-coke-from-hookers'-asses parties multiple times as the ass... for SHIELD, mind you... to get the job done," she recited with mordant humor. "I don't have the luxury of pride. If doing interpretive dance in a giant chicken suit is the best strategy to accomplish the mission, then that's what I do. That's not what's happening here, though. If it makes you happier to think of it this way, then treat it as maintaining an in with or a handle on Saotome. Or a solid line of back-channel communication, at least. However, if we're doing that, then it's a long-term scenario, and there is only so much I'll be able to get done operating alone during my off-hours. I doubt you want me to take the Stark crew on as an exclusive assignment. There are reasons you don't use me as a deep-cover mole, remember."

"Sir, I have to agree with her," Hill interjected. "I've not met Saotome. I'm not going to meet Saotome if things go as planned. If you think my take is more clear-eyed, then listen to me when I say it should be obvious Saotome is the priority here. Handles and openings and back-channels where he's concerned all sound good to me."

"Not Stark?" Fury asked neutrally with an inquisitively raised eyebrow. His deputy took that as him not disagreeing, but wanting her to elaborate on her reasoning.

"Stark is still his own worst enemy," Hill said. "That's very clear from Agent Romanoff's ongoing profiling."

"That's been my take as well," Coulson piped up.

"That, and Stark is ironically our best asset for developing technological counters to Saotome because he is studying those abilities. No offense intended, Romanoff," Hill offered as an aside.

"None taken. As I said, my bag of tricks is useless. I can give you an in and information, but I am not a viable route of neutralization by myself," Natasha agreed earnestly. "My point is nobody has good solutions, just bad ones with lots of collateral damage. We're starting well behind the curve here when it comes to the Ki-using world and we need a team on this sooner rather than later."

"Right," Hill continued. "As disruptive as he is, Stark still fits into a well-established paradigm we can understand and anticipate to a large degree. That is not true of Saotome. That particular under-culture is more subject to superstition than hard fact as far as our records are concerned.

Fury scoffed. "Half superstition and half chaotic lunacy."

Natasha frowned pensively. "It does look chaotic from the outside, but don't forget how well rationality boosts Saotome's abilities. There does seem to be a consistent logic to how he perceives the world, but it is a struggle for us to understand that logic. Don't forget that whatever it is high-end martial artists are doing, or however much sense it seems to make, they get consistent results reproducible not only on command but in the heat of extremely fast-paced, high-intensity battle."

"Reproducible results are the hallmark of scientific laws," Coulson said supportively. "We can't just dismiss it as wild-haired nonsense. There are people wandering around with abilities we can't predict yet. Remember how we all freaked out about the Hidden Weapons thing? Something we had no hint about previously?"

"That's also ignoring how there are substances or devices that can boost a common dojo student to something capable of an Iron Monger-level incident," Natasha added, recalling some of the more out-there of Ranma's stories of Nerima. "The martial arts versions of 0-8-4's. That part is absolutely chaotic and we could really use some insight."

"Let's face it, there are plenty of things we already deal with that are just as chaotic," Hill said. "But SHIELD and the SSR before it put in the time and the sweat-equity to let us be able to pick out the essential details and put them in a framework we can understand quicker. We just need to start that process over again for the martial arts world. Unfortunately we don't have decades of our predecessors' work to give us a running start. Whether it's from Stark's patent applications or Saotome's pillow talk, we need every source we can get."

"We do have a way to smoothly inject several agents into a long-term dynamic of effectively wide open information gathering," Natasha hinted with very little in the way of subtlety. Something she regretted when the director's expression got a little more closed.

Fury raised a hand to stop his employees' litany. "Your points will be taken under advisement," he stated while looking at Romanoff in particular.

"Yes sir," is what Natasha said aloud, though internally her comment was 'shit!'

Their boss did deign to explain things a little. "The Council's priorities are either the neutralization or recruitment of high-level martial artists. Getting hard and fast data points our operatives can use in the field would be our fallback goal. Deep dives into their history or motivations or philosophy are of no interest."

"I hate to say it," Hill responded, "but history, philosophy, and psychology seem to be essential to developing those kinds of abilities. We might need to study those to get those field-ready classifications you want. To develop a Nerima-Scale. I'd like to think we are not subject to the same deficiencies that other primarily American intelligence agencies have when it comes to those three subjects."

"We've worked hard to not be as blinkered, yes," Fury responded. "However, in this case we need to keep the focus on immediacy."

Hill met the gazes of Coulson and Romanoff before she said: "If it's immediacy the Council wants, then they may just have to be satisfied with PEGASUS for neutralization plans. Like Phil hinted, there's a considerable amount of shiny there to distract them." Seeing her boss's expression start to cloud over, she went on: "The only other next-day win I can see us scoring would be recruitment. And when it comes to high-level martial artists and recruitment...?" she trailed off leadingly.

"Those cats don't herd," Coulson stated plainly. "Media depictions of disciplined samurai aside, the only real-world example we've seen of the samurai type is a blithering lunatic, and much weaker than the more anti-authoritarian fighters. Saotome is the best prospect I can point to so far, but knowing what we now know, do you want him to sign up?"

"Absolutely not," Fury confirmed. "I'm even regretting bringing him in to the arms-length distance of an occasional consultant. We will still be required to look for better prospects. Or hope no more of these maniacs crawl out from under their provincial rocks."

"That ship has sailed," Natasha sighed. "The rest of the world has taken notice, so that alone will cause new activity from the Ki-adepts. Beyond that, though, is the martial arts challenge issue. Thank god it wasn't explicitly stated during that comedy program, but there is a trail that a moderately curious person could follow to find out about the 'accept every challenge' rule of Saotome's school, He is trying to resolve that, but he's stubborn about simply chucking the stupid requirement unilaterally. So it might be best to prepare for challengers to show up."

"That's... fantastic," Fury seethed. "More chaos stirred up by those two."

"I think the inherent culture of martial arts society would have produced challengers anyway," Coulson said. "Though if we are ready for it, we can gain advantages. This would be a situation where Saotome inadvertently hauls members of a largely hidden society into the light, after all. That gives us a better look at them. Also, I may be the one who said we had slim pickings, but I wouldn't mind being wrong and seeing some of these challengers turn out to be suitable recruits."

"Always looking on the bright side. Huh, Coulson?" Fury said cynically.

"Pessimism is our bread and butter, but we shouldn't make ourselves blind to opportunities," Coulson replied philosophically.

"From the standpoints of pessimism and optimism both, we should make preparations for whatever rivals of Saotome we can anticipate," Hill advised her superior. "I doubt I'm holding out as much hope as Phil that we'll see potential agents, though. Developing our own Ki-users in-house seems like the best option to me." Looking at Fury, she said with something that might look like sympathy if you squinted: "I know you don't even like the very idea of people like Saotome. I can't say the way he pulls new random abilities and new random complications out of his ass fills me with equanimity and joy either. We still need to be more proactive about this." Fury's scowl deepened, but he didn't interrupt. "Agent Romanoff has opened doors for us. Sure, she wasn't exactly crawling over broken glass to manage it... not with her getting to use her favorite lipstick tactics..."

Blandly, Natasha told them: "I do have more reasons than my own proclivities for that."

"You always have more than single reason to do anything. Even when you start with a single reason, you make sure to have a half-dozen ulterior objectives tacked on by the end," the brunette observed with amused approval.

"Habits of a top agent," Natasha stated complacently.

"Uh-huh. Fun method to create the opening or not, it would be a waste not to take the win."

With somewhat less brashness than before, Natasha said: "Even with how funny people get about us lipstick operatives, I've been a little surprised how much we're hesitating here."

Maria Hill shot a frown Fury's way. "That had better not be the reason we're holding back! All kidding aside, I've read the descriptions of the training... especially the after-care parts. It is obvious that intimacy and positive feelings maximize the efficiency. Using a shortcut to attain that closeness is just good sense! That means Romanoff's scheme to feed women Saotome's way is the correct play! If there's anything in this world you can rely on, it's the libido of an athletic eighteen-year-old!" Coulson chuckled ruefully her comment and Natasha smirked knowingly.

"Saotome is also honor-bound to only teach certain techniques to women," Natasha pointed out. "There is no restriction of male-only techniques."

"Well there you go! If I ever manage to get demoted away from my desk job, I'll look that paranormal jock up to get myself some!" Hill claimed.

"Some training or some nookie?" Natasha quipped.

"Training," Hill stated. "...Unless it turned out he's really all that you've said."

Fury was getting annoyed with the discussion, even without the descent into salacious gossip. However, he had to admit he didn't have a good reason to deny the advice he was getting. All he could say was: "There's a lot of political confusion on the oversight side. What parameters we have to operate with is what they could form a consensus on, which isn't much beyond the simplest, knee-jerk goals. I will be taking your comments under advisement, as I previously stated. Coulson and Romanoff, you are dismissed. Hill, stay behind. I want to talk nuts and bolts regarding PEGASUS.

On her way out, emboldened by the executive officer's recent expression of support, Natasha called over her shoulder: "Just remember, there's a timer on this. Fantastic abilities aside, Saotome is still limited in time and she's not going to hold back from correcting years of social alienation. There are literally millions of girls willing to help her public persona out with that, lesbians or not. That dance card is filling up."

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* A few days later *

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"Hello, Ms. Everhart," Pepper greeted cheerfully. "Doing a spread on Ranma?"

The blonde reporter's shoulders notably jerked as she heard the voice behind her. Then she slumped and the CEO heard a soft sigh before Christine Everhart straightened up and turned to face her. Once again, she'd been found wandering Tony Stark's Malibu mansion after a night of clothing-free calisthenics. There were some notably different details, of course.

A significant difference was the fact that she had just left Ranma's bedroom, not Tony's. For some reason, that had made her unconsciously assume she would not encounter anyone else, but she was obviously proven wrong about that.

A second, less important, but still comforting detail was that she was thankfully dressed in more than panties and a borrowed shirt this time. The martial artist turned out to be a solicitous one-night-stand, very unlike Stark, and had acquired new sensible underwear, smart but comfortable slacks, and blouse for her somehow. All in her sizes and all designer brands. Ranma had muttered about foisting a rather nice summer dress off on her that was 'too little-girly' for her instead, but Christine had to enviously admit there was a substantial difference between her bust-line and the C-cups sported by the superhuman young woman, so the dress wouldn't have been a good fit. It still would have guaranteed she had more dignity intact than that incident from a year-and-a-half ago and she was really appreciating that consideration at the moment. She didn't even have to walk barefoot while carrying her high-heels from the previous evening as comfortable flats had also been included.

A third difference was the change in Ms. Potts's expression. Her professional smile had been rigid and brittle the first time they met. This time her expression was more genuine... amused and a little sympathetic Seeing that face, Christine's tension relaxed and she replied: "Yeah... and I might even do another article, too."

One corner of Pepper's mouth quirked up higher at the in-joke. "This time, it's Wallace who has your dry-cleaning. There is also a car..."

"...Waiting outside that will take me anywhere I want to go," Christine finished for her. "Ah... of course... plus ça change..."

The taller woman chuckled and said: "Well, we aren't making you scurry off to hunt down some privacy to change into the previous night's outfit this time. You can keep all that you're wearing as it was newly bought and laundered for you," she nodded at Christine's outfit. "I should also say you're not being hastily shuffled out either. There are various things scheduled today that we will need to leave for in an hour or so, of course, but you are welcome to stay for breakfast."

Christine blinked in surprise, then cocked her head thoughtfully. That did seem a lot more in line with Ranma's friendly vibe. Then she frowned and realized: "Breakfast with... Tony? Uh..." the blonde's expression was reluctant until her stomach audibly rumbled, making her look conflicted instead.

Pepper's expression now showed a greater ratio of sympathy. "This is a somewhat large house, as you may have noticed. We do not lack in eating surfaces if you want to take your meal in a more... private setting with Ranma."

"Ah... right... um..." Christine bit her lip and looked hesitant.

"Go ahead and ask," Pepper prompted after a moment with the air of having a very good idea of what the question would be.

Christine glanced at the bedroom door to make sure it was closed, then leaned toward Pepper and asked: "How does she do that?!"

"Ranma?" Pepper huffed a laugh. "She does at least six impossible things before breakfast every day, so you'll have to be more specific."

The reporter gave her a flat look, strongly feeling that the strawberry-blonde knew good and well what she meant. "I mean: how am I here? I'm straight! Yet... somehow... someway... here I am! Hell... I asked her at the event last night!"

Pepper nodded ruefully. "Ah... that. Don't worry... it's not you, it's her. You don't need to re-examine your sexuality. Now that she has settled in and gotten comfortable, Ranma is doing some exploring and thoroughly having fun with it. Much like any other college age woman. The difference is she's just larger than life in many ways... some of them literal in ways non-martial artists can barely understand... and now that she's relaxing her guard on the personal interactions. That has an effect on observers. Why, I'd bet if Ranma were male, he'd still end up drawing the eyes of straight men in spite of themselves," she 'speculated' with a secretive smile.

"Really?" Christine asked with raised eyebrows. She tilted her head and said thoughtfully: "That tracks, actually. God knows it's hard not to have your attention sucked in by her. When she talked to me, I could practically feel how she was attracted. It was fascinating and flattering. That was her life-force thing, right?"

"Yes, she can project her emotions to a degree. It's part of her Flirt-Fu."

"'Flirt... Fu...?" Christine echoed blankly.

Pepper favored her with a sharp grin. "Yes. She calls it Flirt-Fu. Obviously not a real fighting style. More of a... mental construct to help her confidence, really. Don't forget she's only a recent arrival on our shores and she was dropped straight into the LA-region celebrity scene. From that perspective, Flirt-Fu almost fits the definition of self-defense... of her self-esteem and social comfort at least. You might have heard she was holding back for a while there until she got settled."

"Ah... I did hear there had been some rumored complaints about her being a tease by some of her earlier dates. It certainly makes sense if you put a little thought into it, though." A moment later, Christine was overtaken by consternation. "And now I'm worried I accidentally took advantage..."

"Don't be," Pepper interrupted firmly. "Joke technique or not, there is a little something real to that 'Art.' You weren't imagining things about picking up on her feelings, and it was no accident. It was deliberate on her part. The fact there's no guessing games with her and the way it's hard to ignore her tends to draw women in who wouldn't swing that way normally. Curiosity tends to be a big factor, too," Pepper observed. "She's not irresistible or anything... there are women who won't respond... but several do drop a few inhibitions with her and she's only to happy to follow their cues. The pattern became clear rather quickly."

"Several women, yes. That's part of the... I won't say problem, that wouldn't be honest. Call it the dynamics of the situation. I distinctly remember feeling some urgency because of the other women. There was a sizable circle sniffing around her. It seemed to create some pressure to grab the opportunity before someone else did. I blurted my offer just as another lady opened her mouth," Christine admitted with a sigh. "I feel a little bad about that now too, since I have no plans to ever do this again."

"Don't worry, I'll bet they get another chance later," Pepper assured her with a quirk of her eyebrows.

"That seems... a little mean to say," Christine pointed out.

The other woman shook her head with an earnest expression. "It's not meant to be. Ranma is the poster girl for doing casual hook-ups the right way... very unlike Tony before Afghanistan. As for the fact she's doing the casual dating at all? Well... people think of how she's the world's preeminent martial artist, and all they notice is the what that implies for combat. What they forget is how that same fact make her the world's most powerful athlete! You know the rumors of what sort of sexual escapades Olympic athletes are rumored to get up to?"

"Rumor nothing!" Christine exclaimed. "I was doing stories in the Olympic village of the 2008 games! I saw what was going on with my own eyes!"

"Ah, then make that you have confirmed the elevated libidos of Olympic athletes. Then think of it this way... if you look at food calories consumed, Ranma is like two, or three, or four Olympic athletes. If you look at how much power she can produce, it's more like three to five hundred Olympic athletes," Pepper estimated with a smirk. "She is an extremely healthy young woman."

Christine was gaping at her as she took the numbers in, her jaw working soundlessly. It reminded her that one notable aspect of her night with the martial artist... the sense of overwhelming but tightly controlled energy. "Ah... oh my god! I didn't think about that! If you put it that way, she's... kind of restrained compared to the actual Olympic athletes! Even shy in comparison!" she chuckled

"Well I wouldn't got that far," Pepper countered. "Not now that she's gotten used to being here. Now she's doing things her way... which frequently means to go big. She doesn't march to her own beat so much as charge around at the speed of sound to her own beat, and people get caught up in the wind she kicks up if she forgets to leave them out of it. Just ask Ranma to dial down the charm in the future if you want. Or don't if you change your mind."

"I doubt I will change my mind. That was... certainly fun... and educational." Christine had to shrug helplessly on seeing Pepper's reaction to the second adjective she used. "But it's not something I feel compelled to repeat. Kind of like riding that one roller-coaster that one time. A much larger roller-coaster than I realized, apparently. Glad I did it, but not inclined to do it again."

Pepper snickered at the metaphor. "That's a good way to describe it. Though there are those who have ended up coming back for more despite making the same resolution." She shrugged. "Whatever you want to do. Her height aside, Ranma's a big girl."

"Not going to unsubtly nudge me away and out of her life?"

Pepper shrugged. "I'm not even going to subtly nudge. Ranma is more than capable of taking care of herself. Pregnancy is obviously not an issue, even the strongest drugs are barely effective on her... so no roofie plays will work... there's nobody on the planet who can physically force her into anything, and her Ki-senses let her detect STD's. There's simply no real risks for her to play as much as she wants. Not physically, anyway. Nor is there even too much risk emotionally... you've felt the full-on empathic trick she does? The one where her aura goes visible?"

It wasn't really a question, but Christine answered anyway. "Ohhhh, yeah," she agreed with heavy emphasis.

"Right. She makes it clear to anyone who hops into bed with her that fun, curiosity, and friendship... only friendship... are all that are on offer. No guessing games and no real room to expect anything more, so very little risk of hurt feelings."

"I... actually get that now that I've experienced it. The two-way bit made me really glad she's a very nice girl... a total tomboy and really mischievous, though," Christine sighed, making Pepper laugh. "And I'm glad she demonstrated a positive view of me. That's really... reassuring in a way. Lord knows I have my moments."

"Oh Ranma doesn't mind bitchiness. As long as it's the right kind of bitchiness." Seeing a raised eyebrow, Pepper elaborated: "The 'take no shit' kind of bitchiness."

"Ah." Christine chuckled with approval. "Right."

"Anyway, Ranma does have to be worried about social risks, though," Pepper pointed out, continuing the previous subject. Something she did with an agenda in mind. "Or she should be a bit more worried about those. The politics of our sorts of circles, how people perceive her, the sorts of rumors that will come up... that sort of thing."

"Are you worried about those things?"

Pepper flicked up her hands in largely indifferent acceptance. "More like I'm aware of the dynamic, not that I'm really concerned. God knows Tony was way worse for decades. Especially at that age from the stories I've heard... which make me very glad I wasn't around back then. However, Ranma's position is far less vulnerable to the vagaries of public opinion than an entertainer's or politician's, or even a CEO's would be. Even as a company representative, the extent her personal life could reflect of Stark Industries is... well... again we have the Tony factor. It'd be more than a little hypocritical for us to object at this point." She made a throw-away gesture. "As far as the business is concerned, the any-publicity-is-good-publicity aspect makes up for a lot. As far as things go for Ranma personally, it's entirely possible there's no noticeable consequence at all. But even if there is? She's young, and minor potential missteps like that are just something she can learn from. There would have to be a lot more indication of a problem before we might need to say anything."

Christine cocked her head thoughtfully. "I see your point. As a reporter, I haven't seen any significant backlash developing. There's been pissing and moaning from the usual suspects, of course, but they're them... not the general public by any stretch of the imagination."

"That's been the perception of our PR department as well so far," Pepper confirmed. "Anyway, long answer made short... no I'm not going to give you crap about sleeping with Ranma." She paused to reconsider. "Well, not non-humorous crap, anyway." She smirked at how the other woman rolled her eyes. "Better you than some other blondes I could mention," she tacked on with some remembered annoyance. "Even if you decide to tell all, Vanity Fair is a more dignified format than some other specific examples."

"Oh god, no... I'm definitely not doing that," Christine exclaimed, being well aware of the minor fiasco the CEO was hinting at.

Pepper sent her a smirk and asked: "Not going to do a compare-and-contrast with your one-night-stand with Tony?"

Christine let out a startled laugh. "No! No way! I'm nowhere near that ballsy!"

"That's almost too bad... it would be pretty amusing since I figure the Ranma-experience was better. Or kinder, anyway. Particularly in the morning."

"Well that's true," Christine agreed heavily. Looking sheepish, she added: "Both kinder and... yeah. Better. Way better. Ridiculously better. Er... don't tell Tony?"

"I am so tempted to talk you into doing that article now," Pepper smirked wickedly.

"Ah... heh..." Christine laughed weakly, wondering if the other woman was trying to set things up so her lover was never tempted to stray due to his insecurity.

"I'm just kidding... sort-of. Actually there were two reasons I wanted to come up here, and one of which was to negotiate with you about when you release certain information," Pepper admitted.

"Ah... the fact Ranma is staying in the mansion now? Or that you're here? You aren't the assistant anymore, yet here you are in the early morning."

"The issue is more with me than Ranma," Pepper answered. "Though if you mention Ranma's current residence without the context of me moving in as well... or the... series of strictly feminine guests Ranma has over... then you'll be feeding the false rumors about Tony and her being an item. I have read all your published work, and playing into demonstrably false rumors is not something I ever saw you do."

Christine knew she was being buttered up a little, but didn't mind it. Ranma had already explained the security issue... the martial artist might not have the same fears as most women about obsessive men breaking into their homes, but it was definitely a problem nonetheless. And the CEO was correct about what the rumormonger's would do without clear and complete information about her living arrangements being made public. She also wasn't too keen on opening herself up for her indiscretion with Stark to become general knowledge if she reported just how she found these things out. Still, she had to ask: "Yet your relationship with Tony Stark is not in any way false, but you don't want me to mention it because...?"

"I'm not quite prepared for that to be officially known. Yet," Pepper replied with a significant tone. "It has been taking me longer than I wanted to get my ducks in a row. Now I can't stop you from going public, of course. I won't even say you'll burn any bridges with us if you do, it isn't that problematic. But if you do hold off, I can offer some exclusives in a month or two... possibly less if I have some breakthroughs."

Christine mulled the deal over. "Could I find out about some of those ducks in the meantime? For background?"

Pepper huffed a laugh. "I don't know how interesting they would be, but sure."

"Then I can agree to that." Christine nodded in acceptance. It was a common enough practice to get a more complete and detailed story later in exchange for not publishing an inferior article sooner. As long as the story didn't break elsewhere first. "What was your second reason?"

"Hmm? Oh," Pepper remembered her earlier statement. "I needed to warn Ranma about something and JARVIS might block my warning if Tony ordered it," Pepper informed her.

"I see... that seems pretty typical of him," Christine said with a distasteful grimace. The billionaire had not left her with a good impression. The night with him had been fun, sure enough... not as fun as with Ranma, though! But like Pepper hinted, he'd made it clear he was done with Christine once he got his conquest. The difference with Ranma really was night and day.

Maybe a piece describing their hook-up styles wouldn't be a terrible idea after all? She could handle some embarrassment for a killer article. She didn't have to submit it if she wrote up a preliminary draft...

"Ranma's in the shower,"Christine interrupted before Pepper could knock on the bedroom door.

"Oh?" Pepper shrugged and knocked anyway.

"Uh...?"

Before Christine could fully voice her confusion, the door opened to show a redhead who was naked save for the towel wrapped around her hair. "Hey, Pepper," she greeted. "I was just in the shower. What's up?"

"Were you in the shower?" her bed-partner of the night asked in perplexity as she looked at her completely dry skin and lack of water droplets on the floor. And then she got distracted by the spectacle of that bare skin, making Ranma smile and shimmy a bit for her viewing pleasure.

"I have a trick for instant-drying," the Ki-adept explained. "I didn't bother with my hair since I'll just go right back in and using the trick a bunch of times in a row is rough on it."

"And you didn't bother with clothes either?" Christine noted wanly. Pepper just shook her head ruefully, well used to Ranma's indifference to nudity taboos.

Ranma just shrugged cheerfully in reply, which did interesting things with her chest. She smirked pridefully when she managed to rivet the attention of both older women that time.

Pepper closed her eyes for a moment to recall her purpose. "Whatever... I came by to let you know Tony picked out your reward for your academic success. Did she mention this to you?" she directed the question to Christine.

The blonde nodded absently while still staring at Ranma's supernaturally perky globes. Whether it was because of being entranced or because of being envious, the Japanese teen was going to give her a complex! "Yeah, I heard about that. Very impressive. I really wish I knew that bio-energy studying technique existed when I was in school!"

"You and me both," Pepper agreed.

Fer her part, Ranma had a jaundiced look. "So I'm guessing this will be more being on the job than a reward."

"Yyyep... sorry. Today will be a patience with antics day."

"So what are we gonna do?"

"Well..."

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

* A few hours later *

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

"Highway to~ the Danger Zone~!" Tony sang enthusiastically while working on programming with holograms and a haptic interface via his suit. "Gonna take it right into~ the Danger Zone~!"

"What the hell are you on about now?" Ranma asked.

"Top Gun!"

"What?"

"Oh man... JARVIS, add that to the list of movies Ranma should already have seen by now!" Tony instructed.

"Oh, one of those things," Ranma said with an indifferent tone.

"Hey... don't be like that..." Tony complained. "I thought it was great back in '86. Actually... we... both of us... thought it was great." He waved back and forth between himself and the other man present. "I'm pretty sure Rhodey here became a pilot because of that movie."

"I was interested in being a pilot long before that movie came out," James pointed out dryly. "I was in the aerospace program at MIT before it came out for a reason."

"Sure-sure-sure..." Tony agreed with patent disbelief. "But watching those Tomcats in the theater didn't hurt, am I right? I feel the need...!" he quoted and paused to let someone complete the line. No such completion was forthcoming. "Come on now... don't leave me hanging! I feel the need...!" he tried again while offering his gauntleted hand for a high-five to Rhodes.

"For medicine? For a nap?" Ranma speculated sarcastically.

"No!" Tony let his arms drop dispiritedly. "Rhodester... come on...! You know this! I feel the need...!"

"Ahhh... are you really doing this? Really?" Rhodes looked at Tony's extremely unappealing version of puppy-dog-eyes. "Christ... fine," the colonel sighed. "'The need... for speed," he droned obediently.

"Hey! Be more enthusiastic!" Tony urged. "Come on now! This is a celebration! Ranma's done with the high school equivalency stuff and took her SAT's!"

Rhodes looked a bit more interested at that. "Oh yeah? How'd you do?"

"Did OK," Ranma shrugged. "800 math, 650 English, and 690 on the essay... surprised the hell out of me the last was that high. Pepper thinks a 'unique perspective' helps with essay scores... and unique's the only perspective I've got."

"Not bad, not bad at all. Especially for someone who had to get used to a whole other country's educational system so fast," the MIT graduate looked mildly approving and impressed before huffing with mordant amusement. "I won't bother pointing out it's what... a less than two weeks away from the Fall semester? Less?"

"A bit less than two weeks," Tony admitted casually while Ranma looked sheepish. "We're cutting it close on the move as well."

"Uh-huh. Well finessing special treatment like that does tend to be a Stark Industries hallmark," Rhodey said cynically before shrugging. "But at least you have the grades even if the ink on them isn't dry yet. Did you really pick all this as a reward?"

Ranma chuckled mordantly. "Nah... this was Tony's idea. Not that I mind going up in the air, but why he gets to pick how we celebrate when it was me who got things done, I don't know."

"Oh... that's because I'm rich," Tony said casually, as if it should have been obvious.

Rhodes gave a long-suffering sigh. "Of course that's what you're going with."

"Why not? It's worked for me so far!" Trying to jolly things along, he added: "Come on people! This will be fun! Super-advanced aircraft and dogfighting! What's not to like?"

"Not like I'm going up there because you're being stubborn. Thanks awfully for that." Rhodey scowled at how Tony flippantly waved his complaint off. "Whatever. Can we get this show on the road? We do have people waiting in the tower and radar station," he reminded them impatiently. "You know I had to pull some strings to get access to this test site, right?"

"The hell you did," Tony smirked. "I'm paying for all those people's time out here, even though a lot of 'em are spying on me. And I know for a fact there's a lot of interest in watching my stuff in action. Interest that goes up all the way up to the Joint Chiefs. Or higher."

As he said, there had been no notable resistance to Stark Industries borrowing a test range like they had back when Tony still developed weapons for sale to the US government. Even without him planning on selling anything, the military still wanted to know what he was up to, and to see if anything could be learned from the testing of his two new vehicles. Presumably so they could pass it on to his former competition... again. For his part, the inventor was confident they would not get anything that was particularly useful to them, and what little they might gain was worth the convenience of having access to a local restricted airspace instead of having to go out to international waters.

Jokes aside, it had been getting past time for him and Ranma to work out certain combat protocols with some live experience, so they were going to play some war games against each other. It was an important part of developing the evolving technologies he was creating, while also letting Ranma learn a new sphere of combat.

And also... Top Gun.

"Argh... OK... yes, that's true," Rhodey admitted with ill grace. "But you and I both know this is just your play time no matter what they think. And you're using the resources of the United States Air

Force for your fun!"

"And for no higher cause than my entertainment have those resources ever been devoted," Tony replied sententiously.

"Rrrr," Rhodey literally growled. "Let's get this over with already!"

"Uh... I do have a date later after this," Ranma pointed out. "Wouldn't mind getting a move on."

"Another one? Didn't you just rock Everhart's world last night?"

"That was a spur of the moment thing. And it wasn't really a date. Just... well... sex," Ranma stated blandly. It had taken her a bit to get used to discussing her activities openly. Back in Nerima, a kiss on the cheek could get a body lynched... she knew that for a stone cold fact. Falling in with a good crowd during her last few months had done a lot to defuse her defensive mindset, but the way the Americans who had taken her under their wing were calm, accepting, and even encouraging had done just as much in a couple of weeks.

Plus it was hard not to have quite a bit of confidence in the subject after Natasha got involved.

"Fair enough. Who is it tonight?" With a smirk, Tony added: "I feel like we need to print out some score-cards for you. I'm going to lose track at this rate! We told you to get to know as many friends as you can, but we didn't mean in the biblical sense!"

"What's this?" Rhodey wondered in spite of himself.

"Our pure and innocent country girl here has been cutting quite the swath through the young ladies of California this last month," Tony explained with relish. "As in with with-an-industrial-lawnmower swath. Even with girls I would have sworn would never touch another girl."

Ranma shrugged blithely. "What can I say? I added that stuff to my Art... and I'm the best when it comes to the Art."

"Seriously?" The pilot shook his head. "I thought that was just horseshit the press came up with. A fake scandal the right-wingers ginned up for an attempt at mud-slinging. How did that start happening? Tony... did you get rid of your playboy tendencies by giving them to your bodyguard?" Rhodey speculated sarcastically.

"Hmmm... maybe! So, uh... who's the flavor of the evening this time, Ranma? Did you bother to remember her name?"

"Don't be an asshole. I don't treat them like you used to. It's Ashlee."

"Who?"

"The blonde? From your birthday party?"

Tony shook his head cluelessly. "You're gonna have to be more specific."

"The one who..." Ranma mimed taking off a bikini top.

"You're gonna have to be more specific," Tony repeated dryly.

Ranma rolled her eyes and elaborated: "The one who was hanging off me when Captain Blastoff here stole your armor and stomped the party into pieces?"

"Hey! I'm a colonel!" That was the only part Rhodey could immediately object to. He was well aware that night hadn't been his finest hour.

"Ohhh... her," Tony frowned. "Oh, goddammit. Take her someplace else tonight. Use that Corley Hellcat you got for a little road trip. That girl strikes me as the type who'll go wild for a motorcycle."

"I suppose I could... hey! I thought it was OK to take dates back to the mansion!" Ranma protested. "I've already taken girls back to the mansion. Nobody said anything about Christine!"

"It is fine to take dates to the mansion! Just not her!" Tony declared inconsistently. Leaning toward Rhodes, he confided: "Ashlee's a screamer."

"Didn't you build all that stuff to stop the sound?" Ranma countered.

The Air Force officer shook his head disbelievingly. "What the hell has Ranma been... wait... she's right! Weren't you boasting of all the fancy sound-dampening tech you built to keep sounds from bouncing all over because of all the concrete in the house?"

"I was," Tony groaned. "Then I had to build more. She..." he pointed accusingly at Ranma, "was able to do something so ungodly to that beach-bunny that it kept us awake on the other side of the place until I told her to cut it out!"

Ranma crossed her arms under her breasts petulantly. "Ashlee isn't like Natasha... she wasn't ready for some of what I could do! I was still learning how to hold back that one time! She liked it, though," she muttered. "And you did fix the sound thing! You guys didn't hear Christine last night and she's a screamer too!"

"Wait... what?" Tony blinked in chagrin. "Everhart's a what? She wasn't when I... no-no-no... I am not going down that rabbit-hole! That way lies madness!" He clapped his gauntlets to the sides his helmeted head a couple of times as if to knock the perturbing line of thought out. "Remember... Ranma cheats! Ranma cheats so much! Right... focus on the part I can handle," he sighed as he recovered. "Right... yeah... I did fix the sound-cancellation! And you're goddamn right beach-bunny enjoyed it! That was the entire problem! Pepper will take one look at her and kick her out! Better soundproofing or no!" Despite himself, he smirked. "It was funny how Pep reacted, though. First it was: 'oh, she's an adult... let her enjoy her private life.' Then it was: 'it can't possibly last that much longer!' Then it was: 'Tony! Go over there and shut her up! Now!'"

"Uh... yeah. Sorry?" Ranma apologized lamely while rubbing the back of her neck.

"Are you? Are you really?"

"...No?"

While Tony snickered at the response. Rhodes looked conflicted, as if his words were being pulled out of him reluctantly as he asked hesitantly: "Wait... were you a guy or girl when...?"

"Girl." Ranma shrugged. "Ashlee doesn't know about the guy thing. She's... chatty."

"She posted selfies of herself in bed with you is what she did," Tony jeered. "JARVIS had to zap the pics that showed too much before they went online!" Ranma just blithely shrugged again.

"Hang on..." Rhodes still looked very confused. "I have to realign my world view here. I was actively changing the channel or deleting clickbait or whatever if it was rumors about Ranma being Don Juan reborn. I thought it was just stupid crap people assumed because of your past, Tony. You're not messing with me here? Again? She's actually been doing this?"

"She's been doing them, you mean," Tony corrected cheerfully. "We've been promoting the hell out of our new initiatives, so a lot of nightlife recently for wheeling and dealing to provide a target-rich environment. I mean... she hasn't been matching my numbers from back in the day..." he buffed armored knuckles against his chestplate with pride, "but she's in shouting distance. Which is pretty amazing since it's all girl-on-girl that should have lower odds. The funniest part is she doesn't even ask them! More like she inspires them to seduce her. Christine asked you, right?" He directed the question at Ranma, who nodded while frowning a little in suspicion her newly developed skills were being disrespected. "Right. She just doesn't resist too hard. At all. Pretty much all a girl has to do is blink big dewy eyes at her and the next thing you know you can call her Ranma-Round-Heels!"

"Ugh," Rhodey grimaced at the joke. "Is that really OK?" he wondered.

"Oi!" Ranma protested. "What's wrong with it?! I'm free now! Completely free!" Celebrating her freedom from Nerima was kind of a big deal for her. She also suspected her new-found liberty was a hint of how she could develop the soul side of Ki in addition to body and mind... but it was entirely possible that was wishful thinking based on how much fun sex was.

"And making the most of it," Tony added. "And... wow... double-standard much? I don't remember you complaining when I was her age and doing the same thing. Mainly because you were right there with me a lot of the time!"

Rhodey held up his hands as if to ward off the accusation and turned to Ranma. "No, that wasn't what I meant. I meant... with your condition... how can you just...?"

Ranma raised one crimson eyebrow at him before cutting him off with: "Skillfully."

Tony snerked at that. Then he shook his head and said pityingly: "Really? Look, I know you've got Internet..."

"No! I..." Rhodey held up his hands to stop the inventor. "I know how that part works. I just thought the transformation would mess things up!" He was really regretting saying anything now. He hadn't taken a chance to think it out before hand, so he was stumbling over out how to phrase things. Magical gender changes were not exactly a common topic of conversation.

Tony sighed and rolled his eyes. "I really don't get what's so hard about this. Ranma's 100% woman and 100% man... interchangeably. All organs in place. No glandular issues. No neurotransmitter confusion. 'X' or 'Y' chromosome as appropriate. We checked. She's 200% functional from a physical standpoint. There's no problem keeping the Jusenkyo thing on the QT, either. She's got this special soap to pause the transformation for a few hours."

"That's the part I was wondering about! Hot water is pretty ubiquitous when getting some is involved! Showers, hot tubs, morning coffee... something was gonna tag her at some point! That's what I meant!" Rhodey protested. "I just didn't know how you were keeping your cover! I'm not a moron!"

"Nah... not a moron... just military intelligence... hey!" Tony clapped his armored hands before his friend could take him to task for the inappropriate zinger. "We're getting sidetracked. We got important government resources to stop monopolizing, right? And Ranma has a blonde to despoil, so let's get to it already! Snap to it, Minion!"

"I'm waiting on you," Ranma said archly from where she sat astride the SkyBuster... AKA: 'the flying Tron-bike...' wearing her DragonSuit and visor.

"Not you, Minion," Tony waved her off. "Other Minion." He pointed at Rhodey. "Get in the bus so you can run the recordings."

"You are such a... fine, yeah," Rhodey sighed in resignation. He'd have been tempted to punch the billionaire... someplace that wasn't too painful, of course... but even as pointless as that would have been with Tony in his armor, it still wasn't a good idea with Ranma around. Instead he clambered aboard the large, air-conditioned vehicle housing the combination command center and mobile workshop Tony had put together.

"Cool, let's get this party started," Tony said as he used his armor to lift off the ground and hover over the ThunderStruck. He dropped into the craft, and the canopy closed over him. The sleek, wedge-shaped interceptor rose on its thrusters.

"Hai," Ranma agreed as she fired her repulsors to shoot the SkyBuster into the air in a backflip, then tumbled in mid-air like a gymnast before rocketing northward. Not to be outdone, Tony blasted off in the other direction before curving east. Kicking in the kind of acceleration the reinforcing side-effects of the Arc reactor allowed, he cracked the sound barrier in about four seconds.

"You two are eager," Rhodey commented over the radio. "Damn, those things are fast. When am I getting one?"

"The day you resign from the Air Force and sign up with me," Tony snarked. "The brass'll have to settle for the War Machine Mark II, otherwise."

"Which you'll take away from them if I quit the Air Force, right?"

"Well... yeah."

"Then I guess I'll have to live without the nifty extra aircraft," Rhodey said calmly, though with a hint of annoyance. "OK. Let's see what we got here..." he muttered as he referred to the itinerary. "Scenario One will be Ranma heading south along the valley, with Tony launching an ambush at his leisure. Repulsors have been locked down to 0.1% power, so you can take hits with no problem, but if I say 'cease fire,' it's over. Victory conditions are for either of you to inflict enough hits for a notional kill if you were using full power, for Ranma to make it to the southern edge of the range, or for Tony to drive Ranma out of the range anywhere else. You got that, Ranma?"

"Yeah, of course," Ranma replied sourly.

"Just asking," Rhodey defended himself. "You are new to this sort of thing."

"I've been fighting in challenges for over a decade, dude," Ranma told him bluntly. "This? Is simple. Way easier rules than... say... Martial Arts Cheerleading, for instance."

"Martial Arts what?!"

"Ignore that... that path also leads to madness. Just let her do her thing," Tony chuckled. "I did hire her for her combat expertise, you know. And if she's not as ready as she thinks she is? Great! I get a free win! I could bloody well use one!"

"Alright..." Rhodey sighed. "I'd object more, but I know you both can easily survive ejecting if you screw up. Let me know when you are in position."

"I'm almost at the starting line," Ranma reported.

"Just about ready here, too," Tony said. Something familiar in the inventor's tone made the Rhodes check over the data JARVIS was providing. He noticed radar return on the ThunderStruck was fading out, until it was suddenly gone.

The lieutenant colonel quickly looked to see if his friend had dropped below radar. Checking telemetry, he saw the craft was actually still high in the sky, hovering in position with the nose aimed at where Ranma would come into view. A swift rundown of the status readings answered the minor mystery. Tony had engaged stealth measures, including retro-reflective paneling, to hide out in the wide blue sky. An internal camera in the cockpit showed Iron Man with a finger over where his mouth would be if it weren't covered with his faceplate.

Rhodey had to smirk at that. The new features had not been mentioned to him, and he expected Ranma was similarly ignorant. He wouldn't warn her. The cocky martial artist was due a reality check.

"OK, I'm good to go," Tony announced. He did pretty well to conceal his anticipatory glee, but Rhodey knew him well enough to detect it anyway.

"Ready here," Ranma confirmed.

"OK..." Rhodey triple-checked to make sure everything was on and recording that needed to be. "You are clear to begin the exercise in three... two... one... go!"

The officer watched the holographic representation of the test area as the SkyBuster took off. It had less acceleration than the ThunderStruck, but it still outperformed any conventional aircraft that had to lug its own fuel around, and was quickly supersonic. Ranma stayed relatively low, under the line of mountaintops, which wasn't a terrible way to proceed when high and fast wasn't an advantage. However, she was still well over the height-above-ground-level that would let her evade conventional radar, much less Tony's advanced gear, and the experienced pilot knew his wealthy friend would be able to target her nearly instantly once she came into view. What was worse for her was she was just flying a straight line without any attempt to throw off a pursuer. He was already composing a list of criticisms for after she lost the first round.

Rhodes switched his attention to the ThunderStruck's gun-camera view. Tony making small unconscious gleeful noises as he got ready to take the shot as soon as Ranma cleared the ridge and he established a lock-on. Which would be less than a second after the sensors had a clear view given that her vector was already known.

The highly trained combat pilot barely registered a streak of blue erupt from behind the mountain the instant he was distracted by a series of rapid electronic tones sounding off along with matching muffled whocks on the fuselage of the ThunderStruck. Tony flinched and missed his first shot with a curse. "What the shit! What is... I'm being hit!?" The surprise was great enough that it took them an instant to realize the yellow slashes of light they were seeing were repulsor bolts from the SkyBuster.

"You're being hit!" Rhodey confirmed forcefully as he watched the whimsical 'health bar' the inventor had added to the scenario deplete for his craft. "You're almost dead! Shoot back!"

"I-I... right!" Tony shakily agreed as he tried to get his head back in the game. "Crap! Hey, stop that!" he complained as repeated electronic bings reminiscent of a pinball machine continued to play to mark each successful hit. "Oh, goddammit," he sighed in frustration as a long, mordant buzz was played by the internal speakers.

"You're splashed, man," Rhodey advised him sympathetically, then frowned in suspicion. "And you didn't get a single hit! Are you messing around out there? Is this some weird put-on? I wasn't kidding about wasting the Air Force's generosity!"

"I'm not messing around!" Tony defended himself. "Not sure about Ranma, though!"

"No put-on. Just another win for the Musabetsu Kakuto Ryu!" Ranma announced with evident pleasure. "Mine is an aerial school! I know I told you all that at least once or twice... or twenty times... but you keep not getting it!"

"Aerial school...? All you did was fly in a straight line!" Tony protested.

"I didn't need to do anything else!" Ranma sassed back.

"Ugh," her boss groaned. "JARVIS? Oh right..." he forgot the limitations he'd enacted on the AI for this exercise. He'd have to figure this out on his own. "Seriously, how the hell did you do that? I was stealthed! Your radar shouldn't have been able to pick me up! How the hell did you get a lock on me so fast?!"

"Huh? Radar? Ohhhh, right... radar!" The two men heard a beeping noise. "I forgot about that. It's on now."

"You're shitting me," Rhodes declared. The initial sound from Tony was a clang as he performed an armored forehead clap. The aviator checked the telemetry. "You're not shitting me... the radar was off until a second ago. What the hell?"

"Are you seriously serious right now?!" Tony exclaimed with profound exasperation. "How did you know where I was?!"

"You've got seven Arc reactors over there!" Ranma reminded him with a laugh. "I couldn't not know where you were!"

The ThunderStruck had three main reactors and a spare. The Mark VI armor had one main and a spare. Plus there was the one in Tony's chest, of course. He'd started going suspenders-and-belt with the designs after Ranma had shown just why having a single exposed Arc reactor was a danger when she forcibly powered-off Rhodey in the Mark II by ripping his one reactor out with her bare hand. There were reasons to have an Arc reactor with access to the outside. The Uni-beam was way too powerful an option to abandon entirely, but that didn't stop him from hiding a second reactor in a secure and armored position. Once he managed to shake free of the mental block of only using the bare minimum of exotic power sources, whole new avenues had opened up for him. Just the ridiculous power requirements of the SlyDr drive alone had shown how limiting single Arc reactors were.

Yes, each palladium reactor could manage 3 Gigawatts of peak output... and the Starkium ones each could do over 4 GW... but that was peak output. They couldn't sustain those rates. Much like how the terrawatt-plus lasers used in labs failed to drain the entire country's electrical system dry when they fired by only operating in extremely short bursts and drawing from capacitors. The reason Arc-reactor worked in a similar manner was... it wasn't really a reactor. Howard Stark called it that partly because 'reactor' was in the public imagination with the dawn of the Atomic Age, but mostly to conceal what it was and what it did. In truth, the Arc 'reactor' was a combination of a power tap into a source they were only now beginning to truly understand and an exotic capacitor. It's ability to draw and store power was limited when it had a load on it. The harder it worked, the faster it drained until the matrix failed. Or they smacked into surprise 'X' factors in the mysterious energy the Arc produced such as whatever it was that resulted in a simple magnet and pacemaker in his chest draining the palladium matrices at an increasing pace. He still wasn't sure where all that power had gone, but it wasn't the megawatt-hours of usable work he'd been expecting.

On the other hand, if one allowed an Arc reactor to recover, it could refill itself. Thus, not only were the additional reactors a safety measure, but also a way to drastically increase the operation time of whatever they were installed in. He was already re-designing the planned tower in New York to have three Arc reactors instead of one. One would be the sole visible reactor that they would admit to using to conceal the mechanics of the discharge/recharge cycle, while the others handled the real load. Given that he synthesized Starkium in his basement, it really didn't cost much to have a fully functional decoy.

Though in retrospect, going gonzo with installing the powerful devices before getting into a match with someone who could sense them like they were lighthouse beacons wasn't a terrific idea.

"Oh right..." the embarrassed billionaire muttered. He'd been so keen on taking advantage of Ranma's lack of familiarity with aircraft combat to use technological surprise on her, he'd neglected to think of what she could use on him.

"'Oh right?' This... no," Rhodey sounded disgusted. "This has to be a put-on. She couldn't have made those shots!"

"Err... my smoldering ass says otherwise," Tony pointed out gingerly. "I'm pretty sure you know about Ranma's senses by now."

"Forget her senses, I'm talking about her targeting!" Rhodey countered. "You seriously expect me to believe she made those shots without radar guidance using just the optical aiming? At... two miles on a target with retro-reflective stealth?"

Tony went silent for a moment, then started chuckling. Lowly at first, then with more and more volume.

Before his friend could get a full-on mad-scientist laugh going, Rhodey interrupted: "What? What now?"

"Oh Ranma~?" Tony asked sweetly. "By any chance, did you bother to use the HUD or any screens to aim those shots?"

"Huh? No... why would I?"

"Oh come on!" Rhodey burst out. "That's ridiculous! Stop wasting our time with some stupid joke! Not with all the people we got out here!"

"Oi..." Ranma growled in offense. "I know exactly where you are too, buddy."

"Hang on! Hang on!" Tony hastened to take up the unfamiliar role of peacemaker. "Rhodey... you don't have to take our word for it. You have the recordings. We record everything Ranma does because 'A:' she surprises the shit out of us... and 'B:' we learn all kinds of cool things from seeing what she does and how she does 'em. You can see where she's looking, what she has active, and what she's using. Check the recordings, then tell us what she can and can't do!"

"You... fine," Rhodey conceded with ill grace while waving over one of the technicians to help him. "Give me a few minutes."

Rather than sit around in mid-air, Ranma and Tony took the opportunity to fly around with their respective vehicles. Not practice or combat training... just for the sheer joy of flying. Whether it was really due to her family martial-arts or not, there was no denying Ranma was at home in the air. She might want to figure out how to fly under her own power like Habu or the Phoenix people, but she wasn't about to disdain her own personal flying machine until then.

They ended up getting in a bit of leisure time as Rhodey triple-checked his findings. Still, it was barely ten minutes before they heard from him. "Tony..." he spoke with an unnerved tone.

"Yes~?" the inventor drawled smugly.

"She's a monster..."

Tony snickered at the assessment while Ranma blurted: "Oi...!" Then she reconsidered. "Oh wait... that was a compliment." Tony laughed fully at that.

"Tony!" Rhodey barked with more urgency. "She didn't bother to turn your way. She cut thrust, aimed all three of left side repulsors, and started the capacitors charging half-a-second before she fired..."

"Hey, once I saw what she could do... once I saw how many dimensions she made full use of... I built that thing to let her vector thrust in all directions at any time," Tony cut in. "That means being able to shoot in all directions...!"

"Tony!" Rhodey raised his voice again. "I'm not talking about that part! I'm talking about the timing! She fired each in sequence and if there was as much as an inch of clearance between the surface of the hill and each individual repulsor bolt, I can't tell from the recordings! She fired the instant the charge was ready and the instant there was even the barest hint of a possible shot!"

Tony whistled lowly. "Well I gotta say, that's... pretty neat."

Rhodey grumbled at the lackadaisical response. "This is a bit beyond 'neat!' She was going at nearly a right angle to you... that's a maximum deflection shot at Mach 1.8! With no radar and no compensation for turbulence! With timing that makes the targeting computer of a fighter look sick!"

"What? It's just angles and vibrations," Ranma said dismissively.

"With no misses?! That's not humanly...! Oh..." Rhodey made a disgusted noise. "I should have realized... JARVIS."

"Ah come on!" Ranma groused in offense.

"No. No JARVIS," Tony corrected emphatically. "Both our JARVIS nodes are observe only during the exercises. No assistance for either of us other than the firmware of the vehicles. I can't wait to see what the two JARVIS'es come up with when they compare notes later!"

"Wait, what? You cloned JARVIS?" Rhodey was instantly sidetracked. "No... that's not important right now..." he started to get back on the original subject before he audibly did a double-take. "No, wait! Yes! That's actually more important!" The beleaguered officer was starting to sound frazzled. "Dammit, Tony! We talked about this! You promised! No robot takeovers!"

"Huh? Oh... didn't I tell you about this?" Tony shook his head with a tinge of embarrassment. "No, no... don't panic. No chance of a robot takeover. This isn't full wide-spread cloning, or even permanent cloning. I had to come up with something to deal with the logic traps JARVIS kept getting into when Ranma pulled something particularly Ranma-ish. He wasn't getting fully Kirk'ed, but it was close sometimes. He can spawn temporary copies of himself that are limited in capability and task scope. These are only in compatible, purpose-built systems though. Stark-OS only. He can't simply copy over to some Cray of something. Nothing on the market can support him... nor anything in the military either as far as I know. It'd be like trying to mount an earth-mover wheel onto a bicycle axle."

"OK... OK..." Rhodey said, calming down. "That's a relief. I really, really didn't want to explain to the brass how my best friend created SkyNet. Why do you need more copies of him, though? I thought he was able to handle everything you needed already."

"He can... but this lets him operate more systems at once more efficiently. However, the real benefit is to avoid getting Kirk'ed by Ranma. The clones keep him from putting himself in a loop by nudging him to keep him on task. Nowadays he's constantly making clones in designated systems and reintegrating them. When conditions allow, they conference and collaborate with each other and the main node. Kind of the equivalent of getting an outside perspective on a problem. There are consensus and error-checking protocols to refine the self-programming so he doesn't paint himself into a corner."

"OK, I get it, but... what were we even talking about in the first place?" Rhodey sighed heavily. "Christ... it's always like this when you get into a bunch of new projects! It starts getting tough to tell if we're coming or going!"

"Tch... you'd think you would have learned to keep up by now," Tony teased.

"We were talking about how the Musabetsu Kakuto Ryu is the best school," Ranma reminded them.

"Ah, right!" Tony responded. "Specifically, we were talking about how JARVIS was not helping to make those shots. And how Ranma didn't need to use JARVIS. Hell... she was actually better off without him!"

"What?!"

"The ThunderStruck's stealth actually works on JARVIS... unlike Ranma... which I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't realize. Radar's no good since the stealth neutralizes it, he's not that good at visual processing yet... not enough to get through the retro-reflection... and Ki-dar isn't developed enough yet to be that precise at range. Annnd for a... very limited, very specific, very... statistically insignificant range of problems, Ranma's actually... well..." Tony reluctantly admitted, "...better than even my computers for something like this. She can interpret her senses way faster than JARVIS can process sensor data. She's not significantly slower at raw calculation either."

"Now I know you're bullshitting me."

"No bullshit!" Ranma protested with grave umbrage. "Do I need to come over there?"

"Hang on, hang on, hang on," Tony hastened to avert violence... even if it was more likely to be more funny than painful. "This is seriously not bullshit."

"You're telling me she's as fast as a supercomputer and expect me to believe it?"

"I didn't say she was as fast as fast as JARVIS... I didn't even say she was truly faster than a regular computer... I said she wasn't so much slower that it made much of a difference," Tony elaborated. "Though yeah... when it comes to vector mechanics, there are some of the dinkier civilian computers that she can out-calculate... eh, depending on how well they are programmed. Maybe."

"How is that possible?"

"Ki," Ranma answered laconically. "Ki and the Art."

"What?"

"Uh... how do I put this...?" Tony mused aloud. "OK... think of it this way. You learned trigonometry, right?"

"Yes, of course," Rhodey replied with some annoyance.

"Right, right... that was a rhetorical question. What I wanted to ask was: when you were learning trig, was it literally beaten into you at the fists of a high-level martial artist? Did you shed blood and sweat and work yourself into a mind-wracking ache to study each micro-radian to the point where you could measure and calculate every angle psychically in your sleep?"

"What? No, of course not," Rhodey responded with confusion and some worry about the mention of beatings. "Where are you going with this?"

"I'm not going anywhere, I'm literally describing what Ranma did when she was growing up," Tony told him.

"Huh... I guess that's true," Ranma muttered thoughtfully. "Once I got past the basics of the Art, anyway."

"I thought when you say 'the Art,' you mean... are we actually talking about martial arts here?" Rhodey questioned.

"Yeah. Obviously," Ranma scoffed. "All things have a harmony. A vibration. Things, people, movement, energy... everything. Master the vibrations and you master... well... everything."

"Ranma's perceptions are... deep," Tony interpreted for her. "OK... exposition time since this is the new stuff we've been learning from studying her that I obviously haven't gotten through to you yet."

"Mainly because you been giving me half-assed explanations mixed with jokes," Rhodey complained.

"OK, it's because I've been doing the half-assed explanations with jokes," Tony readily conceded. "I'll fix that now. The thing you need to realize is Ranma is constantly evaluating vectors and waves around her with her Ki on a level that's way beyond the basic five senses. And I don't mean just the vectors and waves you see in regular old plain-jane four dimensions either. This has profound effects. It wouldn't go too far to say that all the superhuman feats she does are due entirely to this level of perception. There is a level of extreme precision at work here, which is what led almost directly to her scoring so high at math. Proprioception that extends way past her body into N-dimensional space that is basically a higher layer of reality. The senses she was born with can't handle that, so she has to compensate by measuring, and measuring very, very well. She perceives all this as geometric calculations in a way that reminds me of how the old-school mathematicians built up math in the first place. And the ridiculous, death-defying training she did for years has ingrained multi-dimensional geometry into her bones. Or into her soul, if there is such a thing."

"There is," Ranma stated. "Or at least there is Ki, which is close enough for me."

"Whatever the case, she can essentially calculate ballistic tracks as automatically as your knee jerks when the doctor hits it with that rubber mallet thing. Only her reaction time is a hundred times faster than yours. Fast enough to plan and calculate where low-level martial artists... and note that by her standards ninth-degree black-belts are low level... they would need to rely on instinct. Once she figured out how to apply that to math problems outside of a fight, she does a damned good Spock imitation by figuring out problems in her head. Couple that with the fact she can figure out what equation to solve in the first place so very, very much faster than any machine I've seen, and..." Tony gave a long, descending whistle. "You're gonna see some serious shit!"

"Oookay, I guess I understand the reasoning, but it just seems impossible," Rhodey sighed. "Superhuman math from what was a homeless teen in a dugout canoe two or three months ago? All this stuff seems like it came out of a comic book, not real life! I just can't believe it!"

"Not real life? Does someone need to cuddle up to a nice warm Moko Takabisha? I think someone needs a Moko Takabisha," Ranma observed idly.

"No! No! I believe it! I believe it!" Rhodes hurriedly declared. He did not want any part of an explosive Ki-bolt.

Tony has to chuckle at that. "Well, as it happens, this is a bit more relevant than comic book science. Don't forget we're creating new technology based on this stuff she does. I would love to get something I built to calculate the same way Ranma does, but it's proving to be a bitch since her method's pure analog. She really shows the inherent limitations of digital calculations."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that despite all the awesome I've committed over the years with computers, analog measurements are inherently more accurate than digital decimal points."

Rhodey got the point quickly. "Oh... you mean like how one-third is just one-third in fractions, but in decimal it's zero-point-three-three-three-three... however many threes before you give up and call it good enough?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Like in that example, you end up giving up instead of getting an exact answer, so a fraction is more accurate. It comes back to geometry. In a lot of things, numbers have a limit of how accurate they can be. So consistently inconsistent we must calculate margins of error for them to use them properly. This isn't to say lame-brain no-nothing Luddites are right to say math is all arbitrary," Tony was quick to clarify. "But there's no getting around the fact they are frequently approximations. The numbers waver. But geometry? That's different in a lot of ways. A given proportional section of a circle will always be a function of pi, no matter how big or small the circle is. Project that circle on a non-Euclidean frame? Still the same. Warp space and time? Still the same. Always, always, always the same anywhere and anytime for anything from mechanics to electromagnetism to fractals. We might not be able to calculate pi all the way to the end, because there is no end, but that doesn't change the fact it is constant. Unwavering. Every decimal place of pi that gets calculated means moving a bit farther away from approximations and getting a bit closer to something that is very, very real."

"That's a good way to put it," Ranma interjected. "It's also a good way to describe the Art. The goal of it, I mean. Feeling and understanding all the angles deeper and deeper."

"Ah... yeah," Tony acknowledged after a pregnant pause. "That's a really relevant rabbit-hole I really don't want to go down right now, but I definitely will later. Getting back to the practicalities... there are inherent benefits in speed and accuracy of calculations when you don't have to convert in and out of decimal or binary until the very end. Or even into expressible numbers at all, like Ranma is hinting at. I can make some half-assed IC's to perform those analog operations, but they're all purpose-built, single-operation stuff. Nothing for general use. Though... maybe stringing some things together for a point-defense system to pull something like Ranma just did... Hmm. That's something I need to look into, but later though. Anywho..." the inventor got himself back on track, "Ranma's methods are totally old-school, but they have the benefit of that inherent accuracy. She actually reinvented Archimedes's approximation of pi using fractions with base-24 numerals when she was about 11-years-old. She did this as a shortcut for her in-battle calculations, before she figured out her Ki-boosted learning trick," Tony explained emphatically.

"Base-24? That's... weird. Why base-24?" Rhodey wondered aloud.

"Ten fingers, ten toes, two elbows, two knees. Started with including my head for a total of twenty-five, but it didn't work too well, and I couldn't figure out why at the time. Anyway, after some trial-and-error twenty-four seemed to work, so I ran with it," Ranma interjected her explanation. "Not that I knew what the hell 'pi' was other than something you eat. I was calling it Seikuuken until Hokkusu-Sensei pointed out what I was really doing. Read about this dude named Liu Hui from about 1700 years back in China that did it better. Since then, I've switched my little trick to base-768 to be more accurate. A lot of aspects of my Art got super accurate and controlled when I did. I'm gonna work on upgrading to base-3072 when I've got some spare time."

"In her spare time... you see what I have to deal with here?" Tony implored jokingly. "Again... remember that she's been doing all this in four or more dimensions almost instinctively for years because of her Ki. At this point there is no question there's a N-dimensional aspect to Ki."

"N-dimensional..." Rhodey pondered aloud. "So she's really been the source of all that new technology after all?"

"Man... I told you as much!" Tony stated with some aggravation.

"You've told me all kinds of things over the years!" Rhodey griped back. "A lot of the time even you didn't know how much was just bullshit you came up with on the spot!"

"Ah... fair," Tony admitted after some self-reflection. "But this is serious. We really are on to new vistas of science here! Like dawn of the aviation age sort of things!"

"I get it... I get it. It's very exciting for you." Rhodey sighed again. "It's just hard to wrap my head around. I mean... just looking at her, you'd never think she could do the mental calculator thing, much less contribute to the sum of human knowledge!"

"Oi... konoyaro!" Ranma protested. "I think I'm getting pretty mad now."

"Judging a book by it's cover is a pretty dick move," Tony agreed, sounding serious enough that Rhodey had to wince. His comment had been more about a cheap shot at the annoying teen than a real opinion. "Maybe she was born that way, maybe it was the paranormal Ki-training... maybe it was both... but either way she does have unique mental capabilities. The only reason nobody picked up on it sooner was because she never spent much time in institutional learning. And when she did, her teachers were too dumb to figure out she'd invented her own terms and methods."

"Well... I ain't gonna bother defending the teachers at Furinkan," Ranma conceded. "I'm kind of tired hearing people who don't know anything tell me what I can and can't do like they did!"

"Exactly. You wouldn't believe what kinds of morons and lunatics they had at that place! You really don't want to imitate them!" Tony said leadingly.

"OK, you're right," Rhodey conceded. "I'm sorry I said that, Ranma."

After a moment, Ranma said: "Alright. I accept your apology."

"Of course, in the end this means you actually are a monster," Rhodey pointed out, calmer now that he'd had a chance to get used to the new facts of life.

"I already accepted your apology... you don't have to butter me up," Ranma replied sourly, though not completely hiding how pleased she was at the comment, making the two men chuckle.

"Alright!" Tony spoke up more cheerfully, obviously regarding the matter as settled and having used the time to surreptitiously adjust the weapons control programming. "Now that's done with, let's try again!"

"Same scenario?" Rhodey checked

"For now."

"Alright," Ranma sighed, then blasted off toward the starting line. Tony got into position as well, but this time he decided to stay in motion instead of trying to rely on the ineffective stealth systems to snipe.

The next bout, the instant any part of the SkyBuster was in line of sight, Tony fired. And hit. For all the good it did him. Ranma was firing back, after all. The ThunderStruck was objectively tougher and more powerful than the SkyBuster, but that wasn't enough when Ranma went into ballistic free-fall to bring all her repulsors to bear and shoot six times for every four that Tony could send her way. She won that battle of attrition.

"Okaaay, that was cute," Tony muttered. "Let's try this."

The next time, he timed it so he was flying straight at Ranma's exit point when she passed the hills. Being able to bring the entirety of the top and bottom banks of secondary repulsors to bear gave him eight to shoot with while the main repulsors drove him forward. That was enough to give him the advantage until he suddenly started missing.

"What the hell?" Tony exclaimed in confusion. "Wait! Wait! I give! I give!" Once the rain of hit alerts died off, he was able to concentrate. After a few moments of reviewing the data, his tone was shocked and pleased when he said: "Did you just use electronic warfare on me?"

"I guess so? You're using radar and I'm not really using it, so I used that against you," Ranma reported.

"OK... OK..." Tony said slowly with an encouraging tone. "Fair enough... that's fair play... but how? I know what I programmed into the SB, and radar-jamming wasn't... oh my god," he sighed with a mix of exasperation and respect. "You went pachi-pachi with the buttons again," he concluded. The logs showed she had manually flipped the radar on and off and made changes in the wavelengths it used dozens of times per second. More than enough to throw off his own radar and the aiming assist it gave.

"Yep," Ranma confirmed trenchantly.

"Heh. Well you might regret that. Electronics are my battlefield," Tony boasted.

"Oh yeah? Bring iiiit!" the Ki-adept cheered jokingly.

Coming up with a way to compensate for the random, whimsical changes made by a teen operating at several dozen times the speed of a regular human was surprisingly difficult. However, after a few rounds Tony worked out the hard limits of intrinsic lag in the controls themselves and of Ranma's hand speed. She might be able to move faster than even high-speed cameras could record her, but there was still a finite, calculable interval needed to switch between controls that was clearly measurable by the tens of billions of calculations per second his custom designed CPU's were capable of. By watching for those specific intervals, the software could predict the change that was about to occur. "Hah-hah! Got you!" the inventor crowed as he finally scored a notional kill on Ranma.

"Hai, hai," Ranma agreed apathetically as she returned to start.

"You only have to say 'hai' onc... ACK! NO KI-BOLTS!" Tony yelped as a silver Moko Takabisha popped over the rise and started homing in on him.

"And... no hiding behind a tree!" he added a few minutes later as the SkyBuster peeked out from behind a scrubby bristlecone pine to take potshots at him. "Are you even airborne right now?"

"I'm... hovering above SlyDr height," Ranma told him. "Barely." She had to admit she was having fun with this now that she was figuring out ways to mess with her employer.

"Well cut it out!"

"Yeah... yeah... guess I'll try maneuvering now."

"What? JESUS CHRIST!" Tony shouted as the SkyBuster seemed to corkscrew in three completely different directions at once as it ascended.

"Jesus Christ!" Rhodey echoed as he watched the action. That kind of maneuverability was terrifying in the context of aerial combat he was trained in. The wild gyrations did nothing to stop the SkyBuster from staying airborne or to prevent Ranma from sending the occasional repulsor bolt Tony's way while the billionaire found it impossible to line up a shot in return. "And... another bit of Tony's pride bites the dust," the officer announced as the kill tone sounded again.

"Sunnuva..." Tony started to curse, then calmed down immediately as he remembered something. "Right... did I mention Ranma also has an inherent advantage with vectored thrust?" Tony muttered.

"What does that mean?" Rhodey asked.

"Heh... this is just core Saotome aerial school," Ranma chuckled. "I can use the opponent's attacks and force redirection to stay in the air. I was staying airborne for minutes without a plane long before I got here! Having actual thrust I can control? Easy!"

"What she said. Forget N-dimensions, she's got an advantage over me in three-dimensional thinking. I'm not even sure she believes in the concept of local vertical," Tony commented as he continued to review the after-action readings. "Oh for... are you seeing these accelerometer numbers?"

"Huh? Hang on... uh... holy shit! Is this accurate? She nearly hit fifty G's?" Rhodey gasped in complete shock.

"Something like that," Ranma answered cockily. "No biggie. Ku Lon hit me with a 100 that one time."

"What?"

"Yeah... that's accurate," Tony informed his friend. "Uh..." he thought frantically as he was forced to consider just how much of an advantage that kind of G-tolerance gave Ranma. Even with the reinforcing field the Arc reactor somehow provided him while in the Iron Man armor, he still couldn't manage much more than a quarter of that acceleration without blacking out. "Uh... you... just... squished the passenger I just decided you are pretending to carry!" he announced with increasing confidence. "I will generously consider this one a draw. No more than 8 G's from now on! I'm setting a governor on the thrusters!"

"Aw man...!"

"You still behind in the score my man," Rhodey pointed out. "Even with the bullshit rule change."

"Shush! Now let's try this again."

Things seemed to be going Tony's way again on the next run until Ranma managed to bait him in closer despite himself with what was one of her signature talents. Once she lured him into a chase, she suddenly slammed all thrusters into reverse and was abruptly flying up his nose in a blurring flip. By the time he recovered from the surprise, he was hearing the warning tones of repulsor hits all over his airframe.

"Jeez... did she actually manage to VIFF you?" Rhodey wondered with some admiration. "Even the Harriers couldn't really manage it like that!"

"Power-to-weight ratio is way higher than the old jump jets," Tony commented. "I'm gonna have to borrow that for the ThunderStruck. I... aw, dammit!" he groaned as the shot-down indicator went off.

"Splashed again," Rhodey announced with some amusement. "Maybe quit while you're... less behind?"

"Christ!" Tony let out a plosive breath. "Do you want to try your luck, Rhodes? I told you she'd be a nightmare as a fighter pilot. In a F-22, you'd last about a tenth of a second once you were in view."

"Sure," the Air Force officer agreed immediately. "Lemme fly that thing and I will. It'll be worth taking the lumps."

"Nooo..." Tony responded with sardonic patience. "I told you what you'll have to do. This special pain is all mine."

"Too much information," Ranma quipped.

Tony guffawed out loud at that. The joke immediately put him in a better mood, and he started getting inspired instead of frustrated. "OK... let's try this when I don't fuck up and let her get in close!"

"Good luck with that," Rhodey offered sympathetically.

Despite his resolve, during the next round Ranma's ability to coax an opponent into tactical folly that she had been developing since before she could form coherent memories lured him into a bad position even when he knew better. "Dammit!" Once again, Tony was way too close to somebody who managed to frame absolutely everything as close-quarters combat and he needed to do something quick! "Ssssee ya!" This time instead of sticking around to play into Ranma's strengths again, he kicked in all the aft thrusters at full allowed power and used the ThunderStruck's superior level flight aerodynamics to make a run for it, hoping to tank the hits he took until he got out of range. He breathed a sigh of relief when he made it.

Then Ranma sweetly reminded him: "Oh Tony~? Did you forget about who was supposed to be chasing who? Or the finish line?"

"Huh?" Tony looked back as he realized the line he was supposed to be defending was several miles behind him. "Shit!" he whined as the SkyBuster leisurely crossed that line just as he banked to try to turn back. He ended up hovering at a stop when he realized it was too late.

"Seriously... it might be time to pack it in," Rhodey chuckled.

"No... no... no..." Tony protested. "The official reason to be out here is to develop new tactics and refine the technology. In that regard, this has been nothing but a fantastic success! Between the improvements to the combat algorithms, tweaks to the technology, and my increasing fighting experience, I'm becoming even more effective in the field!"

"And... unofficially...?" Rhodey prompted knowingly.

"Unofficially I wanna win dammit!" Tony hissed.

"You won one," Ranma said consolingly.

"Out of how many?"

"Uh... you don't want to know?"

Tony took a long, dramatic breath and declaimed: "As the imaginary god above is my witness... I will win two today!"

Rhodey huffed a laugh and said: "OK. Your funeral. We'll be cheering you on from over here."

"Yay, Boss," Ranma cheered sarcastically and a golf clap could be heard of the radio. "Rah-rah!"

"Cheeky. Damn. Minx," Tony grumbled, then audibly cheered up. "OK. Time to get creative." He grinned to himself and started inputting changes to the ThunderStruck's programming. "Reset to start."

"OK," Ranma acquiesced. "Uh... aren't you coming back in?" she asked as she realized he was still hovering where he had stopped.

"I'm fine where I am," he assured them.

"Okaaay," Ranma replied dubiously as she flew back to her assigned position. "Say when."

"Gimme a second," Tony said distractedly as he finished piecing together a precision range finding routine. Casting his eyes over the changes and the results of a limited simulation, he nodded and said: "OK, we can go!"

"Oh he's definitely up to something," Rhodey observed with considerable prior experience. "OK, let's see what happens. Start!"

Ranma jetted forward while she watched for Tony's move. Once she crossed into the mission zone, she found out as she started taking hits. "What the heck?" she wondered with mild confusion as she threw SkyBuster into gyrations as insane as she could manage with the G-meter limitation. "I thought we were out of range of each other?" True, the repulsors were energy weapons, not projectile throwers, but they also suffered quite a bit from atmospheric attenuation. Even more so than lasers given how their ability to directly impart motive force ended up being dispersed into accelerating air-molecules out of the way of the beam. At the low-power settings they were using, they could only register a hit at about five miles and Tony was way beyond that. "Did you up the power of your repulsors?"

Tony was enjoying the turkey shoot he managed to create. At that range, the precision needed to score a hit was higher, but with weapons that struck at the speed of light, he effectively hit the instant he fired. Not like a bullet or missile that would give the target plenty of time to move relative to the initial aim-point. As a result, Ranma wasn't able to generate enough angular displacement to consistently dodge the shots. "Nah! Power's exactly the same as before! Just ask Rhodey!"

"That's... true," the colonel agreed as he checked the readouts. "He's obviously using some trick, though."

"Hah! How do you like dem apples!" Tony crowed.

"Oh I didn't disbelieve it," Ranma responded with a tone that was far more intrigued than annoyed, showing no hint of all the violent maneuvers she was pulling to minimize the notional damage she was taking. "I just want to figure out how you're doing it. There's something funny about those beams..."

"Er... maybe something..." Tony admitted reluctantly as he redoubled his efforts to score a kill before she figured out his little trick.

Still frantically dodging, Ranma nibbled her lip as she tried to focus on the niggling impression she was getting from the incoming barrage. Following a hunch, she popped open the canopy. Her visor automatically tightened on her head to keep from being ripped off by thunderous air currents.

"Holy shit, Saotome!" Rhodey immediately exclaimed. "Are you still there?"

"What?! What!?" Tony demanded.

"Her canopy opened and she's supersonic!"

["Switching to subvox,"] Ranma announced, the computers converting her subvocal speech into something audible, but stripping out her tone and timbre. ["I'm fine. Just can't talk with all this wind. I just want a better look."]

"That's nuts!" Rhodey yelled. "You're going to get killed!" There had been one guy in the USAF who managed to bailout of a F-15 at 800 MPH and live, but he'd been in the hospital for months and his radar operator had died instantly in the hurricane-times-ten airstream.

"Seriously, don't worry about it," Tony interjected. "She does this all the time. Sometimes she'll take the 'Buster up at night to fly around at Mach 2 with the top down. Naked."

"She does what!?"

["It's for training. I like to feel the sky,"] Ranma explained. As she did so, she caught sight of a repulsor beam just as it appeared beside her. ["Ah-ha."] She closed the canopy again and switched to normal voice to announce: "I figured out the trick! You narrowed the beam!"

"Argh... you're way too quick on the uptake! We'll see if it does you any good!" Tony called back.

"Forget that! I have questions!" Rhodey shouted.

"Well you see... I didn't actually narrow the beam as it is emitted, I set it up to change the focus so it converged at the point the rangefinder shows for the target distance, kind of like using a magnifying glass on a sunbeam..."

"That wasn't one of my questions!" Rhodey interrupted in aggravation. "She does what? At Mach 2 what?"

"What? Are you still on about my recreational flying?" Ranma responded with an insouciant tone that was pure teenager.

"Yeah! Jeez! That was so fifteen-seconds ago!" Tony piped up in support.

"Are we seriously going to just shrug it off when she does something impossible like that!?"

"Where have you been for the last few months?" Tony asked with genuine bemusement. "Of course we're going to do that! Just like I did the last three-hundred and forty-two times!"

"It really isn't any big deal," Ranma assured them before adding thoughtfully: "A little drafty on the hoo-hah, though..."

Predictably, Tony cracked up at that last comment. As soon as he did so, Ranma stopped dodging to turn and burn straight for him.

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" Tony protested while laughing. The uncontrollable reaction threw off his aim and he was missing every shot despite her straight-on charge. "No fair using weaponized humor!"

"Anything Goes, buddy! Anything Goes!" Ranma riposted.

"Nothing in the current rules about it," Rhodey had to add.

"Right. Next time. But for now... believe it or don't, I can control myself enough to deal with this," Tony informed them as he managed to suppress his chuckles.

""We don't believe it,"" Rhodey and Ranma chorused.

"Oh ye of little faith... here we go!" the armored billionaire cheered as he started scoring hits again, making Ranma resume dodging. "No way you can shoot back either!"

"Not unless I change the focus too," Ranma replied calmly.

"You're not any kind of programmer yet. Without JARVIS, you'll never figure out the proper settings to use in time," Tony claimed with quite a bit of truth on his side. "Face it, this round is... hauh? He was shocked out of his boasting when instead of hearing the pings from the sensors of the two craft indicating more hits, he saw a small explosion instead. "What the...? Ranma, are you OK!?" As soon as he asked, he was answered as the smaller craft zoomed past the faintly glowing, blue-green ring that obscured his view. "You're OK... what the hell was that?"

"Did you forget the day we met already?" Ranma teased. "They say the memory is the first to go..."

"I remember perfectly you brat! What the hell does that have to do... oh, goddammit!" He wanted to kick himself when the hint and the familiarity of the odd ring-looking pattern lingering from the explosion made him twig to what she was talking about.

"What?" Rhodey asked, getting a little tired of having to keep saying that.

"She crossed the streams!"

"What?"

Ranma chuckled. "These repulsor beams don't pass though each other! They explode!"

"The first goddamn day I met Ranma, I discovered that by accident!" Tony admitted with some annoyance. "I completely forgot about it after I added code to prevent it! Wait... I copied that programming in these vehicles! How did you override that?"

"I didn't cross my bolts," Ranma answered cheerfully, "I crossed yours!"

"You crossed..." You could almost hear Tony shake himself over the radio as he realized what she meant. "You shot my repulsor bolts?! In mid-air?! How?!"

"Hand is faster than eye. Ear is faster than hand. Ki is faster than all." It sounded like Ranma was quoting something. Something that only made sense to her.

"'Ki is faster than all'?" Tony parroted. "The fuck? Repulsors are light-speed. Are you saying Ki is faster than light? Wait..." he suddenly switched from sarcastic to thoughtful. "Is Ki faster than light?"

"I have no idea. Should we ask Professor Nokken to look into it?" Ranma wondered, referring to the physics department head at ESU who had been one of the driving forces for getting her into that school. "I'm about to win, by the way."

"What! Oh crap!" Tony yelped as he reacquired target lock and fired to try to stop Ranma from crossing the finish line. The rest of his shots merely created interesting fireworks in the sky instead of doing anything useful. "Shit! OK... OK... I give up," he conceded seconds before Ranma reached her goal. "I can't wait to find out... how the hell are you doing that?" he asked with exasperation.

"I told you... I shot your bolts before they could get to me," Ranma stated with a smile evident in her voice.

"Uh-huh... it's easy to tell when you're leading up to something," Tony prompted impatiently. "What's the rest of the story?"

"Well... I did say I changed the focus," Ranma drawled cheerfully. "But not to narrow the beam. To make it wider."

"You... you shotgunned my bolts?" The radio went silent for a bit as he processed that. After a moment, Tony came back with: "Oh man... niiice trick!"

"Right?" Ranma said gleefully. "Once I felt you fire, I did too. I didn't need to know the exact angle, I just needed it to be wider than the patch of sky you're in!"

"...Thus making any beam aimed your way inevitably cross the cone," Tony completed the thought. "But hang on! These things are still light-speed! By the time I fire, it's too late to respond! I would catch you on your charge cycle! Even your reactions are nothing compared to the speed of light!"

"You sure about that? I gotta say... it's trippy watching these photons go by while doing their wave-particle thing!" the redhead joked.

"Ranma~!" Tony intoned chidingly, not buying it for even an instant.

"Ha-ha-ha... OK... I'm not beating light-speed. Yet." Ranma chuckled to herself as she could practically hear the men roll their eyes at her arrogant presumption. "So... instead I've got your patterns nailed down. How you shoot and when you shoot. Even when you hit full charge, there's about seven milliseconds where your software does final checks and micro-adjusts targeting before actually firing. Plenty of time to catch up filling my capacitor if I shoot from the hip. Which I can do because..."

"Because of the wide beam not needing precision targeting," Tony noted. "Ah... got it. Very clever. Very clever. Obviously I need to spend time playing around with this later. I never did bother to try to figure out why the explosions happen in the first place."

"Do we have an anti-Iron Man defense here? I mean one that anybody can use?" Rhodey had to ask for the sake of his superiors.

"You wish," Tony scoffed. "First off, you'll need a repulsor to even begin to try this. Even if you did... to pull off the timing Ranma managed... you'd have to..." the inventor trailed off as he cocked his head, trying to figure out just how he'd return the favor. "Uh..."

At this point, he knew enough about how the master martial artist operated that he knew she spoke only the truth when she said she used his patterns against him with immaculate timing. She had an uncanny ability to spot predictable patterns... harmonies... in combat situations that looked like pure noise to even JARVIS. Or what looked like noise to the AI today. The self-programmed heuristic modeling was always improving, and was taking leaps forward with Ranma's own assistance. Something that by itself justified a substantial salary beyond all the other things she did. However, those future advances were not in effect yet.

"You aren't able to do that, are you?" Rhodey guessed with some accuracy after a little time went by.

"I... give me a minute," Tony requested as he started rapidly working. The problem wasn't the computational speed... that part was done in microseconds... it was the charge time. Plus his mechanistic sensors still weren't as sensitive as Ranma's paranormal ones. Particularly not in the chaos of an active fight. Like he'd said, by the time it was known a shot was coming, it was too late to do anything about it unless you started within a handful of milliseconds or sooner. So... "I can manage it for the first few shots with repulsors already primed," Tony concluded, then his head jerked as he thought of something else. "Or...! Let me try this!"

After some quick reprogramming, the ThunderStruck moved into the conventional range of the repulsors, then turned nose-down and started hovering on the forward repulsors at an angle as the canopy opened and Tony stood up. Pointing his torso toward Ranma's position, he said: "OK, try shooting me!"

"Wiiith pleasure," Ranma acknowledged with relish even though she had a good idea what was about to happen. Sure enough, her first shot detonated as a fan of yellow energy from Iron Man's chest reactor lit up the sky.

"Eureka! Uni-beam doesn't need a charge time! Keep firing!" Tony demanded. He laughed in delight as his newly programmed counter-measures intercepted every inbound beam. Like Ranma had said, the milliseconds needed by the capacitors and aim-correction were plenty of time! "This will work on lots of other things, too!" Tony pointed out. "Nice discovery, Ranma!"

"Yep, yep, yep... that's what you pay me for," Ranma said with a smug emulation of modesty.

"And this highly useful technology will go to the United States military when?" Rhodey broke in on the conversation.

"Never if I can help it," Tony instantly answered.

"That's what I thought. Kind of makes it hard to get excited about it, you know," Rhodey sighed. "What does this mean for the scenario? Are we done? Since you can't hit Ranma and she can't hit you..."

"Uh... if we get closer?" Tony started to ruminate. "No... never mind. Speed of light makes a joke out of normal tactical considerations. A hundred feet might as well be a hundred miles for all the difference it makes in the timing."

"And you can't exactly maneuver when you have to stick your chest out of the plane," Ranma noted dryly.

"...And I can't maneuver when aiming my chest out the canopy, no," Tony admitted.

"So are we done?" Rhodey asked again.

"No! I still want my Top Gun moment, dang it!" Tony blurted.

"Ah yes..." Rhodey let out a breath of deep, long-term suffering.

"So! New rule!" Tony declared.

"Uh... is this new rule gonna be 'hold still and let you hit me?'" Ranma asked with trepidation.

Tony paused a moment. "Don't tempt me. No, actually, I was thinking we play for missile-lock from now on! We'll properly and honestly maneuver for nose-on attack angles! None of this new-fangled shooting up or down or backwards stuff with vectorable repulsors!"

"I guess I won't bother pointing out you're the source of this 'new-fangled' stuff... but... Tony...? Are you sure you want to get into a fight of maneuver?" Rhodes asked dubiously.

"In a more conventional engagement? With Ranma's accelerometer locked down? Yeah, I can do this!" Tony said with confidence.

"Okaaaay..." Rhodey gave up on warning his friend. "Though, there's a slight technical problem with your plan."

"What's that?"

"Boss... I don't have missiles," Ranma spoke up bluntly.

They couldn't see it, but the rejoinder made Tony blink. "Knew I was forgetting something. New plan: head to the bus, and I'll add the targeting and launch programming. We'll add the real missiles later."

"I don't think that'll be the only problem, but... fine..." Rhodey agreed in resignation.

It didn't take long to make modifications to Ranma's ride, and they repeated the scenario once again. Tony started high so he'd have a better position when Ranma came into the fight zone. Surely he had an unbeatable advantage this time...

Ranma figured ten meters was a nice round number, so that's how high above the ground she flew. Far below where even the ThunderStruck's radar could pick out the SkyBuster precisely without assistance from other sensors... and his missiles were strictly radar guided, no optical component like with the repulsors. No radar meant no radar lock.

"Note to self... improve... the... stupid...missiles," Tony sourly recited as if writing a physical note. "Right! New rule! We're flying with a hard deck now! Stay at at least three hundred feet above the ground!"

This time, Tony managed to get the dogfight he was hoping for. He went screaming out of the sky at Ranma as she frantically dodged and jinked. He played the thrusters and control surfaces of his craft like a maestro to bring the targeting reticle closer and closer to his opponent.

Of course, it didn't matter what the acceleration of the thrusters were limited to if the pilot jumped out in mid-air and used a couple of chains to slingshot her vehicle around the fulcrum of her own body before yanking herself back into the cockpit in a highly improbable maneuver to gain an impossible advantage.

"Ranma..." You wouldn't think billionaire industrialists could whine like kicked puppies, but it turns out they can. They really, really can. "Stay in your goddamn seat."

"Hey, uh... is now a bad time to point out that 'Seikuuken' means 'Sky Sphere Domination'?" Ranma asked hesitantly.

Stark's response was not intelligible, but sounded rather negative nonetheless.

"' Sky Sphere...' Jeeeesus. Tony... I think you might want to just pack it in for the day..." Rhodes suggested with healthy helpings of sympathy and weariness... and a fair amount of amusement. "Seriously. If you want a conventional dogfight with a conventional pilot, get me trained up on one of those things and we'll go to town."

"No!" Tony said stubbornly. "With the stay in-your-seat rule I think we got it this time! We need to find out what these vehicles can do!"

"By limiting one of them so the pilot can't go all out?" Rhodey asked cynically.

Tony paused for several beats. "Shut up. Ranma, get back to the starting line."

"Like... oh~ migod~!" Ranma grumbled with a certain distinct accent. Both men listening in burst out in laughter.

"Where the hell did she pick that up from?" Rhodes wondered.

"Believe it or not, from Pepper," Tony shamelessly snitched on his significant other. "She regretted it the instant she realized Ranma was in earshot. Alright," he sighed with some more cheer in his voice. "Let's do this just one more time. I promise."

"Take a dive, Ranma! Take a dive!" Rhodey fake-whispered to the martial artist.

"No, don't do that," the inventor interjected. "Really. One more time, win or lose, and I'm done for the day. You can even go pick up Miss Selfie-Bait early."

"Hai... Hai..."

"You only need to say 'hai' once."

Luckily for Tony, the next run proved he had at last burdened his employee with enough handicaps to get the scenario he wanted. Immelmanns, yo-yos, barrel-rolls, and scissors maneuvers ensued as the two continually struggled for an advantage. They even managed to include an inverted dive. At long last he was using tactics in real life that he had only used in simulations. It was exactly the 'Top Gun' scenario he'd dreamed of.

Right up until Ranma sidled up close to the side of the ThunderStruck, opened the side of her canopy, and slapped his aircraft into a flat spin.

Tony straightened out his flight quickly... the benefit of vectored thrust... but the damage was done as the tone sounding in his cockpit proved. The girl who had never driven anything more complex than a bicycle half a year before had defeated him once again. "Oh my god..." he groaned.

"So..." Rhodey drawled. "Are we changing her callsign to 'Maverick' instead of 'Dragon' now?"

"No." Ranma's denial was immediate. "What does that even mean...?"

"Since Tony is undoubtedly planning a movie night? I can safely say: God help you... you'll learn," Rhodey predicted mordantly.

"Now that's not nice," Tony complained. "Accurate, though. But... no. We are not giving the 'Maverick' title to Ranma," he decreed firmly. "Because: reasons." His petulant tone earned him derisive laughter from his former college roommate.

"Well, Tony, you might not have managed to rise to the level of 'Top Gun,' but you have definitely fallen to 'Air America' levels," Rhodes offered with mock encouragement. "How many times did the main character get shot down?"

"You shut up! You shut up now!"

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

Author's notes:

Disclaimer: all the stuff stated to be more than comic book science is... um... totally comic book science. Oh well.

* For those of you who objected to casual hookups for Ranma in the last chapter, I give to you... more casual hookups! And discussion of casual hookups! And foreboding of more casual hookups! Sorry! Seriously though, this is not pointless diversion. The fact is that Ranma is not going to face a risk of serious physical harm until the likes of Ultron or Thanos (or non-canon characters) show up. Without them, I'm either stuck introducing kryptonite to create a physical struggle where there wasn't one before, or there need to be trials of the non-combat variety. Will trivial, pointless relationships be one of those trials? Will being manipulated by Natasha be something to overcome? I won't go too deeply into the full reasoning as to why things are happening as they are at this stage in Ranma's life, nor will I get into what might become of it in the future, that's what the story is for, but it will take some development before these sorts of questions gets settled. Please remember that just because a main character thinks something is a good idea does not mean it is actually a good idea. Also remember that these central characters are not normal people, so it might not be a bad idea for them even if it would be normally. It's also possible it won't be truly good or bad in the end, just messy. We'll see as the story develops.

* Also if the people who negatively reviewed this particular development could turn on their PM, that would be helpful. One of you posted a phrase I'm keeping in my notes that I'd love to re-use later on in the story.

* Poor Tony, enacting that movie-inspired fantasy with unregulated aircraft really didn't work out too well for him. He would have been fifteen or sixteen when Top Gun came out, and I could easily see it being something he would have enjoyed. Gorgeous vehicles. Fast women. Or was it the other way around? So... there might be a few parallels between that movie and pre-Iron Man Tony Stark's lifestyle.

* Yes, I know the movies show repulsor bolts as moving below the speed of light. The problem is if you use the movies as the only reference, the repulsor bolts are way, way slower. As in: slower-than-paintballs slower depending on which scene you refer to. So... never mind. I'll go with the comic book canon of light-speed (even though the comic book writers definitely showed they had no clue how fast that was.)

* I also know that bit about Air America (starring RDJ) near the end was bad, and I should feel bad. But I don't.