Following Instincts

The Left Doesn't Know And The Right Doesn't Either

It was an interesting simulation: a raid led by AIM that was designed to target Tony. Of course, Tony didn't know that until someone tried to jump him as he walked down the street. The team was standing back - trying to give him a chance to prove that he didn't need the suit - and ready to dive in the instant it looked like Tony needed a save. But he fought the first attacker perfectly well on his own, even showcasing a fairly impressive bit of martial arts training that no one but Steve knew he possessed. He hadn't needed to show it to the others, and Steve had been the one to teach him. But Logan picked up on that quickly.

"When did you teach him that?" Logan asked as they fought a nasty little contingency and watched Tony holding his own in a fight - and further out K was doing well with her fight too - though Steve wasn't watching Tony.

"He asked me to teach him a few things," Steve said distractedly, catching K as she pulled off a complex and acrobatic disarming-sweep-knock out an a trio of soldiers that was almost too fast to follow. "Hey. Did you show her that move?"

Logan watched K for a moment to see which style she was using at the time, switching for a moment from fighting to simply dodging his opponent. "No. She came with that."

"I didn't know she could do that," he said.

"She knows all kinds of stuff you don't, Cap."

"Yeah. I'm sure she does," he said, almost smiling to himself as he said it.

A short while later as the program progressed, the team ended up being taken out of the fight which in the Avenger's training scenario meant they were standing in a room adjacent to the training room - waiting for the signal for them to go back closer to where Tony was. But since K was his partner, she remained in the room, not too far away should he need the help. They were fighting the same fight - different opponents, but close enough to help each other if need be. It was the closest thing to an evaluation that Steve could work up to get K to show him what she could do away from the X-Men's more advanced Danger Room - or in a live mission.

Not to mention that this had been a surprisingly good evaluation for Tony too. They'd never really talked him into anything without the suit, but if they'd asked Logan or K, either of them could have tipped the rest of the Avengers off as to why that was if they were approached nicely about it. The answer was simple enough: Tony was honestly scared of how many ways it could go wrong for him out of the suit. And though he had asked Steve to teach him some self defense that was above the level of what his corporate contacts could give him, he still knew the score.

He wasn't super powered. He didn't have cat-like reflexes or super strength, or magic. What he did have was an incredible mind and a very weak point in the arc reactor lodged in his chest. So it should have come as no surprise when Tony was very carefully - but subtly - guarding his chest. Even favoring that to guarding his head. Even in a simulator the wrong hit without the armor could be devastating.

The problem, of course, was that he'd programmed the computer to adjust for whatever it was that someone was trying to avoid - and attack it. So when the program adjusted and began targeting Tony's chest, K finally found her way into the fight Tony was waging. She spared his ego by not taking over the fight entirely, but it still stung to have the tiny currently non-powered feral woman blocking hits meant for him.

What K didn't know though was that the Avenger's androids weren't nearly as advanced as those in the Danger Room. When one slipped around her and nailed Tony with a hit that took his breath away, before anyone could kill the program, K popped her claws and started killing robots. Which won a smile from Tony at the least. "Are you still standing firm on not letting me hire you as a bodyguard?" Tony asked as one of the last robots threw her into him, and he wrapped an arm around her waist to help right her.