Chapter 9: The Poultry Phantom Takes Flight
"Okay, so Phase One of Operation: Annoy Tony Stark into Oblivion was a roaring success. He's probably still having nightmares about philosophical laser-shooting alarm clocks. Now, for the real fun. Obadiah Stane. The man, the myth, the villain who definitely needs to lighten up. My specialty: psychological warfare, but with more feathers. Behold, the glorious inception of the 'Poultry Phantom' campaign. It's like a corporate haunting, but instead of ghosts, it's just… a lot of chickens. And possibly some really bad puns."
With a freshly minted (and entirely fabricated) D-Rank skill in "Media Manipulation (Minor)" under his belt, Alex felt a new spring in his step. The ability to subtly shift public perception, even on a small scale, was a potent weapon. But first, he needed a base. Los Angeles was expensive, even for a ghost with newfound hacking intuition.
He found a surprisingly cheap apartment on the outskirts, a place that smelled faintly of desperation and stale pizza. It wasn't much, just a single room with a saggy mattress and a perpetually dripping faucet, but it had a stable internet connection. For Alex, that was pure gold. He spent the next few days establishing himself, setting up secure digital proxies, and mapping out Stark Industries' network. His "Basic Hacking Intuition" was slowly becoming more refined, like a blurry image coming into focus. He could feel the network's pulses, its weak points, the open backdoors. He was still far from a master hacker, but he was learning. Fast.
His primary target, however, wasn't Tony Stark's impenetrable R&D. It was Obadiah Stane. The man was a schemer, a backstabber, and precisely the kind of arrogant, self-important target the Mischief System was designed for. And Alex had a special plan for him. A plan involving… poultry.
"People underestimate the power of absurd, repetitive annoyance. It's not about grand gestures. It's about the slow, agonizing drip. Like Chinese water torture, but instead of water, it's just… chickens. And the victim is a corrupt corporate executive. Honestly, I think my version is more ethical. And funnier."
His first move was simple. He purchased a high-quality, perfectly rendered rubber chicken online, using a burner account and a prepaid card. It was generic, unthreatening, but undeniably… a rubber chicken. His target: Obadiah Stane's private office at Stark Industries.
Infiltrating the building was surprisingly easy for a man who'd just escaped a terrorist cave. He used his "Situational Awareness (Tactical)" to identify shift changes, blind spots in the security camera network, and the general complacency of a corporate environment that believed itself impregnable. Early one morning, before most of the high-level employees arrived, Alex, dressed inconspicuously as a delivery driver, slipped past a bored security guard.
He made his way to Stane's floor. The office was opulent, impersonal. He found Stane's desk, covered in stacks of papers and a few framed photos. Alex pulled out the rubber chicken. He didn't just leave it on the desk. Oh no. That was too simple.
He carefully placed it inside Stane's personal, locked desk drawer, tucked neatly beneath a pile of financial reports. It was precisely the kind of thing that would only be discovered much later, and completely by accident. He also used a high-strength, virtually invisible fishing line (leftover from his cave days, a true "Scavenger's Ingenuity" triumph) to subtly tie a tiny, almost microscopic feather to the corner of Stane's monitor. Just enough for him to catch it in his peripheral vision, something fleeting, something to make him question if he saw it at all.
He slipped out as silently as he entered, leaving no trace. The beauty of this prank was its subtlety. It wasn't about immediate chaos; it was about the slow burn, the creeping sense of unease.
Days later, Alex grinned as he read a minor news blurb about "unexplained disruptions" at Stark Industries, vague rumors about "internal security reviews." He knew. He knew.
[Mischief Target: Obadiah Stane | Annoyance Level: Low - Initial Confusion, Building Suspicion.]
[Mischief Target: Stark Industries Security | Annoyance Level: Low - Minor Inefficiencies and Head-Scratching.]
[Calculating Rewards...]
[Reward Acquired: 40 Mischief Points]
[New Plot Alert: The Phantom's Reach. Opportunity for escalating psychological torment and data acquisition.]