IN MARVEL WITH MISCHIEF SYSTEM

Chapter 22: House Arrest & Hammer's Henchman

"Well, Tony's officially on house arrest. Or, as I like to call it, 'luxury detention.' He's probably just binge-watching old movies and trying to figure out if his espresso machine is judging him. Meanwhile, Ivan Vanko, the human walking Tesla coil, is now in the tender, bumbling care of Justin Hammer. Oh, this is going to be good. Hammer and Vanko: a match made in a supervillain's fever dream, probably involving a lot of cheap catering and questionable costume choices. Time to play ghost again, both for Tony and for the dynamic duo of disaster."

The dust from Monaco settled, leaving Tony Stark on "house arrest" at his lavish mansion. Alex, from his warehouse command center, still buzzing from the success of his Monaco mischief, turned his attention back to the familiar landscape of Los Angeles. Tony, currently battling palladium poisoning and a general existential crisis, was an easy target for subtle, perplexing interventions. Ivan Vanko, meanwhile, was swiftly apprehended and, predictably, scooped up by the bumbling yet ambitious Justin Hammer.

Alex knew this was a critical phase. Vanko, imprisoned but not truly contained, would be key to Hammer's plans for the Hammer Drones and the eventual Whiplash reveal. This presented a twofold opportunity: continued psychological torment for Tony, and strategic sabotage for Vanko and Hammer.

"Tony's already a mess. Between the existential dread and the metallic poisoning, he's probably convinced his AI is talking to him in riddles. My job? To reinforce that belief, just enough to keep him delightfully disoriented, but not enough to actually break him. It's a delicate balance, like trying to annoy a god while simultaneously making sure he doesn't accidentally destroy the planet."

For Tony, Alex continued the "Ghost in the Machine" routine. The smart home systems would occasionally play random, anachronistic music genres—heavy metal during a quiet meditation, lullabies during a high-stakes video call. Holographic displays in his private labs would sometimes briefly show an image of a single, perfectly serene rubber duck floating on an invisible pond. His personal coffee maker would occasionally dispense decaf instead of his usual triple espresso. These were minor, almost imperceptible disruptions, designed to be just beyond the realm of normal technical glitches, keeping Tony slightly off-kilter, reinforcing the feeling that something, or someone, was subtly toying with his reality.

Alex even engineered a brief, highly localized Wi-Fi "dead zone" that would only appear when Tony was trying to stream a specific, obscure Russian documentary, forcing it to buffer endlessly. A truly petty, yet immensely satisfying, act of digital passive aggression.

[Mischief Target: Tony Stark | Annoyance Level: Low-Medium - Consistent, Perplexing Digital Annoyance, Compounding Existing Stress.]

On the other side of the city, Alex focused his "Masterful Hacking (Network & Device)" on Hammer Industries. The company's security was, predictably, a joke. Alex could practically waltz through their network, leaving behind no more than a faint digital perfume. He quickly located Vanko's containment facility and the network connected to his workstation.

He didn't just observe; he actively interfered. As Vanko began to work on the Hammer Drones, Alex started subtly introducing logical errors into the drone's programming. Not enough to cause immediate catastrophic failure, but enough to create intermittent glitches, unexpected delays, and minor, yet infuriating, malfunctions. A drone's targeting system might drift slightly off-center. Its flight path might inexplicably veer to the left for a few seconds. Its internal diagnostics would occasionally report bizarre, nonsensical errors.

"Vanko thinks he's a genius. Hammer thinks he's a genius. They're both about to discover that the universe has a very particular sense of humor, and that humor involves their highly advanced death machines spontaneously deciding to play 'Ring Around the Rosie' mid-flight. It's for their own good, really. Builds character. And future headaches."

He also targeted Hammer's communication systems. While Hammer was trying to negotiate with military officials, his video conferences would occasionally freeze, displaying a zoomed-in, unflattering still frame of Hammer mid-sentence, before suddenly resuming. His phone calls would drop out at critical moments, only to reconnect with perfect clarity seconds later. These were subtle, yet maddening, frustrations, designed to chip away at Hammer's already shaky confidence and make him look even more incompetent in front of potential clients.

Alex watched Vanko's work, seeing his meticulous process, and then injecting the digital equivalent of a faulty resistor into the code. He saw Vanko's furious reactions to the glitches – the frustrated curses, the slamming of tools, the growing suspicion that something was fundamentally wrong with Hammer's equipment. This was Alex's true goal: to ensure Vanko's creations, while formidable, would be inherently flawed, prone to spectacular and embarrassing failure at the most inopportune moments.

He maintained his complete anonymity. The shadowy cyber-security initiative was still active, but Alex continued to feed them red herrings – fake cyber-attacks on fictional foreign entities, ghost networks, and encrypted messages that led to dead ends or humorous, nonsensical poetry. They were chasing phantoms, just not the one that truly mattered.

[Mischief Target: Ivan Vanko | Annoyance Level: High - Technical Frustration, Mounting Rage, Unaware of Sabotage.]

[Mischief Target: Justin Hammer | Annoyance Level: Medium - Increasing Incompetence, Minor Public Embarrassment.]

[Calculating Rewards...]

[Reward Acquired: 200 Mischief Points]

[Skill Upgrade: B-Rank - "Masterful Hacking (Network & Device)" merged with "Situational Awareness (Tactical)" to become A-Rank - "Omni-Network Manipulation (Strategic)"]

[Hidden Achievement Unlocked: "The Digital Disassembler"]

[New Plot Alert: The Whiplash Whiplash. Opportunity for catastrophic public failure and villainous humiliation.]

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you can read also 20+ chapters of "MCU/ARROWVERSE : With Trading System" "Marvel : Please Kill Me" "Sitcomverse: TBBT, HIMYM, B99, & Modern family" "The Boys: I'm the New Hue, I Need More Power" and "legends of tomorrow : Im a Legend Now"+"Arrowverse: I'm a Hero"+"The Flash : Please Kill Me"

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