There were three weeks left until the charity gala with Fisk, so until then, I planned to keep my head low.
I looked at my quest window.
[Inspire fear into the main Avengers team!]
Progress:
Iron Man: 0/1
Captain America: 0/1
The Hulk: 0/1
Thor: 1/1
Black Widow: 0/1
Hawkeye: 1/1
Reward Upon Completion: 50,000 to 500,000 FP Random Ability
Time limit before quest becomes inactive: 11 months
In eleven months, the Avengers would be formed when Loki would invade Earth with the Chitauri.
Basically, before then, I had to make contact with every single one of them and induce fear in them.
There was no penalty for failing the quest as far as I could see, but the idea of getting a 500,000 FP ability or anything even close to that was way too tantalising an offer to just pass up. I had to make progress towards that goal.
Right now, I was strong, but not overwhelmingly so. Conqueror's Haki wasn't even enough to take down someone like Coulson, so there was no question that it'd be ineffective against an Avenger. So, discounting that, my only two abilities were the Sharingan and Dead Bone Pulse.
The Sharingan gave me superhuman reaction times, but that wasn't exactly a rarity in the MCU, especially considering this world apparently had fucking mutants.
Kimimaro's Dead Bone Pulse provided me with a potent form of attack and defence, but it wasn't exactly the type of ability that would let me take down A-list heroes.
But if I had an ability worth half a million FP, that would instantly catapult my strength to the level of major heroes, as I had said before; there were no bad abilities at that price point.
Looking through the list, I had four options.
Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk and Black Widow
The easiest option would probably be Iron Man. Tony Stark's movements would be relatively easy to track, considering how well-known he is and his love for the spotlight. On top of that, he didn't exactly have the same level of determination and resolve as someone like Cap or Black Widow.
The Hulk... Was most likely going to be the hardest option. The issue with him was that I had no idea if scaring Banner counted as scaring the Hulk. If that were the case, then I'd go spook Banner right this instant, but I felt that wouldn't be the case.
How the fuck was I supposed to scare the Hulk?
Captain America was a different problem entirely. By this time, Steve Rogers would have just woken up from seventy years in the ice, which meant he was currently somewhere under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s wing, probably being debriefed, monitored and kept close. Getting anywhere near him without walking directly into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s lap would be a logistical nightmare.
Beyond the access problem, there was the more fundamental issue of the man himself. Steve Rogers was someone who had volunteered to be injected with an experimental serum and then jumped on a grenade to protect people he had known for two weeks. The psychological profile of a man like that didn't exactly lend itself to being easily frightened. Whatever I did would have to be genuinely impressive to register as fear rather than just concern.
Black Widow was arguably the most complicated of the four. Natasha Romanov was one of the most well-trained people on the planet, and more relevantly, one of the hardest to find when she didn't want to be found.
The problem with Widow specifically wasn't strength; it was psychology. Making someone like Tony Stark afraid was relatively straightforward because Stark, despite his genius, was still a man with very human vulnerabilities. Romanov, on the other hand, had been conditioned from childhood to suppress exactly the kinds of emotional responses that generated fear. Whatever the Red Room had done to her, it had produced someone whose threat assessment was almost entirely clinical.
To put it simply, I felt there were no good options. Iron Man was technically the 'easiest' one, but I'd still get my ass whooped if I tried fighting him as I was now.
"I need more fear."
But that was easier said than done.
By all means, I could technically go ahead and continue farming criminal organisations outside of Fisk's control, but honestly, I had no interest in that after receiving 20,000 FP from Hawkeye alone.
Doing something to shock the world was also an option, but I frankly didn't want to cause any incidents like that until around the time of the Chitauri Invasion.
"Wonder how much someone like Frost would give me."
Emma Frost was a major character in the X-Men, so she'd probably net me decent points... but I wasn't exactly sure how to induce fear into her.
If anything, I was scared of her. The greatest power I had at the moment was my future knowledge, something that she could potentially rip straight out of my head.
My thoughts began shifting as I thought of how Fisk interpreted my Haki as some form of telepathy.
'How does Conqueror's Haki really even work?'
I began reviewing the knowledge I had from One Piece.
Conqueror's Haki was, at its most fundamental level, the exertion of one's will as a physical force. The reasoning behind it was that the user's will was so overwhelming that weaker wills couldn't withstand contact with it.
The question was what would happen when that will met something trying to push in the opposite direction.
Telepathy, at its core, was an intrusion. It was one consciousness forcing its way into another. And Emma Frost's particular brand of it was extraordinarily powerful, but it was still fundamentally that, an external force attempting to penetrate someone's mental defences.
Conqueror's Haki didn't defend passively. It projected outward aggressively, a constant assertion of dominance over the surrounding space. In One Piece, even being near a powerful Conqueror's user was described as suffocating, like being crushed under an invisible weight.
So what would happen if Emma Frost tried to reach into a mind that was simultaneously pushing back?
'It might not just block her,' I reasoned slowly, working through it. 'It could be worse for her than for anyone else.'
Conqueror's Haki didn't discriminate. It pressed outward against every will in its radius, and the effect scaled inversely with the strength of the target's own will. A weak-willed person dropped immediately. A strong-willed person felt crushing pressure but stayed conscious.
But Emma Frost wasn't just strong-willed. She was someone whose entire ability was built around projecting her consciousness outward and into others. Which meant when my Haki pushed back, she wouldn't just be resisting it as a person, she'd be resisting it as a telepath mid intrusion, with her mind already open and extended outward.
'She'd be more exposed to it, not less.'
A normal person caught in Conqueror's Haki had their walls up. Emma Frost reaching into someone's head would have hers down entirely.
It was still a hypothesis with nothing concrete behind it, but it made me feel slightly more secure with the idea of the Frost situation.