So I picked a target. Nothing crazy. Just a big box store with lax security and terrible lighting.
Inside, I wandered past a few sleepy cashiers, ducked down an aisle, and—carefully—tested Hypnosis. Just enough to make a manager look away when I passed the security room.
It worked.
I felt it hum through my chest like a whispered suggestion—light, subtle, barely a drain on my reserves.
Efficient.
Almost unfairly so.
The door clicked open.
I stepped inside.
No alarms. No shouts. Just shelves full of electronics and supplies.
I didn't take anything big.
Just a burner phone. A spare battery. A prepaid SIM.
Enough to set up a clean contact route.
On the way out, I snagged a protein bar. Paid for that one, though. I wasn't a monster.
Back on the street, I let Stranger drop for a moment and watched as a random jogger almost did a double-take.
Right.
Body of Enkidu
Instant beauty mode.
I smirked and toggled it back on.
The poor guy probably thought he was hallucinating.
"Dude, I swear I just saw a literal angel walk past me… and then vanish."
Or maybe a succubus, depending on how his morning was going.
Either way—
Good to know the glam still had punch.
And honestly?
I could probably pull this trick a hundred times and never get tired of it.
Being hot and untraceable?
Peak system synergy.
I was basically doing a full Gojo—walking flex machine with a fanbase waiting to happen.
All I needed now were the blindfold and the theme music.
Next up:
Testing the spell in motion. Rooftops again? Maybe.
Or something more ambitious.
I glanced at the skyline, eyeing the taller buildings in the distance.
This was still day one.
And I had ten of them.
Ten chances to push what this new setup could do—before the fireworks started.
Training was the obvious move.
But training while doing something useful? Even better.
Why not multitask?
I pulled out the prepaid phone, ran a quick search for a nearby university. One with a solid science program and a security budget that probably hadn't been updated since the Cold War.
Bingo.
Hunter College wasn't far. Good campus. Good data centers. A public library wing with just enough traffic to blend in, if necesary.
And with Mystical Infiltration layered under Stranger, I was basically walking cognitive fog.
As long as I didn't stumble into some mutant with danger-sense or psychic radar, I was golden.
I tightened the laces on my sneakers, stretched once, then took a running start toward the next alley wall.
Let's call it recon.
With loot potential.
And a bit of parkour for cardio.
If nothing else, it beat doing squats in a basement gym.
But before that—I needed music.
A few blocks back, I'd ducked into a cluttered electronics store. The kind that still sold CRT TVs and thought "burned CD" was a sales pitch.
The cashier was half-asleep behind a stack of VHS tapes. One bored glance and a little push of Hypnosis later, he didn't even look up when I slid behind the counter display.
Snagged a decent pair of in-ear headphones—Sony, not bad quality. Then made my way over to the dusty rack of CDs.
Top 40 mixes. Bootleg compilations.
Most were scratched or sun-bleached, but one stood out:
"USA Radio Heat – 2000 Edition."
OutKast. Linkin Park. Santana. Dido. Britney. Eminem. Destiny's Child.
A perfect mess. Loud, chaotic, and full of bad decisions in musical form.
Perfect.
I slipped the disc into a janky portable player—also "borrowed"—and left through the alley door without so much as a beep.
A gentle hum in my chest told me Hypnosis was still holding. Stranger blurred my details just enough to be forgettable if anyone checked the tapes.
Now I was standing two rooftops away, ready to test everything at once.
I vaulted up onto a dumpster, kicked off the alley wall, and climbed to the first roof.
Music clicked on.
"So Fresh, So Clean" by OutKast pulsed in my ears—bass thumping perfectly in time with my heartbeat.
Mana flexed around my limbs—Mystical Infiltration sliding into place with the smooth confidence of a practiced spell. Stranger layered over it like static in someone else's memory.
This wasn't just cardio anymore.
This was calibration.
Rhythm for body. Chaos for mind.
Because if I could keep infiltration stable while dodging chimneys and listening to Destiny's Child ask shady questions about my alibi?
I could keep it stable anywhere.
The song shifted—Linkin Park's "One Step Closer."
Adrenaline surged.
Time to find out how far I could push this before the city noticed.
Learning to balance Mystical Infiltration with headphones blasting early 2000s chaos came with a steep, hilarious curve.
First attempt? I faceplanted into a railing because I tried to catch the beat drop mid-jump. Real smooth.
Second? Tried to hop a hedge while zoning out to the chorus. Didn't watch my landing—stepped right into a sprinkler head and rolled my ankle like a rookie.
Apparently, even with magic, you still need to look where you're going.
But multitasking wasn't new to me. I'd spent years reading fanfics while listening to everything—alt rock, bachata, salsa—but reggaetón? That was the soft spot.
I grew up with those beats. Mornings crammed in the passenger seat while my brother drove me to school, windows down, radio blasting Daddy Yankee or Don Omar like we were headed to a block party instead of math class.
It wasn't just music—it was the background track of every rushed morning, every weekend errand, every "don't tell Mom" mission.
So yeah. That rhythm? It stuck.
And if I could keep my spell stable through that kind of noise? I could handle anything.
Only reason I hadn't queued up actual reggaetón for tonight's infiltration run?
The good stuff hadn't dropped yet. Not in this world.
No "Gasolina." No "Pa'l Mundo." Right now, the only Daddy Yankee songs that existed were the ones that, no matter how much they had his name on them… didn't sound like Daddy Yankee.
You know the ones—back when the beats were muddy, the flows were experimental, and half the lyrics sounded like someone testing a mic in their cousin's garage.
Historical, sure. Danceable? Barely. But hey—gotta respect the grind.
It was the year 2000, and reggaetón was still cooking underground—raw, unpolished, not quite ready to blow up the charts. A tragedy, honestly.
If I had a time travel perk, I'd use it just to leak some bangers into the early scene and jumpstart history.
But for now? Beyoncé, Eminem, Destiny's Child—they worked.
I liked all kinds of music. Reggaetón had my heart, yeah, but I swapped genres the moment I caught myself sitting still—when the rhythm stopped syncing with whatever else I was doing, whether it was reading, sneaking, or thinking too hard.
Movement was the cue. No groove? Time to change the track.
Or worse—if my brain stopped noticing the lyrics entirely. If the beat faded so far into the background that I was fully locked into what I was doing, like the music wasn't even there anymore?
Yeah, that was the signal.
Time to switch it up.
I blinked and shook myself back into the now.
Present-day me was crouched just inside a dim utility corridor in Columbia University, earbuds in place, muffling the bass thump of USA Radio Heat – 2000 Edition. Somewhere between Eminem and Santana now. Appropriate.
The air smelled like old metal and floor wax. The kind of place janitors passed through without looking twice—and that was exactly why I'd picked it. Low-traffic, easy to slip through, and just a few doors away from the Applied Genetics lab I'd marked on the floor plan earlier.
I took a breath.
Then another.
Spell active. Flow steady. Mystical Infiltration wrapped around my presence like a soft distortion filter—bending attention, whispering don't notice me into the minds of anyone nearby.
Stranger layered on top of it, washing my features into generic mush. Not invisible—just utterly forgettable.
No alarms.
No shouting.
No weird feelings at the base of my skull telling me a psychic had just clocked me.
Good.
I crept forward, sneakers soft against the floor, and slid around a corner into a wider corridor lined with classroom doors. One had a light on. Another was ajar. Voices carried somewhere distant—low, boring, administrative.
My kind of ambiance.
I passed a poster about a bioethics lecture, another for a robotics team fundraiser. The irony almost made me laugh.
They were still trying to build the future in here.
And I was already stealing it.
Not from the school bookstore. Not from the undergrad shelves.
Those wouldn't be worth a single slot in my inventory.
I was heading for the Applied Genetics student lab for a reason.
These weren't freshmen playing with microscopes and pipettes. These were grad students—some of the sharpest in the country—testing theories they barely understood, running simulations on unstable code, and saving everything on unsecured systems because no one really thought someone would break in and steal homework.
I wasn't here for homework.
I was here for research data.
Papers in progress. Raw experiment logs. Gene-editing attempts. Sequencing tools. Maybe even samples. Anything that smelled like cutting-edge biology.
And in the year 2000?
That stuff lived on local drives, external disks, and occasionally—if I got lucky—in folders someone forgot to encrypt.
Books? I barely glanced at them. Unless one was glowing, talking, or sealed with a biometric lock, it wasn't worth my time or the slot it would take up.
CDs, on the other hand?
Different story.
I slipped into the lab. Lights on, computers humming. Not exactly Fort Knox. This place had the vibe of "just got abandoned for lunch," which was perfect.
On one desk: a stack of burned CDs. Not store-bought—homemade, Sharpie-labeled, and unloved. I scooped them into my bag without hesitation. No alarms, no tags, just pure backup media—basically free loot.
I tapped each disc one by one, and with a subtle flicker in my HUD, they clicked into my inventory. Stackable. Nice. A neat little icon labeled "Research Data (CD-R) x12" appeared, compact and weightless, like they'd always been mine.
Then I started making rounds.
Not sneaking. Just… walking like I knew where I was going. Room to room, peeking at whatever desktops were still running. Most of them didn't even ask for passwords—year 2000 security standards meant you were a god if you knew how to right-click.
I plugged in the external CD burner and got to work.
Folder after folder, I dragged anything that looked vaguely useful: experimental logs, spreadsheets, molecular diagrams, DNA sequences, half-written reports. I wasn't trying to understand it all—just vacuum it up.
Every time a CD finished burning, I tapped it. Click. Added to the stack.
While it copied, I wandered into the next office and repeated the process.
Download. Burn. Click. Stack grows.
No one stopped me. No security. Not even a locked drawer.
I even found one terminal next to a humming fridge. Nearby, tucked under a cluttered counter, was a compact backup generator—paint chipped, serial plate half-scratched, but still humming low.
Old-school diesel model. Probably a Honda or Briggs. Mid-90s build, judging by the shape. Air-cooled, manual start, maybe 2–3 kilowatts output. Enough to keep the refrigeration units going in case the grid blinked.
I crouched down, checked the fuel gauge—half full. A little dusty, but otherwise functional. Someone had kept it maintained.
I laid my hand on the casing. Focused.
Click.
HUD pinged as it vanished into my inventory.
[Backup Generator – Portable Diesel Unit]
Status: Functional
Fuel: 47%
Output: ~2.8kW (AC, 120V)
Note: Requires standard diesel fuel. Manual recoil start.
Not exactly a magical artifact, but in the right situation? Life-saving.
And now it was mine.
By the time I left, I'd added another dozen discs. The stack read:
Research Data (CD-R) x24
[Stored: Experimental logs, gene sequences, trial data, academic chaos.]
Still no alarms. No cameras. No witnesses.
If someone noticed anything missing tomorrow?
They'd just assume it was Steve from diagnostics again.