Double January: Day 2 - Specter

(See Author's Note: Double January for an explanation of this scenario)

January 2nd: Take 1

I knew the materials I needed, and I had a rough list of the places I could get them. It would have been easier if I'd decided to simply raid a pharmacy, but then I would have needed to hit a lot of them and risk letting the authorities know what I was after. Even massive federal bureaucracies notice patterns eventually.
Hence why I refocused my efforts on the specters of the science world. Those wonderful clandestine laboratories that don't technically exist, so if they're robbed no one can make any complaints. If you can keep your work quiet enough after, they'll never figure out who took it.
This was the biggest dilemma of the whole plan, actually. At that point I wasn't very connected in the villain community so while I knew these things existed, I didn't know the specifics of any of them. So the 2nd was spent scavenger the most random gossip hunting down the tiniest clues to find my best spot.

January 2nd - Take 2

I was alone and with very limited resources, but at the same time I was utterly exhilarated. Time travel had only ever been a theory, and here I was living the proof that it was possible. Of course, I also didn't want to change things too much, so I resolved to become a specter, to avoid interfering with my own life and the lives of those around me.
That resolution not to interfere lasted only until I remembered the sheer number of odd occurrences over the course of the month. I had figured out something, and all I had to do was figure it out again and make it work. And hopefully also set myself on the path to actually steal all that wonderful lab equipment.