Supermarket "Invisibility" Technique

The supermarket freezers gave off a low hum. Lin Mo stared at the rock-hard frozen pizzas behind the glass doors, his Adam's apple bobbing involuntarily. There were still three days until payday, and he only had three dollars left in his wallet—enough for two cans of cola, or half a loaf of the cheapest bread.

He touched the sandwich Martha had stuffed into his pocket. The wax paper had been warmed through by his body heat, and butter had seeped out, staining the fabric. Just looking... Lin Mo muttered to the freezer as he activated Shadowcat's phasing ability.

His body glimmered with a translucent light, as though shrouded in mist. He took a deep breath, imagined the freezer's metal door was a sheet of thin paper, and stepped inside. The instant he phased through, cold air crept up his pant legs, making him shiver. Yet the sensation at his fingertips was remarkably smooth—after half a month of practice, he could now breathe naturally while phased, and even his steps had become much lighter.

The freezer lights refracted strange patches of light across his body, like shards of glass scattered over him. Lin Mo picked up his favorite supreme pizza—the frozen kind, nine dollars even on sale. Bits of cheese clung to his fingers, still clearly visible while he was phased.

"Truly amazing..." He could not help smiling. The embarrassment of getting stuck in a wall half a month ago was still fresh in his mind, yet now he could phase into a supermarket freezer as if he were opening his own refrigerator. The contrast made it feel like a dream.

When he phased back out, he deliberately went around behind the register and gently placed three dollars on the counter, right on top of a receipt. The cashier was a bespectacled young woman with her head down, scrolling through her phone without even lifting her eyelids—in her eyes, the three dollars had appeared out of nowhere.

Lin Mo carried the pizza toward the exit, feeling relieved. Martha's words echoed in his ears like an alarm bell: "Abilities are for saving your life, not for being a thief." He knew he had crossed a line just now. If he had not been craving it so badly—he had eaten repair shop sandwiches for five straight days—he never would have used his phasing ability to "take" something.

As he passed the snack aisle, a boy in a school uniform was standing on tiptoe, trying to reach a bag of chips on the top shelf. A Spider-Man charm dangling from his backpack swayed back and forth. Lin Mo recognized him as Peter's classmate, Riley. At the science fair last time, he had even fought Peter over a microscope.

"Can't reach it?" Lin Mo smiled and walked over. Activating his phasing ability, he passed his hand through the metal shelf and pushed the chips down from behind.

Riley jumped in fright. The bag of chips fell to the floor, and he stared at the apparently empty shelf with eyes as wide as saucers. "Who? Who's there?"

Lin Mo quickly hid behind the shelf, holding back a laugh. Watching Riley pick up the chips and rush nervously toward the register while muttering, "The supermarket is haunted," he suddenly thought this ability was pretty fun for pranks too—so long as they were harmless ones.

As he stepped out of the supermarket, the setting sun was painting the sky orange-red. Lin Mo looked down at the wristband on his arm, where pale blue text displayed:

[Phasing Proficiency: 60%. Can phase through up to 5 meters of non-energy matter. Duration extended to 8 minutes.]

His progress was faster than expected. That was probably thanks to his daily "devil training" at dawn: phasing into the community library's archives to practice precise control without knocking over a single bookshelf; passing through the steel pipes of fire hydrants to feel the resistance of metal; and even phasing into Ted's basement while he slept to help organize his comics—while "borrowing" a copy of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to read.

"Brother Lin!" Peter's voice called from the street corner. He was riding a bicycle, and a huge glass jar sat in the basket. The spider inside clung to the jar wall, spinning silk. "Did you buy pizza?"

"Yeah. Want to eat at your place tonight?" Lin Mo shook the pizza box in his hand.

"Sure, sure!" Peter's eyes lit up, and his bicycle nearly crashed into a streetlamp. "Aunt May made roasted potatoes today. They'll go perfectly with pizza!"

When they passed the park, they saw several children gathered around an old locust tree, looking worried. A kite was caught in its branches. It was shaped like Iron Man, its red armor especially striking beneath the sunset, with its string tangled around the highest branch where no one could reach it.

"I'll get it." Lin Mo handed the pizza to Peter and walked beneath the tree. The children watched him curiously, and one little girl with pigtails suddenly shouted, "It's that uncle who can do magic!"

Lin Mo smiled and activated his phasing ability, his body instantly turning translucent. The children cried out in surprise as they watched him pass through the trunk as if walking through water and reach up to retrieve the kite. When he phased back out, he deliberately paused in midair for two seconds, as though floating above the ground, making the children scream and clap.

"Here you go." Lin Mo handed the kite to the pigtail girl. Her little hand brushed the back of his, passing through it like a layer of thin mist, and she was too astonished to speak.

Peter kept snapping pictures with his camera. In the lens, Lin Mo was only a faint outline, like a figure in an ink painting. "This one definitely has to go in my diary!" he said excitedly. "I'll call it 'The Ghost Repairman of Queens'!"

When they returned to Aunt May's house, Lin Mo had just put the pizza in the oven when he heard an argument downstairs. It was the bespectacled supermarket cashier, crying to her boss. "I really didn't take it! Three dollars suddenly appeared at the register, along with a pizza receipt..."

Her boss's voice was harsh. "Cut the nonsense! There's nothing on the security footage. If you didn't steal it, then who did? Half your pay is docked this month!"

Lin Mo's face instantly turned red. He had never expected his "clever little idea" to get someone else in trouble, and it felt as though a needle had pierced his heart. "I'll go take a look," he told Aunt May, grabbing his coat and running downstairs.

Inside the supermarket, the cashier was still crying, her shoulders trembling. Lin Mo took a deep breath, activated his phasing ability, and phased into the register counter. He took out a note and pen from inside—he could touch physical objects while phased—and quickly wrote: "I put the money there. I bought the supreme pizza on the third shelf of the freezer. Sorry for not saying so beforehand."

After writing it, he placed the note on the desk in front of the boss. The man had been in the middle of berating her when he suddenly saw it and froze. He picked up the paper and held it to the light, then checked the security footage again—there was still nothing there. His face turned deathly pale. "A... a ghost?"

The cashier stopped crying too, staring at the note and murmuring, "So it wasn't me..."

Lin Mo quietly slipped away, feeling relieved. He straightened his clothes in the supermarket's glass door and saw his reflection—in daylight, the faint glow from his phasing ability was nearly invisible. Only at certain angles could its translucent outline be seen, like a photograph that had not been properly focused.

"Does this count as invisibility?" Lin Mo muttered with a smile. Perhaps calling this ability the "Supermarket Invisibility Technique" would be more fitting from now on.

That night, while they ate pizza, Peter suddenly asked, "Brother Lin, can you use your ability to help me with something?" He pointed at the spider in the glass jar. "I want to move it into a bigger container, but it's been really aggressive lately. Every time I get close, it tries to bite me."

Lin Mo looked at the spider. The black rings on its legs were clearer than before, and an eerie green light flickered in its eyes—a sign that it was about to transform. The day it would bite Peter was not far off. "I'll try." He activated his phasing ability and passed his hand through the glass jar. His movements were as light as feathers as he slowly untwisted the wire securing the lid.

The spider did indeed raise its front legs aggressively, baring its fangs, but it could not touch Lin Mo's phased hand at all. "Done." Lin Mo moved the spider into its new container, which was lined with soft cotton and held a leaf—Peter said it was the spider's favorite food.

"That's amazing!" Peter clapped, then suddenly lowered his voice. "I suspect this spider was irradiated. Its silk is ten times stronger than normal spider silk! Do you think..."

"Don't make wild guesses." Lin Mo cut him off, tossing the old glass jar into the trash. "Hurry up and eat the pizza. It won't taste good cold." He did not want Peter to learn about the future too soon. Some growth had to be experienced firsthand.

Late at night, back in the basement, Lin Mo pulled out the comic Ted had lent him. When he saw Spider-Man nearly crash into a billboard the first time he swung on webbing, he smiled to himself. "Everyone has a beginner phase." Then he suddenly remembered his embarrassment at the supermarket that afternoon—he had been too hasty when phasing into the freezer to grab ice cream, and half his body had gotten lodged in a freezer divider. The cold made him jolt, and when he phased back out, ice crystals were still hanging from the tip of his nose.

An older woman choosing yogurt beside him had glanced over and sighed. "Young man, even if life's got you down, don't climb into a freezer. It's not worth ruining your health."

Lin Mo's face had turned crimson then. He had covered his nose and run out, his ears frozen red as apples. Thinking back on it now, he could still feel the cold lingering on his nose, yet it made him laugh out loud.

He opened his computer and pulled up the "ability training schedule" he had made: Monday, phasing speed; Tuesday, precise control; Wednesday, phased movement under load—walking through walls while carrying a toolbox; Thursday... Lin Mo drew a freezer in Thursday's box and wrote beside it: "No sudden stops."

The wristband suddenly vibrated, displaying a new prompt:

[Detected diversification in the host's ability applications. "Ability Branch" options triggered.]

[Option 1: Enhance phasing speed. Movement speed reduction lowered to 30%.]

[Option 2: Enhance phasing invisibility. Cannot be detected by non-energy detection devices.]

Lin Mo stared at the screen, his finger suspended in midair. If he chose speed, he could escape faster in danger; if he chose invisibility, he could hide himself better and evade S.H.I.E.L.D.'s surveillance.

He remembered Phil Coulson's smile on the park bench, the terrified look on the supermarket owner's face, and the blurry silhouette in Peter's camera. Better to stay hidden more deeply. Lin Mo selected Option 2.

The wristband flashed faintly, and his phasing ability instantly became more covert. He looked into the mirror. Under normal light, the translucence of his body had almost completely vanished. Only under intense illumination could a faint outline be seen, like summer afternoon heat distorting the air.

"Not bad." Lin Mo smiled in satisfaction. Now, not only could he walk through walls, he could also "turn invisible" in supermarkets to take things—though he would pay for them, of course—help children out in the neighborhood, and even quietly observe the meteor crater right under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s nose.

Practicing until dawn, Lin Mo tried phasing into the community ATM out of pure curiosity. The instant he phased through, he could clearly "see" the bills inside, stacked neatly in bundles like building blocks. But he only looked once before backing out—there were some lines he absolutely could not cross.

When he stepped out of the ATM, he saw Phil Coulson's car parked at the street corner. Its headlights were off, like a beast lying in wait. Lin Mo did not hide. Instead, he waved toward the car, then activated his enhanced invisibility and slowly crossed the street, disappearing into the mouth of an alley.

He knew Phil Coulson had definitely seen him. But that was enough—show goodwill, maintain distance. That was the way he had found to survive in the Marvel world.

The next day at the repair shop, Carlos tossed him an encrypted hard drive—the same model as Phil Coulson's—with a strange look in his eyes. "The client said only you can fix it."

Lin Mo took the hard drive and used his phasing ability to "see through" it. Its internal structure was even more complex than the last one, and it concealed a miniature bomb that would explode if dismantled. "I'll take the job." He smiled, but he knew perfectly well—the real challenge had only just begun.