It all depends on luck

      Felicia was in no hurry to take everything she saw, like the most common housebreaker. Sure, Stephen Strange had precious metal objects at home, but to steal a silver candelabra from the real-life Merlin was disrespectful. Felicia avoided the items behind the glass display cases, too. There was no hint of alarm systems in them, but that didn't mean the mage couldn't cast some invisible spell on them. Felicia also felt that she shouldn't touch unknown magical artifacts that clearly wanted to keep out of the hands of others. She was already disgusted by some of the items, such as someone's severed and dried hand.       Some of the rooms in the house were locked and didn't even have a lock to pick. Felicia's first and so far only trophy was a thick bronze disk whose patterned lid resembled a puzzle box.       After a short search, Felicia found a staircase leading to the basement. Climbing down, Felicia found a light switch and turned on the light. Merlin's basement, surprisingly, looked like an ordinary basement: rotten wooden floors, water pipes and electrical cables, a washing machine, a tumble dryer, and mountains of junk.       But Felicia realized at once that this musty, wood-covered pantry was only part of the cellar. A much larger part of it was the old stone crypt. There were no more appliances, furniture, household items, not even pipes or lighting. Just stone columns of varying degrees of integrity, rooms with sarcophagi, altars and some holes in the walls, and a lot of stone debris and other traces of destruction. The crypt looked like it was several hundred years old, if not over a thousand.       After not finding anything in the crypt besides stone, Felicia returned to the storeroom. The first thing Felicia checked the refrigerator out of habit... and immediately closed it. Live tentacles, eyes, and other body parts of unknown monsters didn't look particularly appetizing.       Felicia walked along the shelves and tables. Her gaze slid past household items, books and scrolls of no use to her, jars of known and unknown contents, but lingered when she came upon more interesting or expensive items.       A dagger with jewels on the hilt? Into the backpack. A crossbow loaded with a wooden stake instead of a bolt? It's best left where it is. Something that looks like a glass snow globe? You can take it with you. A bronze bracelet with mysterious runes? It'll come in handy. A high-quality diorama of a countryside with an exact replica of this very house? It looks interesting, but it's too big and useless. A small cube with a bunch of gears like a clockpunk? Into the backpack. And a silver object that looks like a telescope too.       Felicia didn't stay long and half an hour later, with her backpack only half full, left the house.       

***

      Felicia took the subway back to Peter Parker's apartment. Turning on the TV, she sat down on the couch and assessed her loot.       The dagger with the rubies on the hilt and the patterned leather sheath looked expensive, but there was nothing magical about it. No glow of any kind, no spell so that "only the most worthy could pull the dagger from its sheath." Even the blade was steel, not silver, which, according to the legends, is feared by all manner of evil.       The bronze goblet with precious stones also had no visible magical properties. However, Felicia did not risk to check and drink from it: she watched "Indiana Jones", and knows how such stories end. Even if she didn't get burned from the inside out, there was a good chance she'd catch some E. coli from that musty basement.       The strange telescope turned out to be... a kaleidoscope. Just an ordinary kaleidoscope with mirrors and colored glasses. But at least the body was silver.       The cube with the many gears inside was still a mystery. Perhaps, like an old winding clock, it needed a matching key, but Felicia couldn't find anything similar in that basement. Felicia tried prying some of the gears with the claw of her glove, but it was no use.       A double ring of yellow metal, not gold. Nothing interesting.       Someone's long, sharp tooth. Belonged perhaps to a common bear, but Felicia wanted to believe it was a fire-breathing dragon.       The mystical glass ball didn't respond to Felicia's touch or voice, no matter how much she tried.       Yes, Felicia assured herself, she wasn't some common housebreaker who took everything that was bad and expensive-looking. She honestly passed over the heavy silver candelabra, but a little less honestly took the old-looking candlestick in the shape of a lion. Didn't even bother to take the candle out.       Felicia put the wide bracelet with runic symbols on her left wrist and stretched out her arm to admire it. It would have made a beautiful accessory, but unfortunately her arm was too skinny, and the bracelet couldn't be adjusted to fit.       Before Felicia could regret it, the bracelet suddenly came to life and tightened around her wrist.       "What the..." Felicia stopped short and cursed loudly when something underneath the bracelet jabbed her arm.       Scared to death, Felicia tried to pull the bracelet off, but it was firmly in place. Felicia tapped on it, hoping for a miracle, and suddenly it returned to its original diameter and fell off her arm. At the place where Felicia felt the prick, a small drop of blood trickled onto her skin.       Slightly recovering from the shock, Felicia picked up the bracelet from the carpet and examined it from the inside. The bracelet was perfectly smooth, and if it had any fine needles, they appeared with the same magic that made the bracelet shrink and expand in girth.       After calming her frayed nerves, Felicia thought it over. Merlin had locked rooms, display cases, just in case, he could have put the dangerous artifact in the most ordinary safe. However, he'd left the bracelet in an unprotected basement, somewhere where children could easily get to it. Five minutes from graduation, but still kids. Which means it shouldn't be dangerous.       "Okay, bloodsucker. Let's try again."       Felicia put the bracelet on the same arm. It closed and gave another shot.       Felicia grimaced, not just from the pain, but from the strange sensation that came with it. It was like yesterday, when she'd almost passed out on the sidewalk, but this time with the settings set to the minimum. Felicia looked at Jameson's face on the TV when it suddenly started sparking and blacked out.       It was strange. It was as if Felicia herself wanted to not see that nasty mustache, and the TV burned out of her own volition.       Fortunately, the breakage was minor, the Parkers had tools and Felicia had electronics skills. Ten minutes of fiddling and the TV was working again.       Felicia was more careful now. She needed that nasty Jameson mustache to keep an eye on Spider. Whatever magic that bracelet was doing, she had to be careful with it.       Felicia tried to concentrate. To bring back that faint and fleeting feeling. But nothing happened. Tapping the bracelet, taking it off and putting it on again brought nothing but unpleasant pain due to the third injection. This was probably how the bracelet established a connection with the wearer directly through their neuro-processes. Many military developments of Oscorp worked in a similar way, some of which later ended up in the hands of various psychopaths and maniacs.       Perhaps the bracelet was not enough of an apartment. It needed space, its own testing ground.       A sickening feeling came over Felicia as soon as she stepped out of the window onto the fire escape and haunted her, never letting go. But Felicia held herself in check. Remembering the incident with the TV, she tried not to think, concentrating only on her actions.       Once on the sidewalk, Felicia finally let the magic of the bracelet take hold. And at the same moment, time seemed to stop around her. Felicia's body remained the same, but her thoughts gained incredible speed. But it wasn't the end. Suddenly Felicia realized that she knew everything that would happen in the next few seconds and even more.       She saw numerous variations of possible events. For example, a sudden gust of wind might or might not have struck. Twenty feet away from Felicia, a certain student was walking towards her. He could have passed by quietly, stumbled awkwardly, accidentally hit the woman who was walking towards him with his bag or shoulder, or looked up and almost collided with Felicia herself.       Felicia wanted the student to stumble. As soon as reality began to feel familiar again, the student took two steps, and on the third took the right shoe with his left, stumbled, but managed to stay on his feet and walked on.       The bracelet's abilities managed to intrigue Felicia. She continued the tests, this time using several variables. A man was walking down the sidewalk while looking at his phone. A woman with a dog was walking nearby. This doggie could have passed the man by, or it could have jumped up to him, sniffing around. The man could notice it at once and go around it, notice it and ignore it, or only discover the dog when it was under his feet. He would have been startled and, depending on the event, would have held the phone in his hands or dropped it on the pavement. Felicia had to manipulate probability after each event that happened. At her will, the man dropped the phone, but Felicia made it fall on the corner, which minimized the damage. The man only suffered a fright.       Felicia did some more experiments with the surrounding objects, the wind, a pair of pigeons, and passersby. Each time Felicia chose one of the options for the future, she felt a faint blurring of her thoughts and a faint glint of color appeared in her eyes for a split second. After several attempts, Felicia realized that the time interval in which the bracelet allowed her to track upcoming events always varied, but almost never exceeded seven to ten seconds.       And not every scenario was equally easy. For example, to make a man look somewhere to the side was a simple matter. But to make a wire on which a flock of pigeons had landed break was a permissible event, but it turned out to be completely unfeasible. The simpler the event, the easier it was to manipulate, and if the event was less probable, the effects of manipulating reality became more tangible.       Being able to intuitively foresee the future for just a few seconds, and alter it slightly by manipulating the most probable events, was definitely not Felicia's purpose in sneaking into Merlin's house. Sorcerous things she envisioned differently, more exciting and awesome. Like a flying carpet, teleports or portals, a cloak of invisibility, some kind of protective artifacts or a staff that threw fireballs. But she had to make do with what she had. If she got the hang of it, she could probably get some use out of this amusement. It will happen in time.