The two children had received a call from Natasha earlier. After that, they woke the sleeping Divine Dragon and fled Los Angeles together with Bumblebee.
Why were they running? Where were they going? The two children had no idea. Running was the right thing to do, anyway!
"Ice cream cone?" Little Elsa pointed at an ice cream shop by the roadside. She meant: should they stop and buy an ice cream cone?
As the aunt here, Little Kitty frowned and seriously thought about it for a moment. No!
"First we find your mom, my second big sister! Then we can come back for ice cream! We need your mom to pay for it too. I don't have any money." She spoke in the solemn tone of a little adult.
"Oh..." Little Elsa watched the ice cream shop disappear from view with a pitiful expression. Only after a long while did she turn back and ask, "Where are my mommy and daddy?"
Little Kitty slapped the steering wheel in annoyance. "Who knows? They probably went somewhere to have fun. I don't understand grown-up stuff either. I don't even know where my mommy and daddy went!"
"You're so pitiful too."
"Yeah, yeah!"
A fissure thirty meters (about 98 feet) wide? Bumblebee accelerated and jumped straight across it. They did not spend much effort escaping Los Angeles, and they prepared to head for Washington, D.C. to find Little Kitty's second older sister, who was also Little Elsa's mother.
After leaving California, they traveled east into the desert of Nevada. The area was sparsely populated, and the main tide of fleeing people had been left far behind. The Chevrolet Camaro finally returned to true self-driving mode, and the two children pressed themselves against the windows to look outside.
"Auntie, where is this?" Little Elsa could not understand what it meant for yellow sand to stretch everywhere.
Little Kitty did not really understand what being an aunt was supposed to mean either, but because Bella wanted her to look after her daughter, she kept drilling ideas like "Little Kitty is the elder, so she has to take care of her niece" into her head. Tell a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth—except this was not even a lie. In Little Kitty's simple values, there was no real difference between a niece and a younger sister. She was older, so of course she should take care of the younger one.
She looked at the endless yellow sand, scratched her head, and thought for a moment. "This is a desert, right?"
Her tone was not very certain either.
"Then what's a desert?"
"It's a place with a whole, whole lot of sand. You'll understand when you grow up!"
The two children found everything fascinating, but Bumblebee strictly forbade them from getting out of the car.
"Ah! That big thing caught up with us!" Little Elsa pointed behind them.
Their speed had been far too conspicuous. The Tripods had noticed them long ago, and one Tripod left the formation to pursue them alone. The huge machine ignored all the buildings in its way and traveled in a straight line. Each step covered dozens of meters, and it was about to catch them.
"Don't be scared. Watch me!" Little Kitty declared confidently.
She scrambled into the back seat and patted it, signaling for Bumblebee to open the sunroof.
She tried to stand up, only to discover that she was not tall enough. Even standing on the back seat, she could not get her head out through the sunroof, so Bumblebee thoughtfully raised the seat for her.
Little Kitty leaned out through the sunroof, coughed once, and raised her right hand as though she were struggling to lift something weighing a thousand kilograms. Then she made a downward pressing motion toward the distant Tripod and even provided her own sound effects. "Let me show you the secret technique Big Sis taught me! Rasengan!!"
The Tripod, still half a kilometer (about 0.3 miles) away, froze for a moment. It thought this might be some strange form of attack, but after waiting for a while, nothing happened.
The Tripod flew into a rage, and its pursuit speed somehow increased by another twenty percent.
Little Kitty was mortified. She hurriedly tugged at the Divine Dragon, who was playing a handheld game console beside her. "Divine Dragon, hurry! Hurry and play along with me!"
The Divine Dragon lowered her head and kept playing her game without moving.
"Divine Dragon! Please, please, hurry! That thing is catching up!" Little Kitty begged repeatedly, finally satisfying the Divine Dragon's vanity.
The Divine Dragon stuck her head out and glanced behind them.
Trash! What kind of junk was that? If this heap of scrap metal were thrown into Fountainhead Palace, the dogs there could probably tear it apart.
"Ahem." The Divine Dragon coughed and, with a thoroughly impressive air, drew the Seven-Branched Sword. Then she held up three fingers at Little Kitty.
The two of them had obviously done this before. Little Kitty held up two fingers, and finally the Divine Dragon signaled one.
The Divine Dragon knew Japanese and had heard Bella tell plenty of stories. Now she swung the Seven-Branched Sword at the distant Tripod and shouted, "Chidori!" Playing along, Little Kitty also screamed at the top of her lungs, "Rasengan!"
The Seven-Branched Sword was a divine weapon that the Divine Dragon had "picked up" from the Silla royal palace back in the day, but it was actually pretty lousy. Forget comparing it to divine weapons like Mjolnir—even the Frostmourne Bella had made herself was higher quality than the Seven-Branched Sword. Still, it was more than enough for the current situation.
The blade of lightning called Chidori shot backward. With a single slash, the Tripod split cleanly in half.
"Divine Dragon, you're the best!" Little Kitty soothed her good friend, then lifted her nose proudly at Little Elsa. Little Elsa gave her a thumbs-up, meaning: Auntie Kitty, you're amazing!
The two children had absolutely no idea how far it was from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The Divine Dragon did not know either. The only one who knew was Bumblebee, but no one asked him...
If you aren't asking, then I'm not telling! Bumblebee carried the group and raced east.
There were plenty of enemies on the road. The Selorians hated Earthlings more than anyone now. Starscream had modified their previous combat exoskeletons, allowing them to control Tripods and slaughter Earthlings from high above.
The two children encountered many Tripods along the way. Some blocked the road ahead, while others chased from behind.
The Divine Dragon and Bumblebee attacked from time to time. An hour and a half later, they met Natasha and Arcee, who had come to meet them in Texas.
"Where's Bella?" Natasha asked.
The two children shook their heads together. Bumblebee and the Divine Dragon also indicated that they did not know.
"That woman must have gone somewhere to have fun again! Forget her!" By now, Natasha understood her lover's personality fairly well. Bella was either joining a commotion or on her way to join one.
"Back up! Get away from us!"
Once the Camaro stopped by the roadside, passing civilians naturally asked them for a ride.
"There's still room in your car! Take us with you, please!" Those were the people asking nicely.
"Move! It's only one woman and two kids? Squeeze together. I've got elderly people here. I'll drive!" Those were the ones preparing to seize the car by force.
Unfortunately for them, they had run into Black Widow.
Natasha had never been a superhero in the traditional sense. She had no concerns about maintaining an image or using gentle, humane methods. You wanted to steal her car? Fine. Come try!
She treated everyone equally. In her eyes, there was no difference between sixty-year-old men and women, tattooed forty-year-old bruisers, and office workers in their twenties. Punches and kicks flew. In less than ten seconds, more than thirty ordinary people were all knocked down. Two of the burly men were even beaten until they vomited blood, looking as though they were about to die.