Combiners had one fatal flaw: their consciousnesses were extremely chaotic. Bella quietly gave all five a single shared objective, a principle they would continue to follow even after combining—obey her.
After transforming, Bruticus used a sonic energy cannon as his primary weapon. Mounted on his back were two cannons from Onslaught, and a single volley could destroy a mountain.
He could lift roughly 200 metric tons, or 500,000 pounds. When he threw a full-force punch, he could reach 14,000 pounds per square inch, which worked out to a little over six tons of force.
He could not compare with a Combiner like Predaking, who could casually lift 500 metric tons, but the technology was still immature and the five Decepticons making up Bruticus were somewhat weak. Even so, at the current stage, Bruticus was already clearly stronger than Devastator.
"Not bad, not bad. Bruticus is already strong enough to dominate all of Cybertron!" Bella lied through her teeth with her eyes closed, deliberately making her tone sound exceptionally arrogant.
That was exactly what Starscream wanted to hear. He believed Bruticus had been created by him, and this "strongest" Combiner was his subordinate. What did that mean? It meant he had taken another step toward becoming leader of the Decepticons—and toward becoming the next Unicron!
Starscream worked even harder. The loyalty that had been slipping before rose by another notch. For the sake of his dream, he stopped resting and sleeping, working day and night without pause.
The spacecraft's propulsion system, the relay processor for the faster-than-light engine, multipurpose exploration vehicles, hibernation pods, escape pods, atmospheric processors—several technologies indispensable to space travel all advanced at high speed.
Bella spent this entire period in New York. Spring had come a little late in 2006. Even though it was already the end of March, temperatures in New York were still low. She had harvested plenty of secrets recently and was now walking alone down the street like an ordinary passerby.
"Screeech—!" A Honda Camry with a somewhat blurred license plate suddenly slammed to a stop in front of her.
Nathan Ingram, the billionaire whose face was already deeply lined despite being nearly fifty, waved at her through the window. "Bella, you're in danger! Get in!"
The whole "There's no time, get in!" routine nearly made her laugh. The scene was simply too unexpected.
"Mr. Ingram... what is this?" She looked left and right while rapidly considering what might lie behind the situation.
"Quickly! You're in danger! Please trust me!" He kept waving urgently.
Bella was not the sort of person who refused good advice. Although she had no idea what was going on, she climbed into the Honda Camry without hesitation. Ingram floored the accelerator with complete disregard for traffic laws and sped away.
Bella kept a small portion of her attention on Nathan Ingram while sending the rest of her psionic power back to investigate the area where she had boarded the car.
Huh? When she expanded the radius of her search to four hundred meters, she really did discover something strange. More than a dozen grim-looking men were radiating obvious hostility toward her.
"Mr. Ingram, what exactly is going on?" The Honda was moving so quickly that by the time Bella thought about reading their minds, the men had already left her detection range. She could only ask the middle-aged man beside her.
The middle-aged man carefully chose his words. "All I can say is that you're in danger. If possible, you should leave New York as soon as you can."
Bella looked at him strangely, clearly expecting a more detailed explanation.
The middle-aged man wore an expression that practically screamed, I know a secret, but I'm not telling you. Bella found it a little exasperating.
She had her own bottom line. It had shifted somewhat as circumstances changed, but her rule against reading the minds of family and friends remained intact. The middle-aged man barely counted as a friend, and he had come here specifically to save her. For both personal and practical reasons, she had no intention of pressing him too hard.
"Then who is trying to deal with me? Surely you can tell me that much?"
Nathan Ingram shook his head as he drove. "Sorry. I haven't found out yet."
You haven't found out? You haven't found out, yet you know I'm in danger?
For a moment, Bella was genuinely baffled by what he had said.
Countless thoughts flashed rapidly through her mind. Memories, secrets, divination, and all kinds of intelligence gathered by the Brotherhood came together, and she quickly arrived at the answer.
"Did that system the National Security Agency commissioned you to develop for identifying violent crimes just come online? You really managed to build the thing?"
Nathan Ingram felt horribly stifled. He had still been trying to preserve some mystery, only for Bella to expose every card in his hand at once. He had wanted to play the hero and help people, yet on his very first day in the role he had suffered such a massive "setback." Was he simply not suited for this?
Then he thought about the identity of Bella's father and decided it was understandable. His Machine had told him to save her; that connection had probably factored into the decision as well.
At this point, there was no reason to keep hiding it.
Even billionaires needed to cultivate connections. He had already gone as far as rescuing her, so saying a few more words did not matter.
"...Yes. It only just came online. Our Machine determined that you were in danger, used street cameras to locate you, and then notified me so I could come over."
A primitive surveillance system and a do-gooder version of Project Insight. Bella silently ran through the list of all her enemies.
"Thank you. I'll leave New York as soon as possible. You can drop me off up ahead." Of course Bella had no intention whatsoever of leaving New York! She had spent years building her power here. Saying that every street was full of her people would be an exaggeration, but her influence was still far greater than that of any so-called gang boss or underworld godfather.
Before getting out, she gave him one more warning. "Mr. Ingram, you need to be careful too... To be honest, you're not professional at all. Leave professional work to professionals. A billionaire like you driving around in a beat-up Honda is far too dangerous."
She waved goodbye to Nathan Ingram, soon entered a Brotherhood safe house, changed routes several times, and finally arrived at the underground headquarters in New York.
"Someone tried to intercept and kill me today. Send our people out and find out who's behind it."
Her order spread outward from headquarters. The Brotherhood controlled the Continental Hotel, and the Continental extended its reach into every corner of New York's underworld. A flood of intelligence was soon gathered together.
Looking at phone footage on the screen, Bella watched one of the goth-dressed men who had prepared to ambush her bare a pair of fangs at Hammerhead's men. Bella normally paid close attention to her image and rarely swore, but this time she could not help blurting out, "Damn! Vampires?!"
There were simply too many vampires. The Ancient One had previously talked her out of collecting fragments of the Darkhold, so after destroying the Volturi family, Bella had stopped hunting them.
What was going on now? They had ignored the road to heaven and come knocking on hell's door instead. These people actually dared to provoke her?
Was she the sort of person who enjoyed stomping noobs?
She was!
She was going to make these scrub vampires pay the price!