"That rigid way of thinking of yours is enough to make me laugh!" Hellstorm stood up and declared with imposing force.
The old vampire understood perfectly well when to bend and when to stand firm. Seeing Hellstorm rise, he lowered his head even farther instead. "We are willing to provide three thousand elite warriors to join Hell's army in its assault on Heaven."
"Hmph. Too few!"
"Five thousand."
"Do you think I'm another one of those idiots whose brains have been burned out by hellfire?"
"Eight thousand warriors. No new-generation vampires. Every one of them will be an elite more than five hundred years old."
Hellstorm thought for a moment. "Each of the thirteen clans must provide one thousand warriors. I also want two hundred vampire mages to join the battle."
The old vampire was startled at first, then furious. "Impossible! We don't have that many warriors! We certainly don't have that many mages! Even counting me, we couldn't scrape together the number you're demanding!"
After a round of bargaining, the number of vampire warriors remained unchanged: each of the thirteen clans would still provide one thousand warriors. The mages, however, were basically the leaders of their respective clans. Hellstorm knew he could not push them too far, and in the end he settled for fifty.
Through the Cauldron of the Cosmos, Bella watched the demons of Hell and the vampires fully join forces. She felt no particular surprise. It was exactly what she had expected.
In her estimation, this Hellstorm was quite powerful. The nature of his power was similar to that of the Son of Satan she had killed at the White House, so he was probably another son of Satan.
The different power systems did not align perfectly with one another, and simple observation could not accurately measure combat strength across them. Even so, Bella believed she was stronger than he was.
She observed him for a long time without Hellstorm reacting at all. His psionic power was definitely weaker than The Fallen's, though his physical capabilities were harder to estimate.
"Sigh." Bella let out a long breath. She wanted nothing more than to stay out of other people's conflicts, yet one group after another kept forcing her to choose a side.
"Activate the final five thousand bioengineered humanoid soldiers. Begin loading combat skills now and have them await my orders. Also tell Starscream that I want Bruticus ready for battle."
As her orders went out one after another, the Continental Hotel, which had spent years putting down roots in New York, activated its enormous assassin network in addition to the bioengineered humanoid soldiers making the frontal assault.
Many assassins and killers who knew absolutely nothing about the true situation received contracts to go somewhere and kill someone. Vampires caught alone outside while carrying intelligence were picked off one after another.
The Continental Hotel's network was made up of countless elite assassins. They moved rapidly through streets and alleys, hunted their targets, uploaded proof, and collected their rewards. Each individual strike fed into a broader campaign.
Nathan Ingram, the billionaire who had previously warned Bella, stared at a computer monitor in shock alongside his friend Harold Finch.
Thirty minutes earlier, at the exact moment Bella had issued the order for the general assault, the artificial intelligence they had named "the Machine" had suddenly gone berserk and begun spitting out the Social Security numbers of potential victims.
In less than ten minutes, they received more than five hundred death warnings. According to the Machine's calculations, every one of those people was in mortal danger. Over the next twenty minutes, the Machine did not pause for even a second, and the number of Social Security numbers exceeded five thousand. Then came a huge number of people with no Social Security numbers at all, only blurry headshots. The final images contained nothing but question marks, one cluster after another.
"What does this mean?" Nathan Ingram had once been an expert programmer himself, but years spent running the company had badly dulled his skills. At this point, all he could do was ask his friend.
Harold Finch, whose hairline was a little high and whose eyes bulged like a goldfish's, did not answer immediately. He repeatedly checked several of the Machine's core algorithms, lightly tapped his forehead, and only then looked at his friend.
"...I think... I think all these people are in danger."
"What? All these people are in danger?!" Nathan Ingram had something of a superhero complex and loved helping people, but even the middle-aged billionaire was dumbfounded now.
He pointed casually at one photograph on the monitor. The Machine had provided almost no information about this person, only an extremely blurry profile. The lighting around him was dim, apparently at night. Judging by his face, he seemed to be an old man. Beyond that, there was nothing.
"This man has no Social Security number, no driver's license, nothing that proves who he is. How am I supposed to find him? And..." Nathan asked in disbelief, "why did so many numbers suddenly appear all at once? Do these unidentified people live in New York too? What does this prove?"
Harold Finch stared hard at him and enunciated every word. "It proves that New York is going to be extremely dangerous tonight. A lot of people are going to die. A great many..."
At the same time, in Kansas in the central United States, the Winchester brothers, who had been busy hunting supernatural creatures, encountered a group of vampires and obtained from them a revolver said to be capable of killing demons outright—the Colt.
The older brother, Dean Winchester, was fired up as he carefully cleaned the Colt. His younger brother, Sam Winchester, was equally determined. They intended to use the gun to avenge their mother and kill the demon Azazel from Hell once and for all.
The brothers soon drove out of town, completely unaware that a "person" on a distant hill was watching them.
Castiel, the angel Bella had called childish, had changed vessels again. He now appeared as a young man with bright, piercing eyes, heavy stubble along his jaw, and a beige trench coat.
He watched the Winchester brothers leave town without expression, seeming to ponder something all the while. Only when a spatial teleportation ripple appeared beside him did he turn his head.
Zachariah, a six-winged angel who looked like a bald middle-aged man, followed Castiel's gaze into the distance. The familiar amused smile hung at the corner of his mouth.
"Why did you do this?" Castiel asked.
Zachariah looked completely at ease. "Why? What other reason could there be? You're always like this. No wonder that human woman—hmm... it looks like she's a demigod now. No wonder she keeps calling you childish."
Zachariah looked at the subordinate who was forever asking "why." "Remember, our mission is to achieve the final victory. We need allies too. Since humanity still hasn't been able to make up its mind, we'll give things a little push from the shadows."
The bald angel spoke with admiration. "Human meteorologists put it so poetically! A butterfly in Brazil gently flaps its wings, and a month later Texas gets a hurricane!"
He pointed toward the Winchester brothers, who were already far away. "The wings they flapped have already raised a hurricane in New York, and all I had to pay was the Colt. Heh heh heh heh—"