Faced with questions from the junior disciples, Bella did not take the matter seriously at all. These days, whoever had the biggest fist made the rules. She pointed at the sky. It was already almost three in the morning.
"I know, I know everything! New York is chaotic enough tonight. Don't add to the mess! Hurry back and do your morning lessons!"
Relying on her seniority, she shooed away the mages, all of whom wore painfully constipated expressions.
To cover the retreat of her own forces, she kept casting spells rapidly. Sushi, chicken curry rice, hot dogs, pizza! The ingredients did not matter. She enlarged every kind of food she could find and threw it into the battlefield.
Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four was attending a scientific conference in Sweden. Invisible Woman and her younger brother, Human Torch, had gone skiing in Switzerland. That left only the Thing in New York. When the big guy ran into the street, even he was startled by the ocean of food. What in the world was going on?
The New York police asked him to go stop Hulk and Abomination and investigate what had caused the ocean of noodles. The Thing flatly refused. My boss isn't here. Wait until my boss gets back and have him study it!
Bella was having a wonderful time. Against muscleheads like Hulk and Abomination, magic was absurdly effective. Just before leaving, she even threw two bottles of vodka into the battlefield.
Bioengineered humanoids, vampires, demons, Decepticons, Tyrants, human assassins, Blade, strangely behaving ordinary New Yorkers, Sebastian the former mutant leader, Hulk, Abomination, the Thing, military soldiers, New York police, mages from the New York Sanctum, and finally Bella herself, a demigod—one faction after another took the stage. The great drama that had swept across all of New York finally reached its curtain fall just before dawn.
The streets were covered with perfluorocarbon fluid from the bioengineered humanoids, human blood, the little blood the vampires had left—which smelled especially foul—mixed with gasoline from roadside cars, filthy water from fire mains, and grease from all kinds of food. With all those smells mixed together, the stench was unbearable!
"Achoo! Achoo!" Hulk no longer cared about fighting anyone. He desperately charged out of the mountains of food. The smell at the scene was overwhelmingly sharp, and the vodka had made him dizzy as well. He sneezed twice with force comparable to a Beaufort Force 4 wind, then unexpectedly discovered that he had turned back into Bruce Banner.
He had no time to investigate why. Holding up his pants, he turned and ran.
By the time Abomination burst out of the literal mountain of meat, his enemy had already vanished. Then he ran straight into the U.S. military led by General Ross, and another battle erupted. After being double-teamed by Hulk and Sebastian, Abomination had already burned through much of his stamina. In the end, before the cameras of several television stations, the U.S. military brought him down, pumped an enormous quantity of anesthetic into him, and hauled him away like cargo.
Was that the end? No. This was only the beginning.
Bella and her people withdrew successfully. They had originally arranged someone to take the blame anyway, but now that Hulk and Abomination had jumped into the spotlight, things became much easier.
There were definitely surviving vampires, but that did not matter. Bella had money! A vampire head could be exchanged at the Continental Hotel for one hundred thousand dollars! Weren't those young people fond of becoming vampires? Fine, come on! Hand over your head and collect the bounty! She had already spent three billion dollars on a spaceship. Why would she care about this little bit of money?
Bella told her biological father some of what had happened in the fighting the previous night. Elsewhere, Old Willy, the Black vice president, received a few "oracles" of his own. Both sides exerted influence, and the Democrats and Republicans showed remarkable tacit agreement in blaming the previous night's upheaval in New York—primarily Wall Street, Broadway, and more than half of Manhattan—on Hulk and Abomination!
The New York Stock Exchange, the Charging Bull, the memorial—those two did all of it! New York City formally protested to the Department of Defense and demanded compensation from the Department and the federal government. The Department of Defense naturally refused. This was not some uninhabited desert. This was Manhattan, where every inch of land was worth a fortune. If they really paid compensation, how much would it cost? Selling the Pentagon would not be enough!
They absolutely could not agree! Still, to give New York City an outlet for its anger, they decisively suspended General Ross and held a press conference, dumping every bit of blame onto him—from research into irradiated mutants all the way to injecting active-duty soldiers with serum.
Once a military court formally opened an investigation, even a three-hundred-year sentence would be getting off lightly.
Wall Street was almost completely destroyed. It truly looked like "a vast white expanse, the earth swept clean."
Most of the vampires had been wiped out, and the Brotherhood had packed up and carried away their cash, valuables, and collections. But the companies, investment banks, and banks they had controlled could not run away. Some shrewd businesspeople sensed the enormous profits to be made and rushed in, doing everything possible to seize the wealth.
No one publicized what they were doing. Everyone quietly made a fortune and, for the moment, had no attention left to spare for Wall Street itself.
Weyland had made an enormous haul. They had stripped away most of the thousand-year wealth accumulated by the vampire families. Not only had they completely recovered the money previously spent building the spaceship, they had plenty left over. This operation was equivalent to digging up another Templar treasure.
Bella was delighted. Who would ever dare say she had no business sense again? She had wiped out the earlier deficit in a single night. Who else could do that?
Operation Enemy on Wall Street was a tremendous success. In a single night of fighting, more than ten thousand vampires and the gangs, mercenaries, and guards attached to them had been killed.
Five vampire families belonging to the Camarilla were destroyed, along with one from the Sabbat and two neutral clans. Seven progenitors were killed. Three of them were trapped in their coffins and burned to death, while Bella personally killed two others.
Go ahead and try making another prophecy if you have the nerve. I'll kill you all!
Two days later, Bella washed the bloodstains from her hands and sat primly in a CNN studio. As a guest, she was there to talk with the host about Hulk's rampage through New York.
"Hello, everyone. Today we're fortunate to have national icon and renowned historian and biologist Miss Isabella Swan with us. Miss Swan, would you like to say hello to everyone?"
A television guest obviously was not someone picked at random off the street. The Democratic Party had pushed this appearance from behind the scenes. The central purpose was to build momentum for the election two years from now.
Charlie could not personally step into the race yet, while neither Samantha nor Natasha had any interest in these matters. That made Bella the only choice. Her image could influence a great many young voters, and she had no objection at all to appearing on television. She came along happily.
Facing the camera, she gave her most dashing smile. "Hello to you, and hello, everyone. 'National icon' is too much. I'm just an ordinary person, so please don't worship me. Hahaha..."