Those tentacles—Bella recognized them instantly.
One glance, even through a screen, and she could feel it: the thick, suffocating malevolence rolling off the image in waves.
Calypso. The sea goddess, fused with a sea monster.
"Is that another one of your friends?" Natasha asked, amused.
"She is a hereditary enemy of the Swan bloodline."
"Wow. Really? A hereditary enemy? Ha..." Natasha laughed lightly, finding the whole concept a bit fantastical.
Bella read her dismissal and her expression shifted—she turned serious, something that didn't happen often. "She is extraordinarily dangerous. You don't share the Swan bloodline, but you carry my aura, which means she can detect you. Without my magic to hide you, do not take any mission that requires going into the deep ocean. I mean it. Do not go into deep water."
Natasha caught the tone and dropped the humor.
"...So these things have been in the deep ocean all along? No wonder S.H.I.E.L.D. keeps running deep-sea projects... don't look at me like that. Fine, fine. I promise—I'll pass on any deep-water assignments. If one ends up on my desk, I'll tell them it's that time of the month."
While they traded intelligence in private, the survivor fleet finally made port.
They docked on the Oregon coast, north of San Francisco.
The wealthy and the well-connected could leave whenever they liked, by whatever means they could arrange, with no questions asked. Freedom. Those who had nothing—no connections, no resources—stayed put and waited for federal assistance.
Bella's family said their goodbyes to the other survivors. They piled into Bumblebee, currently wearing his Camaro disguise, and prepared to swing through Nevada on the way back to Los Angeles.
Charlie couldn't get home fast enough. The whole trip to San Francisco for the birth had been exhausting. He had no idea if their house was still standing after the earthquake—and neither did Bella and Natasha, really. They'd lived there together for over two years. There was real attachment to the place. If it had been reduced to rubble, that would genuinely sting.
While the survivors returned to what was left of their lives and began thinking about rebuilding, far away on Mars, Starscream was running his own analysis.
He'd used the Xerun invasion as cover to conduct a detailed assessment of Earth's military capabilities—and to plan his next move.
He'd seen what Bella and Earth's leadership had glimpsed through satellite feeds: something dangerous lurking beneath the ocean surface.
Frankly, the footage of Calypso's attack had shaken him.
The Xerun weren't even fit to shine a Cybertronian's shoes, but sheer numbers counted for something. They could overwhelm through attrition — "enough ants can kill an elephant" wasn't just a saying. If Starscream had to face a race like that alone, he wasn't confident he'd come out whole. Watching Calypso and her fish-people dismantle most of the Xerun forces that effortlessly was genuinely frightening.
He quietly noted which ocean zones to avoid, filed the information away, and said absolutely nothing to anyone.
And then sent everyone else to Earth anyway.
"Barricade has reached Earth."
"Brawl has reached Earth."
"Blackout has reached Earth."
"Frenzy has reached Earth."
While every government and military force on the planet was still reeling from the chaos, four Decepticons slipped into Earth's atmosphere without a trace. Some disguised themselves as police cruisers. Others became tanks. They scattered separately, going dark, each hunting for information on the whereabouts of their leader—Megatron.
"All hail the Decepticons!"
"All hail the Decepticons!"
Their celebration crackled across a secured frequency.
Earth had no idea they were there. The Ancient One might have known—but alien infiltrators clearly fell outside her jurisdiction. She looked the other way. Bella, meanwhile, wasn't operating at that level yet. If Starscream didn't appear in front of her, she had no way of knowing.
The floodwaters receded. The survivors came home.
They came back to ruin.
Earthquake, tsunami, alien invasion—California had been the hardest-hit area of all three. Wherever you looked, rubble. The population losses and economic damage were simply beyond calculation. Not long ago, California had wielded enough economic leverage to threaten secession—if this policy doesn't change, we walk. Now the state's spine was broken. Population losses above seventy percent. Nobody dared talk about independence now. Say the word, and they'd bury you.
Macs stood before what used to be his shop—now a pile of concrete dust—and couldn't find words. He dug his scooter out of the debris, dusted it off, set it upright. He still needed to eat. He still had to live. He'd never had much in savings; running his own place wasn't an option anymore. Time to find someone else to work for.
The Winchesters tracked down the hunters' safe house. It had been burned to the ground. Several people they'd known lay dead in the wreckage.
The Stanford students and faculty returned to what was left of campus—a handful of surviving walls, traces of the school they'd known. The main buildings had sunk into the sea in the earthquake. Reconstruction would require both the university and its board to open their wallets, and that was going to take time. Online classes for everyone, for now.
Bella's family—all five of them, plus Bumblebee—made it back to the house in Los Angeles.
The Murder House had spent over a century being reinforced by the ghosts that called it home. It showed. One-third of the structure had collapsed. The rest stood.
Charlie stood in the doorway of the nursery he'd spent so much time putting together, and didn't say anything for a long while. The others felt it too.
"Alright—everybody start cleaning." Samantha issued the order. Her two clumsy daughters were immediately drafted into service and run ragged.
That evening, the five of them ate dinner by candlelight, then went to their rooms.
Two days later, the death toll figures were compiled and released.
Los Angeles had taken catastrophic casualties. The earthquake and tsunami had hit the city less hard than San Francisco—a 9.6 there, only 8.5 here—meaning far more survivors had been alive to face what came next.
Then the aliens arrived.
Los Angeles became a battlefield. The angels didn't protect the City of Angels. Castiel, full of lofty ideals, was apparently somewhere off reconsidering his choices. The result: the survivors who had made it through the natural disaster were slaughtered. The ocean turned red. Bella's family had been back two days, and not a single neighbor had returned.
To the outside world, their family of four had become a family of five and lost nobody—not one. That was simply incomprehensible. Some were envious. Some were admiring. It was incomprehensible to most.
For ordinary families, the losses were devastating. Average people had almost no margin against disasters on this scale.
Notice boards had been set up at every street corner across multiple neighborhoods. People crowded around them, searching. Husbands looking for wives. Sons looking for fathers. Every board was a concentrated display of human tragedy.
The federal government and California's state government moved quickly to launch relief and reconstruction efforts.
Charlie—now Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department—had barely been home two days before he was pulled back in. Crowd management. Patrol assignments. Coordinating with the city government on relief distribution. The work was endless.