No matter how exquisitely the AllSpark was constructed, no matter how vast the energy it contained, none of that mattered to Bella. What she cared about was something far deeper.
This thing could use its internal mechanisms to create souls—mechanical souls, at least—and that was extraordinary.
Humans couldn't create souls. Even the gods couldn't.
If the gods could conjure souls out of thin air, they wouldn't have fallen so far. Take Hold Nickar, the God of the Winter Solstice—the one she and Natasha had killed. If he'd still had even a hundred or so worshippers, the two of them would never have beaten him.
Were mechanical souls real souls, though? Bella was deeply curious. She planned to make time to study this.
Unlike Bumblebee in the original timeline, who'd have had to puzzle out how to use the AllSpark, Optimus Prime lived up to his hidden former career as a librarian. One touch, and the 160-foot (50 m) AllSpark began to transform and compress. Two heartbeats later, it had shrunk into a neat metal cube the size of a soccer ball.
Optimus handed the AllSpark to Bella. "Please keep this safe. It contains the hope of the Cybertronian people."
He trusted Bella completely, and she wouldn't betray that trust.
"Don't worry. I'll protect the AllSpark."
She sketched a one-way teleportation circle on the spot, planning to send the AllSpark out as arranged. No luck—two attempts, two failures. The energy inside was too massive; the small circle simply ruptured, while the AllSpark didn't even react.
They'd have to carry it out by hand and fight their way out of Sector Seven's underground base.
They were pushing outward. Starscream's group was pushing inward.
The Decepticons were first-rate fighters. Once they'd taken the measure of the base's defenders, they left Brawl behind to hold off the four Autobots at all costs while Starscream led Barricade, Blackout, and Bonecrusher in a headlong charge. The human defensive lines shattered one after another.
Rumors of budget cuts had been circulating beforehand, and now a powerful enemy was hammering the gates. Demanding that soldiers fight to the death under these conditions? In profit-driven America, that was never going to happen. After Starscream spearheaded two charges and several of the most resolute operations chiefs died fighting, the remaining agents and soldiers scattered.
The total collapse of the defenders also slowed Optimus and Bella's push outward. Faced with a flood of routed soldiers streaming toward them, they couldn't exactly hit the gas and plow through.
Optimus in truck form was stalled for over a minute.
By the time they reached the central plaza of the underground base—right next to Megatron's corpse—they ran headlong into Starscream's group.
"Optimus Prime?! Megatron is dead?!" Starscream stared at Megatron's headless body, stunned rigid.
He was already calculating his exit strategy.
Bonecrusher, the military-green Decepticon who transformed into a Buffalo mine-resistant vehicle, was fiercely loyal to Megatron. He bellowed, shifted to robot form, and came skating in from the flank on the wheels at his feet.
His rear-mounted grappling hook whipped out and snared Optimus Prime's arm, yanking hard.
Barricade, who normally disguised himself as a police cruiser, swung his massive battle-axe at Optimus Prime's head.
Blackout and Starscream hesitated—but seeing it was four-on-one with only Optimus to deal with, they steeled their nerves and rushed in.
Caught off guard, even Optimus Prime stumbled from Bonecrusher's pull. He severed the grappling cable with a sword stroke and dodged Barricade's axe, but Starscream still tagged him with two shots to the back and left hand.
Optimus appeared to be losing the four-on-one fight. Bella had to step in.
She could tell Starscream and Blackout weren't fully committed to the fight. She immediately targeted Bonecrusher.
Bonecrusher was going for the kill on Optimus, but a dense ice storm engulfed him. Unknown signals jammed his sensors, frost locked up multiple joints, and through the howling blizzard he glimpsed a blurry human figure.
"Pathetic lower life form!" Bonecrusher didn't give Bella a second thought. He shook his frame and let his spark melt away the surface ice.
Unless a Transformer was first scrambled by Arctic magnetic interference, then sunk into a bottomless frozen ocean and left for eons—like Megatron—ordinary cold couldn't hold them. Transformers were a species capable of crossing the cosmos in their own bodies. Sure, Optimus had sworn at the end of Age of Extinction that he was heading off to give the Creators a piece of his mind, and then drifted back to Cybertron looking like a corpse, which was a bit embarrassing—but he did technically "fly" back on his own.
Bella's ice storm couldn't fully contain Bonecrusher. She raised her right hand high. Several ice lances materialized—each over six feet (2 m) long and as thick as a wrist—then drove straight at Bonecrusher's head. The Decepticon shrugged them off without flinching.
"Damn! His defense is insane!" Realizing her magic was barely scratching these walking tanks, she switched to Plan B: summon Pyramid Head.
She'd prepared in advance, inscribing the summoning circle onto a scroll. A pulse of psionic energy activated it, and in the next instant, Pyramid Head materialized on the battlefield of Hoover Dam, draped in the robes of an Esoteric Buddhist monk from Senpou Temple.
"Mercy!" That single word was the only thing Pyramid Head ever said. The ornate monk's robes looked absurdly out of place here, but he pressed his palms together in greeting all the same. Then he drew the massive cleaver from his back, leapt high, and brought it crashing down on Bonecrusher.
What had once been pure malevolent energy had been refined through Buddhist practice into something closer to the force of a Vajra guardian—vajra wrath. At ten feet (3 m) tall, Pyramid Head looked like a child next to the twenty-six-foot (8 m) Bonecrusher, yet his presence was every bit as imposing.
The rust-pitted blade now bore dense Esoteric Buddhist inscriptions. Pyramid Head gripped it in both hands and swung. The cleaver bit into Bonecrusher's left shoulder and sank in nearly twenty inches (half a meter).
What in the world is this thing? Bonecrusher's optics scanned Pyramid Head twice and came up empty. Human? Didn't look like it. Mechanical life? Even less so.
With Pyramid Head keeping Bonecrusher busy, Bella redirected her psionic attacks at Barricade. The pressure on Optimus eased dramatically. He couldn't identify what kind of energy Bella was using—was this a human ability? If all humans had powers like this, they wouldn't need the Autobots trekking countless light-years to help.
With Bella shouldering part of the burden, Starscream, Barricade, and Blackout couldn't overcome Optimus even fighting together.
Starscream shot Bella a vicious glare, hostility radiating off him without the slightest attempt at concealment.
"The hell are you looking at!" Bella flipped her wrist and drew the Koh-i-Noor.
This artifact—usable only by those with highly concentrated Isu bloodlines, and ideally by women—was profoundly hostile toward males. If its lethality against women was a 1, against men it was a 5. And right now, every single combatant on this battlefield was male.