For poison application she'd need traditional firearms—something she could doctor the ammunition on. Ironhide modified a handful more for her: a shotgun, a rifle, a large-caliber revolver, a few of each.
Poisoning the rounds, though, was on her.
On top of her own heart poison, Bella had the Weyland side of the house prepare a large stockpile of toxins. A few milligrams of aconitine could kill an adult male. She was planning to use ten pounds of aconitine on Smaug.
As long as she was back home, she wasn't just prepping for combat. She made time for her family too, and handled whatever Weyland and the Brotherhood needed sorting out.
The alien threat had thoroughly snuffed out humanity's appetite for infighting. Politicians could be criticized for a lot, but their eyes and their judgment were very much online.
You couldn't claim humanity had spent the last four months in perfect selfless unity, but large-scale armed conflicts were down ninety percent.
Natasha's workload these past few months had been mostly cult suppression. These cult lunatics had rocks in their heads—preaching end-times gospel, the alien-domination-of-Earth line, all prophet-of-doom nonsense. They'd insist humanity couldn't beat the aliens, that when the aliens came everyone should kneel and welcome them and so on.
S.H.I.E.L.D., the FBI, the CIA and the rest of the intelligence apparatus had been stamping these cult fanatics out in waves.
It wasn't until the Christmas holidays that Natasha finally got a real break.
Little Katie was eight months old now, babbling "Sis!" "Sis!" at her older sisters nonstop. Their poor parents were so disheartened they took the baby girl off to Forks for Christmas and left the two elder daughters to fend for themselves.
Not that Bella or Natasha minded. Mom and Dad clearing out was arguably a feature, not a bug. The two of them spent a "merry and interesting" Christmas at home.
No Father Christmas dropping in to interrupt. No aliens launching an invasion of Earth. Not even an inconveniently-timed Nick Fury stepping out of the shadows with a mission briefing.
This was, by their standards, a Christmas without interruptions—the first they'd actually spent alone together.
"You're very enthusiastic tonight."
"I was enthusiastic before, too!"
"No...I can't put my finger on it exactly, but you seem lighter than you used to be."
"...You're imagining things."
The effect of the Ring of Fire was enormous—big enough that even Natasha had started catching the edges of it. Which was saying something, because Bella had always poured every ounce of feeling she had into Natasha. By rights, nothing should have shifted. And yet her sister was picking up on the little things.
Christmas ended and it was the start of 2004.
Bella made the rounds, checking in on all her friends.
Optimus Prime had wandered off somewhere and still hadn't come back.
Bumblebee was spending every day with the Divine Dragon. The two of them got along surprisingly well.
Frenzy was still down in the undersea ship, studying under JD Red Knight.
Sam Winchester was grinding his way toward the Stanford Law entrance exams.
Barbara wanted to enlist, but family and Sam (her boyfriend) were both against it, so she hadn't quite committed either way.
Heather and Max had borrowed a bit of money from Bella and reopened Max's magical curios shop.
As for Sebastian Shaw's clone and Miss Violet Harmon's clone, they were still months away from maturity. Miss Harmon's was slightly ahead of schedule. Shaw's would be later.
After nearly a month of rest and resupply, Bella headed out again.
She sorted through her pocket dimension and left behind everything that wasn't strictly necessary: the horn Father Christmas had gifted her, the bow and arrows, the cross-hilted sword, and a stack of books she'd already read. All of it went into storage at home. The space freed up was for guns. Heaps of guns and ammunition. She didn't stop back at Kamar-Taj—she went straight back to Vanaheim, oriented herself, mounted her flying carpet, and went to catch up with Thorin's company.
...
Thorin, meanwhile, had run into trouble. The company's route from the Grey Havens to the Lonely Mountain ran pretty much due east across the continent—on a map, it was nearly a straight line.
After parting with Bella, they'd followed the main road eastward: past Bree, skirting the Midgewater Marshes, down the Great East Road, across the River Mitheithel at the Last Bridge, and into the Trollshaws.
Vanaheim's trolls weren't the standard troll you might picture. They were closer to the bigger, clumsier variant.
These brutes were stupid, crude, and dim, but they were massive and muscled and overwhelmingly strong. Their one weakness: bright light.
If Thorin's company pressed on past the Trollshaws and crossed the Ford of Bruinen, they'd reach the Elvish stronghold of Rivendell—the last Elvish sanctuary east of the Sea. It was also the only safe route into the Misty Mountains.
Thorin had no interest in going to Rivendell. He despised those arrogant elves, so he wanted to loop north around the Trollshaws.
And that was how they ran smack into the trolls.
Three trolls attacked the thirteen dwarves and one hobbit.
Thorin Oakenshield, the brothers Kíli and Fíli, and bald Dwalin banded up four-strong. Their teamwork was exquisite, their will to fight iron-clad—but against trolls whose every casual swing kicked up a gale, their strength came up laughably short.
Four of the strongest dwarves working together were barely managing to stall a single troll.
The other two trolls were more or less playing games. They stomped around through the dwarves, goring left and right.
Bilbo Baggins was being chased in circles. He had to watch for tree roots he could trip on and for the massive feet coming down all around him. If one of those feet landed on him, he figured he'd be flattened into a pie.
"Help! Help! Somebody help me!" He ran like a headless chicken.
In the end he smacked back-to-back into three dwarves at once.
Old Balin—white hair, white brows, white beard, more scholar than fighter. Bofur, a common-born dwarf soldier who loved music. And Bombur, the food-loving chubby dwarf.
Three dwarves. One old. One a nobody with barely any combat experience. The last one just frankly a fat man.
The troll reeked of rot. Its skin was rough as sandstone. Bombur, mimicking Thorin, swung his axe at the troll's leg—but his strength wasn't enough, the angle wasn't right, and instead of a wound all he managed to do was draw the troll's full attention.
The troll tilted its head at him, seemingly pondering why this particular dwarf was so chubby.
Then it raised its enormous trunk-like brown club and brought it hammering down at the chubby dwarf.
"Move!" Right at the last possible second, Bella came in on her flying carpet and dove into the fight. Quick eye, quicker hand—she launched an ice spike into the troll's face, and Balin yanked Bombur out of the club's path just in time.
Bella raised her staff. The Light spell flared to life. The three trolls howled and staggered backward, step after step.