Her brief clash with Loki had already shown Bella the unique strengths of Asgardian magic. Now she fixed Thor with an expectant stare, hoping he might have something useful to offer.
Even in the heat of battle, Thor never missed an opportunity to show off for a pretty woman. At this particular moment, however, he was actively dodging Bella's hopeful gaze.
Thor's own mother Frigga was a bona fide Vanir goddess of magic. As for Odin—don't let the old man's habit of charging into battle spear-first fool anyone. He held a divine portfolio in magic, too. He didn't lack the ability; he simply couldn't be bothered most of the time.
Loki went without saying: magic was the core of everything he did.
Father, mother, brother. Every single person in Thor's immediate circle was gifted in the arcane arts. But Thor? What did Thor know about magic? Hammer-all. That was what.
A sealing spell? She might as well have asked him to do brain surgery.
Thor tilted his head away, pretending he hadn't heard.
Kong, recognizing the God of Thunder's embarrassment, beat his chest and hooted in open mockery.
Bella saw through the act instantly. She just found it hard to believe. Not a single spell? Not one?
"I just remembered—there's something I need to take care of at home! Got to run!" Thor hoisted Jarnbjorn, called out "Heimdall!" in Asgardian, and the Bifrost whisked him away.
"That was fast." Bella studied the famed Rainbow Bridge for a moment as it faded.
Then she turned back to the problem at hand.
Kamar-Taj dealt with supernatural threats day in and day out, patching dimensional weak spots as a matter of routine. Naturally, they had sealing spells—but those were designed for mystical-side entities.
Bella stood there for a while, waiting to see if some higher power might descend to lend a hand. When none materialized, she rolled up her sleeves.
She directed Kong to haul over a quantity of dense rock and pack the fissure shut, then layered three Shields of the Seraphim over the sealed opening. That spell could withstand the impact of a spacecraft—it ought to hold against whatever was clawing around down there.
Next she linked the three shields into a unified array and siphoned a measure of temporal energy from the time stream to serve as the array's power source. She couldn't guarantee more, but this seal would hold for three to five years.
The fissure handled, she turned to the beetle monster's frozen remains.
Her seal could block this particular opening for years, true—but if those creatures punched through somewhere else, she'd have no way to stop them. Humanity needed to know about the threat. Humanity needed to prepare.
Bella drew moisture from the air and shaped it into a portrait of Professor Serizawa's face. Skull Island currently had exactly one Japanese man on it, so the recognition factor was high. She pointed at the massive block of ice encasing the beetle: "Deliver this to that old man."
Kong tilted his head, examining the hovering portrait from several angles. With a great ape's intelligence, the concept of an image suspended in midair was utterly baffling.
Bella resorted to a mix of gestures and telepathic impressions: "Ice block! Give it to this old man. The old man. He'll provide food in return. Lots of food. Lots and lots of food!"
That, Kong understood. Food on Skull Island was growing scarce. The energy in animal flesh couldn't compare to radioactive material, and he lacked Godzilla's luxury of eating one meal and sleeping for a decade. He ate every day. He was hungry every day. Very hungry. Extremely hungry.
Bella's proposition was simple: hand the beetle corpse to Serizawa. In exchange, Monarch—with its considerable resources—could certainly manage to keep one ape fed.
Kong didn't waste a second. He scooped up the frozen carcass and bounded toward the surface in great, earth-shaking strides, off to find Professor Serizawa.
Bella searched the nearby riverbeds and soon recovered the trilobite that a certain fairy's foot had sent flying. Take this back for study, and she could easily churn out—no wait, "write" ten whole research papers from it.
Kamar-Taj did not encourage the study of Flight. Before Doctor Strange learned Teleport, his official stat sheet listed his speed at a 2. After learning Teleport, it jumped to 7.
That was the sheer power of Teleportation.
Unless your speed could reboot the timeline, you weren't faster than a Kamar-Taj sorcerer. That was the philosophy behind the spell.
One Teleport was infinitely faster than Flight. The descent had required continuous searching, but the return trip was instantaneous. While Kong was still lumbering through tunnels, Bella stepped through a portal and was back on the surface. A brief search later, she found Professor Serizawa's group, looking every bit the refugees they'd become.
Her story was simple: she'd gone out for a walk that evening, returned to camp to find everyone missing, then came looking. Start to finish, she said nothing about Loki or Thor.
"You sure are lucky…" A few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents muttered with undisguised envy.
Bella showed Professor Serizawa the trilobite she'd "found along the way."
"This one looks nearly dead. The outer shell is cracked all over. How would intact chitin fracture this badly? It doesn't conform to any biological logic." Dr. Graham examined it with visible confusion.
Bella glanced at the damage. A flicker of guilt crossed her face. "Maybe it got… cracked from the impact?"
"Who would brutalize a living fossil like this?"
"…My guess? Probably Kong."
The great ape, freshly framed and unable to defend himself, lumbered into view moments later.
The scientists' attention snapped away from the trilobite immediately, because Kong had brought them a spectacular surprise.
Through an extended game of charades, Professor Serizawa finally pieced together what Kong wanted: the ape was offering the beetle monster's carcass in exchange for a steady food supply.
Done. No argument. Food was cheap. Monarch's high-energy physics laboratory barely ran any major experiments and still burned through billions in annual funding. How much could one ape eat?
Without any prompting from Bella, the scientists identified the heavy radiation signature on the beetle corpse. They scrambled for phones to call in organizational support.
The first to arrive with reinforcements was Old One-Eye.
The man had fled the island without a backward glance, sprinted all the way to Australia, and was now returning with a full support team.
He took one look at the beetle carcass and immediately announced that S.H.I.E.L.D. would be participating in the subsequent research and analysis.
Professor Serizawa and the Monarch apparatus behind him weighed the political realities and ultimately agreed.
Where the beetle monster had actually come from, nobody could determine. The language barrier was absolute. Kong pointed at his own nose, claiming credit for the kill—you owe me, don't try to weasel out—but beyond that, nothing useful could be extracted from him.
Fallen from the sky? Burrowed up from the earth? Some radiation-induced mutation? Or maybe an evolved deep-sea species?
Every theory was on the table. Bella had instructed Kong to keep the underground world a secret. No matter who asked, play dumb. As for what everyone else thought or speculated, that was their prerogative. She wasn't going to police their imaginations.