“Heh~” If Galactus had just stayed quiet it might have been fine.
That disdainful little chuckle made every face on the ship turn strange.
“Fuck you!
What’s that scoff supposed to mean?!”
Johnny’s face went bright red.
“I’ll sue your ass for slander!
He’s slandering me!”
Tony bit back a laugh and tried to sound serious.
“Hurry up, Matchstick Man.
Show him your brother.”
“I’d love to see how you plan to beat me with this brother of yours.”
Galactus didn’t attack.
He just looked Johnny over with open amusement.
“You asked for it!”
Johnny never got the chance to play the dramatic reveal.
Hulk came flying in again and got swatted away for the third time.
Susan rubbed her temples, done with the green idiot.
“Wayne!”
“Susan, that was my line— Fine.
You say it.
You say it.”
Johnny had been ready for a full ceremonial introduction of his brother like a Bollywood movie.
One glare from Susan shut him down cold.
Galactus looked down at the cowering Human Torch, still smiling.
“Where is this brother?
Didn’t you claim you’d beat me with him?
Go on.
Beat me with your second brother… Ahh!!!”
BOOM!
Galactus never finished the sentence.
He whipped his head around just in time to take a full blast of Heat Vision straight in the face.
Half the giant ship vaporized like tissue paper.
The hundred-meter-tall Galactus was launched into the distance in a single flash of crimson.
In the remaining half of the ship everyone stood frozen, somehow completely unharmed.
Johnny cupped a hand to his ear, grinning like an idiot.
“Sorry, what did he just say?”
Tens of thousands of light-years away, Wayne stood on a soccer field with his arms crossed.
He tilted his head a fraction.
Crimson Heat Vision punched through the atmosphere and carved a straight line across the universe.
“That’s the first time anyone’s ever asked me for that.”
He hadn’t expected the Galactus of this universe to be quite this ridiculous.
The Bio-force field locked the Earth in place beneath his feet.
Superman Belief kept the energy of the Heat Vision under tight control.
Without it the temperature alone would have turned the planet and everyone on that ship into vapor.
As the beam faded, the Bio-force field rewrote his casual clothes into the suit.
Wayne punched through the sky and vanished into the stars.
A reporter who’d been hiding in the bushes so long he was practically growing moss scrambled for his camera.
Wayne was already gone before the shutter even clicked.
Left with nothing, the guy started yelling at every student still holding a phone.
“Who’s got a shot of Superman taking off?!
Daily Bugle’ll pay a hundred bucks!”
“What do you mean ‘you want a photo of me taking off’?”
“I only want Superman taking off… What do you mean ‘go ask Lois’?”
“Who the hell even knows who Superman’s girlfriend is?!
No!
The photo of him flying into the sky just now!”
Harry pulled his eyes away from the empty sky, expression complicated.
He’d never realized his classmate was this… bizarre.
Peter, who’d also been itching to follow and help, looked away from the stars and noticed Gwen still staring upward, worry written all over her face.
He shot Harry a knowing look.
The two of them grinned at each other like idiots.
…
When the Heat Vision finally cut out, the wreckage of the remaining half of the giant ship drifted quietly through deep space.
Everyone sealed their helmets.
Even Thor pulled on the spare suit that had been meant for Banner.
“Was that fucking Heat Vision?!”
Tony swore under his breath, still not quite believing it.
“Hey!
Tony, language.”
“Cap, according to Jarvis that Heat Vision just dumped more energy than a full supernova.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?!”
“Cap, you just swore too.”
“Thanks for the reminder… What did you just say?!”
Steve could barely process it.
A supernova was one of the most violent events in the universe.
When a massive star died it could light up an entire galaxy for months and release more energy in a single instant than the Sun would produce in its whole lifetime.
That Heat Vision had matched or even beaten a supernova in pure output.
That was why Tony was still staring.
What truly broke his brain was that they were all still alive.
They had been standing almost right next to the beam.
By every law of physics they should have been erased the second it fired.
“So… what about Galactus?”
Steve seriously doubted the giant could have survived that.
Tony shrugged.
“No idea.
Maybe he’s dead?”
A continuous supernova-level beam with even higher penetrating power.
It was like parking a chain of exploding stars directly on Galactus’s face.
How hungry would the guy have to be to tank that head-on?
If Galactus walked away from that blast, Tony was ready to call him a genuine god.
What Tony didn’t know was that a well-fed Galactus shrugged off pure physical heat and force unless it reached universe-ending levels.
Wayne’s Heat Vision, however, was high-dimensional energy.
It ignored space and physical rules the same way a magic flame did.
It had temperature, but temperature was only part of the damage.
Galactus had eaten well recently.
If he hadn’t, that single blast would have ended him on the spot.
…
On the other side of the fight, Wayne was already moving.
He accelerated past a trillion times light-speed in the blink of an eye and crossed tens of thousands of light-years without slowing down.
Just before he reached the wreckage he casually scooped up Hulk, who had been floating in vacuum holding his breath.
Then he decelerated and touched down lightly on the remaining half of the giant ship.
“Wayne!”
“Hey, kid!
Perfect timing!”
Except for the Silver Surfer, who was still playing dead in a corner because his boss had been launched into the next solar system, and Ben who was keeping an eye on him, everyone crowded around.
Tony looked Wayne up and down, still clicking his tongue.
“You actually flew the whole way?”
He knew exactly how far this place was from Earth.
Crossing that distance in minutes without any teleportation… Newton would have resigned on the spot if he’d seen it.
Hulk, still being carried, was mumbling something through clenched teeth, clearly trying to speak.
Wayne snapped his fingers.
In the hard vacuum the sound somehow reached every ear.
Air flooded back into the area.
Hulk finally stopped practicing underwater breathing.
“Hulk doesn’t hate second brother.”
The big green guy patted Wayne’s shoulder and looked surprised when the shoulder didn’t move at all.
The ridiculous nickname made a flicker of crimson pass through Wayne’s eyes.
He slowly turned his head toward Johnny.
“…Johnny?”
“Well… you see… lil bro, let me explain!”
Johnny scratched the back of his head and took two automatic steps backward.