Bound in steel rebar, Johnny thrashed on the deck like a worm.
“Susan!
Save me!
Susan!
My brother’s bullying me!
Reed!
Ben!
You can’t do this to me!”
Nobody on the team even looked his way.
Johnny’s mouth had pissed off too many people over the years.
Tony, however, wandered over.
He wasn’t there to help.
He just stood there staring at Johnny’s ass with open interest.
“Ayo!
What the fuck?!
Why are you looking at me like that?
You after my body?
I’ve got a girlfriend, you know!”
Johnny squirmed, trying to put distance between them.
Tony wasn’t into guys either.
“No, no, no… I’m just surprised your butt looks exactly like Cap’s.”
“To!
Ny!!!”
“It’s fine, Cap.
America’s ass is one of your signature features, right?”
While Captain America and Iron Man nearly started round two right there, Wayne noticed Thor a short distance away.
The thunder god was curled into a ball, sobbing over a pile of metal fragments.
“What’s his problem?
He’s crying like somebody fucked—ehm—killed his wife.”
“He’s been like that ever since Galactus crushed his hammer.”
Wayne nodded, then raised one hand toward the shattered pieces.
Under everyone’s staring eyes, Mjolnir put itself back together like nothing had ever happened.
“Mjolnir!”
Divine power flooded back into Thor so hard that lightning exploded out of him and blew his spacesuit clean off.
He clutched the restored beautiful Hammer to his chest and started crying all over again.
“Mjolnir!
We will never be parted again!”
Pym stared at Wayne.
“You can do that too?”
“Strictly speaking, I can do pretty much anything.”
Wayne stepped aside just as Thor finished his second round of tears and came in for a bear hug.
Wayne sidestepped it cleanly.
“Johnny’s brother!
From this day forward you are my true brother!”
“Hey!
Double-door refrigerator!
That’s my brother!”
Johnny managed to worm himself closer and barked at Thor.
“Your brother is Loki!
Stay the hell away from mine!”
“Loki?
What Loki?
I’ve never met any Loki.
Never even heard the name.”
“Bullshit!
The guy who invaded New York a while back, that wasn’t Loki?
Was it me?!”
“You invaded New York too?”
“Screw you!
Fuck you!”
Thor looked down at the furious Human Torch, then casually scooped him up under one arm.
“Sigh.
If you hate Loki that much, how about I give him two good hammer strikes every night before bed?”
“Stop changing the subject!
I’m warning you, stay away from my brother!”
“No difference.
From now on your brother is my brother, and my brother is your brother.”
“I don’t want your brother!”
“It’s fine.
As long as I want yours.”
“You motherf—!”
Johnny was still mid-rant when space twisted a short distance away.
Galactus, who had been launched god-knows-how-far by the earlier Heat Vision, forced his way back into existence.
He never even got a word out.
A second blast of Heat Vision slammed him square in the face.
Wayne watched the cosmic giant take the hit and actually looked interested.
“I’ll go handle that mature lady first.”
With that he launched upward, accelerated past light-speed in a heartbeat, and vanished into the stars.
Tony poked his head out from beside Steve and stared into the endless black.
“Still feels like our roster’s a little thin.”
Thor leaned in from the other side.
“I agree.”
Steve rolled his eyes.
Even if he somehow decided a kid belonged on the team, the kid would still have to say yes.
And with Reed standing right there, what exactly did these two expect him to do?
Beg?
A short distance away the Silver Surfer noticed everyone watching Wayne leave.
He quietly lifted onto his board, planning to slip out while they were distracted.
The second he moved, Thor and Hulk’s heads snapped toward him.
Everyone else followed their gaze.
“…”
“No, seriously, buddy?
Can we do this one-on-one?”
“…”
Wayne’s Heat Vision had already launched Galactus tens of thousands of light-years.
The ship had been sitting in a quiet corner of the Milky Way.
That single blast kicked the Devourer of Worlds clean out of the galaxy.
In this universe the rule was simple: anything with mass couldn’t break light-speed on pure velocity.
Most “faster-than-light” travel was really space-warping or dimensional shortcuts.
The Silver Surfer folded space with his board.
Captain Marvel bent cosmic energy.
Bifrost, warp drives, certain kinds of magic—almost everything people called FTL was just cheating with space itself.
A few beings could turn into photons and ride the actual speed of light.
A fully fed Galactus could ignore the rule entirely.
Reality-warpers could rewrite the limit if they were strong enough.
Wayne was closer to Galactus than to the cheaters.
He didn’t need the Bio-force field or Superman Belief to go past light-speed.
Every single cell in his body was a microscopic hyperspace, more than four dimensions packed into something that only looked three-dimensional.
He simply chose to exist in normal space most of the time.
That same high-dimensional energy was why anyone hit by his Heat Vision ignored the light-speed barrier.
The beam itself warped space-time around the target.
Galactus took the second blast full in the face.
He threw up a wall of cosmic energy and ballooned his body and mass until he was bigger than a planet.
It still wasn’t enough.
The beam drove him another tens of thousands of light-years.
The purple shield shattered into glittering scraps.
Spiderweb cracks glowed across the armor on his chest; raw cosmic energy leaked through the molten gaps.
Galactus’s face twisted in pure rage.
Getting his ass kicked on an empty stomach was one thing.
Getting his ass kicked after a full meal?
Then what the hell had he eaten for?
He was Galactus.
Did he have no dignity left?
He had no idea where the bastard with the capital M on his chest had come from, but this was not ending here.
Wayne was strong.
Galactus still didn’t believe he would lose.
A full stomach gave him that confidence.
He never backed down hungry.
Full?
He was going to hit back hard.
He locked onto the direction of the broken ship… and his pupils shrank to pinpricks.
In the space of a single heartbeat Wayne crossed those tens of thousands of light-years and appeared almost on top of him.
Crimson light exploded in the younger man’s eyes.
His mouth curled into an excited grin.
“I’m going to use a little force now~”