As for Wayne’s offer to let him keep being a royal sister, Galactus decided he no longer wanted the job.
Was it too late to switch to loli?
You couldn’t really blame him for turning coward.
Getting his ass kicked while starving was one thing.
Still getting his ass kicked after a full meal?
Then what the hell had he eaten for?
To hell with eating.
Might as well just starve to death.
Galactus didn’t hesitate.
He tore through the reality barrier again and fled into yet another universe.
Wayne’s expression went dark the second the giant ran.
You were the one who declared you were going to eat Earth, and now you’re just walking away?
You think I’m a joke?
His pupils tightened into burning scarlet points.
A tightly focused, explosive Heat Vision lanced out.
It burned straight through the reality barrier, crossed universes, and caught Galactus in the back.
The concentrated beam punched clean through the Devourer’s waist.
Pain spun Galactus around just in time to see Wayne already in front of him, eyes blazing, fist cocked, a dangerous grin splitting his face.
“You can’t escape my palm!”
Pure terror flashed across Galactus’s features.
Cosmic energy erupted from every pore.
Wayne, chasing pure combat thrills, deliberately forced the already-active “Enemy of Men” ability back down.
Galactus, body blazing purple, kept his massive density but shrank himself to roughly Wayne’s size, pouring the extra energy into pure power.
The two of them slammed into a close-range fistfight where every punch landed solid.
Then Galactus’s glowing fist stopped dead one centimeter from Wayne’s cheek.
Fresh astonishment flooded him.
He had known something around the kid warped reality.
He had not known it could also serve as perfect armor.
The Bio-force field’s defensive strength forced Galactus to burn even more energy just to keep reality-warping active and cancel it out.
Even without the field, Wayne’s Steel Body was absurdly tough.
Galactus cracked him across the skull.
Wayne’s backhand clamped around the giant’s throat.
Heat Vision punched through Galactus’s own palm and painted his face at point-blank range.
Galactus gathered cosmic energy in his eyes, copying the Heat Vision to push back.
Both hands locked around the arm choking him, trying to pry it loose.
Wayne’s left hand only tightened.
His right fist kept hammering down without pause.
At the same time he kept flying at high speed, dragging Galactus through every massive celestial body in their path.
Stars, planets, everything might as well have been paper.
They punched straight through without slowing.
After another massive burst of cosmic energy Galactus finally tore free.
He never got a second to breathe.
Heat Vision swept across the void again.
Galactus folded space and dodged.
The galaxies behind him weren’t so lucky.
Two or three nearby galaxies, including the one they were currently in, were carved open by a single hideous trail of light.
“Not bad.”
Wayne looked at the dodging Galactus with genuine appreciation.
“As expected of a royal sister.
You’re just built different from those lolis.”
Galactus’s brow furrowed.
He calmly scanned the surroundings, then suddenly raised both hands.
A crushing torrent of cosmic energy roared toward Wayne.
Wayne puffed out his chest and exhaled.
Storm Breath met the incoming energy head-on and blew it apart.
The breath’s raw destructive power was nowhere near Heat Vision, but its ability to disrupt movement and scramble energy made it a vicious support tool.
Galactus had never expected the blast to win the fight.
He only needed the opening.
The second the energies collided he turned and tore through the reality barrier once more, fleeing into the next universe.
Wayne watched the empty space Galactus had left behind, then casually tore open the reality barrier and followed.
…
Across a sea of stars a purple streak of light left entire star systems in its wake.
Galactus kept glancing back while he fled.
No matter which direction he ran, no matter how far he went, he could still feel the monster with the big golden M on his chest watching him from somewhere in the dark.
“Haah… What the hell is going on?
Why do I keep getting this bad feeling?”
He looked over his shoulder, thoroughly irritated.
“But I can’t find him anywhere!”
“Maybe it’s just your imagination?”
“Impossible!
Absolutely impossible!
How could a mortal’s illusion ever appear on my—”
Galactus froze mid-sentence.
His head turned, stiff and slow, toward his side.
A left hand rested on one knee.
A right hand propped up a perfect face.
The guy was half-reclining in empty space, matching Galactus’s exact flight speed like it was nothing.
The large golden M on his chest gleamed.
“Dressed up all pretty like that, where exactly are you trying to go?”
Galactus met those teasing eyes.
His pupils shrank to pinpricks.
Panic took over.
He started ripping through reality barriers one after another, hopping universes as fast as he could.
The creepy feeling of being watched never left.
It stuck to him like a curse.
After jumping several universes in a row he risked another look back.
Those scarlet pupils were already waiting for him.
“Open up.”
A low, hellish murmur slid straight into Galactus’s skull and kept echoing.
At the same moment a calm system voice spoke inside Wayne’s head.
[Critical hit triggered successfully!
Multiplier: 500%!]
Wayne drew his right arm back a fraction.
Speed exploded.
He was in front of Galactus before the giant could react, fist already slamming forward.
Watching that fist come in, a flood of memories flashed through Galactus’s mind.
In the end his expression settled into something almost peaceful.
He smiled with pure relief.
The punch connected.
Galactus shot through the newly torn reality barrier and kept going.
This time he didn’t even try to fight it.
The follow-through on that punch was a little too generous; for a moment his consciousness simply blanked out.
He crossed the entire observable universe of the new reality in under a tenth of a second.
Just before he could leave it completely, Wayne appeared again and caught him by the collar with one hand.
“Hey!
Don’t play dead on me!
I pulled that punch!
You little shit trying to scam me?”
Wayne patted Galactus’s cheek, looking thoroughly annoyed.
He had accidentally triggered the critical, but he really had held back at the last instant.
Otherwise the giant’s head would have been paste.
Galactus slowly came around.
The second his eyes opened, Wayne, still riding the high of a good fight, grinned down at him.
“You’re awake?
Great!
Time for round two!”
“!!!”
There’s a round two?!
Uncle Galactus decided enough was enough.
He rolled his eyes, tilted his head, and with a soft snap went completely limp again.