“Are you seriously trying to frame me right now?
You realize there aren’t any cameras out here!”
Wayne grabbed Galactus by the neck and shook him hard enough to bounce the giant back to consciousness.
“Stop!
Stop shaking!”
Galactus hurriedly waved him off.
“I surrender!
I’m not fighting anymore!”
He had actually wanted to surrender a while ago, but his face was too swollen and his mouth too numb to get the words out clearly.
Right now Galactus was genuinely close to tears.
For once in his long life he had actually been full, and this bastard still beat him into the ground.
What he didn’t expect was that the moment he said the word “surrender,” Wayne looked even more annoyed.
“You were the one who declared you were going to eat Earth.
Now you say surrender and just surrender, you say you won’t eat it and suddenly you won’t.
You expect me to believe someone like you?
Are you messing with me?
This puts me in a really awkward position.”
“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?!
I haven’t even seen Earth!
If you’re going to keep beating me, at least give me a proper reason!”
Galactus was completely done.
Yes, he had said he wanted to eat Earth, but he hadn’t actually gone there yet, right?
Damn it, he didn’t even know what the place looked like!
That part was pure truth.
Earth was such an obscure backwater that Galactus had never once set foot there in his entire existence.
If he had, back when he was starving nine meals out of every three days, he would have eaten the planet the second he laid eyes on it.
Remote location or not, Earth still packed a decent amount of energy.
There was no way he would have passed it up.
Wayne went quiet for a moment.
The giant actually had a point.
He hadn’t done anything yet.
As a righteous hero, Wayne really did need a better excuse to keep punching him.
With that thought he finally let go.
Galactus watched Wayne drift backward, confused.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.
You’re flying too fast.
I can’t keep up.”
“…”
Are you fucking with me right now?
Do you honestly think Uncle Galactus is that stupid?
If I take off and you suddenly decide I’m still planning to eat Earth, what then?
One punch to the mouth and I won’t even get to argue!
Galactus simply gave up.
He lay flat in the void and refused to move.
The two of them stayed like that in a complete stalemate until Wayne finally let out a soft sigh.
“Fine.
I get it.”
Galactus’s face lit up with pure relief.
He shot upright and was just about to leave when a sudden thought made him glance back.
He met Wayne’s eyes.
The younger man was wearing an extremely suspicious, almost sinister little smile.
“…”
The silence stretched.
“Go on then!”
“Don’t follow me!”
“How do you know I’ll follow if you never leave?”
“Why are you still hanging around if you’re not planning to follow?!”
With no good options left, Galactus simply lay back down again.
Fine.
They could have a contest to see who lasted longer.
He had no idea how long Wayne could sit there, but Galactus could starve for a few more months without breaking a sweat.
Nobody on the universe understood hunger better than him.
Wayne, equally at a loss, sat cross-legged in the void.
The fight had already lost most of its fun.
Galactus, lying there bored out of his mind, finally asked,
“Why won’t you just let me leave?”
Wayne didn’t answer.
Galactus kept going anyway.
“Isn’t it enough that I won’t eat Earth?
I’ve never even seen the place, and with you around I couldn’t eat it if I tried!”
Still no reply.
Convinced the kid had already decided to keep beating him no matter what, Galactus shut his mouth in pure despair.
Then Wayne, a short distance away, slowly stood up.
“You can go.”
Galactus looked up, suspicious.
“Trying to trick me again?”
“Suit yourself.”
Wayne turned, tore open a reality barrier, and flew through it without another word.
Galactus stayed frozen for a long moment, expression complicated.
He muttered under his breath,
“Seriously… you’re just not going to hit me anymore?”
…
Back inside the wreckage of Galactus’s giant ship, the Silver Surfer finally slipped the net.
His herald board could approach light-speed under normal conditions and exceed it once it entered a space channel.
With no one left to stop him, the rest of the team climbed back aboard their own vessel.
Reed settled into the pilot seat and glanced over his shoulder.
“Dear passengers, thank you for flying with us today.
I am your captain, Reed Richards…”
“Reed, hurry up.”
Johnny cut him off, impatient.
Reed just shrugged and started the engines.
Johnny raised one eyebrow, curled his lip into a smug little smile, and winked at the others.
“And I am your co-pilot, Johnny Storm.
Please remain seated.
We are about to take off!”
Reed gave him a calm sideways look.
He knew exactly what the kid was doing.
In the back, Susan stared out at the stars, quiet and uneasy.
A faint sense of powerlessness sat in her eyes; there had been nothing she could do to help.
Janet, sitting beside her, patted her hand.
“Worried about him?”
Susan gave a small nod but didn’t speak.
“He’s going to be fine.
You already know that.”
After watching Wayne arrive and casually blast Galactus across the galaxy with two shots of Heat Vision, Janet couldn’t imagine the kid being in any real danger.
If anyone needed worrying about, it was Galactus.
Still… Wayne wouldn’t actually kill him, right?
Galactus was basically a fundamental part of the universe.
Taking him out permanently might wreck the whole balance.
It would have been nicer if the negotiations had worked from the start.
While Janet was still thinking, Thor spoke up.
“Brother is a great warrior!
Nothing bad will happen to him!”
“Hey!
You muscle-bound idiot who only trains arms!”
Johnny spun around and glared.
“I’ve said it more than once and I’ll say it again.
That is my brother!”
“I won’t take him for free.
I’ll trade you Loki.”
“Get lost!”
Johnny looked ready to explode at Thor’s shameless “nothing left to lose” attitude.
“Hey, you two, don’t start a fight on the ship.”
Steve sounded tired.
Then he turned, still worried.
“Tony, maybe we should try to help the kid.”
“Don’t even think about it, Cap.”
Tony’s eyes rolled hard behind the mask.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to help.
They literally couldn’t.
They had tried to follow at first.
In the blink of an eye both fighters had vanished completely.
The leftover energy signature was so massive that tracking it was pure fantasy.
The only option left was to head home and figure things out from there.
“There’s no way we keep up with their speed.
Even if we somehow found them and Thor opened the Bifrost, those two would already be in another galaxy.”
From the front, Reed added quietly,
“They might already be in another universe.”
“Wayne can travel between universes too?”
Banner lifted his eyelids a fraction, looking half-numb.
Johnny stroked his chin and smirked.
“Obviously.
My brother is invincible.”
“As expected of brother!”
Thor couldn’t help the praise.
Humble, polite, strong enough to punch through universes… and he could even fix hammers.
Way better than Loki.
The more he thought about it, the more he liked Johnny’s brother.
The second they got back he was going to sit Tony down and talk serious poaching strategy.