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Scowling angrily, Galactus looked in the direction of the Phoenix Force, and his scowl turned into a deep frown as he realized he could no longer sense where she had gone. That shouldn't have been possible, not with all of his extra-senses. And yet, it has occurred. And my Herald is dead. Still, so long as his body remains, that is not an insurmountable obstacle.
He gestured, and several dozen robots appeared all around his feet, his power using the planet's landscape to create them via matter-transference, as computer brains were teleported into them from his ship. With another wordless gesture, a dozen sped towards where the Phoenix Force's avatar went down, while many more raced towards where his Herald had fallen. "Find his body. Return it to me."
With that, Galactus turned away, moving back to the siphon. He would be able to revive his Herald soon enough so long as the man's body not been entirely immolated. Whatever Death might wish, my technology has defeated her grasp in the past. But first things first. Drain the planet, thus destroying the last of the Imperial Guards and my other enemies here while rejuvenating my power.
Then he would go after the Phoenix Force's avatar if need be. She was human, Galactus thought grimly. A human has interfered with me. This repudiates the agreement I made with the Fantastic Four. And yet, they still do have the Ultimate Nullifier. I must think about how to respond to this breaking of our treaty.
Reaching his hands out to the siphon, he saw that it had finished constructing itself as he fought the Phoenix Force's avatar. Smiling in something approaching pleasure, Galactus slipped his hands into the side of the siphon, where numerous tubes reached out, connecting to partitions on his armor. With those bits in place, Galactus prepared to feed.
This was where things began to really go wrong for the World-Eater.
Magma's approach to Galactus' position had been completely covered by Jean and her one-on-one battle with the giant, something that caused both her and the shuttle's pilot to stare in blank astonishment. So much so that the pilot nearly crashed the shuttle into the ground rather than depositing her on it.
But then Magma was on the ground and reaching down, her tectonic energy form appearing. She felt the energy of the planet as it responded to the siphon. "Oh no, you don't," she growled, reaching through the energy the siphon had begun to collect. To her shock and surprise, she felt the energy within Galactus as well. "Oh my…"
Galactus's body didn't immediately transform the energy he took in into his own power. It remained within him for a time, slowly digesting. That was why normally, he could go for long periods between feedings. He had fed extremely well of late, so much so there was actually a glut of energy within him that had yet been transformed into Power Cosmic. Just like Reed had predicted! she thought victoriously before she shrieked her cry to the heavens. "Now!"
If Galactus had been able to concentrate, he could have beaten Amara's attempts to control the tectonic energy within him and the siphon off easily, despite her home-field advantage. But as she shouted, the illusions came down, and Stephen and Harry teleported into the fight. And as the illusions fell, Galactus realized that there was scant life force on this planet to add flavor to the tectonic energy he was consuming. He looked up as two more attackers appeared, glowing with energy whose source and properties he could not discern, and he began to raise defenses around himself.
Harry's first strike was a barely controlled, furious fist of magical power that resembled a stream of white and gold energy more than anything directed. He had not liked being forced to keep back as others went into battle, and he took it out on the giant before him.
It crashed into Galactus, causing him to stumble even as his hand was still in the siphon. He glared up, and blasted eye-beams blasted out at Harry, who quickly raised a SciathnaBhFéadfadh shield, the strongest anti-energy type shield he could create, in front of himself as Jean reappeared from behind the illusion, which was now slowly dissipating, to attack from one side while Stephen attacked from the other.
For all his power, Galactus was not used to fighting, not really. Nor was he used to splitting his attention between one external threat and one internal. So he didn't even fight back as Magma pulled hard on the tectonic energy within the siphon and within Galactus himself. Much of the energy that Galactus had built up over the past month or so exploded outwards, causing him to bellow in pain as the siphon exploded in his hands, and his own body rebelled.
He stumbled away from the siphon, his hands smoking, seared in places, the armor of his gauntlets cracked as blood started to drip from his clenched mouth. Still, Galactus was barely a biological being any longer. He could control his own body on the atomic level. Ignoring for the moment the two new enemies in the sky above him, Galactus concentrated and began to repair his insides. Yet it was indisputable that he had been injured. He had been weakened. And now, Galactus was furious. "YOU DARE?!"
Stephen was the next to strike. Ignoring Galactus' roar, he lashed out with a spell, calling upon the Gods of Magic, in this case, the ascended Sorcerer Supereme, Aggamoto. "By the fury of Aggamoto, be brought to your knees, Eater of Worlds!"
The beam of magic, far more controlled than Harry's earlier assault, crashed into Galactus so hard that it lifted the giant off his feet and sent him sprawling. Nor had Stephen chosen that angle of attack randomly. Galactus landed in the middle of one of the gravity arrays. It should have made the giant feel as if he was weighed down by at least a hundred times more than his normal body weight, the weight based on how large the individual touching the array was.
But if it did, there was no sign of it, as Galactus surged to his feet easily, blasting out with eye beams and with one hand while the other helped to push him upright. "Humans!" he roared, the sound another weapon, so loud it hurt the ears. "You dare?! You dare fight me here for a world that is not your own?! At the behest of an empire that is not your own! Our treaty is void! After I erase you all from existence, I will journey to EartHH!"
That was as far as he got before a magical lightning blast from Ororo slammed into his face, nearly taking Galactus in the mouth. He roared in anger and fury but not much pain, despite that attack being more powerful than the spell Ororo had used earlier to kill Morg. Injured, he lashed out against her, but a shield shimmered into being around her. The blast of Power Cosmic slammed into the shield as if it was a small ball hit by a stream from a water cannon, sending her flying but doing no real damage while Ororo gritted her teeth, pouring more power into her defense until the beam of Power Cosmic faded.
By which time Harry, Jean, and Dr. Strange were slamming magical attacks into Galactus again from either side, rocking his titanic form. The giant stumbled backward, roaring out, "What kind of power is this? How can humans have such strength?"
Meanwhile, Ben, the three surviving Imperial Guard, and the returned Alex were fighting the robots that Galactus had sent to retrieve Morg's body. They were strong, powerful creations, and there were lots of them, but the robots were being slowly overwhelmed by Ben and the others. Ben was a rock, standing in the center of their line, while Alex bounced from one position to another, shouting out commands to the Imperial Guard, suddenly having taken command of them when Neutron had fallen in battle against Morg. Behind them, the ragtag elements of the surviving tank divisions from the trap moved over the broken, blasted landscape, hammering in attacks over the super-powered defenders into the dozens of androids.
Yet Alex, looking away for just an instant from their own fight, could see the edges of the climactic exchange of energy blasts over the horizon. Even here, the sound was like thunder, crashing into them so hard and fast that it was practically deafening everyone's ears. Alex knew that whatever happened here with the robots was a sideshow compared to that.
Underneath the assault from the three magic users and Jean, the ground underneath Galactus shattered, creating a crater larger than most cities and deeper than a skyscraper in every direction. Runes activated all around him, cutting spells, binding spells, gravity runes. Every rune within the crater activated simultaneously, jolted into action by the change in the ground around them.
The gravity runes were almost invisible in their activation, but the binding spells created thousands of tendrils of magical energy reaching up to grab and bind Galactus. Deadly runic arrays launched human-sized blasts of spells, ranging from simple cutting spells to bowel loosening and other specific attacks. Others had been created by Dr. Strange calling upon the gods of magic, and these blasted out powerful beams of magical energy of various colors.
They all hit Galactus similtaneously from every direction as his return blast towards Dr. Strange went wide, the doctor teleporting to one side. A second later, Harry's magical assault slammed into Galactus's back with such power that it nearly caused Galactus' feet to become embedded in the ground.
Galactus roared, stretching his arms to either side, breaking the binding spells while his legs took several blasts. None of the specific curses could latch onto his beyond-human body, but a cutting spell caught one of his thighs. The wound began to heal slowly as the others watched, however. On the other hand, the gravity runes didn't even seem to slow him down, and Harry realized that they probably weren't. Galactus was used to moving through space and might well create his own personal gravity field, which would cancel those traps.
As for the bio-energy draining arrays, there was no way to tell if they were working or not. They'd been forced to be subtle with those, and Harry couldn't discern their effectiveness through the tumult of battle. On the other hand, they knew that Magma's part of the attack had worked.
He dodged an eye-beam in midair, flipping around and below it, and his hands clenched together, creating a spell between them that looked like charged-lightning spear coupled with a rainbow as he sent it toward Galactus. It was another penetrating spell, which Harry had created on the spot. "Piercing Fang!"
Galactus held up a hand, and an energy field intercepted that blast, while Dr. Strange attacked from the other side, shouting out his own spell. "By the blood of Oshtur, you will feel pain, World-Eater!"
The blast stumbled Galactus, but he hit back hard, swinging his hand around and creating a gust of energy that blasted Stephen out of the sky, sending him crashing to the earth. A hasty magical shield had protected him from most of the damage, but he looked up as another energy attack appeared in midair, coming down towards him.
Then Jean was there, smashing it to one side one hand, while raising another wing, crashing it into Galactus' chest, causing him to roar in pain as he was once more smashed off of his feet. Harry then appeared to one side and above him again, using a teleportation spell to arrive there. Apparition worked very well in midair strangely. A second later, two more spells crashed into Galactus' face, blinding him.
Galactus grunted as those spells hit, Harry having poured quite a bit of magic into that attack. But then Galactus slammed his hands together, creating a shockwave through that caught Harry and the recovered Stephen, sending them tumbling away in midair as the giant got to his feet. The Phoenix was far enough away that she could weather the attack, as was Ororo herself.
When Ororo and Jean swooped in, Galactus slammed one foot down on the ground, and an aura of Power Cosmic blazed out from him catching women. Jean was able to protect herself. Ororo wasn't. Her shield almost faltered, and she cried in pain as the Power Cosmic ate into her armor faster than she could renew her shield with her magical powers.
"Ororo, get out of there," Jean shrieked into her lover's mind.
Her senses reeling from the buffeting energies eating at her shield, Ororo was in no position to comply.
However, Harry was able to see her from his own position and teleported directly behind his lover. He thrust one hand past Ororo's shoulder, his own magical powers creating another shield of SciathnaBhFéadfadh between them as his other arm went around her waist. "You can do no more here, love," he murmured, feeling her exhaustion and the pain Ororo was already in. Closing his eyes, Harry teleported them back several dozen miles, yet still felt the searing heat of the Power Cosmic blasts that Galactus was now raining out in every direction.
"Go help the others," Harry ordered, releasing Ororo from his one arm hug. "They might need your help against those robots that Galactus sent after them."
"And you won't against that, that thing?!" Ororo asked, a little shaken from her near-death experience. The power of Galactus was just overwhelming.
"Oh, I won't deny that we could use the help," Harry replied, grimacing as he felt another wave of power wash over him from where Jean and Strange were still fighting Galactus despite being nearly an entire time zone away. And this is Galactus after we've weakened him!? "But the others might need your help too, and remember, we had several plans for if this battle went pear-shaped. Rest now, come back in later."
"I think it went pear-shaped the moment that Galactus started to take us seriously," Ororo drawled, beginning to calm down again. But she nodded. "I will help the others deal with those robots, then we will head back to the ship. If at all possible, I'll try to get Hela onto her feet again. Between us, she and I should be able to make a difference."
"Just make sure that everyone is on board the Long Voyager and off this planet," Harry emphasized before moving away, saluting her somewhat mockingly, and then racing back into the battle with Galactus. As he did so, Ororo turned to a slightly different angle, racing towards where the blasts of Havok's mutant power and other weaponry could be seen if not heard over the tumultuous main battle.
Harry arrived back within visual range of Galactus just in time to see some kind of energy web wrap around Jean. Her Phoenix form instantly began to fade, and Harry gaped, wondering how Galactus had figured out what kind of energy plane the Phoenix Force operated on. He and Stephen had talked about it, but even Reed had been unable to figure out precisely what kind of energy the Power Cosmic was, beyond 'everything' as the name kind of implied. If they had, they might have been able to come up with magical means of cutting Galactus off from that energy. Just as he had done now with Jean.
But before she had become the Phoenix Force's avatar, Jean had been an Omega level mutant in her own right, with telekinetic powers that had rarely if ever been matched in galactic history, let alone human history. She roared her own battle cry of "Fuck you!" as she tore the energy web asunder, and her Phoenix Force aura blasted back into being around her as she flew along the nape of the earth towards Galactus's legs.
Galactus saw her coming, but he didn't sense Harry, who landed to his left. "Drill of Light!" Instead of creating the hundreds of thousands of smaller drills of light, lightning and penetrating magic, Harry had condensed the spell into a single bolt of drilling energy around the size of his palm boring into Galactus's side. It didn't penetrate his armor very far, but it did crack the armor all around his side, the cracks spreading quickly and causing Galactus to roar aloud in agony, one hand falling to the side in a purely mortal gesture, which allowed Jean to overpower the blast of Power Cosmic he had sent to her, and for Stephen to get in on the attack from the other angle.
At this point, the titanic energies they were all put pushing out began to take a toll on the planet, and the surface of the planet started to further cave in around Galactus. A series of cracks appeared in the ground as the two sides continued to exchange blasts of rending energy. The cracks expanded outwards accompanied by plums of magma and heat escaped from deep within the planet.
There was a rumble in the ground that could be heard over the tumult of battle miles away. Ben and Alex were still directing the mixed Custodes and Imperial Guard in helping the regular troops retreat away from the battle. Ororo had arrived moments ago and had rained down destruction in the form of magical spells, clouds of acid and blasts of wind as if someone had condensed a hurricane down into an area as thin as a finger.
Wiping away some blood from a bit of shrapnel that had caught his cheek – not having put his helmet back on - Alex shook his head somewhat bemusedly. "Right, when the Custodes says someone's one of their big guns, you better believe they mean it."
Ben chuckled grimly at that, but then his chuckle faded as the ground underneath them continued to rumble. "Something tells me that it's going to be the planet that gives first."
"You would be correct in that, if not in the manner you mean," Ororo said as she came down towards them, looking over at the surviving Imperial Guards.
There weren't many of them. All of the eight Titans had died. They were simply too big a target and didn't have enough durability to face someone wielding the Power Cosmic or the corrupted fragment of the Phoenix Force. Two of the Re'An warriors had survived, but not the leader of the group. One Starbolt and a Voltar were the only other survivors of the Imperial Guard.
Or at least, that was all that the Imperial Guard knew had survived. As far as any of her comrades knew, Nightside had died when she had attempted to use her powers on Galactus.
This was not the case. Not having made any such attempt since Reed had warned them all her powers wouldn't work on Galactus, she had been teleported back to the human's ship by Hedwig. Now she was helping with the other wounded among the Custodes with Thundra, who she had strangely enough befriended over the days leading up to the battle.
"Harry has ordered us to abandon the planet," Ororo went on, looking at Ben and Alex, face grim. "We will retreat to our ship, the Imperial Guard to theirs, and pull out."
There was another cracking rumble in the distance, and underneath them, the planet began to tremble, then open as a fissure appeared between them all. Staring down at it, Ben gulped, nodding firmly. "Right." He turned around to the rest of the Imperial Guard and tankies, many of whom had not been able to hear Ororo just now. "Hey everybody, out of the pool, it's closin' time!"
OOOOOOO
Galactus was furious and becoming more so. Even during battle, he had realized the implications of the projection that had fooled his senses. He and his Herald had been tricked, brought into this fight, into a trap! His Herald was dead. Not a sliver of him remained. Although Galactus could not say he was truly sorry that that corrupted fragment of the Phoenix Force had also apparently been destroyed. Yet the effrontery of this, the sheer gall of tricking Galactus into this battle, infuriated him. Who did these humans think they were!?
He never noticed the retreating Shi'ar shuttles racing towards orbit and the capital ships or the human ship retreating from the other side of the planet. Even Galactus could not see through a planet while fighting, and all of his senses were trained on his attackers, trying to get a handle on their weird powers.
The Phoenix Force was understandable. Even the immense telekinetic power of the woman bound to it was something that he could combat. The other two still attacking him? Their powers were very strange, indeed. Those blasts hurt even if his own powers could mitigate them. And his regeneration ability could deal with the damage to his body, but not his armor. Even there, his ability to control molecules and transform matter would have allowed him to repair the damage if he could concentrate on it. Which he could not mid-battle.
Harry stood to one side of Galactus, his feet planted firmly on the ground of the planet as he used his strongest shield to block an incoming blast of Power Cosmic, returning another attack, a massive spear of power that crashed into Galactus's chest. Thanks to his Drill of Light spell earlier, Harry knew that he had to concentrate on penetrating-type magic. More of Galactus's armor cracked, and he stumbled back even while putting more energy into the attack, hammering into Harry's shield.
At Harry's mental warning, Jean also landed nearby, her entire form blazing with the aura of the Phoenix as she reached for Galactus, one hand blocking another blast of power towards her, the other lashing out like a giant claw across his face. That caused him to stumble, but his own inherent durability saw him through the attack, as Stephen hammered into his back from behind, nearly sending him stumbling.
Stephen too, touched down on the ground, which should have seemed odd to Galactus. The trio had been doing a very good job of dodging most of his attacks while in the air, after all. But Galactus, for all his power, was not used to fighting, certainly not fighting against people who could actually hurt him.
When Ororo reached out through the telepathic link that Jean had created for between them for this battle, Harry was ready. "Harry, we've pulled everyone off the planet!"
Twitching one hand to the side, Harry made his shield grow even stronger for a second as he shouted out, "Jean, Stephen! Shields!"
Then he reached down and activated the portkey spell that Harry had embedded within the entire planet.
The planet, Galactus, and his three attackers all disappeared from where they had been, generally speaking, in the life-bearing range of the red dwarf star. They then appeared in the star's penumbra. At the sudden increase in gravity, the planet shattered underneath them. The previous battle had weakened the planet from one side of the globe to another, and now the red dwarf that had helped birth the planet now finished the task of killing it.
Galactus stumbled on his feet as the gravity of the planet suddenly shifted in a way that even he had to acknowledge, blinking as the equivalent of his stomach tried to revolt, despite currently being somewhat empty. He then gasped as the heat of the star hit him. It wasn't deadly, not to someone like him who had stood in the fires of the galactic core, who had bathed in the energy of nebulas. But on top of the unusual feeling of being teleported like that, it threw Galactus off-balance, and his attackers took advantage of it.
Stephen launched a spell, the most powerful spells he could think of. "By the power of Solomon, let the strength of a billion suns turn my enemies to ash!"
Being so disoriented from the sudden shift, Galactus couldn't dodge or block. The attack crashed into one side of his face, destroying his helmet even as he lashed out with a blow that caught Stephen, whose last-second shield barely withstood the bolt of Power Cosmic that crashed into them, sending him tumbling through space and away.
Jean too, launched an attack so powerful that if she'd hit a planet with it, it would have shattered the planet like someone hitting a walnut with a warhammer. Galactus blocked this one better, but the armor on his forearm shattered under it.
And he was completely unprepared for Harry's hammer blow of magic. The assault hurled him off the bit of planet that he had been standing on and deeper into the gravity of the sun. Harry and the others also started to feel that gravity pulling them deeper in. But all three were able to combat it in various ways while the fight continued.
By this point, Galactus was sorely pressed. His energy reserves had somehow been turned against him when he had attempted to feed on the planet earlier, weakening him badly. Something else had also been smothering his Power Cosmic, something that he only realized now that whatever it was had stopped. His attacks were becoming more focused, more powerful.
Yet, at the same time, Galactus was wounded as well. His regeneration was no longer responding well to wounds made by the two male humans. He had at least three cracked ribs, most of his armor was shattered rather than intact at this point, and he was bleeding too! Bright rivulets of blue and purple blood streamed down his forehead from an attack that had nearly blinded him.
In contrast, his attackers were mostly unwounded. But Jean was now starting to gasp and tremble. Just because she was using the Phoenix Force's power didn't mean that there was no physical cost to using it after all. Stephen was also starting to flag. There was only so much magical energy he could use at one point, although he was still game for the fight.
Of all of them, Harry was the least affected, and he and Galactus stood across from one another for a few moments, simply wailing on one another as the other two returned from having been blown away by Galactus moments ago. As they closed, though, Harry relayed an order through Jean's telepathic link, "You both better get away from here. I'm going to be doing something bloody insane in a moment."
Steve didn't understand what that meant, but Jean quickly explained about the Bloody Insane spells, one of which Harry had used previously against Thanos on Mars. Even as Harry's magical shield, another Sciath na BhFéadfadh,cracked against another assault from the monstrous giant in front of him, Harry was reaching out with his magic to the matter beyond that shield in every direction.
The trick to Transfiguration was that it worked on every level. If you were powerful enough, you could create literally anything your imagination thought of. The spells and wand movements and everything else that Harry's fellow wizards back in his original dimension used to mold their spell work weren't really necessary. What was necessary was imagination, the ability to ignore the little voice in your head that said 'no that shouldn't be possible,' and of course, power. The power equated to how long something could stay in its new shape rather than trying to revert to its old one. But if what you wanted to change wasn't meant to be around for a while, that stopped mattering too.
It always struck Harry as utterly bizarre how narrow-minded the wizards of his old world had been. They hadn't really understood science and, more importantly, how it impacted how you could view and understand the world around you. Because if they had, they would have known a lot more about what Transfiguration and Conjuration meant, or rather what it implied could be possible.
Harry had studied science. He had read science fiction. Harry had even done that before going through the Veil into the Negative Zone. And because of that, he knew that if he used Transfiguration in space, where there was technically no visible matter around, he was in point of fact transfiguring dark matter. And that implied that he could do something a little different with it.
As he concentrated, a thimble-sized bit of antimatter came into being, swiftly growing as more and more matter was converted into antimatter, held in an electrical bubble, conjured into being with a heavily modified bubblehead charm of all things. The process was power-intensive to start with, and only got worse with the need to keep up the electrical bubble as well as cover the entire thing with a Disillusion charm.
That was five spells Harry was using, four of them continuously. The shield, the electrical bubble, the illusion, and the creation of antimatter within. All that plus his ongoing attacks on Galactus, although as he poured more power into his surprise those attacks faltered.
Finally when the bubble of antimatter had grown to be as large as Galactus himself, Harry decided he'd made enough. That, and he could feel himself teetering on the ragged edge of magical exhaustion, and had no desire to be anywhere near here when his attack went off. He let the illusion fade, and as the modified bubblehead charm faded, shouted, "You can survive the heat of a sun, Galactus! Let's see if you can survive a sun going nova at the same time as an antimatter explosion!"
The instant he finished speaking Harry teleported away as far as possible, which put him about halfway out of the system. But it left him gasping and trembling, his magical reserves now shot to hell by the last few moments of battle against Galactus, as behind him, the antimatter explosion occurred. Antimatter exploded as soon as it came into contact with the matter of the galaxy.
While normally Galactus could have dealt with either an antimatter explosion or the star going nova with relative ease, even as weakened as he was, dealing with both at the same time would've tested him. And he had already been wounded badly. The explosion rocked him to his core, going off to one side of his head, searing into his face and side as he cried out, while the explosion was quickly followed by the star reacting, going nova as Harry had intended. The star seemed to grow, then shrink, then grow again catastrophically.
He roared aloud, "Damn you all!" as the nova reached for him.
Harry turned bleary eyes towards the oncoming wave of plasma and destruction, idly hoping that the others had gotten away before Stephen popped into being next to them with Jean on his arm, followed by Hela and Ororo. The four of them both reached forward, creating shields around Harry and themselves. A second later, the waves of destruction crashed into them.
OOOOOOO
In the deep dark outside the Praxis 5 star system, the solar flare was noted by Deathbird's flagship, which retreated to this position earlier. Not because this was the rally point, it wasn't. The rally point was elsewhere, where the broken, shattered remnants of the fleet had retreated, their ships battered, their crew's morale broken.
This was instead the point where the Shi'ar Home Fleet waited to jump the humans on Deathbird's word. Now she stared into the distance, shock and fear going through her at what her sensors were reporting. A planet destroyed, energy readings off the scale, a star going nova, on top of an antimatter explosion of such power that it too would have shattered entire planets. Not just one, but dozens?
When the Admiral of the Home Fleet tried to contact her, Deathbird shook her head, waving her communications specialist away, leaning back. I can't make a decision on that right now. I need to get my head together.
When reports came that the human ship was also being sighted at the rally point, Deathbird began to repair her self-control slowly, thinking hard. But she wasn't only thinking about the humans. Deathbird was thinking about her brother, D'ken's personality. Deathbird was thinking about her ambitions and her desire to be Empress. I wonder...
OOOOOOO
How long they rode the energy of destruction that had propagated from the star, none of the five knew. Harry had started to help after a few moments of recovering his breath from his earlier exertions, and he took over for the others for a time, letting them recover in turn. As the wave of destruction ebbed, at last, all of them were back powering the shields.
Soon after, the energy wave had left them behind, leaving nothing in its wake. For a moment, the magic users all stared around them, seeing a solar system seared clean of everything. Every planet, every asteroid, not even gas survived in the wake of the nova. But Harry knew that they weren't done yet. Not yet.
Jean whispered into his mind. "You know if that killed Galactus, we're in big trouble!"
"It didn't," Harry answered in the same manner, shaking his head.
"How can you tell from all the way out here?" Jean said, looking at him in shock.
"I can't tell. I'm just making a logical leap. We know that the Kree, Skrull, and presumably the Shi'ar can cause supernovas, like if they use their hyperspace engines too close to a star. So, with that, I have to assume that someone somewhere has tried that trick on Galactus before, and he's still here. The antimatter trick on top of that I'll assume is kind of new, but even so, I bet it too has been tried before. That combination and the wounds, though, that will have hurt him, possibly mortally. And if so, we can offer assistance instead of just threats."
Harry looked over at Stephen as he felt Jean's affirmative reply, her arm tightening around his waist as his own snaked around her shoulders, as Harry quoted an old book on tactics he'd read once, the quote attributed to Genghis Khan. "A thing is not great until it is finished."
Stephen nodded, raising himself from where he had been kneeling on nothing for a moment, straightening his back sharply. "Yes, let us be about it."
The three of them moved deeper into the star system, although now without a star, Jean idly mused whether or not he could still be called a star system. There was nothing here any longer, no bits of planet, no asteroids, and no star. In Jean's mind, that point was big enough that it bore repeating.
However, there was something still there. Something that was still alive.
Galactus had been blasted away from the star, so off-balance and weakened from the antimatter explosion on top of his other wounds that he had not been able to set his metaphorical feet against the tide of energy from the star. Now he lay supine in space, tumbling this way and that, twitching weakly.
Harry and the others moved to follow his head as he slowly tumbled rolled through space, staring into his eyes. Or rather, eye. One of his eyes had been scorched clean out of his head; indeed, that side of his head burnt and bleeding profusely in places, the globules of blood drifting away in an ever-spiraling pattern. On that same side, one arm was missing from the elbow down, and the rest of his side was covered with burn marks. The majority of his armor was just gone, leaving Galactus bare-chested from the waist up, with several large gashes across his chest.
Yet his one eye locked on to them, and his mouth twisted into a grimace as he slowly, very painfully, straightened up. The Power Cosmic began to gleam around his one remaining hand as he glared at them. "If you think that I will surrender…"
"We don't want you to surrender. And we don't want you to die either. It was explained to us that was a bad idea," Harry retorted, glaring back at the giant in front of him without an ounce of fear as Stephen and Jean drifted to either side. In the distance, a hyperspace flare could be seen, out of which came the human's ship, racing towards them, while Hela and Ororo spread down and above Harry's position. "However, what we want is an agreement between us."
"An agreement like I made with the Fantastic Four to leave your planet alone? Your involvement here abrogated that agreement," Galactus snarled. "Why should I agree to anything when you humans seem willing to break agreements when it suits you?"
"Your agreement with the Fantastic Four was to not attack Earth. There was nothing in there that stated that humans would not interfere in your own business beyond the solar system," Harry rejoined. "As for how we came involved here, the Shi'ar apparently somehow heard about the Fantastic Four turning you aside and reached out with their normal heavy hand to us."
Galactus nodded, his face twisting into a grimace of pain, as Ororo began to use her magic to help mend the wounds in his head, slowly healing it, the healing slow due to Galactus's beyond unusual biology, if such a term could be used in his case at all. "Perhaps my… understanding… of the agreement was different than the Fantastic Four." He stared hard at the five, feeling Ororo's magic beginning to work on his face. The odd nature of that energy still threw him, but he could no longer doubt its efficacy, especially as it had just healed his head.
It had not returned his eye to him, but Galactus could do that himself. He could even regrow the limb he had lost given time. He had that technology available. Still, his attackers all seemed unhurt, and there was now a fifth one with them, whose power he could feel like an aura around her. "…What agreements do you want to reach?"
"The Shi'ar called us in because you are eating planets that have sentient populations. We want an agreement from you that you will no longer eat planets with sentient life on them! It's that simple," Harry said bluntly. "Eat every planet you come across that doesn't have sentient life on them, we're fine with that. But no civilizations, no sentient life measured in the billions, will die to your hunger any longer. I don't even want to think about the number of races you have helped wipe out over the millennia."
"You stand there next to an avatar of the Phoenix Force and say that to me? Do you think that I am any different from that creature? Whole galaxies, whole spiral arms have died under the fire of the Phoenix Force, and you do not toss that at her feet," Galactus retorted, pointing a giant finger at Jean.
Jean's eyebrows rose, and she shook her head. "The Phoenix Force and I are separate. Yes, I am its avatar, but I am not controlled by it. I am merely empowered. As for the past," Jean shrugged. "I think that the Phoenix Force might have in the past be influenced by its avatars coming to enjoy the destruction it can cause. But the Phoenix Force has always been about death and rebirth, the fires of life coming from destruction. What do you create? What do you leave behind? Nothing but wreck, ruin and grief!"
Galactus sneered at her, shaking his head. "If you were told by someone that my death would not be in the best interest of the galaxy, then you well know what I do. My existence alone is enough of a gift to the galaxy."
"Yes, but that doesn't mean that you should be allowed to destroy whole sentient races!" Harry snarled sharply, floating up in midair to stare at Galactus from a few feet away. He was so small in comparison to the giant that he barely stood in the space between Galactus's nose and the bottom of his chin, yet he stared into Galactus's one remaining, completely unafraid. "You are attempting to tell us this is the way of the world, the way of the universe, the strong preying on the weak? I won't deny it, but we just beat you! We are in a position to finish you! So where on that scale do you place?"
Galactus grimaced, but as wounded as he was, he knew that if battle resumed, he might well be overwhelmed. He could not allow that. He would not allow his existence to end. "Very well. I will no longer allow my heralds to bring me to planets that have sentient life. But you slew my heralds, and I will have to search for another for a time. Worse, I am weak now, extremely so."
"Just so long as you don't choose a psychopath this time," Jean grumbled, tension leaving her body and nearly causing her to faint as her adrenaline started to fade away.
Nodding firmly, Harry touched his still helmeted head. Since he'd concentrated on dodging most of the time and his magical shields were the strongest of them all, "Reed, can you prepare the data we compiled for Galactus?"
Galactus blinked as Reed instantly complied, and moments later, he looked at the tiny memory stick that he could barely see. He gestured, and a shield appeared all around it, hovering there as he gestured it up towards his face. "And this is?"
"A list of forty planets which have life on them, but no sentient life. Most of them have predators that are so anemic to alien life that the Shi'ar haven't tried to colonize them, others have atmospheres that are deadly to them, and so forth. But they still have a lot of life on them. That, plus the planet's normal tectonic energy, should let you eat your fill."
"…" Galactus stared at Harry, then down at the memory stick, reaching down to his waist. Matter converted, eating into his energy reserves again, and a computer appeared out of sub-space, connecting to his eye to inspect the data on the chip. It seemingly checked out, without any kind of trap or trick, and Galactus slowly nodded. Forty planets would see him through several months if not a year, and fully recharge his energy reserves too. "I will not say thank you for this. My hunger at the moment is such that this is a nec
essity rather than a polite nicety. But I will say that it is a good sign of the faith in which you have approached this agreement."
"Just keep your end of the bargain Galactus," Harry grumbled, suddenly tired of this conversation and pretty much everything else about the situation and even being away from Earth entirely. "That is all we ask. And hopefully, you and humanity will never be in contact ever again. The galaxy is after all, infinite, and thus surely large enough for that."
Galactus nodded his head in answer, and his five attackers turned, flying away from him towards the incoming ship. Galactus stared after them for a moment, remaining there until their ship hybrid away, then summoned Kiln out of it's sub-space, hoping indeed that that was the last time he would have to deal with humanity. They were just too much trouble in comparison to what their little planet was worth.
OOOOOOO
Reports came in from the rally point, and Deathbird slowly came up with a plan. Wounded and weakened or no, they just beat off Galactus! Now is not the time to fight them. Now it's time for subtlety. "Send word to the Admiral, call off any attack on their ship. We will go for the subtle trap instead."
With that, she turned to her navigations officer. "Take us to the rally point and make certain it look as if our engines were damaged. We don't want them to think we went somewhere else first. When we are there, open communications, ask them for permission for a delegation to come aboard their ship. We do have to congratulate the humans on their victory, after all. And that is something that should best be done in person." As is my proposal to them…