FF, EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY, Part 12 COMPLETE (Patreon)

"Y-YOU?"

Caught with  her pants literally down, Sue frantically scrambled backwards,  struggling to pull her lower clothes up, to cover herself, from him,  from Terrax, new Herald of Galactus, Terrax, who stood tall before her,  massive in size and bearing, deep-set eyes glinting under the chiseled  grey granite brow, Terrax who had just...

"You-You killed him!"

"That  one?"  Terrax glanced dismissively at the Skrull's lifeless shape.  The  huge wedge-shaped cosmic axe in his hand still smoked with the faint  traces of its recent use.  "Was nothing.  Forget about him."

Despite  her surprise and rising panic, Sue knew what must be done.  She lunged  clumsily forward, trying to clear her thoughts, to focus her shaken will  enough to summon her invisible force as protective shield, over him,  over Kl'rt, over his body, the body that had just been so close to hers,  and which still held her last hope, their last hope.

"Forget  about everything!"  Terrax continued, and before Sue could do anything,  physically or mentally, the cosmic axe swept over the fallen Skrull  body, blazing with mighty energies.

"NO-!"

Her cry caught in her throat.

Only smoking cinders remained of the Super-Skrull's flesh.  Kl'rt's flesh.

Her  eyes had clouded, but even through her tears, she made out amidst the  charred remains a soot-stained metal cylinder, blackened yet somehow  miraculously whole, and she breathed in sharply.

Could still be possible?  Could there still be a chance?

"Please,"  she whispered, weakly, looking up at Terrax, almost afraid to hope.

"Yes, beg.  It is fitting, woman."

Stepping forward, he crushed the blackened aging-ray bracelet with a stomp of his boot.

"Because  you no longer face he who was called Tyros.  Now you face Terrax.   Terrax the Tamer.  And we have much to settle, you and I."

***************************************************

The  destructive forces unleashed could have devastated half the planet,  leaving a barren, sterile blight.  Galactus had to channel and shunt  away most of them, through multiple adjacent levels of reality, to spare  the physical existence of the orb called Earth.  He would not let this  world be obliterated and thus deprive him of its life energies.

Yet  just the marginal spillover within the first instant after the  catastrophic impact had been enough to devastate the whole Giza plain as  far as the horizon into a scorched wasteland, and Galactus had to  stagger back, dazed, drained, even his vast power diminished by the  monumental effort of saving the Earth.

Before him, unharmed, stood the Sphinx.

***************************************************

Blood drained from her face.  A numbing, cold wave of despair ran through her.

The aging-ray bracelet had been the last chance.  For Reed.  For Johnny.  For Ben.  For all of them.

She  had surrendered to Kl'rt for it.  Surrendered her body, her will, her  life,  yielding all of herself to their deadly Skrull foe in order to  save her family.  In order to make everything right again.

But  now that was gone.  The aging-ray bracelet.  And everything she had  dared to hope and want and...  Now nothing could be made right.   Nothing.  Despite all she had done, all she had endured and taken, and  accepted...  And everything more she had been ready to bear...  ready to  embrace, even...

It had all been useless.

She could not find any more strength, or resolve, or hope.

"Reed...  Reed, I am sorry.  I tried to...  I just...  But...  I couldn't...  I couldn't..."

She covered her face with her hands and did not try to hold back her grief anymore.

***************************************************

The Ka stone blazed, a singularity feeding from the flood of redirected energies.

"So even the Devourer of Worlds can make mistakes."

***************************************************

Terrax laughed, a cold, cruel sound of mockery.  "You thought you would have it easy?"

Sue forced herself to again look up, at Terrax, Terrax who had so abruptly put an end to everything.  Everything.

"You thought you got the better of me?"

He  looked much larger and mightier than Tyros had been, the shadow of his  past self lingering only in the drastic cut of his cruel features and  the sharp-edged hard wedges framing the back of his head, as had his  receded haircut.  All flesh and hair had become grey, weathered granite,  and his impossibly broad chest and thick limbs dwarfed even Kl'rt's  muscular build, yet he moved with a haughty ease far different from the  lumbering motions of Ben's rocky body.

"You thought I would forget?"

Only  in his eyes, behind the threatening glow of the Power Cosmic, could  Susan recognize the same exact cold greed and disdain that Tyros had.

"Forget how you tricked me, woman, tricked me in my very own palace?"

She saw his hand wrapped around the shaft of his cosmic axe tremble with barely-held rage, but what could she do?

"Deceived me with the lure of your comely body and face and hair and eyes to bring down everything I had built?"

Even  Reed had said it, before.  Terrax was a Herald of Galactus.  He wielded  the Power Cosmic.  Even if she could still muster the will or strength  or power to fight she would still be outclassed.  She had overcome  Kl'rt, narrowly, but Terrax was so much mightier than he had ever been,  as his dead body before the Herald showed.

"Everything I had conquered?  Everything that was rightfully mine?"

What hope did she have, on her own?  Alone?

Reed  had never replied to her last attempts to contact him, and she feared  the worst.  Ben, Johnny, Rich... had all fallen right here, before her.   Even Kl'rt was gone, now.

All Earth may be hopelessly doomed now.  All.  Including her son.  Including Franklin.

"EVERYTHING!"

Why  had everything gone so wrong?  Why had everyone and everything around  her been doomed?  All who were ever close to her?  Her parents.  Her  friends.  Her family.  Her world.  Even those foes who...

If she could not save anyone, what else was there to do?

"You owe me, woman.  You owe me so much.  And you will pay."

What else was there to fear?

***************************************************

"You let your guard down."

The Sphinx seized Galactus, physically, mentally, in more levels that human thought could grasp.

***************************************************

She had no strength left for fear.  Everything had been washed away by hopelessness and defeat.

She looked up, and held his stare.

"What do you want?"

His mouth spread in a wide grin.

"You know."

***************************************************

There, then, Galactus fell to his knees.

***************************************************

"No."  Something slowly woke up inside her, something she had thought broken but which rose again.  "No."

"Yes.  You know what I want.  You know what you owe me.  And you will pay.  Oh, you will."

She  winced, seething with anger and frustration.  Was it just that?  Was  the world to end because she had humiliated this asshole who had wanted  into her pants?  Because he still wanted to have her?  Because he could  not let that go?

Was it then all her fault?  For doing what she  had, for looking as she did?  All because he, too, wanted to fuck her?   As everyone did? It all came to that?  Just that?  Again?  Did it  always come to THAT?

"No," she muttered, tears streaming down her face.  "Fuck that.  And fuck you.  FUCK YOU!"

Rising from the depths of her grief and frustration and stubborn denial, her invisible power surged against him.

***************************************************

On the Moon, the Watcher stood startled.

This was an unique moment.

Never before had Galactus been brought low.  Never.

***************************************************

The impact would have flattened even the Thing, but Terrax was merely forced a few steps backwards.

He smiled, a gesture of cruel anticipation.  "Good.  You still have spirit in you.  It would be no fun otherwise."

Fighting  the deep ache in her limbs as much as the despondence in her mind,  Susan stood up, tugging fully into place the fabric of her costume.  She  would not give this murderous bastard the satisfaction of seeing more  of her, not any longer.  Not while she could still help it.  And if she  was to fall, she would do it, as she should, fully dressed, as Susan  Storm, the Invisible Girl of the Fantastic Four.

***************************************************

A  maelstrom of energies swirled about the monumental figures struggling  on the ravaged Egyptian plain.  Tectonic plates shuddered with every  minor shift of their physical forms.

"I have the knowledge of the  Living Computers, Devourer.  I know about your power.  You are  sustained by the life energies of planets and nothing else, while my Ka  Stone lets me access all the energies of the universe about us.  As you  spent your strength, I grew stronger.  And you will not have the chance  to replenish yourself.  I will destroy you here, along with this world  that birthed me.  Its rubble will be the monument of your defeat and my  victory!"

On his knees, his helmeted head lowered, his physical frame shuddering with strain, Galactus remained silent.

***************************************************

Sue  raised her right hand high, shaping a force-field between them, as  strong as she could make it.  Despite its being invisible, Terrax halted  right before it, eyes narrowed.

"You think you can stop me like that?"

"And have you forgotten what Galactus said?  He wants us to witness this to the end.  He won't have us-"

"Fuck that.  Fuck Galactus.  I am no servant.  Others must serve me!  SERVE ME!"  He raised his axe.  "AS YOU WILL!"

"No.  Not I.  Not ever."

"YOU  WILL SERVE ME!  SERVE ME AS YOU SHOULD!"  The axe rose high above his  head, cosmic energies gathering about its blade.  "AS YOU SHOULD HAVE  FROM THE VERY START!"

Sue did not flinch, brow furrowed in concentration.  "I'll be dead first,"  she muttered.

Terrax laughed.  "THAT WILL WORK FOR ME, TOO!"

The cosmic axe struck.

***************************************************

The Sphinx laughed.

"It  is fitting!  What better way to herald my ascendancy to godhood than  with the death of Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds himself?"

***************************************************

She felt the impact, and gasped with pain.

The defensive force-field had held, but Terrax just lifted the axe back again.

"Yield!"  With that shout, he struck down again, with even greater power.

Pain  swelled behind her eyes, and she gritted her teeth, eyes closed tightly  in concentration, straining against the mental feedback, its intensity  proportional to the magnitude of the impact against her field.

Terrax raised his axe yet again.  "YIELD!"

"No!"

The whole hangar space shook with the expansive wave of the blow.

"YIELD OR DIE!"

Her extended arm trembled.   "NO!"

The next impact scattered every surrounding object far away from them in a wide radius.

"FOOLISH WOMAN!  YIELD NOW!"

"NO!"  Sweat beaded her forehead.  "I WON'T!"

"DAMN IT, WOMAN, WHY DELAY THE INEVITABLE?  YOU CANNOT STAND BEFORE TERRAX!"

The impact made the whole building shudder.  Her legs almost gave out.  "No.  No..."

"Prepare, then!"

The  Power Cosmic crackled around the axe's long blade, making it glow like a  sun, casting reddish shadows all about them, as Terrax raised it once  again.

"Prepare to be- TAMED!"

Moving too fast for the eyes to catch, the axe came down, and the force field shattered.

***************************************************

Even  the institutional detachment of a Watcher could not be but tested.  His  stoicism wavered before the unforeseen events playing out before him on  this lowly, backwater world.

Could it be?

Could the Devourer of Worlds be destroyed?

***************************************************

The  glowing blade flashed through the fading remnants of invisible power,  rushing past Susan's face and trembling chest, too fast to register,  cutting down through the symbol of the circularly enclosed number four,  before embedding itself into the metal floor at her feet.

For an  instant, she thought it had sliced right through her, through her torso,  but there was no pain besides that still throbbing between her temples.   Glancing down, she saw that the blade had barely grazed the fabric  stretched taut over her chest, the sharp edge slicing cleanly in half  the Fantastic Four symbol emblazoned there, yet sparing the flesh behind  it with astonishing accuracy, leaving no mark of its contact but for  the sundered cloth that instantly split apart, revealing her deep  cleavage, her underwear also somehow cut without her skin being even  touched.

Hastily she covered her exposed bosom as she staggered back, shaken by how close it had been.

Terrax casually dislodged his axe from the floor before her.  "Will you yield now?"

Grimacing, Susan shook her head.  "Never.  You may be mightier now, Terrax, but you're still just a cowardly thug!"

"Fine!"  He drew back his weapon again, high over his head.  "HAVE IT YOUR WAY!"

Susan tried to re-shape her force-field, but there was no time.

The  axe rushed too fast for her to focus, too fast to do anything but slip  and fall backwards, desperately trying to escape the deadly blade,  landing awkwardly on her hands and behind onto the floor, her legs  spread as the glowing edge flashed right before her eyes.

***************************************************

Earthquakes shook the world.  Coasts were struck by gigantic tsunami.

Tony  Stark stammered instructions through multiple communication channels.   Entering the conflict was now unthinkable.  Helping with the  evacuations was all the Avengers could do now.

***************************************************

Sue froze in place, leaning back on her elbows, her feet spread wide apart, not daring to move, barely daring to breathe.

The  blade rose ominously from between her legs, its wedge-shaped metal  angled before and above her lower body, almost as long as was her whole  torso, its lower end embedded firmly into the floor right between her  spread thighs, the razor-sharp lower edge infinitesimally close to her  crotch, so close that the slightest tremor in her hips instantly made  the layers of cloth over her mound split length-wise, just as that over  her chest had, sliced to expose the tender flesh underneath.

Squatting  before her, with both hands on the axe's haft, Terrax smiled.   Impossible as it seemed, she realized he had not missed his target.  He  had chosen to spare her, making his cut just that close, enough that  she would know, know that she had no chance, not against his power and  skill.  No chance at all.

Struggling to keep still, her eyes met his.

Releasing  his grip with one hand, he stood, effortlessly lifting up the massive  axe with the other, pulling it out of the  metal floor before extending  it threateningly just above her outstretched figure, waving the heavy  blade above her head while he slid the end of the long shaft over the  floor between her legs, until it pressed right again her most private  parts, the thick rod pushing insistently against her mound, its rounded  end brushing her wetly swollen outer folds.

Unwittingly, Susan  shivered at the touch, aghast, yet not daring to protest or attempt to  move away.  The looming blade above her was a tangible warning, a threat  that needed no words.

The shaft's end pressed firmly against  her for a few more seconds and then slid up, rubbing hard along its path  before moving up and away from her.  But she had no time to feel  relief, as the blade swung down instead, coming to a stop within mere  fractions of an inch above her.

"Be still," he admonished.  "It would be a shame if anything were to happen to such perfect flesh."

Holding  her breath, eyes fixed now on the sharp blade, Sue had no choice but to  obey, still too shaken, too worn out to summon her invisible  force-field, the power slipping and drifting uselessly amidst her  panic-stricken thoughts.

"Yet a bigger shame that such beauty was so crudely covered.  And so crudely misused."

Held  in just one hand, the Cosmic Axe began to trace her body's profile with  deliberate, taunting slowness, almost grazing her buxom, trembling  contours with such astonishing precision that although she felt no  actual contact with the sharp edge, the fabric of unstable molecules of  her outfit still parted silently in the blade's wake, as it continued  the slashing of her outfit that had begun at her chest and mound,  gradually exposing more and more of her skin with each slow, ominous  motion, that made her clothing fall away, piece after piece, dropping in  perfectly cut strips to the floor beside her.

"But all that can be remedied.  And will be."

She  struggled to keep from shuddering wildly as the axe roamed over her,  sliding slowly, ever so slowly, over her torso and limbs, back and forth  in a slow dance of cruelly-threatened dismemberment that instead  resulted in the progressive, unwavering uncovering of her body.

"See,  this so-called Sphinx may kill Galactus, or even better, they may kill  each other, destroying this world along with them.  I care not for the  details.  Whatever happens, I will be free.  Free to conquer and rule  throughout the stars.  And perhaps I may let you survive and earn your  place by my side.  If you... measure up.  If you... learn.  Learn well  enough."

Her taut abdomen became fully exposed, then her large  breasts jostled unbound and uncovered, settling to the sides of her  chest.

"Learn to regret your past behavior, your defiance."

Her nipples ached with involuntarily stiffness after a near-graze each of the blade's edge.

"Learn what your proper place is, under Terrax."

The blade cut along her instep, again and again.

"Learn, just like that old crone Xalas will, as will all that traitorous scum, all those who dared to rise against me."

The final scraps of cloth fell from her thighs, from her mound, along with the last of her strength and resolve.

"Even  if I am beyond caring now for such a place as that pathetic world, even  if such is no longer worthy of Terrax, they must still pay, pay for  their treason.  And they will.  They will pay.  All of them.  Their  whole world will pay.  Dearly."

The sharp edge brushed the short-trimmed blonde pubic hair covering her mound, before finally moving away.

"And you can be the witness of that, too.  If you survive.  Survive what is to come."

Completely  undressed now but for her boots and gloves, her bare body lay at the  center of a mandala-like pattern of multiple sliced strips strewn all  about her, the thoroughly diced-away last remnants of her Fantastic Four  outfit, of her last flimsy layer of protection from his hungry eyes,  symbolic of her last futile attempts at defiant resistance.

"Survive being tamed."

She  was helpless before him, naked on her back over the last scattered  traces of her identity, her trembling flesh unwrapped before him,  displayed for his consideration.  For his use.  For the use of a cruel,  murderous alien monster.

Again.

She mustered her voice at last.  "Please.  Don't...  Just don't..."

Terrax lifted the axe up and shifted his grip.

For  a moment, Sue thought it might be all over at last.  She may be spared  that new humiliation, the shame and pain and anger and guilt of once  again being forced, being taken against her will, against all she  believed and held dear.  For a moment, she was almost thankful.

With an smug smile, Terrax opened his hand, letting the axe drop.

She gasped.

***************************************************

Charles  Xavier gripped his arm-rests tightly, his knuckles whitening.  The  echoes of countless minds succumbing to fear alone were bad enough.  But  they were nothing compared to the spillover of psychic stress, too  great to dismiss, too great   to escape, even for him.

***************************************************

The  blade had landed heavily by her head, becoming deeply embedded in the  floor by her, the thick metal haft extending horizontally over her neck.

She  gasped again, loudly, and her eyes opened wide, but not at the threat,  the oppressive presence, of the weapon pinning her in place.  It was at a  much larger threat.

Terrax had drawn aside the hanging frontal strip of his loincloth.

***************************************************

Galactus still kept his head down, stress spreading from him through multiple planes of existence, but he finally spoke up.

"YOU ARE NO GOD.  NOR WILL YOU BE.  YOU ARE JUST A PATHETIC MORTAL DELUDED BY POWER UNEARNED."

***************************************************

She  stiffened under the shadow of the axe's shaft, long and thick over her,  and of that other threat before and above her, not any less long or  thick or menacing.

He had already been big, as Tyros, as she had  seen back then, at his palace, in his quarters.  Very big, even.  And  at any previous time, before her daunting experiences on the Skrull  World, such size would have been surely startled her.  But after having  known Kl'rt, and Dorrek, she had easily just shrugged off his attempt to  show off, honestly stating that she had known bigger, much bigger.

But as Terrax, he had been enhanced not just in strength and power.  Vastly, vastly enhanced.

***************************************************

Terrax smiled, obviously pleased by her reaction, by the shock and dread in her bright blue eyes,

"I know."

He stood between her spread legs, letting her contemplate him fully.

"You  are impressed.  And worried.  And scared.  And you should be.  You  should.  Because I am indeed much more than Tyros ever was.  Because I  am now Terrax.  Terrax the Tamer.  And you will know, you will know all  that means."

He moved down, and reached for her bent knees, to spread them farther apart, much farther apart.

"And I will not be gentle."

***************************************************

"And  who are you to speak, you who were once merely Galan of Taa?  A mere  mortal, too!  A pathetic refugee from an universe forgone from before  the current flow of time?  The lingering echo of a cosmos now dead!  A  remnant that should not be!  Ancient trash that should not have survived  the primordial explosion!  I shall do this universe a favor by cleaning  such detritus from it!"

***************************************************

She  flinched at his touch, trying to squirm away, but the ax haft kept her  pinned her place, and his grip on her legs was too strong, too sure.

"It will hurt.  A lot.  As it should."

He  paid no heed to her weak struggles, her weak protests.  Kneeling  between her open legs, he reached for her chest, his rock-hard fingers  digging hard into the supple flesh, relishing their size and firmness as  much as her rasped cry of pain.

"But you will take it.  Take it, and enjoy it."

He pinched her nipples, stiff and rosy between his harder gray fingers.  She gasped in denial.

"You  will.  As you should.  As you must.  As you clearly longed to, from the  very start, from when we first met, back in my palace, in my rooms.   Oh, I knew it then.  I knew.  And so did you."

He reached to  brush one hand lightly against her disheveled golden hair, before  grabbing her lower face, seizing her cheeks and chin in a cruel grip and  looking deep into her moist, blue eyes.

"We both knew.  Knew what would happen.  What had to happen.  What you needed to happen.  Needed, and wanted."

"No.  No..."

"Your  words are empty, woman.  Back then.  And now, too.  Your body, your  luscious body, that was which spoke true, from the very start."

His  hands moved down her torso, to her thighs, kneading their firm flesh,  forcing them to spread farther apart, to make way as he positioned  himself, so he could place the heavy load of his male-hood over her  mound, the rock-hard mass leaning against her just like his axe shaft  had, shortly before, just as thick and threatening.

"In the way you stood, and moved, even as you retreated before me, protesting, trying to fight it, to fight me-"

"No, please..."

"Your body spoke.  Loud and clear.  Of your need.  Your longing.  Your lust."  He rocked his hips, letting the massive member
move  against her, and her eyes could not help but look at it, moving back  and forth, reaching far up her lower body, much more than she could  easily believe.  Much more in everything.  "Your body is all I need to  pay heed to.  All you need, too."

"You-You can't...  I can't...."

He  drew back, re-positioning his bulk, stymieing her feeble struggles with  his great mass, of body and else, and pressed his head firmly against  her gate, her flesh there so soft and delicate and moist.  So moist.

"Oh, you are a hot one.  Such a hot one."

"NO!"

"A hot horny slut who needed to be taken and tamed.  Tamed hard.  Hard and well.  I knew that.  Always did.  We both did."

Her last attempt to speak, to protest, was drastically cut short.

***************************************************

"You survived the death of one universe, Devourer.  But you will not survive the death of this world."

The Ka stone blazed even brighter.

***************************************************

She tensed, in pain, so much pain.

He was too big, far too big, too big to not hurt her, too big to not make her scream.

And she screamed.  And screamed.  Louder and louder.

And kept screaming.

***************************************************

"YOU DARE SPEAK OF SURVIVAL?  SPEAK OF DEATH?  WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF ANYTHING, YOU UPSTART?"

The Sphinx roared:  "NOW I KNOW EVERYTHING!"

***************************************************

She  had been already stretched and wet before, from sex with Kl'rt, perhaps  more stretched and wet than she had ever been, her body coaxed into a  full state of readiness far beyond anything she had ever known, and  which had not yet been fully quenched before Terrax's abrupt  interruption, sustained far longer than she may have wanted to  acknowledge.  But even at the peak of her readiness, it may not have  been enough.  Not enough for this, for him, not enough for her to take  Terrax.  Not without such pain, more pain that she had ever known or  imagined possible.

Still, her recent abundant wetness and  dilation allowed her to at least endure Terrax's brutal penetration  without grievous injuries, to survive being so drastically impaled by  the inhumanly-sized, rock-hard phallus that drove deep into her with  relentless, piston-like power.  So at least in that, those words from  Terrax were proven true.  Her sex with Kl’rt, forceful and overwhelming  as it had been, in its demands, in its intensity, proved to be at least a  preparation for her current ordeal, a preliminary exercise, a warm-up.   At least in that.  At least at first.

After a few more minutes  of being savagely pounded by Terrax's immense phallus, all the sex Susan  had ever known began to pale as well, to seem just a prelude, an  inadequate approximation of what a real hard fucking was like, of what  it truly meant to be actually ravished, to be fully and thoroughly  possessed, to be forcibly raped, raped and owned, without any  possibility, or even willingness, to escape or resist or object, as  Terrax the Tamer proved how fitting his self-chosen title was.

***************************************************

"I  DID SEEK DEATH BEFORE!  IN MY WEAKNESS, IN MY FOLLY, I LONGED FOR  OBLIVION!  AND IT WAS DENIED TO ME!  BUT NOW I AM PAST THAT!  PAST  DEATH!  PAST WEAKNESS!  PAST EVERYTHING!  I HAVE TRANSCENDED ALL!  DEATH  IS NOW NOTHING TO ME!  NOW I KNOW BETTER!"

***************************************************

She  would have fainted almost from the very start.  She wished she had,  wished she could, to escape the agony and shame, but the sharp  explosions of pain that each successive thrust delivered proved too  intense to ignore, to dismiss through mere unconsciousness.  It was too  much to escape in any fashion, too much to deny.

She writhed and  jerked violently, trying to escape, to fight off his massive assault,  his violation of her body, her sex, her very self, but any strength she  could muster was meaningless, and all of her was just a speck drifting  in the face of the maelstrom of unbridled violence and lust and power  that was Terrax.

***************************************************

"DO YOU?  YOU, ANATH-NA MUT?  YOU WHO WERE BORN A LOWLY EARTHLING, RAISED WITH DUNG BETWEEN HIS TOES?  I KNOW OF YOU AS WELL."

"Shut up, Devourer.  You will soon know nothing at all!"

"YOU CAN PRY INTO MY MIND, LOWBORN CUR, BUT NOT WITHOUT EXPOSING YOUR OWN."

"It will do you no good to-"

"YOU MAY HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE AND THE POWER BUT THAT IS NOTHING WITHOUT REAL UNDERSTANDING!"

"Knowledge and power shall prove enough!"

"I KNOW OF YOUR SERVITUDE UNDER YOUR PHARAOH.  I KNOW WHAT YOU SACRIFICED FOR SCRAPS OF DARK POWER."

"SHUT UP!"

"I KNOW WHAT YOU LOST.  I KNOW WHAT YOU NEVER HAD.  NEVER KNEW."

"What pathetic ramblings!  What need would I have of such low, base-?"

Galactus looked up, his eyes ablaze.  "BE TAUGHT, THEN."

***************************************************

Charles Xavier fell from his wheelchair.

***************************************************

At his New York Sanctum Sanctorum, Doctor Strange opened his eyes wide in surprise, almost slipping out of the astral plane.

The Eye of Agamotto closed and opened repeatedly as well.

***************************************************

The  Sphinx had thrust his probes deep into the unknown abyss that was the  mind of Galactus, confident in his greater advantage, in the  inevitability of his victory.  That Galactus managed to link back at  him, at his memories, through that connection, was unimportant.  It did  not matter who he had been, what he had been, only that which lay ahead  of him mattered.

When the surge rushed back through the  mind-link, he raised his mental defenses, unconcerned, but it proved to  not be the attack he had expected.

Instead, his mental energies  found only an open pathway, beckoning, inviting, a welcoming expanse  into which his mind was drawn, taken into a different, more basic level  of consciousness, of perception, of sensorial experience the like of  which he had never known or imagined.

The Sphinx saw, and felt,  and was caught, unprepared, unable to resist, a moth drawn into flame,  the flame of two beings caught in that most pure, most primal and  irresistible of mortal interactions.

***************************************************

Terrax  thrust into her, violently, relentlessly, with more than just his  granite-like flesh.  His whole body was infused with the Power Cosmic  and it blazed inside him as he ravished the trembling body of the blond  Earthling beauty, making it bathe her flesh as well, that soft, smooth,  bountiful flesh, so fetching in its curves and flushed fairness,   burning away every last vestige of green fluid over her or inside her  and cleaning her, reading her for his, for him, him alone, as she should  be.

He had looked forward to this, to claiming and conquering  this infuriatingly unwilling beauty of the alien-colored eyes and hair,  to the pleasure of owning her luscious flesh and punishing her for her  foolish arrogance, for her insulting resistance that had somehow cost  him so much.  He had hungered and raged for her, for her conquest and  debasement until nothing else would quench the fury inside him.  Yet now  that she was helpless before him, that her body was fully at his mercy  and she could do nothing but take him and accept him as her master, he  was still surprised by how good it was, how good she was, how  surprisingly hot she was, moving under him, writhing and shaking and  clenching him inside her with such intensity, such desperate fervor in  her unwilling surrender, in her mixture of denial and supplication, of  struggle and compliance, of resistance and encouragement or even demand.  

He had never known any female who could make so much of being  owned, of being raped, of being tamed.  He had never known a cunt so  tight and hot and wet and deep and needful of cock.

It would be a pity if she did not survive.

***************************************************

She  was helpless before him, fully helpless, unable to do anything but feel  and react, to the pain and the pressure and the impossible demands on  her body and senses, completely overwhelmed, mentally and physically by  the brutal assault of his cosmic-powered body, overcome by the violent  intensity of his rape of her, of her body, of her whole being.

It  was too much, too much to take, too much to endure, too much to resist,  too much not to react to, respond to, no matter how much she did not  want to, not again, not like this, not that way, not so much, but every  second of his ravishment ignited her senses to a greater and greater  heat, a blaze that consumed her whole being, making her feel at first  cut out from the rest of the universe, like if his axe had sliced her  away from anything but the isolation of their joined bodies, from the  overwhelming power of his lust.  The whole universe was reduced to the  focal point of their  coupling, narrowed to the very essence of his  monstrous raging hardness piercing her wet, yielding softness,  stretching her in every dimension of her body and mind, and the pain  became indistinguishable from pleasure, and her isolation became a  cacophony of sensations resonating through her, around her, with so many  shades and bursts of need and hunger and delight that she could not  make what she felt or thought or where her own limits ended or began,  feeling her very awareness being blown away, fragmented into multiple  different levels of consciousness, of wanton physical delight, of  irresistible desire and mind-shattering pleasure.

***************************************************

Still unconscious, Johnny Storm frowned and squirmed, trying to relieve the building pressure in his mind and body.

"Sue-?"

***************************************************

He  groaned loudly, closing his eyes, relishing every second, every  instant, excited even further by each of her breathless cries, whimpers  and moans, feeling his culmination approach but using his power to keep  at bay, not wanting it to end, not yet, not that soon, not before there  was no more challenge in her, no more fire to match his own.

All  throughout the echoes were about him, the multiple layers of sensation  and thought and surprise and pleasure, but he  ignored all but the last,  the many-faced pleasure, the cascade of sensations making him feel like  was owning not just her body but her very mind and soul, knowing how  deeply she acknowledge his mastery of her flesh as he was inside her  mind as deeply as inside her cunt.

***************************************************

Buried under many layers of wreckage and unconsciousness, Benjamin Grimm grunted, his body creaking amidst the rubble.

"Suzie?"

***************************************************

For  an extended, ineffable stretch of undefined time, she could feel not  just how her body responded to its savage rape but also exactly how it  felt was to thrust deep into her own sex and how good her vagina felt  around that hard cock, so tight and hot and wet as it squeezed its whole  length, relishing every painful inch.  She realized just how it felt to  fuck her body while still deliciously aware of being fucked in turn, so  hard and well, so that she did not know for a moment if there was any  break between the two, between being rapist and victim, between  dominance and submission, between being rock-hard and being sloppy-soft,  and whether both were not just one single thing from different  viewpoints, comparing and contrasting each facet of all the different  yet related pleasures, each so intense and rewarding and delightful as  she drowned within the waves of an extended orgasm that pushed her  higher and higher, until she could actually see her own body writhing  sensuously in languid abandon, her breasts bouncing and jostling, large  and firm and yielding under the strong hands she felt as her own, her  stomach muscles clenching visibly in violent spasms, her mouth open with  parted, trembling lips as she panted and moaned and cried out, while  her eyes remained closed behind the long fair lashes, fluttering with  desire and release and regret and demand, as she threw her hair wildly  from side to side, her long hair a wild mess cradling her flushed face.

The tension was too much to be endured any longer and it was finally let loose inside her, in her body, and his as well.

She  screamed and he screamed and one other screamed as the orgasm became a  single nova of unfettered shared pleasure, exploding through bodies and  minds and what felt like the whole universe, too intense to describe or  comprehend.

***************************************************

The  doors had closed behind Herbie, as it rushed away towards the hangar,  memory banks having stored the security codes of all vehicles that could  be useful to make an escape.

His video sensors did not register  the frail shape of Reed Richards stirring weakly.  His audio sensors did  not catch the faint, almost voiceless whisper.

"Susan?"

***************************************************

"OH, FUCK!  FUCK!  FUCK-!"

***************************************************

"Suzie-?"

***************************************************

"FUCK!"

***************************************************

"Sis-?"

***************************************************

Hot  seed saturated her core just as thoroughly as pleasure did her whole  self, overflowing copiously into every dimension,  every slayer of  being, in the ultimate act of possession, of dominance and surrender,  all collapsing into a single, impossibly-dense singularity of primal,  carnal joy.

She was astounded to realize how great a fuck she  truly was, how delicious she was to fuck, to penetrate, to pound and  ravish, and feel her hot, wet tightness tremble and writhe and spasm so  hungrily around that big, hard cock.

It made her even more  excited, more desperately turned on, to know that, to know well how it  felt to fuck such a hot, horny  slut who actually loved being raped,  loved being stuffed full with giant hard cock by a hateful, awful  monster who she hated but of whom she could not get enough, of whose  giant hard evil cock she could not get enough.  And she loved to be that  hot horny slut who loved being raped and she loved that somehow, she  knew he knew, and that he knew how much she loved it, just as others  knew, but she cared not about them, she cared only about him and her,  about both of them, both knowing, and both knowing each other knew.

It just made it so hotter, so much more intense, so much more impossible to resist.

She  cried out, loudly, through many mouths, many voices, as it became too  much, too much to deny or delay, too much to not yield to it, embracing  and cherishing it completely.  Absolutely.

***************************************************

He had not known.  He had not.

He had never imagined it could be like that.

***************************************************

At different spots of the Baxter building, different voices weakly gasped as one.  Or tried to.

***************************************************

On the barren, airless surface of the Moon, Uatu the Watcher blinked twice, and his hairless brows rose.
 

***************************************************

The  pleasure surged and peaked, again and again, until she could take it no  more and it could be no more and it began to spread and fade into a  pool of hot lassitude in which she felt she could drown forever.

No  wonder men, males, of whatever species, desired her and wanted her and  tried to fuck her, she thought abstractly, in a fleeting moment of  detached amazement, still excited and embarrassed and scared, caught by  the unbridled intensity of the coupling, of how it felt to enjoy sex  like that, enjoy and be enjoyed like that.  No wonder they had sought to  rape her, again and again.  No wonder they had fought and risked so  much for her, and made her take it, take them, despite her  unwillingness, despite everything.  Who would be strong enough not to?

***************************************************

"Susan..."

***************************************************

She felt his mind, all minds, flow away, seeping out, just as the warm, thick semen did from inside her.

She  was baffled by how quickly it began to fade for him, for most, becoming  a muted, faint echo of its recent intensity.  She felt her own recall  thinning as well, the larger awareness of the recent event proving too  vast and intense for a mere human mind to retain, to hold on to the  fullness of what had been experienced, yet somehow she still felt she  retained so much more than him, just as she felt that she had  experienced every instant of it so more fully, more intensely.

Maybe women did have it better.

***************************************************

The Sphinx fell to his knees, his legs trembling.  The Ka stone blinked weakly on his brow.

"I-I didn't-I didn't know..."

Galactus towered high over the again human-sized Sphinx.

"YOU DID NOT.  THAT WAS YOUR WEAKNESS.  THAT LET YOU BE DEFEATED."

"I-I never..."

"YOU CLAIMED TO BE A GOD, YET DID NOT KNOW WHAT IT WAS TO BE A MAN."

"Is-Is it always like... like that?"

"SOME... HUMANS ARE MORE...  REMARKABLE THAN OTHERS."

"I thought-I thought it was worth it!  The ritual.  The knife.  For the power.  I thought-"

"YOU  DID NOT UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU HAD FORSAKEN.  NO WONDER YOU SOUGHT DEATH  IN THE RESTLESSNESS OF YOUR IGNORANCE.  ALL THE ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE IN  THE UNIVERSE COULD NOT REMEDY THAT."

Galactus reached down and effortlessly took the now dull Ka stone from the Sphinx's forehead.

"INTERESTING.  AN EARLY PROTOTYPE, A CRUDER, MORE PRIMITIVE VERSION OF THE INFINITY GEMS.  MORE TROUBLE THAN IT WAS WORTH."

His fist closed and the stone was crushed to less than dust.

The Sphinx let his head fall.  "What... What will-"

"YOU STOOD BETWEEN GALACTUS AND HIS PURPOSE.  YOU DARED RISK UPSETTING THE COSMIC BALANCE.  YOU PRESUMED TOO MUCH."

"Please, I-"

"YOU WERE SELFISH.  AND FOOLISH.  AND ANNOYING."

"Please!"

"AND YOU FAILED.  IT IS BETTER TO WIN."

Galactus extended a hand, his eyes glowing under his armor's brow.

"YOUR  JOURNEY ENDS HERE, ANATH-NA MUT, HE WHO CUT AWAY HIS OWN NATURE IN THE  PURSUIT OF POWER, HE WHO WOULD CALL HIMSELF GOD AND SWEAR TO DESTROY  GALACTUS. BUT IT ALSO WILL NOT END.  YOUR MIND WILL BE CAST BACK IN  TIME, TO JOIN WITH YOUR YOUNGER BODY, YOUR YOUNGER SELF IN THE PAST OF  THIS WORLD.  YOU WILL WITNESS YOURSELF MAKE THE SAME CHOICES, THE SAME  MISTAKES, AND WILL BE UNABLE TO CHANGE ANYTHING, THROUGH ALL THE CYCLES  OF THIS WORLD.  YOU WILL REACH THIS MOMENT AGAIN AND BE CAST DOWN AGAIN  AND ONLY THEN, ONLY NOW, JUST BEFORE BEING SENT BACK, WILL YOU REMEMBER  EVERYTHING, AND KNOW THAT YOU ARE FATED TO REPEAT EVERYTHING YET AGAIN.   EVERYTHING.  AGAIN AND AGAIN."

"No, no... Please, don't-"

"SO YOU WILL SEE FOREVER WHAT AN ANNOYANCE YOU ALWAYS WERE."

The Sphinx tried to rise, to protest, or beg, or curse, but the eyes of Galactus flashed and silence came to the plain of Gizah.

***************************************************

Charles  Xavier shook his head, breathing deeply, wondering how much of it he  had managed to contain, how much of it had spilled out beyond his  control, beyond the range for which it had been intended.

Even at a remove, it had been quite an experience.

He noticed with surprise the embarrassing damp patch visible on his pants.

***************************************************

Frowning,  dismissing the lingering annoyance of strange echoes in his mind,  Terrax pulled out, his hard member still squirting mighty bursts of  thick semen over her, easily reaching all the way to her face, coating  her features with thick gobs.  His jism looked good all over her  flushed, fair skin and golden hair.

"Take that, you slut.  Take all that."

She  still trembled and moaned softly.  Her eyes fluttered open, her mouth  quivering with her hoarse breathing, and he knew he wanted those soft  lips around him, licking his seed, paying homage to his maleness, to his  utter conquest of her.

He rose and knelt over her, looming over  her heaving, fluid-splattered chest, the partially-coated large round  globes spread apart and jostling fluidly with her labored breathing.   Smiling, he let his throbbing member drop heavily onto her face, the  swollen head aimed at her lips.

"Work it, bitch."

***************************************************

She  gasped as he exited her, and when he moved over her, she reached out,  reached for the thick hard rod over her, struggling to hold it, to seize  it firmly, to move it as she needed it to move, as she had to make it  move.

It was too big, too heavy, and she feared she was too weak,  too dazed.  She feared she could just not do it, not do what had to be  done, but she found that her weakness, the utter exhaustion that made  her body feel like a trembling, muscle-less mass, did not extend fully  to her mind.  Somehow the intensity of her recent ordeal had shaken her  mind and energized her resolve, her need to focus on what she wanted, on  what she needed.

***************************************************

Her  head moved slightly from side to side, lips spread apart, their  softness brushing against his hard head, back and forth, as did the tip  of her tongue.

Her eyes closed in obvious surrender.

"Yes, like that.  Like that.  Worship that cock, you bitch.  Pay homage to your master.  To your tamer."

It would take a while for him to tire of this luscious slut.  And maybe next time, he would be harder on her.  Much harder.

***************************************************

Closing  her eyes, she grabbed for the long shaft as she had never done before,  feeling all of its hardness, its thickness, and with a final effort she  pulled it up and away from her.

She heard Terrax scream.

***************************************************

Terrax  jerked away, toppling clumsily to a side, grabbing in panic for his  crotch, while the Cosmic Axe clattered near him.  Another heavy  implement also hit the floor with a thud just by them.

His screams grew louder.

***************************************************

He  was so close and it was so close that she could have easily sliced her  own throat, pulling the axe out like that with her invisible force, but  Terrax was so large he had to kneel high above her to let his head reach  her mouth properly and not hit the floor instead.  That let her focus,  gauging his position carefully, intensely aware of his size and position  over her, while her mind secured her grip of invisible force on the  axe's thick metal shaft.

The axe's blade had brushed dangerously  close to her as it leapt up and to the side, before slicing through his  huge hard dangling phallus, the only weapon that could be certain to  work against the Power-Cosmic-enhanced body of a Herald of Galactus  being his very own weapon.

Still screaming, Terrax scurried over  the floor, crouched and holding a hand over his crotch, from which   wildly coruscating cosmic energy erupted in bright bursts.  His free  hand reached for his axe, but Sue kept a solid bubble of invisible power  firmly in place around it, enclosing it completely, keeping it sealed  from his grasp.

"YOU BITCH!  YOU ARE DEAD!  DEAD!"

She  turned weakly over a side, her body aching in ways she had never  imagined it could.  A couple of feet away lay the result of her striking  back at him, still rigid and frightening in its size, even severed like  that.  No wonder she still hurt so  much, down there.  No wonder she  could barely move.  It was a wonder she even alive after that.   All  that.

"Sorry about that,"  she muttered in a breathy rasp, eyes still on the monstrous thing.  "Had to... cut it short."

To think all that had been given to such a selfish, undeserving jerk.  All that power.  All that...  All that!

"YOU  DAMN BITCH!"  He staggered to his feet, wincing, groaning, trembling  with pain and rage.  "I SHALL TEAR YOU APART WITH MY BARE HANDS-!"

"HERALD."

The word resonated in their minds, a simple, uninflected word, yet it made Terrax freeze in fright, and then fall to his knees.

"Ma-Master!  Help me!  Look at what she has done to me!  Please help-!"

"BE QUIET."

Galactus  hovered next to the Baxter Building, visible through the large opening  rent on its side, his armor highlighted by the reflected lights of the  city.

"But Master-!"

"YOU WERE TOLD TO BE QUIET, HERALD.  OBEY AT LEAST THAT IF YOU CAN.  IF YOU ARE CAPABLE OF ANY SORT OF OBEDIENCE."

"Master, please-"

"NOT  EVEN THAT, THEN.  YOU PROVE A DISAPPOINTMENT.  OTHER HERALDS HAVE  DISOBEYED THEIR ORDERS BEFORE.  THEY ALSO TURNED AGAINST GALACTUS IN  THEIR FOLLY, SPURRED BY SENTIMENT OR MORALITY.  BUT NONE DID SO IN SUCH A  WAY, WITH SUCH TREACHERY."

"Master, I didn't-"

"YOU MUST BE DISCIPLINED."

The  energies flowing from Terrax's loins expanded to surround all of him  before he could speak further, shrouding him with a nimbus of radiance  that made Sue need to look away.  After the light faded, Terrax was no  more.  Neither was the Cosmic Axe, gone from within her invisible  bubble, and the floor was empty of the previously severed remnant there.

Sue turned towards Galactus.  "Is he-?"

"HE  CAN BE REMADE LATER, AFTER A SUITABLE ENOUGH PENANCE IS DETERMINED.   GALACTUS STILL NEEDS THE SERVICES OF HIS HERALD.  EVEN ONE LIKE HIM."

Sue nodded, and with great effort, rose to her knees.  "Then the Sphinx-?"

"THAT WITH WHICH GALACTUS WAS TASKED, IS NOW DONE.  THE ONE NAMED THE SPHINX IS NO MORE."

"It was you who...?  While Terrax and I-?"

"THE CIRCUMSTANCES WERE OPPORTUNE.  IT PROVED SUITABLE FOR THE PURPOSE."

"I-I see."  She would have blushed, but she was too far past that, now.
 

"NOW GALACTUS IS FREE FROM THE OATH HE HAD SWORN CYCLES AGO, FREE TO CONSUME THIS WORLD CALLED EARTH."

Blanching, Susan staggered to her feet, to stand, naked and alone, facing the towering Devourer of Worlds.

Now it was all up to her.

***************************************************

The  Watcher lowered his head, momentarily looking away from the sight of  the weary, battered Earthwoman, Sue Storm, so cruelly taxed and abused,  barely on her feet, yet all that stood now before the matchless power,  the cosmic force that was Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds, ready to  perform his role, to act against the blue orb of Earth.

Uatu had  gone against his vow before, for Earth, giving the Fantastic Four access  to the one thing that could make Galactus stop, and in the end, it had  just delayed the inevitable.  He could not do it again.  The Nullifier  was no more.  Reed Richards lay near death, and only his female partner  was still able to face the Devourer.

What hope was there now for Earth?

***************************************************

The metal-bodied Herbie retreated inside a service niche, calculating the odds.

Every  space-capable vehicle had been in this hangar.  His sensory arrays and  links to the Baxter Building's systems confirmed that most were now  wrecked.

The long-range transporter function of the former  Negative Zone portal remained viable, but Richards had securely locked  its  activation to the complete genetic-signature-verified presence of  him or any of his teammates.  Taking the Storm woman as key for its  activation and for any later purposes had been the preferred option, but  things had gone far beyond what could be safely managed.

Terrax  had been bad enough, but now Galactus himself was here, right before  her.  Which meant that the Earth was thoroughly fucked and the priority  was getting out at any cost.

Taking instead one of those other  comatose Fantastic Four members seemed difficult to achieve undetected,  so it may be necessary to go back and drag the damn Richards over there  instead.

Fuck Richards.  This was his fault.  He had been the one who failed the Earth.

***************************************************

Reed  Richards tried to move, to speak, but his body refused, its strength  spent, gone, closely followed by the last of his lingering thoughts.

Susan.

She had to do it.  She had to stop Galactus.

It was her.

She always understood.

She always knew what he meant.

***************************************************

"TIME  HAS RUN OUT FOR THIS WORLD.  IT SHALL SATE THE HUNGER OF GALACTUS AS IT  WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO.  MAKE WHATEVER DEFENSE YOU MAY, EARTHWOMAN.  IT  WILL BE OF NO USE."

Susan looked up, staring at the armored giant so coldly threatening the genocide of all she knew and loved.

It should have been Reed here.  Saving the world.  Finding the solution.  He was the one who knew how.  He always did.

But Reed was not here now.  Neither were Johnny or Ben.  It was just her.  And that had to be enough.

Tears ran down her cheeks, but they were of a different nature.

Daunting  as it was to know that the fate of her whole planet and species rested  upon her, she again had hope, the hope she thought lost, because she  knew now that at least, Reed was still alive.

She had felt him,  then, there, during what that happened with Terrax, through whatever  Galactus had done, that made them all briefly meet, think and feel  together, there, in her mind, in their minds, while she was being forced  to endure being raped, and forced to enjoy being raped.  She should be  horrified, and scared, and ashamed, and so much more, of Reed having  become  aware at any level of what she had done, what she had been made  to do, and how she had been made to react.  Of any of that.  She really  should.  She probably still would.  But later.  Later.

What mattered now was that Reed was still alive.

That was enough for her.

"We stopped you before, Galactus.  We shall do it again."

"SHALL  YOU?  IT WAS BUT CAPRICIOUS LUCK THAT SAVED YOU BEFORE.  NOW THE OATH  MADE IS NO MORE.  THE NULLIFIER IS NO LONGER WITHIN YOUR REACH.  YOUR  COMPANIONS ARE INCAPACITATED AND YOU ARE ALONE.  YOUR POWER COULD NOT  BEST THE HERALD, HOW COULD YOU STAND BEFORE GALACTUS HIMSELF?"

"I  am standing before you.  Here.  Now."  Sue allowed the hint of a bitter  smile.  "And I-I did manage to cut your Herald down to size, didn't I?   But I will not fight you, Galactus.  I do not need to.  I do not have  to stop you."

"THEN YOU ACCEPT YOUR FATE.  COMMENDABLE."

"Because we already have.  You just do not know it yet."

"YOU KNOW NOT OF WHAT YOU SPEAK."

"Reed already worked it out.  He always does."

"WHAT PLAN IS THIS?"

In  her hand was the tattered notepad.  She had picked it before standing  up, retrieving it from where it lay on the floor, with the sliced-off  remains of her clothes, cut away by Terrax's axe.  She flicked through  the pages full of scratched-over pencil scribblings and found the last  page with writing on it, a small sequence of figures and symbols.  Her  hand trembled as she held it up, displaying it before Galactus, but her  gaze did not waver from him.

"This."

"A MERE PIECE OF WRITING?"

"Yes.  A solution.  The solution."

She  had not understood at first.  Not even when their minds first brushed  together, amidst the turmoil of her sexual frenzy and all the many  conflicting emotions and thoughts.  He had not actually explained it at  any point, and at that moment she had not been in any condition to  analyze rational thoughts.  But even through all the... distraction, she  had grasped the essence of what he felt.  How he felt.  About her.

Reed had simply trusted her.

Reed had trusted that she knew what she did, and would know what to do.  That she would understand.

She would not let him down.  She would not let her world down.

"Feel free to take from my mind whatever you need to interpret the nomenclature."

Cosmic fire burned in the eyes of Galactus.  "YOU DO NOT KNOW.  YOU ARE GUESSING."

"It is a good guess."

"YOU ARE GAMBLING THE FATE OF YOUR WORLD ON MERE SPECULATION?"

"I  trust my husband.  I know how he thinks.  I know now what he would have  done.  What he must have done.  And I know now that this is what it was  all about.  All of it."

She did.  She knew what it had all been about, from the very beginning, when that brazen skank Adora showed up at their home.

Galactus was silent for a moment before speaking again.

"THIS...  SOLUTION IS FUTILE.  IT SHALL PERISH WITH YOUR WORLD."

"Reed  was in contact with the Living Computers of Xandar.  He worked it out  there, actually.  And he kept a live link with them, to the very end.   I'm sure he took the necessary precautions.  I can easily imagine how.   A data package, encrypted, sealed from any but him, but keyed to open  if the Earth was destroyed, programmed to be revealed there, to the  Living Computer minds, where resides all the information needed to make  it work, needed to-"

"TO RECREATE THE NULLIFIER."

"Exactly."

"DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THAT MEANS?  CAN YOUR HUMAN MIND-?"

"Reed  theorized how it worked.  Reversal of causality?  Weaponizing of  entropy?  A simple trigger to unmake the universe, make it collapse back  into a primordial singularity?  Honestly, I do not understand the math,  but you can."

That was what the Xandarians had sought all along.   What Adora had come here for.  They sought the only mind that make  sense of millennia of universal information to work out the simple yet  elusive principle that powered the ultimate weapon, the only weapon  whose threat could stop Galactus.

The Ultimate Nullifier.

"Tell me, tell me if this formula here is wrong.  Go ahead and eat the Earth if it is.  Go on.  Prove it wrong.  DO IT."

"YOU WOULD HAVE THE UNIVERSE BE DESTROYED?"

"Not me.  It is in your hands.  You just have to step back.  Spare Earth."

"I CAN DESTROY XANDAR AND ITS LIVING COMPUTERS JUST AS EASILY AS EARTH."

"Of  course.  But can you keep the knowledge from spreading out before that?   It may be programmed to be automatically relayed upon activation to  all worlds that may need it, all worlds that you may one day seek to  consume.  All worlds.  It may happen anyway, within a particular  time-frame, unless we are alive to stop it.  If I can think of any of  that, Reed would have, too.  You know that."

The nature of the glow in the eyes of Galactus changed, and there was a pause before he spoke.

"THE  INTELLECT OF REED RICHARDS MUST BE RESPECTED.  HE REASONED THE HIGHEST  ORDER OUT OF SCATTERED CHAOS.  HIS FORESIGHT MUST NOT BE  UNDERESTIMATED."

"Then BACK OFF.  NOW."

There was another, longer pause, until at last, Galactus nodded.

***************************************************

Uatu tilted his head.  Now that was a surprise.

***************************************************

"IT CANNOT BE LEFT WHERE IT MAY BE DISCOVERED.  THE DANGER IS TOO GREAT.  TO THE TOTALITY OF THIS UNIVERSE."

"Yes.   It will be removed.  But only after you swear the Oath again.  Swear  to spare the Earth.  And Xandar, too.  From your hunger, and any other  hostile action on your part."

"THAT, GALACTUS SWEARS.  EARTH AND XANDAR WILL BE SAFE FROM GALACTUS."

She breathed deeply and went for broke.  "And fix things.  Fix everything that went wrong."

"THAT IS NOT-"

"You  need Reed to be able to remove the data from the Xandar Computers.  You  need him alive and well.  So fix him.  Undo the effects of the Skrull  aging ray, on him and the others.  And undo the damages done to our  world by your fight with the Sphinx and the actions of your Herald."   She clenched her fists.  "Undo all the damage.  All of it."

"EVEN GALACTUS MUST NOT CHANGE WHAT ALREADY HAPPENED, SUSAN STORM.  BECAUSE IT MUST HAVE HAPPENED.  YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THIS."

"I-I  do.  I know.  It is not...  about me.  But you can fix everything else.   The aging.  The destruction.  Everything that can be put back  together.  Everything that can... go back to how it was...  should.   Must."

Galactus hovered away from the building and extended his hands.   "LET IT BE SO."

***************************************************

From the quantum level up, the Power Cosmic reshaped the physical configuration of the world.

At  Giza, the pyramids were restored, as were all other monuments and the  many works of man, as were all the landscapes and features of the world,  down to the very bedrock of Earth itself.

Buildings reassembled  from wreckage, rivers resumed their courses, soil settled and vegetation  grew and bloomed, the countless injured were healed, the scattered  families were brought together.

The world was made right again.

Tony Stark decided he could go without that drink for a while longer.

***************************************************

Stephen  Strange shook his head, surprised by the magnitude of the power  unleashed, by the scale of the manipulation of reality itself.  This  would have startled the pipe off Agamotto himself.

It had been quite an event, in every sense.

***************************************************

Matter  had re-integrated around her, around them, and in a matter of mere  minutes, the Baxter Building was whole again, flawlessly repaired, as if  nothing had happened in the first place.  The torn walls of the hangar  enclosure were restored, all vehicles again anchored upright, undamaged  at their usual positions, along with all the equipment and stacked  storage containers.  Everything was again at its place, and there  remained no damage or wreckage or debris on the floor, aside for  the  three outstretched bodies.

Ben, Johnny and Rich.

She rushed to them, heart thudding inside her chest.  She dropped to her knees by her brother, her eyes filling with tears.

Johnny's  face was calm in sleep, without any of the recent lines and wrinkles;  his hair was full and thick, without any visible receding, and his body  was slim and youthful again.

Several paces away, Ben was actually snoring.

She  covered her face and cried, unabashedly, in relief and happiness,  letting it all flow away, all the fear and regret and guilt and dispair.  

It was over.  Galactus was gone and Earth was saved.  They were saved.  Her family was safe again.

She  rubbed her eyes and face, and tossed back her tangled hair, smiling.   Reaching to shake her brother awake, she realized that she was not nude  any longer.  Her Fantastic Four outfit had been restored right over  her, as good as new, as if it had never been cut away.  She quietly  thanked Galactus for that.

Everything was again as it had been, right?

Right?

Suddenly, she glanced all about, nervously.

She had asked for all that could to be restored, but there just three others here with her.  Just three.

There was no sign of the Super-Skrull.  Of Kl'rt.  Or his body.  Or head.  There was nothing.

She  stood up, worried, and ran to a nearby console, but the security system  did not detect him.  Her power to restore visibility did not reveal  anything, either.

What did that mean?  Was he...?

She  frowned.  He had been dead.  Galactus had said that some things could  not be undone.  But if there were no remains, no sign of him, could it  be that...?

She breathed deeply, unsettled.  Some things would never be as they had been.

She  had to get Reed.  They had to do a full scan of the whole building,  make sure there were no further threats, make sure they were safe.  Make  sure it was really all over.

"Reed?  Please reply!  Are you alright?  Answer me!"

At  the lack of response, she tapped quickly on the touchscreen.  The  security system placed  Reed at his nearest lab space, but the protocols  did not easily give one-way video to the experimental spaces.  She had  to get around that.  What was that robot's name?  Herp?

"Herbie!  HERBIE?  Are you with Reed?  Answer me!"

"I am here, Ms. Storm.  Here.  With you."

Extensible  arms of hard, cold metal suddenly wrapped around her, quickly binding  her arms to her sides, pulling her away from the console and towards the  hovering silvery robotic shape.

"You called.  I came.  And so will you.  Repeatedly.  Systematically."

***************************************************

He  thought he had left all that behind, gladly forgotten, discarded long  ago with his human body, his human needs, after the transfer of his  living brain to an experimental cybernetic system.  He thought he had  risen even higher, evolved beyond mere chemical dependencies, sublimed,  transcended to a more exalted state of being upon merging his  consciousness with the Xandarian Living Computers, escaping at last that  golden cybernetic body and the last remnant of his organic origin with  it, to exist only as pure thought, pure intelligence, immortal and  unbound, at the service not of that irrational walking fossil, the  Sphinx, or anyone else, but only to himself, he who had once been called  Doctor Sun.

Maybe he had been too hasty, however.

Once  inside the Living Computers, he hid from both Richards and the Sphinx,  refusing to aid that madman in his madness, gathering instead the most  valuable knowledge in the universe for his own dreams of conquest, of  subjugation of the atavistic meat-bodied creatures so obviously his  inferiors.  But Richards withheld from all that most valuable data, the  secret key  principle to the ultimate weapon.  That is why he endured  limiting again his awareness in physical confinement, infiltrating this  ridiculous childish drone and feigning to be servile to Richards, even  as he sabotaged all his work.  All for the greatest of power.

But perhaps there was more than just pure knowledge and power.

Perhaps  there was lingering value in those primal states of altered  consciousness he had disdained as associated with meat and fluids in all  their sordidness.  Perhaps there was value to the pure sense of lofty  satisfaction involved in the rightful dominance asserted over the  chaotic randomness of inferior flesh, waiting there to be manipulated  and mastered.  The surprising mental rapport that had temporarily  invaded his consciousness had shown him the appeal of such  paradoxical  complexities of the senses.

So perhaps there was value, even for  one such as he, in the use and mastery of one like her.  Perhaps there  was a value to simple, primal carnal pleasure.

His extensible  arms held fast around her body, his adjustable manipulators squeezing  and pinching her symmetrical protuberances, so soft and yielding  compared to his metal hardness.  He could sense how weak and fragile she  was, how she had been exhausted by her recent physical and mental  efforts, leaving her suitably weakened, readied, primed for being taken,  being dominated.  She had been already used and abused by those much  superior to her, physically, but it was time she found who was her  master in just what mattered the most.

His limbs extended, moving lower, rubbing over her struggling body, probing for her most sensitive area.

He would show her.

***************************************************

Johnny  heard a cry, gasps and protests raised in her voice, Sue's voice.  Again.

He smiled, shifting about.

Deep inside, he knew it had to be a dream.  Again.  It always had to be a dream.

Perhaps he should feel bad.  Feel guilty.  Perhaps he would.

Later.

He shifted again, to better accommodate his unrelenting erection.

***************************************************

Through  the fogs clouding his mind, Ben heard Susan.  She had cried out.  In  distress.  Like before.  Like she had before, many times, in ways he  still could not make clear, in ways he was still uncomfortable to  recall, or acknowledge.

He could not think of Suzie like that, not Suzie, not like that.  Not again.

He forced himself to climb out of the depths of unconsciousness, forced himself to reach for the waking world.

Groaning, he opened his eyes, lifted his head, and sat up, surprised at how easy it felt again to move his bulk.

His eyes grew wide.  "Suzie?"

***************************************************

"AGAIN?  AGAIN?  AGAIN THE SAME SHIT?"

Her  force-field contracted violently around the floating robotic shape,  crushing its metal frame into a ball of twisted, short-circuiting parts,  before expanding for a second and then contracting again, each time  making the artificial construct harder to tell from its original shape,  and much diminished from its previous volume.  

"EVEN FROM A ROBOT?  A FUCKING ROBOT?"

Her  field contracted once again and then vanished letting the compressed  ruin drop to the floor, feeble sparks fading over its buckled metal  mass.

"IS THAT ALL EVERYONE CARES ABOUT?  ALL EVERY THING CARES ABOUT?"

A  wedge of invisible force struck the thing and sent it to crash and  break apart into myriad fragments against the farthest hangar wall.
 

"GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!"

***************************************************

Ben stared.  He had never heard Suzie speak like that.

"Er, Suzie?"

She turned quickly towards him.  "WHAT NOW?"

He had never seen her like that, either.  Although it was not the first time he had thought just that recently.

"Er, whatsa with da-?"

"It was touching me!  TOUCHING ME!"

"Wassit-?  Ah.  Darn."  He frowned.  "Never liked da damn rust-bucket anyways."

"DAMN PIECE OF SHIT!"

Invisible force smashed the last bits larger than a thumb.  That was a rather new side to Suzie.  Another, too.

"Looks like its over, dontcha think?"

"Over?"  She turned back to Ben, blinking fast, and her demeanor changed.  "Oh, Ben.  I hope so.  I so hope so."

She rushed to embrace him.

"Uh, whatta went down after-?"

She drew back.  "Oh, that's over, too.  Took care of it."

"Ya did?  And about-?"

"Took care.   Of everything.  Now, how are you feeling?  Are you-?"

"Like a million bucks, now datcha mentionnit.  Asides from still being a'buncha ugly rocks-"

"Oh, shut up and hug me again."

With  great care, he held her lightly against his rocky body, unsure of  controlling his restored strength, while she pressed tight against him.

"Why Suzie, ya tryin' make Stretcho jealous or-?

"Reed!  Yes!"  She broke away and ran to the elevator.  "Got to find Reed!"

"Uh, sure."

The elevator doors closed behind her, and Ben kept staring in that direction, lost in thought.

"Was that Sue?"

Ben turned to see Johnny sitting up, rubbing his forehead.

"Hey, yer back ta being a snot-nosed kid!"

"Seems like it.  Pity you're still as ugly as ever, Benjy."

"Still da ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing, Match-head.  Guess da Skrull zap didn't last dat much."

"Maybe."  He frowned.  "So what happened with the Super-Skrull anyway?"

"Suzie said she took care of it."

"She did?  The Super-Skrull?"

"Yep."

"And what about that Terrax guy?"

Ben's eyes narrowed.  "What about him?"

"There was this thing with that guy, I think.  And Sue.  I don't know.  I just..."

His words trailed off and there was a moment of silence held by the two of them.  Finally Johnny just shrugged.

"I don't know.  Must've been hallucinating or something."

"Ain't a surprise to me."

"What?"

"That yer dreamin' nonsense, hothead."

"Oh.  Yeah.  Maybe.  Dreaming.  Sure."

There was a longer pause.

"So did we save the world or what?"

***************************************************

"REED!"

Reed Richard lifted his head, a red pressure mark spotting his forehead, where it had rested on the desk.

"Susan?"

She  did not speak, but just rushed into his arms, which were back to  normal, as he was back to normal, back to the Reed she knew, and loved.

It took a long while for her sobbing to subdue, and when she drew back he gently wiped the tears from her face.

"It's done.  Galactus is gone.  He swore again to spare Earth.  Xandar, too.  The formula in your notepad did it."

Reed shrugged and shook his head.  "You did it, then."

"It was your plan, Reed.  You saved the world."

"You were the one who used the plan.  You faced him.  Not I.  You saved the world."

"We did it, then.  Together."

He nodded.  "Together."

They kissed, and when they drew apart, Sue looked down, troubled.

"Reed...   So much... happened.  So much.  I don't know how...  We...  We have to talk.  Really talk."

He shrugged.  "If you want to."

She doubted.  Did she want to?  Did she need to?  How could she not?

"Reed, you...  you must know.  What...  What I had to do."

"I trust you'd always do just what you have to, dear."  He smiled.  "What else would you?"

She stared at him for a long while, her moist blue eyes fixed on his brown ones, so smart and kind, that smiled at her as well.

"You know I love you?"

"I know.  I love you, too, dear."

Susan took a deep breath.

"I-I just broke your robot.  Tore it to bits."

"Herbie?  Oh, no problem.  I think it was probably spying on us for the Xandarians, anyway."

"Really?"

"Or something like that.  I should redesign him up from scratch."

"Yeah, better."  She smiled.  "Anyway, we have to go and pick up Franklin."

"Yes, dear."

***************************************************

Rich Rider say up, shaking his head.

Glancing  about, he was surprised to see the place repaired of all damage.  Last  thing he remembered was that the place was fairly wrecked and he was  getting the crap beaten out of his hide by that Skrull.

The Fantastic Four must have come through, of course.  Saved the world and everything.

The  Thing and the Human Torch stood nearby, both looking away from each  other, both unusually silent, so he stood up and walked towards them.

"Hi there!  Did I miss anything?"

THE END ?