After the judgment of Kingpin, the Erdtree that had shrouded New York quietly vanished. It was as if the whole city had woken from a dream. Some dead people had returned to life. Some people's lives had been completely overturned. On the whole, the changes were for the better.
The shadow left behind by the former emperor of the underworld became nothing more than a fleeting memory. People seemed to remember that there had once been a bastard of unspeakable evil, but whenever anyone tried to verify it, they found that the man had supposedly been a lawyer in life. In the end, all discussion of Kingpin's double identity got filed away under the Mandela effect.
Skyl stood by the street for a while. A few passersby came over to say hello. They were people who had once slept rough in the park after going bankrupt, but now they had found new jobs, moved into apartments, and picked up hope for life again.
Even that Black street thug Skyl had once turned into a gold statue was now working as a salesman, dressed sharp in a suit and looking pretty respectable.
They chatted for a bit, said their goodbyes, and went off in their separate directions, each returning to life.
People who had once drifted without a home had finally settled down. For a moment, Skyl felt dazed.
The wind over Upper New York Bay was still soft and steady. Across the water, the Statue of Liberty stood without the towering Erdtree beside it, and Manhattan no longer held that black fortress of crime that had once risen there.
Gali gently tugged at his sleeve and tilted her chin toward Vanessa.
That woman, battered by fate, was staring blankly at the things Kingpin had left behind.
What made it strangely ironic was this: when Kingpin had been an irredeemable monster, his wife Vanessa had left him, yet in the end she survived. But when he became a righteous Kingpin, he caused his wife's death and passed sentence on himself as well.
Skyl had no intention of crossing paths with Vanessa. Everyone was only a drifting piece of duckweed in someone else's life, brushing past for a moment before floating on. He was about to leave with Gali when the woman called out to him.
"Please wait."
When Vanessa looked up, the expression on her face was still strange.
"You're the person Fisk mentioned on the phone, the one you don't cross, right?"
Skyl had not yet decided what to say when Vanessa apologized first.
"I'm sorry. I'm not trying to blame you. I expected Fisk's death long ago. But I have a lot of questions, and I was wondering whether you might be kind enough to answer them."
"Ma'am, what is it you want to know?"
"I remember Fisk, but at the same time I have two completely different impressions of him. I also remember dying in a car crash, and my Richard dying too. But now he's alive and well. Why?"
Skyl told her that both sets of memories were real.
It took Vanessa a long time to accept that answer. Finally, she nodded.
"Did Fisk mention me?"
"Not often. Only once. He said he couldn't say no to you."
"I understand."
Vanessa said she was going to meet with some of Kingpin's old friends and discuss how to handle the funeral arrangements.
"I hope you'll attend the service." On her face rested both the sorrow and composure of a widow. "I think Fisk would have wanted to see you one more time too. After all, you changed his life."
Skyl nodded. "I will."
She picked up the loose pastor's robe from the ground. Dust and ash trickled out of the sleeves like snowflakes. In the end, Kingpin had left nothing behind. Vanessa departed carrying the last thing that remained of him.
...
Skyl finally returned to Stan's house and found nobody there, which, honestly, was exactly what he expected. Earlier in New Mexico he had looked for Stan too, only to find him missing. After dropping Thor where he needed to go, the old man had vanished again.
Sometimes Skyl suspected Stan was actually a quantum particle. If you weren't looking straight at him, he just teleported somewhere else in the universe. The most likely possibility was that he had wandered off for a cameo in some other movie. If Skyl had to guess, maybe Guardians of the Galaxy?
Gali looked disappointed that Stan wasn't home. She had gotten pretty attached to the old man.
Skyl took the Genesis Pen and headed into the workshop. The sight that greeted him made his heart skip. He must have forgotten to close the window before leaving. The room was a mess. Bird droppings, feathers, fruit peels, and scraps of paper were scattered everywhere. It looked terrible.
He checked the ink bottle that had tipped over on the desk. Since the lid had been left open, it had almost completely dried out.
He searched the drawers for backup ink, but found none. In the end, he poured the last dregs from the bottle into the pen reservoir. It only filled it halfway.
Galactus had a huge frame. If Skyl wanted to restore him the way he had restored Asgard, this little bit of ink wasn't going to cut it. If Stan had been here, it would have been easy. But Skyl was not a comic-book artist, and he definitely wasn't the One-Above-All.
So he took a sheet of paper and drew the scene of Galactus reviving from inside Jormungand's stomach.
A loud gagging sound came from the living room downstairs, followed by Gali's delighted shout.
When Skyl saw the revived Galactus again, he discovered that he had, in fact, made a small mistake. The great devourer climbing out of his granddaughter's belly was no longer the towering, imposing titan he had once been. He had become a frail, bony scarecrow of a man.
Galactus's cheeks were hollow, and he was skinny as a rail. Even his voice sounded weak. If the old version of him had looked like Captain America, then this version looked like Steve Rogers before the serum.
"Hungry..."
Gali scrambled to prepare food for him, emptied out the refrigerator, and then stood there staring miserably at the pile of ingredients.
Galactus wasn't picky about raw or cooked. He grabbed a frozen bag of chicken breast and started gnawing on it directly. Unfortunately, he managed to crack a tooth before he managed to eat anything, so he got a mouthful of blood before he got a meal.
In the end, Skyl had to take over the kitchen. While he was at it, he fixed Galactus's tooth too.
"Lord Galactus, there seems to be a slight problem with your body?"
After the meal, Galactus sat there staring blankly ahead with a round, full stomach in his arms. When he heard the question, he slowly nodded.
"Yes. I'm full."
The eternally hungry Galactus could actually feel full one day. Skyl began to suspect he had lost his divine power.
Galactus let out a deeply satisfied sigh, then looked at Jormungand.
"Child, come here."
Jormungand obediently slithered into his hands. This ancient cosmic god showed a tenderness as human as any grandfather's.
"Look at that. My little Gali has a child of her own now. But you, you were an accident. Do you realize you ate your grandfather? Ah, what a mess you've made. What is her name?" Galactus looked toward Gali. "Oh, Alita. From this day on, you will bear a great mission. A great curse."
Both Gali and Skyl were curious about the mission Galactus spoke of.
Wearing Stan's house clothes and sitting on the couch, Galactus somehow still looked like he belonged on a throne.
"That's right. Galactus has a mission of his own. Eternal hunger drives me to devour planets. If I cannot draw life-energy from them, I die. But the appetite can never be satisfied. Hunger is a beast, and before it, I am only a helpless mortal."
Skyl remembered Galactus once saying that he felt guilty for devouring planets and extinguishing life.
"So the mission you speak of, my lord, is to reclaim all life in the universe?"
"Something like that. I have to consume them and store the energy. When this universe reaches its end, I will eat every last star. That hunger and thirst often leave me terribly alone. I never understood why I had to suffer such a fate. Not until this death. Then I understood."
Galactus gently stroked Jormungand.
"When my soul drifted in darkness, I saw the Phoenix again. It told me that Galactus is like a ship. When the universe is destroyed, when nothing remains, when even the Celestials are gone, I will continue to exist. I will wait, and wait... until the next universe begins. And with that Big Bang, I will bring the information of the old universe into the new one, so that the life that once existed may appear again."
"That is an extraordinary mission. No wonder you've been so lonely." Skyl was reminded of Magnus from the world of The Elder Scrolls, another being doomed to endure the solitude of cosmic cycles.
"Yes. But that mission no longer belongs to me." Galactus rubbed his cheek against Jormungand with deep affection. "Alita, my poor granddaughter. Why couldn't you just behave?"
Gali placed a hand on her father's shoulder. "We'll stay with her. We're not alone anymore. We have a family now. A whole people."
Galactus froze for a moment, then smiled.
"That's right. We'll stay with little Alita until the very end."
The three generations of that family held each other. Off to the side, Skyl silently looked away.
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