“They actually built the damn thing?” I blurted out, and swore. “The damn fools!”

I knew Lilandra wasn’t responsible for it. Tracking back who was would instantly identify those members of the Elder Council who were in the pockets of the Skrulls... or others.

I couldn’t let that thing detonate. First of all, there was no real reason for it to. The empires weren’t at war, but someone was egging them on to an impossible confrontation... and that someone was not who everyone thought it was. Second of all, the reason it was being fought was useless as well.

You couldn’t just jumpstart Kree evolution with a Negabomb, that was totally insane. By definition, any new ‘evolution’ of Kree would not be ‘Kree’, which was the thing stopping them now. They totally could have introduced genetics stolen from the Celestials to send their people off in a new direction of evolution, but ultimately rebelled against the idea.

The Supreme Intelligence was arranging this whole situation to force the solution upon the Kree Empire, even if it would kill off the vast majority of the Empire!

Perhaps it thought this was the perfect time to do so, with the Skrulls infighting and everything.

The Shi’ar had made one and the makers were already prepping to launch the damn thing.

Well, eff that...

-----

I sighed as she glared at me, sneering at my presence. “A traitorous Terran saboteur!” Xenith snarled at me. “So much for your protestations of well-meaning and goodwill!”

“Oh, I have murderous intentions, but they aren’t directed against the Shi’ar or the Kree right at this moment. Seeing you so completely hoodwinked by what is going on is just too funny. Did they talk you into this after you destroyed that false fleet of Kree raiders?” I asked her, completely unfazed by the threat she represented.

I was somehow unsurprised they’d gotten someone to guard the interior of this ship-sized bomb. I wasn’t expecting Xenith, but I wasn’t not expecting her, either.

Despite herself, she hesitated to attack me. She wasn’t the warrior her cousin was. “Those were Kree vessels and crewmen!” she swore at me. “I could not be mistaken about such things! Their identities were verified by the Kree themselves!”

“Really.” Beat. “So, the fact every one of those ships was actually lost in action against the Skrulls over the past thousand years is meaningless, I suppose...”

Despite herself, that rocked her back on her heels. “What?” she spluttered. “Impossible!” she denied instantly. “You are merely spouting more lies!”

“There is a massive amount of Obfuscation going on for this affair, but, ah, it is really, really hard to block the timelines of so many unique objects the size of starships,” I said calmly. “I verified the loss of every single one of those ships up to a thousand years ago, which makes them all current models as far as the Kree go.” I tilted my head slightly. “As far as the crew, the Skrulls have methods where their dead don’t revert to their base forms without knowing exactly how to trigger the reversion. Your people don’t even know how to force the reversion, so you didn’t test for fakes... and, I believe, all the bodies were rapidly fed into the nearest star for convenience after their identities were verified?”

“The Kree military themselves verified the crews!” she snarled haughtily at me. “There was no way to falsify such things!”

“And you went through diplomatic channels to do so, no doubt. And everything was perfectly in proper order, despite being all being a great lie. Of course, you had no ability to take that data and go back to where these Kree lived and grew up, and look for traces of anyone who knew them, and you know what you’d find?” I smiled frostily as she glared at me. “None of those Kree serving on those ships can be remembered by any Kree anywhere else they served or grew up in. Despite immaculately detailed full service records, genetic profiles, and certified existences in every single Kree database imaginable, right down to purchase records for porn and favorite toys, the Kree in the second raid did not actually exist.”

“That is not possible! That level of data falsification is not possible in the Kree systems!” she denied, and I just raised my eyebrow. Her eyes flickered.

“Ah, there it was. You just realized who was totally capable of validating a fake raid, and spurring this whole farce to its height.”

“B-but...” Despite herself, her face twisted, “why would it do such a thing?! And why would you involve yourself in it?”

“My heart is not filled with vitriol as yours is, screaming to the uncaring universe about the death of your people.” I pointed to the heart of the Negabomb behind her. “You are going to kill trillions with that thing, trillions who have done nothing to deserve the death you are going to inflict on them. I am here to stop you because it is the right thing to do, as you know yourself, and have thrown aside in your desire for vengeance upon the universe.”

“Hah! You are a lying bitch-”

“TRUTH.”

She screamed and clutched at her ears, falling to the ground as the Word of Creation slammed into her psyche. She promptly started bleeding out of every hole on her head as she clutched at her skull, trying to drive away the absoluteness shining upon the lies she was telling herself.

“You had no chance of stopping me regardless.” I raised my arms slightly, the Negabands just another part of the bracers and gauntlets I was wearing. “Now, there is going to be a horrible accident, and many traitors to the Imperium and the Majestrix are going to die because of it.

“And then, then this Negabomb is going to go off, as it was planned to do.”

My wrists crashed together, and the magic I’d woven silently while talking to her hooked into the transfer effect, magnified it by the core of the Negabomb, and there was an exchange of energies across universes.

---

The escorting fleet of Shi’ar vessels, and most of an AU around them, was utterly annihilated by the explosion of dimensional energies billowing out of the Crunch, the energies intended to annihilate the Kree Empire and catapult them along, breaking their chains of evolution by sacrificing ninety percent of the Empire to the attack.

As they were still in the Shi’ar Empire, the explosion happening there was a horrifying event. Their scientists confirmed that the bomb had actually been drawn through a spontaneous rift caused by an uncontained release of Negative Zone energies. If it had remained here, it would have annihilated a massive chunk of the Shi’ar Empire. The losses would have been absolutely catastrophic, and included the Shi’ar Homeworld and Capital!

Death sentences for everyone involved in the construction of such a diabolical device came down with great speed, completely wiping away three different factions in the Elder Council and all of their advisors, and heaping dishonor upon their Houses that would take many, many generations to wipe away.

Being involved in nearly destroying the Empire was not something easily forgiven, after all.

---

In the Negative Zone...

A great force was gathering in the dying universe.

Countless warlords had been drawn to the holder of the Cosmic Control Rod. Techno-barbarians bred endless armies of warrior drones to obey them, starships both organic and living were constructed and grown in preparation for the effort to come.

There would be invasion from their dying plane, to a universe where they could live on!

The coordinates were already known. The targets of the invasion were already identified, unsuspecting of what was going to happen, unable to resist their power and fury when the moment came. Entire worlds were being turned into starships, fed by the power of dying suns, ready to rip a path of annihilation across the stars and secure themselves a new home.

In the midst of this great effort, a thread of random energy exited the area of the Crunch they had gathered near, and out tumbled an unstable device swelling with great power. The threat was noticed, its instability, and panicked defenses churned to life... but they were not enough.

The explosion was not overwhelmingly powerful as such things went. Certainly, a nova or supernova would have radiated far more energy.

But what this energy had was the ability to travel along the folds of space and reality, and it was attracted to its opposite: living things and the chains of possibility they represented, as if drawn to their wills to survive.

So instead of dissipating in the endless void, the energies converged on the places where peoples were, and manifested there in devastating explosions of matter, anti-matter, and positive and negative energies from the Crunch.

The eruption spread for hundreds of light years. The loss of life, especially among the forces gathering to invade the target universe, was apocalyptic.

Annihilus, master of the Cosmic Control Rod, watched the explosion erupt, and screamed in fury. He would not die, and could not die as long as the Cosmic Control Rod existed, but this event would set his plans back many years, if not longer, and all they had done so far would be cast into ruin and lost.

Death came through the dying universe, and reaped Her due once more.

------

From a place on the opposite side of the Crunch, the Worldship of Galactus turned and slowly departed.

Inside the great vessel, the Devourer of Worlds looked at a complex and vast array of technological information relayed to Him. Without finite limits, He easily understood the entirety of the planet-spanning device depicted with little more than a glance, along with its purpose and its power.

He made a decision, and the Worldship of Galactus vanished in its course.

A moment later, it reappeared above the world of Hala, the vaunted heart of the Kree Empire. The planet was an ecumenopolis, a world covered entirely in technology, all that would be normally performed by a living ecology replaced by machines, maintained by the tireless labor and efforts of among the most disciplined races in space... the Kree!

He did not send his Herald. To do so would have likely meant the death of the Silver Surfer. This world was the heart of a galactic empire a hundred thousand years old. The homeworld of the Kree had been threatened before, but had never fallen, be it to cosmic beings, invading gods, rampaging star fleets, vengeful invaders, or random cosmic menaces, all of which it had encountered over its long life.

All of those things were threats a true starfaring empire had to be able to deal with, but the standard for dealing with cosmic beings only had one true test.

If Galactus came for your world, could you stop Him?

Galactus had been confronted before by forces that could stop Him. They were rare. Some were cosmic beings that could simply thwart His ability to feed successfully, if not being a true threat to Him. Some had technology or powers advanced to such heights that they could threaten even Him if He were not careful and astute.

Such was the case here. This was Kree-Lar, famed as the world where nothing grew, save power!

And power it had, indeed!

The potential forces locked within this world likely dwarfed the star they called Pama that warmed the world. Only another entire world capable of sustaining the level of construction that had been enacted here could possibly have withstood the might of the technology waiting hidden beneath the layers of metal and plascrete that had swallowed this entire world.

But He was Galactus. The fact that He rarely had to care about the resistance of the lifeforms who lived on His targeted worlds did not mean that He was not capable of precise and measured action to thwart their designs.

Indeed, the mere fact they were capable of thwarting Him meant He found them worthy of His attention, and the more attention He gave them, the more He saw that He should act.

And so act He did.