An Uninvited Guest

Ten minutes remained until the wedding officially began. The bride and groom had yet to appear, while the guests ate, drank, chatted, got acquainted, and passed the time at the open-air banquet venue.

Up until now, Richard had been doing much the same as everyone else—having a bite to eat, watching the excitement, making friends, and so on. Then his phone rang.

The call came from Hydra—or rather, from a research institute under S.H.I.E.L.D., so calling it S.H.I.E.L.D. would not have been wrong either. They said they had detected some foreign object entering the atmosphere over Asia. It was now moving westward at a speed humans could scarcely imagine.

Not only was the thing incredibly fast, it had repeatedly slipped free of humanity's surveillance methods. The energy field around it was also unimaginably powerful. A series of anomalies had occurred along its path: electromagnetic irregularities, signal interference, shifts in strong magnetic fields, and sudden drops in temperature.

It was moving too quickly for satellite images to capture anything. The clearest image they had was already on Richard's phone.

From the satellite's perspective, all that could be seen was a long streak of silver light, like a sword flash slicing across the azure horizon of the sea, charging straight toward their location.

Of course, Richard did not need a clear image to know who it was.

The Silver Surfer.

Richard could not help but sigh.

What was meant to be would come; what was not could not be avoided. What was coming would always come.

Even though his foreknowledge had long told him that Galactus would be passing by Earth around this time, there was nothing he could do about it. A cosmic god was coming in person. As a minor god himself, he had no standing to stop him.

Not