Marvel: Raising — Chapter 130 - Azu and the Celestials
Sakaar.
In the end, it wasn't the Super Blue Earth from the Dragon Ball world. Its stress tolerance just wasn't up to it.
With the Grandmaster, Collector, Zaman, Astronomer, and Gardener defeated and executed, the Runner was transformed into a black-magic puppet by Wanda.
The Judicator, who possessed the power of judgment and sentencing, simply stopped fighting and tried to slip away.
What a coward.
Then Guan Fuyun chased him down and strangled him.
The minor disturbances kicked up along the way were enough. Sakaar shattered completely.
Turned into cosmic debris.
It was an apocalyptic spectacle — majestic and cruel.
But even Galacta, the most pure-hearted of them all, felt nothing at the sight.
Couldn't be helped.
Who told the arena to be so utterly devoid of decency?
Over tens of billions, hundreds of billions of years, the pitiful wretches captured by the Grandmaster and left to die in the gladiatorial pits, their bodies alone would fill countless planets over.
If Galacta weren't generally unable to beat the Elders of the Universe, she would have stopped tolerating it ages ago.
Even from the Celestials' own perspective, this counted as bandit suppression. A great deed.
Guan Fuyun didn't care about any of that, of course.
All he knew was: this trip not only let him enjoy the cosmic scenery, it also netted them Ego the Living Planet, and brought the entire crew to promotion, alternative parity with the Celestials.
The little bastards. Their realms, their power — all acquired. The path ahead wide open.
How great was that?
"Head home victorious!"
......
By the time they returned to the blue planet, a long stretch of time had passed.
Guan Fuyun was exhausted. He wrapped his arms around Wanda and fell straight asleep.
At the farm.
Azu had changed into a farmer's denim outfit. He tilled the fields, pitchforked some firewood, fed the pigs.
Even milked himself a little something from the cow.
Then he drank straight from the bucket, frowning, and looked back at Godzilla trotting along behind him. "You sense it too, bro?"
"Rawr." Godzilla nodded frantically, nearly managing human speech.
Right.
No need for Ashley to report it at all.
The moment they returned to the blue planet, Godzilla, the embodiment of the blue planet's will, its guardian deity, and Azu, who now possessed the Celestial realm, a true cosmic god in every sense, both felt it.
Version update. Another world had merged in.
A heavyweight this time.
A very large one.
"Hum!"
The Time Stone necklace at his throat lit up.
Having attained the Celestial realm, transcended Skyfather-level existence, and formally become a cosmic-level god, Azu didn't need to be the Sorcerer Supreme of Kamar-Taj. Using the Time Stone was now effortless. Completely smooth.
Before, when he used the Time Stone, it was pure brute force: a super body, a super brain, following Pops' guidance and hammering it into shape. A "one-click spoiler" kind of operation. Effective, but clumsy.
The thing was, the Time Stone was a cosmic singularity. It had its own rules, its own underlying logic.
Copying the steps could make it work, but it was inelegant. Like someone who had only ever memorized formulas by rote, with no idea where those formulas actually came from.
Now, Azu was the formula.
His entire being was a subjective, self-contained world, with its own physics, its own energetics, its own mathematics, chemistry. Reflected outward into objective reality, all of that became superpowers.
This was why Celestials were powerful. In a universe where science-side ruled, a Celestial was all of science, walking.
So using the Time Stone now was fast and precise. Like moving his own hand.
And on top of that, even other cosmic gods were readable to him now.
Easily.
Azu "looked" and found it. Hidden deep within the blue planet's core: a massive Celestial embryo.
"A standard Celestial?"
"A group called the Eternals..."
"What the hell!"
"Did Vought International literally workshop their lore for diversity metrics?!"
Seeing Celestials show up, Azu wasn't surprised. As Pops always said, any crisis appearing on this planet was perfectly normal.
But seeing that group of superheroes, absolutely packed with political correctness, even more abstract than Vought International, even more absurd than his old man's company,
Azu started laughing.
He rarely described superhero teams by ticking off men, women, young, and old. That was practically aesthetic assault.
And then,
"The one who dropped the atomic bomb on Little Japan is crying, repenting, and kneeling in apology?!"
"What carbon-based life form actually wrote this brain-rot?"
Azu's expression was pure mischief. He was grinning ear to ear.
Too many things to mock. He didn't even know where to start.
But considering Pops' feelings, he decided: any operation that whitewashed or apologized to Little Japan simply should not exist.
Wasn't this reversing cause and effect? Sowing confusion?
Disgusting.
If there was any chance of disgusting Pops, these people didn't deserve to live.
Azu immediately made a call. "Ashley."
"I'm here, Chief Zu."
"See the data I just sent over?"
"Yes, Chief Zu."
"Those people are called the Eternals. Strength is roughly top-tier surface-level. Arrange Hulk, Thor, Deadpool, Venom... go kill them all."
Azu paused, then emphasized: "Before Pops wakes up and heads to the company — grind the Eternals' bones to dust. No need for assassination. Open combat is fine. Make it loud. The battlefield: Little Japan."
"Understood, Chief Zu."
Ashley responded without a moment's hesitation.
Dirty work. She knew it well.
In The Boys world, she'd been constantly on edge, cleaning up after a bunch of idiots and celebrities, at permanent risk of sudden death.
But here?
Here she was a CEO with real power. The spokesperson for the blue planet's ruler.
And a superhero too, for that matter.
In The Boys world, killing a few people got you on the trending searches. In Marvel, any popular character could cause a crisis that killed countless people, then go right back to being a superhero with a perfectly clear conscience.
No need to even smear them. Just expose a little, and weren't they ready-made supervillains?
In that regard, the Eternals' dirty laundry seemed especially abundant.
Ashley's lips curled upward. Her smile widened into something unhinged. ✓
Following Chief Zu's lead was just awesome.
......
With the Eternals handled.
"Whoosh!"
Azu activated his bio-field, grabbed Godzilla, and dove straight into the blue planet's crust, punching through soil, rock, and magma in a clean line down to the core.
"Celestials use planets as wombs."
"Once this thing matures and is born, wouldn't the whole planet just split open?"
He saw it at a glance.
BOOM!
One punch. The infant Celestial was dead.
"Infant" was generous, it was still enormous, body length exceeding 666 meters.
On the principle of not wasting anything, and that Pops might appreciate it: Azu stripped the standard Celestial's armor, its energy-flesh, its mechanical organs, and hauled everything back to the farm.
......
Meanwhile, in another corner of the universe, a civilization was in panic.
Because they had spotted a squad of Celestials, standing tall in the skies above their planet.
This planet's fate echoed the blue planet's.
Millions of years ago, the Celestials had descended on this barren world. They channeled energy, regulated the climate, built a habitable environment, and sowed the seeds of life.
Thousands of years ago, the interstellar giants descended again, inspecting the planet's evolutionary trajectory and the state of its civilization.
They observed. They judged. They reached a satisfactory conclusion.
The next phase began.
They became civilization mentors. They brought more technology, left behind knowledge, gave the local scientific progress a boost.
But things didn't go as planned.
After receiving the technology, the life on this planet started endless wars. Intelligent beings fought each other over limited resources, and the civilization's development ground to a halt.
Their wars dragged on for ages. Blood soaked every inch of their history.
But today, everything ends. The wars will cease. The civilization will end.
Because the Celestials have come again.
➤ Next: The Celestials, the Ancient One, Eternity