Eating and being eaten are both parts of nature's cycle.
Of course, the one being eaten is usually not too fond of that particular law of nature.
At the very least, Joey certainly couldn't agree with it after being swallowed whole by Galactus and sent straight to his stomach.
"Ah—ow! Damn it!"
After being wrapped up by a giant tongue and dragged down the creature's throat, Joey was bounced around countless times before finally tumbling into a damp, soft chamber surrounded by fleshy walls.
"Now this is more like it. This actually looks like the inside of a stomach."
His head covered in painful bumps, Joey floated upward and clung to the wall above him, conveniently avoiding the acidic fluid...
...or whatever it was...
that continuously surged beneath his feet.
Judging from all the lumps on his head, the giant worm and its razor-sharp teeth weren't nearly as deadly as he had imagined.
He had already been chewed on by several hundred of those teeth while being swallowed.
In the end, all he'd gotten was a head full of bruises.
In other words, the creature's body was incredibly tough...
...but that was all.
It had recklessly swallowed him whole without possessing the ability to actually digest him.
Joey was about to stretch his body inside the cramped stomach chamber and loosen up his fists...
...when the giant worm reached exactly the same conclusion.
"Grrrk!"
The muscles lining its digestive tract suddenly began writhing in reverse.
Energy currents flowed backward.
A violent gale erupted within the stomach cavity, squeezing and pushing Joey back toward the entrance.
It was trying to vomit him back out the way he came!
"In your dreams!"
Driven backward by both physical force and energy pressure, even Joey's bio-field couldn't resist the overwhelming current.
As he spun helplessly toward the exit, he simply reached out at random—
—and grabbed one of the enormous teeth that had bitten him over a hundred times on the way in.
Crunch!
The first tooth was ripped free immediately.
Then he grabbed another.
A second.
A third.
A twentieth...
"I'm not going anywhere!"
By Joey's estimate, before the creature managed to throw him back up, he could rip out at least a hundred teeth.
There was no way he was letting himself be spat out so easily.
The worm had only decided to vomit up its prey so it could smash him around a little more, tenderizing the meat before swallowing him again.
Besides...
Outside was a red sun.
Under those conditions, a Kryptonian's strength would decline rapidly.
Staying inside its stomach was actually much safer.
The creature abruptly stopped trying to vomit.
From somewhere near its mouth came a long, mournful cry.
Although the giant worm couldn't speak, Joey somehow understood exactly what it meant.
"Can... we make peace?"
"Of course..."
"...not!"
The moment he answered, Joey charged deeper into the creature's body.
Every bit of energy he had was precious now.
He intended to search its insides for a vital weak point that could kill it in one decisive strike.
This wasn't like when it had casually swallowed him the moment they met.
If he didn't teach this oversized worm a lesson today, he'd write his name backward.
Boom!
With his next move already planned, Joey prepared to launch himself deeper into the creature—
Only to find the entire world suddenly spinning.
The surrounding space twisted violently, completely robbing him of his sense of direction.
Bouncing around the stomach cavity like a rubber ball, crashing into the walls over and over and accumulating countless fresh wounds, Joey figured the worm had resorted to rolling around on the ground like a sore loser.
Just as he was preparing to push through the interference...
The cramped space around him suddenly opened up.
He lunged forward instinctively and found himself diving straight into empty space.
Before him stretched a familiar rainbow-colored energy field.
It was a Kryptonian bio-field.
Bathed in that energy, Joey's own power rapidly swelled.
It grew so intense that something outside the bio-field noticed it.
A gigantic silver hand reached in from afar and grabbed Joey in one motion.
After a brief struggle, Joey himself was pulled free from the bio-field and drawn into another familiar energy field—
Ultraman's Plasma Light Field.
Ultraman's enormous silver face appeared directly in front of him.
[I have good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first?]
"Huh?"
Still completely bewildered, Joey couldn't make sense of what was happening.
Just moments ago, he'd nearly died fighting a giant cosmic worm.
So why was Ultraman suddenly here?
"Don't tell me the bad news is that we both died and we're meeting in hell?"
[Not quite. I'll give you the good news first.]
Even with the situation rapidly spiraling out of control, Ultraman remained remarkably calm.
The speed at which he and Joey communicated mentally far exceeded the changes occurring in the outside world.
[The good news is that you are no longer inside Galactus' stomach, so you don't have to worry about being digested.]
"...Just skip straight to the bad news."
Joey, who had spent the entire day either being eaten by this thing or that thing, wiped away cold sweat that didn't actually exist.
He had already guessed what the bad news was.
"Don't tell me... that thing came out?"
Back when the Helmet of Fate had split his destiny in two at his own request—one half becoming an ordinary reporter, while the other became not a Kryptonian but Doomsday—Joey had already suspected something like this.
Combined with his inexplicable ability to adapt to every kind of attack...
The truth had been obvious.
The Kryptonian half of his existence...
...was actually Doomsday.
[Correct.]
The berserk Doomsday Giant had just torn Galactus open and stolen his energy.
Part of that energy had therefore returned to Ultraman's body.
Using that opportunity to gain the upper hand in the struggle for control, Ultraman had also sensed Joey's consciousness being carried back along with it, so he simply pulled him into the mental space as well.
[The bad news is that Doomsday has absorbed Galactus' energy traits.]
[We're about to be digested by Doomsday.]
Cold sweat immediately drenched Joey.
"I'd rather have Galactus digest me!"
Given:
Kryptonian + Giant of Light = a super-being powerful enough to forcibly destroy Galactus' physical existence in the material universe.
Then what would...
Doomsday + Giant of Light...
...become?
Galactus only destroyed worlds because he had to eat.
Even if he spent an entire year feeding, there were only so many worlds he could consume.
Doomsday, on the other hand, possessed nothing but primal instinct.
Only hunger...
...and slaughter.
At that rate, within half a year, the entire universe would probably be burning beneath Doomsday's wrath.
[I wasn't finished.]
[The even worse news is that the demon inside your heart has become far too powerful.]
[It is completely beyond control.]
[The three of us together cannot win this battle of consciousness.]
"The three of us?"
Still dizzy, Joey mentally counted everyone present.
"But there are only two of us... wait."
Only then did he instinctively reach up and touch the top of his head.
"...Why is my head pointy?"
"What the hell is this?!"
Before the dizziness overwhelmed him completely, Joey finally grabbed the culprit.
With a hard yank, a leech-sized worm came off in his palm.
It looked exactly like the cosmic worm that had swallowed him earlier.
Only now it was miniature.
So this thing had been clinging to his head the whole time, greedily draining his energy and making him lightheaded!
Treating it the same way he treated every other bug, Joey casually threw it onto the ground.
Then stomped.
Splat.
The little worm burst into a bubble of energy and vanished.
Only to immediately reappear on his other hand.
It lowered its head and bit him again.
"Chirp!"
Although Joey had no idea how it worked, he somehow understood exactly what it meant.
That chirp translated roughly as:
"Yep, I'm eating your energy. What are you gonna do about it?"
It behaved exactly like a parasite.
Even though Joey had recovered quite a bit of energy inside Doomsday's bio-field, he certainly wasn't about to let this little energy thief keep stealing it.
Another bite.
Another large chunk of energy disappeared.
Joey instantly exploded.
"You little piece of—!"
[The heart of compassion must never fade.]
[Only through mutual understanding can we overcome this crisis together.]
"Forget all that!"
"No one's stopping me today!"
Rolling up his sleeves, Joey prepared to exterminate the pest on the spot.
"If anyone gets in my way, I'll beat you too!"
"Move aside, Lipiah!"
"I'm killing this parasite today!"
His barrage of violent insults was so overwhelming that the little worm, which had only been chirping moments ago, abruptly learned how to speak.
"What's wrong with parasites?"
"Parasites are living beings too!"
"...Huh?"
Parasite?
Joey's sluggish brain finally began working again.
A parasite living inside Galactus...
Wait.
Not a parasite...
A tapeworm.
Galactus' tapeworm...
Wouldn't that be...
A tiny Galactus?
Galacta?
Looking at her current worm form...
She was basically still an infant.
An extremely infant one.
Just what exactly had Doomsday been eating today?
First Galactus.
Then Joey.
Then Galacta.
Then Doomsday.
Everybody eating everybody else...
Wasn't this getting just a little too bizarre?
Still...
Just to be safe...
Joey decided to confirm it.
"Then let me ask you."
"Are you a boy or a girl?"
Galacta looked at Joey with the same expression one would reserve for someone with severe intellectual disabilities.
"Sorry."
"I just woke up from hibernation."
"I was really hungry."
She truly was still far too young.
When absorbing energy, she acted entirely on instinct, without the slightest restraint.
She had indeed drained far too much energy from Joey's head earlier.
His thoughts still hadn't fully recovered because of it.
[Is this really the time to be discussing that?]
Ultraman forcibly interrupted the increasingly absurd conversation between the human and the worm.
Right now, reclaiming control of their body was what truly mattered.
If they kept wasting time arguing among themselves...
They would simply be waiting to die.
"Ehem!"
The most useless cosmic parasite present suddenly raised one of her little segmented limbs.
"I have a plan!"