Skyl was living in a strange city, and old man Stan cleared out a bedroom for him so he could stay at the house for a while.
Gali had nothing to do all day, so Skyl taught her a few simple spells. This girl was absurdly gifted—trying to judge her with normal human logic didn't work anymore. Her learning speed was almost the same as Skyl's when he'd been in The Tower of Tomes. Skyl had needed a divine realm buff; Gali was just built different.
If a normal human brain was a pocket calculator, hers was a full-on supercomputer.
This dreamy, spacey girl could swallow an entire library's worth of content in a single day, and with a little practice she could use it smoothly—yet that still wasn't her limit.
Standing next to her made Skyl feel kind of pathetic about how hard he'd worked back then.
For someone with "top student" hardware, Gali's personality was pure lazy. She wasn't that interested in magic. What she cared about was whether she could fill her stomach.
Ever since she'd eaten that "special effects" lasagna, she'd been stuck in a long, grinding hunger. No matter how much she ate, it didn't cancel out the emptiness—like there was a hole in her stomach leading to another world, and everything she swallowed just leaked straight out.
Learning the Doubling Charm thrilled her at first. She thought she'd never worry about food again. But duplicating food cost far more energy than the food would give her back. The loss rate was over forty percent. It was a horrible trade.
So she completely lost interest in magic after that, and Skyl didn't force it. His whole approach was "teach by interest."
By now, he more or less understood what she was. If nothing unexpected happened, she was Galactus's "daughter"—basically a cosmic tapeworm from inside Galactus that had turned into a humanoid form.
Stan must've picked her up out of some trash heap somewhere.
Because she could never get full, Gali always looked listless. These days she'd learned there was a magical fountain pen in Stan's studio that could sketch up any kind of food. She thought about it nonstop, but Stan worked hunched over his desk year-round, so she never got an opening.
One night, she tried sneaking into the studio after midnight—only for Skyl to catch her red-handed. He'd been waiting.
"Kid," Skyl warned her, "you don't understand how that pen works yet. You could cause a disaster."
"But you used it."
"Because I've learned how to restrain desire," Skyl said. "And I have the power to erase the fallout."
Then he told her a cautionary tale—the kind people grew up hearing in the States—about reckless wishing and magic that spirals out of control, like the Sorcerer's Apprentice. He finished with a blunt warning:
"If you abuse that pen just to satisfy your appetite, you'll only end up swallowed by hunger. You'll become a monster that does nothing but eat."
"I'm hungry," Gali said, clutching her stomach as it growled.
Skyl looked at this sweet-faced girl with her simple mind and couldn't help smiling. He sincerely thought of Marika—back when she'd still been the Finger Maiden Annie. Same vibe: grown-up on the outside, but still soft and young on the inside.
Time really flew.
"I'll cook for you," Skyl said, patting her head. "What do you want?"
"Everything!" Gali's eyes lit up.
Skyl rubbed his cheeks. "Alright. We'll start with a Dutch-oven pot roast."
He made her a late-night feast, and the smell drifted through the house until even Stan—sleeping restlessly—got dragged out of bed. The old man clutched his chest like he'd been stabbed and declared, with deep sorrow, that eating like this would make them fat. Then he added that since he was already old, a little extra weight didn't scare him—so he absolutely needed an extra set of fork and knife.
For the next few days, they ate whenever they had nothing to do. Very quickly, they ate Stan's bank account down to nothing. The old man patted his increasingly round belly while loudly condemning their "wasteful lifestyle."
Gali argued confidently, "We waste a little, sure—but we always finish it."
Stan choked on that and had to admit the truth. His balance was basically scraping zero. If he bought one more soda, he'd go bankrupt.
With the household teetering on the edge of financial ruin, Skyl decided to take the bottomless-pit foodie outside to start a business.
After spending a week getting permits and paperwork, their food truck opened for business.
Skyl handled prep and cooking in the back. Gali handled attracting customers. Her method was simple: stand behind the counter and eat like her life depended on it. Passersby would see this cute, beautiful girl devouring food with zero dignity and inevitably wander over, dying to know what kind of meal could make a young woman abandon all restraint.
Then Gali would slap down the menu.
Other places had a few sheets of paper. Their menu was thick enough to bully an unabridged Merriam-Webster—packed tight, and nothing repeated.
"Girl, you can actually make all this?" a few regulars scratched their heads. "Alright—tacos. Let's see what you got."
Gali lifted her face out of a huge bowl. A strand of chewy noodles was still hanging from her lips as she called toward the back, muffled: "Corn-and-beef tacos! Six orders!"
"We only ordered five," one of them said.
"The extra one is mine," Gali grinned.
Before the words even finished leaving her mouth, six steaming, fragrant orders hit the counter. It was basically folded flatbread stuffed with meat and toppings—simple, satisfying, and as loaded as you wanted.
The guys' eyes lit up. They ate and threw up thumbs. "That's legit!" "Tastes like my mom's!"
"That'll be twenty dollars," Gali said.
They paid happily and left even happier.
Gali demolished her own portion in seconds. A few older women nearby gasped and joked, "Oh honey—careful you don't eat your own fingers too!"
"Welcome to Stan's Gourmet Food Truck!" Gali chirped. "What can I get you?"
With Gali as their walking spectacle, the truck drew attention everywhere it went. On day one, their net profit hit nine hundred bucks. As the buzz spread, money started pouring in like a tide. New Yorkers were obsessed with two mysteries: how much this girl named Gali could actually eat, and how many dishes that never-seen cook could make.
Reporters came to cover the "miracle food truck." Famous restaurant chefs tried to recruit them. Big-name celebrities invited them to become private cooks.
With their exposure skyrocketing, the line stretched forever every day. But they kept strict hours—when they said they'd close at 2:30 p.m., they meant it. Not one extra minute. People accused them of "scarcity marketing," but business only got better.
Of course, when you get famous, trouble finds you. A money-hungry gang quickly set their sights on a food truck with no obvious backing.
The place they parked had a park nearby—lots of homeless people, and plenty of folks living in their cars after going broke.
Every time they wrapped up, Skyl handed out free bread. Over time, he got friendly with them. One day, a homeless guy ran over to warn them: a gang that included his cousin was planning to shake them down. He told Skyl to pack up early, leave fast, and take a longer route home.
Gali freaked out. She rushed to clean up, ready to run.
Skyl thought, you're basically Galactus's kid and you're this jumpy? You need to see the world. So he refused the warning and told the guy to let his cousin bring whoever he wanted.
"Yo, brother, I'm not playing," the guy—Pier—tried again. "They're armed, and they're not right in the head. Even Jesus Christ doesn't know what kind of stupid they'll do. People like you—Asian guys—get targeted easiest. Just go."
Gali was so nervous she couldn't even eat her food. She trembled with a disposable wooden fork clamped between her teeth, and her hard front teeth chewed it down into splinters. Little bits of wood littered the floor.
Skyl asked Pier to take the bread they planned to give out today and deliver it for them.
Pier's eyes lit up. "So you finally listened!"
He thought Skyl was agreeing to shut down early. Laughing happily, he hugged the bread and left.
In the end, the truck still got intercepted.
Their route home had been studied. When they passed through a bleak, empty stretch of street, a pickup suddenly swerved out and blocked them. Several gang members jumped from an alley, waving guns and yelling for the driver to get out—there was "big business" they wanted to discuss.
Gali hugged her knees in the passenger seat, frozen solid.
Outside the window, a young punk with a skull necklace grinned and waved like they were old friends. "Hey, pretty girl. What's your name? I'm Dave. Let's be friends. We should hang out sometime. I've got a Harley—I can take you riding. You'll love it."
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