"Now, stop me if you've heard this one..."
"Once upon a time, Earth's greatest heroes found themselves pushed into an impromptu alliance to oppose the machinations of the Asgardian trickster god Loki. Realizing that combining their resources and abilities would let them combat the forces of evil far more effectively than they ever did on their own, those five heroes formed the Avengers, a team of superheroes and crimefighters who's name would live on well into the future, even as members came and went, as heroes retired and passed their mantles on to their successors. Heroes and villains fell in battle, succumbed to old age, but the Avengers carried on, far into the future, protecting the world from every new threat that arose. And it all started here, from these humble beginnings, as a handful of random heroes found themselves forced together..."
"Except, that's not the way it happened, is it? Not this time. Because somehow, this time there was someone else there on that fateful day. Someone who didn't belong. Someone who saw fit to interject himself in the passage of history."
Kang stomps closer, the white lenses of his helmet glowing, his faceplate changing into a frown. "MY history! You are a blemish on MY history, and I'm going to excise you before you do any more damage!"
You know, in retrospect, I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier. Comic books have used time travel as a get-out-of-plot-holes-free card pretty much since day one, but it didn't start getting really bad right up until around the 60's, and the guy in the gaudy purple armor in front of me were one of the first people to really start exploiting it. Unfortunately, this isn't a comic book, this is a physical reality, and I have no idea how that has affected things. But I think I'm about to find out.
And apparently, judging by his rant, and what I remember of Kang and his various other identities from the comics, my meddling with the timeline has started affecting the future as well. Which is either very good, or very bad.
"You know, we were kind of in the middle of something important here before you interrupted and pressed the pause button on everyone. Don't you know it's a bad idea to crash superhero events?"
Kang scoffs "Ah yes, how very droll, glibness in the face of certain destruction. Your Avenger allies can't help you now, they're frozen in time, everyone except the two of us are stuck between moments, and will never know anything ever happened at all! But I hardly need to explain time travel to someone like you, do I..?"
The hell is he..? "Someone like me as in... superheroes or what?"
I swear he's rolling his eyes at me behind his helmet "You think you're the first timeline aberration I've ever encountered? I am KANG, I've traversed all across time, through the fabric of the cosmos itself! I've seen life in it's earliest form crawl it's way across the primordial Earth! I've conquered the ignoble remnants of mankind in it's distant future! I've carved my empire on a foundation of power I've gained through the study of the ages! And yet, even with all I've seen, all I've learned from history, there have been occasional... ripples, static if you will. Individuals appearing where they don't belong, changing things they have no place tampering with. Individuals with knowledge and skill that are just as out of place as they are. Individuals like you!"
Ohhhhhh dear, I REALLY hope this isn't going where I think it is.
"You're not supposed to be here. None of you are! There's no scientific basis for any of it! I've studied every era, from the days of my own empire to the primordial ooze when life on Earth was nothing but some protein floating in the sludge, and nothing! There's no reason for the universe to keep spitting you out, but you keep showing up anyway, with knowledge you're not supposed to have! Wether you're time travellers from timelines that no longer exist, or some sort of glitch in the cosmos, all I know is that this keeps happening!"
Okay, it didn't go there. Not fully anyway. That's a slight improvement.
"So, I've been forced to settle for exterminating you and your ilk wherever I can..."
Buuuut not much of one.
"You know, it's almost amusing if it wasn't so frustrating..." Kang continues his rant "I've dealt with aberrations like you before, they've all had their little pet causes that had to be corrected. A death prevented, a conflict halted, an accident averted. But YOU, out of all the fools I've seen, is the only one I've seen with enough gumption to save this one man" Kang turns around and stalks over to where President Kennedy is standing, frozen as he's holding out the medal meant for me. Kang moves in front of him, staring into Kennedy's unseeing eyes "Of course, the Kennedy name was dust long before the rise of my own empire, along with the nation that so idolized him, but I'm all too aware of how much he influenced the 20th century. And how much impact his death had. And then you, out of all the problems I'd dealt with before, decided to have him live. And a century of history was upended, just like that!"
I shrug, trying to look nonchalant "Yeah, well, I lived through a lot of that century. Trust me, it wasn't a big loss."
"Of course, the same story every time. Every one of them so certain that their one little change will make everything better. That the events they themselves knew as history couldn't possibly be any worse! Did it ever ocurr to you that this man served the world better as a martyr than he ever could have as a man? That perhaps the idea of him was more valuable than anything he could have accomplished himself? You're meddling with things you don't even have a chance of understanding!"
Okay, fuck this guy "Yeah, in case you haven't noticed, that's what you're doing too, Kang. Or should I say Rama-Tut? Or does the name Scarlet Centurion ring a bell? Or even Nathaniel Richards?"
That actually makes Kang pause for a moment "You don't know what you're talking about!"
"I do actually, and speaking as one of those "aberrations" you claim to hate so much, you're a 10 pound bag of bullshit stuffed into an ugly suit of armor!"
Kang walks closer, fists clenched "You dare-"
"Yes, I do fucking dare, are you seriously, out of every possible asshole who might try, going to try and lecture ME about changing the past?! That is literally all you do! For gods sake, you just openly admitted that you built your empire on the ruins of humanity! You seriously think that gives you any kind of moral high ground?!"
Kang crosses his arms, trying to make himself look imposing, which doesn't really do much for him "I don't expect a primitive such as yourself to understand all that I've accomplished! I am KANG! I brought humanity back from the dust!"
"You don't give a shit about humanity, you purple douche, you just want there to be a blank slate for you to build your playground on! You're right, I don't know if saving President Kennedy will work out, unlike you, I don't have the advantage of infinite do-overs if things don't work out the way I had hoped, but you know what? I'd still do it all over again, no matter what, because I believe that Kennedy is a good man, I believe he can still accomplish greater things alive than he could as a martyr. And maybe there's some long-term consequence to The Hulk and Spider-Man not being treated like dog crap on America's shoes, but I'd still help them over again too! But that's not why you're even really here, is it? Otherwise, you wouldn't have bothered doing this big dramatic time freeze thing, you'd just have gone back further and made sure I wasn't able to stop Oswald's bullet. Or hell, just made it even easier on yourself and put an energy beam or something through my head before I could meet up with the other Avengers for the first time."
To my surprise, Kang actually chuckles a bit "Not bad, you neanderthal. You're somewhat right, dealing with your particular kind of... irritant unfortunately isn't as easy as simply going back and crushing you, time is fickle that way. No, to get the rightful timeline, the one that belongs to Kang, things have to be unraveled and put back together the right way. While I could simply squash you like the gnat you are, you must be made to see the error of your ways. You must remove YOURSELF from this time."
He reaches for a small console hanging from his belt, turning one of the dials, and things start to get...
...weird....
...
Kang's Flagship, Above New York City, January 10th, 2020