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This article, Nathaniel K. Richards (Earth-6164), is property of MarvelousMarty. |
Young Avengers Vol 1 1
History
Fools, all of history is my weapon. I fight with time--Nay, I control it... You are its playthings, for now... But I am its rightful ruler for the rest of eternity... And so will you, since after all, it is your fate...
- — Kang the Conqueror
- — Kang the Conqueror
Origins
While he was born and grew up in the modern age as the Nathaniel K. "Nathan" Richards, his existence and menacing presence of the future time-hopping traveler from the 40th century who would be known as Kang the Conqueror is quite far complicated, unexpectedly becoming the result of a causal loop in which he has no apparent beginning nor end but only an endless series of events that leads into his cyclic creation, not to mention his variants across time and space which diverged from his "prime" self in his eons of conquest, slaughter, and control across the multiverse.
Early Years
- Main article: Nathaniel K. Richards (Earth-61615)
Nathan K. Richards had the same exact history with his younger self, right until the latter was seemingly successful in finally defeating his future self Kang the Conqueror for good during the final days of the last known glorious event of the 21st century, recognizably known by many as the "Golden Age of Heroes." Along with this finally accomplished feat, Nate apparently was also successful in rewriting his destiny of becoming Kang himself, after his final defeat.
However, as the Golden Age of Heroes was on the verge of an end, since most modern age heroes on Earth were forced to go into retirement due to old age or had already died, started a new rise of dystopia throughout the entire planet for the next several centuries, known as the "Dark Ages of the Heroic Era."
The 30th Century
After centuries of advancement and warfare, peace was eventually brought to the land by the contributions of the remaining heroes, including Nate, who still continues his heroic crusade as the Iron Lad despite being more committed as a scientist and inventor. Since Nate had brought peace to this war-torn future, he became known as one of it's most renowned legendary benefactors, where he was recognized for annihilating the last known conflict of the Dark Ages that occurred across the entirety of the Eurasian Plate caused by the great hundred years war between Apocalypse and Lord Sinister, which triggered the superhuman wars and shook a quarter of the planet's civilization due to its sheer destruction and casualties until both forces were thwarted.
Thanks to the help of his allies and followers throughout his prolonged lifetime as a renowned scientist, Nate's futuristic and improved technological inventions had also greatly helped him from aging biologically and consistently makes his way living pass into the future, reaching to a time by the end of the 30th century where humanity had gone pass and had been fully recovered from the Dark Ages. During the next several hundred years leading towards the 40th century, it was thanks to Nate and his lifetime partner Cassie Lang's generations worth of research and technology invented during their committed stays and expeditions in the Quantum Realm that the succeeding generation's supreme scientists have successfully improved the nature biology to the point that they seem to age much slower than 21st century human.
The 40th Century
Arriving at the beginning of the more chaotic 41st Century, it was revealed that Nate has isolated himself within his dominion in the Quantum Realm for millennia, when he ended up alone and overwhelmed by his painful memories from the hundred years war during the Dark Ages after having to not being able to move on from the death of his loving wife that was Cassie, who sadly succumbed to her injuries after a devastating battle against Baron Karza, the deadliest ruler from the Microverse (and formerly the Negative Zone) since the late Psycho-Man, whom Karza had usurped and slain. After Karza's defeat, Nate and his scientific colleagues tried to save Lang with the most advanced of medical procedure during the time, but due to her unique body cells (her lifetime exposure to the Pym Particles as the superhero Stinger) rejecting the effects of the serum that grants most normal people longevity and superhumans accelerated healing factor around the time, causing for Nate to grief his loss for the rest of his life.
Slowly becoming detached from reality due to his long-time seclusion, Nate became desperate to end his pain and internal torment he even tried to travel back in time using the time machine on his Iron Lad suit and travelling through the Quantum Realm more than once, only to realize that every time he tries and save his wife, it still ends up with Cassie dying in many sorts of ways, traumatizing him even more than he already was. Around this time, Nate would face off against the extraterrestrial warrior Ord and rest of his fellow Breakworldians, a race whose technology of seeing various futures have led to them seeking the extermination of sentient life on Earth, seeing prophecy in one near future that its overabundance of mutates, mutants, and other superhumans in its governing entities would eventually trigger an intergalactic war that would lead to the destruction of their home, Breakworld. It was the time of that life-changing moment when Nate himself, now fully consumed by rage & wickedness, and is driven to delusion and insanity having fully lost his empathy, sense and touch with reality, has come to such realization, a realization that there was no such thing as an escape for him to change his ultimate destiny in time, no use in avoiding who he truly is in the end, believing that if he were to save the very world he started to despise yet still sworn to protect, Nathan Richards had to embrace his supposed fate as he determinedly turns himself into his once future self, Kang the Conqueror.
As one of his first acts of violence in his grand vision of a safer and far perfect future under his sovereignty, Kang mercilessly and recklessly committed terror attacks against both Earth's defensive forces and the Breakworldians, costing a number of countless casualties in a matter of seven days, as the Breakworldians' strength would diminish in the process which some optimistic survivors would initially see as a silver lining, believing that Kang's intent was to save humanity at all costs. However, the series of events that followed for the next few weeks has led to Kang being able to bring the entire war-ridden country of the United States onto its knees, having no other who defender to protect and fix everything back to the way things were before but himself, letting himself be the one and only savior the Earth can have during those grim times. According to Kang, he "barely made any effort" during his first conquest over the country.
To maintain control over the countries he has conquered, Kang sought out and commanded almost every passionate enforcer or rogue superhuman (e.g. mutates, mutants, Inhumans) within the territories of the following countries which he ruled and convinced them to serve him as his enforcers, and killed the ones who refused to do so. Among of his most trusted associates and lieutenants were the criminally insane speedster Speed Demon and the vengeful former princess turned master assassin Ravonna Renslayer, whom the latter eventually became Kang's lover. First, Kang conquered and "unified" the majority of the Earth, then began conquering the galaxy, taking over thousands of entire empires and civilizations, such as but were not limited to the Badoon, Breakworldians, Kosmosians, Shi'ar, Sovereign, and Technarchy. Throughout his eons of conquest, Kang and his growing coalitions enslaved, converted, or forged alliances with communities into his intergalactic domain through his twisted vision of unification, while destroying those he deemed a threat to his domain and people on his home planet.
Manipulating the Timeline
In a particular point in his life as a tyrannical dictator of the entire American and Eurasian plate as well as the leading superpower of the Milky Way Galaxy, Nathaniel used the Breakworldians' time-shifting tech for himself and was able to use it with upgrading a time machine previously encased and located beneath the underground areas of the abandoned Baxter Building and having grown bored of his once peaceful time that he turned half of societies across the universe into a dark dystopian reality, he decided to play god or "play around" and travel back in time to the past using the space ship he discovered, thereby initiating his ability to time travel with these upgraded technologies at his disposal.
However, given the constant travels and manipulations of Kang throughout history, which resulted in either the creations of branching timelines under his control or ones in an inevitable state of chaos and bloodshed due to the fallen heroes and villains which Kang had slayed out of catharsis of reminiscing his past in person, it could no longer be determined exactly how many times he had traveled across different points in time or when he first manipulated time. Realizing that all the purging of heroes and villains with his endless conquering of various civilizations across time did not fully satisfy his quench as the Conqueror, Kang wanted to make a challenge for himself when he discovered an multiversal agency that polices the flow and structure of the space-time continuum across the multiverse. Learning how efficient and dangerous the agency was with hunting "time-hopping wanderers" like Kang, the latter planned a long-term strategy with his desire to rule the timeline by hiding and inserting himself across various points in the history of the prime reality, enacting this plan as he set his course for Ancient Egypt.
Ancient Egypt
After arriving in ancient Egypt, Kang introduced himself to humanity as a warrior-like figure, saving one of the earliest Egyptian civilization from both the Celestial Gardeners, who tried to terraform the planet in order to restore the waning population of the Celestials as the sentient authorities of the universe, as well as the smaller yet still deadly Deviants whom the Celestials were actively exterminating as Kang knew the Deviants were their flawed and bloodthirsty creations. In the aftermath of both subsequent battles, Kang was revered and set himself up as the Pharaoh Rama-Tut to the Egyptians, where he had somehow had a family with a prestigious line. However, Rama-Tut's reign would meet its greatest rival when he was challenged from this position by the power of the firstborn mutant, En Sabah Nur (the mutant who would one day become known as Apocalypse), and his loyal followers, the Horsemen of Apocalypse.
Knowing how the agency could end up tracking him if he decided to stay in this timeline and defeat Apocalypse even before his reign came to pass as it should be, Kang decided to leave Ancient Egypt to continue his linear conquest of the main timeline, but before doing so, he decided to build and activate one of his artificial intelligence an android body as a stand-in, given past memories from Kang's experience as the Pharaoh and was designated to act as Rama-Tut himself, in an attempt to continue his legacy in the Egyptian culture furthermore, to have a lifespan of more years right before the android was finally ousted by a group of time-travelers revealed to be the Fantastic Four, who at the time, had already faced Kang once during a point in time that they decided not to unveil to the Conqueror.
Intending to free the people from his coercive reign and to restore the timeline as it should be, the Fantastic Four battled Rama-Tut and his fanatics until he was beaten, and while the fallen pharaoh tried to escape the timeline through his ship, he was convinced that the agency had already caught with him as his ship and technology had gone missing. Weakened and fully usurped by the heroes, this Life-Model Decoy of Rama-Tut would meet his fate, taking his last stand against the growing forces of his fateful usurper, Apocalypse (whose genetic mutation was biologically enhanced by the ruins of a Celestial Gardener ship), while Rama-Tut still attempted to recreate the time-traveling technology to his last breath. The android's organic-esque remains were eventually buried inside the Pyramid of Giza by his surviving followers to seal Rama-Tut's legacy as a powerful pharaoh.
Age of Enlightenment
Following his short-lived reign on Egypt, he decided to travel towards a particular point of the late 18th century in Wisconsin, specifically during the Age of Enlightenment. At some point later in that timeline, the last known female descendant of Rama-Tut's lineage — a woman by the name of Teresa Tourminet — became married to a man by the name of Victor "Timely" Kang, a critical philosopher whose core interest and teachings was the nature of space and time, by the time of the 18th century, and as well as an inventor and a professor who frequently proposes his own principles of robotics, years after the death of Leonardo da Vinci and several more years even before the birth of Isaac Asimov.
Unbeknownst to Tourminet, she had basically married her foremost ancestor since Victor was Kang himself in actuality, with the latter's intention to keep his future descendance intact. As a result of his marriage to his own descendant, Victor and the woman had conceived six children, which was indeed an enough amount to keep the future fate of his own kind sealed for the next several centuries towards the modern age, 21st century. Out of honor towards outstanding philosophical theories regarding time and space and his underrated robotic principles, he was recognized as one of the most well-acclaimed philosophers and inventors during the Age of Enlightenment.
Along with it, his descendant turned wife was also revealed to be the modern founder of a secret religious cult based off her ancestor, known as the Cult of Rama-Tut, much to Victor's delight and fascination for his descendant's loyalty towards his own kin. In dedication to the legacy of Rama-Tut, the group itself had built a strong discreet foundation within the Kang family, the cult itself had stood strong for over centuries until its value had seemingly ended within the family lineage by the beginning of the modern age.
Modern Timeline
Having enough patience to keep on living in his 18th century life for the next ten years, Kang had decided to end his term as Victor by promptly faking his own death, in order go back to the timestream, where he recalled of his old family and allies during the glory days of the Age of Heroes, the 21st century. Throughout his following quest in the modern timeline, Kang the Conqueror has taken every opportunity to conquer it, leading him in clashing with various heroes and rivals, most notably the Avengers and even unique temporal counterparts of himself, from different countless timelines as he would end up becoming one of his greatest adversaries across the multiverse due to his threatening presence.
When Kang was on his way to escape through the timestream after losing a battle against the Avengers in the late 21st century, Kang accidentally lost one of his trophy vaults, containing his former Iron Lad armor and a few other devices he once used, throughout the timestream itself, sending it in an unknown point in time. At first, Kang never cared when his suit had fallen across the timestream and into the modern timeline, but out of sheer curiosity, and an act of desperation to clear his mind from having too many thoughts on where the vault would have possibly landed, Kang decided to have a shortstop, following the traces of the vault in order to find out when and where it has landed. Following the traces of the suit's vault, Kang's ship has landed in the modern age, respectively at the exact location of where his childhood residence would have become someday, approximately three years in the future.
Along with it, Kang had also discovered that out that was how his parents at the time had found out about the neurokinetic armor below their residence's bunker, in which they would keep it hidden later, thinking that keeping it safe from the younger Nate would be the best decision until he would grow up as an adult. And at that moment, Kang had also thought of an idea of indirectly helping out the eventual younger Nate Richards achieve his ultimate, seemingly inescapable destiny as Kang the Conqueror sooner.
Forging His Own Destiny
In one of his first steps towards his scheme, Kang had built an advanced version of a L.M.D., containing an uploaded artificial intelligence similarly to those of the Heroic Age hero Vision only basing the A.I.'s personalities off Kang before he became the conqueror that he was now, designating his name as Jonas and gave "him" false memories about having a normal life in New York, with him voluntarily working at the Graham Windham youth development organization, giving him the role that would make him the future mentor of Nate.
At some point in time later on, Kang was so desperate in making his younger self's history morbidly tragic exactly to how he experienced as a child, he traveled in time a few years into the future where Nate was already born, and unhesitatingly burned the Richards Residence, at the night of his own 9th birthday. When the great fire had promptly engulfed their entire home into flames, the younger Nate was almost killed inside his bedroom having suffocated by the smoke, similar to what has already happened to his parents at that night, Kang intentionally rescued an unconscious Nate, and carried the child outside his burning home to keep him alive and the timeline intact.
Later on, Kang decided to six years later when was 15 years old, using the obvious advantage of being mentally linked to his younger self, Kang showed the boy his ultimate destiny through showing him visions of terror, which somehow proved to be a mistake, for at least a short while, until Kang immediately realized at everything that he was doing to Nate has already happened to him when he was fifteen years old, since he still remembers everything. Afterwards, Kang evidently followed both Nate and Jonas through their journey towards discovering his future fate and the Iron Lad armor, with Jonas finally finding out about his true being and nature.
Following the incident when Nate had discovered his grim fate in the future as Kang, the latter continued his plan by commencing the same test experiment that led to the eventual formation of the Young Avengers, summoning the growing android, to whom he decided to call the Growing Man, which its role was to only wreak havoc across the narrow streets of New York City. As he expected according to plan, the young heroes have indeed form for the very first time, with the younger Nate eventually becoming of the leaders of the team. Unbeknownst to his younger self and his teammates, the small town havoc of the Growing Man was just the beginning of what's about to come and happen next, when he would have finally meet his own destiny, far later in the future.
Osborn's Dark Reign
Kang, now mostly reassured that his plans are going providently well, he tried to flee back to his own era, but was inescapably caught in the middle of a massive time storm and was forced to reappear once again after his ship had been struck by a cosmic lightning, damaging the ship's mainframe and controls, as it crash-landed back in the modern era of Earth-61615, only several years later, now during Norman Osborn's "Dark Reign" over the entire world for several months by then. With no where else to go to after his ship was broken, Kang then came into encountering and clashing with the Dark Avengers, which led into a destructive skirmish between the conqueror and the forces of Osborn's H.A.M.M.E.R. that occurred throughout the New York.
In the end, Kang was unexpectedly defeated when Osborn, following the suggestion of Noh-Varr, had decided to secretly call in the Young Avengers to help them defeat and apprehend Kang for the very first time. At first, the young heroes, but since they realized that one of their core missions were to help Nate change his destiny from becoming Kang, they decided to help Osborn and the veracious villains defeat Kang on their own terms.
After his first known defeat as the conqueror, Kang was imprisoned at the maximum security prison under the authority and custody of H.A.M.M.E.R., apparently for the rest of his life, with his weapons and equipment inspected, where it was all kept in a storage vault inside a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility within Brooklyn. Since his imprisonment, Kang's currently damaged spaceship was also inspected by the organization and Osborn decided to have it carefully transferred it in the Helicarrier Bay beneath the Triskelion, due to unknown reasons.
Infinity War
During his intended lifetime imprisonment at the Raft, Kang was reluctantly broken out of his highly-secured cell by Iron Lad and Hawkeye after a reluctant agreement to have him out, without having to trigger any of the facility's alarms, and offered his freedom, his weapons and equipment being handed back to him, and his way back home, in exchange for his help and effort in the heroes' cause against Thanos, who was on the pinnacle of warping the universe after successfully wiping out half its population, due to him falling prey into Lady Death's tempting and morbid whispers to him.
The surviving Younger Avengers believed that Kang's involvement would somehow even the odds of Thanos' godly power along with his massive Starfleet, only for Kang to seemingly ditch on their agreement the moment he was freed by the desperate heroes when he suddenly vanished. The two knew Kang would still be stuck since his time-travelling vessel was severely damage, as they also had some lingering sense of faith that Kang would have no other choice but eventually help them. After tracking down the location of Thanos in his Sanctuary which was located in the "edge of the cosmos," the alliance of the surviving heroes, antiheroes, and redeemed villains, battled the Mad Titan, aided by the Cosmic Entities. During the battle, Iron Lad and Hawkeye were gladly surprised by the last minute arrival of Kang to help the two and the heroes clash the bloodthirsty and rageful minions of Thanos, the Outriders and the Chitauri, among the massive Starfleet of his Sanctuary.
The two temporal counterparts and the heroic archer were able to fend off the incoming attackers, only to be overwhelmed by Thanos himself later on, who manages to seriously injure Iron Lad after former almost crushed Nate inside his own armor, much to Kang's dismay seeing his younger self in pain, immediately saving Nate from death. In the process of the ensuing battle, Thanos had overlooked his vengeful and restless adoptive daughter Nebula who was able to wrest the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos' hand. Her first act was to undo all that has occurred, which inadvertently freed the heroes and the cosmic entities and resurrected most of those who have once withered away into ash by the Titan's snap of changing reality, including the rest of the Young Avengers.
Back to the Future
The battle resumed afterwards against a gauntlet-less Thanos, and in the end it was Adam Warlock who finally possessed the Gauntlet after being reluctantly given by Nebula (who tried to kill her father out of revenge for his past sins), ending the cosmic conflict for the Infinity Gauntlet in the meantime. In the aftermath of Infinity War, Nate kept his promise to Kang, in which he helped his older self fix his spaceship so he could return to his home, the 40th century.
Before leaving the modern timeline onboard his futuristic spaceship after it was fixed with the help of various tech and his younger self's assistance, Kang lastly told Nate that his destiny isn't such an atrocity he should be renouncing, and all he had to do was to embrace it, when the right and fateful time comes. Afterwards, Kang entered his ship, and set off his course back to his timeline to see the current status of his rulership, apparently abandoning his crusade to make Nate into Kang sooner, at least for now.
The Resistance
Arriving back to his home timeline after believing he has sealed the fate of his younger self, Kang saw that so much has changed in his timeline in the 40th Century, both for the better and for the worse. One of these changes was Kang finding about the demise of his frequent lover and lieutenant, Ravonna Renslayer, who was forced to be killed by Kang's second-in-command, Speed Demon, after she suddenly went all heroic and rebellious towards her own leader and tried to form a Resistance against the Empire of Kang for the freedom of America. Finding about in the hardest way possible, Kang was stricken with grief and sorrow, feeling betrayed even after her death, with his unstable emotions had accidentally killed a few of his men and almost killed Speed Demon after suffering from believing the fact that his own beloved would turn on against him, after he had done for her.
As a consequence to her betrayal, Kang went back in time weeks earlier to an alternate past, exactly to the very moment where Ravonna first attempted to leave the Empire and abducted her to where she was, bringing her back to his present future timeline, to punish Ravonna by imprisoning her with the rest of of his collection of trophies located inside the secret vault of the abandoned Baxter Building, with Kang implying that her death was too easy of a consequence to her rebellious actions.
Visitors from the Past
Nate Richards as the heroic figure known as the Scarlet Centurion
After imprisoning the temporal duplicate of Ravonna, Kang was then informed by his messengers that a "family of visitors" from the past had unexpectedly arrived inside the Baxter Building. After recognizing their appearances, Kang immediately had his men take down and kidnap the visitors, interrogating to why the Fantastic Four would come to the future in the form of the Scarlet Centurion, a persona that he created in acting and pretending as a former nobleman of the future United States of America and a leader of the Resistance in their objective against Kang the Conqueror, during the arrival of the Fantastic Four. Moments before Kang turned into Centurion, he traveled back in time once again in a certain point in the past, recruiting his alternate past self as Kang so he could take his place in the meantime to take over his empire, while the prime Kang on the other hand, plays the role of Centurion inside the ruins of the Baxter Building, "assisting" the Fantastic Four.
Honestly answering Centurion's question during their first encounter, Reed Richards told Centurion that they went back in time using the Baxter Building's time machine in order to find a possible cure for Ben Grimm's worsening condition, and if he stayed as the "Thing" for far too long, his rock-like skin would become permanent for the rest of his entire life. Centurion questioned to why Ben does not embrace his true being as the Thing, only to accidentally insult Ben with that response that almost led them to have a brutal fight, before being calmed down by Sue Storm, Reed's fiancée. As he expected out of Ben's reaction and knowing that Reed and Sue aren't married yet, these version of the Fantastic Four were revealed to have come from the distant past, a few years even before his younger self had met and encountered the superhero team.
Centurion agreed to help the Fantastic Four, only to deceive the team, especially Reed, into "helping" him in the Resistance's lifelong mission, defeating Kang and his enforcers. As they were working on the cure for Grimm's condition inside the lab, Sue asked why he was willing to help them, when he hasn't even met them before. Centurion then partly told them the truth just so he could gain their trust even more, which was revealing his real identity, Nathan K. Richards, one of Reed Richard's long lost, distant cousin. Reed was confused by his revelation, since he had never met or have even heard of him before. Deciding not to "spoil the fun," Centurion simply hinted to Reed that they'll eventually meet his younger self, someday in the future. Aside from Centurion's background story, Reed also questioned the origins of Kang the Conqueror, to which Centurion tells him a fabricated origin about the latter, saying that Kang's true origins remains a mystery, with rumors only telling that he was a rogue time-traveler and a descendant of Victor von Doom.
Kang Attacks
Despite having already faced the Fantastic Four countless of times across countless timelines, Kang faced the version of team who encountered him for the first time
Unbeknownst to Kang and the rest of the team, Johnny and Ben decided to roam and have a one-to-one talk on what he's truly feeling about his condition, when it was abruptly interrupted after Johnny accidentally stepped on a pressure pad located at the end of the halls, only meters away from the lab, where Centurion and Reed still currently were. Though it seem like everything they found out was coincidental, the two discovering the true horrifying events of the dark future was all part of Kang's game. Secretly finding out about what happened to Ben and Johnny, Centurion used his mental link to communicate with the Kang divergence, signaling his next objective to teleport inside the building, and ruthlessly attack Centurion and the Fantastic Four without stopping, interrupting Ben and Johnny, causing for them to leave the vault, and jeopardizing Reed's work on closely completing the serum of Ben's cure. Johnny and Ben tried to fight off Kang, but his power, forcing the two and the rest to follow Centurion on the hiding place.
Due to the unexpected arrival of Kang, Centurion led the Fantastic Four to a secret vault, the same vault where both Ben and Johnny were earlier, and forced them to hide there, while Centurion "deals with Kang." Coming out of the vault, Centurion casually meets with the Kang remnant, thanking him for easily agreeing with his little game. Kang then asked his future self if he finally gets to go home afterwards, only to be stabbed through the chest with his own sword, killing him without any signs of remorse, telling the remnant that he would not be needing to.
Following the actions of murdering his temporal counterpart, Centurion returns to the hidden vault, holding Kang's head as he brings it in front of the heroic team like it was nothing new to him, much to the horror experienced by the latter. Since Ben already knew Centurion was not to be trusted, he immediately takes action, but before he could have thrown his massive fist at him, the unhinged uses his advanced combat skills, easily taking down the rocky behemoth, followed by gassing the rest down, before imprisoning every each one of them, except for Ben whom Centurion had taken to the lab, with the rest of his collection of trophies, located within another vault in the building.
The True Identity
Upon waking up inside his encased cell, Reed was being watched by Centurion as they start another conversation. During that very conversation, Centurion finally reveals him all about his true complicated origins, and that he was the true Kang all along. Along with it, Kang also introduced Reed to a fellow prisoner, revealing to be his son, or at least a future counterpart of his future son with Sue, named Franklin. Eventually, Sue was able to get her and the rest of the Fantastic Four out of their cells and began their search for Ben, who was being experiment upon by Kang after he was close into creating the cure, but not before helping the imprisoned Resistance members escape the building first.
However, in the wake of their escape with the rest of his prisoners, including the temporal duplicate of Ravonna Renslayer, Kang left Ben and went to get back up and created dozens of his temporal remnants to surround the prisons and prevent them from ever going home to their own timeline, and despite Kang knowing the risks of creating a larger fracture within the space-time continuum, he let his own unstable emotions and selfish ambitions of ruling the entire history of the "Prime Reality" get in the way, falsely assuring that he would still find a way if the structure of the multiverse were to suddenly collapse because of his reckless intentions. Kang and the temporal remnants arrived and encircled the members of the Resistance as they try and escape the Baxter Building, killing several prisoners in the process, despite the three's efforts to save them.
Reed fought Kang by himself while Johnny and Sue Storm helped the prisoners flee, but Kang's powerful anti-matter weapon combined with his combatant skills had only made him the victor, weakening Reed. As Kang prepares to deliver the killing blow to Reed, Ben rescues him and the rest of the team, conclusively giving up his goal to revert his own self back to human form, and instead has decided to embraced his powerful form, accepting the heroic persona of the Thing within him. Nearing the end of their final show down, the heroic four and Renslayer ultimately battles Kang, with Reed successfully taking out all of Kang's counterparts out of existence using an improvisational device of his own design, ultimately enraging Kang in his allied selves' defeat. The loss of his Council of other temporal variants of Kang was the final trigger of a domino effect that would ultimately crumble his international dynasty on the 41st century within that same year.
Rebuilding his Glory
While an infuriated Kang had a fair shot at reclaiming his power on the 41st Century even with everything he had left, the realization that the same humanity he once united from its state of chaos into his authoritarian rule had now amassed against him — a fortified and growing Resistance dedicated into bringing down the Kang Dynasty and restoring their freedom — has snapped him into submission. Impatience and weariness has finally rendered Kang to accept defeat and abandon his domain in the 40th Century, his own home timeline, escaping on his new upgraded ship — the Damocles Base — while his newfound enemies, including the old man Franklin Richards and Ravonna Renslayer's more heroic temporal duplicate, would pledge to hunt him down once they helped humanity reinstate populated states and the entirety of civilization in a world without the Conqueror.
Having amplified the last of his Quantum Realm technology, Kang would riskily yet successfully rebuild his empire after entering the Microverse, setting up his base of operations on Chronopolis. His activities of restoring Quantum-based power and resources even led to him originally forming a rivalry with a native Traanian who was the unhinged scientist and would-be conqueror named Psyste Vaxan, who weaponizes the emotions of lifeforms with his invention into submitting to his rule, in what Vaxan believed would achieve true peace and unity among worlds. However, when the the two had reached a stalemate during a destructive battle outside Chronopolis, both rulers would find a middle ground with a realization that they were not all that different with their notions and goals.
In exchange for Vaxan allowing him to continue expanding their rule in the Microverse on the former's behalf (since the Conqueror only primarily needed Chronopolis as his main base to supervise the realms he still had control over across time and space), Kang offered Vaxan access to the normal universe. Vaxan was intrigued by the concept of "greater worlds" existing beyond his microscopic home, and accepted their offer as both tyrants, with Kang even stalling the freedom fighter group known as the Micronauts who tried to stop Vaxan's attempt to reach the normal universe. Vaxan successfully entered the wormhole summoned by Kang's Quantum Tunnel as he enlarged into the normal universe, and initiated his expansion to establish his twisted vision of peace on the first worlds he discovered only to be challenged by some of the heroes of Earth: the Fantastic Four and various heroes who primarily utilized the powers of the Microverse to shrink or enlarge themselves, nicknamed the Pym Particle Pioneers.
Along with the help of the Micronauts who reached Earth in time, the protectors of the Terran planet were able to free humanity from the suppressive influences of Vaxan's Control-Box, ultimately using his own weapon against him which defeated Vaxan. With Vaxan's imprisonment via exile in the Negative Zone, Kang took over some of his secret domains in the Microverse on his own, and even left the realms' heroes alone, notably the Micronauts, with both freeing Vaxan's coerced followers and preventing his rivals from taking over their home with another tyrannical empire, ensuring that the civilizations of the Microverse would be free and united in the morally right and justified manner.
Despite his villainous reputation, Kang would participate during the heroes' active mission from the shadows, with him being the one who slayed Baron Karza, who during this point in time, was still a bloodthirsty, high-ranking warrior on his way to rise as a despot. Kang vengefully killed the Baron, with Nathan believing it would avenge and prevent the untimely demise of his beloved, Cassie Lang, since her future self — the one who Kang had married and lovingly lived with for centuries — ended up passing away from her fatal wounds in the late 39th Century after battling Karza and preventing his invasion of Earth.
Battles Throughout Time
Ends of the Earth
Kang reluctantly works as an agent of the TVA to prevent the unpreceded acceleration of the end of time and death of the multiverse
After his major defeat against the Fantastic Four for the first time as well as his later battles with Earth's other heroes, Kang continued his conquest across time in order to one-up against the heroes whom he grew to despise. While Kang ended up slaying various past and future counterparts of heroes and villains across the multiverse, his insatiable feeling of dissatisfaction of being unable to defeat the heroes' in the modern ages has led to him on a continuous course of retreat and further escapade across the multiversal timestream, eventually landing in a barren realm which appears to be an endless wastelands, away from Chronopolis, wherein he encountered and gathered with other time-hopping figures such as Victor Kang and a divergent Kang from a dystopian future, who were led by Lord Immortus, a godly being who claimed to be the final warrior and leader of the Time-Keepers and explained to Kang that he and other time-hoppers were brought to the "void at the end of time," a place simply called Limbo by its surviving inhabitants, due to a glitch in the timestream.
In Limbo, the time-hoppers fought the "embodiment of entropy" known as the Griever at the End of All Things, an entity who was responsible for unleashing the great destruction of the multiverse with the ability to summon a swarm of other ruinous intergalactic cosmic beings such as Alioth to fulfill her impulsive duty of consuming lost and wandering cosmic beings. Being welcomed into sacred organization of Immortus which was located in the Null-Time Zone, Kang reluctantly joined forces with Immortus' servants, the time-keeping agency known as the Time Variance Authority, in dealing with threats that would accelerate the end of the multiverse by completely damaging the timestream. It only took a moment for Kang to realize the these authorities were, as they were the very agency who tried to hunt him down during his first era of conquest across time, something that fatefully drove him into sneaking his way across the modern ages in the first place.
However, it wasn't long until Kang discovered the revelation that Immortus was not some all-powerful deity or extraterrestrial deity known by some as "He Who Remains," but a future temporal counterpart of himself who intentionally summoned other counterparts like him from the timestream into the void to do his bidding in the frontline at the cost of their lives. Despite being merely an agent of the TVA in the beginning for a long while, Kang eventually challenged Immortus the moment the former told most of his fellow colleagues that they were being deceived by their own founder and ruler. With the state of the TVA starting to divide in confusion, Kang led his uprising against the godly yet weary Immortus, whom he mercilessly killed when the so-called final Time-Keeper was bested in battle. Throughout his unexpected journey in space and time, Kang was baffled and distraught by the multiversal cataclysm which he and other few cosmic beings have witnessed emerging non-stop in the end of time, something that he and his counterparts and other allies have failed to fully prevent even as they banded together. Having a newer, clearer and more radical objective to save the fate of the multiverse in his own twisted vision, he maintained his power as the very last known head of the Time Variance Authority after mercilessly murdering his own older self that was Immortus among other opposing temporal counterparts and taking his place, reclaiming his status as one of the greatest time-hoping and chronic manipulating figures in the vast multiverse.
With such mighty power, Kang aimed to thwart any time-related threat that endangers and potentially drives the multiverse into its prophetic destruction, stabilizing it by preventing the creation and spread of more and more branching timelines caused by time-travel actions and/or incidents, or if inevitable, keep temporal interference to a minimum by keeping it into one stable, "sacred" timestream, a spatial bubble of linear timelines from different alternate parallel universes, thus preventing timelines from converging or merging with each other that it could cause another grave catastrophe in space-time, something that could pave way for beings and entities such as the destructive Griever at the End of All Things in accelerating the death of the multiverse itself, which Kang and the TVA had feared would occur if they fail to protect the sacred timeline which they helped constructed and solidified for countless millennia, which seemed like an eternity.
Kang Dynasty
Kang as Mister Gryphon, the latest Alternity of the Time Variance Authority
With this, Kang succeeded the legacy of Lord Immortus even after his death in a different light, bearing the determined identity and persona of Sergius Gryphon as the new head/director or Alternity of the TVA, either abducting and/or recruiting more and more individuals which he intellectually deemed as valuable and essential enough to fight for his cause and strengthen his cosmic authority on a multiversal scale; this even included the temporal duplicate of Ravonna Renslayer, the one who helped took down his empire, and the TVA's long-time loyal senior manager Mobius M. Mobius, who were initially unaware of Immortus and Gryphon's real identity, among other alternate versions of individuals, dubbed "variants," from timelines (be it destroyed pasts or futures) across the multiverse that were considered to be dying or beyond salvation due to the very disastrous or apocalyptic events which ruined it in the first place. To his newly-gained armada of protectors of the sacred timeline, Kang promised all his subordinates the safety of the multiverse from a greater peril, although deep inside, Kang's ulterior motive of controlling the chronic flow of the multiverse still remains within him.
He deemed this grand achievement as killing two birds with one stone, since he gets to harness legitimate power and authority over the timestream while still being able to be perceived by many as a godly savior and protector of it at the same time. Overseeing many timelines with ease, Kang noticed how his younger self, Iron Lad, from the modern timeline was starting to successfully in altering his own fate, forging his own destiny away from being the diabolical Kang the Conqueror, thus filling Kang with insurmountable envy and despair that his younger self was striving his greatest to become a new and independent person for the past several years. Kang nevertheless scoffed at Iron Lad's attempt, despite the truth that he was deeply insecure and desperate in keeping the fate of his younger self in check and ensure his sacred future path into becoming Kang would always be inevitable, especially now that he planned to recruit Iron Lad to fight with him in the ultimate schism to prevent the accelerating end of the multiverse.
Everything Dies
Arriving at some point in late 2027, the year considered to be the present point of the modern era according to the TVA's timestream watch, Kang was hunting and tracking down the multiversal-hopping team known as the Exiles who arrived in the present timeline to warn this reality's heroes of Gryphon's true intentions, leading to the Conqueror reluctantly clashing with the Young Avengers and their older mentors and allies — notably the Avengers and the Future Foundation — who eventually saw through Kang's presence and deception as Mister Gryphon, when the Vision-like Young Avenger, the futuristic android Jonas, Kang's own creation who had redeemed and freed himself from his creators' grasps, had detected his presence as a time anomaly. Deciding to come clean as a means of avoiding conflict, Kang warned them that if Iron Lad does not end up joining him and the TVA outside the space-time continuum, then not only history would be irreparably changed, but so will the entire multiversal timestream be slowly eradicated in catastrophic ways.
Kang's presence in the modern age only accelerated this change. While the Young Avengers geared to fight Iron Lad's future self, the Avengers saw firsthand the changes that were being made and resolved to try and help Kang restore the natural order. When the Young Avengers fought back, they were easily trounced by Kang who turned Iron Lad's own armor against his teammates. Hacking through Jonas' interface since he was Kang's invention was after all, the latter opened a time portal to bring Iron Lad back to his own era, but was knocked in by Iron Lad's teammate Stature, sealing it, in which she and the rest of the Young Avengers fought back even harder than before, a lot more prepared and a lot stronger than when they first faced off against Kang when they were still teenagers back in 2015, or when they first defeated him in late 2017 during Osborn's Dark Reign.
Iron Lad realized the gravity of the situation which Kang had warned him about and willingly came with Kang to join the TVA in the Null-Time Zone as his new recruit. Kang trained and mentored Iron Lad among new other TVA agents, but as Kang would expect due to his mental link with his younger self, Iron Lad was already doubtful and it wasn't long until he became disillusioned with Kang's words, suspicious that there was more to what he was telling him. As a result, Kang's memories suddenly disconcerted excruciatingly and would retroactively shift back and forth as Kang envisions the lives of different Kangs and Iron Lads from other realities all at once. Thinking of a way to keep his younger selves from starting another mutiny over the TVA, Kang amped up his ultimate scheme to deal with both the impeding certainty of betrayal and the larger threat that was the end of time: founding and reassembling an army of his temporal counterparts into the Council of Kangs.
Unfortunately for Kang, while he had grown powerful in time to ensure his quest and authority to lead the agency that would save the multiverse from the Griever at the End of All Things, Iron Lad made a risky move to have his memories suppressed using a biological implant, which he made with the Future Foundation, for a short period in order to keep Kang incapacitated, long enough for the TVA to discover recorded message exposing the truth of Kang and Mister Gryphon being one and the same individuals, in a similar fashion Kang had done in order to rule the TVA from Lord Immortus. Thanks to the assistance of the Exiles, some of the once prominent loyalists from the TVA, including Renslayer and Mobius, have sided with Iron Lad's mutiny that they were willing to bring down the organization which they dedicated themselves believing and working for a long time, especially since they knew the truth. Kang was fuming with rage and dismay once he witnessed his entire agency break down wither away into oblivion indefinitely, questioning his younger self how they would be dealing with the Griever's doom since the TVA was gone.
As they watched the entity Alioth, the Griever's transtemporal beast, enter the Null-Time Zone and slowly devour the TVA's headquarters, Kang knew it was too late when some of his former subordinates had abandoned the Null-Time Zone and escaped into the timestream using their time-hopping devices. The two versions of Nate Richards were left stranded at the collapsing TVA base, and has decided to stay there to keep Alioth trapped within the zone rather than let it enter the already damaged timestream. Together, the pair piloted Kang's spaceship, the Damocles Base, arming it with a supply of the Enigma Force, which was once used to power the TVA headquarters in the Null-Time Zone, before driving right through the misty heart of Alioth. The Damocles Base impaled the interdimensional beast and self-destructed, releasing the energy from within as Alioth unwittingly consumed the sword-shaped ship, thus paralyzing it.
Iron Lad reassured his older self that he had faith in his fellow allies back in the modern era, but Kang argued with a realization that even though they managed to incapacitate Alioth into catatonia, he believed that everything else is doomed to die, even time. Despite seeing the point in his older self, Iron Lad saw hope as they used positive energy against Alioth, reminding Kang that their efforts were never in vain, evoking that with every ending, a new beginning would always be there. Kang merely thought that his younger self couldn't be more hopeful in a crisis, despite the fact that deep inside the former himself wished that he would still feel the same.
In their final moments, the two Nate Richards assimilated their tech and worked together one last time to repair the major "cracks" in the timestream to keep the routes of their subordinates uninterrupted, ensuring that the message would be transmitted throughout the multiverse about the threat of the Griever at the End of All Things. A severely weakened yet enraged Alioth wailed out a final surge of anti-matter, consuming the two along with the TVA headquarters, but as they calculated, the monstrous being was left to cry within the Null-Time Zone for the rest of eternity until its master, Griever at the End of All Things, had fulfilled her purpose: destroying the multiverse and recreating it into one patchwork planetary realm known as Battleworld.
Destinies Realigned
A series of universal rafts containing the survivors of the incursions from different realities and timelines had miraculously found its way into the last multiversal realm, and the heroic and villainous survivors themselves set out to defeat the tyrannical power of the Beyonders, the race in which the Griever was revealed to belong to as she was also known as the Great Mother. Once the surviving heroes have restored the multiverse and returned almost everything to the status quo. Both Iron Lad and Kang were restored to life as a result, but strangely enough, the two's mental link was no longer there, thus rendering Kang's existence as a paradox. Kang discovered this revelation when he traveled back to the modern era to pay the younger Nate a visit, only to found out how Nate had finally abandoned his mantle as Iron Lad and left the Avengers in order to start a normal yet passionate life with Cassie Lang, who had done the same.
Kang saw his attempts for his younger self to accelerate his fate as Kang and finally realized how futile all his attempts were, leaving the modern timeline once he accepted that his younger self was free from the shackles of becoming him in a future, and the possibility of it was little to none. Traveling across the timestream in route to his home reality and timeline, Kang contemplated what was left for him to accomplish as a time-hopping pirate in a multiverse, only to face the wrath of a reorganized Time Variance Authority, now under the leadership of Ravonna Renslayer, as they vowed to hunt him down and punish him for his acts of chaos and mischief across different timelines throughout the multiverse during his reigns of enduring regime and conquest.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Increased Lifespan: Kang the Conqueror is approximately at least 1000 years old in terms of chronological age, but the people of the next generation he's currently living in have successfully improved biology and advanced technology to the point that they seem to age much slower than the 21st century man, something that was factored in by technology derived from the Quantum Realm, which originated in the deeper Microverse which enabled Kang to modify and prolong the "biological clocks" of most lifeforms. In fact, it was also due to his prolonged exposure to the Microverse along with the myriad of time-shifting technology which he uses that Nate was considered to be one of the oldest humans in his timeline due to him being one of the last few living people who was born in 21st century and has lived through the 4th millennium. As a result, the older Nate Richards would appear to be a man whose appearance ranges between his late 40s to his mid-50s.
- Paradoxical Existence
- Nigh-Omnipresence
- Nigh-Omniscience
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| Intelligence* |
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| Strength* |
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| Speed* |
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| Durability* |
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| Energy Projection* |
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| Fighting Skills* |
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| * Teleporter; other stats' enhanced ratings due to armor and advanced technology and nigh-limitless resources | |||||
Abilities
- Gifted Intelligence
- Superior Level Intellect
- Master Scientist
- Master Engineer
- Political Savvy
- Expert Tactician
- Skilled Combatant
- Indomitable Will
Strength level
- Class 10+ (with armor)
- Class 6 (without armor)
Weaknesses
- Mental Instability
- Insanity
- Delusional Disorder
- Superiority Complex
- Mental Link to his Younger Self (formerly)
Paraphernalia
Equipment:
- Battle Armor: Kang's battle armor is produced from some of the most versatile and durable alloys across time, spanning from Vibranium retrieved in ancient times to advanced synthetic material from his home in the 40th century. It is neurokinetic, meaning it responds to his subconscious thoughts. Though Kang has no innate superhuman powers, his armor endows him with rough equivalents of superhuman abilities, and sometimes even beyond such levels.
- Enhanced Strength
- Durability
- Anti-Gravity Device
- Video Communicator
- Time Travel
- Concussive Bolts
- Weaponry
- Electric Shock
- Hover Pad
- Survival Kit
- Body Transference
- Kang's Light of the Centuries Sphere
- Kang's Time Scanner
- Neurokinetic Armor (formerly): Iron Lad's battle armor is produced from a rare synthetic alloy from the 40th century. It is neurokinetic, meaning it responds to his subconscious thoughts. Though Kang has no powers, his armor endows him with rough equivalents of super-human abilities. Kang's neurokinetic armor has since he lost it when he decided to return back to his timeline, later revealing that it consequently fell into the timestream, where his younger self would have later find it during the modern age of heroes.
Transportation:
- Chrono-Ship of the Conqueror
- Damocles Base (formerly; destroyed)
Weapons: He typically carries various weapons, such as an anti-matter defense screen generator, a "vibration-ray" projector, an electromagnetic field amplifier, neutrino-ray warheaded missile launcher (hand-gun size), electrical paralysis generator, nerve gas sprayer and a molecular expander. He commands a vast array of warriors from across all periods of time, including his own future era, armed with advanced weaponry.
Notes
- No special notes.
- ↑ Modern Comics: Young Avengers Vol 1 5
Trivia
- No trivia.
See Also
- Appearances of Nathaniel K. Richards (Earth-6164)
- Character Gallery: Nathaniel K. Richards (Earth-6164)
- Quotations by Nathaniel K. Richards (Earth-6164)
Discover and Discuss
- Search News for: Kang · Nathaniel Kang Richards · Nathaniel K. Richards (Earth-6164)
Links and References
- None.