Star-Lord Peter Quill stood at the observation window on the Milano's bridge.
He was holding an unopened bag of potato chips he had sneaked from the celebration after the Battle of Xandar.
Outside the window was the faster-than-light transit station the Imperium of Man had just built.
The gigantic gate, carved from living metal, gave off a cold, mechanical light, and the energy runes engraved on its surface flickered and shifted as it operated.
The vortex inside the gate turned slowly, now and then sending out ripples, and ships bearing the double-headed eagle flew out of it.
Pillars of flame jetted from their engines, leaving straight, dazzling golden trails behind them.
A few minutes later, several more ships followed close behind and headed off into the depths of the Milky Way in orderly formation.
"Earthlings built all this?"
Shock crept into Quill's voice; he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
As far as he knew, human technology had only just reached the stage of getting into space on fuel rockets.
When Yondu took him from the farm in Missouri, even landing on the Moon had been an enormous challenge for humanity.
Even as an adult, he had kept an eye out for news from Earth, yet he had heard nothing about this.
A civilisation without interstellar travel is effectively invisible in space.
The last news he'd had was that Thanos was planning to attack Earth.
Yet far from being destroyed, Earth had pushed out into space and planted faster-than-light navigation stations across the cosmos.
The other Guardians of the Galaxy joined him.
Gamora stood beside Quill with her arms folded. Her green face was expressionless, her gaze fixed on the Imperial fleet moving along the route.
She had trained under Thanos since childhood and understood better than any of the other Guardians
what it meant for a military force to hold such precise formation in the void.
Even in Thanos's army, only a handful of units could manage it.
This was a force capable of competing on a cosmic scale.
Rocket jumped onto the control panel and tapped the touchscreen for the Milano's external sensors with his small furry paws.
He zoomed in as far as it would go on the details of an Imperial frigate, muttering technical jargon about propulsion specs and weapon calibres.
"Did these guys bolt engines onto their guns?"
"Whoever designed this warship must be a hardcore warmonger."
"I am Groot…" Little Groot, standing in his flowerpot, echoed Rocket.
Drax the Destroyer, arms folded as he looked out the window, said bluntly, "I hope all of humanity hasn't turned into war-crazed lunatics."
"This gives me a bad feeling. It's like your hometown has become the territory of a dictatorial empire that's churning out weapons day and night to prepare for war." Rocket pulled back his paws, turned to Quill, and gave him a smug grin. "Hope the farm you grew up on hasn't been flattened yet."
"I am Groot." Potted Groot nodded hard.
"They may already have destroyed it," Drax added with a serious expression. "As far as I know, dictatorships like destroying farms. It is the first step in establishing power."
"This can't go on." Star-Lord casually pressed the chips into Gamora's hand, walked over to the star-chart projector, and swiped quickly across the display with his finger.
The Milano's holographic star chart unfolded in the centre of the bridge, and countless star systems turned into glittering points of light.
Many of them bore the double-headed eagle. Those were the systems controlled by the Imperium of Man.
The enemy was expanding at a terrifying rate. At this pace, it would soon swallow the whole galaxy and spread even further.
In the future, the double-headed eagle would cover the entire night sky.
"If we start a war carelessly, the galaxy will be plunged into the abyss. We have to deal with this mess before it gets out of hand."
Star-Lord turned to Gamora, Rocket, Drax, and Groot. "Everyone, we need to find allies who'll help us resist the Imperium's expansion."
None of the other Guardians objected.
The Guardians of the Galaxy had defeated Ronan the Accuser, saved Xandar, and helped many other civilisations through crises.
From arrogant royal priests to interstellar mercenaries and trackers, everyone across the galaxy told stories about them, and they had become famous.
That gave them real pull.
When Star-Lord, in the name of the Guardians of the Galaxy, called on these civilisations to resist the expansion of the Imperium of Man, many civilisations and powers answered at once.
However, Datch paid little attention to the resistance to the Imperium's advance into space.
At the time, he was busy with another problem: dealing with the Time Bureau.
Ever since he had defeated the Time Guardians and Time Hunters in the Battle of New York
and summoned Imperial forces to fight the Chitauri,
the sacred timeline had been collapsing and branching chaotically.
Countless branches that had been pruned sprouted from the main trunk all at once.
The Time Bureau tried every means to stop him.
It sent its most elite Time Hunters to track his timeline.
It sent its best undercover agents with orders to create logical contradictions at every point before and after his arrival.
None of it worked. Datch had a timeline anchor built into his body, so he would remain unharmed even if the entire timeline collapsed.
Every form of temporal manipulation the Time Bureau used was completely useless against him.
In its obsession with preserving the sacred timeline, the Time Bureau descended into madness.
It kept sending people to other timelines to contact superheroes there.
With lies, it painted Datch as the ultimate threat from another dimension,
and the expansion of the Imperium of Man as a catastrophe that would swallow the entire multiverse.
It promised the superheroes it won over that once the Nameless One was eliminated, the sacred timeline would return to normal and everything would go back to the way it was,
and they would be remembered forever as the heroes who saved the multiverse.
This clever pitch fooled many superheroes, and one after another they set out to defeat the "ultimate villain."
The result was as expected. Mutants from parallel universes, Avengers from other timelines, even far more powerful beings…
All of them were erased by Datch.
Chaos magic, the Phoenix Force: none of it meant anything before Datch.
The Infinity Gauntlet could not erase him, and even the Heart of the Universe was no match for him.
After eliminating the superheroes who came to fight him,
Datch decided to strike back. He aimed Rick's portal gun at the void dimension where the Time Bureau was located and opened a portal.
With the Emperor and many C'tan, he invaded its interior.
The void dimension is a realm beyond the control of time. Kang the Conqueror had founded the Time Bureau here and recruited its staff from various timelines,
wiping their memories and brainwashing them into swearing loyalty to the Time Bureau.
The Time Bureau's architecture combined cold, minimalist dark-grey metal with rectangular holographic screens.
Everywhere one looked, there were clocks and other symbols of time, and the rhythmic ticking of second hands, like electronic clocks, echoed endlessly through the connecting corridors.
Datch and the Emperor were spotted the moment they entered.
The Time Bureau's forces were utterly powerless against C'tan, who could freely manipulate physical laws.
The Time Hunters and Time Guardians, who had once struck terror into countless time criminals,
were like feeble ants before the terrible power of the C'tan.
The rapid-response teams were annihilated and reduced to ash before they could even counter-attack.
In the past, they had relied too heavily on the power of time.
That power was simply too strong. No matter how mighty a superhero was, they could not defeat time.
Even beings as powerful as Asgard's Odin or the cosmic tyrant Thanos could not escape its influence.
The Time Bureau's staff were used to defeating every enemy by wielding time,
and to finishing their missions easily thanks to the absolute advantage of stopped time.
Unfortunately for them, this time they had run into the "Nameless One," a being who transcended every law of the universe.
Every attempt to plant contradictions or traps in Datch's timeline failed and cost them enormous casualties.
Without the power of time, the Time Bureau's agents were nothing but targets for slaughter.
The power the C'tan unleashed destroyed everything with ease. The advanced devices once used to manipulate the sacred timeline were smashed to pieces.
All the agents and staff perished in the wrath of the gods.
The whole Time Bureau was engulfed in flames; black smoke rose, and screams, shouts, and explosions blended together.
Datch knew very well that Kang the Conqueror, the founder and ruler of the Time Bureau, was at the end of the timeline.
So he let the C'tan tie up the Time Bureau, forcing it to throw all its strength into fending off the invasion.
Seizing the chance, he took the Emperor, used Rick's portal gun to travel to the end of time, and went to hold talks with Kang the Conqueror.
At the end of the sacred timeline lay the Void, where many superheroes and villains the Time Bureau deemed "variants" lived.
They had been pruned by the guardians of time and banished here,
and had barely escaped the clutches of a terrible giant beast called Alioth.
Alioth could devour time and space itself, and it was Kang the Conqueror's most powerful weapon.
In the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, before the Time Bureau was founded, the Kangs of multiple parallel universes had discovered one another.
They exchanged ideas and shared technology and knowledge, making each of their worlds a better place,
until a warlike Kang started a war and the entire multiverse was dragged into conflict.
To end the war, Kang the Conqueror used Alioth to wipe out the other variants, founded the time-management organisation, and created the sacred timeline.
From then on, Alioth was stationed at the end of the timeline, in the Void, where it continually devoured those who were banished there.
When Datch and the Emperor arrived in the Void, they happened to witness Alioth devouring the exiles' camp.
The gigantic beast was formed from a pure dark-purple time storm, and its time vortex kept expanding outward.
Ruined buildings and exiles who couldn't escape alike were erased completely.
The camp was home to many strange superheroes and villains,
existences outside the sacred timeline such as a female Thor, an ape Iron Man, an evil Captain America, and a righteous Red Skull.
Each of them was resisting Alioth's onslaught in their own way.
But against that ancient colossal creature that fed on time and space, all their resistance was useless.
Seeing this, Datch didn't hesitate. He took the Sacred Slaughterer's Spear out of his game inventory.
This spear had the power to annihilate every eternal being in existence,
and Alioth, who could devour time and space, was no exception.
The instant the spear tip pierced the body of the ancient beast born of a pure time storm, it let out a scream of agony.
Countless golden cracks spread across its gigantic body, and a strange white light poured out of them.
Finally, Alioth's body shattered into countless fragments and vanished completely as particles of light.
Superheroes and villains alike were stunned.
The giant beast they had tried every means to harm without leaving a scratch had been killed by an unknown man with a single blow.
Datch ignored the astonished crowd and led the Emperor to the door left behind after Alioth's death.
Through the door lay the end of time.
The realm at the end of time was an endless void wrapped in eternal twilight.
An ancient palace made entirely of time crystal floated in it.
Kang the Conqueror was here.
The man who had once ruled everything stared intently at Datch and the Emperor as they entered. His expression was stern, yet he forced a smile.
"Welcome, both of you."
"Please, have some black tea first. It's a simple place, so forgive me for not being a better host."
Datch didn't answer right away. He opened the man's profile, confirmed that he truly was Kang the Conqueror, then sat down across from him.
The Emperor took another seat.
He looked around, his eyes full of curiosity.
How could a Black man of such ordinary appearance build and control so vast a timeline?
"That's enough. You know why we're here." Datch stared at Kang the Conqueror. "You tried to destroy me, and unfortunately for you, you failed."
"Now that I'm here, you have five minutes to explain. If your explanation is reasonable enough, I may reconsider your death sentence."
Kang the Conqueror gave a bitter smile. "I didn't expect you to get here so easily."
"Before I explain, could you tell me a little more? Who exactly are you? And why is the power of time completely useless against you?"
"Even if you came from another universe, it's impossible to escape the flow of time completely."
"Curiosity is fine, but we'd better deal with the problem in front of us first." Datch waved a hand, and Kang the Conqueror floated into the air.
He tried to pause or rewind time with the controller in his hand, and when he realised it had no effect, irritation flashed across his face.
Even with the improved equipment, it does nothing to him?
Kang the Conqueror took a deep breath and steadied himself.
"Mysterious outsider, perhaps we can reach some kind of agreement and coexist peacefully. What do you say?"
...