Chapter 220: The Council of Kangs, and the Mysterious Chen
At the furthest edge of the multiverse, where the boundaries between timelines fray into something that isn't quite space and isn't quite time, stood the Council of Kangs.
The chamber was built like a colosseum — vast, circular, carrying the particular atmosphere of a place where important things had been decided for a very long time. At the center stood three enormous statues, each one a different Kang, each one radiating the specific weight of someone who had made history bend around them. The statues were not decorative. They were a statement.
The three men who walked toward the council table moved with the unhurried confidence of people who had already won every argument they intended to have today.
On the right: Rama-Tut. Egyptian regalia, layered and ceremonial, the kind of clothing that communicated absolute authority across three thousand years of human history. He had earned the look — had traveled back to ancient Egypt with technology no one in that era could comprehend, had ruled as pharaoh, had been worshipped. The Fantastic Four and the Avengers had eventually forced him out, but he had walked away intact, which was its own kind of victory. A time storm had redirected him afterward, dropped him into the modern era, and a chance encounter with Doctor Doom had given him the resources to reinvent himself once more.
On the left: Scarlet Centurion. Future-tech armor that caught the light like something alive, cold and precise and built for someone who wanted to be impressive and had the capability to back it up. He was the newest of the three — the one who hadn't been there for everything.
At the center: Immortus. The oldest Kang variant in existence. The one who had studied under the Time-Keepers and come away with an understanding of temporal mechanics that went beyond anything the others had touched. His eyes had the quality of someone who has watched the same mistakes repeat across enough centuries that surprise had become a physical impossibility. He had deleted timelines that inconvenienced him. He had held his position long enough that it no longer felt like holding — it simply was.
They sat.
Rama-Tut spoke first, his brow already creased. "I've received an urgent report from our operative — Spider-Man Kang. The Spider-Society has become unpredictable again. There's a new factor involved." He turned the words over. "My instinct is to move preemptively. Neutralize them before they develop into a meaningful problem. They're irritating at the best of times, and if they interfere with our timeline—"
"They're spiders," Scarlet Centurion said, with the boredom of someone setting down an argument he'd already won. "We've eliminated them before. They don't warrant this level of attention." He leaned forward slightly. "What I find more interesting is the new element in the report. Someone called Ethan Cross — apparently capable of breaking canonical events without collapsing the associated universe." A pause. "That's worth watching."
"Worth watching," he repeated, and something shifted in his tone toward something that was almost appreciative. "Destiny should always be in the hands of the strong. I respect the impulse. When we meet, I'll make sure he dies cleanly. It's the least I can do."
Rama-Tut hadn't relaxed. "The name. It's been bothering me since the report came in." He looked at Immortus. "Eastern name. Family name Chen — or close enough. You know what I'm going to say."
Immortus's expression didn't change. But he took a moment before responding, which was itself a response.
"You're reaching," he said. "That matter was resolved. Years ago — many years. The Reed Council and our forces combined. We watched it happen."
"What matter?" Scarlet Centurion looked between them. He'd joined the Council after whatever this was. Nobody had fully briefed him.
Immortus was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, it was with the careful precision of someone choosing what to include.
"An Eastern man. Some time ago. He had the same ability — breaking fate, disrupting what should have been fixed. We never learned his name. Everyone called him Chen."
Scarlet Centurion raised an eyebrow. "And he was a significant threat?"
The silence from both Rama-Tut and Immortus was informative.
"You're afraid of him," Scarlet Centurion said. It wasn't an accusation — just an observation, delivered with the mild surprise of someone recalibrating their model of what "significant threat" meant in this context.
"We defeated him," Immortus said. "That's what matters. At considerable cost, through a combined operation with the Reed Council — Avengers drawn from multiple timelines, resources neither of us had deployed before or since. But yes. He died."
"And now there's someone with a similar name and a similar ability," Rama-Tut said.
"Coincidence," Immortus said. "The pattern-matching is understandable but the conclusion doesn't follow. He's gone. We confirmed it across multiple timelines."
Scarlet Centurion absorbed this. "So what's the actual priority?"
"The Illuminati," Immortus said. "The ones who call themselves protectors of multiversal stability. They're more motivated than we are right now — more anxious, less patient. That urgency creates opportunities." He settled back. "Our focus should be the next phase of consolidation. We have timelines to bring into alignment. The spiders are a nuisance. Chen — whoever he is — is a variable we can monitor. Neither is the objective."
He looked at the other two. "The others will be arriving shortly. Go. Get them organized."
Rama-Tut and Scarlet Centurion left.
Immortus remained alone.
The colosseum was very quiet when it was empty. He had always found it easier to think in the quiet, and right now he was thinking about a battle that he had spent a long time trying to stop thinking about.
One man. Eastern. The name Chen, or something close to it.
He had come through a Council assembly that had involved every variant they could mobilize, backed by Reed's Illuminati pulling Avengers from timelines that hadn't finished being written yet. It should have been impossible to survive. More than impossible — it should have been over quickly.
It had nearly gone the other way entirely. Countless timelines had collapsed in the crossfire. The structural damage to the multiverse had taken years to repair — years neither the Council nor the Illuminati could fully account for in their plans, years that had pushed every objective back and back until the present moment, where they were still not where they should have been by now.
All of that. One man.
Immortus looked out at nothing in particular and felt something he didn't generally permit himself to feel.
"If it's really you," he said quietly, to the empty chamber, to the space where a dead man's memory lived, "then I owe you a very thorough response. Chen."
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