The Secret History of the MCU
(as related by Zuras)

Based on the MCU, based on Marvel Comics. I own nothing.

Chapter 1: The First Contact War


The old man threw his remote across the room as the credits on "The Legend of Ikaris and The Eternals" rolled.

"That bloody fool!" he roared. He ran his hand through his graying beard, once more noting the loss of his copper locks, a century or three back. It had paled to a light blond before turning dark into pepper and now silver-grey. At least he could still have some color, willing it back to it's former glory, unlike his old friend, Odin, who had gone white before his brief retirement. He had paid him one last visit before his death. And the calamity that followed, which the late Allfather had begged him not to interfere with. Making him swear on her life that his boys would not need his help. Yet.

He tensed. The sky outside rumbled.

The snoring from his compatriot stopped at the commotion. "What's wrong now?" he asked, looking around the marbled room.

"Kingo." As if the name was meant to explain everything.

"What did he get wrong, now?" the other man inquired, wiping the sleep from his eyes. "I zonked out a while back."

"You drink too much, you mean."

"Or not enough," he retorted. "Boy! Mead!" he called out. As if expected, a young man appeared with a pitcher, righted the golden cup next to the younger man, and filled it. He then turned to the elder, who waved him away.

"Your infatuation with these mortals will be your downfall," he warned. "How old is that one?"

"Thirty-seven?" he pondered after a long moment. "He's been here a good, what, two decades?" The elder man growled under his breath. "He keeps in shape."

"I'll just bet he does," the elder accused. "Get dressed. Modern attire. We're going to visit your 'nephew'. We need to correct his version of our history."

"Whatever thou commands, Zed-Daddy." Thunder rumbled again. The younger man downed his goblet, then stumbled to his quarters to freshen up.


The woman knocked lightly, then entered. "There are a couple gentlemen here to see you, sir," she announced.

Karun glanced at her, still typing away at his laptop. "Who is it?"

She glanced back over her shoulder nervously. "They-They claim to be his uncles?"

He looked at her in confusion. "Uncles? But he has no-"

The two men pushed past her. The elder, a flame haired bear of a man in a green business suit and black button up shirt that seemed decades old in fashion, and tailored to a slightly thinner man. The younger, muscled, but in more recent fashion, powder blue suit jacket over a navy t-shirt and jeans, glanced around and promptly dropped onto the couch. "How many has the boy auditioned on this? Or do I not want to know?"

"Silence, you," the older man warned, then turned to Karun. "Where. Is. Kingo?"

"A-A thousand pardons, sirrah, I don't know-"

"Where. Is. He."

Karun motioned for the woman to close the door behind her. "I wish I knew," he said simply. "You are, ah, his family? Many apologies, I do not recognize you?"

"Look out your window, little fat man," the younger man suggested as he shucked his jacket and reached for an apple on the coffee table. It was already turning dark. Thunder rolled closer. The threat was clear.

"I am only being honest," Karun explained. "You do not look like Thor," he motioned to a photo on the wall of the Asgardian and the alleged Indian movie star laughing together. "Might you be his father? I did not know he was one of you."

The elder man looked to the photo then back to Karun. "The Allfather Odin is dead. Since before Thanos visited this planet. Did the Thunderer neglect to mention that in the Avengers' press release on Thanos? He was a good friend." His tone was somber.

Karun looked between the two men, entirely confused. "Many condolences for his passing. I still do not know where Master Kingo is, at the moment." a slight rumble of thunder outside. "Again, I wish I could tell you, but he simply disappeared right after his, ah, compatriots brought up that statue in the ocean," he explained.

"The woken Celestial?" the elder man inquired. "Even I thought our task here was over."

"(excuse me?)" Karun dropped back into his chair. "I went through all his contacts for his, ah, 'university friends', which is what we called his fellow Eternals. What contacts we had. None of them answered. I still try to call them, even Sersi, who was always on her phone. Even her boyfriend has not seen her. I do not know what else to tell you?" He held his hands up at a loss to go further. "I have no reason to lie to ones such as you gods."

The younger man burst out laughing on the couch. A stern look from the elder silenced him. He finally sat in the chair opposite Karun's desk and gave a heavy sigh. "You want to record this?"

Karun fumbled on his laptop a moment, then reached into a drawer and pulled out a camera, setting it between the two of them. He nodded.

"We are not gods. We are Eternals. Compared to you mortals, we might as well be one and the same, since the boy and I were often mistaken for those you did call gods. There were not ten on that mission as Kingo declared in that documentary. No, there were more, but several of us decided to part ways early. There is more to your own history that you mortals have forgotten, or has been willfully hidden from you. For reasons good and bad."

He stood once more. "My name is Zuras. Although many have called me Zeus, I am not the Skyfather, yet we have similar abilities over the elements such as the electric forces."

Karun nodded in awe, then glanced to the other man.

"Call me Harry. Harry Cleese, is what I go by, these days."

Karun nodded, then seemed to make a realization. "Hercules?"

"As my...friend has suggested, we have been woven into your lore, such as my brother Ikaris was added into Greek myth. I was mistaken for the Greek Herakles, but that is a name I have not always had. He's still out there, partying hard."

Zuras harrumphed. "as do you."

"My apologies, sire," he bowed from his reclined position. "Tell your own tale of tales."

Zuras glowered at him a moment, unamused at the double entendre. "When we arrived here, there were fifteen Eternals in our troupe. We all had our duties to perform, and abilities or powers or whatever you mortals call them, to assist us in our assigned functions. Ikaris was not the only flyer. I could fly, as well, but he was faster, yet neither as fast as Makkari." A private memory of the three of them testing their speeds against the others, early on in their time of this planet. None would say who truly won, back then.

"We had been here a century or so, spreading out among what you would now call the MidEast and northern Africa, just broaching the Indian subcontinent, Europe, and Russian steppes. Your 'Cradle of Civilization', as you call it. We fought the Deviants as they tried to kill the nascent peoples of this world, and meeting the others interested in this plane." He glanced to the photo of Thor and Kingo again.

"Some were friendly." His smirk turned dark. "Some were not." He sat down once more. "They were the reason for the first split amongst us Eternals. What happened here, and elsewhere. Thanos was not the first to assemble the Infinity Gauntlet, and had I known he was trying to recreate it, I would have acted to assist before the Snapture."

"Snapture?" Karun interrupted. "You mean the Blip?" Zuras looked to Harry in confusion.

"I like the term Snapture better," Harry interjected. "Blip is so...blah, you know?" Karun nodded.

"Where was I?" Zuras continued. "Ah yes, the first time the Kree arrived here. The Kree Empire was still young, still pioneering their galactic reach. Apparently, our presence here tipped them off that this planet could be a good outpost. Once they advanced the natives, that is."

"Advanced?"

"They had set up their first outpost on the moon. We hadn't noticed at first, as it was usually on what you call the dark side."

"Usually?"

"Ah yes, you mortals didn't know the moon had a regular rotation back then, do you? How else do you explain the craters on the light side?" he mused. "Anyway, that base was the first step to their outpost down here. What you would now call Atlantis." Karun gasped, but held his tongue this time. "They were subtle. Taking random stragglers that would not be missed. Exiles from various tribes, or travelers that were thought to have met their demise in their journeys, not abducted and experimented on." Karun covered his mouth at this casual revelation.

"We only found out by accident, I recall? A promised caravan that simply went missing between, was it Cairo and Babylon? It was too large to be simply ignored. Makkari and I went to investigate. We found their camp after a few weeks, it was a well traveled route, regular towns that grew up from checkpoints. We could find no trace of Deviant activity to account for their loss.

"Turns out, the Kree were getting greedy, wanting more test subjects. A whole caravan of peoples caught between the usual villages? They thought we were stupid and wouldn't notice. The hard part after that was tracking them down to their base. They had no clue there were people who could fly and chase down their drones, back then."

He paused for a long moment. His hands tightening.

"Your so-called world wars, a century ago, was it? The talky European with the short mustache?" Karun nodded. "He would be proud at what the Kree were up to, from what I read of him. Although he would be jealous the Kree went much further in their sadistic 'experiments'." He paused again.

"Ikaris spied one of their ships traveling between the moon and Atlantis. He was careful not to be spotted, following it back to what you now innocently call the Atlantic off the African coast. Not quite near the western continents, what you call the Americas? He alerted us to the location and we soon scouted it out. Too far out for even the paltry attempt at what you would call a navy, these days. They had all the privacy from attack they needed with this primitive civilization.

He paused again. "What we saw, thanks to Sprite's camouflage? Again, your recent would-be-dictator would have been jealous. Looking back now, even from a scientific standpoint, it was all very clinical. I'm still not sure how they were all divided up, men and women were thrown together in four different sections. From what I remember, they were given different classifications from initial testing, they told us later. They were exposed to various things like radiation, Terrigen Mists, extreme conditions. Again, you've probably read what happened a century ago, only worse.

"What you would call the Alpha group were deemed 'successes.' This group came out of the testing with active powers and abilities. This made them subject to further testing." He paused again, thunder rumbled outside once more. "The, ah, Beta group survived the first round of testing, but there seemed to be some confusion as to if they were active or latent powered? The Gamma group had either not been tested or were what you were called the 'control' group?" His expression darkened.

"The fourth group?" Karun pressed. "What of them?"

Zuras looked at him. "You saw the Deviants in action, yes?" Karun nodded. "Think of those in the fourth group as the Deviants of Earth. Those few survivors were malignant in body and soul. Some would later side with the Kree when we tried assaulting the compound, to free the mortals and drive the Kree off our- off this world we had been charged with protecting."

"It was a dozen of you versus a whole galactic empire?" Karun inquired.

"We were still new to this world, but we were not stupid," Zuras chided. "I spoke of the others interested in this plane, earlier? I speak of the Asgardians and Olympians, although they hailed not from Olympus, that was another misinterpretation over the centuries, mixing our history with theirs. They did not correct it early, and they soon realized it was too late to do so, in the centuries that followed," he chuckled for a moment. "There were others, too. Many favors were called in for that assault. Bor and his sons, Odin, Vili, and Vi. Zeus and his Olympians. The Egyptian Ennead. Earth's Sorcerer Supreme, among others."

"Sorcerer? Like Doctor Strange?"

"I know not this strange doctor, but it would not be the last time I worked alongside the sorcerer Agamotto." Karun nodded. "Or his later apprentice, Myrddin. Emrys to his closest compatriots," he mused.

"(Merlin?)" Karun said under his breath.

"Before the assault, Sprite had worked her way into the pens, letting the prisoners know salvation was on the way. Many agreed to help, and we learned of a handful of Kree who had empathized with their prisoners, willing to turn on their masters. Before long, we had a plan of attack." He paused once more, glancing to Harry. "Before we were betrayed inside the compound. And out."

"I wasn't even there," Harry proffered, holding his hands up in defense.

"No. No, you weren't." Zuras nodded. "Nor were many of our planned allies. The Kree somehow managed to convince the Jotunn to attack Asgard, only young Odin came to assist us. In fact, only he, Zeus, Poseidon, Nephthys and Isis, and Agamotto were able to assist us, due to other deals the Kree made with our planned allies. Tho few, we were the superior force. Ikaris and Zeus were able to delay any help from above, while the rest of us fought and freed the subjugated.

"The Kree city ship Atlantis was sunk, and fell into myth, as the Diaspora of freed prisoners spread across the globe. Some of the Kree and freed prisoners stayed in the sunken craft, adapting to life underwater. On rare occasion, I still hear news from them, but not lately. Not in a century or so?"

"The Atlantean myths are true?" Karun gasped. "They still live?"

"To my knowledge, why?"

"Where is it located? Could this explain the many boats found adrift? Like the Marie Celeste? Why so many boats and even planes go missing in the Bermuda Triangle? Or Mu? Or-"

Zuras eyed him for a moment. "It is not to me to give out the location, if it is even still there. As for the rest of your questions? I cannot answer them, either."

"Many apologies, sirrah, but you could answer so much hidden history and-"

Zuras held up his hand. "I could, but I won't. Now where was I? Ah yes, the battle of Atlantis. It was the first fracturing of the Eternals. Many arguments were had before and after. Afterward, it was decided that those of us siding fully with the mortals would 'take a break' as you say, from the rest of our duties.

"I spent time with our various allies, Agamotto, Zeus, Odin. My friend Thoth ventured along with the Ennead. And my mate- she stayed in Olympus for a while. She became known as Gaia, the Earth Mother."

Karun bit his knuckle, dying to press for more information. "What of- what of the others? The freed prisoners? Do you know what happened to them?"

Zuras glanced to that photo again, then to his companion, then turned away. Harry acted insulted, as if a child who was proven innocent of a grievous charge was proven right.

"Besides the Atlanteans? From what I hear, those who remained below intermingled, forming a loose alliance, as one does after war. They used the remaining technology down there to acclimate themselves to living underwater. The rest? Those who survived the Terrigen Mists became their own colony, hidden away from the rest, occasionally moving when other mortals became too aware of their presence." He glanced out the window at the drawing night. "I cannot say where they ended up."

Harry followed his gaze outside, eyeballed something out of Karun's point of view and made a finger gun at something.

"All the others scattered to the four corners of the globe. Latents and Deviants, alike. I can only guess they reintegrated back into their early civilizations. Until today. When they seem to be popping out of the woodwork, every day. As my compatriots have done, recently."

"That's all you can say of your early days on this planet?"

Zuras seemed to ponder the question. "Of the First Kree Invasion, yes. There are more details, of course, but many of those are lost to time. Or death of the participants, obviously." One of the freed prisoners came to mind, the powerful Egyptian shapeshifter who tried to rule his people before Thoth and his new Ennead allies intervened with the help of the local tribes. He had remained buried beneath the sands since then. Thoth made sure of that.


First draft: Dec.7, 2021