It was supposed to be perfect.

I was once a simple monk, who saved Earthrealm from Shang Tsung and Goro in the Mortal Kombat tournament. From there, I was to save Earthrealm three more times before meeting my end at the hands of the vengeful Shang Tsung and his fellow sorcerer. But Lord Raiden reset the timeline, following a series of defeats that culminated in Shao Kahn's total victory.

In this new timeline, I was to avenge my cousin's death in the Outworld tournament at the hand of Shao Kahn, and then die in conflict with Lord Raiden, with whom I had grown discontent for his shortcomings. I would then serve as an enforcer for Quan Chi, Shinnok, and finally, Kronika, the Keeper of Time. Her actions merged the present with a time thirty years past, which is where my current self came in.

I was brought into the time merger alongside Lord Raiden, Kung Lao, Princess Kitana, and many others. Our two times became one and we were drafted into a conflict to prevent Kronika's resetting of the timeline to create a new era that would bend to her will. Lord Raiden gave up his powers to fuse my past and future selves into one: a Fire God - one with enough power to defeat Kronika. Her attempts to prevent Lord Raiden and myself from uniting against her ultimately led to a far stronger union than she could ever have imagined.

With Kronika's Hourglass now in our possession, the mortal Raiden tasked me with keeping vigil over time, alongside my beloved Kitana. Before her defeat, Kronika had managed to rewind time to its beginning. Although I was able to save Kitana, I was unable to save anyone else. We had to rebuild the timeline from scratch, as accurately as possible, for even the smallest of alterations could have catastrophic ramifications down the line. Recreating the realms' greatest atrocities, such as Shao Kahn's numerous conquests, all in the name of preservation, was a heartbreaking task, but one which had to be done. Perhaps, that birthed a darkness within my heart that allowed what came later.

We managed to identify and plan out a scant few alterations to improve the lives of our comrades without major alterations to events, but beyond that, once the timeline was rebuilt, we sought to prevent any other from interfering with the natural order of reality. A tentative peace has endured since, but there was inevitably a source of strife.

Unbeknownst to either myself or the late Lord Raiden, my revenant continued to exist within me, attempting to subtly influence me into making more alterations to the timeline. Once I became aware of his presence, we debated the matter for time untold. He, ultimately, was driven by a desire to make right what he believed his Raiden had ruined through his interference and poor decisions. He wanted to rewrite history to create a better reality.

But, where does it end? At what point, once you open that door, have you gone from nudging events in the right direction to micromanaging every aspect of the universe, effectively making a mockery of the notion of free will?

Eventually, he managed to break free of our union, escaping with both an equal power to my own, and my beloved Kitana, once more transformed into a cursed revenant. I could not save her, and she remains in my other self's clutches.

Many years have passed since Kronika's defeat, and many of my Earthrealm comrades have since passed into the afterlife, unable to aid me in stopping my revenant from amassing an army to claim the hourglass for himself.

So, I peered through not only time, but space as well. I gazed sideways in time into other realities entirely to seek aid. I glimpsed countless alternate realities, free from the influence of Kronika or my darker self. I have seen realities where Kung Lao retained his title for millennia. Where Earthrealm has known peace since Shao Kahn's death in the invasion. Where Bi-Han secured Earthrealm's victory in the Outworld tournament. Where the tournament was wrested from the grip of the vampiric Shang Lao. And finally, I found yours.

Yours is a reality that remains free of the tainted influence of those that wish to change history for their own interest. It is like an amalgamation of my timeline and the one that came before it. Not a perfect reality, but a pure one. And now, I must expose your world to the corruption of my own to ask of you: will you help me to defeat my other self and save my reality?

Well, when you put it like that, how can I refuse? After all, two Kangs are better than one.


Yes, MKK is going through a big shift here. The focus will be on a continuity that amalgamates both timelines from the games, with no dumb time travel shit. Stories relating to time travel or that require there to be multiple timelines may still be written, but they'll be set in another universe. I'm still trying to work out the designations for the two worlds. One idea is that they are "Universe M(erged)" and "Universe K(anon/ronika)". We'll see.

I've had this one ready to go for a while and debated for months whether or not this should be Chapter 50 to mark the occasion, or if the upcoming Shirai Ryu history chapter should instead. That story's opening is being split off into a new story, so this one is 50 and that one will be pushed back to give me room to release its intro standalone.