Nebula (Earth-199999)

Nebula is a Luphomoid assassin and adoptive daughter and sister of Thanos and Gamora, respectively. She and Gamora have a rivalrous but tensely loving relationship, stoked by Thanos's cruel and provocative upbringing of them both. The two carried out Thanos's wishes in his quest to recover the Infinity Stones, but both betrayed him for different reasons. Nebula was briefly allied with Ronan the Accuser before his defeat at the battle of Xandar in 2014. After quietly escaping during that battle, Nebula's whereabouts are unknown.

Biography

Search for the Orb

Nebula was taken in by Thanos as a child after he and his army slaughtered her family. She was trained alongside another of Thanos's "daughters," Gamora, to be an elite assassin and carry out his will. The two were also partially raised and trained by Thanos's ally, Ronan the Accuser. Gamora maintained a "superior" position over Nebula throughout their youth, winning virtually all of their contests against one another and thereby focusing Thanos's punishments onto Nebula as a way to "improve" her. Thanos eventually struck a deal for Ronan to recover the Orb, containing the Power Stone, and for Thanos to obliterate the people of Xandar in return. Thanos had Gamora and Nebula transferred to Ronan's Kree warship, the Dark Aster, where they were to assist him in the hunt for the Orb. On one mission to find the Orb, Nebula ran into the cloud tombs of Praxius IX too hastily, had to be rescued by Gamora. She had to amputate her arm in the process, getting it replaced with a metal prosthetic.

Ronan eventually traced the Orb to an abandoned temple on Morag, but a rogue named Star-Lord (Peter Quill) retrieved it first. He was planning to sell it off to the Broker on Xandar. Nebula and Gamora each petitioned Ronan to go to Xandar and take the Orb, but Gamora was the one chosen on account of her past experience on Xandar. Gamora and Star-Lord were both captured by the Nova Corps and held in the Kyln. Thanos's ally the Other learned from inside sources that Gamora was planning to betray Thanos and Ronan by selling the Orb to a third party. By the time Ronan and Nebula arrived at the Kyln, Gamora and Star-Lord—along with bounty hunters Rocket and Groot and the barbarous Drax—had escaped. Later, Drax shockingly contacted Ronan by radio: he sought revenge for the deaths of his wife and daughter, and challenged Ronan to mortal combat on Knowhere. Ronan, Nebula, and a large fleet arrived there to find the five with the Orb. Gamora, Star-Lord, and Rocket each boarded small, one-person flying pods and attempted to outmaneuver Nebula and other pilots while Ronan easily defeated Drax on the ground. Nebula noted that Gamora had the Orb, and paid particular attention to her. Nebula forced Gamora out into space, where the pod's structural integrity was compromised, and blasted her pod to pieces, leaving Gamora floating in the vacuum of space. Nebula recovered the Orb by tractor beam and left her sister to die.

Ronan discovered that the Orb contained the Power Stone and turned his back on Thanos. Nebula gave him her loyalty, bearing no fondness for her "father." Ronan set his sights on Xandar, aiming to take the Power Stone to its surface and use its colossal might to wipe out the planet's population in seconds. His fleet was met in Xandarian airspace by Gamora and the others, whom Ronan would come to sarcastically call the Guardians of the Galaxy—their forces were buttressed by the Nova Corps and Ravagers led by Yondu Udonta. The Guardians boarded the Dark Aster via Quill's Milano, where Nebula confronted Gamora personally while the others fought their way through Ronan's personal forces. Gamora defeated Nebula in hand-to-hand combat, knocking her through a hole that had been blown in the wall of the ship. As Nebula hung by her cybernetic hand, Gamora implored her to side with them, but Nebula instead detached her hand and fell to another, smaller ship, using it to escape offworld. The Guardians went on to defeat and kill Ronan with the Power Stone before handing it over to Nova Corps control.