AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is an expansion of my drabble "If You Want Something Done." An expansion of about 14,000 words! It focuses more heavily on the team than on Len and Sara alone. Fair warning: Lots of silliness lies ahead!

Thanks to Jael for the beta and for encouraging me to try a long one-shot. I ended up going multi-chapter after all, but it helped push me to actually complete the work before posting.

Lemire cursed as the ship rocked again, sending him careening into the cargo bay shelves. "You call that evasive maneuvering?" he shouted.

"Kind of hard to evade anything without our starboard thruster!" Lindelof shouted back from the cockpit.

The comms crackled. "Attention, pirate ship Moreira. This is Captain Rip Hunter of the Waverider. We're here for the items you took from the temple. Hand them over and we'll let you go on your way."

"To hell with that!" Lindelof replied, before the ship jerked again.

"That was your aft thruster. I can do this all day, gentlemen," Hunter said in that irritatingly composed British accent. "Or you can let me come aboard and give me what I want. I'll give you thirty seconds to think about it."

"Dammit!" Lindelof swore. "If they come on board they'll find…"

"No, they won't!" Lemire told him. "Got an idea!"

He went to the case holding the items Hunter was after. He cursed again as he opened it; Lindelof had forgotten to secure some of the artifacts they'd stolen across time. The two pieces in question were dripping with some kind of shimmering liquid from a shattered flask.

But they were otherwise undamaged. He hit the comm button on the bulkhead. "You want 'em so bad, Hunter? Then go get 'em!" he shouted, shoving the artifacts into the garbage chute and hitting the Cycle button, sending them tumbling out into the time stream.

Hunter was no longer composed. "Bollocks!"

Their former teammates were waiting for them in a riverside park a short walk from the aquarium where they'd parked the Waverider on the roof. Carter hung back just a little, nodding to everyone but otherwise seeming a little ill at ease with the team he'd walked away from not too long ago.

Len supposed he couldn't really blame the man for that.

Kendra had no such qualms, giving a warm smile to everyone before hugging Sara, then Len, telling him, "It's good to have you back!" Then she stage-whispered to Sara, "Did you remember what I told you to do when you found him?"

Len raised an eyebrow at Sara, who just chuckled, shaking her head. "We… got a little bit busy."

Kendra snorted. "Well, then..." Her warm smile turned wicked. "She was supposed to do this once for me."

He found himself being kissed soundly, and rocked back on his heels when Kendra released him to wink at Sara. "Lucky girl!"

Len glanced over at Carter, who shrugged and said, "Four thousand years. She always comes back to me."

Len didn't miss the slight wince crossing Ray's face at Carter's words. Neither, apparently, did Kendra, who promptly elbowed Carter in the side, getting an "oof" from him.

The hawk goddess had sharpened her talons a bit, Len thought with approval. He wondered whether every version of Carter Hall was an entitled ass. "Lucky guy," he said sarcastically. Then he kissed Sara just as soundly as Kendra had kissed him, dipping her before coming up with a smirk. "But I'm luckier."

"Enough with the mush already," Mick grumbled. "Thought we came here to party!"

"We came here to retrieve some time-displaced artifacts," Rip corrected, just a little acerbically.

"Then we'll party!" Jax added eagerly. Martin rolled his eyes fondly at his partner's enthusiasm.

Carter chuckled. "Well, you've picked the right time to come down to the Big Easy! The Krewe of Bacchus parade rolls tonight."

"They chose Hawkman as their king this year," Kendra said.

"Yeah, but I only accepted when they agreed to name you their first queen," Carter added. "If you have the time after you're done with your mission, we'd like you to join us after the parade at the Bacchus Ball."

"Bacchus! God of wine! I approve!" Mick declared.

Martin raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were more of a beer man, Mr. Rory."

"Mick is an equal opportunity drinker, especially if the drinks are on someone else," Len said drily, getting a snort from Mick.

"Can we please focus on the task at hand?" Rip demanded.

"I see some things haven't changed," Kendra murmured to Sara, who shrugged.

"So, tell me about these artifacts," Carter said. "Anything we would have seen at the university?"

"University?" Stein asked.

Rip shrugged a little at the confused glances the team gave him. "I neglected to mention that Mr. Hall is now Dr. Hall of the archaeology department at St. Roch University."

"Another thing that hasn't changed," Sara muttered to Kendra. "Rip not telling us things."

"Now, there are worse things I've neglected to tell you!" Rip protested. Then his shoulders slumped and he let out a grunt of despair. "That did not come out right," he complained as the team snickered around him.

"Yeah, but we knew what you meant, Rip," Jax said kindly.

"So you're teaching where your son was a professor?" Ray asked.

Carter nodded. "Yes."

"There's a scholarship in his memory there now," Kendra added. She looked over at Mick. "I know I blamed you for Aldus' death, but… Carter and I have talked a lot about what he did while he was Savage's puppet. I know now that Mick Rory isn't responsible for the things Chronos did."

Mick studied the woman for a moment, then grunted. "You can make it up to me at that Bacchus party tonight. Drinks are on you, Birdgirl."

Kendra dimpled at that, while Rip huffed, "Artifacts first, party afterwards! Now, Dr. Hall, these… items… were part of a Time Pirate's illicit cargo, jettisoned in the time stream. Gideon's scans showed they landed here in the New Orleans area."

He pulled a device from his coat pocket, and with the press of a button projected a hologram of a medallion depicting some ancient Egyptian pharaoh and a sceptre topped with a stylized hawk, wings spread in flight and talons extended. "Here's what we're looking for."

Carter stepped closer to Rip, furrowing his brow as he studied the projection. "Hmm. First Intermediate Period… looks like… 10th Dynasty?"

Rip smirked a little. "Ninth, actually."

Carter shrugged. "Before my time, either way, and that's saying something."

"Indeed," Rip agreed. "The Time Pirates stole it from the Temple of Heryshef in Herakleopolis."

"And it's important that you find it because…?" Kendra asked.

"These two pieces were major discoveries in a dig at Herakleopolis in 1879," Rip answered. "If they're not found, then the archeologist in charge of that dig won't go on to teach and inspire Howard Carter, the man who discovered King Tut's tomb in 1922."

Kendra and Carter exchanged a puzzled look. "King who?" Carter asked.

"You're kidding, right?" Sara said in a surprised voice. Carter shook his head, and Kendra spread her hands in bewilderment.

"Astonishing! Apparently we are already seeing the effects of the theft," Stein observed. "Anyone who wasn't in the time stream when it happened wouldn't know anything about one of the major finds of the 20th century."

"Yes," Rip said. "We'll have to find those artifacts before time sets."

"What's the worst that can happen if this… King Tut's tomb is never found?" Kendra asked.

"Steve Martin won't make one of the best comedy records ever," Mick answered, getting smirks and chuckles from some of his teammates.

"That may be true," Rip conceded with a pained expression, "but more importantly, an exhibition of those artifacts from Tut's tomb helped to lay the foundation for repairing U.S. relations with Egypt after the Yom Kippur War, which eventually led to the Camp David Accords and the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. If we don't retrieve the stolen items, those events never happen."

"Making the Middle East even more of a mess than in the original timeline," Jax said.

Rip nodded and added, "And we need to do this as unobtrusively as possible, to reduce the risk of impacting the timeline."

"New Orleans is a big place," Carter pointed out. "Do you have any idea where these pieces fell?"

"We do." Rip touched the button on his projector, changing the image to a map of the area with two glowing red dots. "One fell here, and the other over here. We don't know which went where, but that's not really a worry. This is just a simple recovery, so if we split up we should be able to make short work of it."

Kendra peered at the projection. "Looks like one of them landed over in Tremé," she said, "and the other one…"

Carter grimaced. "Blind Lagoon. Great."

"Is there a problem?" Len asked.

"The university has a research station there. Just a small place, but the guy who runs it is a bit of an ass," Carter answered. He didn't notice the amused look Len exchanged with Sara at his words. "Maybe we'll be lucky and Holland won't be there."

"But if he is there, don't hit him!" Kendra ordered. "I don't care what he says about your funding." She shook her head at the others. "The last faculty party got a little too... lively."

"He threw the first punch," Carter protested. At Kendra's dark look, he made a conciliatory motion. "All right, all right. I can take three of you over to the lagoon, and the rest can go with Kendra over to Tremé."

"I call Team Tremé!" Ray volunteered brightly.

"Oh, that's not gonna be awkward," Jax said in a not-quite-undertone to Stein, who rolled his eyes.

Ray glanced around at the rest of the team, furrowing his brow at their expressions, then comprehension dawned. "Oh, you think that I… because Kendra… Guys, it's not… I just want to take a selfie over at Louis Armstrong Park, which is in Tremé!"

He looked over at his former fianceé. "It's not that I want to spend time with you… I mean, it's not that I don't want to spend time with you…"

The man was digging himself deeper with every word. There was a time when Len would have just watched and enjoyed it.

But that was before the Oculus.

Len opened his mouth to say something to stop Ray's babble, but Kendra beat him to it. "Ray, it's okay. I get it. And I remember how much you love Louis Armstrong's music. We'll get you your selfie."

"After we get the artifacts, please," Rip begged.

Another thing that hadn't changed; Ray talking incessantly to fill silence, and to cover up whenever he felt uncomfortable. He was doing it now, sitting next to Kendra in the van she'd borrowed from her school. "You know, I always wanted to go to Mardi Gras. Actually, just to New Orleans any time."

"Ray, you're a tech billionaire," Jax said from the back seat. "You could go anywhere you want, any time you want to."

"That's what you think," Ray answered with a shrug. "The trouble with running a multi-billion-dollar company is that you're so busy doing what you have to do that you don't always get the chance to do what you want to do. Instead you're stuck in shareholder meetings, board meetings, developer meetings..."

"Too many damn meetings!" Mick grumbled. "Give me a share of the multi-billion bucks and I'll take care of that problem for you."

"Mr. Rory, murder is not considered an acceptable business practice," Stein said in that long-suffering tone of his.

"Who said anything about murder?" Mick asked.

Stein sighed. "And neither is arson."

Jax chuckled. "So much for your future in business, Mick."

Mick let out a huff. "And so much for the multi-billion bucks."

Kendra couldn't help laughing. "Guys, I have to admit I've missed this."

"Enough to want to rejoin the team?" Jax asked brightly.

She smiled and shook her head. "It's funny. When I first left the team I thought I would eventually come back, once Carter was settled and comfortable living in the 21st century. But... He and I are building a life together here, and it's a good life. It's nice to… stop and breathe after four thousand years on the run. We're both able to do what we want to do without looking over our shoulders all the time." She chuckled. "And at least at culinary school, I don't sound like an idiot when I tell people I used to be a barista."

"None of us ever thought you sounded like an idiot, Miss Saunders," Stein said kindly. "And the people who run your school must think highly of you, if they're letting you borrow a school vehicle."

"Privilege of being the student in charge of the catering team," Kendra replied.

The professor shrugged a little. "Perhaps. But I, for one, am glad to see you taking charge of your own destiny, instead of letting destiny take charge of you."

"I like the way you took Birdman down a peg," Mick grinned.

Kendra's eyes met his in the rear-view mirror. "Despite the occasional slip-up, this version of Carter is a much better man than the last one. He's much more like...like his first self. Khufu. The man I originally fell in love with," she said, her tone now quiet and sincere. "There's more to us than just four thousand years of history."

"As long as you're happy," Ray said, just as quietly. Then the smartphone in his hand started beeping. "Oh! The tracker says it's right… in… there."

He pointed toward the other side of the street, at a large plot of land covered in greenery. A sign facing the street proclaimed it the Tremé Community Garden. Kendra nodded and parked the van.

"Looks like the artifact is at the back of the garden," Ray said, leading them down a path running through neat rows of planter boxes filled with a variety of vegetables.

Kendra noticed Mick wrinkling his nose as they walked. "You okay?"

He gave her a quick grin. "Been a long time since I've smelled farm smells."

"Feeling nostalgic?"

That made him bark out a laugh. "For compost and manure? Hell, no!" He pointed at a woman weeding one of the planter boxes. "Don't miss that either."

Ray was still fiddling with his phone. "Hmm. Wait a second… it's moving!" He began to run toward the back of the lot, the others right behind him. "It's picking up speed!"

They passed through stands of sugarcane, into an alley behind the lot. A panel truck was just turning onto the main street.

"It's in the truck! Hey! Hey!" Ray shouted, waving his arms. He dropped them as the truck kept going. "Well, dammit."

ADDITIONAL AUTHOR'S NOTE: There really is a Krewe of Bacchus parade and gala during Mardi Gras, with a celebrity King each year.

In the comics, Carter Hall actually was an archaeologist.

And there are a couple of Rip Hunter Easter eggs in this chapter.