Just a little short story filling in the blanks in the recruitment montage. I changed the order around because it doesn't make any sense for Rip to pick Ray up in Star City, travel to Tibet to pick up Sara, then return to the US for the others.
Quite a bit of research has been done regarding time zones and even sunset/sunrise times to ensure accuracy. I've mentioned this in a previous AN, but in my headcanon, Star and Central are both in California; we know that Star is on the West Coast, that they're 600 miles apart, and they must be in the same state if they send criminals to the same prison; California is the only state that fits the bill.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow. All but two lines of dialogue in this are directly quoted from the episode 'Pilot, Part 1'.
WORD COUNT: 1829
"I need you to pull up some files, Gideon. The eight men and women who'll be joining us on our little crusade."
"You usually prefer to work alone, Captain."
"This time, I'll need a team."
Friday, January 22nd, 2016, 7:49am China Standard Time (Tibet, China)
"First recruit: Sara Lance. Former member of the League of Assassins. Also formerly dead."
He chose Tibet first, since all the other recruits were located in the United States. It had taken Gideon a while to track down this recruit, as she was staying off the grid, but he'd found her in a small village, having a drink in a local tavern.
And not just drinking. Rip got there just in time to see the woman knock back a shot before hurling the glass at a man's head. The man fell to the floor, but got up quickly in a rage. Ms. Lance quickly dispatched him and another man who got up from a nearby table and charged at her as well. All in less than ten seconds. Yes, she would do quite well against Vandal Savage's forces.
"Ms. Lance!" Rip decided to make himself known. "Join me for a drink? I have come quite a long way to meet you."
That much was true, however, he had no intention of sitting and having a drink with her at this moment. He casually pulled out a rather handy device, aimed it at her, and pressed the button. A flash of light immediately rendered Ms. Lance unconscious, and she slumped to the floor.
Of course, there was still the matter of being in a tavern full of patrons and staff. Rip had no choice to knock them all out, as well. Just in case, he also hog-tied the two men Ms. Lance had been fighting, to prevent them from harming anyone if they awoke before the rest of the bar.
Thursday, January 21st, 2016, 8:17pm Eastern Standard Time (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
"Firestorm. The merged super-form of one Jefferson Jackson and Professor Martin Stein."
It was a bit of a shame that he couldn't recruit Ronald Raymond; Prof. Stein's previous partner had clearly been a true hero, having sacrificed himself to save the world not a year earlier. But that did not, of course, mean that Mr. Jackson was worth any less. Still, Rip wondered if Prof. Stein and Mr. Raymond had gotten along better than the current Firestorm partnership.
Rip was certain that Prof. Stein was aware of the dangers of just throwing fireballs around willy-nilly in a chemical plant, but that was exactly what Mr. Jackson was doing, although the younger man could clearly be forgiven for being distracted by man on the ground trying desperately to kill them with a machine gun.
That, of course, was taken care of when one of Firestorm's attacks set off a small explosion that sent the criminal flying. Firestorm landed and separated into the two bickering men.
"What's the use of sharing my intelligence if you won't listen?!" Prof. Stein berated his partner.
"Stop bossing me around like I'm one of your snot-nosed undergrads!" Mr. Jackson retorted.
"Excuse me," Rip interrupted their argument.
"Who are you?"
Once both halves the two-in-one metahuman were rendered unconscious, Rip turned his attention to the criminal they'd been chasing. He quickly searched the scoundrel and removed any sort of weapon from his person, then he dragged him over to a nearby chain-link fence and used the man's belt to tie him there. The criminal's effects, especially the gun, were left in a neat pile well out of his reach. The authorities would surely be alerted by the explosion and gunfire, and would likely arrive to arrest him shortly.
Thursday, January 21st, 2016, 8:03pm Central Standard Time (St. Roch, LA, USA)
"Kendra Saunders and Carter Hall. The latest reincarnations of Hawkman and Hawkgirl."
And the first to actually go by those names. These two were the most important on his list of recruits. They alone could kill Vandal Savage. They alone could accomplish Rip's ultimate goal.
If Ms. Saunders didn't tear her soulmate's throat out, first.
"Kendra! You, my love, almost got us killed!" Mr. Hall set down the woman they'd just rescued (and who now knew half of the secret identity of one of her rescuers). "Your flying is still clumsy like a bird just out of the nest-"
"Well maybe that's because, up until two months ago, I was a barista!" Ms. Saunders snapped back, "Not some damn winged demigoddess!"
"Have you two considered couples counseling?" Rip asked as he approached, "I hear it's quite popular in this century."
He knocked both of them out, and moved forward to pick them up, when a scream reminded him of the witness present.
"Don't you dare hurt them!" the woman yelled, "They saved my life! They've done nothing wrong!"
"I know that, miss," Rip assured her, "I promise you, no harm will come to them. Or you." He knocked her out as well, catching her and carrying her over to the sidewalk so that the poor thing wouldn't get hurt due to being left unconscious in the middle of the street.
Thursday, January 21st, 2016, 7:23pm Pacific Standard Time (Central City, CA, USA)
"There seems to be an error, Captain. These candidates, Leonard Snart and Mick Rory, are a pair of criminals."
"There's no error, Gideon."
On second thought, perhaps Rip should have thought this one through a little bit more. This was what was running through his mind as he desperately dove out of the way of the minivan driven by the now-unconscious Mick Rory. What on Earth had he been thinking, knocking the man out at the wheel?!
The vehicle crashed through the guardrail and rolled into the ditch, eventually coming to a stop, conveniently next to a space wide enough and flat enough for the Jump Ship to land.
What wasn't convenient, however, was the mass of police cars coming up the road behind them. Leave it to these two to make having them on the team as frustrating as possible – and he hadn't even gotten to the point of actually recruiting them, yet!
To say the least, this stop took Rip the longest, what with having to knock out all the police officers, then sabotaging each and every dashboard camera so as to not have his face on Wanted posters plastered all over Central City. Then there was the simple fact that he was running out of room for everyone! Ms. Lance and Prof. Stein were on the Med Bay's two beds, while he'd had to resort to putting everyone else on the Med Bay floor and stretch the spare IV cuffs as far as they would extend to keep them sedated.
Thursday, January 21st, 2016, 8:23pm Pacific Standard Time (Star City, CA, USA)
"Final recruit: Dr. Raymond Palmer. Also known as The Atom."
This one would be by far the easiest to convince to join his team. Dr. Palmer was known to always be looking for ways to help others, and would jump at the chance to help save the world.
It took some doing, but Rip managed to infiltrate H.I.V.E.'s secret computer lab at the same time at which Dr. Palmer was scheduled to do the same. Still, he only just got there in time to see the inventor literally burst out of a large computing unit and take out all four of H.I.V.E.'s agents – the Ghosts – that had been converging on his location. It honestly took him only half the time it had taken Ms. Lance to subdue the two ruffians at the Tibetan tavern, although she had done so without a high-tech (for this era, anyway) exo-suit.
Rip applauded Dr. Palmer's performance, which predictably resulted in the inventor pointing his exo-suit's weapons in his direction. "Oh, I am not one of your adversaries," Rip assured him, even as he knocked the man out.
Getting Dr. Palmer out of the building was more than a bit of a challenge, considering the Ghosts swarming all over the building, but at least carrying him was much less difficult; Gideon had already done her research and shown him how to activate the shrinking abilities of the A.T.O.M. Suit, so the unconscious Dr. Palmer simply rode around in Rip's pocket. After getting him to the Jump Ship, Rip re-sized him and deactivated the tracker that would surely lead the Green Arrow to his location. Dr. Palmer – and Ms. Lance, for that matter – could probably talk Mr. Queen down, but Rip needed to convince them that they were on the same side, first, in order to get them to do that.
Thursday, January 21st, 2016, 9:03pm Pacific Standard Time (Star City, CA, USA)
Rip heaved a sigh as he dragged the last of his recruits onto the rooftop. Who knew that just the recruitment would be so physically exhausting? His back was going to be sore all day tomorrow, after having dragged so much weight around in the past five hours or so.
He had them all lined up in a row, their weapons already tampered with just enough that they couldn't up and attack him with them, but not so badly as to be unfixable later. He couldn't do much about Ms. Lance's many knives, so he set the ones he could actually find on the ledge, far enough away that she wouldn't spot them immediately, but close enough to the door leading into the building that she'd find them on her own.
He kept Ms. Saunders and Mr. Hall together, knowing from past records that one or both of them were likely to go on the attack if they did not spot their respective soulmate right away. Mr. Rory and Mr. Snart were lying side-by-side for similar reasons. Mr. Jackson and Prof. Stein, on the other hand, he kept separated, with three people in between them to keep them from merging straight away.
Now, he just had to wait, but not for long. They should all be waking up at any moment.
"My head," Mr. Rory groaned.
"Stein?" Mr. Snart asked groggily, "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I'm as ignorant as you, for once."
"Where are we?" Ms. Lance asked.
"Why don't you ask the dude who knocked us out and kidnapped us?" Mr. Jackson responded, "British dude with a flashy thing ring any bells?"
And that was Rip's cue if there was one. "The name's Rip Hunter. I'm from East London. Oh, and the future."
THE END
Less than a month until I start posting 'The Cold Factor'! 'Fellowship of the Spear' just made me depressed in so many ways, now I have to figure out how to fix that!