Previously, on DC's Legends of Tomorrow: With a heartless cabal of android replicas of themselves hunting the Legends through the timeline, the group was forced to disband back to their native times to survive. But Gwyn Davies, inventor of time travel who helped the Legends escape the killer androids, refused to let his comrade-in-arms perish in 1916.
Though he cannot rescue his beloved Alun before his younger self witnesses his death and become inspired to create a time machine, he believes he can do so by replacing Alun with a robotic duplicate - saving him and letting his younger self go on to complete the loop. Despite the Legends recovering their Waverider and coming to his rescue, the 'Fixer' in charge of preserving the fixed point steals their timeship and abandons the crew in the middle of World War I.
Returning mere hours later to recover them, the Legends and their new member are elated to return to their home where a contrite Fixer is waiting with a surprise in store.
Mametz Woods, Northern France - 1916
"Huh!" Sara shouted as the Legends strode onto the bridge of the restored Waverider. "You have something you want to say to us, Mike?" Over by the console, Mike looked sufficiently embarrassed that she didn't break her knuckles on his face.
"Yeah, ah," He stammered. "I apologise - I may have acted a bit impulsive."
"You stole our ship!" Behrad could hardly believe what he was hearing. Stranding people in time required a lot more grovelling than they were hearing.
"I did," Mike admitted. "But, to be fair, I just found out that my job was pointless! And then this big, beautiful timeship showed up out of nowhere and landed right in front of me, what did you expect me to do?" He shrugged helplessly.
"Well, I certainly wouldn't have abandoned my new allies in their time of need." Gwyn gestured to the group around him.
"I know," Mike stepped out from behind the podium. "But, I had things to do, you know? I had people to see, people to save," A set of very distinct jewellery came into view as he continued to walk and talk. "Adventures to be had," Ava gasped as his gesturing hands highlighted the links between them.
"Hi, er, sorry," Zari broke in and pointed at the accessory. "What's with the aggressive jewellery?"
"Oh, this?" Mike twisted plated handcuffs back and forth experimentally. "You like?" He looked at the Legends hopefully. "Good, because you're all about to get your very own. Guys! Come on out!" He shouted. "The Legends are here!" Sticking two fingers in his mouth, Mike gave a shrill whistle as doors around the bridge opened and uniforms piled out with guns drawn.
"It's a setup!" Behrad shouted, instinctively turning to secure an escape.
"On the floor, Legends!" A grizzled man with a touch of grey where his beard met his hairline spoke with clear authority. "You're all under arrest."
"Oh, Hell we are!" Spooner shrugged her coat off and pulled a gun from somewhere.
"Spooner, put the gun dowwwwn!" Mike shouted in fear. Ava gently reached out to point the firearm away as Zari placed a calming hand on her shoulder.
"Argh!" Astra growled in pain as the lead cop grabbed her arms and began securing them in cuffs. "Who the Hell are you? Why are you arresting us?!" She demanded.
"For time crimes," Mike said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Duh!"
"That's enough out of you, Buster." The cop snapped.
"Hey, it's Booster." Mike corrected proudly. "I'm Booster. Gold. Okay?" A heavy-set cop who reminded them slightly of Mick Rory grabbed him by the shoulder. "Yo, dude, argh!" Mike/Booster was forced to his knees as the rest of the Legends followed suit.
"Mike, Booster," Sara didn't care much for the treatment she was receiving on the deck of her ship. "What the Hell is this?"
"I hope you don't have any plans for the near future because we're about to spend a lot of time together." He pulled an apologetic face as the thug kept him pinned tightly to the floor. "In jail!"
Looking at him with conflicting emotions, the Legends groaned en masse and planted their faces to the decking in despair.
"Waverider are secure." Another squad of boots arrived. "There's nobody else aboard, sir."
"Very good, Arvind." Chief cop smirked and holstered his gun. "Get them up." The Legends and Mike were dragged back to their feet for his amusement. After a moment of scrutiny, he came to a decision. "Call base, tell them we're bringing in the Legends." Nodding, one of the faceless goons moved to a console and began tapping.
Sara leaned closer to Ava with the tiniest smile. "Watch out, he's about to start bragging."
"Sara, please." She hissed back. "I'm sure we can sort this all out by explaining what happened." It was adorable how her stickler-for-the-rules wife had never experienced an encounter with the average cop. Outside her dad and a few of his buddies, Sara could have counted the good cops in the SCPD on one hand growing up.
"Do you have any idea how long we've been chasing you guys?" Sara shot her beloved wife the smugest look she could with armed guards around as Jurgens continued. "We found evidence of your tampering all across the timestream. That Soviet mess in 1986, Central City more times than I care to count. I thought that time when your team was scattered to the time winds would be the end of it but the saints smiled upon you as the demons must have smiled at me. Fallout from that atomic weapon kept the Waverider hidden"
"We get it." Astra rolled her eyes. "Honestly, I've heard less moaning in Hell."
"You must be Astra Logue." Jurgens glared. "Don't worry, we made sure to have spellweavers from Zerox enchant your cuffs."
"O-o-o-h." Gary whimpered. "Zerox is known as the Sorcerers' World, one of the largest focal points of magical practices in the galaxy."
"We'll see about that. Permuto!" Astra cried with a flick of her wrist. Silence enveloped the room as her handcuffs stubbornly remained as handcuffs. "Okay, so you did your homework."
"And… I believe you go by 'Gary Green' in this form." Jurgens smiled unpleasantly. "Tell me, why do you think the Fountain of Imperium chose to spare you?"
"Sir?" Another uniform, Arvind, prompted him.
"Lieutenant, set course for headquarters. Try and bring us in within a month of leaving will you?" Jurgens glanced around the ship. "If this bucket of bolts can even be that accurate."
"Belay that order!" Gideon shouted.
"Convicts don't give orders on my ship!" There was instant outrage at Jurgens' words. Both actual captains started staking claims on their partner's behalf, Gary shook off his glasses and waved tentacles threateningly with Behrad trying to explain that ownership was a concept that needed to be removed from society.
Exasperated, Gideon deduced that a logical argument would need longer than they had left and took action. "Just," Rushing past, Gideon forced their captor to look through the viewpoint behind her. "Look!"
He looked. More importantly, he saw.
"Stand down!" Jurgens bellowed.
"But sir," A uniform protested.
"NOW!" He screamed fearfully. With looks of confusion, the time police begrudgingly lowered their weapons.
Sidling closer, Zari found the anomaly but not the reason for fearing it. "Gidget, not to be a downer but what's got your funky disco ball in a twirl?"
Jurgens had the dreamy look of someone recently hit by a bus and currently waiting for the ground to make a painful introduction. "The time drive is already active." He said distractedly.
"Sir, we haven't finalised any jump coordinates." Arvind reminded him.
"That's because there isn't anywhere to jump to." Standing beside Jurgens, Gideon had a strange look on her face. "Captains," She turned. "What's the name of the feeling where everything inside wants to get outside and you want to run away and curl up in a ball with an itchy back?"
"Too much tequila?" Spooner posited.
"Too few gummies?" Behrad shivered unpleasantly.
"Fear." Alun, still trembling from the sudden changes to his reality, spoke up in a soft tone. "That would be terror you're describing, Miss Gideon."
"Yes," She said gratefully. "Sorry, many of these emotions are still new to me."
"Still new to," Echoed the Welshman, Gwyn stepping protectively close enough to touch shoulders. It was small comfort and his glare at the time police arresting him said that his fury for being unable to hold his beloved's hand was more dangerous than the armies warring outside.
"Gideon, sitrep." Shouldering aside her guard, Sara stepped up to the podium alongside her pilot.
"Hey!" Not-Rory moved to restrain her.
"Hands off!" Darting out, Ava cleanly broke his nose with a solid headbutt as she kept her wife free. "Ow. Ow ow ow!" Mission accomplished, she drooped pitifully against Spooner, trying to stem the wave of pain in her head as Not-Rory rolled across the floor.
"Well, Captain Lance," Gideon acted as if nothing had happened while the Jurgens bellowed to his squad to stand down and take P'tar to the med bay. "We appear to be caught in a tachyon stasis field. By now, the automated systems should have performed a full sweep, calculated the source of the nearby interference and," An alarm sounded right on cue. "That's not good." Gideon frowned. Turning on the spot, she began nosing the console.
"Hey!" Jurgens pulled her upright by the shoulder. "What are you doing?"
"If the ship can't identify the source of the stasis field, we're unable to use the time drive beyond actively keeping up with the normal passage of time." She replied.
"Because trying to activate a drive like that would overload the causal nexus and cause complete temporal inversion," He snapped, pushing her (but not too roughly because Ava was already upright again) to stand beside Sara and pointing the pair back to the rest of the group. "That's the only reason I didn't have you thrown in the brig for your little stunt."
"You're not listening," Gideon insisted. "Tachyon stasis fields strong enough to freeze a timeship have enormous power requirements and cannot operate over long distances."
"Gideon!" Sara reminded her who was actually in charge of the ship.
"Captain Lance, the time drive is currently active and running at full capacity." Gideon explained. "We are moving through time at a rate of one second per second."
"Miss Gideon, forgive me," Gwyn instinctively straightened up as the first true authority on time travel. "But my life's work is not to merely follow time's current but to break free and soar through history as a bird to the skies."
"You're all crazy. And under arrest." Jurgens reminded them. "Lieutenant Arvind, put the prisoners in the brig while we perform diagnostics on the sensors and the time drive."
"Hey!" Ava shouted past the stars in her vision. "The lady wasn't finished." Jurgens held up a hand to temporarily halt their incarceration.
"Mrs Sharpe, I greatly respected your work at the Time Bureau. You performed your role adequately despite the primitive surroundings." If they weren't already married, Sara might have worried about losing Ava to the one other person who could make a compliment sound like a failing review. "But you're in my custody now, and I say what happens."
"Oh yeah?" She stepped onto the platform around the pilot seats and stared him down. "Well, your 'custody'," She twisted so he could see the sarcastic quotation marks. "Includes the father of time travel, an A.I. transmogrified into a human, one alien warlock, the only lady I know who could make a gun out of a microwave," Spooner shrugged helplessly at the rest of the crew as they finally found out how the last one had died. "A living magical nexus, a tech genius, a socialite who can tear you apart in under two minutes,"
"Please, with those outfits?" Zari glanced over the black with brass buttons uniforms and snorted. "Under eighty seconds."
"Led by," Ava continued with a nod of appreciation. "My kick-ass former assassin wife, and me, who just took down your biggest guy without even trying." Looking him in the eye, she hoped Jurgens couldn't tell he was secretly blurry. "We could break out of these cuffs in seconds."
"Hey," Mike interrupted. "Don't I get a cool introduction?"
"Then why haven't you?" Jurgens said coolly, ignoring their traitorous friend.
"Well, I, that is," She rallied to the bluff magnificently. "Because we need you to listen to what Gideon has to say first."
The Time Police officer evaluated the damage they could cause if they got unruly. "Fine," He sighed. Better let them vent before putting them in holding. "Miss Gideon, you have two minutes."
"Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen," Gideon continued muttering to herself.
"Gideon!" Sara hissed with a slight knock on her boots. Ava had pulled off the best bluff of her career so far and she didn't want it ruined.
"Sorry, Captains." Gideon looked up with a face of fear. "As I was trying to explain [twelve, eleven, ten] a tachyon stasis field shouldn't be this powerful [eight, seven, six] and undetectable unless [four, three] unless it's actually,"
Klaxons sounded throughout the ship and it shuddered dramatically, quaking as the shields kicked in and weapons automatically came online. Alerts filled every screen and all exterior doors fastened tight in lockdown. The view out of the fore windows diverted all their attention and even prevented Jurgens from demanding further answers. It had been the dead of night when Mike arrived to trap them when Jurgens arrived to arrest them. Twenty minutes ago at most. Too soon for the dawn to come.
Too early for red skies.
"Gideon?" Sara swallowed painfully. "Tell me that's not what I think it is." Not again. She couldn't go through it again.
"If you think it's the first sign of an antimatter wave, then it's not what you think it is," Gideon assured her. The Legends breathed a collective sigh of relief. "It's a negative tachyon field, powerful enough to keep the entire planet frozen in 1916."
"Commander Jurgens!" Arvind burst back into the room. "There's some kind of lockout on the systems - we can't access anything."
"Oh, goodie!" Gideon said happily. "I was worried the automated systems might not be fully operational without a system A.I. in place."
"Undo the lockout and return control of the ship." Jurgens levelled his weapon at her chest.
"Don't people usually say 'please' when asking for a favour?" Gideon ignored her crew's shouting as she continued smiling at her captor.
"Hey, idiot!" Behrad called from the sidelines. The Legends had moved as a group to protect her friend but the guards were less keen to give them freedom after what had happened to Not-Rory. "You're going to shoot the only person who can get this ship working?"
"I'll shoot her to make a point," Jurgens insisted. "Then, while she's getting patched up in the med bay, I'll have you fix the ship."
"Mr Tarazi won't be able to bypass the encryption for quite some time," Gideon eyed the gun pointedly. "Cessõ Protocol is a core component to the base operating system of all Time Master vehicles. It can activate enough without an A.I."
"And what does Cessō Protocol do?" Jurgens stepped close enough to press the barrel of his gun against her jacket.
"Cessō Protocol activates when a large-scale negative tachyon field is detected." Gideon glanced fearfully at the red sky outside.
"Luckily, the concentration doesn't seem to be enough to overpower our time drive just yet." Ava took over the conversation. "The Time Bureau once tangled with time pirates who had experimented in using negative tachyon payloads - they vaporise a time drive upon impact." And any ship or crew caught in the blast zone.
"Cessō Protocol dictates that any functional timeships are to immediately return to the Vanishing Point and receive direct orders from the Time Masters." Gideon continued. "Of course, there are no Time Masters and the Vanishing Point and any ships were destroyed when Captain Snart sabotaged the Oculus."
"Then we're just going to sit here, spinning wheels until the gears give out and we get stuck in whatever that is out there?" Zari didn't know who the Time Master was or what an Oculus did but she knew when the party was about to turn sour.
"Not likely," Lieutenant Arvind seemed more hospitable than his commander. "Timeships can function for decades."
"Long enough to starve to death instead." Gary's face fell.
"Can't you cocoon up and coma it away?" Jurgens snapped.
"Not without sustenance." If possible, he looked more despondent.
"I volunteer this clown as first tribute." Spooner sneered towards Jurgens.
"Try it, half-pint," He snarled. "See how far you get."
"Don't threaten her!" Astra snapped.
"Don't threaten us!" Arvind ordered from behind.
"At least we're trying to solve the actual problem." She shot back.
"And do your plans always end up with you in handcuffs?" Jurgens retaliated.
The argument dissolved into petty bickering before the captain stuck two fingers in her mouth and blew a shrill whistle.
"Guys," Sara grinned wider than the Cheshire Cat as the group finished getting the stress out of their systems with some petty muttering. "Biff Protocol."
"Oh, hell yeah!" Spooner whooped.
"What's Biff Protocol?" Jurgens still had his weapon drawn but now it was cocked.
"Sara, no." Ava insisted.
"We can't do anything from here," Sara touched elbows with her wife to make it clear that she had heard and understood the reluctance but they didn't have much choice. "But we can still message someone with time travel capabilities. They can then come back and leave behind everything we need to escape right here."
"Commander," Arvind interrupted. "This sounds like a bootstrap paradox."
"It's technically not," Ava was visibly uncomfortable with the suggestion but still a stickler for the rules. "It would only be a bootstrap paradox if we did it ourselves. Otherwise, it's more like calling a breakdown recovery."
"And how do you propose to get a message beyond the negative tachyon field?" Jurgens didn't so much crow with joy as he did click the safety back on. "Last I checked, that's still the problem."
"We have a second time drive on our jump ship we can use to put a message in a bottle and send it safely through the field same as us - one second per second." Arvind nodded to confirm Behrad's words. "We'll still be safe in the Waverider while someone curves around this little time pocket, leaves what we need, and then we can pick up and go ahead as planned." Down a time drive and still in custody but better than their current situation.
"Except all Time Police facilities are guarded against temporal incursions." Jurgens reluctantly holstered his weapon. "We'll have to send it to," Teeth gritted as he forced the words out. "One of your friends. The Flash will do." Advanced (for the period) tech, natural ability to navigate the timestream, and a strong sense of justice.
"Mm-mm." Gideon disagreed. "S.T.A.R. Labs underwent full geographical surveys to accommodate the particle accelerator. There's no way to leave a beacon without it being detected before our natural point in the timeline."
"How about D.E.O. facilities?" Gideon shook her head. "Wayne Tower?" Shake. "Fortress of Solitude?!" Jurgens fumed.
"How about the Starchives?" Gary crept in. "They weren't originally a subsidiary of S.T.A.R. Labs, Dr Wells bought it to store components to construct the pipeline."
"Gary, that's brilliant!" Gideon gushed. "We can fly to Central City and plant the time drive now. As soon as it reaches the Flash, it can initiate a tachyon burst to alert him to its presence."
"Don't think I'll let you plot some sort of escape plan," Jurgens could see the hope growing and snuffed it out before it could become a danger. "If I see any hint that you're planning to break custody, the deal's off and we'll stay right here until the Time Police notice and come to retrieve us." Hackles raised on all sides at the ultimatum.
"May I suggest a compromise?" Alun burst in. All eyes focused on the soldier. "Commander Jurgens, it would seem to me that your team is marooned here with my Gwyn's friends, correct?"
Jurgens looked at the only innocent in the room. Alun being aboard the Waverider, an aberration in time, was not his own doing. "As you would understand it, yes."
"But this fine lady, and her crew, have a plan for returning you to your rightful time." He swallowed nervously. "Would it not be prudent to attempt her plan while devising alternatives in the meanwhile?"
Jurgens glowered at Gwyn for bringing about the entire situation. "Commander?" Arvind broke in. "We'll need to travel slowly to avoid overtaxing the time drive as we pass through the field. Getting to Central City will give us enough time to devise alternate plans."
Jurgens looked between them. If he'd brought a Time Police ship, none of this would be happening. They could have linked the two time drives aboard the Waverider to those aboard his ship and had enough power to punch through this field. As it was, "Fine." He agreed begrudgingly. "Set a course for Central City. Arvind, tell the crew to make themselves comfortable. Captain Sharpe, Captain Lance, I expect you to handle your team. But I'll throw you all in the brig together at the first sign of trouble, are we understood?" A chorus of sullen agreement muttered his way. "And debrief Officer Thomas," Jurgens grunted. "He deserves to know what he's in for."