"Nobody knew that much about the Star Centurion. He was a brilliant man who looked at everything around him with such wonder. He told the Society he was a hero from the future who had come to stop Kang Degaton from disrupting the past more than he already did.
Degaton's Spear of Destiny created a field around Europe that prevented any superpowered people from getting in lest they fall under his control. A lot of innocent people died before we had the chance to intervene. His Tachyon Rod was the X-Factor the team needed to enter the war; it had the power to dispel that field. Thanks to him, the Society was able to go overseas in '43. He was even able to free Mother Shade from Degaton's control and we could use her as our double agent. Without him, the Society probably would have lost the War, and you'd be speaking German," regaled Esteban Garrick, lying on a therapist's couch in an office in Fawcett City, Ohio.
Sarge was having his weekly therapy session with "Doc" Dudley Samson, or as Billy Banner affectionately referred to him, "Uncle Gamma". He was the green Captain's psychiatrist turned eventual legal guardian. The doctor was there to help Billy cope with the divinely powered alternative identity, and eventually help the two sides of SHAHULK become one in the same. And if Samson could help Banner, he could definitely help the Sergeant through his grief and existential enough, Dudley wasn't even a real doctor, let alone a licensed therapist. Despite this, he was still the go-to guy for superheroes in need of some sage wisdom and psychological help.
Since the death of the Fatal Compass, Sarge had been seeing Samson. The loss of Erik weighed heavily on the speedster's mind, and it brought back a lot of bad memories from the war. Samson diagnosed him with PTSD, and over time, he was helping Sarge work through it by going into detail about everything he went through during his time.
"I'm sorry Esteban, can we back up a few?" Samson asked, still a bit bewildered by what he was told just five minutes ago. "Are you sure that you don't want to talk about the fact that a time-traveling Nazi altered history to change your race? I feel like that's a bit more important."
Dudley Samson exuded a folksy charm. He was a large, plump man in his late sixties. His face had kind eyes, a round nose, and an infectious smile. His hair was thinning, but what was there was dyed a bright green, and he had a distinct lightning bolt shaped scar down across his left eye. He wore a red shirt with a similar symbol on it to match with a large, ill-fitting, lab coat over it. It almost looked like a cape, perhaps to match his adopted "nephew."
"There's not much to say about that, Doc. I was raised to remember that your actions matter far more than whatever color you are," postured the Sergeant in his old-fashioned, righteous tone. "What Thawne did with that was his twisted, racist idea of what he thought would torture me. He failed. I'm still a good man, and that's what matters."
Dudley took in what Sarge said and then took a few notes, "Okay, okay. We'll circle back to that, okay?" Esteban Garrick seemed to mask a lot of his personal shortcomings by a sense of bravado. "Anyway, you were talking about the Star Centurion's clash with Kang Degaton. Continue, Sergeant."
Esteban nodded and continued reciting his exploit, "Even though he was from a world far beyond our own, he treated his fellow soldiers with a deep familiarity. It was as if he knew us already. He knew the punchlines to all our jokes before we even started them. He could anticipate our actions as if we were wholly predictable. Logan and I used to butt heads over who was really in charge. But I think deep down, Logan knew that he'd been calling the shots behind the scenes the whole time. But after I finished my first fight with Thawne, I saw a much different side of him that day."
When I ran back into the main hall, the two future men flew around the room like shooting stars. They threw each other against the stone walls so hard, the bricks crumbled like drywall. They were operating on a level far beyond my understanding. It was like watching primal forces of the universe fight for control over reality itself. But most importantly, I could tell that the Centurion was pissed.
When the Spear and the Rod clashed, their energies collided to create miniature novas. I could watch it all in slow motion, it was almost beautiful. I was snapped out of awe for what felt like minutes when Diana shook me back to my senses and brought me back down to normal speed. I saw the Hawks were grounded, Rex was an old man, and I couldn't find the Lantern anywhere. That day was just constant chaos and fighting, nothing felt real anymore. Thawne's reveal still had me reeling at that point, but I pushed it to the back of my mind for the sake of the mission.
The mission meanwhile, kept getting more and more complicated. Remember Bio-Wave, the little man with the huge head? Well that head let him do things. It let him control organic matter with his mind. We'd fought his genetically engineered monsters since Brussels, coincidentally, the monsters he sent there were made of brussel sprouts. But Arnim King had a secret weapon buried beneath the castle, just in case the rest of the Hydras went down, and in dire straits, he let it loose.
The shaking in the floor felt like a ticking clock to me. But the thing that came out had hands which were a lot less rhythmic. A massive, green, vegetation-covered arm burst through the floor. It clawed its way up from beneath and pulled the rest of a monstrous body through the stone. What emerged looked like a gross amalgamation of a swamp monster and a zombie. The beast was huge, even bigger than Captain Gamma. It was covered head to toe in reeds, vines, and other swamp plants, but you could tell it used to be a man. It wore a white shirt, black jacket, and pants held up by a rope. All of what it wore was soaked and tattered, it smelled of decay and rot. I couldn't tell you if it was even alive, but beneath all the weeds were a pair of soulless, red eyes.
The monster roared at us, it was a horrifying sound. It lumbered towards me, Diana, and Fate and began swinging violently. We were all easily able to get out of the way, but anywhere it touched, the surrounding area began to melt, even the stone. The creature secreted some kind of intensely corrosive acid. None of us wanted to get near it.
"What is this strange man…thing?" Diana asked as she side-stepped another heavy slam of the monster's fist. She tried to blast the thing with fire, but it was too saturated with water to be burned.
"I think this is one of Alan's foes from Goth's Kitchen, one of his toughest. He called this one "Swamp Man Grundy," I answered as I tried to throw my helmet at it to gain its attention. But instead, it got lodged in Grundy's vines.
"Come on Fate, this guy's magic, you've gotta know something about him!" Diana called out to the Fatal Compass.
Swamp Man Grundy was in a frenzy, slamming its mighty fists down on Fate, the sorcerer barely repelling its blows by use of a mystic, golden forcefield. "Grundy is a creature born of science and magic. It has strong empathic abilities, and the levels of aggression and fear in this castle are causing the beast great pain," the Lord of Order explained as he remained wholly on the defensive. Nabu took great effort in suppressing Erik's emotions for the time being. If they were to surface, the monster could grow even more enraged. "But there is another force present within. Bio-Wave is manipulating the creature's essence from afar. If we find and disable him, we have a hope of calming the beast down."
"Alan doesn't feel emotions the same way we do, that's how he's been able to fight Grundy before. He can handle it afterward," I strategized as I still had a thousand other thoughts racing through my head. Every single thing that kept happening that day just added to the chaos in my mind. I just kept doing my best to be what my team needed.
Diana bought us some time. She realized that if the thing was full of swamp water, she could freeze it. But just like the rest of us, she was running on fumes and couldn't hold it up for long. I remember how tired all of us were, and how the fights just kept coming and coming. Not just that day, but the entire invasion of Europe. We saved a lot of lives, but we saw just as much death. We were just clinging to the steam we had left just to get to the light at the end of the tunnel.
We used Diana's stalling to regroup. Rex joined us, I knew war aged you, but that was ridiculous. Ororo quickly ran towards us with Logan propped on her shoulder. With their flight devices disabled, Stormbird simply cast aside her cape wings to alleviate the dead weight, but Wolfhawk's wings were a part of his body. He had bones in those metal wings, and without the antigravity, he could barely move, nor retract them into his back. But all of them were still prepared to fight for their comrades, and they looked to me for leadership.
Alan and the Centurion were off handling their respective threats, so I threw together my last on the fly battle plan with my old team. It wasn't my best, but I'll never forget it.
"We have three primary points of focus: Wizard, Bio-Wave, and Grundy. Wonder Crystal, 60 Minutes, and I will stall the wet salad as long as we can. Stormbird, find Alan and get him over here so he can contain it. Wolfhawk, you're going to get Bio-Wave," I instructed quickly. I didn't have a lot of time to think.
"Sarge, how the hell am I supposed to get up to King's perch with my wings like this?" Logan asked, struggling to lift his wings even a few feet off the ground.
"I'll handle that, but you must be able to find him once you're up there," Fate chimed in as he raised his hand to start a spell. His hand crackled with a magnetic field as the weight of Logan's metal wings lightened.
Logan sniffed, getting a smell for Arnim King's scent, "Trust me Nabu, I'm the best at what I do, and what I do to him won't be very nice. I'll get him," he all but guaranteed.
"Fair enough, after that, I need Fate to assist our other heavy hitters. Alan may need your help," I continued as I looked over at Diana, straining to keep Grundy contained. "Rex, do you have any juice left?"
"Kang aged me ten years, but at least as far my body's concerned, it's a new day, and I have another hour," Rex answered as he reached into his belt, grabbed another pill, popped it in his mouth and was reinvigorated with strength. He flipped his hourglass again to restart his timer.
Diana finally lost her control over freezing the swamp monster and staggered back. She looked at her hands and I saw some frostbite on her fingertips. She always gave more than she could give, she still does. I still worry about her sometimes.
Rex threw a super powerful punch and sent the monster back about ten feet. Grundy charged towards all of us again and called for everyone to split up. I dashed towards Diana and picked her up to get her out of the way.
I saw Ororo and Logan share a brief kiss and a few quick words before Fate magnetically picked him up and threw him like a fastball straight towards the inside balcony where Bio-Wave was last seen. I'm not sure what exactly went on in there, but I could hear the sound of scraping metal across concrete.
Once I got Diana away from the fray for a moment, I took it as a chance to briefly talk. "You alright, mi hermana?"
Diana let out a heavy sigh, "I'm tired, Hermes. I think my time away from the island is starting to hit me. I'm finally aging. Slowly, but surely." It was true, she went from looking twenty-five to looking twenty-six.
"You're not going to go back home right after the war, aren't you?" I asked, worried about only one thing for a moment.
"Great Hera, no! I'd never give my family the satisfaction of being right," Diana replied with her crystalline smile. That damn smile, she knew how much power it could have over a person. It immediately put you at ease, even when she wasn't. She knew that too, and always knew when to use it. "Besides, I could never leave you behind."
"Same here, Diana. Now, let's bring this can of spinach down, vámanos!" I responded before we both charged back in to fight Grundy.
"You talk about Diana quite frequently in these sessions, Esteban. Why do you think that is?" Doc Samson asked as he kept writing things down. Most of it was his analysis of Sarge's psyche, but there were also a few notes documenting the story itself he told. He loved being a superhero therapist because he found the stories they'd tell him absolutely riveting.
Sarge was taken aback, he hadn't realized how much he was doing while he told the story, but realized upon being called out. "Ay, who's to say? Maybe it's because she's the one thing that didn't change in the time I was gone. I jumped seventy years, and her shining diamond smile stayed the same. Diana has been the one person I could always count on."
"Do you love her?" Dudley asked, wondering if there were any romantic feelings towards her.
Esteban gave a small smile, "Of course I do. She's the sister I never had. Mi hermana."
"Have you ever told her about the extent of what Johann Thawne did to you?" the doctor asked, trying to bring the course of the conversation back to the elephant in the room.
Sarge took a deep sigh, "No…she knows that he's done things to me, but she's never pried too much into details. She wants me to wait 'till I'm ready. I could never tell her, though."
Dudley wrote that down, "Why not? You also said you worried about her, why do you think that is?"
"She's not like us, Doc. Diana is on a level beyond us. She's a descendent of the gods, but she doesn't act like it." the Sergeant let out a sigh. "She has so much love for everyone, but she has trouble accepting that we are finite. She understands that humans are limited, but she always wants to help us be better, even if it seems impossible. As long as she can draw a breath, she won't stop trying to help. I don't want her to waste her time on me. She's got enough on her plate already."
That remark really intrigued Dudley, he immediately began scribbling something down in his notes.
Esteban cocked an eyebrow, "Was it something I said, Doc?"
"Why do you feel that you aren't worthy of help from your loved ones?" Dudley asked in a sympathetic tone. "Why would you, of all people on this Earth, feel like you're not worth the trouble?"
That question hit Esteban like a bullet train. He had never framed his feelings like that before, but he couldn't argue the statement. He was always playing support to his teams, being a tactician, being a leader. Sergeant Speed was always one to jump on the grenade when needed. He rose to the occasion like the rising Sun. He paused to consider what made him rise, but he didn't have to think about that very long.
"I…I just think it's all bigger than me. What I want is irrelevant to what the rest of the world needs. I've fought alongside a lot of great men, women, and everything else in between; good people who sacrificed themselves to help make the world a better place. I owe it to those who aren't here to keep on running until we finally get to the finish line together."
"God, you give a good speech," Dudley muttered under his breath. He was truly in awe of being able to talk to Garrick like this. He was his childhood hero, but being able to understand the man beneath the cowl and the winged hat made it all the more tangible. "But you have to remember that you are more than what you can do for others. You are more than a symbol. You are a person, and that's enough"
Those words seemed to resonate with Sarge on some level, but he still held strong in his sense of self, or arguably lack thereof. "Right, yeah. If so many people have died so I could live, I must be worth something, right?" His voice cracked as he said that. He flung his head over the arm of the couch.
"Do you want to finally talk about those events, Sergeant? You've opened up a lot today, with what you've described to me. I think we're making some shahulking sized progress today. Let's keep the ball rolling, come on." Dudley probed, hopeful for one more big revelation.
"Well, okay Doc," Esteban said with a shudder in his breath. "If you think it'll help to keep going."
"Just keep yourself centered, Esteban. Go at your own pace," Dudley said reassuringly. "Actually, maybe not that fast. A little slower than your own pace if you can," he joked, trying to ease his apprehension.
Sarge closed his eyes, and let his mind take him back to that final hour in 1945. "Eventually, we changed our approach and were able to subdue Swamp Man Grundy. If it fed on our emotions, the best way to handle it was calming down. Diana used her Lasso of Purity to clear her mind and control her emotions so that Grundy would only feel a sense of peace coming off her. It was brilliant. She managed to keep him in place with the Lasso, weakening any hold Bio-Wave still had on him. I took a step back in case anything I was feeling would set him off. I was reeling from what Thawne told me still, and I didn't want to risk setting that thing off with my petty hang ups."
"We just have to hold here until Erik gets here with Alan. I think we did it," Diana said calmly as she gently petted the beast. Knowing how the monster functioned, she pitied it, and treated it with compassion until we could properly transport it back to the swamp they got it from.
Things were going alright, I spent a few seconds rounding up the downed Baroness and Bonechiller. Spirit of 60 Minutes disarmed them of their weapons and took Ororo's disabled Adth-Metal cape to wrap around them, the weight of it all keeping them firmly in place. I had no idea where the Masters went, but we could get them later. I was about to go get Thawne from the weapon's bay, but then the Star Centurion and Kang Degaton crashed through one of the castle walls and straight into the ground next to us.
So much stuff had happened in the past ten minutes, that I forgot that they were even a part of this. That's to show how hectic of a day that was, I forgot about the two time travelers flying around the castle with magic sticks trying to kill each other.
Diana stood back, maintaining her hold on Grundy. Rex and I ran to them on the ground. It wasn't a pretty sight. Degaton stood over the Centurion with the Spear of Destiny in hand, and the tip straight through his chest.
The three of us looked in horror at the man we fought alongside impaled like that. Ororo brandished her mace, her crackling with electricity. Rex and I put up our fists, prepared to fight Kang. The conqueror looked at us like we were nothing. We were just ants waiting to be stepped on by him. I was terrified, but I had to avenge my comrade.
"You have run out of time, Marvelous Society of America," Kang said with dismissal. "Everything you have fought for has been for naught, a cosmic inevitability in my crusade for conquest. Even your great Centurion was nothing but a crude distraction."
He picked him up by the neck and raised him into the air, his face looking towards us. "Your armor and rod indicate you are from my time period. I have often wondered who you were. Are you the son of a man I murdered, an old officer who I cast aside in my rise to power, or are you a weak, future version of myself, guilt-ridden over what we had to do to get here?" Kang tapped a button on the side of the Centurion's helmet, deactivating the holographic shimmer which covered and muddled his face to all of us, he pulled back the helmet to reveal his true identity.
As the shimmer dissipated, who we saw was a younger man with red hair, just like Kang's. Rex immediately recognized the man before us, "Wait a minute, Ted Timely? He's the Star Centurion?!" he asked incredulously. "Oh god, that makes so much sense. This is the guy that helped me invent my miracle pills!"
"Timely, he was there in Erskine's lab the day I had the accident which gave me my speed," I added, piecing everything together.
"Hold on, that man was with Logan and I during our expedition in Egypt. Without him, we would never have found the temple which held the secrets of our past lives." Stormbird called out as she came back and brought Fate and Lantern towards the group.
"And without the Star Centurion, you never would have found the remains of the camp that Erik destroyed when he received the Helm of Nabu," the Fatal Compass explained as he floated into the room with the Human Lantern behind him.
The Human Lantern had the Wizard restrained in shackles made of his hard light constructs. He was back in his normal appearance, without the emerald light enveloping his whole body. He looked at Ted Timely suspended in the air, "Theodore Timely was the co-inventor of the Horton Cells which make up my body. He helped create me, he helped create all of us."
"Surprise. Sorry for the deception, but if I was going to defeat Degaton, I was going to need all the help I could get. Also, this…really hurts. So can we move this along?"
This whole time, Degaton was in stunned silence. It wasn't that he cared that much that Ted Timely, unbeknownst to them, created the MSA. But Kang recognized Ted in a different way. He saw his eyes, his own eyes in Ted. He could come up with two possible conclusions. He asked the one which scared him less, "Are you my descendant, boy? Did I kill my own son?" The conqueror sounded terrified, but not guilty.
"Nope…guess again," Ted said as he coughed up blood. "I didn't want it to go this way, but I was prepared for the worst. I'm not your son, Kang. I'm you, twenty years before your empire began."
The castle was full of gasps. Everyone was awash in shock, awe, and absolute confusion. This was the 1940s, there weren't any movies out to explain how time travel worked yet! Nobody understood what past and future selves and branching timelines meant! But we found out what that meant pretty quickly.
Kang dropped the Spear on the ground, and Ted with it. "No, this can't be! I can't be slain by my hand! I just have to go back in time to stop myself from killing myself," he kept rambling on about using a paradox to prevent himself from disappearing. He was about to start fiddling with a device on his wrist to execute a last ditch plan, but Fate just cast a spell which destroyed the device on his arm, "Temporal anomaly has been eliminated. Order shall be restored," the sorcerer said grimly as Kang panicked. After that, Kang's body began to spasm and fade in and out of reality. We didn't understand it then, but it was a grizzly sight to watch.
Ted managed to stand one more time, he propped himself up with his Tachyon Rod. "An older version of you once went back in time to show me what I would become. You were the master of the universe, a tyrant above all others, the greatest enacter of injustice across time and space," he said between coughs, "I was horrified of the kind of man I would become. So I made it my life's mission to make sure I'd never become you. And if I have to never become anything for that to happen, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
Kang scrambled around, trying to repair his device to escape, to save himself. "No, no please! Don't let me fade away!" He pleaded for salvation.
Rex responded to his pleas by a simple punch to the jaw. "That's fer taking my 40s."
Kang was on the ground, looking off into the distance at who knows what's on the other side for a dying paradox. He was scared, and for the people he had slaughtered, it was too good for him. "I just need more time," were his last words before he and the Spear disappeared from existence.
Ted, or young Kang, fell to the ground as he was slowly fading. Not from reality or anything fancy like that, he was just fading. A stab to the chest will do that, even to a future boy.
"Come on, Fate, we gotta save him! He's one of us!" I ordered to Fatal Compass.
"No, if Kang Degaton is to remain dead, his past self must perish for the timeline to be restored. Order must be restored to the universe, and he can no longer remain for that to happen." Fate answered coldly. You could tell that was just Nabu talking. Erik liked the Star Centurion, Ted was good to the kid. There was no emotion there, just duty.
We didn't entirely understand the scenario, but we accepted that this was Ted's heroic sacrifice. He created us, brought us together, made us his friends, just so we could watch him die. All of that time travel stuff made me feel so small. They controlled the story of the world, and I was just along for the ride. That'd make anybody feel helpless.
We were all gathered around Ted as we had to let him succumb to his wounds. Diana still had to stand back. She couldn't let herself feel grief or else Grundy would go off again. But the five of us sat with him until he passed. He said some stuff about how much fighting alongside us meant to him, how the past was such a "romantic" experience for him. I don't remember his final words, I was just so engrossed, thinking about all of that power. And just like that, he was gone, out of time.