Justice League Presents... Booster Gold #1

On the fringes of time itself, mounted on the rock at the edge of entropy, Booster Gold was lying back in his deck chair, sipping a mojito, watching the universe end. Every now and then he’d do this to kill some time. He was waiting, as ever, for Rip Hunter. Rip Hunter hadn’t been seen for a few months now, ever since the Zero Hour incident, but there was a note, carved into the back of his chalkboard, with a date that must have been from Rip, and Booster, in his infinite wisdom, had decided to wait.

<Sir!> buzzed Skeets, <shouldn’t you be waiting in Mister Hunter’s time lab?>

“Aww, come on Skeets, what’s the point in that? ‘Sides, I’ve set up an alarm to--” Booster fell out of his chair as Vanishing Point began to shake. Waves of entropic energy washed out toward the rest of the timelines that diverged into this endgame, and Booster’s forcefield activated on automatic. “Did you feel that?”

<Define ‘feel’,> said Skeets.

“You’re no help, what the hell was that?” Booster looked at his gauntlet, his internal computers analyzing the energy readings that had just shook Vanishing Point. “Whatever it was, it was impossible… this place is in a holding pattern in time. We’re stuck in a moment, so if something…” Booster was about to attempt to stretch his thinking and deduct his way toward an answer, but a small red dot began to throb on his wrist. “Well, if anyone is gonna’ know the answer to this, it’ll be Rip Hunter—and by looks of it, he’s back. Come on!” Booster activated his time-travel field, and shunted out of space, followed immediately by Skeets. The wave of entropic energy continued to move away from Vanishing Point, and down through the timeline…

Booster landed in darkness, in the shattered remains of Rip Hunter’s time lab. The Time-Sphere was intact, and the chalkboard was covered in instructions. The air was thick with smoke, and Booster didn’t know what had happened—it wasn’t like this when he had left it earlier. Where was Rip?

“Skeets, what’s going on?”

<The timeline is shifting, sir!> said Skeets, swooping toward the blackboard, <these instructions match Mister Hunter’s handwriting!>

“Well, upload them! Look like we’ve got a job to do!” Booster leaped inside the Time-Sphere, and began charging the chrono-engines. “Up and at ‘em, chum!”




Rip Hunter blinked. He was stood in front of his chalkboard, stick of white chalk in hand, dressed in his red and green jumpsuit. He blinked again, and looked at the chalkboard, words in his handwriting covering the black surface. Dust had collected on the bottom of the board and as the notes and phrases reached the base, the handwriting was frantic, scruffy-- but still Rip Hunter’s own. He looked down at his finger tips, caked in white.

“Something isn’t right,” he said, adamantly. He looked around the lab. His Time-Sphere was buzzing on the launch bay, his chronosuit was waiting to be worn in the compartment across from that, and his massive computer station was trailing information down the screens. There was a thick layer of dust on everything. “How am I here?”

“Time is broken,” said Booster Gold, as he blurred into existence, “isn’t that your line? Something isn’t right and events are shifting and I guess that explains your appearance here, yeah?” The time-travelling hero was a mess of bruises and blood, and he held in his arms a Green Lantern battery and a ring. Inside the curve of the ring itself was a finger. Bloody and torn.

“What’s going on, Michael?” asked Rip Hunter.

“I don’t know, but something cracked at the end of time and now the rest of reality is suffering. I’ve already had to tear this ring off the hand of a sociopath who was never supposed to get it—damn Green Lantern guidelines seem to get lax in the 46th century.”

“You took down a Green Lantern?” Rip Hunter didn’t mean to sound so surprised, but he couldn’t help himself.

“With a little help,” he motioned to Skeets. “Had him disrupt his concentration. I could have done it myself, but I don’t like wasting my Grade A banter on shmucks.”

“Understandably so, but I don’t understand how I’m here, last thing I remember I had crash landed in the 31st century in a nature preserve…” Rip Hunter wracked his brains. He remembered, in flashes, meeting Braniac 5, the Legion of Super Heroes… but other events evaded him. He remembered blinking, his eyes opening, and being here. “Nevermind, it can wait. The mysteries of time. What’s going on?”

“There’s a hole in time, punched from one point to another, twenty years distant,” said Booster, Skeets throwing up a holographic projection. “Someone’s travelled back in time and now reality is shaking. And I was at Vanishing Point, and something snapped at the end of time and sent my head spinning… it could be connected?”

“That is really shoddy time travel technology,” said Rip Hunter, “to create a hole like that. It needs sealing, before something falls through too big for us to handle. Like another Earth.”

<Is that possible?> asked Skeets.

“Could be,” answered Rip, as he began to pat his hands together to get rid of the excess chalk dust. “We best get going.”

“Good idea,” said Booster, “I’ve been playing fireman, putting them out where I can—but the effects are reverberating out… I need to go to the source.”

Rip pulled on his chronosuit and clambered inside the Time-Sphere. “Come on, we’ve got a job to do.”

“Glad to have you back, boss,” said Booster, grinning. “Thought we lost you for a while.”

“You weren’t the only one,” said Rip, as he powered up the engines. Scattered on the floor of the sphere were numerous relics and items of mass power, Green Lantern rings, Star Sapphires, forcefield belts, cosmic rods, antimatter gauntlets…Booster Gold had been busy. “How long have you been at this?” He asked, as he uploaded coordinates into the flight computer.

“Three weeks, relative time?” answered Booster, his eyes closed and his feet up on the dash. “Wake me up when we get to the future, okay?”

“Sure thing,” said Rip, as he looked over to Skeets. “And how are you holding up, buddy?”

<Numerous repairs required,> answered the security bot, <but am managing just fine, thank you, sir!>

“We’ll have you refitted nice and easily when this job is through,” said Hunter. He glanced back at Booster, who was now quietly snoring. “How’s he holding up?”

<I have never seen Booster push himself as hard as he has these past few weeks,> said Skeets, <he refused to bring Mister Kord into the proceedings, deemed it too risky. It has just been the two of us.>

Rip Hunter rummaged through a small pocket in his suit, and removed a small patch. He stood up as the Time-Sphere hurtled through the recesses of the time stream. He slapped the patch on an exposed bit of Booster’s flesh, and Gold’s eyes snapped open, awake and hyper aware. “Whoa. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, we’re here,” said Rip, as he pointed outside. Reality became clear, and the two time-travelers’ eyes opened wide at the sight before them. There was a horrific black tear in the fabric of space, and a phalanx of faceless men and women were trying to erect a cordon around it. “What is that?”

“I have no idea, but I know where we are,” said Booster, “this is the Hall of Justice. It’s ruined and wrecked but it’s undeniably the Hall of Justice.” They were invisible to the naked eye, but the sea quaked all around, and the platform that held the ruins of the Hall was damp and rusting. Helicopters swarmed the skies, jet pack-bearing operatives patrolled the skies. “We need to seal that hole.” Rip looked up. “Oh, no, no, the skies are red. That’s not a good sign, not at all.”

“Means that the walls are thin, doesn’t it? Bleed through?”

“You’re paying attention, good,” said Rip. “I need to get close to that tear. My suit tethers me to the sphere, so I should be safe to get in close proximity. The readings coming off that thing… maddening. I don’t know what that is. I’ve never seen it before. But I can surmise… a tear in reality, events seeping through… but did it cause the ripple you felt at Vanishing Point?”

<Sirs, my sensors detect a mass of scanning technology on site, might I suggest we hurry up and get the job done?>

“You’re right Skeets,” said Rip, “I don’t like what’s going on, but that hole needs sealing.”

<UNIDENTIFIED MULTIVERSAL INTRUDER!> bellowed a voice straight into the Time-Sphere. <UNAUTHORISED TIME TRAVEL HAS BEEN DETECTED. DEACTIVATE YOUR SHIP OR BE SHOT DOWN!>

“They can see us?” said Booster Gold, disbelieving. “That’s not good.”

<YOU HAVE TWENTY SECONDS!>

“They’re Global Peace Agents, in some timelines their technology is capable of... crap!” He slammed his hand into his head. “Holes in my memory, making me forget tiny details, they can see us because in a handful of damaged timelines time travel makes survival next to impossible. Every time an incursion event occurs the walls weaken. People vanish, people appear, whole countries are ruined. They’re here to stop this.”

“What do you need to plug that hole?” asked Booster, checking his suit-systems.

“Time we don’t have, so a sheer force, a trauma to overwrite the damage. I need to think...”

“How much time, minimum, do you need?” asked Booster again, activating his forcefield.

“Hell, hell, uh, I can have something ready in two minutes if we’re not shot out of--” A massive black blast of energy grazed the surface of the Time-Sphere, and the exterior screamed as it buckled in. “Two minutes! Get me two minutes!”

“Get up and out, and I’ll handle the rest!” said Booster Gold, leaping from inside the Time-Sphere and out into the war zone. He began blasting, his energy shorting out the systems of those he hit. He was knocking people out, he was disabling systems, but he wasn’t, killing, he wouldn’t kill. Two minutes. He boosted forcefield systems, salvos cascaded over his body. He felt the brunt of it, but it didn’t take him down. He kept moving, kept flying, and within moments he was surrounded.

<TIME TRAVEL IS BANNED IN THIS TIMELINE,> said a voice. <EVERY UNAUTHORISED ENTRY WEAKENS THE WALLS OF REALITY. YOU ARE MURDERING US WITH YOUR RECKLESSNESS.>

He remembered the tone, if not the voice, back in the days when he ran with Powers, Inc. “Power Girl?” whispered Booster Gold, grinning. He remembered how aggravated his teammates got with him. Thing was, he knew he wasn’t putting them into danger. He knew it. Something in the back of his head told him everything was going to be alright-- his arrogance? His bravado? No. He wouldn’t let anything happen to his team. He wouldn’t let anything harm his friends. He would protect them, because that meant he was protecting the future. Sure, he wasn’t Justice League material, but they weren’t the be all and end all. Not entirely. Men and women like Blue Beetle, Power Girl, those who were with him back in the early days, they would go on to greatness. Ted would grow into a member of the Justice League itself, become a tenured member whose service was welcomed with many an incarnation. Power Girl would bring about the restoration of the Justice Society of America’s dynasty. She’d be a lynchpin, a rallying point. He blinked, and dragged himself back into the moment.

<...WHAT DID YOU CALL-->

A blast fried the speaker, and he kept moving. “Booster, you need to draw their fire to the temporal nexus.”

“Rip?” spluttered Booster, his head spinning around.

“Your head comms, you mook! Come on!”

“Ah, right,” Booster dipped down, and landed where the swirling blue portal was spinning wildly. “What do you want me to do here?”

“Don’t... move!” The Time-Sphere suddenly phased back into sight, and it shot through the vortex with a snap and a pop. Booster Gold was dragged inside by a tractor-beam projected by an array inside the walls of the Sphere, and was pulled back inside the main compartment of the Sphere. Rip was looking at his readings, looking at recordings, and the hole in reality sealed shut with their pushing through the hole. There was a shriek as the timeline sealed itself back up, and then suddenly silence, and they were floating back home.

“That was easy, wasn’t it?”

“Not really,” said Rip, “I had to flood the engines, we need to get back to my lab and reinforce the structure of the power source. If that breaks...” Rip clasped his heads together and then violently pushed them apart. “We could wipe out a whole dimension of existence.”

“What’s in the core?”

“A moment in time,” said Rip Hunter. “A whole universe, waiting to be born.”

“Huh. And you use it as a power source why?”

“Because I made a promise to someone, years ago, that I would.”

“You’re not going to give me any more than that, are you?”

Rip smiled and shrugged. “No, I’m not.”



Booster Gold held the small metal box in his hand. The last of the supplies Rip Hunter needed to repair the Time-Sphere. Skeets and he had been running around the time stream locating the best materials for the job, been at it for hours, dipping in and out of the future, and finally, they were done.

Rip Hunter had gutted the interior of the Time-Sphere, and it was now this large void, almost larger on the inside that it appeared on the out, but the fact of the matter was, Rip Hunter liked his clutter, his clutter made sense, and it kept him zen at the worst of times. But right now, the throbbing, incandescent core of the ship was being repaired, and Rip, his goggles tight around his eyes so he could see through the light, was hard at work.

“Put it down there, would you, Michael?” He said, not looking up.

<It looks like it is coming along nicely, sir!> said Skeets, optimistically.

“How long before we’re ready to rock and roll?” asked Booster.

“Soon enough. I just don’t know if it’s the right move to make. This is a highly unstable energy source. But the very act of using it stabilizes it. It’s very confusing. So I’m stuck between the knowledge that this thing is the most dangerous weapon in my arsenal, and also the one that needs to be used the most. Hmm.”

“I’ve had to duck calls from Ted, over the past few hours. Something’s going down on the surface. I might have missed my call into the big leagues.”

<But what about Powers, Inc., sir? Were they not--?>

“Quiet, Skeets. Yeah, apparently Superman requested me personally...”

“You don’t need the Justice League, Michael, you’re doing good work. People may not see it, but you’re saving the universe daily. Hell, the multiverse. The greatest hero nobody has heard of. Keeps you safe and keeps you alive. I doubt the Justice League would recognize you with the leaps and bounds you’ve made in performance these past months.”

“I know but--” Booster was interrupted by a klaxon call that reverberated throughout the lab. “Well, that’s loud.”

“Loud and important,” said Rip, as he placed the core in the main containment grid of the engine. “Something’s wrong. As ever.”

“Where?” asked Booster. The two time-travelers were at Rip’s computer bank, watching as information scrolled down before their eyes.

“...Might have something to do with the calls you’ve been dodging. Time incursion, massive power fluctuations. Jeez-Louise,” Rip pressed a button on his belt, and the engine folded together, and floated back to the under carriage of the Time-Sphere, beneath the flooring. The metal shutters slammed closed, and the Sphere was complete again. “The timeline is quaking. And the energy signatures... they’re connected to the bridge from the future that we shut down a few hours ago!”

<I don’t believe it’s a coincidence, sirs!” offered Skeets.

“Guess we find our time-travelers then?” said Booster. “Is she alright to fly? You haven’t finished the repairs...?”

“She’ll fly fine,” said Rip, “come on!”

There was another flutter of commotion, and Booster, Skeets and Rip felt reality slip away, before they arrived in the middle of a large meeting room, surrounded by a legion of superheroes. The Justice League were surprised at their arrival, though Blue Beetle smiled smugly. Even though they weren’t in full reality focus yet, he knew what was coming.

“What’s going on?” asked Superman, over the commotion of their arrival.

The noise on the outside got louder, but on the inside everything was silent. Rip Hunter turned to Booster, a solemn look on his face. “This Justice League that they’re entertaining, they can’t be here. Their causing damage to the timeline by being. I don’t know what damage has been done already, but their mode of transport...” He pulled up a file on his console. “...Eurgh, using the fixed point existence of a cosmic entity... and the bend of gravity and light and time inside Starbreaker? That was painful. That’s hurt the world.”

“We’ll pick them up, we’ll take them home,” said Booster.

“If they’ve got a home left,” said Rip. “Damage to the time line. I don’t even know if their home is waiting for them. But if we can reintegrate them to the timeline, so they never left...”

“...It’ll be home?” said Booster. “They’d never have left, they wouldn’t even know. I know how this works. Time heals.”

“It should be home, yes,” said Rip. “And the damage done will be spread out, and won’t be so painful to the membrane of time. Good thought process, Michael.”

“I’m paying attention, is all,” said Booster. “Come on.” He opened the glass door to the sphere, and leaned out. “They’re not supposed to be here.”

“They were telling the truth about something then,” said Batman, quietly. “Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, protectors of the multiverse?”

“Was there any doubt?” asked Booster, grinning. “We’re here to take them home.”

“Home is gone,” said Catman, “we all came here knowing that a return journey was impossible.”

Rip Hunter climbed out from his seat and scratched his beard. “There is a timeline with an absence of you within it. You need to reintegrate into said timeline, or the walls will flex, and it’ll cease to exist.”

“What is he going on about?” asked Doctor Light, leaning in to Blue Beetle.

“I have no idea, but he’s never wrong about these things,” replied Beetle.

“So you want us to fall into place like jigsaw pieces?” said Starman.

“We’ll do what’s needed of us,” said Red Robin. “But tell me this, Hunter-- are we returning to where we came, to that hell hole?”

“I can’t tell you that,” said Rip Hunter.

“I can,” said Booster. “It’s different. Things have changed.” It felt like a lie. But Booster was from the future too. A future beyond these guys, from what the Time-Sphere said. If he was here, untainted by the timeline damage, then it had to work. Sometimes he thought that he was too optimistic. That he was too full of hope for success. But maybe not...

“And do they survive?” asked Mary Marvel. “Did this work?”

“You’ll find out,” said Rip Hunter, “but you’ve already done something inexcusable. You’ve smashed into a timeline and you may have caused irrevocable damage. You’re lucky I’m allowing for reintegration, instead of locking you up at Entropy Point.”

“…Where?” asked Firestorm.

“Leave it,” said Blue Beetle. “A story for another day.”

“Then we go back,” said Red Robin. “Or ‘go’, as the came may be.”

Rip and Booster watched as Aleea Strange leaned over to The Flash, and they wandered out of the room. Rip looked at his readings uncomfortably, but nodded to himself, whilst the rest of the alternate Justice League approached his Time-Sphere.

“It won’t hurt... will it?” asked Arsenal.

“No, it will be like it never happened,” said Rip.

“But it did,” said Superwoman. “We succeeded.”

“I...” Rip Hunter trailed off, and then he smiled. “I hope so.”

The Flash rejoined the rest of his team, a look of discomfort on his face. Wonder Woman looked over his way, but he shook his head slowly, and the Amazon Queen didn’t push. The rest of the alternate Justice League clambered into the Time Sphere with Rip Hunter and Booster Gold. “Back in a flash,” said Gold.

Red Robin hesitated beside Aquaman, and leaned in close, whispering something that only those with super-eavesdropping powers could overheard. Without warning, Aquaman grabbed Red Robin by the cowl and dragged him down to the floor. “How dare you-- how dare you--!”

“Whoa, whoa, Arthur--” said Green Lantern, but Arthur looked at his teammate and Hal Jordan backed away slowly. Booster Gold realized he’d activated his energy blasters, and looked around uncomfortably.

Red Robin half-shrugged under Aquaman’s grip. “It’s a warning. You need to know what happens without you. You all do. There’s not enough time now, but just know…”

Aquaman hesitated. “Don’t threaten my family. Don’t make me hurt you.”

“It’s not a threat,” said Red Robin, as he was pulled to his feet by Aquaman. “I’m trying to give you knowledge. I’m trying to help you all. You need to know that you’re going to have to change the way you think,” he prodded his temples with a gloved finger. “Change or die.”

“What’s going on?” asked Booster, as Rip approached him in the doorway. Everyone was on edge now. Aquaman was back in the ranks of the Justice League, and they watched their future counterparts as they stood within the confines of the Time Sphere.

“I don’t know. They’re playing stupid games. Hopefully when we put them back where they’ve come from it’ll be fine.” He scratched his beard. “Hopefully. Dammit dammit dammit...”

“Good luck, Red Robin,” said Superman.

Red Robin shrugged. “Our lives might be forgotten, and merged with the way things are supposed to be. I hope so, at least.”

“You hope,” said Firestorm, “the Professor says that there’s no guarantee. And…” Firestorm blushed. “He also told me I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud.”

Aleea Strange nodded, and looked over to Superman. “Then we hope.”

“We’re leaving,” said Rip, powering up the Sphere. “Shouldn’t have let you talk to them, that was stupid, reckless,” he was mumbling to himself now, and the passengers sat around the circumference of the craft, holding on to the straps that hung from the ceiling. “Going home.”

The Time Sphere rumbled, and quaked, and then vanished with a pop. The alternate Justice League, Booster Gold, Rip Hunter and Skeets were shunted into the timestream, and then, without warning, the engine roared into overdrive, and they punched forward, uncontrollably--!



Rip Hunter nearly screamed. “No,” he whispered instead, “this is wrong, this isn’t right,” he flicked some switches, banged the console in front of him, but to no avail. “Oh, God.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Booster, leaning over the back of Hunter’s chair and peering out the Time-Sphere. “You sound-- Jesus. What is that?”

Outside the Time-Sphere, giant, throbbing tentacles seemed to smash at the landscape of the timeline. The whole world was black, scarlet cracks running up the infinite walls of reality, and the tentacles-- no heads, no eyes, just these tendrils of constant motion-- were thrashing apart at the landscape, the direction of the cracks shifting and changing as the tentacles slammed into the walls of reality.

“Where are we?” asked Booster.

“The wrong side of the reality wall,” said Rip Hunter, “the future is in flux, and... and now we’re on the other side of the wall. We shouldn’t be here. No one should ever be here.”

“Then how do we get back?” asked Aleea Strange. “How do you know this place is what it is?”

“I had an... experience...” said Rip Hunter. His eyes wandered, his voice became distant. “I’ve seen time, undistorted, unhampered by human perception. I fell through the Zero Hour, a million duplicates of myself cascading into here, into my head,” he tapped his temple, “and so I know time, like an old lover, and now... we need to get past those things.”

“What are they?” asked Catman. He was nervous, scratching at the side of his cowl where it met his cheek. “I’ve never seen such... God, they’re damn ugly.”

“Timelines don’t just... fix themselves,” said Rip, “an external force, a defense mechanism for the survival of reality... that’s them. Antibodies. Fixing things. Like platelets, you follow? Sealing holes in the Bleed. The dimensional veins.”

“We get past them, we get home?” Red Robin flexed his fingers, and took a seat next to Rip Hunter. “We ride the rapids. We need to shoot through one of those cracks, I guess, get to the other side before they seal?”

“That’s the plan,” Rip turned to Skeets. “I need you running algorithms. I need you to find us a crack we can slip through. And I need that information as soon as possible.”

<Running scans! Information coming,> said Skeets as he plugged himself into the Time-Sphere’s computer core. <Locating!>

The Time-Sphere floated in the dead-space on the other side of reality. “Come on, come on,” muttered Rip Hunter, “faster...”

The tentacles were busy at work. But then one seemed to sprout from the side of another, and it moved slowly toward them. It was slower than the rest. Unsure. It didn’t know what to make of the rogue time ship, but it wasn’t right, it wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Oh, no,” said Superwoman, her eyes focusing on the incoming attack. “Company!”

The tentacle smashed into the side of the Sphere, sending in spinning deeper into the void behind the universe. A fissure formed in the side of the Time-Sphere and Arsenal screamed as a bolt of energy clashed toward her. Catman moved fast, pushing her out of the way, but his back was exposed to the pure entropic energy of this place, and he howled in agony, falling to the floor with a smoldering wound on his back. Starman removed his cape and passed it to Arsenal, who covered the wound tightly, whilst Theo Knight sealed the hole with a cosmic construct.

“We can’t hold this together, if they’re noticing us-- what’s going to happen?” he asked Rip.

“We’ll be erased. Crushed into our trace moments and scattered to act as universal sealant. We’re not supposed to be here! Skeets? Come on!”

<Located!> sparked Skeets, and the computer suddenly had a target. Rip pushed the Time-Sphere into overdrive, and they were suddenly spinning straight for the throbbing mass of tentacles that were hacking at the universal wall. <10 seconds-->

“We’ll make it,” said Rip Hunter, and Booster Gold believed him; the Sphere shot at the wall, nearly impacted-- but then it juttered down, and dodged the thrashing strikes of the tentacles. Then, without another moment, a glowing red crack began to seal, and the Time-Sphere, with Rip Hunter, Booster Gold, Skeets and the alternate Justice League inside, burst into true reality. “Good! Great! We made it, good, God, that was--”

He fell silent.

The crack snapped shut after they plunged through, and the Time-Sphere creaked and cracked under the immense pressures it was under. They were on the other side, they were back where they needed to be, but events were moving fast behind them, images flickering into place.

Rip Hunter’s moment of victory and satisfaction and victory was short lived.

“The timeline is reintegrating!” he said, the Time-Sphere bucking and rolling as the Justice League held on for dear life. “You need to go now!”

“But is it the future we left?” asked Aleea Strange. “After all this, are we returning to the end of our world?”

“I can’t tell you that,” said Rip Hunter, “it’s not my place, but if you have faith, I think--” A rogue bolt of entropic energy struck the Time-Sphere, and the controls seized together, sparks flying out into the face of Rip Hunter. The engines shrieked. “Ggggodammit!” An arc of noise and energy slashed through the main console in front of Rip, and the time-traveler yelped as his body was wracked with blue energy. When the haze cleared, Hunter hunched over, the Time-Sphere was coming apart at the seams, and Booster Gold’s eyes were open wide.

<Sir! The core of the Sphere is rupturing! Emergency procedures must be activated!>

“What... what?” said Booster Gold. “Oh.” He looked to Rip Hunter, and moved him out of the pilot’s seat. “We’re on a collision course with your timeline. If I don’t guide this Sphere to a dead dimension your entire future will be erased by the explosion. You need to go. Now.”

“What about you?” asked Red Robin. “You can’t just--”

“Go!” said Booster. “I can... I can fly this, I know I can, I’ve been trained. You need to go. You’ve done what you set out to do. You must have. I believe in the Justice League, and I believe in you, so please--” There was another crash of energy, and it tore through the front of the Time-Sphere. Booster Gold’s forcefield took the brunt, but the circuitry was torn ragged, and it was only Starman’s quick reactions that sealed the hole. “God, my... my circuitry is wrecked. That...” He clenched his fists. Without his costume in full working order, he wasn’t tethered to the 21st century, he wasn’t anchored to his adopted home timeline. “Get out, get going, now. I need to take this Sphere somewhere where no one can get hurt.”

Red Robin watched as Skeets began to distribute small pocket sized devices to the Justice League. “What are these?”

<Timeline locators! They put you back in the moment you left, and so, as the timeline reintegrates, you’ll be where you need to be!>

“How do they work?” asked Red Robin.

“Press and go,” said Booster Gold, waving at the man to leave. Gold turned to Rip, and triggered the man’s own return mechanism, sending him straight back to the lab, and to safety.

<Sir,> started Skeets, <are you sure...?>

“This has to be done, Skeets!” said Booster. “I won’t let anyone die. I won’t. I’m going to ride this baby into a dead dimension, and hopefully... I can ride the blast out, can’t I? Kick start the cells in my suit. Yeah.” No. Booster knew the truth. This was a one way trip. “I can reroute my energy cells to... yeah. It’ll be fine. Get the Jacuzzi on, I wanna be able to relax when this is done.”

Skeets said nothing for a moment. <It’s been a pleasure, sir.> He warped out of existence.

Meanwhile; “Team,” said Red Robin, turning toward his Justice League, “you have been the best. The greatest. I don’t know if we’ll remember this when we get home, or if we’ll be the same people we are at this moment in time... but we transcended the tragedy and the hurt of our time, and became something great. We saved the Justice League. We did. I believe that.” He smiled, a rare occurrence, and Mary Marvel looked to the rest of the team, the handheld device ready in her hand. “Get home. Be safe.”

“It was a pleasure, Timothy,” said Superwoman, kissing Red Robin on the cheek.

“It really was,” the Time-Sphere rocked, and Starman was the first to press his handheld. He fizzed away. Mary Marvel followed. Aleea Strange smiled weakly at Red Robin, and then followed suit.

Arsenal hesitated, supporting Catman, who was dazed and confused by his actions earlier. “You... sent Tommy away, and I want... I need... to know why.”

Red Robin rested his hands on Arsenal’s shoulders, and smiled again. “To guarantee things. To make sure you exist, in the now, and for your brother to exist, too. I planted some seeds. Contingencies. Plus, I needed an ace in the hole. He’s a smart kid. And he will be when you get home.” He triggered their devices, and the two of them faded. “Thank you, Booster.”

Booster shrugged. “It’s my job. I save time. Heh.” He hesitated. “Oh, crap, those are gonna’ be my last words?”

“No.” Booster turned away from Red Robin, and didn’t have time to react when Red slapped the handheld inside Gold’s suit, triggering the shift. Booster faded out of existence, not before he turned back at the future vigilante and screamed. “Sorry, Booster. I need to fix this.”

Red Robin assumed the controls of the Time-Sphere. He’d been the one to dissect the fallen Sphere that had crash landed in Russia, Rip Hunter at the helm. He knew how the engine worked, he knew how the controls worked. He knew he could steer this thing out of this timeline and into another. He shunted the engine into full burn, and streaked through twelve dimensions, before the Sphere began to fall apart.

Without Starman’s cosmic energy holding the hull together the atmosphere was burning hot, and Red Robin’s cowl had slid down on automatic to cover his mouth, to protect his exposed flesh.

There was no air in the higher dimensions, no oxygen, and Tim Wayne felt his head bubble and haze. He held on for as long as he could. He pooled his will, he pushed himself so hard-- hold on, keep going, keep driving this thing away-- but suddenly it all became too much, and he felt his finger slip away from the controls. Red Robin felt blackness slip into his head, and then-- and then-- headed, hurtling, careening toward the end of time itself, the only place Red Robin could think would be safe for the destructive detonation of the Time-Sphere’s engine--

Impact.

--Booster fell out of his chair as Vanishing Point began to shake. Waves of entropic energy washed out toward the rest of the timelines that diverged into this endgame, and Booster’s forcefield activated on automatic. “Did you feel that?”