Zero Hour Finale

"Now, Extant," Rip Hunter said, hefting a huge gun-looking device to his shoulder. "We come to the Zero Hour of this affair."

"So I see," Extant replied, hissing. "Let us have at it then... and to the spoilers, the fate of time itself!"

“Oh, get some better liiiinneeeeeeaaaah!” Rip gripped his chest suddenly, and so did Extant in an exact mirror of his opponent’s reaction. “What’s happeningggg?!” both howled as they dropped to their knees.

Owlman stepped before Rip Hunter, and Chronos did the same for Extant. “I know what this is.” whispered Owlman.

As he whispered the rest of the combatants from the battle down the hall came bursting through a couple at a time as they continued their fight. As they entered they saw Rip and Extant both down and stopped to stare. Thousands of Flashes below them still running.

“KILL THEM!” roared Extant as he threw up his hand, his finger pointing accusingly, and the Rogues grinned as they jolted forward, leaving the multiverse hopping mastermind to scurry into the shadows.

“STOP HIM!” screamed Rip Hunter he too threw up his hand.

“Why are they--?!” Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern, threw up an emerald shield and the Rogues bounced off it, surprised. He threw a blanket forcefield down upon the floor, pinning the villains to the cold steel of the outpost. Major Force grinned, his fingers digging into the green energy, pumping his body full of more and more power.

“My God,” Batman grabbed Rip, and pulled him up. “You’re him, aren’t you, and he’s--”

“Me,” coughed Rip, pale as a sheet, dark bags around his eyes, shivering like a junkie going cold turkey. “He’s me, and we’re the only two left. We're the last two Rip Hunter’s left in the multiverse because that sonofabitch killed us all.”

Booster and Beetle continued putting together the pieces Rip had sent them across the multiverse to collect, frantically glancing up as the Justice League assembled from throughout the multiverse battled the assembled villains. Captain Marvel from Earth-S grinned, yet the sheer determination on his face as he swatted the bad guys across the satellite floor was palpatable. The soviet Superman was at his back, heat vision and arctic breath unleashed and scathing. Kal went to slam his fist into the face of Ultima-Spectro when Marvel placed a hand on his shoulder and shook his head as Superman turned.

“We don’t kill, sir.”

Kal-El looked at the man who was also Billy Batson, and smiled. “…Where were you on my world, friend? Where was our hope?”

Captain Marvel shook his head slowly. “We make our own hope, Superman. You just need to persevere through it all…” and with that they continued to fight the Rogues as they swarmed forward.

Booster’s face washed over with realization. “It all makes sense.” He said looking at Blue Beetle. “All the times Rip contradicted himself. Banning me from the time stream and then sending me to police it! I should have known!”

Batman span around but screamed in agony as his body shifted and morphed, and suddenly Kol Langstrom was shrieking in agony as his own body, newly arrived, reacted adversely to the rays of the permanent full moon that orbited above Earth 66.

The deviation hurtled toward Major Force, and his glowing Nth metal claws dug into the hide of the nuclear fueled person of mass destruction, and tore him in two. Kyle again threw up a shield, as did Sinestro across the way from him, but the power tore through the satellite, dozens of villains flash fried across the atmosphere, heroes barely staying close enough to the Green Lantern to survive, all wanting to finish this. Rip Hunter looked to Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, who were by his side with the weapon fully assembled, and nodded. “We’re dying. We’re all dying.”

“Not yet.” Booster asserted, pulling the weapon up off the ground and strapping it to his back.

Rip looked to Booster, whose eyes were pinpricks of hyper attention. “You have to…use it…on me.”

Booster and Beetle looked shocked. “No, no way! That’s insane.”

Rip grabbed Booster and looked directly at him. “It’s the only way Gold. Do it.”

Beetle shook his head, furious. “The only way? You have be joking! There has to be--”

Booster cocked up the weapon, ready. “…Okay.”

“You can’t be serious!” Beetle interjected. “It’ll kill him!”

Rip still looking at Booster simply repeated. “Do it.”

Booster stepped back and fired the weapon at Rip. Concentrated energies from a hundred universes unloaded as a single tear rolled down Booster’s cheek.

“I’m sorry Rip.” He said softly as the air around them crackled. Rip’s hair turned white, his face wrinkled.



Extant whisked through catacombs of his lair with Inertia and Chronos following behind him. Chronos looked up at Extant just in time to see him fall to the ground screaming in agony. He convulsed and his hair singed and turned white. His weathered face wrinkling even more.

“What’s happening to him?” Inertia asked looking at Chronos.

“Hunter’s done something.” Chronos replied watching Extant slowly recover.



“Rip?!” Booster pleaded kneeling next to Rip’s broken crumpled up body. “Rip?!”

Hunter gasped a deep breathe. Slowly he managed to get up to one knee.

“Did it work?” Beetle asked rushing to help Booster get Rip on his feet.

Rip tried to respond but went into a coughing fit. Finally, he whispered, “The end…”



“… is near,” whispered Extant getting on his feet. “Hunter is…better than I thought. I’ve been drained to half the power I had. We’re tearing through reality, we’ve lost our ability to stay bleed-borne, and I just don’t care enough to fix it.” Extant’s recovery was much quicker than Rip’s. He smiled a half smile. “It won’t matter, soon enough none of it will matter. We have to get into place.”

“You won’t let us die…will you?” replied Inertia, Speed Force, unbeknownst to him, bleeding out of his feet, trailing down, down, down…



…Something was wrong. The air was energized; the atmosphere was crackling with more than just a direct link to the Speedforce. Something was happening! Wally West, Kid Flash, knew the time was now. He looked over to Bart Allen, his nephew from worlds away, and nodded. Over the cacophony of foot falls, one after the other, millions of speedsters from all across the multiverse, a change could be heard. “REVERSE!”

Dominos fell. From one side of the world sized cosmic treadmill, the speedsters began to slow down, though not stop, and instead of running forwards, they began to run backwards. Electricity and thunder and lightning crackled across the sleek metal of the world, and speedsters dressed in red and yellow and black and white all sweated at the exertion forced upon them by this plan. The Speedforce was being pooled by their efforts, even those not familiar with the concept of the cosmic treadmill had surmised as much, or been told by the speedster beside him or herself.



A quick moment of calm was felt by heroes and villains alike. The crackling electricity in the air was all that could be heard. With all of reality bleeding through and convulsing around him, Rip for that one second, felt at home. The fighting commenced as fast as it had stopped, but for that one second…foe one second Rip knew what had to be done…



“What’s going on?!” Blue Beetle and Booster Gold were backing up Rip Hunter, who was shimmering in and out of existence. “Rip?”

“The multiverse is stretching to breaking point! Multiples are fading in and out, universes are dying every second! The only reason this world is relatively intact is that Extant and I are holding it up, our unique signatures propping up the entirety of the-- hhhhrrr --multiverse!” He pointed to the bracelets around Booster and Beetle’s wrists. “You’re held together by those, a life line tied directly to my bio-signature…”



Extant now stood on the edge of the satellite over looking the battlefield.

Energy shot into him as the Cosmic Treadmill began to come apart and the planet began to feel the effects of the multiversal destruction. His body seemed to pulsate with power, every breathe he took seemed to cause reality to shimmer, and he grinned as he pulled off his mask, revealing a very gaunt visage resembling Rip Hunter, wasted away by thousands of years of time travel and murder, the mass genocide of one man over countless realities taking it’s toll all too clearly. “Reverse. Like I am to you, Rip!” He swatted the Rogues aside, who had flanked him and stood poised for a victory they did not understand.

“Like I would need the straight forward powers of moving forward to grant me my greatest power. No, no you stupid little pinpricks of existence, I need to go back, back to where it all began, so I can extend my influence over the entirety of creation!”

He laughed, and the Rogues looked at each other congratulatory, but then-- “Your use has grown old. There will be no room for your aberrational being in the new world order, so why put up with you now?” He clicked his fingers, and their atoms disassembled, and suddenly the villains were gone. “See how fun this is, Rip? We are the last of our kind, and I’ve won.”

Rip heard Extant’s words echoing through his mind.

“Not… yet… you… haven’t…” Rip clicked a button on his belt, and reality flashed, and his Time Sphere overtook himself, Blue Beetle, and Booster Gold. Extant lashed out with his new found power, fuelled by the reverse energies of the cosmic treadmill, but it simply bounced off, ineffectual against it. Rip, his skin flaking off, his hair white, his face gaunt and wasted, pulled himself into the pilot’s chair. “He’s taking on a whole new level of power, but it’s a super charge, it won’t last forever. I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to--”

“Go back to the Zero Hour,” smiled Extant, as a new mask flashed across his face. “And--” His words faded as he disappeared.

“--Recreate the multiverse in his own image. Billions, trillions of alternatives, all ruled by him. More than a God more like--”

“Entropy,” said the transformed Extant, taking on a new name and a new role in the cosmic scheme of things. “Just try and stop me.”

“TIME-DIVE!” Rip pushed hard on the controls, and the Time Sphere began to follow Entropy down the multiversal stream, and Booster Gold held onto dear life as the craft that he, Blue Beetle and Rip Hunter were inside quaked as something hit them hard.

“What the Hell is going on?!”

Rip held tightly onto the “The multiverse is dying! You’re seeing waves of entropy eat at reality like maggots on rotten flesh! We need to get to the root of the problem before we’re engulfed in the waves and thrown into non-existence!” Rip Hunter shunted the time-sphere into hyper-drive, panels of golden metal flying off the surface of the craft like flaking skin. “Extant, Entropy, whoever, he’s causing a domino effect that’ll wipe out everything and leave him himself able to set himself up as a God!”

“What chance do we have of stopping him?!”

“He’s using up hundreds of layers of superpowers getting here. He’s killed thousands, and the journey to the Zero Hour of creation is a tortuous one. We won’t be on his level, but he’ll be taken down a few notches. At his moment of weakness… maybe, just maybe, we can stop him. Now get yourself ready, I’m not sure how long it’ll be before we reach him. Seconds, minutes, hours, years, this isn’t something I’ve ever done before!” He looked up at the monitors that adorned the front of the ship, and cringed. “We’re losing integrity. I don’t know if we can make it much further…”

Blue Beetle looked outside at the maelstrom all around them. “This is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” Black light swirled past them, jagged bolts of purple mixing in with dark blues that erupted with white as the time-sphere pushed on.

“You weren’t supposed to see it, Beetle. This is the wall in front of creation. When, if, we get through this, we’ll be right in the middle of the spark of life that created the multiverse. This is where dead energy loops back and pushes forward. The universe is a cycle of death and life and this is the start of everything. You weren’t supposed to see this.”

Booster looked at Rip. “Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Seen this before?”

Rip grunted, and pushed forward on the controls, flicking switches and straining his muscles as the time-sphere refused to react to his movements. “God, damn, yes, yes I have, once before, and I like it even less now--”



Entropy screamed in defiance and pleasure as waves of devastatingly powerful time energy wracked across his body. Each layer of super enhanced power he had stolen with his hijacked HERO dial device was being put to the test, he felt a hundred Supermen’s abilities slipping away, but he just pulled to the forefront a thousand more. This was his final moment of victory, and he wasn’t going to let anyone stop him now, especially not a pair of multiversal jokes like Blue Beetle and Booster Gold.

Before him, a solid wall of time had built up, tendrils of energy whipping out as events passed by and grew. The ultimate deterrent. Time Death. Entropy’s eyes would have melted if he didn’t activate ten thousand invulnerable shells of power inside himself. His momentum now faster than a birthed time-line, he activated every single power he had stolen, Wonder Women, Supermen, internalized power batteries and Captain Atoms, they all came to the forefront and he screamed in defiance and pleasure as—



“Oh, God.” Rip checked all the readings as the time sphere began to peel apart in the time stream. “He made it. He’s through the time barrier.” He shook his head. “We’re too late. He’s won, time is his.”

“Wrong,” Blue Beetle checked the readings on the computers all around him. “He has to start existence up again if he wants to take full advantage of whatever’s beyond that wall. We’re in limbo here till we either go back, which is impossible and stupid, or go full blast into that mysterious blind spot of un-time. Now, I’m not time-travel veteran like you guys, I’m just sticking by Mike till we finish this, but if we power up the miniature universe you use to power this thing, pump the cradle to full tilt, we can make it too. We may not have millions of superpowers, but we’re damn clever and we’re going to stop him, so do it, Rip!”

Rip didn’t hesitate. “Multiverse engines on full blast. Activating time dampners…”

Ted Kord leant in to Michael Carter, who had a blank expression across his face. “This going over your head as much as it is mine?”

Mike turned slowly to Ted, his eyes wide. “Buwhuh?”

“Ok guys, you might want to climb into those time-suits in the back lockers. I’m not sure how long the sphere will hold together under these pressures.” He pulled his journal out of his suit, and began to scrawl inside. Beetle acknowledged this but said nothing, instead the two heroes nodded and grabbed the sleek time suits out from their containers, and pulled them on quickly.

“What about you, Rip?”

“Got my own,” smirked the time-travelling adventurer, as he replaced his journal and then pressed a button on his wrist and his jump suit suddenly cranked into overdrive and layers of armour formed over him. “Now, hold on tight, because here we go..." His frail hands held tight to the controls of the Sphere, and the entire craft began to shift and quake. “Oh, this is sucking on so many levels!”

They breached the wall between time and un-time, not with an explosion of light but with a pop, as the wall sealed up around them like a bubble. The Sphere landed hard, collided with a sparkling platform that floated in the centre of a massive void, and in the middle, with Entropy approaching slowly, was a majestic incandescence, and Blue Beetle and Booster Gold instantly knew what it was. “The source of the multiverse.”

“Uncontaminated, pure and innocent,” whispered Rip Hunter as he cranked open the porthole that lead to the outside. He leapt back inside the Sphere, and began to rummage through his belongings. “It won’t last long if he has anything to do with it.”

“Then what do we do?!”

“Do you remember when I sent you to Earth Designate? 1109? To retrieve one of the most dangerous tools in the entire multiverse: The Absorbascon, capable of bringing lost memories and personalities to the forefront of one’s mind.” Rip Hunter pulled the strange device from a compartment inside the Sphere, and placed it on his own head. “You follow my lead. And you pray your Time-Suits work.”

“Why wouldn’t they,” replied Blue Beetle.

“They’re old. That’s why.”

“Oh, great, You fill me full of such confidence,” groaned Booster Gold.

“I’m glad,” said Rip Hunter, as he climbed out of the Time-Sphere, followed by the Blue and Gold team. “Hey, Rip!”

Entropy turned from his exertions. To reach the Zero Point, he was burning up dozens of powers a second, the radiance of the source of reality blistering at his skin. “Not… my name… any more… Entropy! The end of all! The beginning of everything!”

“The Alpha and the Omega, pssh, we’ve heard it all before,” shouted Booster Gold, covering his eyes with his arms. “God that light’s bright.”

“I know who you are, after all this, I finally worked it out. You aren’t some random Rip Hunter, some refuge of Earth Designate: 34445 or something, you’re the opposite of everything I am. I know I’m from Earth-1, and you know what that makes you?”

Entropy sneered and turned from the heroes, continuing his trek forward as the trio pressed forward. “I am Entropy…”

“You’re Rip Hunter of Earth Designate: 3! The reflection of me, the one, true, brilliant Rip Hunter!” Rip felt his lungs shake as he coughed. He was weak now, he didn’t have the luxury of a thousand stolen Superman power sets, and he could feel his Time-Suit buckling. “But who gives a £$%^, am I right?”

Entropy turned slowly, “what?”

“I’ve had enough.” He pressed a button on his belt and Blue Beetle and Booster Gold froze, locked inside their Time-Suits and unable to move. “I want this done. And yeah, I can’t stop you, but you know what? That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be part of this.”

“Rip, what the hell are you doing?!”

“Shut up, Booster, I’m done! I’m dying, and if you can’t beat ‘em, $%^ing join them, am I right?”

“But you… you’re a hero, aren’t you?”

“Beetle, Ted, I don’t like labels. I don’t believe in black and white and clear definitions of good versus evil. I like grey areas. So what do you say, Rip the 3rd, I’m done, I’m tired, so let’s do the ol’ supervillain team up.”

“I don’t trust you,” hissed Entropy. He put out his hand, and using the power of twelve dozen telekinetics, wrenched Rip Hunter toward him. “No time for paltry alliances. I take you like I have taken all other Rip Hunters. You disgusting little ‘do-gooders’, none of you like me, all of you weak.”

“You… sonofa…” Rip Hunter of Earth-1 felt his brittle bones break underneath the stresses exerted by the Rip Hunter of Earth-3. “Ghhhuuhhh!” and all Blue Beetle and Booster Gold could do was watch as the man they thought valiant and heroic turned traitor on them, and finally was crushed to death by the horrendous threat to all existence.

“I wish… I wish Superman was here…” Whispered Booster Gold into his open comm.-link with Blue Beetle. “He was destined for such great things, but the universe will never know…”

“Superman?” Blue Beetle laughed uneasily, “I want Bruce here. I want Batman.”

“I think you win, Mr Beetle.”

“That I do, Mr Gold.”

“We’ve had a good run, if you could call it that.”

“I think I will. It’s been a pleasure knowing you, Mike.”

“And you, Teddy.”

Rip Hunter breathed his dying breath, and then Entropy seemed to warp in reality. His chest opened up and tendrils of matter shot out, and began to drag the corpse inside his body. He finally absorbed Rip Hunter inside himself, and then began to laugh. “Now… every Rip Hunter is mine. And I am the final page in this story!” He turned to the Zero Point, and lost a hundred invulnerabilities with the turn of his head. “I will make the multiverse mine! No, you won’t. What? What?! You forgot that I’m not a goddamn idiot, Entropy. That I am a goddamn hero, and nothing is going to change that. WHAT IS GOING ON. The Absorbascon. You absorbed it into your being. And with it I’m bringing every single Rip Hunter to bear on you, you sonofabitch. I don’t give a damn if STOP THIS STOP THIS NOW I AM IN CONTROL-- No. No you aren’t. We are.”

Blue Beetle and Booster Gold suddenly found themselves back in control of their bodies, and looked to Entropy as he writhed in pain. “Rip, you magnificent bastard!”

“Now ain’t the time for congratulating him, Teddy, we need to get back to the Sphere!”

“What, why?”

“Because Rip is going to restart creation, and he’s going to wipe Entropy out from inside of reality and I don’t think we want to be here when that happens. We need to be out of time itself so we can slot ourselves back inside when his work is done.”

Beetle clambered inside the Sphere, and began to seal the hatch once Booster was inside. “How do you know all this?”

“Because I’m a Time-Agent, that’s why,” replied Booster, as he began to fire up the engines. “Time-Dive imminent.”

“We were aberrations in the multiverse; us, with the knowledge to travel between realities and worlds. And now we’re going to die together. NO NO NO! I WON! I WON THIS! I GATHERED A LEGION OF VILLAINS AND I ASSAULTED REALITY AND I WON! I DESERVE THIS! You deserve to die screaming.” Rip reached out Entropy’s hand from within him, and finally reached the Zero Point. “End time. Rip Hunters 1 – Entropy 0. Boom.”

And then reality started anew. Blue Beetle and Booster Gold rode the shockwaves of the multiverse to the fringes of the megastructure of reality, and then plotted a course back to the restructured Earth Designate: 1, and landed squarely on the grounds of the Hall of Justice. The Justice League were waiting. Beetle looked over to Booster, who chuckled to himself, and breathed out. “I could sleep forever.”

“Well, that can wait, I think. I think they want to know what happened.”

Superman was the first to speak. “What happened? Last thing were remember was the red skies, the alternates, and now everything is fine, the Sun is shining… what happened?”

“The day’s been saved,” said Booster Gold simply. “Rip Hunter sacrificed his life to save the multiverse, and reality reset.”

“The alternates? What of the alternates? Owlman and the others?”

The Atom grew from Firestorm’s shoulder, and landed before Blue Beetle. “Returned to their home dimensions. Barry could fire up the Cosmic Treadmill and verify that, but our machines tell us that the multiverse is stable. Wow. Mega-science. This is brilliant.”

“We can debrief you all later, can’t we? I want to sleep, is that ok? I mean, I’m used to the Madmen or Nazi-madmen, not reality warping madmen from Earth-3.”

“Earth-3?” asked Hal Jordan, curious.

“You really don’t want to know. And it can wait till the debrief.” Booster Gold and Blue Beetle climbed back into the Time-Sphere, and the Justice League looked at each other confused.

“But--” started Green Lantern.

Batman placed his hand on Green Lantern’s shoulder. “Leave them. It can wait. They’ve been through Hell, can’t you tell?”

“I guess,” replied Hal Jordan, “but is this how that ends? We nearly died, Bruce, reality was in danger and Booster Gold and Blue Beetle saved the day. Isn’t anyone else a bit worried?”

Batman headed back toward the Hall of Justice. “Does it matter who saved the world in the end? Is that a hint of jealousy I hear in your voice, Jordan?”

“Now wait a minute--!”

“…andImettheFlashesandtheKidFlashesfromacrossthemultiverse!Itwasamazing,somewerethesame,someweredifferent,butintheendtheyhelpedstopExtant’splans!”

Barry laughed as Wally spoke, and then hugged him tightly. “I was so worried about you, kid.”

“I helped save the multiverse, Barry,” replied Kid Flash, grinning, “you don’t have to worry about me.”

"You say that," replied Barry, as he continued to hug his nephew. "Now, let's go see your Aunt Iris. It's been an age." The speedsters departed, as did the rest of the Justice League, leaving Superman and Wonder Woman gazing at the rising sun.

“The multiverse is saved,” mused Superman, as he turned to Wonder Woman. “And we had nothing to do with it.”

“We aren’t the only heroes in this world, Kal.”

“Isn’t that the truth, Diana?” smiled Superman, as the Justice League dispersed, and went their separate ways...