by Philip-Todd Franklin
Rip Hunter’s California headquarters, March 3, 1987:
Animal Man slowly sipped his coffee, recounting the rest of his tale. “And then, once I came to, I found myself back outside. I looked for my companions, only to discover that both of them were dead. I ran back until I came into range of a bird, then absorbed its power of flight and headed here as fast as I could, taking another two days of travel to do so.” Looking up, he asked, “Can you help me, Rip?”
Rip Hunter listened attentively, his mind filled with questions, but he had refrained from interrupting the narrative until his friend was finished. Standing up from his stool, he walked over to a large blackboard covering one wall. Taking an eraser, he cleared part of the board and picked up a piece of chalk to write. “Are you sure you recognized the man?” he asked, beginning to write notes and equations on the board.
Animal Man nodded, dropping his head into his hands as he relived the horrible moment when he’d discovered the young men’s bodies. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he said, recalling the memory once again, along with an even older memory, and shivering uncontrollably. “But I know I saw him die,” he nearly whispered.
Rip continued to write on the board, asking, “So what do you want to do about it? Why did you come to me, of all the people you could’ve asked? Why not appeal to one of your fellow super-heroes?”
Animal Man couldn’t respond for a moment, still caught up in his memories. Finally, he said, “Rip, I’ve got to stop this evil, but I’ve also got to know the truth about this man, too.”
“I see,” said Rip. “We could always call in the rest of the Forgotten Heroes, not just our old team, but Captain Comet’s team as well.”
Animal Man shook his head, replying, “No time, Rip. There just isn’t enough time.”
Rip raised an eyebrow at that phrase, continuing to write for a moment before dropping the chalk from his fingers. He checked over the equation he’d just written, nodding, and turned to face Buddy. “Then it’s just the two of us, since Bonnie is at a history conference, and Jeff went to visit family. This is your show, Buddy. Where do we go first?” Rip Hunter said, smiling and looking ready for the adventure to come.
“To my old hometown of Deep Hollow, near the Epistle Baptist Church,” said Buddy, his face going blank for a moment as he tried to recall the exact details. “I think I also remember the date, Rip,” he said, nodding his head as the ghost of a smile crossed his face for the first time since he’d arrived. “Yes, it was April of 1962. I think it was the 17th, but I don’t remember the precise time, except that it was after suppertime.”
Rip nodded and walked over to a locker, quickly running through the combination in the lock to open it up. “If time truly is of the essence, as you’ve already said,” he began, grabbing several items from the locker, “then we need to hurry.” He tossed both a pair of goggles and a small device over to Buddy, which he recognized, from a previous trip in the Time Sphere with the Forgotten Heroes, as a translator chip. Rip motioned for him to follow.
Slipping the translator device over his left ear, Buddy looked at the goggles for a moment before pocketing them in his jacket pocket. Wonder what I need the goggles for, he thought as he followed Rip Hunter toward his hangar.
Reaching the Time Sphere in the cavernous chamber, Rip Hunter sat down inside it on a chair behind a large console panel and donned his own goggles. Quickly feeding information into the onboard computer through the keyboard, Rip looked up as the results began to show on the screens built into the Sphere. “Just find a seat anywhere, Buddy. We’ve got plenty of room,” Rip said, pressing the control to close the hatch. “Oh, and I hope you didn’t forget those goggles,” he added a moment later as a humming noise could be heard. “The ride can be a bit… dirty without them.”
Buddy Baker took a seat in the middle of the Sphere and watched the monitor before him, wondering what Rip meant by dirty. But thoughts of goggles were left far behind as he tried to make sense of the information being played upon the computer screens.
Outside the Sphere, time slowed to a stop and then began to swirl in a counterclockwise direction. With a little bump, the Time Sphere lifted from its resting spot and began to fade from sight. If anyone had been in the hangar to witness it, they would’ve just seen the Time Sphere disappear in an instant, accompanied by a popping sound.
Sitting at the controls, Rip Hunter continued to manipulate the keyboard as the information before him changed. Neither of the two men spoke during the trip. Only once did Buddy look away from the screen in front of him, noticing the swirls and streaks of color surrounding them. In an instant, he felt violently sick and quickly closed his eyes, moaning loudly as he lowered his head.
“I did warn you to not forget the goggles, Buddy,” Rip said from the Time Sphere’s pilot seat.
The Time Sphere began to shudder fiercely as it traveled through the time stream, only adding to Animal Man’s increasingly queasy stomach. As Rip Hunter rapidly typed away at the keyboard, the only sounds within the Sphere were his constant hitting of the keys, the humming of the power source, and the light moaning coming from Animal Man.
“Ohhh… Rip, can you let me off this roller-coaster?” Animal Man asked from his seat, just before he emptied the contents of his stomach into a bag that had been hanging on the back of the seat before him.
For a moment, no reply came to Animal Man’s question. Then the Time Sphere stopped, and reality popped back into view on the monitors.
With a few more clicks on the keyboard, Rip checked the area outside the Time Sphere before flipping the switch to open the door.
“Here we are,” said Rip Hunter, “Tuesday, April 17, 1962, just outside Deep Hollow, California. Let me help you out into the fresh air.” He extended a hand and assisted Animal Man out of the Time Sphere.
After a few moments of walking around, Animal Man’s normal complexion began to return. “I’m starting to feel better. That was one heck of a rough ride! I don’t remember it being like that when we were with the Forgotten Heroes!”
“I’ve had a few… setbacks with the Time Sphere over the last year or so,” admitted Rip Hunter. “Around the time you joined the Conglomerate, I devised a scheme to use my Time Sphere to save all the heroes lost during the Crisis. I went to Rick Flag for help, and with the assistance of Arisia, one of the Green Lanterns, we traveled back in time to the Crisis and managed to pluck Supergirl out of harm’s way before the Anti-Monitor could kill her.”
“Really?” Buddy asked. “You mean… that new Supergirl who looks so much like the old one is actually the original?”
“No, not at all,” Rip explained. “It turned out that I had been duped. We had all been deceived, in fact. We hadn’t actually returned to the Crisis, and it wasn’t Supergirl we brought back with us. As Flag later informed me, the Supergirl impostor was actually an evil witch named Tala, who had been trapped in the antimatter universe until we rescued her. She had somehow influenced my mind, making me so unhinged and obsessed that Jeff, Bonnie, and Corky wanted nothing to do with my crazy scheme to save the Crisis dead.” (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: See Captain Comet’s Rehab Squad: The Return of Supergirl.]
Rip shook his head as he recalled that low point in his life, before he continued, “The Time Sphere was damaged on the voyage home. That forced me to make some repairs using parts from the Time Sphere on display in a museum in the twenty-fifth century. Just catching a glimpse of that future version of my time machine, even in my crazed state, gave me some ideas. Maybe I really could return to a time where I already existed. After all, two versions of the same Time Sphere could exist in the same time, or I would never be able to travel to the future at all. So why not people?”
Rip gazed around at the clearing where they had landed, becoming too lost in thought to finish explaining. “The Time Sphere should be well-covered from prying eyes,” he finally said. Turning to Animal Man, he added, “Sorry about the bumpy ride, Buddy. I can’t for the life of me understand what caused it.” With that, he glanced down at his wristwatch and asked, “Do you have any idea when this death took place?”
Animal Man nodded sadly, continuing to look around, having heard little of what Rip had told him. The shadows of the past crept back into his mind too quickly. Slowly, they left the clearing of trees in the small park just behind the Epistle Baptist Church.
Buddy looked up at the sky and noticed the sun’s position, indicating it was nearly seven in the evening. “We’ve got about an hour to get to the right location,” he said, distracted by something on the back door of the church that caught his eye. Upon the old oak door was a small carving of a cross with three sets of initials on each arm — one reading B.B., another R.D., and below that was carved Friends Forever.
Rip walked up to see what Buddy was looking at. “What has you so interested, Buddy?” he asked.
After a moment, Buddy turned to Rip and pointed at the mark on the door. “I remember when Roger, Dodger, and I — Roger Denning and Roger ‘Dodger’ Marshall, my best friends growing up — carved those into the door. I remember it like it was yesterday.” A mournful sigh escaped his lips as he spoke.
“The two Rogers always had a bit of a rivalry going on, and they were always chasing the same girl,” Buddy explained. “They were both older than me and always acted like they were my big brothers, protecting me from school bullies. But I also felt like each of them was jealous of the other over my friendship, too. I usually had to hang out with one or the other, rather than both at the same time. It got kind of confusing. And because Roger Denning was alphabetically first in their class — they were in the same grade — Roger Marshall began to be called by his nickname of ‘Dodger,’ though he really hated it.”
With another sigh, Buddy turned away and began to walk back into the woods, this time toward the west.
Deciding not to press the issue, Rip didn’t ask the question running through his mind. If Buddy and his two friends named Roger carved their initials next to his, he thought, then why are there only two initials there? Furthermore, why didn’t Buddy notice that himself?
As they continued walking, shadows from the setting sun began to grow longer until the sun dipped below the mountains. When they finally stopped, Buddy put his finger to his lips and whispered, “This is the place. If I recall correctly, it should happen in less than an hour, so let’s make ourselves scarce.”
Rip nodded and pointed toward a large grove of tangled trees and brush. Buddy agreed, and soon the two men were buried deeply in the foliage, where they had a perfect view of the area without being seen.
After an hour and a half passed uneventfully, doubt crept into Buddy’s mind. He began to think he had been completely wrong about the day and time. Yet the carving on the door confirmed otherwise. Just as he was about to leave their hiding place, sounds came from the east, emerging from the church they had left earlier. Hearing the noise, Buddy reproached himself. How could he have forgotten about the church outing after supper?
A few seconds later, two teenage boys walked into view, both dressed in blue jeans and plaid shirts. One had blond hair, while the other had much darker hair. Hearing a few words exchanged between them, Buddy quickly identified which was which. The dark-haired teenager appeared nearly eighteen, while the blond seemed barely sixteen. As they continued to whisper, Buddy listened intently for another dreaded sound, and he wasn’t left waiting long.
A third figure entered the clearing, brandishing a gun and demanding money from the two teenagers. Dressed in dark, close-fitting clothing, his face was hidden in shadows.
The older, dark-haired youth looked at the gunman and lunged at him. The younger blond, meanwhile, appeared momentarily frozen in shock and couldn’t move.
The assailant was so surprised by the attack that he nearly forgot he was holding a gun and jumped backward toward the very trees where Buddy and Rip were concealed.
With the assailant jumping out of the way, the dark-haired boy missed him and landed prone at his feet, cursing as he struggled to get up. The younger boy, regaining his senses, took off running into the dark woods, calling for his friend to follow him. Ignoring the younger boy, the assailant looked down at the older boy as he tried to rise.
By the time the teenager made it to his hands and knees, the assailant had already pressed the barrel of his gun to the youth’s head. The gunman grinned as he saw fear wash over the boy’s face, mumbling something incoherent before pulling the trigger. As the sound of the gunshot echoed through the woods, a bright white light erupted before them all, momentarily blinding everyone.
Unable to see, the killer ran in the only direction he knew, toward the church, and accidentally dropped the gun as he fled.
Buddy tried to move his arms to rub his eyes but found himself unable to move. Suddenly, he could see clearly, as if it were midday rather than early evening. A figure, whom he initially mistook for the killer, stood over the body lying on the forest floor. Buddy’s mind screamed, That’s not how it happened!
After a moment, he noticed the person standing over the body was dressed in a black suit with a white shirt beneath, wearing either a long dark blue cloak or a trenchcoat. A fedora of the same shade of blue adorned his head, and white gloves covered his hands. As the figure raised his arms, a golden medallion hung in front of him. Buddy couldn’t help but notice how closely that medallion resembled the carving that he’d seen at the mouth of the cave in South Africa.
The figure began to wave his arms in small gestures, and a blue-green glow encircled the body on the ground. After a few seconds, it appeared as if the body was fading away, then suddenly grew more solid before the glow finally dissipated.
A few moments passed, and the figure bowed his head over the body, uttering a few hushed words before disappearing in a flash of light. Buddy was left thinking, What the heck?!
Next to him, Rip Hunter was also watching the scene unfold. As the figure in black vanished, Rip and Animal Man found they could move again. Tossing caution aside, Buddy crawled out from the forest’s edge and rushed toward the body on the forest floor. Rip tried to grab him but missed, quickly moving to keep up.
“What do you think you’re doing, Buddy?” Rip asked urgently as they reached the body.
“I have to see it once more, Rip,” he replied, his voice shallow. Looking down at the body lying before him, the world around him began to spin madly and dim. Gasping for air, Buddy attempted to walk away, only to crash to the ground in utter shock.
There, lying on the forest floor, was not the dead body of an eighteen-year-old boy he had known as a childhood friend, but the corpse of a man with coal-dark hair graying at the temples, dressed in red, who had been shot in the forehead.