Ted Grant has lived a fairly interesting life. One of the top heavyweight boxers of the 1940's, he'd decided to take the skills he'd learned beating the crap out of people in the ring and put them to use on the streets as well, by assuming the mantle of Wildcat and dealing with Gotham's crime problem in a more direct way. His career as a crimefighter would eventually lead him to team up with a handful of other likeminded concerned citizens, including Gothams own Green Lantern and Black Canary, the diminutive Atom, the mysterious Sandman, as well as more obscure superhuman individuals such as Iron Munroe and the Phantom Lady. From his beginnings in the boxing ring, Grant would go on to lead a life of adventure that took him across the world, across the war-torn cities of Europe as a member of the All-Star Squadron, and faced enemies straight out of nightmares, such as the depraved Psycho-Pirate, the terrorists of the Black Dragon Society, and the sadistic immortal Vandal Savage. Really, enough experiences to fill an entire series of biographies.
And now, he's spending his retirement teaching me how to get punched in the face.
Lucky me.
"Not bad, Flagg! You're getting better, but you really gotta stop flinching like that every time you get a punch thrown at your head. That's a real good way to get your ass knocked out in a real fight" Ted says as he steps back, letting me catch my breath for a minute. Naturally, the old man's not even winded, despite being a good 30 years older than me, magically extended lifespan or not.
"Easy for you to say, Champ" I wince at the developing bruises on my face as I try to correct the padded helmet I'm wearing, which might as well be made of paper mache for all the good it's doing "I spent my whole life up until last month trying to AVOID being hit in the face, so it's a bit difficult to drop that reflex. And we don't all got a literal 9 lives to keep us going!"
Grant rolls his eyes as he steps back towards me "Should've never told you about that nonsense. And I'm still not sure Fate wasn't just pulling my leg when he put that mumbo jumbo on me, I have no idea if it's literally nine lives or not." He raises his gloved fists back into fighting position and I awkwardly mimic him.
"I admit, I never met Fate myself, but he doesn't sound like the leg pulling type. Plus, I got magic vision, remember?" I gesture towards my face, and my eyes gives off a flash of light "There's certainly some kind of spell all over you, and it's definetly the rejuvinating kind of magic, even if I can't tell if it's exactly what Fate described it as. The guy was a Lord Of Order, that's a good bit above my weight class..."
"I'll take your word for it, Flagg. I left all that hocus pocus up to Fate and Zatara back in the day, I was the guy who punched things. Speaking of which!" He slams his fists together "Let's get back to it!"
Oh boy....
...
"You're getting there, kid! A few more weeks of this, and you might go from a glass jaw to a slightly less fragile glass jaw!"
"You should've been a motivational speaker, Ted..." I grimace as I try to work the soreness out of my arms. It's not like I didn't work out back in my own reality, but compared to Ted's training, I might as well have been lifting pillow cases filled with feathers, it's almost laughable how far behind I was when we started. An hour of sparring, followed by two hours of weights and punching the bag will take it out on anyone. Well, anyone except Grant himself, and Bruce Wayne I'm guessing. At least I'm improving, slowly but surely, when we started doing this, I had to spend the night sleeping on Ted's couch because I was too exhausted to even open a portal back home, much less walk there. Now I just have to sit in a lawn chair in Ted's back yard while I try to regain the use of my limbs.
"Ah, I'm just joshing ya. Here, you earned it" Ted pulls a can of beer from the six pack he's holding, the cool surface of the can already wet with condensation from the summer heat. I accept it, but rather than opening it right away, I run the can across the side of my face, just to enjoy the refreshing coldness for a moment.
Damn, that feels good.
Next to me, Ted has popped open the top of his own beer and taken a sip "Okay, so where did we leave off last time..."
"You were telling me about how the Justice Society ended up helping with the war effort."
"Oh right, so this was right on the heels of Pearl Harbor, right, and pretty much the whole country was going into overdrive, getting geared up for the war effort. President Roosevelt decided they weren't just going to let a resource like superheroes sit out the war so he calls up every last one of us costumed folks for a special meeting. It wasn't just us guys in the Society neither, EVERYONE in a cape, or mask or whatever they wore. The Crimson Avenger, Robotman, Johnny Quick, that cowboy fella, the knight guy with the winged horse, bunch of masks I'd barely even heard of. Roosevelt got us all together, and we're told that we can't technically be drafted since our identities aren't public, he'd consider it a personal favor if we were to lend our abilities to the war effort." Ted snorts "Like we're going to say no?"
"Things didn't work out so great with that though, did it?"
He sighs harshly and takes another drink "That goddamned spear... How that Ratzi bastard managed to get his grubby mitts on the actual Spear of Destiny I'll never know, much less how he got it to work the way it did... We almost walked right into a disaster, if it hadn't been for Fate warning us before any of our heavy hitters got deployed in Europe, god knows what would have happened. Imagine if one of those goosestepping pricks had gotten control over Green Lantern, or Zatara..." He shakes his head "But yeah, there we were, all the power in the world at our fingertips, and we couldn't do a damned thing with it. We had to basically stay home and mind the fort while the regular joes went to bleed and die for us."
"Not like you guys just sat around on your thumbs the whole war, from what I've read about it, you guys had your hands full pretty much the whole time." I lean back in the lawn chair and watch as the sun begins to set, cracking open my own beer and taking a drink. "Couldn't you have taken part, though? I mean, you didn't technically have any powers back then."
"Wouldn't have worked, I even tried to sign up out of costume, but I'd already gotten that spell whammy put on me by then, and Fate said that it was enough of a deviation from a basic human that I'd just hand the Nazis an empowered super soldier if I went overseas. So, I stuck it out for the war, and made any Axis pricks who tried sneaking around on our turf sorry they ever showd up!" He cracks his knuckles with a grin "Did a pretty good job of it too if I say so myself. Ever hear of the Aryan Brigade?"
"Nnnnno, but with a name like that, I'm guessing they weren't exactly cheering for the home team."
"You got that right, buncha homegrown Nazi jerks who decided to try and make a mess of things on U.S soil, so it'd be tougher for us to fight overseas. Not exactly brain surgeons either, not one superpower among them, group was run by this guy named Backlash who just used a whip as a weapon. Lady calling herself Golden Eagle was in it too, could fly a bit with this wingsuit she had, but it was really more gliding. Heatmonger had a freaking flamethrower if you could believe it, god knows where he got the fuel for it during rationing. Iron Cross was this has-been pro wrestler who got washed out during the Depression and decided that being a Nazi would fix all his problems. They tried to blow up a munitions plant back in '42, and the Society got sent in to take 'em down. Only reason it was a real fight at all was because most of our strongest members were out on missions for the war department, so it was me, Dr Mid-Nite, Sandman and The Atom. Actually took a bit for us to put 'em down, but down they went!" He takes another drink "Eh, I try not to think of it as the glory days, they were pretty damn awful in fact, but we had some good times then too. Of course, things didn't exactly calm down after the war either, you ever hear about the Injustice Society?"
"Yeah, basically the first supervillain team, right? Led by William Zarda?"
"Yup, some fruitcake dressed up like a stage magician- er, no offense."
"None taken."
"-but yeah, called himself The Wizard, though I was never entirerly clear on if he was the real deal, or just a tech fake, like that Abra Kadabra lunatic the new Flash has to put up with."
"Well, I can't say for sure without actually meeting the guy, but from what's been written down about him, and some of the magical research I did before I met you, he seems to have been an actual magic user."
Ted pauses for a bit "...you know Flagg, not to change the subject, but you never did tell me how you figured out that I was Wildcat. I know some of the old mystery men revealed themselves over the years, or their identities got leaked, but I know for a fact mine wasn't. Did I make it obvious and I was just too far down the list for anyone to come knocking before, or what?"
Hmm, how to put this... Obviously I can't tell him the real reason for why I already knew who he was, but luckily I don't have to "Okay, so I wouldn't have done this under normal circumstances, but remember how I told you about using my scrying to track down missing people? The magic doesn't make a distinction between civilian identities and secret ones. Sorry."
He gives me a stern look "I hope you understand what kind of responsibility that is, kid. Secret identities aren't something to be taken lightly, they can be the difference between life and death for someones family."
"Oh yeah, no, I totally I get it!" I say, holding my hands up in defence "This isn't something I was planning on making a habit of, out of professional courtesy if nothing else, I wasn't going to look for anyone else" Mostly because I already know nearly all of them, but still, I won't be using magic to find out.
"Alright then... Anyway, like I was saying, the Injustice Society, that was back in '47, and we'd just gotten-" He trails off at the sound of the front door opening and closing, followed by the sound of footsteps quickly walking through the gym towards the backyard.
"Uncle Ted? You out here? Sorry to come by without calling first, but I wanted- Oh!" A beautiful, blonde woman, looking to be in her early 20's, dressed in a leather jacket, black jeans and what looks to be motorcycle boots appears in the door, coming to a halt as she spots me. "Oh, sorry, I didn't know you had company over..."
"No problem, kiddo! Flagg, this is Dinah Lance. Dinah, this is Randall Flagg."
Oh, well, hello there, probably-future-Black Canary!