Watching the Legends staring at him with weapons raised, vigilant and ready to strike, Jack Kadere stepped out of the car, glanced at the blown-out tire, and smiled.
"Alright. Who's paying for that?"
"Pay for what? The tires?"
The Legends, who had been bracing for a fight, froze. Even if he wasn't surprised by their existence, he couldn't just calmly ask for compensation, could he? And was that really the main concern here?
"Is he really the person we're looking for?" Captain Cold asked, doubt creeping into his voice.
"It does seem like we blew out his tire, so... should we compensate him?" the Atom asked in a low, uncertain voice.
Rip Hunter—Captain of the Legends, Captain of the Waverider, former Time Master—frowned and addressed Jack Kadere directly. "We'll compensate for the vehicle damage later, but right now there's a matter of temporal security we need to discuss immediately."
Jack Kadere looked them over, one by one, and smiled broadly. "Sure. I'd also like to know why you showed up now."
"Why now? You know us? You knew we were coming?" Sara Lance's brow furrowed.
In the moonlight, her blonde hair was striking, and her white tank-top-style tactical suit drew more than a few stares from pJack. She held silver batons in both hands, swaying them slightly—ready to fight at the first sign of disagreement.
"Top assassin of the League of Assassins. White Canary. Slept with your sister's boyfriend. Bisexual…and somehow made it all look cool." Jack Kadere's smile widened. "Am I wrong?"
Sara Lance smiled back. "Takes one to know one."
Jack Kadere moved on without missing a beat, roasting them one by one.
"Ray Palmer. You could have been Superman, but you ended up as the Atom. Quite the career downgrade."
"Jefferson Jackson—one half of Firestorm. The textbook example of the new partner making everyone forget the original. And Martin Stein—instead of staying in your lab like a proper scientist, you're out here playing adventure with the youth. You're going to die."
"Captain Cold. Leonard Snart. Your father abused you and your sister when you were kids, which is why you became a criminal. Your sister's very pretty, by the way—after you die, I wouldn't mind comforting her. And judging by the look of things, that'll be soon. You'll die before Martin Stein does." Jack paused, tilting his head. "Incidentally, in another universe, you're gay."
"As for you, Heat Wave—Mick Rory. You're an arsonist, but you're also one of the most successfully redeemed members of this team. When you write novels in the future, remember to put me in them."
"Hawkman. Carter Hall. Hawkgirl. Kendra Saunders." Jack's gaze swept over them dismissively. "For you two, I have only one word: trash."
"And finally—" Jack Kadere turned to face Rip Hunter, whose expression had gone rigid. "Honestly, you're the one I admire most. This whole thing is just about saving your family, but you wrapped it up in 'saving time' and 'protecting the world,' gathered this band of losers under that banner, and actually made it work. Impressive."
With every sentence, someone's expression darkened—anger at being mocked, shock at the content.
"Have you met our future selves?" Rip Hunter asked, frowning deeply.
He had assumed this mission was straightforward: stop Jack Kadere from picking up Laurel, prevent the formation of the Birds of Prey, and thereby preserve Sara Lance's original destiny. But Jack Kadere knew them too well. He knew futures they themselves hadn't lived yet. The only explanation was that Jack Kadere had encountered the Legends at some future point and learned their fates—which made things significantly more complicated.
"It seems we have a lot to discuss," Rip Hunter said, his voice low.
Jack Kadere smiled. "Then let's go aboard the Waverider and talk."
---
The Waverider was a large expeditionary vessel that used ion propulsion as its primary power source. It possessed time travel capability, cloaking technology, autopilot, and self-diagnostic functions, and was equipped with a medbay, escape pods, and the artificial intelligence known as Gideon. It was the only vehicle the Legends used to travel through time and correct temporal aberrations.
Jack Kadere followed the emotionally conflicted Legends aboard and greeted the AI first.
"Hello, Gideon."
"Hello, Mr. Jack Kadere," came the electronically synthesized female voice.
Jack Kadere smiled, leaned against the console, and looked at Rip Hunter and the others. "Why don't you start by telling me about the time aberrations you've detected."
Rip Hunter glanced at Sara Lance.
Sara began. "Because you made my sister become Black Canary ahead of schedule and helped her form the Birds of Prey with Felicity and Catwoman, it resulted in a series of aberrations. I wasn't killed by Thea Queen. I wasn't resurrected. And my sister wasn't killed by Damien Darhk."
She paused, her jaw tightening.
"Two sets of memories are appearing in my mind simultaneously, and I can feel the original ones fading. That means time is slowly solidifying the reality you changed."
"As far as we're concerned, you're rewriting history."
"So we have to stop you."
Time was linear. Although the altered future hadn't fully arrived yet, if events continued on their current trajectory, time would gradually solidify the new reality, and the original history would be overwritten. Detecting temporal aberrations and traveling to the point of deviation to stop them before history was permanently altered—that was why the Legends had come for Jack Kadere.
Jack Kadere was the time aberration causing history to change.
---
"Compensate me for the tire."