- "Forming the Time Bureau has been the work of the last five years of my life. They've gotten quite good at it I have to say."
- — Rip Hunter
The Federal Time Bureau, known simply as the Time Bureau, is an organization whose goal is to protect the timeline, the supposed goal of its predecessor, the Time Masters. It was led by director Ava Sharpe and formerly by Wilbur Bennett and Rip Hunter.
After the Legends defeated Mallus and fixed the anachronisms, the Time Bureau reached a more amicable working relationship with the team.
Overview[]
The Time Bureau was formed to carry on the mission of the Time Masters' and complete their goal to protect the timeline; however, unlike the corrupt Time Masters, the bureau put a value on morals, principles, and human life. Its members used a device known as a time courier, that allowed them to transport through time and space without the need of a timeship, despite this, they do possess timeships but they are much larger than the ones that were used by the Time Masters. Their field office was located in Star City and their headquarters was located in Washington, D.C., instead of the Vanishing Point.
No one was above the Bureau's rules, not even their founder and co-director Rip Hunter; who was arrested and stripped of his status; due to his rogue actions that resulted in the deaths of several agents.
Unlike their predecessors and the Legends, the bureau was protocol-centric, as evident in their motto, "The adventure is in the details". Missions require approval, which takes a while. After a mission, successful or not, agents must make a report.
In 2391, Hank Heywood provided funds for the completion of the fugitives' advanced containment facility.
History[]
Creation[]
After Rip Hunter left the Legends from their recent victory against the Legion of Doom, he went off to create a new group to replace the Time Masters to guard the timeline. He then saw that the Legends' actions had created an abundance of anachronisms, people or things getting misplaced throughout time. He spent five years looking for new recruits and setting up a base of operations. He would at some point recruit Wilbur Bennett who became director of the bureau alongside him.
At some point, Rip travelled to 2414 to recruit an Advanced Variant Automation clone as an agent to the Time Bureau, naming her Ava Sharpe. He had her mind wiped of her factory settings and memories and provided her with fake memories and even hired actors to play her parents. As the clone would die he would replace her with a new and repeat with the latest being the 12th.
Meeting the Legends[]
With his new Time Bureau, they set off to Los Angeles in 2390, where they began to take all the lost dinosaurs and displaced architectures, and restored them to their proper place and times. The Legends were relieved of their duties for six months. However, during this time, Julius Caesar was spotted in Aruba by Mick Rory. The Time Bureau attempted to handle it, but were unsuccessful and didn't believe Caesar had actually been displaced, causing the Legends to reform and steal the Waverider back from Time Bureau's custody and head to Aruba to fix it. They were able to capture him, sending him back to his original time period, but accidentally left him with a book detailing Roman history, including his murder. The Legends and Time Bureau were forced to team up, taking the book back and restoring the timeline. After this Rip agreed to let the Legends keep the Waverider and continue hunting anachronisms although agent Sharpe was skeptical.
Soon after, Ava Sharpe had Gary Green follow the Legends to Wisconsin in 1870. He was soon noticed by them, being captured. He reported back to Sharpe, claiming under duress that everything was fine. Sharpe didn't believe him, boarding the Waverider herself. She was intercepted by Sara Lance, who she fought until the two grew tired. Eventually successfully fixing the anachronism, Agent Sharpe allowed them to leave freely, despite still not trusting them.
Agent Green was sent to Seattle in 2442 to sort out some unregulated time travel. However, he was taken aboard the Waverider, causing Agent Sharpe to appear with a significantly larger time ship. When Sara Lance piloted the Waverider directly at the Time Bureau's ship, they were forced to time jump away.
Mallus[]
Following a recommendation by Director Hunter, Director Bennett sanctioned a large number of agents being sent to 1895 London to assist with a particularly unusual anachronism. However, they were all killed by a newly-resurrected Damien Darhk and his associates. Due to these events, Rip was arrested by Director Bennett and Agent Sharpe and stripped of his status. In return for the Legends turning him in, the Time Bureau called off the manhunt on the vigilante group.
According to Agent Sharpe, after Rip's arrest and imprisonment, the Time Bureau quickly descended into disarray. Among the problems were disastrous missions to stop Damien and Nora Darhk, resulting in multiple agents dying at their hands. Sharpe later informed Sara that Rip managed to escape the prison and his current whereabouts were unknown.
Rip Hunter had gone AWOL and Director Bennett ordered that he be found and arrested. When Rip made contact with Agent Sharpe and the Legends on the situation of Mallus, he tried to arrange a meeting with Bennett but he wouldn't have it and ordered that he be placed under immediate arrest. When Rip Hunter, Agent Sharpe, and Sara Lance tried to convince Bennett to listen as a group, he remained stubborn in his decision. However, he was then quickly killed by Grodd, making the position of Director fall into Sharpe's hands. Her first act was to re-instate Rip Hunter as an agent of the Bureau.
Eventually, when Sara Lance decided the only way to use the six Totems of Zambesi to defeat Mallus was to release him from his time prison, Rip chose to support the plan but Sharpe refused to involve the Time Bureau in the undertaking. After Mallus physically manifests through Nora Darhk, Rip sacrifices himself to ensure the Legends could escape. After the Legends destroy Mallus with a giant Beebo, the Bureau proceeded to wipe the memories of the Roman soldiers, Pirates, and Vikings that Mallus had recruited and returned them to their proper time periods.
Aiding Team Flash[]
At some point, the Time Bureau had at least one encounter with negative tachyons, learning that they slow speedsters down instead of speeding them up. They also learned that if negative tachyons were to get anywhere near a timeship's time drives, the reaction would vaporize the ship.
The Time Bureau later provided Team Flash with technology to upgrade their tachyon enhancer to help Nora West-Allen return to her time period, though Team Flash never ended up using their tachyon enhancer after upgrading it.
Capturing magical creatures[]
Five months following the defeat of Mallus, the Time Bureau hosted a surprise party for the Legends at their Washington headquarters as thanks for fixing the last anachronism and awarded them all medals for their feats. Following the party, Sara troubled Gary to check the timeline from their headquarters for potential magical fugitives. After the Legends determined that a unicorn caused a massacre at Woodstock 1969, Gary helped the them and John Constantine banish the creature to Hell. Subsequently, Gary told Ava about the unicorn as well as other magical creatures which had been released as a result of Mallus escaping his realm, thus placing the Time Bureau on a new objective.
Late one night, Ava found Nate Heywood staying at the Bureau because he had had nowhere else to go. At the same time, Sharpe was preparing for the Bureau's annual budget meeting with the Pentagon needed for the Fugitives crisis. Nate initially offered to help only to abstain when he realized the Bureau's military liaison was his own father, Hank Heywood. Though Ava stressed to Hank the continued importance of the Bureau in maintaining the timestream, Gary ended up embarrassing her in his attempts to convince Hank of the existence of magic. Hank threatened to shut the Bureau down unless he was presented with proof, leading Ava convincing Nate to stand up for himself. Ultimately, Nate was able to convince his father by bringing a pig that transforms into Ray Palmer as a result of the Legends thwarting the Fairy Godmother in the Salem witch trials. Hank agreed to allow the Time Bureau 4.2 billion bars of latinum in subsidizing, after which Ava extended Nate an employment opportunity at the Time Bureau.
Nate found himself bored by the Bureau's bureaucracy and copious amount of paperwork so urged Gary Green to go on a mission with him without waiting for approval. Gary accidentally brought back a magical plant to the office which the two fought, resulting in the office being left a mess full of plant goo but they were victorious. When Ava accompanied the Legends on a mission she left Nate and Gary in charge at the Bureau. As the Time Bureau deployed multiple teams deployed throughout history to track down fugitives, Ava had Nate train them all.
While Ava and Nate were at Thanksgiving dinner at the Heywood house, Gary noticed the fugitives had escaped as the tranquilizer worn off. Nate asked Ava to distract his father so he would not find out what had happened and went to aid Gary at the Bureau. With the help from food delivery person, Mona Wu, Gary and Nate managed to calm the creatures who it turned out just needed to eat. After finding out what had happened, Hank told them he would greenlight additional funding for the completion of their containment facilities so this could never happen again. The Bureau then hired Mona as their magical creature handler and although Ava was initially against Mona's ideas on how to make the place more comfortable for the prisoners, she softened after accidentally getting locked in with Mona and Nora Darhk in Nora's cell.
Neron[]
At some point, Hank Heywood started making plans of opening a theme park which he would call Heyworld with magical creatures and would secretly train creatures captured by the Bureau for that purpose. He was a approached by the demon Neron and made a deal with him. Neron would provide him with unlimited funding if he gave him access to all magical creatures at the Time Bureau.
While Mona was in Konane's cell, suddenly two masked men appeared. He urged her to hide while the men disabled the lock and kidnapped him. Mona tried to stop them and Konane escaped. However, Hank Heywood removed the footage and replaced it with a fake video, framing Mona for freeing him. Mona seeked help from the Legends who eventually discovered the doctored footage and found the kaupe. Ava put all their resources towards fining the kaupe despite the Legends trying to convince her of what happened but the Legends succeeded in stopping the Time Bureau agents from preventing his fight in Mexico City although he was eventually killed by an agent. In the aftermath, Hank forced Ava to take a leave of absence to "get her priorities straight" and took over as acting director of the Bureau. After she and Nate discovered Hank's involvement in the cover-up, Zari Tomaz joined the Bureau as an agent to find out more and expose Hank.
Hank wanted to go after the Legends for going against them. Zari enlisted the help of Gary to go through Hank's phone for proof while she and Nate warned the Legends that Hank was after them. The Time Bureau hijacked the Waverider while the Legends escaped in a RV. Zari sabotaged the ship to not give Hank access to Gideon. Feeling in over his head, Gary enlisted the help from Nora Darhk. They uncovered that Hank had used time travel for things outside Bureau protocol but soon Nora sensed a presence and they hid under his desk while man entered the room. Feeling his strong magic, Nora told Gary to stop digging. Meanwhile, the Time Bureau eventually caught up with the Legends but Hank agreed to let them walk as an ultimatum from Nate. Wanting to prioritize his relationship with Nate, Hank wanted to sever ties with Neron but he then killed him. After, Zari went back to working with the Legends.
Known members[]
Former members[]
- Wilbur Bennett (director; deceased)
- Ava Sharpe (director; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Rip Hunter (founder, former director and agent; deceased)
- Gary Green (agent; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Mona Wu (magical creature handler; fired; later joined the Legends)
- Hank Heywood (funding department head and temporary director; deceased)
- Nate Heywood/Steel (agent; rejoined the Legends)
- Zari Tomaz (agent; briefly; rejoined the Legends)
- Nora Darhk/Fairy Godmother (agent; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Ava Sharpe (director; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Dietel (agent; status unknown)
- London (agent; status unknown)
- Neil McNeil (agent; status unknown)
- Powell (agent; status unknown)
- Reyes (agent; status unknown)
Known allies[]
Current allies[]
- Helen of Troy (operating in 1253 B.C.)
Former allies[]
- Legends (relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Sara Lance/White Canary (leader; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Ray Palmer/The Atom (relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Mick Rory/Heat Wave (relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Gideon (relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Nate Heywood/Steel (former member; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- John Constantine (relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Charlie (relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Mona Wu/Wolfie (former member; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Nora Darhk/Fairy Godmother (former member; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Behrad Tarazi (relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Leo Snart (returned to Earth-X; status unknown)
- Amaya Jiwe/Vixen (left to return to 1942; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Wally West/Kid Flash (left to focus on himself; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Zari Tomaz (alterations to the timeline kept her from ever meeting the Legends)
- Kuasa/Vixen (operating in the present; enemy in a former timeline; status unknown)
- Jefferson "Jax" Jackson (former member of the Legends; operating in 2395; relocated to Earth-Prime)
Known enemies[]
Current enemies[]
- Time pirates
Former enemies[]
- Julius Caesar (operating in 49 B.C.; deceased as of 44 B.C.)
- Kuasa (in an alternate timeline; turned ally in new timeline; status unknown)
- Grodd (relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Damien Darhk (deceased)
- Mallus (deceased)
- Nora Darhk (turned ally and later member; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Gary Green (former member; rejoined; relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Neron (deceased)
- Magical fugitives (currently residing in Heyworld; inactive)
- Tabitha/Fairy Godmother (deceased)
- Unnamed Minotaur (status unknown)
- Unnamed Pùca (relocated to Earth-Prime)
- Frederic (status unknown)
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Earth: Prime
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