Calibrations

California 2006

"I'm serious," Youngblood said as he paced around the Paramour. "What happened to Figment?"

"I haven't seen him in a while, but he has to be around here somewhere," Pepper said. "Maybe we should look for him."

Youngblood nodded. He knew that if they couldn't find Figment, they were all in big trouble. They couldn't save Frank if he wasn't there to operate the time machine, and more importantly for Revenge and Youngblood, they couldn't go back home. Youngblood had no idea what would happen if he got stuck in 2006, but he knew that it couldn't be good.

Youngblood, Pepper, and Revenge all started searching for Figment, or more accurately, Youngblood and Pepper looked for him while Revenge raided the band's movie collection. "Revenge!" Pepper shouted as he tried to put a copy of Revenge of the Sith into the DVD player. "Come help us!"

"But it's Star Wars, and this movie hasn't come out yet, and it has my nickname in the title..."

"It's not actually that good," Pepper said. "The original trilogy is way better."

"Then why do you have it?" Revenge asked.

Pepper didn't have a good answer, so he tried to change the subject. "Just help us, okay?" he said. "We need to find Figment."

"Fine," Revenge said.

Youngblood wandered around the mansion, checking every inch of the house for any sign of Figment. However, he was nowhere to be found. Revenge and Pepper didn't have any luck either. Before long, Youngblood started to worry that something truly horrible had happened to his future self. Back in 2002, Figment had warned him about the Watch and what they might do if they caught him. Maybe they had finally found him. Maybe Youngblood really was stuck in 2006. Then again, Revenge's existence meant that he must have returned to his own time at some point. Not all hope was lost.

Pepper, Revenge, and Youngblood met in the kitchen. They had looked in every last corner of the Paramour Mansion, carefully avoiding the other members of My Chemical Romance, yet they still hadn't found Figment. Now, they needed to decide what to do next.

"I'm going to make more coffee," Pepper said, which Youngblood suspected was his future self's solution to everything. "Does anyone else want some?"

Revenge laughed and said, "I think I'm going to need something a little bit stronger than coffee if I'm going to make it through this."

"Absolutely not," Pepper said. "Youngblood? Do you want some?"

"Sure," he said.

Pepper made some coffee, and when he was done, he opened up a cabinet and pulled out enough mugs for everybody. However, he stopped when he saw something unexpected in the cabinet, hiding in between the rest of the coffee cups.

"Figment left his coffee mug here," he said.

"That's weird," Youngblood said. "Why would he do that?"

"I don't know," Pepper said. He carefully took the mug out of the cabinet, and he pressed the button on the side. All of a sudden, it transformed into a high-tech watch. Pepper strapped the time machine onto his wrist, wondering what to do with it.

"Maybe we could go a few minutes into the past and figure out where Figment went," Youngblood suggested.

"Is that even possible?" Pepper asked. "The time machine is supposed to be pretty personalized. If I remember correctly, it's calibrated to Figment's brain waves, so it only works for him."

"Yeah, but you are Figment!" Revenge exclaimed. "Or you will be, anyways. We're all the same person, so I don't see why Figment's time machine wouldn't work for us."

"You have a good point," Pepper said. "Maybe we should give it a try, but just going back a few minutes seems like a waste of a great opportunity."

"So what are we going to do with it?" Youngblood asked.

Pepper gave his past selves a sly smile, as if he had just come up with a brilliant idea. "Remember when Figment said that the Watch banned everyone from time traveling to 2007?" he said. Both Revenge and Youngblood nodded. "I want to know what happens next year, especially if it's bad enough that the Watch is keeping us from going there. I want to go to 2007."

Youngblood thought about it. Time traveling to 2007 might be dangerous. After all, something catastrophic must happen in that year if the Watch was keeping people from going there. He couldn't imagine what it would be, but his curiosity got the better of him. If Pepper was going to 2007, he would go too.

"I'll go with you," Youngblood said.

"Me too," Revenge said. "I've always wanted to live through an apocalypse."

"Great," Pepper said. "Let's do it. If I can get the time machine to work right, Figment won't have to know that we went to 2007. Once we're back, we can keep looking for him."

Pepper looked back at the wristwatch, and he typed in that there were three travelers. Then, the time machine asked him for a place. "Where are we going, exactly?" he asked the others.

"Let's go somewhere fun," Youngblood said. "Japan, maybe? I've always wanted to go there."

"I've already been," Revenge said. "Let's go to Scotland. If the world's ending, I might as well go hang out with Grant Morrison."

"That's not a bad idea," Youngblood said.

"I don't know," Pepper said. "I'm thinking about going home to New Jersey."

"That's boring," Youngblood said.

"Yeah, it is," Revenge said. "Let's go somewhere cool."

"Colorado?" Pepper suggested.

"Yeah, because the end of the world is a great time to go skiing," Revenge said sarcastically.

"I'm fine with that," Youngblood said.

"Revenge?" Pepper said. "Does Colorado work?"

"I guess so," he said.

Pepper typed "Colorado" into the time machine, and when it asked for the year, he typed "2007." He pushed one more button, and for a moment, nothing happened. The three Gerards just stood in the kitchen, waiting for the time machine to take them to the apocalypse.

"Is it working?" Youngblood asked.

Pepper said, "I don't..."

Before he could finish his sentence, they were gone.