It was three o'clock in the morning: the devil's hour. Traffic had died down, and Death Valley was dead silent. There was no one on the road at this time of night, unless you counted the brightly painted Trans Am still stranded on the side of the 395.

Youngblood was fast asleep. He was curled up in the backseat of the car, softly snoring and occasionally whispering something that sounded like "Frank," "I'll never let them hurt you," or "Pepperiwillkillyouifyoudon'tgetoffmerightnow."

Pepper was trying to sleep too, but he had made the grave mistake of sitting next to Poison. "Pepper!" Poison shouted, nudging him awake again.

"What is it?" Pepper said drowsily.

"I just wanted to tell you that they made a movie out of Watchmen, and My Chemical Romance got to cover a Bob Dylan song for it."

"That sounds made up," Pepper said.

"It's not," Poison said.

"I'm pretty sure it is, just like whatever bullshit you told me about some newspaper in England thinking that we were a suicide cult."

"I swear it's all true," Poison said. He grabbed a comic book from under the seat and placed his left hand on it, while raising his right hand. "I swear it on the holy Bible that is Doom Patrol Volume 2, Number 19."

"Whatever," Pepper said.

"And after that, we were abducted by aliens," Poison said. "It was crazy. They took us in their spaceship and everything."

"Okay, now I know you're messing with me."

"I'm not!"

"Can you please just be quiet?" Pepper said, leaning his head against the seat rest. "I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in weeks."

"Oh yeah, I remember that," Poison said. "Those night terrors were awful. Did you get the one where everyone you love dies yet? I think that was the scariest one. It made for some great song material though."

"Will you shut the fuck up?!" Pepper shouted as he shut his eyes and tried to go back to sleep.

Meanwhile, Figment and Revenge were wide awake. Figment was in the driver's seat, alternating between staring out the windshield, checking his phone, and wishing that he had coffee. Revenge, on the other hand, was hell-bent on figuring out exactly what was going on.

"So what is your plan anyways?" Revenge asked.

Figment sighed. This was the fourteenth time Revenge had asked the exact same question, and for the fourteenth time, Figment looked up from his phone and gave him the exact same answer. "You'll see," Figment said.

"What kind of an answer is that?" Revenge asked, but Figment didn't respond. Revenge turned to look out the window, watching a tumbleweed slowly roll by. "Some vodka would be really nice right about now."

"No, Revenge," Figment said. "That's not happening."

"Maybe you'd loosen up a little if you had something to drink," Revenge said.

"Still no," Figment said.

Figment looked out the windshield and searched for Ray, but he was nowhere to be found. He tried to hold onto a shred of hope, but Youngblood was right: Ray should have shown up hours ago. Something awful must have happened to him while he was time traveling. That was the only way to explain why he hadn't come yet. Figment took a deep breath and looked for Ray one more time, but he was starting to worry that they really were stuck here.

Figment wiped away his tears as he realized what this meant. Ray Toro, one of his closest friends, was gone forever. Sure, he had hidden the fact that he was an agent of the Watch from him, but that didn't cancel out all of the years that they'd been friends. Figment had written songs with him, he'd played shows with him, he'd left him behind at a countless number of truck stops, and now, Ray had lost his life trying to do him a favor. He wondered what he was going to do now, how he was going to go on without his best friend.

Of course, Ray couldn't really be gone. It wasn't possible. If he was dead, Figment wouldn't remember him still being around in his time. However, if Ray didn't show up soon, he would have to take the slow path back to 2019. He wondered if he would even remember anything when he got there. Would he just lose every memory he had, all the wonderful moments he'd shared with his bandmates over the years? He couldn't let that happen.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had to get his time machine back, no matter what. There was no other choice. If Ray couldn't find it for him, then he would have to do the job himself. He didn't know how he would do it, but he would find that time machine. He would keep going with his plan, save Frank, and go home to 2019, where his beautiful guitarist would surely be waiting for him.

"Are you okay?" Revenge asked Figment. "You look kind of upset."

"I'm not okay," Figment said.

Revenge laughed. "That seems like something I would say," he said. "I guess that makes sense though. You are me, even if you're, like, the weird, boring version of me from the future with some crazy plan to save Frank from dying." He paused and then asked, for the fifteenth time, "So what is your plan anyways?"

This time, Figment didn't bother to respond. Instead, he looked out the windshield, and for once, he saw something. There was a figure in the distance, and just as he leaned in to get a closer look, his phone buzzed. When he took it out of his pocket, he saw that he had a text from Ray. It read, "I'm here."

All of a sudden, Figment got out of the car. "Where are you going?" Revenge asked.

"My friend from the Watch is here," Figment said. "I'll be back soon."

"Can we meet your friend?" Revenge asked.

"You already have," Figment said.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Revenge asked.

Figment didn't respond to Revenge's question. Instead, he closed the door of the Trans Am, and he wandered through the darkness, heading straight for the curly-haired man in the distance. Eventually, when the Trans Am was nothing more than a speck on the horizon, he found Ray. "What took you so long?" Figment asked as he admired Ray's jacket.

"I tried to go back to the exact moment when I left, but I guess I didn't concentrate enough and ended up coming here twelve hours late," Ray said. "Even after eight years in the Watch, precision travel's still not my forte."

"That's okay," Figment said. "I'm just glad you made it."

"Me too," Ray said.

"So what happened to Mike Pedicone?" Figment asked out of sheer curiosity.

Ray shrugged. "I handed him over to Billie," he said. "I'm pretty sure he sent Mike back here, and I can't tell Frank or Mikey that our drummer stole a time machine, so I'm just going to have to pretend like nothing happened."

"But he's going to steal all our stuff!" Figment exclaimed.

"That's not my problem right now," Ray said. "I can't punish him for something that he hasn't done yet, and there's only so much damage Mike can do if he can't time travel." Ray paused and searched around in his pocket, "Speaking of time travel, I have your watch."

He handed the time machine to Figment, who promptly strapped it onto his wrist. "Not so fast," Ray said. "You still need to calibrate it."

"How do I do that?" Figment asked.

Ray took the time machine back and fiddled with it for a few moments, and then he gave it back to Figment. "Alright, now just close your eyes and focus," Ray said.

"Focus on what?" Figment asked as he shut his eyes.

"Yourself," Ray said. "Don't think about anyone or anything else. The time machine needs to know that it's you in there."

"Oh right," Figment said. "This took forever last time I did it."

"What did I say about focusing?" Ray said.

"Well, you're not helping, Ray!" Figment exclaimed.

Ray went quiet, and soon, Figment was lost in thought. He drifted across his mental landscape, the worlds that he'd built within his head. He heard gunshots and guitar riffs, birds singing and the voices of the people he loved. He saw bright lights, big crowds, vampires, demons, flames, teenagers, heroes, villains, and so much more, stretching out for miles around him. He felt fear, sadness, anger, apathy, excitement, confusion, shame, happiness, distraction, despair, hope, and love. He felt like himself.

"I think it's done," Ray said.

Figment opened his eyes and put the watch on. As he returned to reality, he asked, "Do you know of anywhere I can get coffee around here?"

"Why do you want coffee?" Ray asked. "Can your time machine turn into a mug or something?" Figment pushed a button on the side of his watch, and as it transformed into a coffee mug, Ray laughed. "I know you too well," he said.

"Yeah, you do," Figment said. He turned his time machine back into a watch and strapped it onto his wrist.

"I should probably go home. I'm sure Christa's worried sick by now," Ray said. "Have fun doing...what are you trying to do again?"

"I'm going to save Frank," Figment said. "He's going to die in six years."

"Listen, I get why you would want to save Frank, but that's not going to work," Ray said. "Time is inevitable."

"Don't worry," Figment said. "I know what I'm doing."

Ray shrugged and said, "For your sake, I hope you're right. I'll see you around, Gerard."

"See you, Ray," Figment said. He walked back to the Trans Am, and when he opened the door, Pepper and Youngblood were asleep, Poison had turned on the car radio and was busy practicing his karaoke skills, and Revenge was complaining about how his eyeshadow had gotten messed up again. "I've got the time machine," Figment told them.

"That's great, but do you have any more red eyeshadow?" Revenge said.

"WAKE UP!" Poison screamed at the top of his lungs.

Youngblood and Pepper bolted awake. "What's going on?" Youngblood asked.

"Figment has the time machine," Poison said.

"I want to go back to sleep," Pepper said as he closed his eyes again.

"You can sleep when you get home," Poison said, nudging him awake again. "Come on!"

"But I told you, I can't sleep at the Paramour," Pepper said. "I have night terrors."

"Let's just save Frank and go home, okay?"

"But sleep...sleep is important..."

Figment ignored his past selves and started typing into his watch. All of a sudden, the arguments stopped, and Death Valley went dead silent again. The five of them had vanished once again.