When Figment opened his eyes, he was alone in a dark, sparsely decorated room. "What the fuck did you do to me, Ray?" he shouted, but all he could hear was the echo of his own voice. "Where am I? When am I?"

All of a sudden, the door opened, and a man with green eyes and dyed black hair walked in. Figment recognized him immediately. "Billie Joe Armstrong?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

"I'll answer all your questions," Billie said. "You're at the Watch Headquarters for questioning, which I believe Special Agent Toro already told you. It's still January 24, 2006, although it's a few hours later than it was when Ray captured you. He's going to get a nice pay raise for that, by the way. I might even make him a Senior Special Agent. Anyways, I asked Ray to send you forward a few hours, since I'm kind of busy today..."

"Seriously?" Figment said. "You made me skip over the last few hours just because you were busy?"

"Y'know, you should see my caseload," Billie said. "I really needed some time to catch up. Oh, and I'm here because I'm the Director of the Watch."

"That's...that's insane," Figment said.

No, not Figment. There was no need for a nickname, not in this place. Here, he was all alone. Here, he was just Gerard.

"Well, I'm really only in charge of the North American division, and I don't bother with anything outside of the late 20th and early 21st centuries," Billie said. "I'm a little too busy with Green Day for that." He approached Gerard and then took off his handcuffs. "I don't know why Ray bothered with these. I'm pretty sure you're not dangerous."

"I'm not," Gerard insisted. He still couldn't quite believe that Ray and Billie were both in the Watch. For all he knew, all of his friends could secretly be spying on him. "Is anyone else I know in the Watch?" he asked Billie, as if he would actually tell him the truth.

"I don't think so," Billie said.

"Is Ellen Page in the Watch?" Gerard asked. He was pretty sure that she was, but he just had to make sure.

"The kid from X-Men?" Billie said. "No, she's not." There was a brief period of awkward silence, and then Billie said, "So you're from 2019, huh? You've changed an awful lot, but I suppose thirteen years is a long time. Ooh, can you tell me what I'm doing in 2019?"

"You're working on your thirteenth album, and you're going on a tour with Fall Out Boy and Weezer next year," Gerard said. "Also, people still make jokes about waking Green Day up when September ends and you still get unnecessarily mad about it, you're way too nice to Billie Eilish just because you happen to have the same name as her, and you still think that you're more punk rock than you actually are."

"Yeah, that all sounds like me," Billie said. "Y'know, I remember when Green Day and My Chemical Romance went on tour last year. That was so much fun, wasn't it?"

Gerard thought back on that tour. For him, that had all happened a long time ago, but he did remember having a good time. "Yeah, it was," he said.

"It's a shame that we had to meet again like this," Billie said. "So what exactly are you doing here? And don't give that story about collecting customer data for Netflix, because both Ray and I know it's bullshit."

Gerard told him the truth, or at least most of it. "Frank died in a bus crash in 2016, and I'm trying to save him," he said. "I needed to talk to the version of me from this era to make sure that it doesn't happen."

"That's not going to work," Billie said. "Time is inevitable. If you succeed, then you would have felt the effects of your time travel all along. You would remember Frank surviving the crash. Therefore, there is no point in allowing you to travel, because you will inevitably fail." Billie paused to think, and then he said, "Or will you? You could be lying to me. Maybe Frank will survive the crash, or maybe the crash won't happen at all, and if Frank is only alive because of your intervention, then I have no choice but to let you go..."

He started typing something into his watch, which was even fancier than Ray's. "I'm going to the future to find someone who can verify your story," he said. "I'll be back."

Gerard blinked, and Billie was back, but he'd brought someone with him. She was in her twenties, and she had brown skin and bright green hair. Gerard knew that he'd never seen her before, but somehow, her brown eyes and sharp jawline looked familiar.

"So is this the suspect?" the woman asked Billie in an accent that Gerard couldn't quite identify.

"Yeah, this is Gerard Way," Billie said. "Gerard, this is..."

"Sheena Way-Velasquez," she interrupted as she shook Gerard's hand. "Nice to meet you."

"She's the Director of the Watch in 2242," Billie said.

"Sheena Way-Velasquez," Gerard said. "Are we..."

"Related?" Sheena interrupted. "Billie asked me that when we first met, and I did some research, and it turns out that Mikey Way is my great-great-great-grandfather. Or something like that. Maybe there's another 'great' in there."

While Gerard tried to process that information, Billie asked, "Hey Sheena, could you do me a huge favor?"

"Depends," Sheena said. "What is it?"

"Could you go back to your time and tell me when Frank Iero died?"

"Sure." Sheena as she started typing something in her watch.

She disappeared, but in the blink of an eye, she was back. "I don't know," she said.

"What do you mean, 'you don't know?'" Gerard said angrily.

"I searched around in the info cloud, but there's no record of a person named Frank Iero ever existing," Sheena said.

"That's not possible," Gerard said. "I know Frank exists."

Sheena shrugged. "It's common for people born more than 200 years ago not to have records," she said. "A lot of documents from the 20th and 21st centuries were destroyed in the Second American Revolution."

"But you know that you're descended from Mikey..."

"And do you realize how hard it was for me to find that information?" Sheena said. "I never would have known that if I wasn't in the Watch. I'm sorry you two, but I'm not going to be able to help. It's just too far in the past."

Gerard glared at Billie. "Couldn't you have found someone who's a little closer to our time?" he said. "Or even better, couldn't you just take my word for it?"

"The first rule of the Watch is to never trust anyone," Billie said. "Well, actually, that's not true. The first rule of the Watch is you do not talk about the Watch, the second rule of the Watch is you do not talk about the Watch..."

"Isn't that Fight Club?" Gerard asked.

"Whatever. It's all the same thing."

"No, it's really not."

"Anyways, I've met almost every single one of my successors at some point, and Sheena's the only one I trust," Billie said. "I can't even trust myself. Y'know, a future version of me showed up while Green Day was working on Cigarettes and Valentines, and he said that the album would go straight to #1. The very next day, our master tapes were stolen! I couldn't even ask myself about this, Gerard. How would I know that he's not lying to me, like he lied about the album? We're just going to have to accept that Frank Iero is a Schrodinger."

"What does that mean?"

"We can't tell whether Frank's alive or dead in 2016," Billie said. "So there's no way for me to know whether or not you're telling the truth."

"So what's going to happen next?" Gerard asked.

"I'll tell you in a minute, but Sheena, before you go, could you tell me if there's anything important that happens in the next few years?"

"Uhh...let me think," Sheena said. "The next major event in the Watch is you kicking Mark Hoppus out for using time travel to take credit for band reunions. It was one of your greatest achievements as Director of the Watch, along with stopping the Time Thief, reforming the licensing program, and composing American Idiot. Although these days, most people only know the first few notes of that song."

"Mark Hoppus is in the Watch?" Gerard said. "Billie, you told me nobody else I knew was in it! You lied to me!"

Billie shrugged and asked Sheena, "Which bands got back together?", because unlike Gerard, he had his priorities straight.

"The Jonas Brothers, Motion City Soundtrack, My Chemical Romance..."

"Wait a second," Billie said. "Gerard, did MCR break up?"

"Yeah, in 2013," Gerard answered. In this case, there was no harm in telling the truth.

"And you got back together?"

"Yes, earlier this year," Gerard said.

"I'm confused," Billie said. "How did you get back together if Frank died? Did you get a new guitarist or something?"

Both Billie and Sheena looked at Gerard expectantly, but he didn't say anything. "You're lying to me, aren't you?" Billie finally said to him. "I don't know what you're up to, but I'm sure it's nothing good."

Gerard considered speaking up, but in the end, he kept quiet. There was nothing that he could say that would help his case, no lie that he could tell, nothing he could do to save himself.

"I wish I could help you, Gerard," Billie said. "I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but even if your story is true, the Watch can't just let people go back in time to save their loved ones from dying. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if we just let everyone do that?"

"Don't you have people that you would want to save?" Gerard said. "Like your father?"

"Don't you dare talk to me about my dad!" Billie shouted. He took a deep breath and then said, "Gerard, I'm going to have to confiscate your time machine and send you back to 2019. You won't be able to time travel, but be thankful that I'm not punishing you any further."

"But...you can't!" Gerard shouted. "I need to save Frank!"

Billie didn't listen as he grabbed Gerard's wrist. However, he saw that his wristwatch was gone. "What the fuck did you do with your time machine?" he asked. Gerard didn't answer. "Answer me, you nimrod! What did you do with it?!"

Sheena sighed and said, "I think my work here is done, so I'm heading back to my own time. See you around, Billie."

She opened the door to the room, and all of a sudden, Gerard broke free of Billie's grip and sprinted away. As Sheena typed something into her watch and vanished, he just kept running until he had left the Watch Headquarters behind. Thankfully, he was still in LA, so all he had to do was find the Paramour Mansion and leave this era before the Watch found him again.

They were never going to get him, like a bullet through a flock of doves.