"Rick! Rick! Wake up!" Morty shouted anxiously as he shook his grandpa awake.
Rick has fallen asleep in his UFO that was parked in their garage. Morty shoved the bumbling drunk to the passenger side and took the driver's seat. Before Rick could say a word, Morty had backed out of the garage, cleared the atmosphere, and the duo was flying through space.
"What? Morty, what's going on?" Rick asked as a rancid burp escaped his esophagus. "Why are we in space?"
"Because we can't just portal there from earth… there's some kind of anti-portal barrier" Morty said. He reached over and pulled out Rick's portal gun and played with some dials, pointed in front of the ship, and fired. A green portal erupted from nowhere, and the junk heap saucer flew in and vanished from this dimension.
Rick sat quietly and eyed Morty. He took a few swigs from his hip flask and quietly put it back inside his lab coat.
"I'm not a robot, alien, or have some weird parasite," Morty answered the unasked question. "You should know this since you've added the DNA and Dimensional scanner to the ship."
"Okay," Rick said.
"You're not going to ask what we're doing?" Morty asked. Rick took another swig from his flask and shrugged.
"This is your rodeo, I figured I'll find burp out when we get there. Wake me up when we land." Rick said and rolled back over.
Morty glared at his companion and sighed.
"Rick, I'm having some trouble with landing… and looks like we got some cops on our tail." Morty frantically shouted.
A massive explosion erupted from behind them as the new galactic police open fired at the craft.
"What the hell, Morty!" Rick said as he was jarred from his slumber. "Can't you do anything right? Goddamnit, move!"
Morty slid out of the driver's seat and let Rick drive. Rick expertly piloted the craft with one hand while finishing his flask with another. He looped around and destroyed the police vehicles and set a landing trajectory for the planet Morty had taken them too.
"So, where are we going?" Rick asked.
"Sector 232, block 12," Morty said. Rick gave Morty a sideways glance and raised an eyebrow. Without looking, he entered the coordinates.
"I don't recognize this place," Rick said dryly. "That really says something. It's either a shithole that doesn't deserve my attention or someone has been actively hiding it."
"I got the information from a few other Mortys," Morty admitted.
"You… have been talking to other Mortys? What, is there a council of Mortys now?"
"Was… there was a counsel of Mortys." Morty said solemnly. "I… dissolved it after I got the information I needed."
"So what did you guys do? Trade baseball cards or Pokemon or something?" Rick chuckled.
"Heh, yea… something like that" Morty chuckled. "You know… I know you don't like mushy stuff, and I know you really don't care about all this. I just wanted to thank you for everything you've done to… for me. Heh, 100 years Rick and Morty!"
"Hellz Ya!" Rick shouted and took a swig from another flask.
"Well… Today is our 100th anniversary of our adventures… and since you gave us those nanobots to keep us from aging… and well… we had to watch all our friends and family grow old and die… I thought we can celebrate a century of being together."
Morty pointed to a massive factory that spewed out black smoke into the atmosphere.
"Happy 100 years, Rick." Morty solemnly said.
Rick's eyes grew wide as saucers.
"Holy… shit." Rick said in awe.
The factory carried a familiar golden arches logo and on the front gate was an advertisement about the release of Mulan in theaters.
"The big bang in this universe didn't go off when ours did. Time here is off by about 100 years or so. I didn't know about it until one of the Mortys pointed out that a young looking Rick was being indoctrinated into the new council. I had one of the council Mortys talk to him, and we found out Mulan was going to be coming to theaters soon."
"So, this is where it's made!" Rick said drooling. "You're a great and wonderful grandson! No matter what anyone else says!"
Morty chuckled.
"What?" Rick asked.
"Oh I just remember how you said time travel was stupid and it couldn't work," Morty said.
"Don't be stupid, this isn't time travel, you just portaled to a younger universe, you didn't break any time travel dimensions," Rick said. The ship rocked from an explosion. Morty looked out of the dome and gasp in horror.
The sky was filled with countless other spaceships that looked like theirs, but some slightly off.
"How did they find us?" Morty shouted.
The other Ricks opened fire on each other, countless ships crashed and exploded across the landscape, entire city blocks were vaporized from weapons fire. Rick dodged the blasts and dove directly to the factory.
"Morty! Which floor is it?"
"Oh um… the third!"
"God… just when I was thinking you did something right…" Rick belated his grandson.
"They couldn't have found out," Morty growled.
"For god sakes, you relied on Mortys! You of all people should know how unreliable they are!" Rick shouted back.
"I killed the council as soon as I got the information, and I also killed the Rick of this dimension along with his loaner Morty, since he hasn't been born yet. There were no traces left to follow!" Morty screamed back and crossed his arms.
"Well, however, they found out, that Szechuan sauce is mine!" Rick said and blasted a hole into the side of the factory.
The ship skidded to a halt. Rick and Morty lept out of the ship. Morty led the way, with Rick blasting behind him, vaporizing McDonald's employees along the way.
"The storage room is there!" Morty pointed to a door. Before they could take a step, the room and everything erupted in an explosion. One of the stray blasts from the other Ricks must have hit the side of the building.
"NO! We were so close!" Rick screamed and fell to his knees.
"I thought of this," Morty said and pulled Rick to his feet. "Come on, they have the mixers in the center. We can open a portal and pull it to earth. I already set the portal gun to where I have some containers to hold it."
Morty tossed the portal gun back to Rick. Another explosion erupted next to them, and Morty led the way.
They arrived at the main factory floor. More McDonald's workers open fired on them, and Rick and Morty returned fire, leaving piles of ash in their wake. They approached a massive glass tank labeled Szechuan Sauce.
"It's here! I've finally found it, Morty! The Szechuan Sauce of my dreams! It's beautiful! And, I have you to burp thank for it! I know I never say this enough… but, I love you, Morty. I am so glad you're here with me and come on these crazy adventures with me! I… I promise to do better and to treat you with more respect... Because you earned it! I can never be happier than this moment!" Rick said with tear filled eyes.
"We can't open a portal from this angle, It needs to point down," Morty said and pointed to a ladder to the top. Rick nodded and scrambled up the ladder, Morty followed behind, providing cover fire.
Rick and Morty made it to the top of the ladder and looked down into the abyss of sugar and various spices.
"It's beautiful!" Rick said.
"Hurry up and fire the portal!" Morty shouted as he vaporized a group of Ricks who had just broken through the wall.
Rick nodded and leaned over, he aimed the portal gun and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Rick looked at the gun and noticed the power source was not attached. He turned to Morty as his grandson took out another group of incoming Ricks, all had a crazed look on their face.
"Morty! You idiot! Did you drop the power…" Rick was interrupted by sudden freefall. Morty glared at Rick as he fell, a sadistic smile crept on his face.
"Oh, I didn't forget." Morty chuckled and pulled out the green portal energy source. Rick slammed into the vat of Szechuan sauce. He frantically kicked his arms and legs, trying to keep afloat.
Morty disconnected one side of a wire and plugged it into another section, the green glow turned purple and flashing.
"What are you doing?" Rick sputtered as his mouth filled with sauce. "That's going to destroy this whole sector! Stop kidding around and get me out of here!"
"I know… I let the location slip to the new council of Ricks. Every single Rick is in this sector now. And, since we've lived a hundred years, only the Ricks who have some sort of Immortality are all that's left. I'm sure there are others, but I'll find them eventually. Time is on my side now, thanks to you. I will become the Rickslayer. I have no other purpose in life now."
"Oh my god, you've gone full Evil Morty, haven't you? And the monologuing… god just shoot me now." Rick said condescendingly and rolled his eyes.
"You know something interesting, Rick?" Morty said and dropped the purple power supply into the sauce. Rick tried to swim to it, but couldn't move. "The density of nugget sauce is like quicksand. There's no buoyancy, so swimming and treading water won't help. You'll slowly sink like a bug in amber."
"God Damnit Morty! Why?" Rick shouted frantically. "After all I did for you!"
"Exactly, for everything you've done to me," Morty said and walked out of sight.
"Wait! Please! Just save me! I'll help you find and kill the other Ricks! Take your hate of me, and just vent it out on the others! I'm the Rickest Rick!"
Morty stepped back into view.
"And I'm the Mortiest Morty," he said and dropped something next to the slowly sinking Rick.
It was a McDonald's six-piece nugget.
"I kept it in the fridge for a week or so." Morty chuckled. He pulled out a spare portal gun and disappeared into it.
"God, I know you're going to kill me but cold nuggets? Just kick me in the balls while you're at it" Rick said to himself. He grabbed the box and opened it. The nuggets were ice cold. He sighed dipped one into the sauce that encroached around his head and took a bite. A tear ran down his cheek as he chewed.
"I'm proud of you Morty," Rick said as he slowly sunk into the middle of the vat of Szechuan sauce.
Other Ricks surrounded the glass container, all fighting one another while trying to break the glass to get to their beloved sauce when a white light penetrated everything.
In another galaxy, astronomers look at the Milky way and still try to ponder why there is a perfectly spherical void of empty space 100,000 light-years wide near one of the arms.