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Rick heard the Doctor shout at Morty and looked up from his executioner's work among the temporarily offline Cybermen. He was treated to the last few seconds of the Time Lord's electrocution, and then his sobbing, hysterical grandson plowed into him.
"He saved my life and he d-didn't even need my brainwaves and they k-killed him!" Morty cried, burying his face in Rick's lab-coat.
"Morty, you're screwing up my aim! I can't- Never mind, it dropped him. No, don't look, just keep getting mucus all over me."
The moment the Cyberman released the Doctor's limp carcass, Rick blasted the robot. He really didn't get a flying shit if he shot the Doctor, except Morty, already deep into histrionics, would probably have a total meltdown. There was neither time nor oxygen for that.
Rick patted Morty's head. "Don't worry, we got revenge. Now let Grandpa kill the rest of these robots so we can b-blow up this stupid crap planet."
Summer, who had also seen about as much of the attack as Rick, asked, "Are you sure he's dead?"
"It-it broke his arm and zapped him," Morty said.
"Uh-huh, and you can survive both those things. I'm going to go check."
"Have fun," Rick said dismissively.
Summer glanced at the Doctor, laying supine next to the Cyberman that had fried him. Then at the immobilized Cybermen Rick was shooting with all the dispassion of the average death squad. Then at Morty, who was still crying and clinging to Rick like a baby monkey.
"I know CPR!" Summer announced to any and everyone in the vicinity, using that as her warding magic. In movies and hospital dramas, CPR could solve just about any medical emergency. And she'd learned her CPR from a cursed monkey's paw, so that had to count for something cool.
Armed with the belief her magic-endowed CPR would come through for her should the Doctor require it, Summer marched towards the Time Lord. He hadn't moved from the awkward position he'd been dropped in, so that wasn't super promising. Still, Summer held onto hope as she knelt down by the body and...realized she had no freaking idea what to do now. The mechanical acts of pressing down on a chest and breathing into a person had absolutely nothing to do with establishing proof of life.
"Uh... I think you can take a pulse in someone's neck?" Summer asked the universe. Then Summer had a combination "eureka" and "duh" moment. She was making this way harder than it needed to be. Even without a stethoscope, she'd be able to hear a heartbeat by putting her ear to the Doctor's chest.
Summer did just that, placing her head about where she would have placed her hands to perform her beloved CPR. She heard a moment of silence that filled her with dread, then a beat, more silence, another beat quickly followed by two beats, silence, and another beat.
"That's probably not good."
"No," the Doctor croaked.
Summer shrieked, flailing away from the Doctor as quickly as she would from any other zombie.
Back at the site of the ever-growing massacre, Rick jerked away from his latest victim and aimed in Summer's vicinity. "Summer, why is something always trying to grab or molest you?!"
"Everyone's jealous of how hot I am! But it's not that! He's alive!" Summer replied.
"H-hear that, Morty? Your new favorite Vindicator is alive, so you can stop throwing your big pity party now."
The Doctor was alive, but tenuously. One heart was an unmoving dead weight in his chest. The other had no discernible rhythm and was barely pumping enough blood to keep him conscious at all.
Not that he particularly wanted to be conscious just then. His whole body ached from the enormous dose of electricity he'd been given. Some of his muscles continued to spasm and twitch and his left foot still seemed convinced it was tap-dancing. The involuntary muscle contractions, besides being painful on their own, played havoc with his shattered arm. He could feel the bones shift every time the arm moved.
"So...we gotta fix this?" Summer said.
"Both of them," the Doctor confirmed.
"Both of what? Oh, your heart and your arm. Yeah... I don't think CPR can help that."
The Doctor managed a small grin. "No, I meant both of my hearts."
"Oh. Ooh. You have two hearts. I heard one, but is the other one hanging out nearby?"
The Doctor used his good arm—and the last of his energy reserves—to tap his chest over both his hearts. Summer nodded her understanding.
"Got it. Um, which heart should I work on first? Or should I see if Grandpa Rick knows CPR and we can do them-"
"Leave me out of it, Summer! I've got a b-bomb to build and it's not l-like Cybermen are easy to crack open! Stupid sonic strap-on..." Rick's comments dissolved into muttering.
"Oh my God, why is my grandpa the grossest person in the universe?" Summer moaned.
The Doctor silently apologized to his sonic screwdriver for all the abuses it was enduring. There was no living being or inanimate object in the universe that deserved to be that close to Rick for that long.
Shaking off the sheer nastiness of Rick, Summer focused on the Doctor and his hearts.
"Try to stabilize the functioning one first. I can live with one heart, same as you can live with one kidney," the Doctor said.
Summer placed her hands in the correct overlapping position on the Doctor's chest. "Really hope that monkey's paw didn't wear off."
"What?" the Doctor asked.
"Nothing!" She hastily compressed the Time Lord's chest and gave him something else to think about.
As the Doctor was breathing fine, there was no reason for Summer to administer any rescue breaths. She performed the prescribed thirty rapid chest compressions and tried to ignore the grimace the Doctor wore through the whole procedure. There was a reason CPR training was done on dummy torsos that couldn't complain and only performed on people who were probably going to die unless someone intervened.
After the full set of compressions, Summer removed her hands and asked, "Did it work?"
If the goal had been to bruise or possibly break every rib in his body, then yes, it certainly worked! The Doctor had just enough tact not to be that candid. Or rude, as most people liked to call it. Instead he ignored the brand-new ache in his chest and focused on his stuttering heart and its idiot friend.
It was now the stable heart and the sluggish, unmotivated sidekick. The Doctor listened to the steady, happy beat and gave a little friendly encouragement to the under-performing heart.
"Much better," the Time Lord said.
"Awesome, because CPR is way sweatier and less sexy in real life," Summer responded.
The Doctor nodded. With both hearts more-or-less working, his brain and body were getting enough oxygen to function properly. It was time to get out of the dirt and see what horror Rick had cooked up.
"Do you see my jacket?" the Doctor asked.
Summer looked around and found the Doctor's coat. It was dirty but a quick shake took care of that.
"Excellent. I'm going to sit up, hopefully not pass out, and then I'll need your help tying that into a sling."
The Doctor held his fractured right arm as tightly against his body as possible. Then, with Summer shoving against his back, the Doctor propped himself into a sitting position using his left arm for leverage.
"How bad's your arm?" Summer asked as she loosely knotted the jacket.
"I was wondering that myself." The Doctor carefully pushed up his shirtsleeve, exposing skin bruised the deep purple of a plum and swollen to the point he could not fully reveal the injury.
"At least it isn't an open fracture," the Time Lord said. He let the sleeve fall back into place.
"Wow, we're really looking for the positives," Summer muttered. She helped the Doctor slip his broken arm into the sling and then secure it. Once she was sure the sling was knotted and the Doctor's arm wasn't going to fall out, Summer grabbed the Doctor under his good arm and hauled him to his feet.
The world swam for a moment and the Doctor needed to lean against Summer until it settled. Once it did, the Time Lord sought out Rick and Morty. But mostly Rick. Because Morty wasn't an immoral, deranged Davros-level lunatic.
While the Doctor had been busy almost dying, Rick had been busy channeling a combination of his boy K. Michael and Dr. Frankenstein. The entire Cyber squadron had been killed, and most of them had been dismembered for useful parts, and said useful parts stored in a haphazard pile like old recyclables.
"W-welcome back," Rick said as he used the sonic, which was buzzing feebly, to pop the plating off the arm of one of the few remaining Cybermen. He dug around in the wiring and circuitry, pulling crap out of the way, until he liberated the components that could go boom.
"I did CPR," Summer announced, puffing her chest out like a great frigatebird.
"Nice. First you s-saved the actual, literal Devil and now a time-traveling douche-bag. Want me to find a dying ISIS c-commander so you can give him the gift of life?" Rick taunted.
"This dimension has an incarnate Devil?" the Doctor asked incredulously. "Not a Beast bound to an impossible planet orbiting a black hole or -"
Rick snorted. "Y-your devil sounds way too Twilight Zone. Believe me, this guy was 'incarnate' down to the shitty goatee."
The Doctor perked up. "Goatee?"
"I-it wasn't your buddy. What's his name? The Dominator? The Overlord? The Tiny-Dick-So-I-Need-a-Badass-Name-and-Shtick?"
The Doctor coughed. "He goes by Missy now."
Rick laughed. "Haven't met that one yet. Does Missy still have- still have the goat-"
"No."
"Eh, I'm sure even as a ch-chick, the Master could piss all over the Devil. Standing up."
Everyone besides Rick cringed. Rick shoved past their disgusted faces. He had just finished removing the power generators and weaponry from the last Cyberman in the squadron, and had only one more to tear apart: the advanced model that had cooked the Doctor.
"I-Instead of acting like I called you a glip glop-" The Doctor's mouth fell open at the sheer, wanton vulgarity he was hearing -"why don't you p-pick up that shit and come on? I still need to wire all this to the Microverse battery, if that's even possible, and then drink myself into o-oblivion."
"Hashtag life goals," Summer muttered.
Morty looked at the Cyberman electronics Rick had tossed hither and yon. Then he looked at his hands, which numbered two, and weren't particularly huge or muscular anymore.
"S-Summer? Can you help me carry this stuff?"
Summer groaned. "How much more am I going to have to do today? I already saved someone's life! That should really count for my good deed of the day."
Rick rolled his eyes. "Y-you did one thing, and it wasn't even a good thing! I'm the one b-busting my balls around here, Summer! Everybody who isn't me, pick up some body parts!"
The Doctor adjusted his sling until one of the pockets on his jacket became accessible. "It's been a...fair amount of time since I've bothered to clean out my pockets, but there should still be enough space for everything."
Summer eyed the jacket. "I could probably fit a lip gloss and maybe my phone in there."
"Time Lord tech. Bigger on the inside," the Doctor replied.
Morty was up for the challenge. He jammed a finger, then his hand, this his arm up to the shoulder into the Doctor's pocket. Once Summer's eyes were sufficiently large, he retracted his arm and flexed his fingers.
"Really smart, Morty! Stick your hand in-in some stranger's pocket because he tells you it's bigger on the inside! That's how people get traumatized, Morty! That's how they end up t-touching all kinds of alien dicks!" Rick shouted.
"It's a jacket pocket!' the Doctor protested.
"Yeah, maybe y-you Gallifreyans have dicks there! I don't know! I mean, I know one place you have them, but you've got extra body parts all over the place!"
"Oh look, Morty and I are picking up all the robot parts and we're putting them in the pocket and nobody is going to say anything else about dicks!"
"Penis," Rick said, and snickered.
"Close enough! Grandpa Rick, why don't you go work on that last robot?"
"Because with your luck, the m-minute I turn my back, an assload of those new quiet Cybermen are going to come, kill 1.21 Gigawatts there, and then make me get new grandkids. So stuff that pocket and hurry the b-balls up!"
Summer and Morty grumbled but picked up every last piece of circuitry and packed it into the Doctor's magic pocket. It was like watching clowns pile into a tiny car, or Joey Chestnut inhale hotdogs. As soon as the last circuit was safely homed, the two humans and their Time Lord burro joined Rick in heading towards the final Cyberman.
Rick knelt down besides the dead Cyberman. Various bones and joints creaked. He gave it a quick once-over, mentally comparing it to the dozens of cyborgs he'd taken apart. Externally, it was identical except for a little more bulk at the knees, ankles, and elbows.
"Damn, I need to get me an u-upgrade like that," Rick said, squeaking his old-man body.
After his bones calmed down, Rick plied the sonic screwdriver to the Cyberman. The device gave a single chirp and died in his hand.
"Piece of crap!" Rick threw the sonic over his shoulder and looked for a rock he could bang against the Cyberman.
The Doctor chased after the sonic and caught it in midair. The glare he gave Rick could have shattered diamond. Rick was too busy abandoning any attempt at subtlety to take notice. He couldn't finesse the exact part he wanted from the Cyberman, so he blasted the arm off at the elbow, and then shot off the supererogatory hand.
"We-We'll just jam this in there. It'll fit," Rick said, like the improvised bomb was a stuffed suitcase that would, one way or another, accommodate another pair of trousers.
"That's too wide to fit into my pocket," the Doctor noted.
"Fine, I'll carry it." Rick slung the arm over his shoulder. "Shit, it's heavier than it l-looks."
With all the usable parts finally squared away, everyone hoofed it towards the remains of Rick's ship and the empty bomb housing waiting beside it. The burden of the Cyberman arm, plus the low oxygen, slowed Rick considerably. Despite offers to help from Morty—and one super, totally sincere one from Summer—he told everyone to screw off.
Summer, Morty, and the Doctor arrived at the ship together. Rick, cursing, panting and now dragging the arm, arrived a minute later. The second he was clear, he dropped the arm and collapsed against his ship.
"M-Morty, get the Microverse battery."
The Doctor had seen every sort of battery, from Anulax to zinc-carbon, but he'd never encountered a "Microverse" battery before. As he watched Morty lift the glowing device from the ship, the Doctor grew more and more suspicious. Why had the Cybermats stripped everything else of value but been unable to glean anything useful from battery of all things? What was driving that unusual purple glow? Radiation? Why was the battery the one part of the ship that didn't look like it had been rescued from a rubbish heap? How was it powerful enough to-
"Hey." The severed Cyber arm whapped the Doctor on the back, snapping him out of his think-session. "G-get the shit out of your pocket, HG Wells."
"Not until you explain your battery."
"You've got one functioning arm and you don't kill p-people. I have two arms, a gun, and I don't give a shit if I have to beat you with the Microverse battery and then take that j-jacket."
Morty threw himself between the Doctor and Rick. "It's a-a whole planet in here! Rick made a planet to power his car, and one time we shrunk down and visited it and they have a holiday called Ricksgiving and I had to-to live among the tree people and-"
"Alright, shut up, Morty! He has no idea what the shit you're talking about! Because you couldn't even explain how-how sex works, never mind how something as c-complicated as my Microverse works!"
The Doctor stared at the purple box clutched in Morty's arms as though it has just suggested he have sexual relations with his mother. If Rick had made the claim that there was a populated planet inside the battery, he would have dismissed it. But Morty...quite frankly lacked the capacity to make up a lie that enormous and unfeasible.
"How in the hell did you create a planet capable of sustaining life in there?"
Rick wore one of the top-ten evil grins the Doctor had ever seen. "It's bigger on the inside."
TBC
Author's Notes (and one life saving tip!):
The current recommendations (which are almost never followed in pop culture) for CPR are cycles of 30 chest compressions and two rescue breaths.
Male great frigatebirds attract mates by inflating large, red skin pouches on their chests.
There are several episodes of The Twilight Zone that deal with the Devil, but none are in space. Likewise, many episodes are in space, but none deal with the Devil.
1.21 gigawatts is the amount of power needed for the time machine in Back to the Future.
Anulax batteries are from Guardians of the Galaxy.
HG Wells wrote an early novel about time travel.