Mostly just an experiment to see if I could get Rick's voice right at all, but I also just really like these crossovers :P
Edited in my usual haphazard design. I own nothing.
On with the show!
Bars like these were interchangeable in the multiverse: walls splattered with all manner of unidentifiable fluids, floors so sticky it practically tore the boots off one's feet, more lights and sounds than a Yyvarian coming-of-age party, the claustrophobic crush of dozens of different species of every shape, size, and colour. Ford found himself in one of these bars nearly every standard week, but the sheer energy never failed to make his skin crawl.
He tried to ignore the rising panic as he squeezed past a jovial, six-armed alien, and slid into the bar's corner stool. A thin line of sweat, caused half from the heat of bodies fogging up the air and half from his own anxiety, meandered down Ford's spine. A quick scan of the bar's interior revealed a relieving lack of wanted posters, but even so, he dared not remove his coat and scarf. Best to stay vigilant.
The bartender, a faceless creature with four tentacles, gave him a wordless look before gliding off to the kitchen. It returned with a plate of the unidentifiable grey nutritional mush served as a standard in bars like these. It had no smell, but Ford swore the very essence made his stomach churn. Nameless, tasteless, and by far the cheapest thing on the menu, it had been his staple meal for longer than he could keep track.
He glanced up to thank the bartender, but its attention fixed on a point beyond his right shoulder, to the door. Ford's curiosity got the better of him and he followed the creature's line of... well, whatever kind of sight it had.
Aliens, aliens, more aliens... wait. There, in the back, some kind of... glowing vortex? Ford shifted to peer through the writhing throng, adjusting his glasses. His chest seized.
There, just before the vortex swirled shut, stepped a human. Or as human as one can look while being ninety-eight percent leg. Perhaps just a humanoid, but far and away the most human thing Ford had encountered in his travels. The pure bizarreness of seeing another human in the vastness of the multiverse caused Ford to rise an inch or two off his stool in order to get a better look. Two arms, two legs, ten fingers, a surprisingly wild shock of silver human fare. What was he doing in an interdimensional bar?
The answer became clear as the man approached the bar in long strides, spine ramrod straight and neutral-almost-annoyed expression unwavering even in the midst of dozens of nightmare creatures.
Nightmare creatures who, upon seeing this man, quieted to watch him pass by with varying degrees of emotion. Ford managed to tear his eyes away from the man long enough to catalogue wariness. Anger. Fear in some, awe in others, though it deemed difficult to tell those two apart. Electric energy crackled through the air and set Ford's teeth on edge, though the other man barely seemed to notice.
He was halfway to the bar when the mantis-like creature leaped at him, screaming like a devil.
Ford leaped to his feet, one hand on his blaster, but the man was quicker. In one fluid movement, he reached into his lab coat, brandished a penlight backward over his shoulder, and proceeded to melt through the mantis's exoskeleton with a concentrated beam of orange laser that left both a sizzling, quarter-sized exit wound through the mantis's head and a scorching crater in the titanium walls beyond.
It was dead before it hit the ground, sliding to a stop at the man's heels.
He didn't spare it a glance, staring ahead with a bored, half-lidded gaze. "Anyone else?"
Everyone else aggressively avoided eye-contact. Ford's jaw loosed. How...?
The man continued walking, the raucous music started up again, and all proceeded to act like someone hadn't just been killed in front of them.
Ford couldn't help himself. He stared openly, agape, as the man lurched to a stool two away from him and sat, sweeping his white coat behind him to dangle off the back. He tapped the bar twice with two fingers and the bartender shifted, setting three shot glasses on the counter and filling them with what looked like radioactive waste. The man downed all three of them one after the other before wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
"Who are you planning on shooting, and I'd consider your answer caUGH-carefully before trying anything, because I know at least twelve people in here capable of killing you before you flick the safety. Me included."
"Wha~" Ford jerked his hand away from his blaster in a start, as if it scorched his hand. "No, no, I was... uh~" how did he explain the intrinsic desire to protect the only other human he'd seen in ages? Pack bonding? Instinct? He got the distinct impression that no excuse would warm this stranger to him, so Ford eased himself onto his stool, trying to force his shoulders to relax.
Not once did the man look at him, but Ford couldn't help sneaking glances between bites of his meal. He held himself in a way that suggested he owned the bar and all its patrons, while also not giving one thought to them beyond their regretted existence, much like one regards a mosquito. Beyond the radiating aura of distaste and indifference, though, Ford couldn't deny there was something... magnetic about him. The whole bar seemed different in his gravitational presence, everyone turned slightly towards him either to keep him in sight, or deferring their dominance to him.
Astonishing. Simply astonishing. And that vortex. And that laser! Ford craned his neck, trying to see where the penlight disappeared into his lab coat, but the man hunched in such a way that anything beyond the collar shrouded in shadow.
"Look, buddy, I know I'm great, but the whole 'hero worship' thing wears thin after a while. Let a man enjoy his drink."
Ford blinked. Oh, the man was addressing him! Had he really been that obvious? The thought of sitting two seats away from a potential genius (and possible ally?) and not getting a look at the laser sent an unpleasant itch into Ford's hands. "Uh, sorry, but... Well, that was quite the impressive light show."
Finally, the man deigned to side-eye him. The pause before his words betrayed his first impression. "Can't be hard to impress you. First time off your home dimension?"
Ford chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. His glove came away damp. "That obvious?"
"You stick out like a stone wheel at a hovercar convention, dumb-axe."
An odd turn of phrase. Perhaps normal in the man's home dimension? Ford made a note to study that later. "What was it, compressed spatial coherence? How did you power it? Or even get enough technology to run a laser that frequency in such a small capsule?"
The man might have paused, though it was so minute Ford couldn't be certain he hadn't imagined it, then tapped the bar again. The bartender refilled his previous order, and the man downed one glass before reaching into his lab coat. He tossed the penlight in a careless flick of a hand, and Ford scrambled to catch it. Immediately, he pulled out some of his remaining parchment and scribbled down notes, the weight, length, possible energy sources, ways to replicate such a precise tool. "Astounding... And this turns it on?"
"Yeah, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you're cool with sending this scab of society hurtling into the depths of empty space."
"Ah." Ford gently set the pen down on the bar. Scribbled some more notes. "Nyrite conductor?"
The man scoffed. "You really are a caveman. Couldn't be bothered to refine nyrite, I tossed one half of a wormhole at an exploding star and built a dampener on the other side."
Ford gaped. "That's... that's incredible!"
"I'm the smartest thing in the universe."
Somehow, Ford didn't doubt this otherwise-absurd statement. He picked up the pen, hefting it, trying to imagine a dying star on the other end. This could be so useful. So very useful...
He bent to check his credit amount, frowning at the number. "I don't suppose you could offer this to me on a discount?"
The laugh shot back at him wasn't entirely false, but not entirely real either. "Discounts are for the weak-willed." He held out his hand, palm up, and Ford passed over the laser. It vanished back into the lab coat, along with a little bit of Ford's hope. The man knocked back another glass.
"Are you sure I couldn't offer you anything else?"
"Like, like what, your edgy shoulder belt?"
"Then, could you show me how to make it?"
"You're very keen."
"You're very intelligent."
The man looked at him now, really looked. Then offered a hand. "Rick Sanchez, C-137."
Ford shook it, beaming. "Stanford Pines. Ford, please."
Rick raised one... well, one side of his unibrow.
"Dimension?"
Ford's own brow furrowed. "What?"
"What dimension are you from, fusing idiot?"
Leave it to this man to make one instantly feel like an admonished schoolchild. "Dimen~ uh, 46-apostrophe-backslash."
A greater noise of disgust could not have been uttered if someone had presented Rick with a pile of feces. So jarring was the reaction that Ford physically recoiled. "Ugh, that explains so much. Fudgin' apostrophe-backslashers, your dimensions are a joke. You're~ you're something they watch on Disney channel. The most dangerous thing you've encountered is the inevitable drop in ratings after brain-dead children get tired of having monster-of-the-week episodes shoved down their throats. You solve problems with the power of friendship. You have a, a profanity filter, for ChriUUGH, Christmas's sake!"
Ford took a second to recover from the verbal whiplash. So many ways to go with that.
"A... a profanity filter?"
Definitely not his finest moment.
Rick seemed to jump on the opportunity. "Curse, go on. Worst one you know."
Ford cursed. At the exact moment the word left his mouth, someone across the bar smashed a glass and the word drowned beneath the noise.
"See? No one will ever hear them."
Ford tried again. Same result. "It's not dangerous, is it?"
"Nah, but my speech is going to sound real fugling weird to you."
Ford slid onto the empty stool between them, tapping his fingers on the bar like he'd seen Rick do. The bartender once again replaced Rick's drinks. It would take a bit out of his credit stash, but Ford could learn endless things from this man who played casually with wormholes. As the bartender left, Rick swirled the liquid in one of the glasses. The viscosity and colour reminded Ford more of power steering fluid than a drink. Rick didn't seem to mind as he tipped the glass back. "Are you trying to proposition me? Because I'm more of a 'fuse first, ask questions never' kinda guy."
Ford couldn't decide which to be more mortified about, the question itself, or the hint of sincerity in Rick's words. "No, I'm not trying to proposition you! No! I'm asking for your help!"
Another glass emptied. Rick burped unabashedly. "Sounds like a proposition to me."
Ford took a deep breath, willing his ears to stop burning. "Listen, my dimension is in a lot of trouble. I made a..." his breath caught in his throat. He cleared it and started again. "I made a mistake, and I put everyone on my world in danger. My family's down there. My brother, and my parents. They're all going to die if I don't fix my mistake, and I can't live with that. I truly believe you can help me rectify my error and save my entire planet! You're the most intelligent being I've encountered in my travels, and if anyone could help me, it would be you! With your help, I could save everyone. I'd..." he paused, the memory of Stanley's horrified face washed out by the light of the portal as he'd disappeared on the other side. "I'd be able to save them. Please. Won't you help me?"
Though still through his rant, Rick now groaned theatrically, massaging the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "I cannot begin to describe how much your little sob story doesn't affect me, and that's saying something considering I could build something right now in my seat to download an entire thesaurus directly into my brain. But I can tell you're not going to stop pestering me until I help, and you've trapped yourself in the multiverse and aren't dead despite being from an apostrophe-backslash, so you must have some semblance of brains, so I won't disintegrate you where you sit so long as you keep the drinks coming."
Ford couldn't stop his grin. He ordered another round, and started his story at the beginning. From choosing his field of research, all the way until his fight with Stanley. Rick listened without looking, making an occasional comment, but mostly occupied with the growing mound of dirty glasses arcing around his section of the bar. He downed his last glass as Ford finished, burping again. "So you're considered a genius on your world despite getting literally all of your interspatial knowledge from a maniacal floating triangle. Gotta wonder how smart you actually are without his guidance."
Even through their limited contact, Ford was becoming more and more familiar with Rick's brash attitude, but that comment stung more than it probably should have. He nodded, staring at his gloves. "You're~"
"Of course, if I had the potential to be impressed by anything other than my own brilliance, it would be the fact that you managed to finish the darned thing with only the technology of an apostrophe-backslash and without the input of a dream sucker from a two-dimensional universe."
Ford glanced at him, surprise pulling up one corner of his mouth. "I... I didn't peg you as the kind of man who gives compliments."
"Maybe you caught me on a bad day." He burped again, and sitting this close Ford felt the reek wash over him. He tried desperately not to flinch as his skin crawled under his coat. "So?"
Ford tilted his head. "So?"
"What are you going to do about it?"
Ford had put a lot of thought into his next moves. After he got out of the nightmare realm, his only instinct was survival. And now, with a possible means of trade, he could implement the next stage of his plan. "I'm going to lead him as far away from my dimension as possible. There's no one there now that can reopen the portal anyway, it's of no more use to him. I'll lead him to the ends of the earth if I have to."
"And then what, you'll make out with him?"
A mental image came briefly into Ford's mind, banished almost immediately, but his lip curled nonetheless. Rick barked a laugh. "No, but he'll be running after me until the end of time."
Rick laughed again, this time more of a snort. "Okay, princess, it's your life if you want to spend it running." His expression hardened so abruptly Ford withdrew a little. "No one's going to save you, though. You can keep running, and he might follow you, or he might go back to your dimension while you're holed up in some rat's nest somewhere like a cockroach and burn everything you consider important to the ground. Fat lot of good you'd be to them then."
His description sent an unwelcome shiver down Ford's back despite the bar's heat. "Surely there must be some heroes in this multiverse that could track him down and stop him, right?"
"Heroes don't exist, Fordsie, just egos with legs."
Ford fell silent. So much for that plan. "So... what do I do?"
"Fight back."
"How?"
Rick threw his hands up, and Ford knew he'd nearly reached the end of this man's good graces. There was only so far alcohol could go, he supposed. "Do I have to do all the thinking here, I thought you were the, the smart one in your dimension! I don't get paid enough to come up with the answers to save your pathetic display of sentiment and, frankly, even if I did I probably wouldn't care. If you have problems, find your own solutions."
Something about the punctuation in that last word... something sparked in Ford's mind and he struggled to grasp the concept lingering tantalizingly close. What was...
He gasped involuntarily. A wide smile stretched across his face, bigger than any he'd smiled since getting thrown through the portal. "A quantum destabilizer!"
Rick propped himself on one elbow, turning his torso to face Ford in the most attentive display he'd seen all evening. Ford took that as an invitiation.
"Bill is a being made of pure energy, if I could somehow disrupt the essence of that energy, the core that keeps him together, I could weaken him enough to banish him from my dimension completely! "
He glanced at Rick, expecting a scathing remark or a bored yawn, like he'd figured this out eons ago. But the other man sat with an interested eyebrow raised. "You know how to make one?"
"Ah," Ford glanced away, "my colleague and I were working on a prototype before he... before I got trapped here. We had an issue with the power supply, nothing seemed big enough to power it safely, but with the entire multiverse at my fingertips I'm sure I could find something!"
"So your problem is solved."
Ford scaled his hands, but his grin betrayed his hope. "Obviously not solved, Bill is still out there somewhere, but I have a plan!"
"Great. Go away."
The grin faded a little. Ford peered at Rick, searching for some form of amusement, but his face remained set in that stony disdain.
Of course. He'd only helped because Ford practically begged. But he'd held his end of the bargain, and so now Ford would keep his own. The grin faded to nonexistence with a measured nod. He counted out the correct amount of credits to pay for his meal, as well as Rick's drinks, and slid off the stool, pulling his hood up over his head. He paused.
This was going to be the worst part.
"Th, uh, thank you, Doctor Sanchez."
"You're still here?"
Right. Ford took two strides towards the door.
"Uh, Pines."
Looked back. Rick still had his back to him, but a slip of paper fluttered from between the taller man's pointer and middle finger. Ford crossed over and took it, examining the sequence of numbers. A ghost of the aforementioned grin returned.
"Just for if you ever want to proposition me again."
Sweet Moses, Ford could hear the wink in Rick's voice! He flushed (from the heat, Stanford, from the heat) and slid the paper into his pocket before turning and walking for the door again.
Rick didn't call out a second time, but Ford desperately hoped that wouldn't be the last he'd ever see of the anomaly that was Rick Sanchez.
END