Chapter 3

The overpowered black swordsman faced the evil fairy king, and demanded, "Unhand the captive princess, or you will have to contend with me!"

The pretty boy fairy king came of his throne, and challenged, "You will have to fight and defeat me for that to happen."

Suddenly a green portal opened up with a mad scientist riding a massive brown wolf bolting through it like a bullet. Her paws smashed through the fairy king turning him into sparkly bits then disappeared through another portal.

"Huh? Who summoned that thing?"

Somewhere else, a brave scout patched up the wall surrounding his great city while declaring, "That should keep all the titans out!"

The portal opened out of nowhere, and the giant wolf dashed through, crushing buildings, and sending people in a panic before vanishing through another one.

"The titans can transport through walls, we're so screwed!"

In another city, a bald super hero in a yellow suit and white cape faced a giant slug monster, and made ready to fell it in one punch. The brown wolf then materialized out of nowhere, and split the thing right in half during its rampage before swallowing through another portal.

At last a portal back to Holo's world opened up and she bound sloppily through with both laughing hysterically as she let Rick down.

"Aw man, that was great!" Rick gleamed struggling to walk straight.

Holo shrunk down into her human form, "Oh dear I wonder how many rules we just broke!"

"Meh, who cares about rules." said Rick then laughed even harder when seeing Holo, "Hey you, your, eeeerp! you realize you're naked right?"

Looking down and seeing her bare form she blurted with hilarity, "Oh no I-hick-I forgot to take my clothes off beforehand and now I ripped them apart!"

"D-don't worry I-I-I got you." said the mad scientist using a tool which made a holographic grid of her old clothes, and recreated them out of thin air.

"What a fascinating trick! How did you do that?" said Holo getting dressed.

"No tricks, just science. I used your-your clothe's original design, reconfigured the-the surrounding air particles into cloth materials and assembled them all together."

Then after being unable to remain balanced, he fell on his back with Holo collapsing next to him.

"You sure are a crotchety old man, but I must say, you can be very fun!" Holo cheered.

"And you might be an overly posh wolf god with burp! separation anxiety, but-but you sure know how to party."

Holo giggled while wiping drool from her mouth, "'Separation anxiety,' whatever do you mean?"

Rick looked over to her, "Oh c'mon, isn't it obvious you're not ditching Lawrence whenever you get to yokes; or-or-orrrrggghhh- or whatever it's called? It's pretty clear you wanna stick by him."

"What on earth gave you that impression?"

"Wh-when you were talking to Morty about him opening up a shop, you-you yeeeerp! You said 'we can get a shop.' Meaning the both of you."

"I never said that. Prove it."

Rick hit a few commands on his wrist gadget playing back Holo's audio from earlier.

"If he can secure enough coin we can get a shop." it said.

"Ah there it is!" Rick teased.

Holo collected her arms, and turned slightly red.

"I mean c'mon, what's the deal between you two? Sounds like you want to be more than just friends, am I right?"

"I do not want to talk about it." she sulked.

"Hey I get it. I'm not one for long term relationships either. Believe me, life's worth a lot more living when you're not tied down, and you simply enjoy the occasional ink dip once in a while."

Holo reclined back facing the stars with a look of exhausted strain on her face.

"He is dearer to me than just a friend, however, I am afraid of what will become of us if we stay together."

"What's so scary about that? I mean he seems like a nice enough guy. Self reliant, down to earth; He's basically the epitome of just above average, which is a pretty difficult catch for most women by and large."

"Well there are a few drawbacks. One, is me remaining young and having to watch him wither away and die."

"Shit I'd consider something like that an honor."

Holo ignored him, "There is also the risk of our regular day to day interactions becoming mundane and mandatory. I want to remember him as we are now."

"There's a cure for when you days get boring, it's called drugs."

Holo sighed out her nose while shaking her head.

Rick finally rolled over towards her and said, "What you're clearly afraid of is commitment."

"What!?"

"I know right, isn't that usually the guy's problem?"

"You know what I mean!"

"Holo when I see someone like you, I see someone like me. Look at us; we're vastly superior to the average nimrod in over fourteen quintillion ways. But when it comes to something we want, that's somehting only they can offer, we either commit to it, which means holding ourselves back putting our glory days in our memory banks to collect dust, or we can live without, the trade off being living in regret of what could have been. The thing is, you can't have your cake and eat it."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, you can settle down with him, have little Holo and Lawrences running around confined for decades to one spot which would eat at your free spirit. And watch his inevitable decline to where he dies with his bones scrapping together which will be bitter sweet to say the least. OR, you can fulfill your agreement go your separate ways, do whatever the hell you've ever wanted to do with nothing but a hole in your heart, and thoughts constantly lingering on what could have been, and your cursing yourself for being too big of a coward to take the jump. Love is a simple hormone that pushes all life forms into procreating and it's probably the worst recurring enzymatic chemical our brains produce. Because it always puts us in a dilemma where we don't know what to do, except to put if off as long as you can, which only makes it worse."

Holo's expression was blank and completely neutral. She looked back up to the stars without saying a word.

Then after a long silence she said, "At times I wish I had a mind such as yours. You can reduce all dilemmas to their basic logic to where it ultimately has no effect on you. How I wish I could be so carefree."

Rick looked down and depressed, "To be honest, I wish I had your body."

Her eyes darted over to him angrily.

"Not like that!" he protested, "I mean, you can't grow old. You can live forever without arthritis, Alzheimer's, dementia, bladder control problems. I mean, what good is this mind if its hardware is so vulnerable to free radicals it'll eventually turn into dust?"

"You have no scientific remedy for aging?" Holo asked nearly stunned.

"Not really, the best I've been able to do is create new bodies for myself and transfer my consciousness into them."

"Sounds elaborate."

"But that's the thing, this body isn't the one I was born with, and before that I kept myself going with cybernetic implants and replacements. Nothing about this skin is original, and unlike you, I'll never be able to outrun the biological clock."

"So is that why you want my wheat?"

Rick's unibrow lifted.

"You are trying to find a way to bring yourself back to some state of former glory. And you theorize the wheat which contains my essence shall provide that for you?"

His dead pan look returned, "It's only a theory, but yeah, I'm at a point where I'm willing to explore alternative options. Like mystical bullshit to stay alive."

"But you do not know for certain if it will work?"

"That's the point of science, nothing works until you try it a million times."

Holo nodded, "Tis' ironic really, that even for a man like you, who knows everything, nothing is for certain."

He laid back towards the night's sky without saying a word more.

Holo sighed at the grim path their conversation took then suddenly had a drunken idea, "You know, with your mind and my body, could you imagine what kind of being we could create?"

"You're not coming onto me are you?"

"No, no, I mean, tis a shame we could not merge together, or something of that nature."

Rick suddenly sat up and looked at her with a look of devious contemplation.

"What?"

…

Lawrence and Morty were searching all over the city for Rick and Holo with no luck.

"This isn't good Lawrence." Morty whined, "Every time Grandpa gets like super drunk he always tries to blow something up. If we don't find him, this whole town could get launched into the stratosphere!"

"If he's such a known cause for disaster why do you even go along with him? Why not just go on adventures by yourself?"

"Well I mean he's still my grandpa. Besides he'd kill me if I took his portal gun out on my own."

That gave Morty had an idea, "Of course the portal gun!"

"What are you going on about?"

"One thing I know he'd probably do, is use his portal gun to go do something else. I can track when and where it was last used."

Morty then typed some commands on his watch and looked outward, "This way, it was last activated about five minutes ago a couple miles from here."

As they were walking out along the dirt roads they overheard a frightened peasant shouting, "Be wary, a great beast roams the land! By the gods what have we done to incur its wrath!?"

"Oh no, that sounds like Holo." Lawrence sighed dismally.

They came across a fresh set of giant wolf prints deviating into the prairies that just so happened to be the same directions of Morty's transponder.

"Well I'm no genius," said the boy, "but I think grandpa and your lady friend went on a little joy run together."

In a panic Lawrence started running after the tracks with Morty struggling to keep up.

"Hey why are you going so fast all of a sudden?"

Gritting Lawrence replied, "Something you should know about our world is that beings like Holo are considered to be pagan gods. If the church discovers them in these territories they're likely to get pursued and burned at the stake. If Holo just revealed her wolf form and other people saw it, we've got even bigger problems on our hands and we need to find her now!"

The tracks ended up disappearing so they had to rely on Morty's tracking device to guide them through the trees and forests.

"Man," Morty panted, "They sure got pretty far out."

"You have no idea how fast Holo can move."

At last they stopped where the signal was at its strongest, "Alright they should be around here." Morty said.

Lawrence suddenly gasped and ran over to something on the ground and just stared in anguish. Morty came up to join him and found what had him in such disarray, some of Rick's and Holo's clothes were lying next to each other.

"Oh, aw geez." Morty grimaced looking up at Lawrence who appeared heartbroken, "Hey look, I know this looks bad. But you never know…"

"Is your grandfather the celibate type?" Lawrence seethed.

Morty looked down, "No, not really. He's pretty far from that actually."

Lawrence rubbed his chin and said trying to feign off his hurt feelings, "It's alright, Holo can do whatever she wants…with whoever she wants."

"Look, we're not even sure if they did anything."

Suddenly Rick's voice broke through the trees, "Morty! Hey Morty!"

"Grandpa?"

Holo's voice then called out, "Lawrence, over here!"

They followed and found a single person in a white lab coat with their back facing them.

"Who's that?"

Suddenly the person turned around showing it had both Rick with Holo's features such as her hair color, ears and tail complete with some of her curves.

"You've got to be f*cking kidding me!" Morty blurted.

"What's going on?" Lawrence stammered, "It looks like both of them combined into one."

"That's because they are." Morty chided, "They merged together."

"That's right Morty!" Rick's voice broke out, "I'm Holo Rick!"