Day Nine, Part Three

Rick returned a few minutes later and jabbed a syringe filled with purple fluid directly into the closest leg. Both of his legs straightened out instantly as if by magic.

Morty's moans cut off and turned into amazement. "Wow, Rick. That stuff just healed my broken legs instantly." He got up and hopped foot to foot. "I mean, I've never felt so good in my life. Thank you!"

"Neat," Phoebe commented. "I'd love to study that compound at length if there's any left."

"There's a little," Rick held it out for her to examine as he moved closer to the tree. "Morty, Don't worry about it. Just come help me get these seeds, all right, buddy?"

Phoebe rolled her eyes. Those damn seeds must be hella important.

Restored to his former mobility, Morty agreed instantly. "Sure thing, Rick," he chirped, scaling the tree and grabbing the first fruit within reach.

Rick, like he had many times before, launched into an explanation. "Not that either of you asked, but what just happened there is I went into a future dimension with such advanced medicine that they had broken-leg serum at every corner drugstore. The stuff was all over the place."

"That must have been fascinating," Phoebe said. "That means they don't have cancer and HIV too, then, if they bothered making a broken bone serum?"

"Oh, no, still HIV, but no cancer," Rick shrugged.

"Wow, that's pretty crazy, Rick," Morty said. He tossed down a seed and Rick caught it.

Rick continued with his story, and for some reason Phoebe had a sinking feeling. "There's just one problem, Morty and Phoebe, one little hang-up. The dimension I visited was so advanced, that—" belch "—they had also halted the aging process, and everyone there was young, and they had been forever. I was the only old person there, Morty and Phoebe." Belch. He broke the fruit open and began rubbing the insides against Morty's head. "It was like I was some sort of, you know, celebrity, walking around. I-I was fascinating to them. There were a lot of attractive women there, Morty and Phoebe, and they-they-they— they all wanted time with me. I had a lot of fun with a lot of young ladies, but I spent so much time there, my interdimensional portal device—Morty and Phoebe, it's got no charge left. The device."

"What?!" Morty was understandably panicked.

"What the fuck, Rick, are we stranded somewhere because you wanted to use your other head?" Phoebe snapped.

"That's a low blow, Pheebs," Rick scowled. He threw the fruit and seeds onto the ground and held his hands up, fists curled. "At any rate, the portal gun is unusable right now. It's as good as garbage, Morty and Phoebe. It's not gonna work anymore."

Morty wailed in distress. "Oh, geez, Rick, that's not good. W-what are we gonna do? I-I have to be back at school right now. How are we gonna get back home?"

"I have school too—grad school." Phoebe tapped her foot and looked at him expectantly. Sure, she followed him when he didn't ask her to, but he was the asshole who was supposed to have the way home.

"Don't get your pantries in a bunch, you two. There's ways to get back home. It's just—it's just gonna be a little bit of a hassle. We're gonna have to go through interdimensional customs, so Morty, you're gonna have to do me a real solid, and Phoebe, I don't want any objections unless you're willing to be the one who takes one for the team."

"Uh-oh," Morty cringed.

Rick licked his lips. "When we get to customs, I'm gonna need you to take these seeds into the bathroom, Morty, unless Phoebe is feeling like a martyr, and I'm gonna need you to put them way up inside your butthole, Morty."

Phoebe felt like she was choking on her own tongue. "What?" Phoebe croaked.

"In my butt?" Morty wailed.

"Put them way up inside there, as far as they can fit," he gestured with his hands and arms for emphasis.

"Jesus," Phoebe breathed, wincing in sympathy.

Morty was not enthused. "Oh, geez, Rick. I really don't want to have to do that." Who could blame him, really. Who wanted to shove two giant seeds up their ass unless they had a fetish or a kink or something?

"Well, somebody's got to do it, Morty. Th-these seeds aren't gonna get through customs unless they're in someone's rectum, Morty. Don't be selfish, Morty. D-Don't, don't look at Phoebe like that, Morty, this is all you here, buddy."

"Uuuh." Morty seemed reluctant.

Rick went on and on. He was a definite over-sharer of gory details. "And they'll fall right out of mine. I've done this too many times, Morty." Zeus' saggy balls, how often did he shove seeds into his ass? Phoebe cringed to herself and he kept talking. "I mean, you're young. Y-y-you've got your whole life ahead of you, and your anal cavity is still taut, yet malleable. You got to do it for grandpa, Morty. For your aunt. She's got grad school Morty, and I can't ask her to put them in her rectum. Y—" Belch. "—you've got to put these seeds inside your butt."

Oh my sweet Dionysus, did he really just say that?!

"In my butt?"

"Come on, Morty. Please, Morty. You have to do it, Morty."

"Oh, man."

"Do they have to be in a rectum?" Phoebe interrupted, completely ignoring their apparent illegality. She was just tired of hearing Rick beg Morty to allow him to shove stuff up his asshole. "Or just hidden from view?"

"Rectum," he shrugged.

Phoebe bit her lip and looked at Morty, who had pleading eyes turned on her. "Sorry kid," she shrugged. She clapped him on the shoulder. "When you do it, bend over slightly and slide them in at an angle. It'll make them go in easier. Oh, and uh…" she looked at Rick, "So they have lube in the middle of buttfuck nowhere or wherever we are right now, right?"

"Phoebe!" Morty pleaded weakly.

Phoebe shrugged again. "Sorry, I tried. Also, rather you than I. Plus, I already contributed to the team, I stabbed the monster that tried to eat you, and Rick fixed your legs," she shrugged. "Your turn." She petted him on the shoulder and looked at Rick. "So, Rick, about that lube…"

XXX

"I hate you so much," Phoebe screamed over the commotion. Thanks to Morty's quick thinking when they were busted at customs they had run up a wall and along upper levels—or rather, Rick and Morty had run while she clung to Rick like a limpet, squeezing him tighter and tighter. She bounced with every forward stride as Rick ran, hanging onto his back for dear life.

"That's nothing new," he shouted. "You're going to hate me a little more before this is over."

She wasn't sure where he was going with that until he jumped and they were dangling from something floating over the waiting area—a baggage shuttle, judging by the brief glimpse of it she had when they went flying through the air. "Fuck you so much, Rick," she hissed in his ear.

"Later," he shot back, and if they weren't hanging onto the barge by only his fingertips she might have kicked him. Then he let go, and she was sorely tempted to do it anyway.

Their fall was broken by some purple blob creature, the poor fuck. She rolled off of Rick's back and sprang up, running with Rick and Morty once more now that they were back on solid ground. It was a straight shot. They bolted down the hallway toward the portal room, skidding to a halt in front of the portal computer.

Rick bent over the machine, typing frantically. "I need to type in the coordinates to our home world, Phoebe and Morty. Cover me." He tossed a gun to Morty.

Morty dithered. "Oh, man. I mean, you know, I-I don't want to shoot nobody."

"They're just robots, Morty! It's okay to shoot them! They're robots!" Rick shouted distractedly.

Phoebe scoffed. She knew very well they weren't robots, but she didn't give a damn. Who knew what would happen to them if they were caught? Someone might try to eat them again, or they might be executed or something! Phoebe added her two cents in, shouting fiercely, "It's us or them, Morty! I'm personally choosing us."

Phoebe resigned herself to using more of her weapons. "You owe me so many things at this point, Rick, namely a new outfit, two knives, and more senbon," she told him, then she marched over and took position. Just as Morty took aim and shot at a guard, taking off his leg, she flicked out the knife that survived the spider attack and threw it, nailing a guard in the chest. He went down like a marionette with its strings cut, a gaping wound visible where her knife hit its mark. Blood welled up, blue instead of black.

"Aaaaah! My leg is shot off!" the one Morty injured cried out.

A companion of his dropped down and cradled him in his arms. "Glenn's bleeding to death! Someone call his wife and children!"

"Kyle's dead!" Someone else cried. "Someone's throwing knives!"

They'd both drawn blood it seemed, except Morty was freaking out over it and she wasn't.

"They're not robots, Rick!"

"No shit, Sherlock," Phoebe yelled. "I totally called it."

"It's a figure of speech, Morty. They're bureaucrats. I don't respect them. Just keep shooting, Morty. And Phoebe, you beautiful, vicious woman, you-you just keep doing whatever it is you're doing. You have no idea what prison is like here!"

She just knew it would be something awful if they were caught. Prison, lovely. She went from being a science nerd to a criminal over the course of a few hours.

Morty kept shooting, his aim indiscriminate as long as it meant the people outside were pinned down and couldn't advance. For her part, Phoebe only aimed at any guard who tried getting closer and got halfway or more. Morty did most of the work because most of them weren't stupid enough to try anything, but one did and ended up with two gleaming senbon of all things sticking out of his throat. He coughed up blood then dropped dead.

"Holy crap! This is insane! But also, Phoebe, you're scarily good at this."

"I told your grandpa I could handle myself," she shrugged, inadvertently frightening Morty.

Suddenly someone grabbed her by the arm and pulled her backwards. She whipped around with her last knife in her palm but it was only Rick gripping her forearm. He also had a hold of Morty. He was pretty much dragging them to the portal.

"Come on, Morty! We got to get the hell out of here!"

Well, at least he got me, Phoebethought brightly before being sucked through the portal.

XXX

Phoebe could tell by the puzzled expressions that they hadn't ceased wearing since she fell out of the portal alongside Rick and Morty that Beth and Jerry were just confused as to why she was there. They kept looking at her oddly as if she were the weirdest thing going on at the moment. They did it at the school, even when she faded into the background as Rick tried and failed to talk his way out of it, and they did it when they got home, and oh gods did they really want to stick Rick in a home? He was too independent for that! The man might be annoying as all hell at times, but he was also as intelligent and fiercely independent as he was annoying. Someone like that would hate being cooped up in a nursing home. It would be a cage. She let Rick try to find his own way out, first, and if he couldn't she'd intervene. In the end, she didn't have to. Somehow, like magic, everything settled, and before she knew it she was standing alone in the garage with him and Morty.

"Holy cow, Rick. I didn't know hanging out with you was making me smarter. If Phoebe keeps coming too I'll be as smart as you two in no time!"

"Full disclosure, Morty it's not. And that's not going to happen. Temporary superintelligence is just a side effect of the mega seeds dissolving in your rectal cavity."

Phoebe felt faint alarm at that. What would the seeds do to him? Would they poison him? Would he get seriously ill or die?

Morty was obviously wondering the same. "Aw, man."

In his usual fashion Rick explained with relish, "Yeah, and once those seeds wear off, you're gonna lose most of your motor skills, and you're also gonna lose a significant amount of brain functionality for 72 hours, Morty."

"He's going to what?!" Phoebe said dangerously.

Rick waved off her concerns a little too casually for having watched her kill two customs guards and fight off a giant spider-monster-alien thing a few hours ago. "Temporary side effects." He pulled his sleeve back and checked one of his three watches. "Starting right about now."

"Oh, man, I don't feel so good," Morty groaned. He swayed, and Phoebe rushed to catch Morty to make sure he didn't bang his on the cement floor.

"You're a real bastard, you know that right?" Phoebe said, slipping a bunched up discarded lab coat under Morty's head and turning him onto his side as he started seizing.

"So I've been told," Rick said. "If it's any consolation, I'm sorry, Phoebe, and even though you can't hear it, I'm sorry Morty. It's a bummer. In reality, Morty is as dumb as they come and I needed those seeds real bad, and I had to give them up just to get his parents off my back, so now we're gonna have to go get more." He started ranting, growing more and more energized, electrified, rabid.

At the end of his initial speech about Rick and Morty forever, he turned wild eyes on Phoebe. He seemed to have just remembered she was there. He bent down and grabbed her by her shoulders. "And you! We can't do any of it without you, Phoebe! You're coming on our adventures too! I didn't plan for this to be a three-man show, Phoebe, but you changed my mind. I used to think you were just Jerry with tits, Phoebe, but you're not, you're amazing with weapons, you think on your feet faster than lightning strikes, you saved our asses twice, you didn't hesitate with those guards—that's-that's talent, Phoebe, that's natural inclination, that's instinct that can't be taught." He shook her a little. "Morty's so limited, but you have a mind just like me, you get it. We'll be like the Three Musketeers, Phoebe! Not just Rick and Morty anymore, it's Phoebe and Morty, Rick and Phoebe, Rick and Morty and Phoebe."

He grinned down at her in a decidedly feral manner. "Together we'll be unstoppable."

Phoebe gazed at him with wide eyes wondering just what she had gotten herself into.