A/N: In which Phoebe has to perpetuate an uncomfortable lie to help them survive, and in which she steps on Rick's foot, like, two more times. Yes, the title is a reference to that one Beyoncé song.
XXX
Somehow, though Phoebe could never tell anyone how it happened later, they had gotten the huge red brutes to start bringing them any discarded sex robots they could find. As it turned out, 'Gwendolyn' had many, many sisters, any number of whom Rick would have to scavenge and scrounge through for parts. The four of them were in a roughly designed tent that had already devolved into a sexbot graveyard, with heads, torsos, and limbs lying scattered about. Summer sat moodily on a pile of grasses while they worked—the sheer volume meant that once Phoebe and Edana knew what to look for, they both helped him. A continuous line filed in and out, dumping more bots in the corner, most of them growling, roaring, and making incoherent sounds that didn't count as speech.
"Thanks, dum-dum," Rick said to the latest creature to walk through.
It roared, and when Phoebe looked up from sorting useful and non-useful parts, saw that it was advancing on Summer. Almost as one she and Rick aimed to kill without a word passing between them. "I said, thanks, dum-dum. Go get more," he snapped. The creature backed off almost immediately, though it had a resentful look about its ugly face as it backed out of the tent to do as Rick asked. "Summer, put your burqua on!" he hissed irritatedly.
Phoebe rolled her eyes. She wished he would quit calling it that. It wasn't a burqua even by technical definition. It was more a niquab, which she couldn't help but mention. "It's actually a niquab," she said stiffly, handing him another component he wanted. "A burqua would cover the eyes, too. Niquab is when the veil covers the face, but not the eyes."
"Whatever it is, it's a human-rights violation, and I spent a lot on this top," Summer said.
"It's only a violation if someone is forced to wear it—or not to wear it," Phoebe replied. "It's harmless by itself."
"Look, I'm trying to repair a p-portal gun with a bunch of sex-doll parts, and I have to do it one-handed to keep these belushis from carting you off, the least you could do is be ashamed of your gender, Summer."
Phoebe reached over and pinched him. "Ah, Phoebe, what the fuck, it was a joke!"
"Well it's not in very good taste, is it? It's not her fault they're all pigs."
Summer groaned. "Ugh, What's the deal with this place? Why is it such a sausage planet, and how did such backward idiots invent robots?"
"I don't think they did," Phoebe replied.
Rick smirked at her. "What, you don't hold with the theory that obviously, at some point, the Gazorpians became so evolved that they replaced females with birthing machines, and that the resultant lack of distraction and hen-pecking allowed them to focus entirely on war, so they bombed themselves back to the stone age, and now they just fight with each other over fake pussy with sticks and rocks all day long?"
"First of all, Rick, don't say 'females', we're not just broodmares or dogs, and second of all, I do still have knives, Rick, and right now I have the electrocution pistol in one hand. I can stab you or shoot you before you can get me, so I'd be careful before running my mouth about an entire gender."
From across the room, Summer said, "Boo-yah!", then sniffed, "You think it's efficient to get rid of women?"
Rick, clearly thinking Phoebe wouldn't really stab or shoot him, and also clearly wanting to rile up Summer, said, "You ever see a line for the men's room? Are you hea—do you li—do you hear me, Summer?"
"Right, because most men are the ones who have to change out old pads and tampons to avoid toxic shock, change their baby's diapers, and who actually wash their hands after they flush."
Summer laughed, and Rick gave Phoebe a stink eye. "You are absolutely no fun, do you know that?"
Phoebe shrugged nonchalantly. "Anything you bring I can return."
Rick's lips curled upward, then parted, but a sudden rumbling drew all of them outside. A ship that resembled a large floating head hovered above the hordes of male Gazorpians.
A robotic voice issued from the head. "Droppin' loads."
The clustered red aliens underneath took up the chant. "Droppin' loads! Droppin' loads!"
"The—" belch "—plot—" belch "—thickens," Rick said, genuinely interested.
As the head vomited more sex robots, the red aliens swarmed, their shouts filling the air.
"Uh, you might want to cover your eyes," Phoebe muttered.
"Yeah, like it was my dream to watch," Summer replied sarcastically.
It was over almost as soon as it started, and then the head was exclaiming, "Yeah, baby!" The sexbots had all transformed the way Morty's 'Gwendolyn' had, resembling pink spheres as they rose to go back into the ship.
"Summer, Phoebe, grab—grab hold," Rick said, shooting a grappling hook from yet another gun in his possession at one of the closest ascending spheres. Phoebe grabbed onto him just as his feet started to leave the ground. "Edana, hold onto me," she instructed the android. Soon they were soaring through the sky as a human and android chain, dangling from the line of the grappling hook with no safety net and nothing else to cling to. If the line snapped, they'd fall to their death.
"Yeah, baby!" the robotic voice boomed again.
"Aaaah!" Rick screamed.
"Oh fuck you and your tendency to have us hanging by a thread inches from death, Rick," Phoebe hissed at him, her grip tightening around him as tightly as she could manage. In her current state she couldn't appreciate the smooth lines of his chest and back under her arms.
At last the terrifying seconds of dangling in empty air ended and they were flying through the mouth of the floating head.
"Grandpa Rick, where are we going?" Summer said as soon as their feet touched the solid interior of the ship. They started walking.
"Well, obviously, Summer, it appears the lower tier of this society is being manipulated through sex and advanced technology by a hidden ruling class, sound familiar?" Rick said, leaning up to touch one of the collection chambers for the incubating sexbots.
Summer gasped, "Ticketmaster?"
The hair on the back of Phoebe's neck stood on end, and in a flash she had her hand in her pocket fingering the electrocution pistols that she had only minutes before hastily stashed in her pocket to free up her hands.
"Oh, there—there we go, Summer," Rick said, looking at a space to the side of her. She turned and saw two cloaked figures had closed in on them.
"Hey—hey, brother, hey, bro, nice racket you got going on here. Listen, I'm Rick Sanchez from Earth dimension C-137. I don't mean you any harm, coming in peace. It's all cool in the, uh— 'Good in the neighborhood' is what I was trying to come—is what I meant." As Rick finally stopped rambling, the two figures looked at each other, then threw off their cloaks to reveal two tall, feminine forms, both in knee-high boots and thigh-length skirts, though of different colors. They both had four arms each in the usual place and another set where their ears should be. They towered over everyone present.
Of course, Rick couldn't keep his mouth closed. "Oh, I get it—the old behind-every-great-man, Amazon twist—"
"Silence!" The one in the pink skirt and brown boots snapped at him. The one beside her in the mint-colored skirt and gray boots moved her hands and he rose into the air choking, coughing, and gasping. Apparently these aliens had advanced telekinetic abilities. Lovely.
"Your slave is ill-mannered," Pink spoke again.
"M-my—our slave?" Summer repeated hesitantly.
Phoebe stared at Rick with wide eyes, then at the large alien woman choking him. Even if she could shoot Mint, Pink most likely had the same abilities and would choke her next, aside from the fact that Rick could get injured falling from that height. All she could do was hope for the best, and try to get Mint to stop asphyxiating Rick as soon as possible before he suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation.
"We assume you are from a more primitive world, where men are still permitted to be servants," Pink continued. "If he is a rogue male, tell us now and we will kill him."
Summer rushed forward, shouting, "He's our slave, he's our slave, he's definitely our slave." Phoebe flinched at Summer's hurried words. She didn't know how she felt about being included in a slave owning narrative even if it was to hoodwink the angry aliens so they didn't kill Rick. Meanwhile, above them, Rick continued to asphyxiate.
"Could you release him?" Phoebe requested, trying to stay polite. "I don't want a brain-damaged slave. He'll be useless." The words felt like poison in her mouth, but she supposed she had to stick to the narrative Summer established. Any inconsistencies and they might all be choking midair, thrown into some dungeon and never heard from again, or thrown out of the head before it got to wherever it was going. Regardless, smothering, falling, or being tortured did not rank on her list of thrilling new pastimes.
Mint lowered Rick then allowed him to drop to the floor, where he laid on his back at all of their feet. "Ugh! Ohh! Oh-ho-ho! Oh, boy, what's the opposite of 'Wubba-lubba-dub-dubs'? Am I right, ladies and gentlemen?" Phoebe facepalmed. Rick liked being asphyxiated? Did he maybe have some sort of breath play kink going on? You learn something new every day. "Are you guys kidding me?" Rick gasped, pulling out his flask and downing a considerable amount.
"Ugh, I think he might have a little damage," Phoebe huffed, toeing him in his side. She knew the words would rile Rick up, but at the moment he couldn't do anything about it without ruining their cover story. Rick rolled over and sent her the opposite of a dazzling smile in return. "Edana, help me please." She bent down and, with Edana's help, hauled Rick to his feet.
"We will gladly replace him if he is badly damaged and no longer of use to you," Pink told them.
"He's fine," Phoebe replied, trying not to sound frantic as she did. "We don't have him for his capacity to think, after all." She could feel Rick's indignation rolling off of him in waves, but she could apologize later, after they found a way to get off of the planet.
"Ah, a sex slave, then? Or one for all of your manual labor?" Pink mused. "We no longer directly copulate with our males, but I can understand why a more primitive people without our advanced reproductive technology or sexual evolution might see the need."
Phoebe would have laughed if it weren't both so absurd and so offensive. On Earth, anyone who threw around the word 'primitive' to talk about another culture or ethnicity was almost always being racist and xenophobic. She supposed this counted as racism, though not the typical kind. Perhaps speciesism would be a more apt term, and xenophobia still fit the bill. Instead of voicing her thoughts about either its comedic value or its offensiveness, she tamped down her feelings and immersed herself into the lie she now had to act out with Summer. "A little of both," she said shifting closer to Summer as she laid her hand on her shoulder. "This is my sister Jennifer's daughter. We inherited our slave, which is why he's so old."
Rick was going to kill her later, but who the fuck cared if they weren't brutally murdered? She used the same reasoning to ignore her own discomfort, but it took effort.
Pink's sharp eyes looked over Rick's form dismissively. "I hope he's better than he looks," she sniffed.
The two aliens left them to themselves for the rest of the journey, during which she whispered "Just go with it," in Mandarin to Rick. In response, he frowned and looked up at the ceiling in displeasure.
The ship didn't travel far before it started to descend, and before they knew it they were disembarking—but not before Pink slipped a set of chains around Rick's feet and a collar around his neck. Mint led them down the gangplank and then through a short hallway, Pink leading Rick like a dog. Phoebe felt a fresh flood of guilt, but knowing they would kill Rick otherwise kept her from stepping in to stop the treatment. The door opened to a hive of activity. They passed through a set of guards on either side of the door, then followed Mint through the crowd. There were only women, women everywhere.
Eventually, Pink and Mint had them stop in front of a set of ornate double-doors that opened into a throne room. Pink passed the lead to Rick's chains off to Phoebe, then gestured for her, Summer, and Edana to enter the throne room. "Keep your slave at heel," Pink said, "He is unruly. We expect you to control him at all times."
Phoebe swallowed thickly, but made herself say evenly, "Yes, of course." She turned her head to Rick. "Come on, then." She sent a quick look just for him that said I am not enjoying this. Some of the lingering irritation faded away and he nodded, though he looked no happier about their situation. Phoebe could understand why. She had no desire to be forced to pretend to be someone's slave, nor their master. There was too much ancestral trauma for it to be at all enjoyable or anything less than awkward for her. Someone had owned some of her ancestors less than three or four generations ago—slavery only ended in 1865, and until the last decade, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of slaves were doing things like meeting the president.
The two earth women, their android companion, and their pretend slave entered the throne room, approaching an alien woman wearing a crown and a lavish beige silk dress. She stood, doing an odd bow and clasped hand greeting as she spoke. "I am Ma-Sha, ruler of Gazorpazorp, I am here if you need to talk."
Phoebe curtsied, and Summer spun in place with a look of awe on her features. "What is this place?" Summer breathed.
"Paradise," Ma-Sha replied. "Walk with me." Ma-Sha was quite obviously the queen, and they had little choice but to go with her. "We built it during the great passive-aggression," she explained as they walked, "when the female members of our species separated from the male members due to their increasingly destructive behavior."
Every time she ran into someone they greeted each other with the words 'I am here if you need to talk.'
"From here, we dispense mechanical surrogates to maintain our population," Ma-Sha continued, stopping so they could observe, "Fertilized surrogates are returned here to our nursery. The female children are placed into educational programs where they can discover a service to our paradise that fulfills them most. Male children...they get to play outside."
"That was just a baby," Summer gasped as a young male Gazorpian was deposited into a large slingshot and then flung through a disposal chute to the outside.
"And within a day, he'll be an adult male Gazorpian—one of the most aggressively violent creatures in the universe," the guard walking with them commented.
"Wait a minute, we're here because a male Gazorpian was born on our planet," Rick blurted. Phoebe gave Rick a panicked look out of the line of sight of the queen and her guard. Shut up she said with her eyes. She glanced at the two tall alien women to see them exchange an outraged glance and shake their heads, then look to her and Summer.
With a sinking feeling, Phoebe turned to Rick. She forced her voice to come out harshly. "Men do not speak in the presence of women," she pretended to reprimand him. The queen had one set of arms crossed while her guard had one set on her hips, and both seemed to be waiting for something. Oh no, do they really expect me to hit Rick? I can't...Phoebe thought frantically, but Summer had her covered.
"You speak when you're spoken to, ding-a-ling!" Summer smacked Rick across the face hard enough that he fell to the floor and had to be helped up by Edana. She turned to the two imposing Gazorpian women, clearly apologetic. "It's true, though—one of your babies was born on earth."
"We came here not a half-hour after its birth," Phoebe added. "And please pardon our slave. My mother was very lax with him, but she should have been firmer." The lies almost physically hurt at this point. It felt like her throat was closing up.
"Are you the ruler of this Earth?" Ma-Sha asked Summer, appeased for the time being.
"How did you know?" Summer fibbed.
"The quality of your top," Ma-Sha responded.
"Do you love it?"
"I love it."
Someone new came by, and another flurry of 'I'm here if you need to talk' followed.
"If the Gazorpian is male, your earth is in grave danger. We will give you passage back home so it can be terminated," Ma-Sha returned to the conversation, her face and tone grave. She brightened and clapped her hands, "But first, Mojitos."
"We don't have time for moj—" Rick started, but Phoebe cut him off by stomping hard on his foot.
"We would be honored," she said politely, "to accept, however, my sisters are woefully unprepared to deal with such a threat, and I fear for their imminent safety. We do not wish to offend, but could we perhaps return when we have less pressing issues at hand?"
"Ah, yes, of course. Well in that case, we'll just have your Mojitos made to go." Ma-Sha clapped her hands again, and they started walking.
Phoebe gave Rick a meaningful look and jerked her head in the direction they were taking. "STOP," she signed at him, since they had picked up a few signs from Summer, who was taking ASL as her language course. "FOLLOW PLAN." They could get out sooner and with less complications if he could just pretend for a little while longer. To her surprise Rick grudgingly complied. In short order they had Mojitos handed to them as they settled into a small fuchsia-colored space cruiser.
"Thank you for your kindness," Phoebe curtsied to Ma-Sha. "Hopefully we will meet again under less dire circumstances."
"Yes, it would be lovely to speak to your queen again," Ma-Sha replied, watching Summer as she slid into the cruiser, followed by Edana and a slightly-more-clumsy-than-normal Rick.
"Fair weather and safe travels, Queen Summer," Ma-Sha intoned.
"To you too," Summer returned from her seat.
Phoebe walked to the ship on shaky legs, nearly collapsing into her seat behind Summer. As soon as the hatch closed, she let out a shaky sigh of relief. "I swear to gods, Rick, I thought you were going to get us executed," she hissed. "Cào nǐ zǔ zōng shí bā dài! I almost had a heart attack, like, twice!"
"You seemed to be doing fine," Rick sneered.
"No thanks to you," Phoebe shot back as Edana guided the craft into the air. Apparently she had flown spacecrafts in her previous life. Her personal memories might be erased, but her skill sets were intact. Phoebe twisted to the side and reached for Rick. "Lean over, I'm going to get out the thing you used to free everyone when Snuffles decided to make humanity his bitch for a day."
Rick shuffled closer, still scowling. She reached into his lab coat and fished around for the right device, only able to go off of touch rather than sight. "I think I have it," she muttered, pulling out what she had at an awkward angle. "Yes, this is it." She freed Rick in a matter of seconds. "You should probably give Edana directions. I have no idea where she's flying, only that she won't crash us." She reached out and squeezed his right shoulder with her left hand. "I'm sorry about earlier. You know I didn't mean any of it. I would never own a slave, let alone enslave my best friend."
"Aww, you two are friends," Summer cooed from the front. "I totally called it."
"Shut it, Summer," Rick growled. "Edana…"
Phoebe sat back wearily. Before she knew it, her eyes closed of their own accord to the gentle murmur of Rick's voice as he guided them home. An indeterminate amount of time later, she startled awake to find them descending through Earth's atmosphere—and to find that while she slept, she'd ended up slumped against Rick's shoulder. For some reason he'd refrained from shoving her off and into the floor, for which she was belatedly grateful. Startled, she sat up abruptly, any residual drowsiness fading away. She glanced at Rick out of the corner of her eye, but he was steadfastly paying attention to Edana and her driving. Phoebe subtly shifted away from him and sat forward, putting it out of her mind for the time being. They were soon flying low, just over the streets, and she had something else on her mind anyway: Morty Jr, and whether or not he had already started a killing spree. They made it to the house but found no car in the driveway. "Does anyone see the kid?" she said urgently. "Summer, text your mom and see if he's still inside."
"No," Summer said to both a minute later, "He's not at home and neither are Morty or Dad. That can't be good, can it? What if he's already destroying stuff and terrorizing people?"
"Then we deal with it," Rick said evenly. "Edana, take us up over the town. If he's gone on a rampage, we'll see it."
Edana took them up again until they had a bird's eye view of the town. They all crowded at the windows, looking down. "There," Summer pointed. Edana took off in the direction she indicated. Sure enough, they saw a little damage already done, though nothing irreversible, and no bodies. Uprooted trees and street lamps littered the ground, and a building or two had taken some damage. They followed the line of destruction—which actually circled back toward the house—until they came upon Jerry and Beth's car looking a little worse for wear, with Morty and Jerry confronting a now almost full-grown young male Gazorpian. Edana landed so that the cruiser could face the car, and as soon as the top came up, Rick jumped out as if on fire. "Merde," Phoebe cursed softly under her breath, hopping out after him.
"Out of the—out of the way, Morty!" Rick shouted, weapon aimed at Morty Jr. By the looks of it, it was the same one that had left holes through the bodies of the male Gazorpians he'd killed earlier.
Morty apparently had other ideas. He leapt in front of Morty Jr, pitifully trying to shield him with his much smaller body. "No!"
"Morty, that's one of the most violently aggressive creatures in the universe!" Rick yelled.
Morty's skinny body shook with adrenaline and determination. He tackled Rick, taking both Rick and Phoebe by surprise. "He's my son! And if you hurt him, you'll have to kill me, Rick!"
After seeing the other male Gazorpians nearly assault Summer earlier and learning that they almost universally had the same temperament, Phoebe was a bit less forgiving of Morty Jr than she had been a few hours ago when he was just a squalling, many-armed infant in his teen father's arms. "It might be for the best," Phoebe called, coming to stand closer to Rick but not restraining him as she had before. "We went to Gazorpazorp. We know what adult male Gazorpians are capable of, Morty! Summer was almost jumped by a group of them! If he's determined to be the same, it'll be kinder to put him down before he kills or seriously harms anyone."
"What—no—what? Phoebe, how could you even suggest—no! No one is hurting my son!"
Morty Jr looked around uncertainly and wailed, "Dad, I'm so confused!"
"I'm here, son!" Morty disentangled himself from where he'd been wrestling Rick on the ground and went over to his huge alien son. They sat on the edge of the sidewalk to talk.
"Well…" Phoebe sighed, rubbing tiredly at her eyes. "What a fucked up whirlwind of a day. I'm beat, what about you two, Summer, Rick?"
"Yean, I'm kind of tired, too," Summer yawned.
Phoebe eyed Rick. "Rick, what about you?"
He shrugged. "Isn't it interesting, you two, that after all that stuff we just did, nothing really mattered and there was no point to it? Kind of makes you wonder, huh—about nothing?"
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Don't start on another one of your depressed rants about the futility, pointlessness, and monotony of existence, Rick. It's been too long a day for that shit."
"Are you sure it doesn't make you re-evaluate your policy about taking girls on adventures?" Summer pressed instead. "Girls besides Aunt Phoebe, I mean?"
Rick scoffed. "No, I'd say, given what we've been through, that I was right the whole time. You were utterly useless today. I mean, what—what did you contribute besides getting captured immediately and being a pain in my ass?"
Beth's voice interrupted what would have been an indignant response. "Phoebe? Dad? Summer? Where were you guys this whole time?"
"Oh, on Gazorpazorp," Summer answered promptly, "Where were you?"
"I was reading a newspaper…"
Phoebe grabbed Rick and tugged him toward the spaceship. "Let's go, Rick, before I drop right here in the middle of the street. The rest of our lot can find their own way home since they found their own way here." They were only a street or two over anyway. If they had to, everyone else could walk. Her arm and hand tightened into a vice-like grip. "Besides, we need to reevaluate your response to building a secondary portal gun for me. If I'd had one, none of the stuff on Gazorpazorp would have happened…"