In which Rick is framed for 27 murders. OR in which Phoebe meets another Phoebe face to face, and she's not laying bloodied on the garage floor with a dead Rick and Morty. Some more Rick/Phoebe feels, if you know where to look.
…
May
And just like that, a flurry of activity and exams were over. Thankfully for Phoebe they were done on scantrons, and therefore required little work as far as grading. Considering how carefully she kept ahead of the curve of her workload to account for any Rick-related mishaps, she found herself with little to do except to take her own exams, then once she got through them she nearly collapsed in relief. More than ever she felt gratitude to her slightly younger self for enrolling part time on a tri-semester basis. It made things much more manageable, even if they were faster-paced. When her classes for the spring semester ended, she decided against taking any summer session classes so she could have some breathing room. She went to bed early as soon as the end-of-semester craziness died down.
As she walked into breakfast the next morning after completing her usual activities, she found everyone else already at the table. She quickly took the seat beside Rick, sitting near him as usual. Morty sat across from him, with Summer at his side and his parents at either end of the table. She glanced at the spread laid out on the table. "Hey, Rick, can you push that trey a little closer and pass the orange juice?"
"What, not even a good morning?" Rick drawled.
Phoebe sighed. "Good morning, Rick, good morning everyone else. Now, Rick, can you please pass the damn food tray and the OJ?"
Rick narrowed his eyes at her but fulfilled her request. As she scooped the steaming breakfast meat and potatoes onto her plate, Beth entered the dining room with one huge platter of silver-dollar pancakes topped by a single birthday candle, and another plate with a much smaller pile of silver-dollar pancakes. "Happy anniversary, Dad!" Beth said with a genuine smile. "And happy anniversary, Phoebe!"
"Oh, an anniversary?" Phoebe perked up. "Of what?"
"Oh, well, I just thought we should celebrate his one-year anniversary of being back in our lives and your nine-month one of coming into them."
"That's so sweet, Beth, I appreciate it," Phoebe thanked her, blushing and slightly embarrassed but very pleased as she accepted her smaller ration of pancakes to eat alongside her other food.
"Oh, I get it," Rick commented as he accepted his own larger mountain of syrupy goodness, "Regular pancakes are already shaped like flying saucers." He cut off a bite, speared it, and shoved it into his mouth. "Mm," he hummed in satisfaction, "I should be making you breakfast for putting up with me."
"Should be making us a whole restaurant," Jerry objected petulantly.
"Ugh, Jerry, not today," Phoebe sighed, beginning to cut into her food.
"Nonsense," Beth rebuffed Jerry, "We couldn't be happier to have you around, just like I'm sure Jerry couldn't be happier to have his younger sister around. I just wish I got to see more of you."
"I wish I could see more of Phoebe," Jerry muttered, "but she's always with Rick and Morty."
"Not always," Phoebe shook her head.
"Well, more than I'd like," Jerry shot back, crossing his arms as he sat back in his chair.
"No one cares what you'd like," Rick muttered around another mouthful of pancake.
"Jerry, leave my father alone, this is his day." Beth placed her hand over Rick's arm, squeezing slightly. A genuine smile slipped onto his features, though it disappeared when a swirling mass of green energy bloomed into existence on the wall opposite him. Phoebe watched, surprised, as three alternate Ricks emerged from the portal, each wearing boots and militaristic lab coats. The Ricks on either side of center held large rifles, and they each had an energy pistol strapped to their right thigh. Phoebe could see some sort of badge on the chest of the Rick in the center, who had his hands behind his back.
The Rick in the center was the one who spoke, addressing Phoebe's Rick, the Rick she knew from her original reality. "Rick Sanchez of Earth dimension C-137." He pointed at Rick, and the Ricks on either side of him aimed their rifles at him. "You are under arrest for crimes against alternate Ricks by the authority of the transdimensional Council of Ricks."
Jerry slammed his fist down on the table and jumped up, crying out indignantly, "Hey! What the heck?"
"Neutralize the Jerry," center Rick commanded.
Panicked, Jerry yelled, "Wait, no!"
The Rick on the left shot his rifle at Jerry, freezing him.
"Dad!" Summer and Beth exclaimed at once, one calling out to Jerry and one to Rick.
"Rick!" Morty wailed.
"What the everloving fuck is going on here?" Phoebe turned to her Rick for an explanation.
"Everybody relax," he stood, arms extended and hands held up to show he wasn't a threat. "If I know these a-holes, and I am these a-holes," as usual, he threw in his usual level of emphatic gesturing, "they just wanna haul me to their stupid clubhouse and waste my time with a bunch of questions. Let's get it over with." He pulled the napkin from his neckline and stood, hands on his hips.
"Their club—you mean the Citadel?" Phoebe whispered at his side.
"Bring his Mo—" belch "—orty." The Rick in the center pointed at the boy, then looked directly at her and swung his pointing finger in her direction. "And his Phoebe."
"Oh, man," Morty moaned despondently as the Rick on the left approached.
"And what if I refuse?" Phoebe leapt to her feet as one of the Ricks grabbed Morty and cuffed him. "I am not a thing to be borrowed or summoned!"
Her Rick placed a calming hand on her shoulder, then pushed her body slightly behind his own. "Leave my—" belch "—Morty and Phoebe out of this!" The remaining Rick came around and grabbed her. She slapped him, but he cuffed her raised hand.
"This will be easier for everyone if you just go along with it," the Rick scowled.
"Fuck you," Phoebe hissed, trying to jerk away, but he twisted her arm and she screamed. If he pulled too hard one way, he would break it, if he wrenched it another, he would dislocate it. Tears sprang to her eyes at the pain of the hold. "Don't make me hurt you," he snarled. "It would be a shame to damage a good Phoebe." What the hell? What did that mean?
"Leave her alone!" Her Rick tried getting to her, but the Rick who had cuffed Morty hit him between his shoulder blades with the butt of his gun, making him stumble and fall to his knees. She watched as that Rick leaned down and quickly cuffed hers.
The Rick restraining her jerked her up and cuffed her while she gasped in pain.
The Rick in the center bared his teeth and snarled at her Rick, arms crossing, "You lost the right to have a say in these things when you refused to join—" belch "—the Council.
"Wait, wh-wh-wh-what about Jerry?" Beth pleaded.
Her Rick sighed, shooting daggers at the one holding her. "Will you at least unfreeze my daughter's idiot? And stop manhandling my Phoebe! Just because you don't have one…"
The Rick who arrived in the center unfroze Jerry, glancing at her. "Be a bit more gentle with his Phoebe, G-85. Actually—give her here. You know better than to mishandle a Phoebe, even if you don't have one."
The Rick holding her pushed her toward the commanding one, nearly making her trip. "I've got you," the commander said, stroking her hair once, though it offered her no comfort. It sent a wave of revulsion through her at the wrongness of it. The three Ricks all smelled, looked, and sounded like her own, but they were very obviously not hers. Her Rick had never hurt her, and he'd certainly never stroked her head as if she were Gollum's precious.
The alternate Ricks, each with a charge, pulled them through the portal. The revolving green energy reached out for Phoebe, and before she knew it they were on the other side, coming face-to-face with another armed Rick. They emerged into a large, open space. On either side lay pools of water, one fed by a waterfall and one with a jet spraying a steam of water up into the air. Glancing behind her, she saw a large statue of Rick sitting on a throne, and tilting her head back she saw multiple levels extending upward, with more alternate Ricks accompanied by alternate Mortys. A black path extended before them.
Next to her, her Morty spoke as the Ricks surrounding them goaded them forward. "Geez, Rick! Wh-what is this place?"
"I know," Phoebe answered for him, "The Citadel of Ricks. It's the secret headquarters for the Council of Ricks." One night Rick mentioned it in passing, though couldn't be pressed for more information.
"Council of Ricks?" Morty wondered.
Rick answered his next question. "As you know, Morty, I've got a lot of enemies in the universe that consider my genius a threat," he started. As he continued speaking, they passed by other Ricks and Mortys who happened to be on that level of the Citadel. "Galactic terrorists, a few sub-galactic dictators, most of the entire intergalactic government: wh-wherever you find people with heads up their asses someone wants a piece of your grandpa." The Ricks led them up an escalator, two standing in front and two behind. "And a lot of versions of me on different timelines had the same problem. So a few thousand versions of me had the," his voice raised in pitch on the next words, "INGENIOUS IDEA OF BANDING TOGETHER," he yelled, voice then returning to normal, "like a herd of cattle or a school of fish or those people who answer questions on yahoo answers."
Phoebe glanced around her during his long-winded rant at the various businesses, including diners, around them, coolly studying the other Ricks and Mortys she passed. Confusingly, wherever she looked was not filled with duplicates of all three of them. In fact, she spotted significantly fewer Phoebes dotted amongst the populace that they happened upon, each looking back at her as curiously as she looked at them. She wanted so badly to ask why there weren't more of her, but she held back at first, half-fearing the answer.
"Um, Rick—my Rick, C-137," she finally fortified herself enough to bring it up, biting on her lower lip before continuing. "Why—that is, where are—"
"Hey, what do you know? It's a cowboy version of me!" Morty noted excitedly, interrupting her.
"Geez, you're easy to impress," Rick drawled. "Yeah, most timelines have a Rick, and most Ricks have a Morty. This place is a real who's-who of who's you and me."
"But where am I?" Phoebe wriggled between Rick and Morty, turning to look at Rick. "You said most timelines have a Rick, and that most Ricks have a Morty, but where does that leave me?"
Rick sighed. "Well, Phoebe, you're smart enough to have noticed the uneven ratio of Phoebes to Ricks and Mortys. Not every Rick has a Phoebe in his timeline, just like not every Rick has a Summer, but there are a lot more Phoebes than Summers."
"Why? There are…a lot less than I imagined."
Just then a Rick dressed as a salesman interrupted them, shoving her question to the backburner. "Turn your boring old Morty into a hot fashion statement, with some Morty dazzlers!" He followed along with them with strings of medallions in either hand.
A second Salesman-Rick approached, holding up a Morty doll. "Hey, check this out!" He pressed a red button on its chest, prompting it to speak. 'Show me the Morty!' the doll exclaimed.
"Dumb," her Rick scoffed. A third Salesman-Rick approached, this time trying to sell her Rick 'Morty insurance', but her Rick rebuffed him with a snarl of "Back off!" He sighed, glancing at Phoebe and Morty. "Not my cup of tea, this place." His nose wrinkled in distaste as they were pulled into a long hallway. "I say the point of being a Rick is being a Rick."
"Save your anti-Rick speech for the Council of Ricks, terror-Rick!" snapped the commanding Rick from earlier.
"Hey, save your Rick rules for the—" belch "—sheep-Ricks, Rick-pig!" snarled her Rick.
"Fuck me, pal," the same Rick from before retorted.
"Fuck you? Nonononono, fuck me!" her Rick bit back.
The party of four alternate Ricks surrounding Phoebe and her own Rick and Morty came to the end of the hallway, standing in front of a set of double doors that opened inward to a large Council chamber. They were forced by their escort to walk toward the middle of the chamber, where they stood in front of a raised platform. A row of gold chairs lined it, filled with other Ricks, each with a different hairstyle from her own Rick. One of the chairs between two Ricks was empty, and Phoebe wondered where that Rick could be. Other Ricks and Mortys filled the spectator boxes in the room, with no Phoebes in sight.
A Rick with a thin, pointed goatee and three points of hair to either side and on top of his head commanded loudly, "Bring up the holograms!"
Images sprang into view on the holographic projector, each depicting alternate Ricks, each horribly murdered. Phoebe turned her head away from the sight, not wanting to see another dead Rick. Instead she tried to focus on her own Rick, alive and whole at her side.
"Twenty-seven Ricks brutally murdered in their own timelines," the same Council Member Rick intoned gravely, "An unprecedented Rick-icidal epidemic. What say you, Earth Rick C-137?"
Her Rick turned to face the accusing Rick, walking towards the platform. "You think I did this? Why am I the first Rick you pull in every time a Rick stubs his toe?"
"You—" belch "—have a history of non-cooperation with the Council."
"Yeah, so does The Scientist Formerly Known As Rick!" her Rick countered. "Wh-wh-wh-why isn't he here in handcuffs?"
"Because he's dead too!" announced Tri-hair Council Rick, pointing an accusing finger.
As the photos from that particular murder flashed onto the screen, a horrified 'no' echoed around the room, spoken by most of the other Ricks present, including her own.
"Who else would you have us question? You fit the profile. Of all the Ricks in the central finite curve, you're the malcontent. The rogue." This Rick gestured as much as her own. She guessed it was just a Rick thing.
Phoebe turned to glare up at the Cynthia-doll-haired motherfucker. "Go fuck yourself with an electric chainsaw, you Cynthia-doll-haired motherfucker," she hissed at him. "My Rick had nothing to do with any murders!"
The Rick who had been addressing Rick blinked, looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, then looked from Phoebe to Rick with an accusing stare. "You lucky bastard, you have a Phoebe that likes you, that lives and breathes, and you brought her into your treachery?" A Phoebe that likes him? A Phoebe that lives and breathes?
Her Rick stepped squarely in front of her, blocking the other Rick from her sight—and her from his. "Leave her out of this and listen to me, dicks for breath. I'm the Rick. And so were the rest of you before you formed this stupid alliance. You wanted to be safe from the government so you became a stupid government. That makes every Rick here less Rick than me. Not one of you has the right to say anything about my Phoebe or to stand there accusing me like the dumbest, smuggest prick in the universe."
The gathered crowd of non-Council Ricks set to murmuring protests and outraged remarks.
"Yeah, murmur it up, d-bags. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got pancakes back home with syrup on top of them. They're about to hit that critical point of syrup absorption that turns the cakes into a gross paste. And I hate to get all Andy Rooney about it, but I think we all like fluffy discs of cake with syrup on top! And I think we also like to be accused of crimes when there's evidence! So as they say in Canada, peace oot!"
"Evidence?" Tri-hair Rick breathed, "Good idea. Scan his portal gun!"
One of the armed Ricks, the one from the center, Phoebe thought, though she couldn't be sure, stuck his hand into her Rick's lab coat, withdrawing his portal gun. He walked towards a machine underneath and behind the hologram screen.
Her Rick protested weakly as they set it into a cradle, "Oh, come on. Don't look at another man's portal gun history. We-we all go to weird places."
As they watched, a map of timestamps and locations appeared on the screen, replacing the gory crime scene photos. Some entries flashed green, while others flashed red. Phoebe assumed the red flashes meant bad news, especially given the triumphant, cat-that-got-the-canary look on Tri-hair's face. "Yes, but it appears you alone have been going to the exact timelines and locations in which the murders occurred!" he crowed.
"What? That's Rick-diculous. I'm obviously being set up!"
"Of course you're being set up!" Phoebe snapped, shouldering past him to glare fully at Tri-hair Rick for the second time that day. "I'm Phoebe Johnson, also of C-137, and I can vouch for my Rick with absolute certainty."
"Oh, really?" Tri-hair Council Rick scoffed. "What about the evidence we have right in front of your eyes?"
"Well, there's not only one version of me, is there? I mean, I know there are more, I saw them in other parts of the Citadel!"
"...No," a different Rick replied. "You're right. There is more than one Phoebe."
"We all know there are other Phoebes. Get to your point," Tri-hair urged, waving one hand in a hurrying motion. "I want to get to sentencing."
"My point, Rick Douchebag-Mc-Fuckmuffin, is that if there's more than one Phoebe, then you ought to know that the only person who spends as much time with Rick as Morty does is me!" Phoebe exclaimed in exasperation. "That's why he couldn't possibly have done what you're accusing him of! I would have noticed him disappearing at random for odd chunks of time, much less being gone long enough to commit a murder! The locations must be a coincidence or a false positive—or just planted altogether." She exhaled huffily, then smirked and added nastily, "Also, your hair makes you look like one of the stars people put on the top of their Christmas trees." At her side, her Rick snickered at her last sentence.
"How do we know you aren't lying for your Rick?" A new voice cut into the conversation, working to instantly silence her Rick's snickers. The new voice made Phoebe freeze. It wasn't another Rick, or even a Morty. The voice was feminine, familiar. Phoebe craned her neck to see the speaker, someone who had the same face that Phoebe saw in the mirror every day. Another Phoebe had entered the chamber behind them, and she stood in the entrance. She was dressed like the high-ranking Ricks on the council, in the same type of robe in the same colors. Unlike Phoebe herself, this alternate version of her had long, thin dreadlocks styled into an intricate updo. She had a large chunk of Amethyst that rested between her collarbones, hanging from a cord circling her neck.
As Phoebe watched, her alternate self walked closer to where she stood with her Rick and Morty. She came to a stop directly in front of Phoebe, who, aside from the time she found herself staring down at her own corpse, had yet to be directly confronted by another version of herself, as she had only seen the others from a distance. Phoebe thawed a bit from the shock of seeing herself—alive this time—and answered her question with a question. "Why do you think I would lie?"
The other Phoebe smiled, and while it wasn't comforting, it was oddly knowing, as if she had knowledge Phoebe herself did not, though she looked no older. "Because it's what I would do," she said. "I would protect my Rick." She sighed. "You see, Phoebe C-137, of the Phoebes that know a Rick, things go one of two ways. They either have affection for their Rick, or they loathe him." She looked over the small group from C-137. "I would say you're in the majority of Phoebes, and that you're a Phoebe who has affection for her Rick, whatever kind of affection it may be. Very few—only a handful, really—hate their Rick, but it happens."
Phoebe's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean by that?"
In response, the foreign Phoebe only carefully studied her face. "You really believe he's innocent," she said after a moment, avoiding the question, "but just because you think you're telling the truth doesn't mean you are." She sighed. "I do so hate to see anything happen to a Rick, especially after...but that's neither here nor there."
She turned to go away, but Phoebe reached out and grasped her robe between her cuffed hands. "Wait! Why are there less of us here? And if you care about Rick, why won't you give this one a chance?"
The other Phoebe turned back to her, a sad but understanding look on her face. "I asked that, too, when I first got here. There are lots of reasons. Some of us are dead, some of us are still children and have never met a Rick, some of us were never born at all, and some, as I already told you, do not have the best relations with their Rick." An even sadder smile crossed her features. "But some of us more than like our Rick," she murmured, her thumb absentmindedly rubbing at one of the fingers on her left hand. It had a suspicious tan line near the base. "Mine died, and while I could claim another Rick, I just don't have the heart. None of them are my Rick. You understand." She looked between Phoebe and her Rick. "Again, it's just too bad that yours has to be punished, but I'm sure if you wanted you could have ten Ricks in an hour."
She stepped around Phoebe to gently caress Rick's face (Rick appeared so stunned by the action that he didn't have time to react before it was overd), then turned to face the rest of the Council, the only Phoebe with a seat amongst them. There were no Mortys on the Council at all. "Proceed to sentencing," she called up to them.
That was the only encouragement that Tri-hair Council Rick needed. He leapt to his feet. "Earth Rick C-137!" he roared, "The Council of Ricks sentences you to the machine of unspeakable doom, which swaps your conscious and unconscious minds, rendering your fantasies pointless while everything you know becomes impossible to grasp. Also every ten seconds it stabs your balls."
"I've heard enough," Phoebe's Rick interjected. He shoved his elbow into the stomach of the Rick behind him, then threw him over his head and into the Rick next to him. In the struggle he'd stolen that Rick's weapon, which he used to shoot off all of their bonds. The other Council Phoebe grabbed for her, so Phoebe slapped her across the face then shoved her onto the floor.
"Run, Morty!" Rick yelled at their Morty, pulling on Phoebe's wrist. "Phoebe, come on!" She didn't have to hear it twice. Rick snagged his portal gun from the cradle it sat in when they sprinted past it. They dashed towards the exit, escaping into the hallway.
"Oh my gods, Rick, what do we do?" Phoebe wondered. "This isn't like running from a monster or something, we're running from you."
"We try to get to the bottom of this and clear my name," Rick responded.
As they shot through an intersection with another hall, Ricks poured out from both directions, following hot on their heels.
"Fuck, there are like ten of them," Phoebe yelled.
"Aaaaah!" Morty screamed.
"Just keep running, Morty," Phoebe encouraged him.
Rick started activating portals left and right along the walls as they flashed past them. Looking back over her shoulder briefly, Phoebe witnessed several Ricks being encumbered by things that fell or reached through the portals from the other side: fire, a swarm of wasps, tentacles, falling objects. The cries of the Ricks being picked off echoed down the hall after the three C-137 fugitives. There were still too many Ricks pursuing them for her comfort, but he'd taken out over half of them. "That was savage," Phoebe remarked.
"Well, I can't let them catch us," Rick returned.
"It's not a criticism," Phoebe replied, "just an observation." They turned a corner and found themselves nearing a balcony. "Fuck fuck fuck, what are we going to—"
"Just trust me, Phoebe, and jump when I do," Rick interrupted.
They kept running straight for the railing. Phoebe had confidence that Rick wouldn't choose jumping to his death as a way out of their predicament, so she readied herself to jump. They soared off of the railing together, Morty screaming and Phoebe using all of her will to force her eyes to stay open as they fell. Rick activated a portal underneath them and they sailed through it, landing on, of all things, a giant ass protruding from the ground. It broke their fall, bouncing them like a trampoline. The three rolled off, mercifully landing on their feet, but only had a moment to look around before another portal flashed open and alternate Ricks—and an alternate Morty—poured out after them.
"Shit," Phoebe muttered, taking off with her two companions. Morty continued to make sounds of distress as they ran. Her Rick opened another portal, this one summoned in a rather unfortunate place—the space between two cheeks of another giant ass, as they were apparently in some sort of weird world filled with asses as landmarks. They wouldn't really be going inside, Phoebe comforted herself as they plunged into the portal. It opened into a living room where two pizza-slice people sat in chairs, staring at them with wide, alarmed eyes. Rick opened another portal directly across from them at the door, and they dashed through it too, repeating the process in a world full of grease-covered old women who they had to dodge around to get to a wall, where Rick shot the portal into existence. The next portal jump took them through a room with two phone people sitting on pizza-slice seats, then to an odd dimension that looked eerily similar to Dr. Seuss' work. Hump-backed, furry, beak-faced creatures roamed around, most of them repeating the same word, 'Doopidoo', over and over. None of them seemed very intelligent, standing around with their tongues lolling only saying the one word.
The other Ricks and Mortys hadn't caught up with them yet. Her Rick fired off six shots in quick succession, activating six new portals at once. He grabbed onto her and Morty and pulled them through the last one to open in an attempt to throw their pursuers off their trail. They stepped into another one of the weird sentient-object dimensions, this time confronted with chair people sitting on fake humans. "That'll keep 'em—" belch "—busy for a while," Rick assured them, opening the door to the house and slipping outside. Phoebe spared one backward glance for the stunned, terrified chair people and followed him out with Morty close behind her.