School days
A/N: Here's the monthly Rick and Morty fix that has a dash of Star Wars in it. In this one I'm gonna try and get back to the regular style of Rick and Morty, meaning create a problem and somewhat try to resolve it, with a little Rick flair thrown it, and more than enough Morty as well. Welp, enjoy.
Morty PoV
For the next month and a half, I have been in the underground room, or the temple, as Ren calls it, with him, Master Ramuh and Serenity. Every chance we get, we go down there and meditate. Sometimes Ren and Master Ramuh will spar, their lightsabers flashing and sparking as they trade mock blows with each other. And sometimes Master Ramuh and Serenity and sometimes Ren and Serenity. Should I keep calling Ren by his first name? I mean, he doesn't come off the same as Master Ramuh, the white tiger cat person giving off an air of respect and wizdom. And Ren is just… Ren.
Anyway, today marks the 42nd day of my recovery. My chest is still a bit pink, and the skin and tendons on my left shoulder still twinge every now and then, but other than that I'm fit as a fiddle! If… if that's the saying nowadays. But on this day Ren woke me up at about 4 in the morning and took me down to the temple, Master Ramuh and Serenity were already there.
The temple is a structure that Rick designed for Force users to find. I don't know how he built it to be like that, but it took Ren a good 10 minutes in the sub lab, he said he looked while I was unconscious, to find. And he could pretty much pick up the needle out of a hay stack in 0.5 seconds. Trust me, I know, that was one of the first lessons he taught me about the Force, and he demonstrated it.
To get to it you have to go down the hatch in the garage to the Sub lab, open a hidden panel in a corner using the Force and ride down the elevator that it calls up. Once in it, it's about a 3 story ride down to the main structure. It opens up into an underground courtyard like place, with a fountain in the middle and stone boxes with some type of hieroglyphs on them. From the elevator there are 3 doors on the 2 adjacent walls on the left and right, and one across behind the fountain. They lead to hallways that make up the first floor of the temple. On the first floor are meditation chambers, lecture halls and a library.
On the second floor, a bit smaller than the first, are sleeping quarters and combat rooms. Also a war room, is what Ren called it, a chamber where a type of counsel could meet and discuss matters in private.
The last floor, floor 3, houses a special room called the Cloister of Trials. I don't know what that is, all Ren said was, "You'll know when it's time." And left it at that.
Today though, we woke up early at round 4, and went to the temple. We exercised for a bit, and me and Serenity sat and watched Ren and Master Ramuh go at it again. We were told to keep the battle in focus and lose ourselves in the Force, but also use the battle to keep us in the now.
Soon it was 6, and they deactivated their lightsabers. "Ok," Ren said. "Review what we did today, and I want a 5 page summary on it by dinner time."
"What?" I said. "How can I write out 5 pages? I can barely make one paragraph!"
"Well, you'll just have to figure it out now, huh? Go up stairs and take a shower, we got school in an hour."
An hour later we get to school. Me, Ren and Serenity. Last week Ren and Master Ramuh did a thing on the galactic interweb(I kid you not, that's what the space internet is called) and falsely registered Ramuh and Serenity as space nomads and got them a temporary home in our neighborhood and registered Serenity in my school. We're in a lot of classes, except for 2. Math and english, since they have different terms on other planets, they stuck her in a remedial class for those two.
Anyway, school was pretty much normal throughout the day, at least until lunch time when I'm forced to interact with the twins, Talzan and Mileena. Well, it's more like they force us to interact with them. As me and Serenity were sitting down, Ren is older looking than us, so he placed himself in the junior class, which has a later lunch time than freshman. As we were sitting down with our crappy school lunch, starting on the 5 page essay that Ren assigned us, the two reptilian/amphibious twins came up and sat on either side of us, Talzan next to Serenity, and Mileena next to me.
Both of us froze up for a second, then we made eye contact with each other, and felt each other put up a Force shield. Ren has been teaching us a lot.
"So, dear brother," Mileena says, "How was your school day?"
"Hmm, not too bad sister," Talzan replies. "Had to mind fuck with a guy who was getting fresh with me, but the nightmares should stop by the end of the day. How about you?"
"Pretty boring actually brother, at least until I sat next to this cutie," she said attempting to touch me on the shoulder, but she is met with my Force shield. Over the past month I've been working on making my connection to the Force stronger, and although I could feel that it's not that stronger than when I started, I can do things like meld my shield around my body. "Hmm," Mileena says. "Interesting. Seems as though you control a higher command over the Force." She glances at her brother, who is staring at me.
"Or maybe not," he says after a moment. I can then feel something probing my shield, and then little wisps of… something enter my mind, making my brain all kinds of fuzzy. "Maybe he just has a better handle on something that he already has, and not gained an ounce more of power." He smiles and tries to swipe some food off of Serenities plate, but I snap a quick look at him and his own food goes flying off the table as if someone swiped it with their arm.
"Don't. Do. That," I say through my teeth, seething and shaking my head trying to clear my thoughts from whatever it is he did to me.
"Well," Talzan said, looking at his sister in surprise. "Seems as though our little rouge friend actually does have some talent after all."
"Yes," she said, eyeing me with a look of calculating respect and maybe even… fear? Different from her usual indifferent flirty attitude. "Quite. The Masters will be most pleased with what we've discovered."
"What are you talking about?" I say with a more controlled voice. Finally getting a better handle on my emotions I turn to look at her more clearly. "You know what, I don't care. Come on Serenity, let's go somewhere else."
Just as I was getting up Talzans hand slams down on my trey, causing a rattle and the people around us turning to see if it's something interesting. "We don't have to be friends, hell, you can probably go and tell us to go fuck our selves and we wouldn't bat an eye. But there are things that you should know, things that can make us allies. You can join us, unlock your true inner potential. You think that dusty old relic of a master can teach you something worthwhile?"
I don't say anything, just narrow my eyes at him, letting him know of my distaste of him through my facial expressions, but he doesn't stop or even react to it. "There are other paths you know," he continues. "Theres the Dark Side." The way he said it, the raw passion behind it made me shiver and a cold sensation ran up and down my spine.
I looked to Serenity whose eyes are wide with shock. Looking back to the Brother, I say, "Don't really care," and yank my trey, causing some of the contents to spill off, such a waist, I think as I toss it to the side. "Even if I did want to go that route, I'd still find a way to stop you."
"I wouldn't be too sure," the Sister said, but I cut her off.
"Oh yeah? How? We read the law. Jedi and the training of Jedi isn't illegal, they were branded as traitors, yes, but over 300 years ago. Pretty much all of it's leaders at that time were either hunted down, or were never seen again. Jedi wasn't outlawed, just the leaders at the time. And like time, things change, there are no more traitors. You can't touch us."
She stares at me for what feels like years. Finally she smiles and says sweetly, back to her old self, "For now." Then she and her brother get up and walk away.
I watch them for few moments then collapse in my seat. "Holy crap that was scary," I gasp out looking at Serenity. "We need to get this training done ASAP."
"I agree with that," she says smiling.
"What?" I ask as I feel something from her.
"Nothing," she says. Then blushes and looks anywhere but me, "It's just that, what you did, how you said things, the emotion behind it… that was kind of hot."
Now it was my turn to blush. "R-r-really?" I ask stupidly while scratching the back of my head.
"Um, y-yeah." She said.
We sit in silence for a few minutes, me processing that my new, very pretty mind you, friend might actually be into me, and her, well, I can feel the role of emotions going through her head as well. She feels accomplished, scared, and confused as well. The confusion has an underlining yin-yang sort of darkness. As if something is holding her back in this.
I opened my mouth to say something when I heard a loud shrill, "Excuse me?" From across the lunchroom. We both turn to see the twins harassing the popular kids table, namely Jessica. Turning back to look at each other, we both get up at the same time and quickly walk over there.
"Oh come on, don't be like that love," Talzan says while bringing out the best of his accent in a suave voice. "It'll just be a little bout, I promise you that our species can't even intermingle with genetics. Scientifically impossible."
"Oh gross brother," the sister feins disgust. "We didn't travel halfway across the galaxy for you to be fraternizing with them."
"Oh yeah," Eugene says getting up(I forgot the black guy's name, so I'm just gonna go with Eugene) "And what exactly did you come here for?"
Talzan barely glances at him before saying. "Oh look, another pathetic lifeform monkey has come to play."
"Monkey- Pathetic. Motherfu-" Eugene stuttered. "You little shit, what I'm gonna-" Before he could do anything more than raise a fist in the air Jessica come up behind him and grabs his arm.
"Come on Eugene, these lizard people aren't worth it," She said dragging him back. That little vein on his head was throbbing but her next words stopped him cold. "These guys are space aliens, they could abduct you if they wanted to."
Finally seeing sense he allows her to lead him back to table. Me and Serenity breath a sigh of relief. Of all the lessons that Ren and Master Ramuh has taught us, is that Jedi are, above all else, peacekeepers. And if this turned out ugly, we would have had to step in, at least to get the regular humans, you know, the one's who can't wield an invisible all knowing force of nature? Yeah, it would have turned out really, really bad for them.
Just as we were about to turn around, I see the sister roll her eyes, and Talzan smirk and say, "That we can beautiful," and then he slaps Jessica's butt. She makes an 'eep' sound and Talzan turned around laughing, but then stopped. He struggled a few times, and said, "Why can't I move?"
His eyeballs found me. My hand was raised, and I had a look of pure rage on my face, I could just feel my pores tightening up as red hot fury bursts to life inside me. When he tough Jessica, I felt, well, jealous, of course. Also rage at him that he has the gall to defile something so sweet and innocent. But it was more than that. I made a realization of myself as well. I've been looking at the Force objectively, as if it's a physical thing that I can grab onto and swing around like a club. It's not. The Force is everything. Energy, matter, living, even inanimate objects have a place in it. The way I've been going at it is me using my mind as though it's an extra arm to go through the thick soup of the Force to grab something and throw it around, now I see it for what it truly is; flowing. To fight the will of the Force is like fighting against the current of a raging river. When Ren said that I had to open myself up to the Force, he wasn't speaking metaphorically, he literally wants me to let the Force in, to let me be swept up by the current and let it take me down stream. Only then can I manipulate it, if I let it manipulate me, to work with me, not for me.
When he touched Jessica like that, not only did I see him messing with my crush, but also someone who is innocent. And since I am a Jedi, or becoming a Jedi, I have to protect the innocent from people like him. Jessica, my crush, Eugene, my rival, my bully, my opposite, everybody. The fact that Jessica falls into that category is inconsequential, especially when I finally realize what I'm doing.
"Y-you?" He says.
"Yeah," I say, winging it. "I can do this now." I move my arm and will him to go flying through the air and I then pin him to the wall behind him, 8 feet off the ground. "I've had enough of your bull crap," I say, walking closer, and applying pressure through the Force on him, making him crack the wall as he slowly starts to sink into it. "First you embarrass me, try to kill me, twice, and now you're being a creeper to the people I care about not even 10 seconds after trying to recruit me? That's not a good sales pitch."
The room is silent. I hear a few clicks of camera phones taking pictures. Well, secrets out now, but I don't really mind. Let them know what I can do. It'll make my job much more easier.
"He has a point brother," Mileena says. "But still, would you be so kind as to release him?"
I can feel in the back of me, since I can't see through the back of my skull, that Serenity stepped up to her and held her back by putting an arm in front of her. "You and I both know, friend, that these two need some time to work this out themselves."
Sensing Mileena's acceptance of this, I focus all my concentration on Talzan.
My arm starts shaking with the exertion of this, just because I gained this new awareness doesn't mean that I know how to use it properly. Talzan sees this, and smiles as he says, "Well, you can do that, but can you do this?" I 'see' him bring the Force into his body, and then expel it in one burst. I felt my mental conection to him snap and I flew backwards as he freed himself and fell on the floor. "Sorry to disappoint you Morty, but you are way out of your league here. Sister dear?" He said looking over to Mileena.
"Yes?" She says sounding bored.
"Would you be a dear and so kindly get my backpack for me?" He then smiles this creepy sadistic smile.
The sister sighs. "Ugh, fine. Hold on a minute deary," she says to Serenity and then whackers the back of her head knocking her to the floor. I am just getting to my feet as Talzan's backpack sails over my head. He catches it and takes out his half circle lightsaber and smiles.
As I reach into my back pocket and take out a cylinder, a small compact vibro sword that Ren dictated that I take everywhere I go, he says, "Sorry Morty, but it's time you learn how outclassed you really are."
With a flick of my wrist I release the catch holding the spring of the blade part, and push the button turning it on, making sure that it's set to 'kill'.
Talzan smiles, activates his lightsaber and just as he was about to come charging in at me, Ren blind sides him by punching him in the temple, knocking him out. His lightsaber goes flying and retracts as it sails through the air and lands a little ways off.
Ren stands straight, looks at me, Serenity sitting up on the floor, rubbing the spot where she got hit, and Mileena. I look back and forth between them. Her shrugging her shoulders in a, 'I donno' gesture, and Ren narrowing his eyes at her. I retract my blade and go over to Serenity and help her up. "Are you ok?" I ask quietly.
She nods, "Yeah, I'm fine. She just got the jump on my, that's all. Are you ok? That was a pretty ballsy thing to do."
"Um… can I get back to you with that?" I say as Ren comes over. I am so in for it.
"You are so in for it," He says when he got to us. Me and Serenity get up and he continues, "But more on that later. Right now, we got dimensions to go to."
"W-w-wait, what?" I say dumbfounded. "But I thought that Rick destroyed his portal gun? He always made a point to only have one incase he misplaces it and can be tracked easily. And he destroyed his at Bird Person's wedding."
"Well, who do you think helped perfect it?" He said, pointing to himself. "In the early days he could only make one trip and had to wait weeks to either find a new power core, or a suitable power source to recharge it." He takes off his backpack and brings out the portal gun. It looks pretty much the same. "I was gonna wait until after school to do this, but since you brought attention to yourselves," he motioned to the ruined wall and the crowd, some of which is still filming this. "It's probably better if we do this now incase we need a quick getaway in the next few hours." He fires the gun next to him and the oh-so-familiar way opens up. "There and back, won't even be gone five minutes. You," he points to Mileena, "take care of that," he points to the unconscious form of Talzan. "Before we get back. Serenity, backpack. Morty, keep that vibro blade handy."
After we get out things and go through the portal, that closes behind us, we find ourselves in a familiar dimension. It had a pinkish sky, with whitish-pink clouds, a soft green mossy floor, and we seem to be at the bottom of a canyon. Fungous like trees shoot up a few yards above our heads, and various forms of life seems to be flying or buzzing over head. I don't even want to know what's in the mossy floor we're standing on.
"Where are we?" Serenity asks.
"A place where we can get obolacto tanzanite crystals," Ren said.
"In other words, hell," I grumble. "I nearly got eaten by a few obolactite toads one time. Long story short, Rick left me, and I had to fend for myself for 2 hours before he finally remembered that he left me behind."
"Woah," Serenity said.
"It's whatever," I reply. "Come on, I know exactly where to find the crystals in this sector." With that I walk forward, trying to bury my feelings.
After a few minutes Ren falls in step with me and says, "You ok?"
"I don't really want to talk about it," I say softly, not really knowing if I'm ok or not.
"Hmm… hmm," he says and we fall silent again. Then, "I see that you passed your first trial."
"What?" I ask looking at him funny.
"Your trial. It's a personal one that determines where we can place you in training. The Trial of Awakening it was called. It was very big back in the day, you're not instructed to take it, and once you do you would know if you passed or failed. It's, sort of like a personal enlightenment. Where you figure out that the Force doesn't work for you, rather it works through you. If you try to force the Force, heh, yeah, I know, wordplay, but, whatever. If you try to force it to work for you, you'll find that it'll resist much more. But once you realize that the Force is so much more, you, in theory, you will understand what it means to hold the Force. And I can see that you made that connection, haven't you?"
I think back to that… awareness, when he touch Jessica. At first it was blind rage and emotions, but then I began to think, and let go of all of that, and in doing that I also let go of the notion that the Force is something that I can physically grab onto, and just let it flow… the Force flows.
"Yeah," I finally say. "I did. The Force flows, and if you try to block that flow, you find it fighting you more and more as it tries to take it's natural path." I glance a look at him and see him smiling. I smile back.
"Guys, I think we're hear," Serenity says behind us. We look in front of us to see naturally forming greenish crystals sticking out of the ground in front of us.
"Yup, this is it," I say. I go over and, with the new understanding of the Force, use it to shatter half of the biggest piece and it rains down in a pile in front of me. I didn't use the Force for that, it just kind of happened.
As Serenity scooped the shards into her backpack, she's the only one who brought one, the ground rumbles. I look behind me to see a 10 foot giant obolacto toad. One with a missing toe on it's front right paw.
"Sinor. Ribbit," I say through clenched teeth. "We meet again."
"Wait, wait, wait, what?" Ren says.
"Is he fucking with us, or is it actually named that?" Serenity says offhandedly to Ren.
"Knowing Morty… it's probably both."
"Ren, open up a portal, now," I say activating my retractable vibro blade. Ren opens up a portal and I turn around and rush through it, the other two hot on my heals. We find ourselves back into the cafeteria. A quick glance at the clock shows that we were only gone a minute, and just as I land, the other two come rushing after me, but I skid to a hult and get in a ready stance. "Ren, quickly, drop the connection!" But it's too late.
The toads massive head and arms are just small enough to make it through, the rest of it's body, not so much. As it's stuck there trying to wiggle through, it see's Ren fiddling with the portal gun, it has a fail safe to not close or open a portal on a living being, you have to override it before hand otherwise it'll stay on or not turn on. It see's Ren, makes a snorting noise and hawks a loogie at him, a football sized sickly yellow projectile, and it makes a whistling sound as it soars through the air. Ren see's this, tries to jump out of the way, but it explodes on the ground behind him and some of it gets on him.
Finally the toad manages to wriggle it's fat body through the portal and hops in. It croaks, and then makes an unnatural, for a toad that is, roaring sound and hops around, smashing tables and narrowly missing students.
Play Spear of Justice, Undertale ost for this… trust me :3
I find a discarded trey next to me, and chuck it at him. "Hey! Frog breath!" Sinor. Ribbit turns towards me, and if it's possible for a toad to narrow its eyes, this one did. "It's me you want! Or did you forget how I made a knife and soup out of your toe?"
It croaks-roars again and jumps to me. If this was me a year ago, hell, 5 weeks ago, I would have turned tail and ran. But this is the new me, I have trained, I have faced death countless times, I stopped counting after I faced Senior. Ribbit, and has been brought back from the brink of death. I charge at him, giving out a war call. It stops in front of me, tries to pluck me off the ground with it's tongue, but I leapt out of the way, finding little resistance with gravity. I feel a twinge of pain in my left shoulder, where the sister inquisitor cut me deepest, but I brush it off. I center myself in the Force, feeling it becoming much easier since 10 minutes ago, and lunch at him. I cut its left eye, making it roar in pain, then as I was falling back to the ground, I plunge my blade into its shoulder and use it as a hand hold as I get up on it's back.
Roaring in pain, it leaps straight up and smashes me between it's back and ceiling. My Force shield takes most of the damage, but it still hurts. I am jarred a little bit when it falls back to the floor, nearly falling off it's slimy back, but I don't. It probably thinks I'm dead, which is why it stopped moving to take a breather, big mistake. Gather what little stamina I have remaining, I scramble up, use the Force to propel me higher as I jump, and come back down full force, blade right in the middle of it's head.
Sinor. Ribbit makes a strangled cry of pain, but then it's legs collapse on themselves and it crashes to the floor, dead.
End song
I wrench my blade free, and hop to the floor. The room is silent, everybody staring. But I pay them no mind as I turn to face the dead form of my foe. "Sinor. Ribbit, you fought well, may you go in peace," I did the catholic cross(You know, specticals, testicals heart and watch)
The crowd started cheering.
Ren came up next to me and just looked at me with a look of absolute disbelief. "Dude," he said, wiping some of the slime off of him. "What the hell!?"
"Oh, when I said that I was only left there for 2 hours, it was actually 2 earth hours. In that time it was more like 2 weeks."
"... I hate reletive speak."
"Yeah… think you can help me clean up?" I said motioning to the dead toad.
"Yeah, hold on." Ren took the portal gun, made a big opening on the floor next to us, and used the Force to lift Senior. Ribbit in the air and drop him through.
The crowd finally stopped cheering and I felt someone tap me on my shoulder. I turned to see Jessica. "O-oh, u-um. H-hi J-Jessica. Y-y-you ok?"
"Yeah, I'm fine Morty," She said smiling. "That was cool what you did. And, also with the aliens," she motioned to the Sister helping her Brother off of the floor. "That was cool of you too, much better than what Eugene did… which was nothing."
"Oh, um, I-I'm sorry. I just saw what he did, and, I donno, I just-" She leaned forward and planted a kiss on my cheek. I stopped talking, I stopped breathing. Hell, if it wasn't for the massive blush blooming on my face I would have thought that my heart has stopped too.
She giggled at my reaction. "Hey, I want to repay you properly. Here's my number, why don't you give me a call sometime?"
She scribbled down her phone number on a scrap of paper she got from her backpack. When she stuffed it in my hand I finally shook off the shock enough to stupidly ask, "W-wait, wha-what about Eugene? Isn't he your boyfriend?"
She giggled again and said, "Let me worry about him. Just, give me a call sometime. I'll make it worth your while," she winked at me and walked away.
I stared after her for I dunno how long, then Ren came up from behind me, clapped me on the back and said, "Come on Romeo, let's go home. I gotta wash this stank and sludge off before it seeps into my pores forever."
Later that night we're in the temple and handing in our essays. Ren took one look at mine and said, "I asked for 5 pages. You barely wrote one."
I sighed. "Ren, what you're asking is literally impossible. In no way what you showed us warrants 5 pages. What you showed us was literally perfect. I saw no flaws to you, or Master Ramuh's forms both inside and out of the Force. So, there you go."
It was silent for a long time. Then Ren started laughing. "Ah, ha! Oh man, well, I guess you are ready."
"Ready? Ready for what?" I ask, I look to Serenity to answers, but she strangely avoids looking at me.
"For the next test, of course," he says, smiling.
"Huh?" I say looking at him now.
"The next test that determines whether or not you can become a Jedi, that is."
End chapter 4
A/N: SO… sorry for the month delay, I'll try to produce two for next month, but, my computer is busted, again, and on top of that my PS4 decided to clunck out on me, so, no more updated youtube videos until I got to a repair place this weekend. So, enjoy what I have. It's called The Adventurers Crew, there's a link to it on my Bio. So, enjoy and what not, don't forget to read, review and favorite. I might be changing this to M in a few chapters, still can't decide if I want to ruin Morty's image with a sex scene or not. Well, see ya. *BOOP*