"Dad!" Mom said the words as I watched the flames swallow a handful of my model homes. They were a museum of ki control. Flames had already destroyed them before I arrived. Mom was in tears; she had just come from heart surgery on a national championship thoroughbred.
"High Beth, I'm back." He puked on the ground and stumbled out of the garage.
"Honey, this guy can't be your Father. It's been years." Dad said.
"Jerry, do you think I can't recognize my own father?" She looked back at Rick. "Is it really you?"
"I'm home."
Rick crept into our lives like a fungus. At first, he stayed in the garage, drinking and cursing, then he was standing over my shoulder. "Hey, Morty, what is that?" Rick pointed at the TV.
"That is a very pregnant werewolf," I said.
"You see, Morty, I was connecting my systems, the family systems, when I stumbled upon some interesting search history." I waved my hand, and Rick lifted in the air and swung around the couch to hover in front of me. "They are out there, Morty, maybe not the same ones, but if you help me, you can see them. You can touch all the furies you want."
I returned him to the ground. It wasn't like I planned to hurt him. "Oh, Jeez, Grandpa Rick. You really know how to tempt a guy."
"Why not the hot goth girl?"
"I'm not ready to commit. I thought a one-night stand with a MILF would be easier. Mavis is a baddy, she's wife material."
"I get where you're coming from. I was 14 once." Urp! He drank from his flask.
He sat in a chair away from me, writing notes until the movie ended. "So I noticed you didn't go to school today." Rick held his hands up. "If I had telekinesis, I wouldn't be interested in school either." What was with the respect? It felt weird like he was treating me like a dangerous animal instead of his grandson.
"I already finished high school. I was debating whether to go for an engineering degree. Mom's a specialized Equine cardiac surgeon, so she's bringing in 300,000 a year outside commissioned emergencies."
"Wow, go Beth. So you're not worried about paying for college. You think your mother is paying for it all."
I shrugged and rubbed at my hair. "That or I can always extort the government. They are bribing everyone else, why not me? Free college sounds cheap, doesn't it?"
"Dial it back, killer. We don't shit where we eat. Your mother made a college fund for you. Maybe worry about extorting people when it runs out."
I shrugged. "True power is defined by the ability to impose one's will and create a new world." Rick stared at me. "I think I would rather go on adventures and have fun than worry about college for a while. If I were serious, I could take all four years in a night. Mom would only have to pay for one semester. Besides, how am I going to sleep with all those hot college coeds if I'm not legal?"
I downed another drink. "I knew you had your priorities in order, Morty."
Hours later, I helped Grandpa Rick organize the garage into his new lab. He walked off, leaving me to work alone. "Morty the Mortster, the guy I wanted to see. Let's go on an adventure. I need some mega seeds. They are powerful. I need them for my research."
"Sure, are we going on your ship?"
"What, don't be an idiot, you can't find mega seeds here. They're in another dimension."
I lifted him off his feet with ki. He pulled something out of his coat, but I didn't let him pull the trigger. "Maybe you need to sleep off the alcohol."
He pressed a button on some device, and my grasp dispersed.
He searched his coat, pulled out a 40, and struggled to open the bottle. "If we're going on a dangerous mission, I'm not going to let you drink."
Rick smelled like a Brewery. "Let me, you think you can stop me from drinking? You're just a dumb kid. There are an infinite number of Mortys."
I sat in the chair nearby and clasped my hands together. Rick burned my model houses and hadn't apologized. He didn't seem to care at all. It would be easier to snap his neck and study his technology. I could tell Mom he ran off and didn't say where he was going. I could hide the evidence and toss his body into the sun.
"Oh, scary Morty thinks he has me where he wants me and is looking serious. If you think you have the balls to kill me, then bring it on. Do it, show me you have it in you."
I watched him smash the lip of the bottle. He covered himself in cheap liquor as he poured it down his throat.
"I'll drink what I want." He grinned like he won some great victory. "Now, about those mega seeds."
"You'll have to wait until you're sober unless you want to get them alone."
"Oh, Morty's too good to go on adventures with his grandpa." I was going to have to take care of this manipulative old man.
"I think you're going to puke on my shoes the first chance we get, you old drunk." I sighed when he raised his portal gun and fired it. My mind was already working on a technique to push through the fabric of reality. Unless I got a hold of the math, it wasn't feasible without brute forcing it, which would take more power than I had.
"Let's go!" Rick yelled.
I followed him through into a psychedelic world filled with flying ballsacs. I sensed for anything strong and was disappointed. We stumbled into the territory of something, but it was too weak; it might have been 10 times as strong as a human.
"Come on, let's go. I think I know where some are." He gasped and turned around. "Morty, look out."
I picked up a rock and flicked it at the monster. Its head splattered across the blue grass.
"Good job, Morty. It's important to keep a cool head. You didn't even think that it might be stronger than you. You threw a rock at it." Urp. "That's why school's lame."
He pulled out a flask and upended it, drinking like sweet ambrosia. We're getting close, I can feel it. The mega plants are down the cliff.
"Do you want me to float us down?"
He pulled out two pairs of shoes, one pair in my size. "Don't be stupid with these shoes, we can stick to any surface and walk down."
"Why can't we look around a little bit more? This place must have something interesting besides Mega Seeds. Did you name them?"
"No, it was another guy, a real dick. He's rich after discovering them, and no one knows their secret. I'll get it. I'll find it out, and then I won't have to pay for the Mega Seed Oil."
"Neat," I held out my hand and pulled the fruit from down the cliff to me. "So why didn't you portal us in the orchard. Were you worried about the Mega plant farmer? He's still in town, but there are some employees at the farmhouse."
"I can't get anything past you. Come on, show some awe, we're in another dimension, doesn't that excite you?"
"Rick, I'm 14; unless it's a hot girl or something interesting to fight, I don't care that much." He looked completely dejected. I sighed like I was making the biggest compromise of my life. "Portals are cool."
I double checked my senses, searching through the planet for any surprises, before passing my ki sense through the stars, searching for a bonfire of power. There were a few interesting signatures, but nothing close enough to matter. I wish Rick had brought his ship; we could have had some actual fun.
"You're right, they're cool. So my grandson is a little Romeo. Do you have anyone you're interested in?"
"Yeah, and no, I like this girl named Jessica, but I'm too scared to talk to her."
Urp! "Don't worry, I won't make a move on her."
I would talk to Dr. Wong about that in therapy.
He pulled the seeds out of the fruit, and I sniffed one before taking a bite. The seed broke under my teeth and tasted like a hunk of wood.
"You're not breaking one with your teeth." Crunch! "Or people in your universe have unusually strong teeth and occasional mutant powers. How does it taste? It usually isn't injected through the front."
I didn't answer. I only chewed the seed for a while, sensing any effects on my body, but my Saiyan biology made short work of it. There might have been a slight uptick in my k, but I wasn't sure.
"Morty, my portal gun is out of juice. I forgot to fill it. We'll have to return to Earth the old-fashioned way. Mega seeds are illegal if we're caught with them the galactic federation will put us away for a long time. We need to get them through customs."
"So you're going to pay desperate people to hide them up their butt and pass through the sensors."
"The sensors can't handle humans. We eat too much fast food." Rick made some helpful motions. "You need to get them all the way up in there."
Not for the last time, I thought about breaking his legs and arms before robbing him. Killing for no reason was against my morals, but this was testing my patience. He wanted to see how far he could push me. Honestly, it was like a child messing with their parents to find the line.
"Or you can make a scene, and I can float a bag with them while everyone is distracted."
We were in line to go through the alien TSA. The bag in question was stashed with a pile of luggage nearby. Once all eyes were on me, it would be easy.
"I don't know about this." Urp! "My plan has worked for years." One of the flying aliens stopped me. "What are you doing?"
"Surprise inspection. We're going to run him through a new scanner designed to find things way up in the butt."
Rick looked from me to the alien. "There is no way your scanner can see all the way up there. Human colons are lined with lead and other heavy metals from Earth's fast food."
"Yeah, it was an antennae scratcher, but one of our scientists found a way to scan deep in there." The bug held up a big metal rod about as large around as the seed. "We take this here probe and stick it way up in there and feel for it to hit anything."
"This sounds like something that might catch a lot of attention; it might even be distracting for everyone," Rick said.
"Oh, yeah, this is my favorite part of the job."
"And if I refuse," I asked.
"Well then, we'll hold you in contempt and probe you anyway. So you'll get probed and won't be allowed through customs for six months. How does that sound?"
"It really looks like our hands are tied." Rick snapped his fingers and glanced at the bag. "Hey, everyone, TSA is about to probe my grandson."
I moved the bag to the pile with the ones that had already gone through the machine.
"Don't worry, Morty, I'll wait for you on the other side," Rick said.
The agent took a step, and his leg snapped. He screamed, and other agents ran to help him. "Wow, it looks like getting probed isn't in the cards."
"Come on, let's go while they're distracted." I followed behind Rick as we grabbed the bag and ran through. Agents saw us and gave chase, only for their legs to snap like twigs.
"A little on the nose."
"Maybe they'll think it's an act of god."
"God doesn't exist, there is only us."
Rick worked fast, turning a stargate into a portal. It flashed to life, and we jumped through, ending back in the garage. He set the bag down and smirked. "Thanks, these will help with my research."
I doubted it. This little adventure felt like test but I would play along.
"Can I help with your research?"
"I'm not much of a teacher. If you want to stay and watch, I won't stop you."
Author's Note: I'm trying to capture original Rick in his most depressed form. He's swimming in boos, and this is his Hail Mary to catch Rick Prime. I'm tentatively going to claim this is an alternate C-137 Rick instead of a random Rick as I planned. Tell me if I'm far from the mark or if I got close to his personality.
Check out my original work if you want to support me. Karma Maxing