Chapter Text
“Why am I still here? I already confessed to everything.”
“Case has been reviewed. You're free to go.”
“But, I violated at least a dozen departmental codes!”
“New department, new codes.”
“New Citadel.”
For a city whose population consists largely of the smartest men (and women sometimes, or whatever else people above the gender spectrum are called) of each universe across infinity, it makes sense for renovations to be immediate, but Rick was surprised to learn all the new changes were being commanded by a Morty.
Weren't Morties fourteen year olds?
Eh, the stuff he learned about Morties in the academy already proved to be severely biased on his very first day out in the field. They weren't all naive or skittish, not all of them had a stutter and apparently the “aw jeez”es were just for show. Cop Morty and that alley kid used the interjection almost like slang. Rick learned about their value as camouflage and the Morty trafficking problem, he knew Morties had to be protected, but the Citadel had an entire section just for those who had been abandoned to fend for themselves. That doesn't really spell out protected or even valued at all.
Fourteen year olds shouldn't be living by themselves on the streets under any government, much less a government run by their own grandfathers.
So. He felt optimistic about the new constitutional law so far, he'd read all about the updates in the morning.
He was happy Morties were no longer getting eight hours of dog-like training at school, he was happy the Morty distribution center worked more like adoption than auction now, and he was happy Morties were no longer shoved off to the ugly, dirty corner of the Citadel scavenging for work. He had no idea things were that bad until they started getting better. Though to be fair, he was pretty new to the Citadel altogether. Guess he'd just put too much faith in the other versions of himself who were in charge before President Morty – that's one humbling way to find out whether or not you'd be fit to run the country.
There was still a bitter taste left in his mouth. It wasn't just coffee. All of those Rickless Morties- why couldn't they just be sent back to Earth? Their families were gone, sure, but the American foster care system couldn't be worse for a freshman than working a nine-to-five every day with no real education and no interpersonal relationships.
Rick glanced down at his new badge on his way to work. The Citadel's new emblem gleamed under the artificial sunlight, with a trident or sai blade shaped M doubling as the little leg that was missing on the old logo's R. It was above the R instead of underneath it. As if to be read as “Morty and Rick” instead of “Rick and Morty”.
Pretty symbolic of the Morty revolution or whatever was going on. Good for them. He… didn't really get it.
Not for the first time since arriving, Rick felt out of place – he didn't know shit about Morties. Maybe he should go grab one off the trash like a stray cat and everything would fall into place. If he learned why everyone hated them, he could get political about it too.
“Fuck!” a Morty's prepubescent voice greeted him as he stepped into the precinct lobby. Rick looked away from the badge he'd been fiddling with to see a boy in uniform wrestling with a barely intelligent alien form he only vaguely recognized as a tapuree. It was something that would come out from the forbidden love between an ant and an anteater, basically a nose on six legs, about as tall as Morty himself from the tip of his snout to his stinger. “Rick, help! Do something!”
Rick had an impulse to dart forward and intervene, but held back when a Rick checking in at the counter turned around. He had been taught not to get comfortable with another Rick's Morty without permission.
“I- I told you it'd be a bad idea to bring her along, that, that's on you, buddy.” the Rick said lazily, seeming content with watching Morty struggle.
“Rick!”
What a fucking asshole. Rick walked over to them. Halfway there though, the Morty was able to pull his arm out of the thing's mouth with a wet schlop sound and scramble back to his feet. He blinked as Morty squared up his shoulders, glaring at the alien.
“Dor- Drop! Drop, now!” he yelled, firmly, pointing a finger downwards. The alien hesitated. “Drop!”
Then, it obliged, puking up a whole dog, like, the mammal from Earth, and Rick quickly realized Morty hadn't been in danger. His dog was. His dog that he'd brought to the police station for some reason.
“That a fucking dog?” Rick asked, approaching them. Morty didn't acknowledge him, instead worrying over his puke dog, so Rick faced his Rick instead. “What the fuck is either of these things doing in here?”
“The dog, not so sure, but the Morty works here now. Don't be so pussy hurt about it, he's more qualified than Hot Glue Gun Rick.”
Whoever that was – the name felt self-explanatory.
“I meant the dog and the tapuree.”
The Rick stared him down, eyes not so subtly twitching towards specific spots on his face, likely searching for identifying characteristics, and Rick didn't feel self-conscious until he finished his inspection and said,
“Oh, you're the Rookie.”
He frowned, shifting into a stance that'd seem more confident. “Yeah, but- I know we stopped using cop dogs ages ago for a good reason, soo unless they're your Morty's service dogs, you gotta, gotta leash them outside on a fire hydrant or something. They've already made enough a mess as it is.”
The Rick contemplated him, then smirked, taking a swig off his flask. “C- C-aUGH-ome on, new stuff. You gotta see this.”
He disappeared down the hallway, his Morty instinctually running after him like a baby duckling to its mama – not without whistling for his dog and tapuree to follow – and Rick was too curious to stay behind. They walked all the way down to one of the sub labs Rick hadn't gotten a chance to marvel at during his tour the other day, and when the Rick flicked the lights on, he instantly identified the lab as a cloning facility. The cloning part was small compared to the holographic training room to their right, but some tubes connected the two in a way Rick figured whatever happened in that room would directly influence the output of the machines outside.
The other Rick, noticing his interest, explained proudly, “We sto-URRP-ped using lil' pets in security 'cause they weren't loyal enough. If shit got tough, they weren't focused on saving you, they wanted to save themselves. But check this out, check- look at this guy!”
The Rick opened his arms wide, swiveling drunkenly on his feet to clap his hands on Morty's shoulders.
“This motherfucker here is like a Disney Princess!” he continued, tone increasingly maniacal. Morty yelped as he was forcedly turned around to face the Rookie. “He- He's got a knack for this thing, the animals they- They love sacrificing themselves for Morty! Turns out the problem was that they can sense who gives a fuck! And that's Morties! Mo-aUGH-rties give so many fucks, it's all about emotional attachment, do you see that?! That dog would jump straight into a wood chipper if Morty told her to!”
“Rick!” Morty shrugged out of his Rick's hold, having paled at his last comment. He crouched to hug his dog. “Y- You know, I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk about them like they're just–” he sniffed, “–meat shields…”
“Yeah yeah,” the Rick waved him off. Real regret flashed across his expression as soon as Morty dropped eye contact, but he drowned any signs of it with another sip off his flask and returned his attention to Rick. “I got clearance to relaunch this experiment, I'm breeding these guys to be all over Morty. They're not gonna be cop dogs though, we'll get them to do more important shit like sniffing out a specific dimension's DNA so we can finally have a system that tells us exactly when the, for example the Rogue steps into the Citadel. Yunno? Ca- Can't believe we're supposed to just let him walk all over us every fucking time.”
The reason Rick knew about the Citadel at all in the first place was because a Rick and Morty barged into his house asking for contribution to the “Citadel's redevelopment fund”. They told him about the Rogue the same way little kids talk about the Boogie man, glancing at darkened corners, voice lowered like he might hear them talking through the walls and attack at any moment. He couldn't tell if they respected or despised him. Both, probably. The Rogue—Rick C-137 —had slaughtered every member of the old council and teleported the Citadel of Ricks straight into a Federation Prison. Rick had seen footage of him and his Morty. It was like seeing shitty recordings of skin walkers on YouTube shorts at 3AM.
“If you think my Rick is dead, he's alive,” he remembered the Rogue's Morty yelling at the council during a trial, “and if you think you're safe, he's coming for you!”
Yeesh. It didn't sound preposterous either, that Morty looked fucking resigned. Fuck, he wouldn't be surprised if that boy was just another one of the Rogue's many victims who had learned the hard way, a long time ago, that no person wriggles away from his grandfather's vicious grip except through the mercy of death. And unfortunately for him, his Rick had stripped him off his right to die. He wondered for a second if the Rogue's Morty had tried to kill him before, to run away, to get help from other Ricks or even from the Feds, only to find that absolutely nothing worked. Nothing was ever enough to stop the Rogue. He imagined Morty forcing himself to come to terms with it like the fish that obnoxious little girl from Nemo got to take in a bag.
Rick scowled. “Yeah. H- Hope we catch that-- degenerate piece of garbage soon.”
The other Rick eyed him. Analytically. Rick bristled.
“So, y- yeah,” the Rick changed the subject, “really uh- Real glad we're getting Morty rights on the Citadel from now on, with the new president and all that. They can get actual jobs, now I can keep an eye on mine aaallll day long. ALL day!”
Morty rolled his eyes, head lowered to something that branched more from the painful side of embarrassment as he avoided both of the men's eyes and scurried away towards the machines, patting his thighs on the way so his dogs knew to stay by his side. He pressed and turned buttons that made the machines hum, and signed for the tapuree to enter a smaller, horizontal tube that'd hissed open. The expertise with which he handled everything impressed Rick up until Morty bumped on some clutter over the board and scrambled to catch everything in the most awkward, ineffective way.
“O-Oh shit- Uh-”
His Rick snorted. “Morties, huh?”
Rick grinded his left canine teeth together. “Wouldn't know.”
“You don't have one? Hoo. Can, can I ask why or are you gonna be all sensitive about it?”
“My Beth died.”
“So?”
So?! “Didn't feel like worming into a random dead Rick's place for a fucking kid. The camouflage didn't seem worth the trouble.”
Off to where Morty had been juggling pens and gadgets, there was a series of clicks and clacks as they slipped off his arms to the ground.
“S- Sorry,” he said quietly, staring at the mess he'd made with his hands clutched to his chest.
After a full minute, he eventually bent down to fix it, but Rick was faster and gathered the clutter in one swift motion, placing it back where it was on the board – all the while making sure he kept a polite distance away from Morty. The other Rick watched him. Morty watched him too, a lot less subtly.
“You gonna show me how this thing works or…?” he asked the dog trainers.
A tension they pretended not to notice building up lightened, and Morty's Rick grinned, turning to type something into a panel while Morty wholeheartedly complimented the tapuree for behaving inside the tube as it closed. Soon, the tube had filled with some plasmatic fluid that began glowing red and flowing at a speed that slammed the tapuree to one end of the tube. Under Morty's reassurances though, it stayed calm, and the fluid cycled through a filter net that both scanned the biological design of every different cell type on the alien and broke it down to molecules that were later translated into coding, which was translated back into molecules in the bigger tube. A mass of flesh grew inside of it, constantly misted, and soon another tapuree was formed. It didn't look special.
“Good boy!” Morty told the tapuree in the smaller tube, pressing a button that, judging by the way it wiggled happily, rewarded it chemically. Then, he ran inside the holographic training room, whistling for his regular dog to follow. “Here, Oats!”
His Rick smiled proudly, configuring the training room to build an intense obstacle labyrinth thing a human child wouldn't be able to cross. After a buzzer sound's warning, the bigger tube sucked the clone tapuree into the training room, where Morty greeted it by holding out his hand. The tapuree sniffed him all over before allowing himself to be pet, and damn did Morty take his sweet time petting that thing.
His Rick knocked on the double glass to hurry him up, and Morty snapped out a command for his dog, who set off running. The tapuree immediately sprung into action, but Morty held it back. After about twenty seconds, his dog had finished the maze and the hard light holograms began moving forward at her pace, that's when the boy got out of the tapuree's way. The tapuree shot forward, making its way through exactly the same path the mammal had taken, except three times faster. Morty had climbed on its back. The skin there was soft and flexible enough that even if the tapuree were to crash against a wall, Morty would just sink into him, completely unharmed.
As soon as they reached the dog, Rick turned off the holograms and Morty wrapped himself around the tapuree's snout so it didn't gobble Oats up.
“Good boy! Who's a good boy? Here,” he cooed, handfeeding the tapuree a pink block the size of his hand, then tossing the dog her own treats. “Good girl! Yes you are! You're a good girl!!”
Rick couldn't help but smile at the interaction. He was adorable, all giggly about his pups. That was the first time he'd heard a Morty's genuine laughter.
The other Rick snorted at his reaction. “Isn't that worth the trouble? That- That little punk?”
Shrinking, Rick looked away to properly recompose himself. “I can't.”
“Pussy.”
“I couldn't even raise Beth to that age,” he argued. “And -I got my last Morty killed. No, fuck, I killed him.”
“You mean Cop Morty? I read your files, man, that piece of shit had it coming.”
“Don't–” He snapped his tongue. “..He was just–”
“Seriously, don't defend him to me, everybody hated that guy. Whatever you say's gonna slide straight into my brain dumpster shutter.” He flicked off his ear lobe with a ‘pew’ sound. “In one ear, right, right out the other. He soured the mood of every get-together. You know that's why they assigned you to him, right? Classic rookie prank.”
Rick pressed his lips into a straight line.
The Rick burped. “Ugh, listen, your eyes scream need-a-Morty, it's- No, really, it's all over your face, look–”
“What the fuck does that even–”
“–just go check them out! There's still a buncha Rickless Morties in the Morty distribution center. Their universes exploded, or got taken over by a zombie infestation, whatever. They can't be shipped back to Earth's dearest foster system.”
…Oh.
The door to the training room opened and Morty left with one arm over the tapuree and one over the dog, a huge dorky grin on his face. His Rick looked like he was trying his hardest not to mirror that expression himself.
“O- Okay, so uh-” Morty cleared his throat. “I think we need to make Oats faster so- so we can cycle the training for as long as Sloppy can handle. Then we'll know how far he'll go out in the field in case we- in case he- Like, if, if I fall or he runs away.”
“That's good for building resistance too,” the Rick said, ruffling up Morty's hair. “If you don't want them to die for you, we gotta build them like war machines. S- So nothing will kill them.”
Morty gave him a small, crooked smile.
“God fucking damn it! I thought we told you to report to the s- second floor,” a Rick walked inside the lab and, without looking at the dog trainers, grabbed Rick's wrist and began dragging him away. “Come 'ere, Rookie, we got a job for you.”
“Wait! There's a new Wendy's place opening next door, tonight,” the dog trainer Rick said, grabbing his other wrist. “It's actually called Morty's, but the cook's like, from a dimension where Ss- Summer was never born and that made their Morty a redhead girl for some reason.”
Rick's forehead wrinkled in the middle. Was that an invitation? The other Rick stayed silent, so he probably knew about the restaurant too and the dog trainer Rick had invited the whole precinct already.
“She- She looks like if me and Jessica had a baby- a uh, if we had a daughter, which is I guess- so weird, but so cool,” Morty fumbled. The blush on his face was of fondness more than of longing, so Rick could assume this Wendy's Morty girl was just a friend, not a crush. ...He wouldn't judge two Morties who fucked each other though, that would be like Masturbation Plus.
“Yeah, so, we're basically getting VIP treatment there because Morty here is her fucking bitch. We're cutting the line and getting the best table. You should go check it out, it's a big deal for a Morty to open up business outside Morty Town.”
Once Rick nodded, the dog trainer Rick let him go so the other Rick could drag him outside.
Later in the elevator, he asked,
“Wh- What's that Rick called?”
“Uh, the, the dog trainer?” There was a pregnant pause as the Rick gulped his flask empty. “Heugh- Hhhhe and his Morty are from the K-09 dimension.”
“…Are you fucking with me? K-9?”
The Rick leaned down heavily on the elevator's railing, clutching his stomach, and burst out laughing. “We- We call him Dawg!”
Rick's unibrow raised in amusement, but when the elevator doors opened to the second floor, the other Rick stumbled out and puked on the ground. Rick wondered how that was his superior, and if his Morty – if he even had one – was better off wherever he was rather than working as his partner in the precinct like K-9 Morty did.
He wondered how often that was the case across dimensions.
On lunch break, he paid the Citadel's School for Morties a visit. It had only recently reopened, adjusted to the new constitution's guidelines. The school used to be directly connected to the Morties distribution center – Morties who wanted a chance to leave the Citadel and live a normalish life on Earth would sign up for six hours a day of compliance conditioning, and the best students got to be auctioned at “graduation day” for Ricks who weren't looking for grandchildren any more than they were looking for mindless puppets – now Morties distribution was handled at the Morty Agency. There, a Rick looking for a Morty would undergo a background check and the system would assign them a Morty whose own background and personal needs were the most compatible with the Rick's. The Morty's personality and appearance no longer played a part in which Morty got to be adopted and which would end up in the streets.
A large number of the students that lived in the dorms pre-election preferred to stay in the school given the choice though, so if he wanted to check on the Morties labeled “available” in the Morty Agency, the School was an okay place to start. The new curriculum consisted of basic—“basic” to Ricks' standards—knowledge of the outer universe: notable planets, alien species, languages, culture. They were taught to identify breathable atmospheres, edible food, a library worth of dangerous substances and all that; and they had self-defense classes now. The school used to teach them how to rely on Ricks for everything, now it taught them how to survive without Ricks.
“Hey,” Rick greeted the Rick and Morty behind the counter at reception, presenting his badge. “I'm Rick 76⊢T74 from the police department and I'm he- here to see the uh, how the school's been handling the new curriculum.”
The Rick and Morty exchanged glances.
“We're 3∆7⊇トז, but–” To Rick's widened eyes, the Rick at the counter stressed, “–but, everyone just calls me School Reception Rick, and this is my Morty. You- You want a tour or something?”
He considered the offer and shrugged a shoulder. “Show me everything that's changed since President Morty.”
“Sure. Morty, you man the reception now, for fuck's sake don't leave your post. If you need to go take a shit just do it in the plant pot over there.”
“O- Oh man,” the Morty scrambled out of his Rick's way as he circled the counter to meet Rick, “um, okay, I- I'll stay here I guess?”
“If anything happens, puh- press the button on the–”
“Yeah, yeah um, I know.”
The first floor consisted mostly of administration offices and staff rooms, there was a library too, two auditoriums, an indoor gym and the canteen. All of the classrooms and dormitories were in the upper levels of the building. That much had stayed the same through the council replacement, but School Reception Rick showed him how differently things worked. Most of the stuff he saw, he'd already read about in the morning; the articles didn't say the canteen was open for nonstudent Morties on the weekends though, or that they were also taught basic engineering and programming for quick weapon improvisation skills on the battlefield. That was pretty cool. He was starting to understand the Rick that had cloned himself as a baby to be kissed by President Morty.
On the last floor, the classrooms were quiet. Some classes had lunch break earlier than others so that the canteen was never too crowded. The only noise in the entire floor was from a janitor scrapping stickers off the underside of a chair- and from two Morties having a hushed conversation in the corner behind the lockers. Rick decided not to bother them. He stopped by the window at the end of the corridor and watched all the Ricks and Morties going about their day outside.
School Reception Rick approached him tentatively. “So. Y- You're here about the clones situation. Right? 'Cause the a-RRGH-ctual inspection's not for another five days.”
Clones situation? What, the Morty cloning? Since Morties distribution used to happen only twice a year, Ricks who couldn't afford to wait would pay to have a Morty clone on demand at any minute's notice. If your Morty died, you just had to make a call and he'd be right back beside you like nothing ever happened. Rick didn't consider that unethical because Ricks did pretty much the same with themselves, every Rick has at least one backup body somewhere – if anything, it'd be unethical not to have a “Plan B” Morty stashed up.
The issue came with misuse and mass-production. Obviously.
There used to be a widely popular.. game among Ricks, way before Rick had even heard about the Citadel, called Pocket Morties—like- Pokémorties if you wanna get French about it—and it involved collecting Morty clones, “evolving” them and forcing them to fight other Ricks' Morty collections to death. A lot of Morties were valued for their uniqueness – “Oh shit, you have a Dragon Morty?!” “Wow, Soccer Ball Morty?!” “FUCK yeah, I got a Funny Morty!” – and thus copied and sold like Taylor Swift's special edition vinyl records. Every so often, a Morty had to go out in the arena and kill exact copies of his friends, same memories and all that included. And they didn't even get to go the fuck home, there was a storage place for those kids to sleep in, awaiting morning when their grandfathers would drag them out for another fight.
It wasn't just that, of course. The irresponsible cloning of Morties opened the hell gates to Morty slavery, Morty sex slavery and, for some especially sick nutcases, free torture toys.
All of that stuff became illegal though, Ricks now could only order one clone at a time with a strict monthly limit.
“You think we should- we should be worried? About the clones situation?” Rick asked School Reception Rick, sympathetically, as if he knew what they were talking about. “You look like you've got a good thing going on in here.”
“Oh, believe me, I do! But every other fucking hour some bigoted fucks come in to curse me and Morty out, saying–” School Reception Rick fumbled with half words, then took a few sips off his flask to rearrange his thoughts. “Listen, they've been- They're mad they can't choose how nice and quiet their new Morties are going to be now. S- Sure, let it all out of the fucking receptionists, how about that!” He sniffed. “Yesterday, a Rick came in, and, and he was dragging this Morty around by the shirt…”
Rick listened, frowning. He glanced at the corner where the two Morties had stopped talking, likely eavesdropping, and motioned for School Reception Rick to turn it down.
“He kept waving his Morty at us,” he continued in a lower volume, “the- he- The Morty looked fucking lobotomized. He knocked him around, slammed him on the counter, the Morty was limp. N- No ‘aw jeez’es, no ‘ooh, ouch, oof’, no nothing, he just shut his eyes and took it.”
Rick knew where this was going.
“I kept telling him to stop that and fuck off, my Morty was freaked out which was no help, but he just kept bragging about his Morty! He kept saying shit like ‘Look! Look at him!’. I told him he was hurting his Morty, so he said ‘well, I think this is great, do you think this is great, Morty?’ and–” School Reception Rick took another drink. “His Morty looked me dead in the eye, smiled and said ‘yeah! This is great, Rick!’ like a fucking- That has to be a clone, a- a mindfucked clone, they're se-EUGH-lling this shit around, I'm telling you!”
“Did- Did you tell anyone about this?” Rick asked, fists clenched.
“I called the cops immediately after, but they did a background check on him, and when they found out he's never been to the cloning facility, they dropped it.”
What the hell?? Who?! Rick would have to ask after lunch and sucker punch whoever let a case like this go that easy. He pulled out his pocket notebook and wrote down everything School Reception Rick had said, asking for elaboration and clarification occasionally, then noted down the suspect Rick's dimension name.
Suddenly, a device on School Reception Rick's belt blared, and he bolted for the elevator. Rick followed.
“Oh,” he deadpanned once they arrived back on the first floor, looking at where School Reception Morty was awkwardly trying to shoo a Rick in the classical Morty outfit away, “that's ‘Tall Morty’. He probably asked a question Morty didn't know how to answer and now they're both panicking like fucking idiots.”
“Is that not a Rick?”
“Depends on what you think makes a Rick a Rick.”
Rick didn't have an answer for that.
The sense of urgency from the illegal cloning problem apparently going on had distracted him from his main goal coming to the School. Pocketing his notebook, he absentmindedly glanced at the canteen, where several dozen Morties ate and chitchatted, dispersed in groups of four to eight around the tables. He considered returning to the uppermost floor and talking to those two Morties he'd heard hiding behind the lockers.
That's when he caught sight of a redhead. A freckled Morty in pigtails, with a blue bow on each side, distinctively Wendy's styled.
“Holy shit,” he mumbled, forgetting to think twice before lurking into the canteen after her.
If Wendy's Morty was enrolled in the School, K-9 Morty had most likely befriended her there when the School was still the Morty distribution center, which raised a chance he wasn't K-9 Rick's original Morty. That would explain why K-9 Rick insisted Rick visit this place for a Morty, either because K-9's own experience adopting a Morty had been so illuminating that he couldn't help but feeling pity for Mortiless Ricks, or because he sympathized with his grandson's harsh past in the Morties distribution system and wanted every Morty to have a home.
Wendy's Morty wasn't seated on a table, but on the floor in a circle with four other Morties, all classical except for one who had a mole on the corner of his eye. They seemed to be playing a game on their phones, often turning to one another to excitedly share the contents of their screen.
He cleared his throat once close enough to the group, presenting his badge. “I'm-I'm Rick 76⊢T74 from the police department, you kids up for a talk?”
They looked between each other, seeming to huddle up a little in caution. Rick crouched to meet their eye level and said, gently,
“Hey, you-- You're not in trouble, okay? Do you guys know Morty K-09?”
Their faces lit up with recognition and curiosity.
The Morty with a mole grinned. “Oh shit! It's his first day at work in the- in the, the cop place!” he told the others. “Did he get in trouble?”
They laughed at the odds, but Rick was quick to correct them,
“He's not in trouble either, he's- Uh, I watched him work and he did even better than his Rick this morning. He's great.”
“Oh man!”
“Did you see his dog?” another Morty asked. “I was the one who named her!”
“Of- O- Of course you were, Oatmeal,” Wendy's Morty said, giggling. The others laughed too, Rick could tell it was an inside joke and wasn't planning on prodding, but she went out of her way to explain it anyways, “He's the only one who liked the uh, the breakfast oatmeal they used to serve here.”
“You're the one opening up the Wendy's place, right?” Rick asked her after a pause, glad that she had spoken first so he could pretend to have only just noticed her hairstyle. “K-9 said you're one hell of a cook. …D- Did you start wearing your hair like that before or after the–”
“Before. A- and before you ask, my name's June, not Wendy. Do you seriously think Beth would name me Wendy?”
It was interesting that Beth would have named her first-born daughter June instead of Summer had she been born three years later than usual. June was when Summer season began. What was it with Beth and hot weather?
“Damn, okay. Get asked that a lot?”
“Yeah.” She lowered her head, embarrassed at the way she'd snapped. “Aw jeez… sorry…”
“Trust me, I get it. Y- You guys met K-9 here? Were you classmates?”
“No,” several of them said at the same time.
“I mean, me and Spoon are the only ones who's- who used to study here before the whole curriculum change thing,” Oatmeal said, eyes flickering over to one of the other Morties, who Rick had to assume was nicknamed Spoon for a second breakfast-related anecdote. “We started meeting with K-9, June and Mole on the fountain outside to play Honkers.”
He didn't miss the way Oatmeal neglected to mention the fifth Morty. He might be a fairly recent addition to the friend group. Rick looked at him, meeting the kid's eyes for just a second before he shuddered and looked away, tucking his knees to his chest and scooting for a tighter fit in his spot between June and Spoon. In an instant, Spoon was leaning against his side comfortingly and June had cocked her head so their temples rubbed together. The Morty relaxed in their protective hold, resting his chin on his knees, and the conversation continued as if uninterrupted,
“Yeah, but um, now K-9 has a job so I- I think he's not going to walk Oats around the s- central square anymore?” Spoon looked at the others for confirmation, hunching.
“Hey- We- Uh, we'll figure it out,” June squirmed, now leaning her whole body weight onto the fifth Morty. He didn't seem to mind. “Tonight he's gonna tell us his schedule and we tell his- we tell him yours. And mine.”
“Why is everyone getting jobs now?” Mole whined jokingly.
“Well, I'll only have mine for a bit.”
Rick frowned at June. “You quitting Morty's so soon? I kinda feel like you're the face of the brand, kid.”
“My- My Rick's coming back. I think.”
He blinked. How long had she been living by herself in the Citadel waiting for her perfectly fine and alive Rick to come pick her up? Had he been paying for her stay somewhere and giving her a weekly allowance for groceries? At the very fucking least? And what the fuck did the “I think” stand for?! Had he told her he was coming back soon and she wasn't sure whether or not to believe him because this had that too many times before or had he just not told her he was coming back? Did they keep in touch at all?
“You have a Rick?” he picked one of the questions burning his tongue to ask. “Whuh- Wh- What, did he leave you here in the Citadel for the week and- and you figured you might as well open a freaking restaurant?”
“No, he's um, like, I know other Ricks don't do that, but before an adventure my Rick always leaves me here in the Citadel for a while, to uh, acclimatize? To space? Get– I- I don't know.”
What.
“Quirky~,” Spoon joked.
Oatmeal laughed. “Man, he's- he's so OCD.”
“He's just sexist,” Mole accused, “it's only because she's a girl.”
“M- Maybe it's because she's red haired.”
“He left me here uhh, four? Months ago?” June told Rick. Mole whispered ‘six’. “Oh. Um, six months ago. That's the longest he's ever been gone, so I guess we're going on a pretty big adventure soon.”
“Holy shit, kid,” Rick muttered, pursing his lips. “Does- Do you guys keep in touch?”
The concern that seeped through his voice visibly put them off. Rick could've laughed at how synchronized they were, all pulling a face at the same time.
The fifth Morty then scowled, staring him down, and his bottom eyelids were twitching like it hurt him to maintain eye contact. He mumbled something.
“What?” Rick asked him, quirking an eyebrow.
“What are you actually doing here?!” the Morty repeated, louder. “You're a cop and we're five fourteen-year-olds try- trying to finish a round of Honkers before lunch break's over. What are you looking for? What information could we possibly have?!”
Rick suddenly realized how close he'd gotten, physically, to the group. He wasn't within arm's reach of anybody but June, having moved closer both so that their conversation stayed private and so that they could hear themselves in the first place, since they were still surrounded by chattering kids. Feeling like he'd overstepped, he put another foot's distance between him and the group, sitting on one knee.
He could tell them he'd come here to evaluate whether Rickless Morties were in desperate need of a Rick like K-9 had implied, or if they were handling things well by themselves under the new management. Or he could tell them he'd come to talk to School Reception Rick about the weird Rick that'd harassed his Morty the other night, word had probably gotten around about that anyways, this being a school packed with naturally nosey teenagers. Would they believe him if he told them he only approached them in specific because he'd spotted a friend of K-9 Morty's and wanted to know more about his past? Was that better than the other two options?
Fuck.
“L- Look, yesterday night while you were all in bed, we received a call about a Morty that was beat up here by a Rick,” he invented a new option. With the Morties' big wide eyes on him, he continued to weave his amalgamation of half truths, “We're investigating it, but I just want to make sure nobody else's been having this type of issue. You don't need to answer everything I ask, this- this isn't an interrogation.”
After spending a minute sending each other glances that made Rick wonder if Morties had a telepathic connection, they settled back, each bearing a serious expression.
“Aw jeez.. M- My Rick is nice, you know,” June told him, voice small. “I mean, he's still a Rick, but he doesn't hit me. He wouldn't hit other Morties.”
He's nice, but he's still a Rick. The words School Reception Rick said on his departure returned to him – what makes a Rick a Rick? Whatever it was, it wasn't a synonym of Good.
“Okay, see? Good to know! Is June the only one out of you who has a Rick?”
“Yeah,” Oatmeal said, “and K-9 I guess, but his Rick is okay too. My old Rick died.”
“Mi- Mine got uh, got another Morty. He fucked off somewhere though, he doesn't come to the Citadel anymore,” Spoon said.
“Mine comes around every now and then. With- With his new Morty.” Mole licked his lips, looking like he was struggling to convince himself his Rick wouldn't hit him. “He doesn't bother me so… I don't see why he would go around hitting ..other Morties?”
Rick frowned. He turned to the fifth Morty for his answer only to find a full-on glare on his face.
“Uh..”
“We did have a friend in our class who had- had- who got a bad Rick in the last graduation,” Oatmeal perked up, earning an ‘oh, true!’ from Spoon. Rick carefully shifted his attention from the fifth Morty to them. “He texted us after he left saying that everything was super dirty, so he only went to the bathroom at school, and he was the only one doing the dishes and stuff. And then he said that his new Beth, Jerry and Summer wouldn't talk to him.”
“And then he- he told us his Rick would randomly hit or push him, or squeeze his arm really hard and then apologize. There was one day where- when he said his Rick pushed him off the stairs?” Spoon said, rubbing his arm. Oatmeal nodded. “Like, for no reason. And then he just stood there watching Inches cry for a super long time. H- His wrist broke.”
“And I think his phone must've broken too at some point because the day after that, our texts stopped getting through.”
Rick reached for his notebook. It'd be pointless to ask if they'd tried to get a responsible adult involved. If they did, it didn't work, and if they didn't, it wouldn't have. Not back then. “Do you remember his dimension name?”
“52 uh, uhh–”
“5-something-2-Γ-something something,” Spoon offered. “S- Sorry, we just called him Inches.”
Assumedly due to his dimension name incorporating the average Morty's height, 5'2".
“That- That works. Thanks.” He noted down everything they'd said. “You still have those texts?”
“No…” Oatmeal shrunk. “Aw jeez, you- You're never gonna find him, are you? Oh man, I shouldn't have deleted the chat, fuck- But I- I was running out of–”
“We've done more with less,” he reassured them. “A- Anything else that comes up- Keep an ear out for this type of stuff, okay? If you notice anything worth mentioning, pass the message through K-9.”
“Can't we just text you?” June asked.
Rick didn't have a proper phone like they did, it was more of a pager, it received texts and alerts from other similar devices through a limited, encrypted connection shared only within the police department and higher-ups. He could add her phone number to the line, set as one-sided communication, but the department would notice immediately and this could count as unauthorized disclosure of confidential information. What he could do instead.. is create a second private line that connected his pager to devices he linked it to. But he wouldn't be able to receive an alert from the department while in the second line or vice versa, so he would have to check the second line for messages only outside of work.
“Gi- Give me your phone.”
With the keyboard on June's phone, he was able to program the second line into his pager, that would switch with the main line whenever he typed a specific code. He added her number to the line and, with five little heads looming over the devices on his hands, sent a trial SMS text from her phone to his pager.
«trial trial» his pager beeped.
“Cool,” Mole whooed. “Can I have your number too?”
Rick held out his hand. Mole, Oatmeal and Spoon put their unlocked phones on it and he connected them all to the line.
“This isn't gonna be like regular texting. You can send texts, but I can't reply, so you can only use it for emergencies or- or to talk about the things we talked about. And remember to sign your texts, this thing doesn't allow ‘contact names’.” He looked at the fifth Morty. “Morty, you- You sure you don't want in?”
The Morty's glare deepened.
“Okay. If you see or hear anything, you can text me through your friends' phones.”
Rick stood up. His pager beeped with messages,
«hi -mole morty»
«trial trial? (oatmeal)»
«hii :)»
«oops sry forgot to sign :P its spoon morty»
He chuckled. “Alright, you stinkbugs, gotta, gotta get back to the station. Stay attentive or whatever, but for fuck's sake don't go snooping where you'll be put in danger. This isn't a secret mission, I'm just trusting you to be on the lookout.”
They beamed, hearing nothing but the words “secret mission”.
Lunch break was almost over and Rick hadn't had much of anything for lunch. He bought some alien cum pie pastry thing on the canteen before heading out, making a quick stop at the pharmacy before work for a box of one-full-meal nutrient pills.
Once back at the precinct lobby, he pulled out his notebook.
“Hey, y- you know who responded to the call to the Citadel School for Morties yesterday at 11:43PM?” he asked the Rick behind the counter. “Is he in the precinct right now?”
The Rick raised an eyebrow, but typed into his computer without questions.
“Uh, that was BァD-2, he's inside.”
“Thanks.” It wasn't hard to find BァD-2, mingling with a Rick that was not concentrated enough on his report. Rick approached and yanked on his shoulder so they were facing each other. “Hey, why the fuck did you drop that case with the doped up Morty?!”
“W- What the fuck?” BァD-2 slapped the hand Rick had already retrieved from his shoulder, drunkenly staggering back. “Are you talking about that sh-aUGH-ithead who got his ass beat at- at the School? He wasn't even one of the students.”
“How does that matter?!”
“Means it's not illegal to beat him up, noobie.”
The Rick that BァD-2 was previously talking to sat up straighter in his office chair. “Wait, whuh- what happened? Someone took their Morty to the School and beat him up there? Why?”
“He was showing him off to the school receptionists,” Rick gritted out. “According to them, the Morty was c- completely compliant. Shady shit.”
“Damn,” the Rick said, eyebrows raised in interest. “Ne-URGH-ed me one of those!”
He and BァD-2 cackled. Rick took a step away from them, paling.
“A- Are you fucking serious?! We need to investigate that Rick!” Rick tried to speak up through their laughing fit. “This could be illegal cloning!”
“Nuthin' we can do about it,” BァD-2 said, smirking.
“Yeah.” His friend snorted. “It, it was bound to happen, you know, after wha-AUGH-t they did to the Morty distribution center. The government forced all those Morty-addicted Ricks to quit cold turkey. What- Whuh, what did you think they would do about it?”
They laughed again.
“We can't neglect a case just because you think it's inevitable, th- that's like if someone told you they received a death threat and you went ‘oh, damn, my condolences’!” Rick ranted. “I'm only coming to you first because I'm giving you a chance to pretend you realized your own mistake before I take this issue up to the chief. So–”
“Sheesh, you're like one of those Morty rights activists,” BァD-2 whined. “Fine, chill, I'll reopen the case, we'll track the guy down. I kinna wanted to go stretch my legs anyways. Lemme go talk to Chief.”
“If anything, we could go find this uncertified Morty cloning facility just to buy one. My Morty's been a fucking bitch since he started working for the new ‘president’,” BァD-2's friend said. “It's- It's like the ego boost's made him forget we Ricks are the real deal here. We built the Citadel.”
“We- We're the Head, and Morties are the, the uh, lice infestation.”
They laughed again, and Rick stared at them like a mother stares at the literal shit that comes out before her baby does during birth.