Chapter Text
Morty's weekday routine had been damn near consistent the last couple of months, so he had come to expect pretty much the same thing every school day.
Wake up and eat a small breakfast.
Endure some minor bullying before class.
Go to his boring morning classes.
Sit by himself at lunchtime and quietly eat his food.
Go to his boring afternoon classes.
And not have to worry about Rick pulling him out of class.
It had been months since Rick last pulled him from school early, so he was entirely surprised when he shut his locker door and found a glowing green portal opening in front of him.
Rick stepped out of the portal and Morty could see Summer farther down the hallway, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. He nodded at her, currently sharing that sentiment.
"Come on, Morty. Let's go."
"Rick, you said you weren't going to pull me out of school anymore." Morty didn't want to sound whiny, but he had been doing so well at consistently attending his classes and his grades were the highest they'd been all semester. He didn't want to ruin that and he knew, if he started cutting class again to go on adventures with Rick, that's exactly what would happen.
"Just this one time, okay? It's an emergency."
"You said that last time too. My mom's going to be pissed at you if I miss class. I'm going to be pissed at you." Rick seemed to pause at that, thinking for a moment, but must have ultimately decided it was worth the risk.
"Look, it'll only take a few minutes, okay? And then you can go back to class."
"You promise?" Morty was doubtful about that. Rick did have a habit of saying things would be quick and then it turned into a whole days long thing.
"Yes, I promise. Now, come on."
Morty groaned in annoyance and rolled his eyes as he followed Rick into the new portal he'd created.
~
"You know, it wouldn't kill you to pull me out class early." Summer couldn't deny she was a little jealous. Yes, Morty missed a lot of class time and his grades definitely suffered for a while because of it, but she wouldn't mind having that experience every once in a while too.
Rick scoffed at that as she walked into the open garage, presumably returning from school, but he didn't bother looking up from what he was reading on the tablet in front of him. "Yeah, right. So I can have your parents bitching at me? No thanks."
"Are you serious right now?" Summer wasn't entirely sure why he was playing dumb with her. She had seen him pull Morty out of school earlier. In fact, they'd made eye contact while in the hall. "What about Morty?"
"Hey, I promised your parents I would stop pulling him out of school and I have."
"Bullshit, you lying asshole!"
Rick finally looked up at her, surprise and confusion written all over his face, though it quickly turned into irritation and anger. "Excuse me?! The fuck is your problem?"
"I was there when you came and pulled him out of school earlier today."
That statement immediately extinguished any fury Rick felt and he felt like a bucket of ice water had been poured over him as a chill ran down his cybernetic spine.
He had not pulled Morty out of school today.
Which meant some random Rick had shown up and taken him.
Summer finally seemed to realize something was wrong, her anger turning into concern, and she suddenly grew uncertain about her accusation. "That was you, right? Grandpa Rick? Please tell me that was you!"
"No the fuck it was not. Shitshitshit!" Rick quickly rolled his chair across the garage towards the shelf by the kitchen door. He accessed the tracking screen he had hidden there and went down the list of family members.
Rick:
Garage
Jerry:
Pool
Beth:
Equestrian Hospital
Space Beth:
Defiance Headquarters
Summer:
Garage
Morty:
-UNAVAILABLE-
Morty's tracker wasn't showing up and that was bad news. Something had happened to it. It had either been removed, or short circuited , or destroyed and it likely had something to do with the Rick that had taken Morty.
"Fuuuuuck!" His grandkids were supposed to be safe at school. Well, safe from everything but normal high school teenage problems and drama. Rick had added certain modifications and hidden weaponry in case of emergencies, but he hadn't planned on a version of himself ever showing up and pretending to be him. Once he got Morty back, he was going to add a proximity sensor to the school that would trigger if a Rick other than him showed up again.
"Uhhh, Rick?" Summer's voice called out from the other side of the garage and she sounded even more worried than she had a few minutes prior.
He turned with the intent of asking about the other Rick, but froze when the tablet on the counter started projecting a flashing triangle with a red exclamation point in it.
That was the health advisory alarm. Which meant Morty had just been injured. He rushed over to it and opened the notification. Several alerts popped up at once.
| Health Advisory: Laceration on bicep. Medical attention recommended. |
| Health Advisory: Laceration at base of neck. Medical attention recommended. |
| Health Advisory: Blunt force trauma to face. Medical attention recommended. |
Summer's eyes widened as she realized this was tracking Morty's injuries in real time, which meant the Rick that had taken him was likely torturing her brother. "Oh my God! Grandpa Rick, what the hell are they doing to him?!"
"Shit." Rick cursed as he read through the first alert. Morty's bicep is where the tracking implant had been placed and if he had an injury there, then it's was very likely the Rick had cut open Morty's arm to remove the chip.
Finding Morty just got a lot harder.
He immediately turned to his granddaughter, given she was the last one who had seen Morty and this mystery Rick. "Summer, what did he look like?"
"The Rick? He looked exactly like you. How are you going to find him?"
Rick took a moment to think about that. There had to be another way to find him.
Cameras.
There had to be cameras inside Summer and Morty's school. He just needed to get wired into them. Unsurprisingly, that ended up being extremely easy. Their school had absolutely no security for their systems. Rick rewound footage from the last few hours and stopped the feed when he found what he was looking for.
The Rick came out of the portal right in front of Morty, just as Rick used to do before he stopped taking Morty out of class. Just as Summer said, he looked exactly like Rick with no visible differences. Kidnapper Rick, as Rick now dubbed him, was standing in the hallway, talking to Morty. Morty looked irritated, but it was the same type of irritation he had whenever Rick tried to convince him to cut class, so he clearly didn't suspect anything was wrong. After a dramatic show of rolling his eyes and groaning, Morty followed Kidnapper Rick through the portal he'd reopened.
Rick rewinded it again, only going back a few seconds, then paused the video. The Rick's portal gun screen was facing the camera, which meant Rick might be able to grab the dimension number. "Garage, blow up the video by 200 percent and increase resolution as much as you can."
When the picture was blown up, the letters on the face of Kidnapper Rick's portal gun were blurry, but readable.
Dimension C-465E
"I got you now, bastard."
~
Something about this whole thing felt off to Morty. His grandpa was being unusually cryptic. But he still followed Rick, even as his grandpa led him down a deserted alleyway.
"Something about this feels wrong, Rick."
"That's because it is." The Rick had finally stopped at the end of the alley and out of the shadows stepped three more Ricks. There weren't too many visual differences. The three all wore the same brown armor, but one had a mohawk, one had a mullet, and one had a buzzcut.
"What the fuck is going on?" Horror filled Morty as a chilling thought suddenly occurred to him and he turned to the Rick standing next to him. "You aren't my Rick, are you?"
"No, he's not." The Rick with the mohawk stepped forward and handed a briefcase over to the fake Rick. "I trust everything went smoothly?"
"No one was alerted to his absence, D-99B."
Morty was being sold.
Trafficked.
Morty needed to get out of here while he still could, but he was vastly outnumbered. His only chance was surprising them long enough to run off. If he could get out of this alley, he could likely disappear in the crowd.
"Alright, you little turd. Let's go." D-99B approached him and Morty didn't hesitate.
Morty brought his foot up, hitting D-99B right between the legs, and when the Rick collapsed in pain, Morty made his move. He quickly turned on his heel and sprinted back towards the entrance of the alley. Before he could get very far, a hand grabbed his wrist and yanked him back.
It was the fake Rick and Morty leaned in to bite the hand that had ahold of his arm. With his other hand, he reached into the Rick's labcoat and blindly felt around for a portal gun. Once he had it in his grasp, he set his dimension and opened a portal.
Morty couldn't wait to see Rick's reaction when he portaled out of nowhere with the craziest fucking story.
He didn't even get a chance to take a step towards the portal.
Something suddenly struck Morty in the back and, just like that, he lost all feeling in his body and collapsed to the ground. "No, fuck!"
"Jesus fucking Christ." That was D-99B approaching from behind. He snatched the portal gun up and tossed it back to the Rick Morty had stolen it from. "You're a little shithead, aren't you?"
Morty glared up at D-99B. Just a couple more seconds and he would have been home.
"Yeah, you like that? Paralysis dart. Sure comes in handy." Rick D-99B knelt down and dragged Morty into a sitting position. He scanned Morty over with his cybernetic eye and then pulled out a knife. "Two chips, one in the arm and one in the neck. C-137 sure is paranoid, isn't he?"
Buzzcut Rick laughed at that. "Must be if he put two tracking chips in. Maybe his Morty gets lost a lot."
Morty stayed silent as the group of Ricks laughed. They didn't need to know the one in his neck wasn't a tracker. If he lost control of his repressed rage, they'd be in for a nasty surprise.
D-99B looked down at him with a smug smile as he brought the blade up to Morty's arm. "You're lucky I had to use the paralysis dart on you."
Morty was immensely thankful he had no feeling in his body as he watched his arm be cut open. It was clear D-99B was no surgeon, because it was a sloppy cut and a lot of blood spilled out as the tracker was removed. He scrunched his nose in disgust when blood began to run down his neck and back as D-99B removed the chip at the back of his neck.
"Can't have your Rick tracking you."
"He'll still find me." Morty was sure of it. Rick wouldn't stop until he had Morty back. He grinned and couldn't help laughing a little when D-99B seemed to falter at that statement. "Having second thoughts?"
"No, I'm not. Shut the fuck up, Morty! Buzzcut, Mullet, get him to his feet and help him walk. We're leaving." The Ricks with the mentioned hairstyles did as they were told and lifted Morty up from the ground by his limp arms. "Oh, and Morty?"
Morty looked up just in time for a fist to strike him across the face and he went limp against the Ricks holding him as the world around him faded into darkness.
"That's for kicking me in the dick, you little shit."