"I'm a first Morty."
And Rick's blood stops.
Morty asks, "W—W—What does he—"
Rick looks back and forth between President Morty and 1-03. "That's impossible..."
"Certainly not in infinity," President Morty replies. And his following words cause him to grow increasingly furious, "Funny, even though every Rick fathered their first Morty from birth to become a genius," then shapes his hand like a gun and places it against his head, "I was the only one stupid enough to miss his own brain..." pretending to fire his gun-shaped hand towards his right eye, then taking his eye out to reveal cybernetics, "...yet still smart enough to capture Ricks," and he slams a button by the door.
A waiter-Morty carrying a water pitcher and drinking glasses comes in and pours some for President Morty. Before grabbing it, President Morty merely holds his hand over the glass as he continues speaking, "Even funnier how some of you feel responsible for the one true choice we ever made on our own." He places his hand on the glass and looks at the waiter Morty. "Oh, you remind me... Two choices of our own." As he stares directly at the waiter, he downs the water like a shot of liquor, breaks the glass on the wall, and uses all his rage for Ricks to stab the glass into the waiter's head over and over again.
As Morty stands horrified, President Morty catches his breath and wipes the blood from his hand. "The trick is to actually have a few waiters you don't kill so no one suspects that's their only purpose. Because Mortys killing Mortys... Well... " he pulls out a gun by its barrel, "Rather than have a flashback, why not a reenactment. Any Morty can repeat history, if given a reason," and he places the gun into Morty's hands.
Rick looks to Morty, deeply concerned for him; in a way, expecting emotional torture by proxy.
Morty trembles, "What?—Why? None of this makes any sense! Why are you doing this?!"
"Because I have to," President Morty scowls. "I'm not well. And neither are either of you. I need this therapy to practice on Rick and Mortys, to help me cope with being replaced only months after I left my Rick, to cope with killing the second Morty, to realize that anger is as meaningless and wasted as every Morty, so I don't try to kill myself again, so I can save Mortys—and Ricks—from what is destined to repeat to an exponential degree."
1-03 stood behind President Morty, bored, rolling his eyes and waving his hand for President Morty to hurry the fuck up.
In hearing the word 'practice,' Rick begins to feel the weight of defeat, knowing they'll be there for quite some time, suffering regardless of what awaits them. But Morty looks back and forth between the two of them, then asks, "W—Why'd you leave?"
President Morty answers, "Ricks are assholes, aren't they? Every first Morty reached their limit of abuse. This was before Ricks erased memories."
"Well..." Morty says, "Then I want to help you, to save Mortys, and Ricks, to help you with your practice."
"Morty, there's drains in the floor," Rick berates. "What do you think they're for, because when this prick starts his 'therapy', I know they're not for our tears, dreams, souls, my vomit, or the figurative cum of this self-righteous self-appointed ther-rapist jerking himself off with his own words."
"Shut up!" Morty shouts. He looks to President Morty, "What do I have to do? This is a fake gun right? Do I get to shoot him whenever he's a jerk—Can it be a stun gun? What are we reenacting? What kind of practice?"
"You saw the type," President Morty says. "The fortress of tortured Mortys was an incredible practice exercise for me. Emotionally brutal, but it eventually became easy to construct. Killing Ricks however, I needed that Rick you saw with me—cybernetically controlled—" revealing the wires behind his eye for a moment, "—because for some reason I still can't kill Ricks with my own hands."
Morty raises his gun to President Morty, unable to stop shaking with rage and fear.
1-03 rolls his eyes again, harder, waving his hand to the back of President Morty's head again to hurry up, but this time with his middle finger out of it.
"I suppose my eye-patch made me look evil or something closed-minded like that. But I think both of you would agree... there's nothing evil about ridding the multiverse of bad Ricks."
"W—What do you mean bad Ricks?" Morty asks. "I mean aren't they all pretty bad? Aren't they all pretty the same—pretty similar?"
Meanwhile, Rick could no longer look at anyone in the room. To him, all of himselves were all bad, nothing 'pretty' about it.
"That's what I thought too," President Morty replies, "when I first started my plans. I made a spectrum of Ricks of least evil to most evil, killing the worst first. But in doing so, I met good Ricks, ones that actually cared about Mortys, that had matured to try to change themselves. So I redesigned the spectrum's filter to save the good. It's not fully automatic, yet, and it's not easy..." He looks to Rick, "There are anomalies..."
"Oh my god! Shut, up!" 1-03 gripes with an eye-roll. "Are you going to go on about how he's like me now? This ~UURP~ is taking forever! If you're not going to start, I am," slamming a button to open a panel of clubs, taking one.
"Fine," President Morty replies. "Let's see how I compare to you first, I need a control to measure progress." He takes a club and begins a cold long stare at Rick. Rick just stares back preparing for what he saw coming.
Rayna kicks 1-03's club out of his hand and he slaps her, electrocuting her to the ground. Morty sees how touching the club didn't cause electrocution and tries to reach the dropped club, but 1-03 grabs it even though Rick could have if he tried. Morty yells, "Why did you just stand there!?"
1-03 comes towards Rayna again but this time she kicks his shin, getting electrocuted and falling again. She gets up and kicks again, falling again.
"What the hell?!" Rick yells to her. "What are you—"
"The charge has to wear out," she says. "Are you so much of a pussy you can't suck it up?"
Rick grinds his teeth, then sees President Morty advancing on Morty. Rick tries to push him away from Morty "ARRGGG" and falls from electricity. He suffers it to get up—
"Fine," President Morty says. "You're making me advance the exercise." He pulls out a gun. "Watch me take something important from you." He points the gun at Rayna.
Rick's eyes burst open.
Taking note of how Rick didn't move or say no, President Morty smirks, then shoots at Morty—
"NO!" Rick leaps to take the bullet.
"AHHHRRRGG!" Morty screams in pain, shot in the shoulder.
Rick almost cradles him in his arms and glares at President Morty, thinking 'How could he have meant Morty?!' but President Morty's gun aims at Rayna, 'Why not both?'
He shoots and a shield reflects the bullet, emanating from the choker Rick gave her.
Only Rick and Morty weren't gawking in shock, as Morty's screams of pain become fueled double now by rage, and he takes swings at Rick.
Rick and Rayna both charge for Rick's coat in the corner and both get knocked down by President Morty's and 1-03's lazy touch, 1-03 touch being suddenly flipping off Rayna's face to so she'd run into it.
President Morty address 1-03, "If you portal her to your private quarters and figure out how to remove the choker, you'll get to do whatever to her before returning her here."
1-03 smirks like a dirty old man and takes out his portal gun—
Rayna recovers military-quick from the shock—having only pretended it hurt as much as it would someone else—yanks the portal gun away, and kicks off the wall to dart across the room, opening a portal as Rick pulls Morty in with her.
The haphazard portal exit makes them fall onto a dense crowd of Ricks. Rick immediately rips a coat off one as Rayna was reaching for a coat with the same idea but 1-03 and President Morty fall from the portal too, so she creates a portal instead.
The coatless Ricks yell, "HEY! MOTHER FUCK—" but Rick and Rayna were too far away now, carrying Morty, who was still screaming in pain. The Rick turns to another Rick in the crowd, rips off his coat and runs.
"THE FUCK! I'M NAKED—GIVE ME TH—!" the Rick shouts, ripping off the coat of another Rick.
As Rick, Rayna, and screaming Morty enter the portal, Rayna grabs a coat at the last second, as the crowd turns into chaos of near cannibalistic Ricks. It slows 1-03 and President Morty from following and some of the Ricks get shocked before they back off from 1-03 pointing a gun, "BACK AWAY FROM THE ~UURP~ PRESIDENT! BACK OFF ASSHOLES!" Some of the Ricks had inadvertently kept the portal open by entering it to chase Rick, so President Morty and 1-03 enter just in time.
"RICK—OHHH—IT HURTS! Heal me! What are you waiting for!?"
With Morty flailing in Rick's arms, Rick manages to pull out—not a healing gun—but a gun-gun and starts shooting pursuing Ricks, "There's no time! Suck it up and run! There's no holes in your LEGS! I can't aim—" and Rayna opens another portal.
President Morty speaks and his voice carries over the entire citadel, "ALL RICKS: CAPTURE THE RICK WITH A WOMAN AND SCREAMING MORTY. THIS IS YOUR PRESIDENT."
Every nearby Rick sees Rick, Morty, and Rayna enter the portal and follow. Rayna pulls a gun from her Rick-coat and she and Rick start shooting Ricks coming from the portal. Rick stops when President Morty and 1-03 exit among the crowd but Rayna continues shooting with precision headshots outside of the range of President Morty's probable shield range.
"AWWAAHH," Morty wails, "Rick I know you have Bullet Repair!" collapsing to the ground.
Rick drags him, "Quit being a PUSSY MORTY! Get up! You know how many times I've been shot or forced to watch the Star Wars Christmas Special! Get over it!" Then Rick orders Rayna, "SWITCH!" tossing his gun to Rayna, and she intuitively knows to throw the portal gun to him, both catching their switched item at the same time, in sync. Rick opens a portal as Rayna shoots with two guns.
Exiting the portal, they fall from mid-air as Rick opens a portal far below them, then opens one above them, as they fall into the portal below, whereas President Morty, 1-03, and other Ricks fall into the one above them without seeing the one Rick fell in.
President Morty, 1-03, and all the following Ricks exit the portal to crash down onto the same chaotic crowd of Ricks from earlier. Now with even more Ricks piling on from above, Ricks all around get electrocuted until the charge fades away. "GET AWAY FROM THE PRESIDENT, get out from UNDER US damn it!" 1-03 orders.
Elsewhere, Rick throws flailing Morty down and starts putting on his coat, "Hopefully I've just drained the charge on their Shock Armor by tossing them into a crowd," then starts digging through it, "but now we—"
"Why are you just standing there—" Morty screams as Rick pulls out a healing gun.
"What the fuck is this, huh!" thrusting the healing gun in Morty's face, then injects Morty's wound with healing fluid. "Why are you screaming?! You know I always carry this around! It doesn't matter! I'm just going to erase—"
"If it doesn't matter, then why am I always in pain!? I—I don't care about the future, everybody dies in the future. But everything matters right now, I don't want to hurt right now! Erase my memories all you want, I still wouldn't want to be in pain, even if it goes away!" as the wound finishes healing.
"Because you're a little pussy-puss, Morty! W—W—We were getting shot at repeatedly and you want me to stop and fix something that you can just suck up if you had balls to go with your pubes. Pain disappears, it's meaningless, see!" motioning to the healed wound.
"I meant emotional pain!"
"That's the pussiest of them all!" Rick yells. "It—It—It's needy, irrational—intangible, barely even real. It's all in your head, so get over it," but it sounds like an excuse.
Rayna defends, "Rick, I know you know there's more than three hormones. Hormones are literally tangible emotions. Tissue heals but you can't escape chemicals in your blood. Otherwise why is it impossible to not cry at the death scene in Up."
Morty stands up and leans into Rick, "Y—Yeah. And, how could you give her a shield at not me? Two years Rick! Almost two years you've had to give me one—like a bracelet or a Fitbit or something! Rayna even likes pain!"
"There's only one of her, Morty! And a ton just like you. I can find another like you exactly in every way, ~UURP~ again. I can even copy your memories and put them into a clone—It doesn't matter, nothing matters!"
"To you! That's your problem, you think that's the same thing! Of course it doesn't matter to you, but it matters to me, cuz there's only one of me and there's only one of you!"
Suddenly a portal opens below the three of them and they fall into the therapy room again. Rick instantly tries to portal away but President Morty informs, "Unregistered it. And we figured her shield also had a tracking device. Hacked it to find her... You can't keep running... C-137."
"Whoa..." Rayna says, aghast, and Rick sees it too. When President Morty said 'C-137', glaring at Rick, they both saw in his eyes a thick sinew of love and bonds, worn raw and bloody from a lifetime of screaming into the insurmountable, unmovable wall that is Rick. This Rick.
Rick wrenches his eyes away to stop them from watering when Rayna looks to him to say, "Rick... You should tell him—"
"Fuck you."
"—Look, I don't want to manipulate you, but I don't want to manipulate him either," motioning to Morty. "I don't want to be like that anymore. I mean when I say it's a 'dead end for me, times infinity,' you know it's not a hyperbole—It's literal. Please."
"Fuck! Off!"
"Tell me what?" Morty asks, looking between all three of them.
Rayna looks to Morty and opens her mouth to speak—
"It stops moving its chin or else it gets the mute again!" Rick growls to her.
Morty glares at Rick, "Well, wouldn't that mean two of us would get manipulated, by you, instead of just one?!" then looks to Rayna, "So not telling me would be even more manipulative."
"Good point," Rayna says, and starts to speak ag—
Rick mutes her.
"Rick!" Morty demands.
"ANYWAYS," President Morty says, impatient. "Now that you've met a Morty that chose to leave his Rick, let me introduce you to a Rick that chose to leave Mortys."
They look to 1-03, then Rayna turns to Morty and starts trying to tell him something using gestures including pointing at President Morty.
"Raayynnaa!" Rick warns.
"Here," President Morty says, "let me help," then he takes out his own portal gun, and just as everyone's eyes widen, he opens a portal under Rayna and Morty.
"Noo!" Rick shouts, collapsing to his knees. A growing torrent of every kind of pain—decades of it—begins clawing through his core, becoming something unbearable, until there's nothing left to shred.
President Morty moves beyond 1-03 to stand over Rick, knowing he's been rendered lifeless, letting him see him play with a portal gun, knowing it would chill him. "Should I be flattered that I was able to trick a genius for this long?" President Morty asks, "Or should I be insulted, that it really took this long for you to figure it out?"
"Would it have even mattered? Aren't I dead either way..." and Rick drags his eyes up to his, "...Morty."
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Next Chapter: Sane Rick and Torture
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