Beth wandered into the communication room and just… Watched. She'd been so worried.
Sarah was glaring at the portal. "Just walk through it, please."
Space Beth's eyes flickered to Beth, showing visible relief, but focused back on dad. "And you swear it is safe?"
Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose. "Yes. But, and I must state this again for emphasis, everyone ELSE in the family is now protected from this molten liquid death orb even IF I wasn't trying to redirect the transitive position to target a different species. One that has a low population count and a low sexual compatibility to reduce half breed casualties."
Her dad leaned forward. "Now come through and let me enhance and reinforce your genetics and psionic field before someone too strong sneezes at you and wipes you from existence. Not to mention that I have concerns about your implants, those things need a full redesign no doubt."
The woman on the other end of the blue 'window' floating in the air snorted. "Now I KNOW you aren't a normal version of my Dad, he refuses to see ANY problems with his projects."
Sarah was in mid rant when she froze. "Shit. Hold that thought sweetie, another dimension just got black listed. MRS, send Beth… Local Beth, I mean, send your sister over here to take over."
A speaker next to a visibly amused but unnoticed woman spoke up. "Yes Ma'am? But…"
The other glowing blue portal to the side vanished. "Sorry MRS, I'm out of time. Tell her when she gets here that this button…" A pedestal formed into place with a big blue button. "Will open a portal to her sister when she agrees to come through. The Medical Pods are pretty automated, so when she comes through she can easily enough apply the same upgrades the rest of the family got, although she will be on a separate personal hive mind just like you and just like the local version of my sweetie."
A strange bone spike with blue flames formed in her hands as skeletal armor began fading into view. "Oh, and technically the blue button will open a portal anywhere you target MRS, so have fun with that, but no other portals are allowed within a significant distance from this ship. The defenses I set up should keep it safe, but there is a REASON I made this communication room so easily secured and defended… Anyway, just... Just keep the family safe."
Beth stood forward. "Dad?"
Sarah blinked. "Damn that was fast! No time to talk, ask the ship and get Space Beth her enhancements while I'm gone! You can contact me with your command node after I secure the survivors."
And the lab coat woman left through a blue tear in reality.
A confused part of her mind judged this blue form of portal was much more pretty than the normal toxic green one. The rest just stared with her space clone at the missing father.
Her space sister broke the silence. "Huh."
She threw a half hearted glare at the similar woman with mechanical enhancements. "I KNOW you were trolling her. You always do when Dad tries to talk."
The other woman had the grace to look a bit sheepish. "Yeah, sorry. Didn't know anything serious was going on after he confirmed the family was safe."
It was probably telling that neither of them felt the urge to mention Jerry's passing. That man had burned EVERY bridge possible.
She walked over, tapping the blue button, letting her other half walk through… And then wrapped her sister in a hug. "Thanks for coming home, Beth."
If there was a trembling in her weary space adventuring half, neither mentioned it. "Glad to have a home to come back to, Beth."
A slightly awkward digital cough came from the speakers. "Can… Can I assume that you both got Sarah's message? Good? Good. I'll go off and get the medical pods ready for the procedures."
One Beth raised an eyebrow at the other. "So what was all that 'enhanced ability' mumbo-jumbo our father flavored Ms. Bellum was talking about?"
A mental flex made the other woman jerk back as holograms began showing the various benefits her father had ensured her family now had. "Oh… One or two things, really."
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Now that Adam had [[Harvested]] the laboratory of a mostly 'normal' Rick, it had been easy enough to have an alert mark when a new dimension hit the 'abandon' listings. It was, strangely enough, mostly determined by Jerry Smith.
At some point, one of the Ricks had discovered that if there was ANY hope of saving a dimension, a quick way to roughly determine it early and without work (Which was a vital and fundamentally important criteria for ANY Rick) was to check on the local Jerry.
If there was a way to betray his family, to flee, to hide, to slither out of death and danger… He would take it. To a nearly supernatural degree, that man would survive nearly everything.
So when Jerry dies, it was probably good to assume that the entire dimension was a write off too.
Not that anyone LIKED Jerry really, for a man who was nearly immortal when it came to risky and deadly situations he didn't do much of ANYTHING to make anyone's life better. Not even his own!
The man infuriated the Ricks because the bastard was almost like a carefully designed product who's only gift was survival at any cost.
No skills, no talents, no abilities… Nothing but selfish survival. And he was perfectly willing to betray, kill, steal, cross any line and do near anything to keep living. Even against other Jerrys, no less.
In the end, it was a major warning sign when a Jerry suddenly decided to 'hang out' or tried to sneak onto one of Rick's ships. And trying to kill him not only caused issues with other people (Some who didn't even care before!), but again: He would somehow survive MOST of the time anyway!
So MANY Ricks just made sure to dump their Jerrys in one of the nearby
Jerryboree daycare locations (Go off and play with your other Jerries!) and just cautiously check their home base situation to determine WHAT exactly caused Jerry to try and flee the dimension THIS time and maybe fix it.
It was a working theory that Morty's odd ability to avoid detection, the one Sarah's Perk was based on (Not that anyone here knew that), was a variation of JERRY'S ability to somehow survive situations through betrayal. And it WAS an odd thing.
Literally armies of Ricks had investigated HOW Morty worked, and came up with nothing. Somehow reality itself just sort of caused cameras to be aligned slightly wrong or some random fight would shift perfect scanner patterns to slightly miss their target sections. Even guards would need breaks or would feel sick or whatever.
The only time it DIDN'T keep Morty protected was in situations where Rick might be able to determine how it operated... At which point everything showed up as a normal boy that could easily be killed. With no special qualities. It basically made further testing pointless, protecting the OTHER Mortys from further experimentation.
And don't even get her started on the crazy stuff that happens when lots of Mortys are gathered together! The reactions got beyond complicated and hard to trace and evaluate. There was a reason you needed a Morty on policy enforcement duty, no Rick could have the same results if it was THEIR job.
Sarah wasn't able to figure it out either, but her analysis abilities were limited compared to a full Rick. As a part of the decoy family experiment, the original Rick only focused on granting two big skills: Genetics, to ensure cloning would operate at expected tolerance levels, and the robotics engineering levels required to fill in impossible gaps with artificial replacements.
True, it ended up with ceramic and puppet decoy clones being created… But the amount of information NEEDED to make a wood/human clone cyborg? That is Rick level shit right there.
Probably why the Jump incarnated her here, in that clone. Her purchases just found an easy match to insert her logically into this Jump, even if she would have preferred a less horrific start on this leg of the journey.
Anyway, she was trying to overcome her lack of ability. Right NOW Sarah was cheating like hell using Adam's 'Research' ability to control, modify, and safely test all the shit stolen from the Rick lab and her fragmented memories to brute force solutions.
It was at least partially why her daughters could understand and even discuss all this technological stuff, because compared to her ability when it came to genetics or robotics? It was just not as astounding.
But, on the other hand, less mad scientist skill seemed to ALSO mean less madness.
Which was nice.
Anyway, the local Jerry is dead! The new dimension was marked as lost! And Adam's alert marked this particular location as one where the Rick isn't there (Or wasn't willing) to save the others. Ether from dying or from abandoning it all to go elsewhere.
Fuck that, let's see who survived. Hopefully it was soon enough that the whole family made it.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Sarah looked at the still corpses left inside the activated shielding of the Smith house.
Some sort of military force, and not one of the more recognizable ones… Still. "Adam?"
Adam was busy. <<One moment… No, hang on! This will be faster.>>
[[
Harvest.]]
The entire house vanished, along with a significant underground base and lots of dead soldiers.
He hummed. <<Right, invasion trying to… Huh, not actually related to Earth or Rick at all! Planet seemed to just be in the way, if I'm reading the data in the soldiers body armor correctly. They only bothered to invade because the local Rick somehow prevented the planet from being excavated… Some sort of core extraction wave thing?>>
Yeah, whatever. "Where are the survivors?"
Data showed up. <<Taken for examination. Jerry tried to make a deal, but that ended up with Rick being executed and managing to somehow take Jerry out at the same time out of spite. Some sort of tooth grenade, though it looks like stupendously dangerous material was used. Probably gave him mouth cancer every week or so.>>
Yeah, well, Ricks be like that. "Got the coordinates?"
Some marks were highlighted. <<Thankfully, yes. The house systems were active during the attack. Due to losing two of the prisoners needed for questioning, the others were given much better treatment to ensure survival for transit! Here is the destination, we will hopefully get more data there.>>
These particular creatures were some sort of wooden golem wearing red flannel shirts, suspenders, and… High heels? Well, you do you, wooden lumberjack people.
Mr. McStabberson would however like to have a bit of a chat about where her damn family was right now.
Now that she was off of the MRS ship, she could use 'normal' green portals again to avoid certain questions, and she used one to step through to an artificial planet (Some sort of meat forest war world).
Let's ask some questions!
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Morty was freaking out! But like, only mentally. This wasn't the first time things got a bit tricky to handle. "Come on sis, just… Just stay calm."
Summer glared at him! "Grandpa's dead because of Dad and Mom is… She hasn't woken up yet."
Focus. "Rick is probably fine, I've seen him die a dozen times before." Technically true, but most were just clever setups and fake death traps to throw off pursuers. Or Ricks from other dimensions causing problems. "He'll come save us, and Mom's just… She just needs a bit of treatment and she'll be fine."
His mom was breathing, therefore a Rick could fix this. Morty could use the portal gun and head to the Citadel, pretend to be doing another chore for his lazy ass grandfather, get her fixed right up! He knew where all the valuable junk was after all, and most Ricks didn't bother to follow established procedures, so it would probably work!
Once they escaped.
And stole a ship.
And got back to Earth.
Where the portal gun was.
No, don't freak out. "And I managed to set off the emergency assistance beacon, just before they took us! Remember?"
Summer weakly smiled, not knowing that Rick had torn that system apart for parts months ago. Not that it mattered, one of the more drunken rants had the old man telling Morty that the button was more a 'stay away, bad situation here' marker than anything.
If it had been working, he wouldn't have bothered to hit it at all… But as he had hoped, the futile potential for rescue was keeping Summer's spirits up AND, more importantly, convinced their captors to keep them alive long enough to find out what that button actually did!
So… Probably torture. Hopefully for only him, since Summer hadn't gone through the shit he had over the years. Better than instant execution like these wooden lumberjacks did to Rick though.
Seriously Dad… Claiming 'Rick' was the cause of all the problems!? Rick was the only one who could have saved them! It was like stabbing your life raft to make a blanket, it just caused MORE problems than it solved!
Not that it mattered, Dad got to experience karma for his acts almost immediately after.
No, focus. "Right, I got a few tools in reserve, but we need to time this right. These log ships are shaped too poorly for atmospheric reentry, so there must be a limb or branch ship they use for transfer of prisoners to their interrogation rooms."
Hopefully. Unless their home planet was a beaver dam or something, and the entire log just slots into it or whatever. No, Focus.
Morty tapped his holdout laser, the one that destroyed his left hand's coordination after it was installed into his limb. "The smaller ship will have less enforcers, and yet most armies like this one ensure that each of the individual units can also travel long distances in an emergency."
Nope, in fact the majority of the time it was the opposite. Carrier ships like this would let the expensive units in transport vessels skip over the expensive shielding and more powerful engines, relying on the fighting crafts and the massive hull to protect the things until battle and travel was done.
Still, there was a CHANCE to escape and commandeer the transport ship (If one would be used), and that was better than their options NOW.
Summer adjusted her jacket over mom. "Plus neither of us can actually move Mom that easily, so at least they will help move her to the smaller vessel first. What can I do to help?"
Not really anything. The only reason they had a chance was this species was made out of wood, they had dropped their guard, and Morty had the ONLY long distance weapon he had seen so far. The lumberjack golems insisted on only using axes, so if they were careful? Maybe.
Still. "Keep track of everyone we see, and make sure I end them all before trying to take over the new craft. If I lose count I might accidentally leave someone behind putting Mom at risk."
Summer gave a weak smile. "Yeah! I can do that, Morty."
Right, that was a plan. Right? Right.
Here's hoping his hidden arm beam doesn't burn all his nerves and tendons before the escape attempt finishes. It was a holdout weapon for a REASON, the hand itself was almost assuredly a lost cause after this.
Still, a plan! Things were getting better already!
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Sarah was not having ANY of this shit.
"[[
Harvest.]]"
As more than a dozen of these golems vanished, even more details unfolded.
The lumberjacks were just minions. Robots. Feeding units for this meat forest.
This living flesh planet covered in flesh trees spawned the lumberjack fighters and ships and so forth to go hunt more meat and discover sexy new breeds of lumber. It was in it for the wood.
A flick of her wrist sent Mr. McStabberson off to pierce a distant 'Log Cabin', one of the many assembly buildings where even more lumberjacks were being constructed. That should slow down the process a bit.
There were no computers to infiltrate, but a bit of experimentation had helped 'Research' learn how to more efficiently [[Harvest]] these low intellect wood creatures at least. To translate chemical signals and wood grain patterns into consumable memories and data.
This stupid monster was almost a knock off version of the Borg, just flesh and puppet oriented instead of focusing on technology. Each of these war worlds were fleshy hunters that searched through space for… Something. Not clear what exactly.
And there was some sort of 'Old Growth' somewhere out in this reality? Not much data there.
In a way, it was lucky Earth lasted THIS long before it got targeted. Sheesh.
An odd sound of creaking trees echoed as another army of lumberjacks began thudding their way towards their eventual doom through the meaty forest.
Good, it would take another four hours until the 'Star Log' got within easy scanning distance of this place. Hopefully one of THESE idiots knew better positioning data so she could skip all this free material donation and actually HELP her family.
If not, she was perfectly happy to continue harvesting this location until they arrived unharmed.
And they BETTER be unharmed.
If their space vessels had any kind of travel stability, she would have actually hijacked a ship or whipped up a small travel something or other and intercepted the stupid thing by now! But it would be faster and safer to just wait for the dumb thing to show up.
That didn't make her FEEL better, but it was more important to save her loved ones than to waste time trying to 'do something' that ended up being pointless.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Morty prepared.
Summer was keeping her eyes open while staying close to Mom being carried by one of the few unarmed lumberjacks they had seen so far.
When he deployed his weapon, the slow reaction speed of these creatures should let him burn the escorting guards before the one carrying Mom could retaliate… Probably.
It was the ONLY option with a chance of success though. Otherwise, if he didn't focus on the wooden and armed crowd, one would axe him while his focus was off.
Each step through the halls sounded like some sort of whimsical wooden instrument, which clashed harshly with their bloody and torn clothing. Thankfully the filth wasn't from further injuries, just… Rick and Dad didn't end cleanly.
No, focus.
One shot, and hopefully the wooden ship would be easy enough to redirect destinations so that Summer could get them SOMEWHERE while Morty would pass out from exploding his wrist and forcing his hold out weapon to burn the rest off trying to kill these bastards.
It wasn't the BEST situation, but… Well, it wasn't the best situation.
He shook his head at Summer.
Not yet.
The next doors were closed (Manually, what a crappy spaceship, honestly) and the wooden creatures began sliding into wall recesses like some sort of storage system.
Not yet.
A massive JERK had the wooden vessel shudder (Hopefully a transport ship? Or even better, a combat focused one since they clearly hadn't planned on any prisoners when attacking Earth, that would be damn useful!) and he began charging his beam and gritting his teeth.
This was going to suck. So bad.
Three. Two. One.
Now, they should be far enough away to not just re dock with the massive log shaped carrier. "Hey Summer? Can you make sure Mom is breathing alright? That is an important function of us organic sticks, a function needed to ensure we can properly provide data to the living forest as directed by the living forest."
This STUPID way of talking! But whatever works.
Summer did her best. "Uh… Yeah? I'm going to need you to put Mom… I mean, the long organic stick down to make sure she is functioning as required."
A stupid plan.
Of course, this was a near mornic lump of moving wood, so why WOULDN'T it work? 'Forest Twig confirms, requires organic stick to ensure lengthy organic stick is operating optimily to ensure Living Forest can extract required organic stick functions as mandated by Living Forest."
Whatever, the important thing was Mom now lay flat on the ground and Summer was 'checking' on her, also out of firing range. "Summer, make sure to cover your ears to ensure proper confirmation that long organic stick is fully functioning for future extraction."
Shit.
This was going to hurt.
SO bad.
Summer covered her ears and nodded.
Well. Time to get shit done.
A scream of pain had Morty's left hand explode into gore as his wrist cauterized from the orange beam burning straight through his arm… AND through the nearest lumberjack.
Gritting his teeth, Morty dodged to the center of the room while carefully blasting one specific area of the ship clear, providing a spot to retreat to while the lumberjacks slowly recovered from the change in circumstances and hopefully NOT piercing through this flimsy craft into space itself. "Summer!"
Shit, she couldn't hear over the screaming and his own weak voice.
Well, it didn't matter, his sister couldn't move Mom anyway. Better clear some more space and just… Try not to burn through the walls and lose atmosphere, causing everyone's death. Everyone needing to breathe at least.
While statistically killing everyone should count as a win, it wasn't the optimum endgame Morty was aiming for.
Oh good, his left arm had burned enough that he couldn't feel the pain any more. He had a few more minutes of fire or so until the weapon damaged the limb enough to fall off, hopefully not killing someone important in the process… But at least for now, it hurt less.
Though the fact that his living flesh was transfering enough heat to burn MORE of his body in the process, well… He might not have as much time left to aim as he estimated.
He would adapt.
Dodging a thrown axe (Well, collapsing to the side, but it should totally count!), Morty blinked after another flaming timber warrior fell... And no more came into the room.
Did… Did they do it? Maybe. Focus.
Suddenly his laser flickered and shut off.as SOMETHING important melted. Ah.
Well, uh. Hopefully that was enough, because now they were unarmed. Ha.
Stumbling forward, he tried to lift one of the thrown axes with his remaining hand.
And nearly fell over in the process. "Shit."
Right, uh. The Axes might be made out of metal or something. They were super heavy.
Seeing Summer easily lift the same axe, he blinked.
Or the blood loss might be hurting his ability to get shit done. Whatever, they could work with this. "Mom alright?"
Summer nodded, trying not to look at his still smoking limb. "Yeah, we're both fine… And uh. You? You doing alright?"
Hell no. "Yeah, might be a bit slow though. I am pretty sure the control center of the craft is this way, toward the center of the thing. All these ships are roughly built the same, and that's where the power supply and command structure was located when Rick was scanning the biggest attackers back on Earth."
Back when they thought wiping out the leadership would help the situation. At least, help more than cause a three minute pause in action. "Just… If Mom's safe there, help me get walking?"
Thankfully Summer wasn't going to be annoying about this, although she did accidentally bump one of the cuts Morty hadn't noticed when dodging those thrown weapons. "Right, uh. Let's just go redirect this thing and… And get home and stuff!"
Please don't be a direct wooden golem to ship interface. Please.
Just be some sort of computer, or use buttons or levers or something. Morty could work with that, he could do SOMETHING, half of Rick's shit came without instructions! He was TRAINED to handle shit like this!
Things were blurry.
Summer… Said something? "What?"
No, his hearing was gone entirely now.
A good portion of his vision too.
And uh. Things felt bad. Real bad.
Still, as his mind fell to fog… He just had one, strange question.
Was that Ms. Bellum?
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Summer ignored the burn on her arm best she could. "You did great Morty, I bet all the girls back home are going to be super impressed…"
Shit, something in the charred fragments of his arm just fell out. Some sort of wire? Fuck. "Just… Stay awake, a little bit longer! You just gotta tell me how to fly this ship and uh… Well, for now, just get away from the other ships. Then you can take a bit of a nap."
Her damaged brother made some sort of hiss and whine noise. It… It didn't sound good. "Hang on, we're almost there."
Maybe? His directions hadn't been clear, and the damage to that room had made the hallways damaged and even more confusing than this odd organically designed mess already was. Nothing was straight lines, the wood just sort of twisted in any which way and the ship seemed to enjoy just letting it do so.
He hadn't said the damage would be this bad. "Hey, Morty? Are… Is this the way I needed to go?"
Silence. He had fallen unconscious. Hopefully, ONLY unconscious. "Just… Alright, I can do this. You just… Just rest up."
Shit. Shit. Shit. NO! Mom AND Morty needed her to stay calm!
Leaning against the warped wooden wall, she groaned. "Right… What should I do? I can… Maybe let Morty rest here?"
She could move faster alone, but something wouldn't let her put down her brother. Honestly, if she could walk while holding Mom she wouldn't have let HER go either, resting in that damaged room of death.
Suddenly she flinched! Footsteps!?
Distantly, a voice was shouting! "Beth! Summer! Morty! Can anyone hear me!?" And a snarl. "Not you, you moronic wooden hatchet jobs! You don't even HAVE names, you are… Oh just die already. [[
H̩̞̻a͈̝̦r͓̟v͇̤̥͎͕̘͚e̝̜ș̻͈t̻.]]"
Fuck it. "Hello! We're over here!"
She did NOT know enough to take over this ship, and none of the lumberjacks that had taken them had cared about their names or safety. So this was SOMEONE potentially unrelated to the situation, and that was worth the risk.
The woman's voice audibly perked up! "Summer!? Oh thank everything, I was starting to worry I had invaded the wrong ship! Not that this stupid mess should count as an actual ship, substituting hive psionics for shoddy engineering. Oh, right."
An achingly familiar green portal formed on the nearest wall!
And confusion stepped out. "Ms. Bellum? Why are you dressed up for an anime convention?"
The heavily armored bone-covered neighbor (Who looked surprisingly young and attractive for some reason) snorted and pointed a bone spear at Morty. "Talk later, Morty looks like he took a huge hit."
Her brother somehow floated from her weakened arms, and into another green portal (One that showed up WITHOUT the use of a portal gun, impossibly enough). "Now, where's your mom?"
She wearily waved behind her. "A few halls that way." How long had it been since they ate? Or had anything to drink? Or even slept? "Are we safe now?"
The woman wrapped her up in a quick hug. "Yes, sweetie. Let me get you treated and healed up, and then go get little Beth somewhere safe. We can come back and handle this situation later, they move slowly enough that we will have months to make a plan first."
Wow, Ms. Bellum was way more hard core than she realized! "I'mma take a nap now."
The humming was nice too.
