"They Live...Again!" - Part Four

Part Four

            “Did you say ‘dead’?” Darwin reacted to Rick’s assumption of Elmore Junior High’s new interim principal.

            “Yes, dead…as in ‘deceased’,” Rick scathingly clarified. “W-What? D-Do you people not have death in your world?! Do…Do you just…like…I dunno…waste away into nothingness? Like some magical pixie dust?!?!”

            “Rick, calm down,” Cara instructed. They were no longer in the auditorium (the assembly ended over twenty minutes ago). Instead, they were standing out in the middle of the hall. “What if this friend of yours isn’t the same woman? What if she’s just one of infinite versions of herself?”

            Rick considered her reasoning. “I…I just can’t shake this feeling that it’s her. You guys need to look into it.”

            “Us?!” Cara exclaimed. “You’re the one that’s so paranoid about it.”

            “Well, I can’t *burp* look into her and try to find the source of the signal, can I?!” Rick disputed. “C-Compromise with me here, will ya?”

            “Mr. Small?”

            In his ranting, Rick almost didn’t see the living cutout of a bear approach him.

            “Aren’t we supposed to meet for my afternoon session?” she asked him.

            Rick neglected to remember his cover as a high school counselor, wishing he had gone as a janitor instead. “Y-Yes…like, totally, little…paper girl…thing…”

            “Teri,” Gumball whispered to him in a sideways manner.

            “Carrie!” Rick blurted by mistake. “Yes, Carrie! I’m ready!”

            “I’m Carrie. She’s Teri.”

            Rick jolted in alarm as another girl – a white, translucent ghost – materialized right in front of him. “Geez! What is wrong with this dimension?!”

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            Cara felt like the big kid of the bunch, sitting at the lunch table with Gumball, Darwin, Morty, and even Tobias, who continued to flirt with her. She hated her “Thelma” disguise, which should have broken the school dress code, with the ridiculous shortness of the skirt part of it.

            Interim Principal Holly Thompson monitored the cafeteria. Her presence in the room gave Cara an idea that she shared with the boys: “If we can get a food fight started, Thompson will have no choice but to call us into the office.”

            “So, your plan is to get us in trouble?” Gumball cringed.

            “Yeah,” Cara confirmed. “We need to find out if she really is the same woman Rick claims to have fought the Overtakers with. She might be able to help us.”

            That last possibility was enough incentive for Gumball and Darwin to enact Cara’s plan. Scooping up globs of peanut butter and jelly from their lunch trays, they stood atop the table and yelled loud enough for the whole lunchroom to hear, including Miss Thompson.

            “How dare you say that about my mother!”

            “Dude,” Darwin whispered, out of character. “We got the same mom.”

            “Oh, right.” Realizing his mistake, Gumball changed the script. “I mean…How dare you say that my head is the wrong proportion to my body! I’ll have you know that my head and body are exactly the same proportions!”

            Gumball’s setup made no sense to Darwin, but he went along with it anyway.

            “I’ll prove you wrong when I show you how easy it is to aim for your big head!”

            This was the cue for them to hurl their condiments at each other. Unfortunately, both Watterson boys had terrible aim. The peanut butter and jelly ended up hitting Anton – a living piece of slightly burnt toast – instead.

            To make matters worse, Anton told them, “Thanks, guys! My dermatologist’s been tellin’ me to take better care of my skin. All this P.B. and jelly will really help with my complexion!”

            Cara groaned over the failure of Gumball and Darwin’s approach in provoking a food fight. Showing them how it was done, she stood up on the table with them with a handful of mashed potatoes and screamed at the top of her lungs, “FOOD FIGHT!”

            After the first throw, each and every student in the cafeteria hurled their lunches across the room.

            In the midst of it all, a slice of pizza struck Miss Thompson in the face.

            Humiliated, her strikingly pale blue eyes fixated on the instigators of the mayhem.

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            Cara’s plan was a flawless success. There was a setback when Thompson had only Cara and Darwin brought to her office. Gumball and Morty were forced to stay and clean the cafeteria – a task that Morty experienced difficulty doing with the lack of appendages from his “Alan” disguise.

            Cleaning the sauce and pepperoni off her face, Miss Thompson scolded Cara and Darwin in a husky yet smooth voice: “That fight you both started in the cafeteria was unnecessary. If you wanted to find out that I’m the ‘Holly Thompson’ Rick Sanchez fought the Overtakers with, all you had to do was ask.”

            Her awareness of their suspicions surprised Cara and Darwin. She pretty much verified it to them right there and then.

            “Thank God,” Cara huffed in relief. “You’ve got to help us stop them. They’re here in Elmore. We’ve been helping Rick find the source of the signal, which we believe is somewhere here in the school.”

            “I know,” Thompson said. “Because I was the one who brought them here.”

            Out of the principal’s desk, Holly seized a gun and aimed it directly at the horrified faces of Cara and Darwin.

            “Jinkies,” Cara gulped.

"They Live...Again!" - Part Three

Part Three

            “Of all the places they could choose to set up their signal, why Elmore Junior High?” Gumball questioned to Rick. The group returned to Cara’s T.A.R.D.I.S. posthaste in learning of the Overtakers’ whole plan.

            “Probably ‘cause of their previous attempt on another Earth,” Rick surmised. “Their signal there was at a *burrrp* cable news station. I guess they’re thinking outside the cable box this time and using your school as their base of operations in this dimension.”

            As feasible as all this was, Cara still couldn’t wrap her head around one thing:

            “If you knew where the source of the signal was this whole time, why did you decide to shoot up the bank?”

            “I wanted to be sure I had the right dimension,” Rick replied. “I…I mean, have you seen this world? It’s the last place we’d expect the Overtakers to overtake, which is why it’s so ingenious.”

            Cara couldn’t argue with that logic. “So, what’s your plan?”

            “You, Morty, and me are going undercover at Gumball and Darwin’s school. You and Morty are gonna be *uurp* students, and I’ll be one of the faculty members.”

            “How’re you guys gonna pass that off?” Gumball asked Rick and Morty specifically. “Your faces are all over the news after that bank shootout.”

            “Ah, but I anticipated that scenario,” Rick said before retrieving a couple of necklaces from his lab coat. “These will camouflage us completely.” He demonstrated by putting on one of the necklaces and adjusting the attached dial for his chosen appearance.

            Rick morphed through a dozen different people until finally settling on a tall, fluffy cloud-like man wearing a rainbow-patterned shirt, black bell bottoms, and blue and yellow sandals.

            “Hey, you look just like our school counselor, Mr. Small,” Darwin observed.

            Cara, Gumball, Darwin, and Morty stood amazed from Rick’s demonstration.

            “L-Let me try mine,” Morty said, taking his necklace and adjusting the dial to his chosen disguise. His dial, however, only gave him the form of a slightly deflated, teal colored balloon, whose face was drawn on with black permanent marker ink. “What the…?” His voice became high-pitched and squeaky to suit the cover. “W-Who is this guy?”

            “That’d be our good friend, Alan,” Darwin recognized.

            “Though I wouldn’t necessarily call him our ‘friend’…or ‘good’,” Gumball remarked in a dismissive tone.

            “Wait,” Cara realized, following Rick and Morty’s transformations. “What about me? Where’s my necklace?!”

            “Oh, uh, about that…” Even with Mr. Small’s stereotypical hippie voice, Rick still retained some of his usual gruffness (and belching). “I didn’t make you one, ‘cause you *buuurrrp* know…I didn’t expect to see ya in this dimension. So, I gotcha this on the way here.” He threw her a disguise that came complete with a short brown wig, a bright orange sweater, a red mini-skirt, and glasses.

            Only after putting it on in the wardrobe room and looking at herself in the mirror did she discover that she bore a striking resemblance to Velma Dinkley of Mystery Inc., albeit more sexualized in the disguise Rick provided for her.

            “Seriously?!” she griped. “What is this, Rick?!”

            Taking a swig from his flask (an odd display for Gumball and Darwin, who perceived Mr. Small as the one drinking from it), Rick told her, “What? You wanted a disguise, so I *uurrp* gave you one.”

            “Yeah, as Velma Dinkley!” Cara stormed.

            “I…I don’t see what you’re complaining about. Isn’t she the sexy one?”

            “That’s Daphne, you moron!”

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            With no other choice, Cara went along with Rick’s ridiculous disguise. She arrived at Elmore Junior High the next day with Rick and the boys. Gumball and Darwin were welcomed back by their peers and teachers alike (except for maybe Miss Simian, who could’ve gone an extra month free of their antics).

            Cara, the “new student,” got a lot of attention, particularly from Tobias Wilson.

            “Well, hello there, pretty mama,” he flirted, developing a fast crush on her. “Haven’t seen you around here before? What’s your name?”

            “Thelma,” Cara giggled, putting on a thick southern accent.

            “Enchanté, Thelma,” Tobias said. “You just moved to Elmore?”

            “Why, yes,” Cara returned, feigning enthusiasm. “I transferred here all the way from a little place called Gallifrey.”

            “Gallifrey,” Tobias repeated the name like it was something else for him to fall for. “Sounds as beautiful as you.”

            Gumball and Darwin weren’t sure if they should laugh or gag at the exchange.

            Thankfully, they didn’t have to make up their minds just as soon as Principal Brown spoke over the intercom: “Attention! All teachers, students, and staff are to report to the school auditorium at this time for an important announcement.”

            Cara, Gumball, Darwin, Rick, and Morty included themselves in the assembly, curious as to what this announcement entailed. Once they were in the auditorium, Tobias sat next to Cara, still fawning over her during Principal Brown’s presentation. Brown rambled on for minutes about himself and how hard of a job he had been doing with keeping the school together.

            “…which brings me to the reason I called all of you here,” he reached his point, at last. “Starting today, I’m taking a much-needed paid vacation. As such, the school will be under the care of an interim principal. Without further ado, I welcome Miss Holly Thompson to Elmore Junior High.”

            A formally-dressed, redheaded woman stepped on stage and stood beside Principal Brown to the curious murmurings of all the students and teachers in the audience. The most unsettling thing about her to Cara and Gumball were her eyes.

            “Is it just me or the blue in her eyes freakishly pale?” Gumball inquired.

            “From here, they’re practically white,” Cara noted.

            They then heard Rick gasp aloud, “You’re kiddin’ me! It’s her!”

            “You know her?” Cara asked him.

            “Holly Thompson,” Rick recited the name Principal Brown introduced the woman as. “She helped in the fight against the Overtakers in the previous dimension…and she’s supposed to be dead!”

"They Live...Again!" - Part Two

Part Two

            It was a good time to live for Gaylord Robinson, mainly because his next door neighbors, the Wattersons, hadn’t pestered him with their usual antics in the last seven months. Their two boys, Gumball and Darwin, had gone missing; and, as uncaring as it was for him to admit it, their disappearance was the best thing that had ever happened to Mr. Robinson.

            He stepped out that afternoon to water his lawn, when he spotted a strange object sitting on the Wattersons’ lawn. It was a tall, flat black rectangular solid of some type – reminded him a lot of those old VHS tapes the kids used to watch movies on.

            Mr. Robinson didn’t pay much mind to it, until three individuals ran out of the Wattersons’ house.

            He hardly believed his eyes when he saw two of them to be Gumball and Darwin.

            No! They can’t be back now! Not when things are so peaceful!

            Luckily, the boys were too occupied with whoever their new friend was. A crazy-eyed blonde with a sparkly smile; she looked young enough to be Gumball and Darwin’s big sister (unless Nicole and Richard took up adopting another poor soul to their insane family).

            What bothered Gaylord the most was how the three walked into the solid.

            It was like magic. A pair of doors opened on the oversized domino block, permitting them entry into a seemingly bigger space inside the flat structure.

            But what was the more perturbing thing was how it disappeared thereafter.

            Just like that, seven months of peace ended, and Gaylord Robinson was sent rushing back into his home and yelling for his wife.

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            “So, let me get this straight,” Gumball said. “That old dude we saw on T.V., robbing a bank without proper facial obstruction to hide his identity – other than a pair of sunglasses – used to be your boyfriend?”

            “That’s right,” Cara spoke from within the wardrobe room.

            Gumball and Darwin stood by the doorway, waiting for her to change into a disguise to avoid being recognized when she confronted Rick Sanchez at the Bank of Elmore.

            “But he looks twice your age,” Darwin indicated.

            “Or the age you would be, if you were…you know…human,” Gumball elaborated.

            “My relationship with Rick stemmed from my first regeneration,” Cara stated. “I called myself ‘Ms. Mars’ then. I had a strange taste in men, from a one-eyed pirate to a burping, drooling old man like Rick Sanchez.”

            She finally stepped out with her disguise: a red-and-white-striped tank top with cutoff denim shorts, a bobble hat worn over a black wig, and rounded glasses.

            “Well, how do I look?” she asked her companions.

            “Like that guy in that book we could never find,” Gumball truthfully answered.

            “I guess that’s good enough, as long as I’m unrecognizable,” Cara said. “Now, I want you boys to stay in the T.A.R.D.I.S. no matter what, got it?”

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            All of Elmore’s finest responded to the situation at the bank. To Rick and Morty’s shock and amusement (Morty’s shock and Rick’s amusement), Elmore’s finest mostly consisted of living caricatures of various types of food, particularly the kind consumed by police officers.

            The man in charge was in fact a doughnut with a bullhorn.

            “Come on out,” he demanded. “We got ya surrounded!”

            “That line is as clichéd as it is obvious,” Rick shouted through the front doors. “Y-You people don’t…Ya don’t *buurrp* understand the severity of what’s happening to your dimension! Aliens have invad-*burrp*-ed your society! You’re puppets! You’re puppets and you don’t even know it!”

            “Uh, Rick?” Morty addressed. “M-Maybe this wasn’t s-such a good idea, y-ya know? Maybe we s-should’ve thought this through?”

            Rick groaned. “There wasn’t time to think it through, Morty. The Overtakers aren’t just gonna sit by and wait for when we’re ready to stop them.”

            “B-But we already shot and killed three people,” Morty pointed to the dead bodies sprawled out on pools of blood over the floor. “A-And I’m not even sure they were Overtakers.”

            “You’re wearing the…*urrrp*…You’re wearing the sunglasses, Morty! L-Look at that one guy’s face! Ya see his face, Morty? His face wouldn’t look like Michael Jackson’s evil twin, if he weren’t an Overtaker! They’re all Overtakers, Morty! Just like the ones we stopped in the last dimension, Morty…Y-You remember? With Roddy Piper and the bald black guy Billy Bob Thornton told off in Armageddon when he wanted to kill Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, but someone should’ve told him that would’ve made it a better movie! Y-You remember, Morty?!”

            “Y-Yeah, Rick, I remember,” Morty said. “I…I just don’t see a way out of this for us. I mean, your portal gun’s out of power and we’re surrounded by the police.”

            “They’re made of food in this dimension, Morty. We’d die from diabetes before they Butch and Sundance’d us.”

            All of the sudden, they heard heavy humming and grinding.

            “What is that?” Morty asked. “Is that the air conditioner?”

            A huge grin manifested on Rick’s face. “No, Morty. That’s music to my ears!”

            Right at the center of the Bank of Elmore’s lobby, a tall, black rectangular solid materialized. It opened from the inside, allowing a dark-haired beauty in glasses and a red-and-white-striped shirt to step out.

            “Have you lost your mind?!” she spoke directly to Rick. “Get your sorry butt in the T.A.R.D.I.S. before I shoot you myself!”

            Morty was all kinds of confused. “W-What’s going on, Rick? Who’s…Who is this woman? And why’s she dressed like a sexy Where’s Waldo?”

            “Just do as she says, Morty,” Rick urged, running into the solid with the woman.

            It dematerialized from the bank, making a clean getaway.

            “Yeah! That’s what’s up!” Rick cheered before turning to one corner of the console room and joyfully calling out to someone. “I knew you hadn’t given up on me, baby! Get out here, so I can kiss you!”

            Without warning, the woman in the striped shirt and glasses slapped him hard across the face. “How could you murder innocent people in an innocent dimension, Rick?!” she berated him.

            “Ow!” Rick rubbed his face, an imprint of the slap left over his right cheek. “First off, who are you, lady? Where’s Mars? And what’re the things that killed Cartoon Network doing here?” He gestured to Gumball and Darwin on that last question.

            “It’s me, you idiot,” the woman told him, removing her disguise (specifically the hat, wig, and glasses). “I’ve regenerated! I go by ‘Cara’ now!”

            Rick was taken aback from the revelation, gazing up and down at the blonde.

            “Whoa!” His tone suggested intense admiration. “Gotta say, this bod’s a billion times better than your last one! Regeneration’s a lottery and, baby, you hit the jackpot!”

            Cara scoffed. “You’ve always been a grade-A jerk. And that’s entirely the reason why we broke up. I’m taking you to the Council of Ricks for what you did in this dimension.”

            “Wait, babe,” Rick quickly pleaded. “Hear me out over lunch.”

            “Lunch?!” Cara exclaimed in disbelief. “How can you think of food right now?!”

            “Hey, you try facing down a whole precinct of edible police officers and not think of food,” Rick challenged. He turned to Gumball and Darwin and asked the boys, “You freaks are from these parts. Know where the nearest McDonald’s is?”

            “Why you wanna eat at a farm?” a genuinely baffled Gumball asked.

            Rick slapped his forehead in aggravation. “Man, I miss Dexter’s Laboratory.”

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            Gumball and Darwin introduced Rick to the best burger joint in Elmore: Joyful Burger. After confusing Larry by ordering ten-piece chicken nuggets with some “Szechuan Sauce,” Rick could only settle for a burger and some fries. He consumed them in his usual, revolting way while telling Cara, Gumball, and Darwin about the Overtakers – a race of aliens that take control of Earth, as they had other planets in the past, depleting each one’s resources and destroying its environment before moving on to others.

            “Only now they’ve moved up their game to interdimensional takeover,” Rick concluded with a mouthful of food, bits of which he spat out onto the table.

            Trying not to vomit, Cara asked him, “What proof do you have of this?”

            Rick removed his pair of sunshades out from the pocket of his lab coat, handing them over to Cara. “See for yourself,” he encouraged her.

            She accepted the shades and put them on.

            At first, the only difference she could see was that everything had turned grey through the lenses. But then she glanced at certain signs around the restaurant, most of which read only one word against a white background: consume.

            “Oh, wow…” she whispered before looking out the window to see more of the hidden reality implanted within Elmore. “Looks like you’re not as crazy as I thought, Rick.”

            Gumball and Darwin both tried on the shades themselves.

            “What the what?!” Gumball blurted. “Where did all this come from?!”

            “Like I said…the Overtakers,” Rick told him. “The only way to stop them is by destroying the source of the signal they have broadcasted all over town. That’ll expose them.”

            Cara nodded. “Where’s the source?”

            “Somewhere within Elmore Junior High,” Rick disclosed.

            Gumball and Darwin knew that location all too well. “Our school?!”