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.
------------------
“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?”
-------------------
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.”
-------------------
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?!”
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