“Calm down?”
“I am calm.
I’m just sick…
burp, tired of it.
The people in this world are too damn annoying.
The FBI and all that crap.
If I hadn’t stormed into that White House and chewed out their president, they’d be up my ass every single day.”
“But don’t worry.
Before I…
burp, throw this bomb away, I’ll pull out your dream girl, Jessica.”
“Burp, then you and Jessica can be Adam and Eve.”
“Then the two of you can live like one of those…
burp, bullshit stories and repopulate the human race.”
Morty: “…”
Even after spending half a year with Rick, Morty’s blood pressure still shot up every time he heard Rick say something insane without thinking it through.
You’re a grown-ass old man.
So why is your head still full of ideas that are so crazy, so deranged, and so completely goddamn brainless?
And if you’re bringing up Jessica, that petite, mature-looking girl with light orange hair, then you’re just stabbing me right in the heart on purpose.
You want me and her to be Adam and Eve?
Fine, I admit it.
Over the past six months, just like the original Morty, I fell for the number-one beauty in the whole school.
But I’ve only been at school for a few days total!
I haven’t even had a chance to talk to her, okay?
Besides, you won’t even take me on one proper money heist.
If I had tens of millions of dollars in cash, I’d buy a mansion and a luxury car and use money to sweep that girl, whose worldview hasn’t even fully formed yet, right off her feet.
And then there’s us…
After ranting in his head for a while, Morty suddenly remembered the actual problem in front of him.
[God, I’m pathetic.
He mentioned Jessica once, and I actually forgot he was about to blow up this planet!]
[If I look at Jessica one more time after this, I’m a total simp!]
Even though Morty knew Rick had never been the type to talk big for no reason, he still didn’t want to believe Rick seriously planned to blow up the world.
But he definitely couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.
What if he didn’t stop him, acted all “go ahead and blow up the planet if you’ve got the balls,” and then this guy actually got drunk enough to do it?
So Morty immediately straightened his arms and his back, trying to grab the steering wheel.
Rick, who had the wheel firmly under control, obviously wasn’t letting that happen.
The two of them fought over the wheel while cursing each other out.
“You spineless little piece of shit who wants it but doesn’t have the balls!
I’m blowing up this world so you can spend the rest of your life with Jessica, and you’re still not happy?”
“You senile old bastard with explosives in your brain and shit spraying out of your mouth!
Stop being such a narcissist and making decisions for other people!
Not everyone wants your goddamn arrangements!”
“Do you believe I’ll kick you out of this thing from eight thousand meters up?”
“Oh yeah?
Do it!
I’d love to see how…
you plan to lay hands on your favorite grandson!”
Grandfather and grandson traded insults so hard they dragged the whole family tree into it.
After they had finished cursing every ancestor they had, Morty saw that Rick was still pulling the ship higher toward outer space.
Morty, who had originally planned to stop short of going too far, instantly panicked.
He leaned back, ready to kick Rick in the face.
But Rick, who should have been completely wasted, showed terrifying reaction speed at that moment and blocked it with one hand.
“Enough, enough.
For someone who’s usually such a coward, you suddenly going full tough guy makes you look like you took the wrong pills.”
Morty: “I’m a coward because I play it safe!
The path of playing it safe!
The path of playing it safe!
Do you get it?
With a god-tier fighter like you around, why the hell would I try that hard?”
Seemingly unable to resist his grandson’s intense demands, Rick finally steered the ship back down toward the ground.
After they landed, he pushed the door open, and empty bottles rolled out from the seats one after another.
Rick himself rolled outside along with the empty liquor bottles.
Morty had already been exhausted after a full day, and now, at night, he had to wrestle a busted steering wheel away from Rick, whose strength was basically inhuman and who had almost decided the fate of the entire planet with it.
Drenched in sweat, Morty leaned back in his seat, looking completely drained.
Right then, Rick suddenly laughed and said, “This was just a test.
Just a test to make you more decisive and confident!”
Like tossing a match onto gasoline, Morty shot up from his seat and roared at Rick, “Test my ass!
Fuck that!
My grandpa’s dead!”
After cursing the bastard a few more times, Morty suddenly froze.
He stared blankly at Rick lying on the ground, and in that instant, something clicked.
Half a year ago, Rick had suddenly appeared.
From that day on, Morty had been following him all over the universe to mess around, or rather, kill people.
They had been through a massive pile of bizarre crap.
And today, when Rick said this was a test, Morty finally got a definite answer from him.
Rick was training him!
Otherwise, for someone like Rick, who was basically lazy in certain ways, why would he be willing to take Morty out adventuring every single day?
Sure, this world didn’t have any clear power-level system.
But Morty felt that, as long as he had a weapon nearby, he was now basically capable of wiping out an entire team of America’s strongest special forces by himself.
So that raised the question.
Why train his combat ability?
What could Rick not handle himself, yet somehow need Morty, a guy with only average intelligence, to deal with?
With that bit of confusion lingering in his mind, Morty went home and barely slept all night.
By morning, he ended up face-planting into his breakfast, making the three people around him frown.
“Oh my God, his face is about to start breaking out, and now it’s buried in his food.
That is seriously making me want to puke,” his sister said, looking disgusted.
Beth shot her teenage daughter a glare, then asked with concern, “Morty, are you sick?”
Morty lifted his head from his plate, looking exhausted as he made up a lie.
“I’m not sick.
I just didn’t sleep well last night.
Maybe my dream took too much out of me…”
His sister, sitting across from him, exposed the lie without mercy.
“Or maybe!
You went out with Rick all night again.”
“What?!”
“Dad?”
Rick, who had been playing invisible until now, saw everyone’s eyes turn toward him and asked back like he couldn’t care less, “What?
Is everyone required to sleep every night now?”
“You people do realize sleep wastes most of your lives, right?
You spend one-third of your life sleeping.
That’s just slow-motion murder of your own existence.”
As for Jerry, he had been unhappy for a long time with this father-in-law who had suddenly come back half a year ago and refused to leave.
He had even been secretly pushing his wife every day to send Rick to a nursing home.
Now Jerry seized the chance and directly accused Rick of taking his son out on adventures every day, making Morty’s grades nosedive without end.
Even the idiot son from the neighbor’s house could get better scores with his feet than Jerry’s son did!
No matter how much he believed in happy education, Jerry could no longer tolerate his father-in-law ruining his son like this when Morty ranked dead last in the entire school on every single test.
“Starting today, Morty is not going on adventures with you anymore.
You’ve completely corrupted my precious son!”
“When he should be studying, you drag him off on a bunch of so-called stupid tech adventures.
How is he supposed to make it in society after this?”
“Are you trying to turn me into someone like you, someone who has kids and then abandons them for twenty years without giving a damn?”
“And besides, this is my home!
I’m not letting someone who disappeared for twenty years come back and start ordering everyone around the second he walks in!”
Rick gave this son-in-law, whom he had never been willing to acknowledge as his son-in-law, a long look.
Then he mocked him with a jab about dictators before continuing to needle him.
“Wow, you really are the family-edition Julius Caesar.
Honestly, HBO, Netflix, and FOX not hiring you for a preschool cartoon is a tragic waste of talent.”
“But you’re right.
This is your house.
Your family.”
“It’s just that my personal view of school is that it’s a waste of time.
They take a bunch of people and ignore differences in aptitude, special talent, emotional intelligence, everything, then toss them all into one big arena.
The only standard they use to judge ability is modularized worksheets and exams.”
“Ninety percent of what they learn is stuff they’ll basically never use again once they enter society.”
“Then when lunch rolls around, they feed you food they would never eat themselves.”
“And they hand you a piece of paper that says, ‘You can go take a shit.'”
“Besides, your own personal history already told me plenty.
You hooked up with my daughter while you were in school, then had Summer before you even graduated.”
“When the father is this much of a loser, why the hell would anyone expect the kid to turn out great?”