Work Text:
The garage was unusually quiet.
Well, except for the crackling sound of a plasma coil doing something it definitely wasn’t cleared for.
Rick hunched over a desk cluttered with glowing wires, alien bones, and a mason jar filled with what looked suspiciously like apple juice but smelled like regret. His goggles were on, his lab coat was stained, and his portal gun was laid open like a patient on the operating table.
Morty poked his head around the corner.
“Uh, Rick? Is this gonna explode again? Because last time-”
“Morty, for the love of entropy, if this was going to explode, I’d have at least three sirens going and a squirrel-shaped emergency exit.” Rick didn’t look up. “Now shut up and hand me the chroma capacitor.”
“The what?”
“The thing that looks like a rave threw up on a AA battery!”
Morty fumbled with the parts bin. “Okay, okay, jeez, I’m just tryin’ to help, man-”
The air popped.
Then ripped.
Right above the workbench, a jagged stroke of glowing color slashed through the air, flickered like a corrupted frame, and promptly vomited Ink directly into the garage.
He landed with a dramatic twirl, boots skidding across the concrete floor, brush already out like he was announcing his entrance on stage.
“Ten outta ten landing,” Ink said brightly. “Style points for the drip.”
“Morty,” Rick said slowly, “did you order a sentient cartoon skeleton off Etsy?”
“What?! No!”
“Ah,” Ink said, peering around. “Science-y lair. Lots of wires. Dimension tech. Love the cluttered apocalyptic vibe.”
He reached out and casually booped the open portal gun with the tip of his brush.
It shimmered. Then twitched.
Then glowed in about seventeen different colors it had no business glowing in.
Rick’s head snapped around. “No no no- HEY-”
Too late.
The portal gun surged with raw color, slurping half of Ink’s brush stroke into itself like spaghetti and fired a random portal straight through the ceiling. The hole rippled, spat out a stream of floating paint blobs shaped like screaming ducks, and then shut itself with a hiccup.
“...Cool,” Ink whispered.
Rick stood very still. “What. Did. You. Do.”
“I think I made it better?”
“You glitched my portal gun into a paintbrush! It’s leaking color theory into spacetime!”
Morty was already backing away. “Rick, man, I don’t wanna go into any more ‘art dimensions’! Last time you said it’d be fine and we got chased by an abstract cube that cried poetry!”
Ink lit up. “Wait, you’ve been to that one? I love Cubie. He’s dramatic, but he’s got taste.”
“Of course you know the cube,” Rick muttered. “Of course you do.”
The portal gun, now half-metal, half-doodled ink, pulsed in Ink’s hand. He turned it sideways and watched a paisley-colored beam shoot out and turn the garage door into a mural of Morty screaming.
Morty screamed again in real time.
“Look, it’s interactive!” Ink chirped.
Rick reached for a wrench. “Okay, Mr. Brushstrokes, unless you want me to reverse-engineer your bones into whiteboard markers, hand over the gun.”
“I’d love to,” Ink said, “but it’s bonded to my aesthetic now.”
The portal gun beeped cheerfully. Then fired again.
A portal opened on the floor, and from it poured liquid abstraction. Colors with no names. Shapes that looped and folded like origami hallucinations. A duck made of triangles floated past and gave Morty a dirty look.
Rick stared.
Morty pointed. “That- That’s not right, man. That’s not even mathematically okay.”
“Oh this is so cool,” Ink said, spinning. “This is like jazz, but for geometry!”
A huge rainbow-tentacled paint creature slithered halfway out of the floor-portal. It had two eyes, a single sock for a tongue, and a sign on its chest that said, “PLEASE CRITIQUE ME.”
Rick rubbed his temples.
“I was having a normal day. A normal goddamn day. And now I’m about to get killed by an eldritch finger painting.”
Ink offered him a thumbs-up. “At least it’ll be stylish.”
“I am going to kill you,” Rick said. “So hard, it’ll smear.”
“RICK,” Morty shouted, “THE THING IS TRYING TO EAT MY SHOE!”
“You didn’t like that shoe anyway.”
Ink raised the gun and, without any real plan, drew a giant circle in the air. It shimmered, then burst open into a portal that looked vaguely like a watercolor version of Saturn.
“Well,” he said, “I think my cue’s up.”
Rick growled. “If you step through that portal, I swear to Zorp I will find your home dimension, uncolor it, and leave nothing but beige.”
Ink grinned, mid-backwards-step. “Joke’s on you. Beige is the absence of hope. I thrive in it.”
With a wink, he vanished into the portal. It fizzled out behind him, leaving only a faint shimmer and a pile of googly eyes blinking slowly on the table.
Morty slowly turned to Rick.
“Dude. Did we just get graffitied by a skeleton with ADHD?”
Rick picked up a bottle of something suspicious and downed it in one swig.
“Morty,” he said, wiping his mouth, “I have never hated someone so fast in my life.”