Earth Dimension [Replacement]; Wednesday, December 27th.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Despite the pile of dead Varrix corpses that littered the ground at the mouth of the cave, more of them still emerged, as Summer, Morty, and their father fought tirelessly against the swarming horde. Summer stabbed her pitchfork down into her latest assailant while another lunged for Jerry, who swung his ax, sending the head flying.

"No, Dad!" Morty bemoaned as the head hit the ground, sprouted legs, and hissed angrily up at them. Morty swiftly stabbed his sword into its skull. "You’re not doing it right!"



"Cutting off their heads," said Jerry, ax swinging again, "isn’t doing it right?"

"They’re clearly regenerative!" Morty grunted as he yanked his sword out from the Varrix's brain. "I-I think you have to stab them through the heart or something."

"You think," demanded Summer, "or you know? I thought you were the alien expert, Isaac Asi-hole."

"Don’t snap at me!" Morty complained. "I’m tired!"

"Me, too!" Summer shouted back, glaring as she threw another pitchforked Varrix over her shoulder.

"We’re all tired!" Jerry yelled, but they kept fighting, because they had to, because they just kept coming.

Or did they? As Jerry and Summer brought down another pair of Varrix, one more rushed from the cave, only to have Keara shift behind him, lunging forward to stab her spear through his chest. "Last the last of them," she announced proudly. "Tonight, we celebrate."



"With a hunt?" Jerry ventured, although he totally already knew the answer.

"Yes," Keara nodded, then turned to walk away. "For tomorrow, we hunt."


****

It rained later that day, as Jerry drove Summer and Morty back to the house. For a long moment, after he'd pulled the station wagon in front of the garage, they all just sat there in a shared stunned silence, still covered in the blue blood of the Varrix they'd massacred and the dirt and the grime of the battlefield.

Finally, Jerry cleared his throat.



"I, uh, really have to get out of this soul bond," he said.

And the Smith kids lost their shit.

"What the fuck, Dad, obviously," Summer groaned at the same time as Morty's exasperated, "Ohmygod, duh! Yeah, no kidding!"

"Can you guys help me?" Jerry pleaded.

"What?" asked Morty. "How?"

"Can I just, uh, tell her it’s because of my kids?" offered Jerry. "You know, like, you don’t like the shape of her head, or--"

"That’s you, Dad!" Summer broke in, pointing accusingly with each charge. "That’s you! You’re a baby and an idiot!"

"I think that’s been established, Summer," Jerry grumbled. "Now help me!"

"First," Summer folded her arms in front of her and fixed her father with an unwavering glare. "I want you to admit that you’re a closet racist, a beta-male sexist, and you dragged everyone into a horrible situation by only thinking of yourself."

"Okay!" Jerry said desperately.

But that wasn't good enough.

"I want to hear you say it."

Jerry sighed, sagging under the weight of his own pathetic shoulders. "Look, I’m a closeted racist," he said, with a sarcastic undercurrent that Summer would rather wasn't there, but she knew this was the best she was going to get, "and I’m sexist and selfish, and I dragged us all into my sexist, racist bad things because I’m stupid."

"Thank you," said Summer.

"Now you’re gonna help me," said Jerry, "right?"

"She just did," said Morty, crawling toward the car door.

"Yeah," said Summer, opening her own door, "clean up your own mess."



"Wait, wait, what?"

The car doors slammed behind them.

"Oh, man."

[[more bits from S03E09, "The ABC's of Beth," from Rick and Morty. Open if'n you want! ]]