They returned to the villa in stunned silence. Anakin, for once, had sheathed his lightsaber without a word, his mind grappling with the vision of a man dissolving into atoms and a portal to nothingness. Padmé clung to Kaelen's hand, as if fearing he too might vanish.
They sat in the main study, the same place where Padmé usually reviewed reports and Kaelen teased her with his inventions. Now, the air was heavy with the weight of a shattered reality. Kaelen placed the three recovered portal guns on the table. They were sleeker, more compact, and somehow more... potent than anything he had ever built.
As his fingers brushed the alien metal of one of the devices, a new jolt coursed through his brain. His mind, already on high alert, connected with the superior technology. He analyzed the circuits, the power source, the impossible math that made it work. The System responded to this torrent of new and dangerous data.
EXTERNAL TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION COMPLETED COMBAT ANALYSIS AGAINST TEMPLATE SOURCE PERFORMED SYNCHRONIZATION INCREASED: +3% TOTAL SYNCHRONIZATION LEVEL: 30% NEW FUNDAMENTAL ABILITIES UNLOCKED: - Multiversal Physics (Basic Level) - Advanced Portal Mechanics (Intermediate Level)
Kaelen blinked, a new layer of understanding settling over his panic. He understood better now. Not just the what, but the how.
"Your father..." Padmé began, her voice soft, trying to anchor the conversation to something she could grasp. "Is he... like you?"
Kaelen let out a hollow, joyless laugh. "No. I'm an echo. He's the original voice. And he's a selfish, alcoholic mad god who just happens to be the smartest being in an infinite number of universes."
Anakin, who had been silent until now, frowned. "Infinite universes?"
"Yes," Kaelen said, now with a new, grim authority in his voice thanks to his recent upgrade. "But not all of them. He and his other versions created something called the 'Central Finite Curve.' It's like a walled garden that separates all the universes where he's the smartest being, from all the universes where he isn't. They live inside that curve, a private multiverse of Ricks. The Council you saw is their pathetic attempt to govern themselves."
The Burden of Genius
Now I see it. My existence here is a glitch in their system. An anomaly. My 'template' isn't a gift; it's a data leak. I'm running a pirated copy of their brain software, and they've sent their enforcers to revoke my license.
I have to make them understand the scale of this. They need to know what we're up against.
"You asked me to tell you about my father," Kaelen said, looking at Padmé. "I can't describe the man, because he's barely one. But I can tell you his feats."
He leaned back in his chair, his gaze lost in memories that weren't entirely his own.
"Once," he began, "to avoid a family therapy session, he transferred his consciousness into a pickle. A vegetable. And in that state, using only his mouth and his brain, he built an exoskeleton out of rat bones and insect bodies, and massacred an entire spy agency in their own building before returning to his body. He did it out of spite. Out of boredom."
Anakin and Padmé exchanged a look of disbelief.
"That's nothing," Kaelen continued, his voice growing darker. "To charge his spaceship's battery, he created a miniature universe inside a box. A 'microverse.' Then he visited that universe, taught its people how to generate electricity, and left, turning an entire civilization into his unwitting energy slaves. When they developed their own science and tried to rebel, he simply walked in, destroyed their society, and created another microverse inside theirs to do the work for him. For Rick, creating and subjugating an entire universe is the equivalent of changing a battery."
The horror on Padmé's face was palpable. It wasn't just the power; it was the monstrous lack of ethics, the indifference to life on a cosmic scale. Anakin, on the other hand, was equally fascinated and terrified. The concept of such power was both seductive and repulsive.
"And then there's his dimension's Galactic Federation," Kaelen added. "An empire that spanned thousands of worlds, far larger and more consolidated than this broken Republic. The Federation considered him their number one enemy. They captured him. And he, alone, from his cell, manipulated their economic system until their currency was worthless, and then teleported the Council of Ricks' citadel into the center of the Federation capital, unleashing chaos that collapsed the entire empire in less than a day."
He paused, letting the weight of his words settle.
"That's Rick Sanchez. A being who can turn the laws of physics into suggestions, who views life and death as malleable concepts, and whose moral compass is not just broken, but probably never existed."
He leaned forward, his expression filled with a vulnerability that contradicted the stories he had just told.
"That's the mind that's leaking into mine every day. A little more of his genius, a little less of me. That's why I built that weapon. Because a part of me, the part of him, saw the problem and leaped to the most logical, ruthless solution. And that's why I need you," he said, looking directly at Padmé. "Because I'm terribly afraid of becoming him. I'm afraid that, one day, my love for you will just be another variable in one of his fucked-up equations. You're the only thing keeping me from becoming a monster."
The room fell silent. The mission to Tatooine to save Anakin's mother seemed almost trivial now. They faced a threat that was not from their galaxy, not from their reality. Kaelen's true enemy was not a Sith or a bounty hunter.
It was his own potential. And the war for his soul had just begun.