Rod's secret abode shimmered into view like a mirage made solid—high ceilings dripping with crystalline light fixtures, walls lined with strange artifacts humming faintly, and a table so long it could host a peace summit.
Every wall was cluttered with relics, gadgets, and glowing artifacts that looked expensive enough to buy planets—or break at least seven cosmic treaties.
The dining table could've seated a galactic peace summit. Instead, it held three people, a mountain of steak, and enough wine to drown a lesser being.
Instead, it hosted them—Rod, Beth, and Morty—hunched around a section near the center where steam curled off plates of perfectly seared steak.
Infinite supplies of steaks .
Juices sizzling on silver platters.
Wine for Rod in a cut crystal glass, dark red and slow like blood in zero-g.
Rod carved into his steak with a casual precision, taking a bite, then dabbing the corner of his mouth with a napkin.
Across from him, Beth—self-proclaimed princess of the multiverse and very much spoiled by her godlike brother—leaned back in her chair like she owned the place.
"This—" she waved a fork dramatically, "—is what we should have. Always.
I mean, come on. My dad's a god-level genius. You're… whatever you are.
Why doesn't we have a mansion already?"
Rod smirked, rolling the stem of his wine glass between his fingers.
"Correction—I'm like this. And Rick's like this. So you... definitely not on the mansion list."
Beth's face dipped into a faint frown.
She toyed with her fork for a beat, then shrugged like she'd already filed it under inconvenient truths.
"Fine. Then, brooooother—" she leaned forward, grin curling up again "—teach me how to be like you and Dad!
C'mon, you can do it. We'll montage it. I'll even wear a training headband."
"You'd last five minutes," Rod muttered, cutting another perfect slice.
"I'd last six. Minimum!"
Morty, still in full steak-feeding frenzy, barely looked up.
"O-Oh god, Rod—this is… this is delicious!" He jabbed another forkful into his mouth, grease shining at the corner of his lips.
"Is this legal? This can't be legal."
"It's not legal," Rod said casually.
"To be precise it's the combination of the best ingredients from both legal and illegal ingredients.."
Beth leaned forward, grinning wide.
"BROTHEEEER! Seriously, brother! Training arc! Do it!
Make me your apprentice! I'll be your Padawan, your… your—"
"You'd be the Padawan who shoots the lightsaber backwards," Rod said.
"That happened one time in holo-class!"
Rod set his glass down, tapped his temple like he was weighing something heavy.
Then he grinned. "Okay, I'll give you a chance, but Beth...aha!
And at the same time, why not make it a competition between you two?"
Beth froze mid-bite, eyes narrowing with instant challenge.
"You're on!"
Morty finally paused chewing, still holding a chunk of steak on his fork.
"Wait—what kind of competition? Like… trivia? Arm wrestling? Galactic war crimes?"
Rod just leaned back in his chair, smile sharpening.
"The kind where the winner walks away a little more like me… and the loser?
Well—" he gestured to the endless plates between them, "—still gets steak. But no bragging rights."
Beth stabbed her fork into another slice, grinning.
"Then start pre-polishing my bragging trophy."
Morty swallowed hard. "Or… mine?"
Rod just raised his glass. "We'll see who's still standing after round one, kids."
Beth slapped her palm on the table, nearly launching her fork into orbit.
"Round one: Death Race. Across three galaxies!"
Rod raised an eyebrow. "You realize I own the only car in the room that can survive that, right?
And if you drive mine, Morty with his hover scooter, that'll be truly unfair."
"Fine," Beth said, pointing at him with her steak knife, "we swap rides. I get Morty's hover scooter, Morty get the space car."
Morty nearly choked on his bite. "Uh—no! No way you're touching my scooter!
I've got… history with that thing."
Rod smirked. "Yeah, it smells like history. You had fuck on that, Morty?"
Morty stabbed his fork toward them.
"F-Fuck no! Alright, round one: survive the Death Mines of Tarvalon Prime.
First one to grab the Crystal Skull of Doom wins."
Beth tilted her head. "That's not even a mine. It's a giant worm pit with shiny rocks."
Rod leaned forward, resting his chin on one hand.
"Kids, kids, you're thinking too small. Round one should be… something skill-based.
Like stealing a crown from an interdimensional emperor while making him thank you for it."
Beth's eyes went wide. "Ooooh. Now we're talking."
Morty frowned. "Wait, you mean like… trick him? Or, uh… assassinate him?"
Rod pointed his steak knife at Morty. "Surprise me."
Beth tapped the table in thought. "What about… a scavenger hunt? Across realities.
Whoever comes back with the weirdest item from history wins."
Rod leaned back, grin spreading.
"Okay, but one rule: you can't bring back the things that you bring to life for shock value.
That's rookie stuff."
"Fine," Beth said. "But if I find a dinosaur with a jetpack, it's mine."
Morty slumped back in his chair. "This is… this is gonna get us arrested.
Or exploded. Or both."
Rod raised his glass again. "That's the spirit."
Beth leaned back, arms crossed, smirking like she'd already won.
"Alright, final suggestion, death race across the three galaxies.
No portals. First to touch the Obsidian Gate at the edge of the Shattered Belt wins."
Morty groaned. "Why is it always a death race?
Can't we start with, like… a slightly-inconvenient-but-not-fatal race?"
"No," Beth said, stabbing a bite of steak. "Because 'slightly inconvenient' is boring."
Rod wiped his mouth with the napkin, tossed it aside, and stood.
"Alright. Decision made. You two—gear up."
Beth's eyes lit up. "Space car?"
"Yup," Rod said, grinning.
Morty pumped his fist.
"Yes! Wait—what do I get?"
Rod pointed toward the garage. "That."
Morty's face fell.
"That" was a rickety hover trike that looked like it had been welded together by a drunk squirrel.
Beth cackled. "Oh, you're so dead."
Rod's face fell too. He murmured, "That's one of my finest creation, yknow...except the looks, tho.
That ugly baby of mine got better specs compared to the space car...."
- - - - - - - - - -
Ten minutes later, both of them were lined up at the starting strip—a cracked asteroid platform suspended over a glowing nebula.
The Obsidian Gate was just a black speck in the far, dangerous distance.
Rod floated above them in a shimmering holographic projection, wearing sunglasses, a racing flag in one hand.
"Alright, racers. Rules are simple. No portals, no teleporting.
You can sabotage each other, though.
And before you ask—yes, this is being livestreamed to fourteen different dimensions.
Say hi."
Beth leaned out her window, waving like a rockstar.
"Hey multiverse! About to humiliate my adopted cousin!"
Morty frowned. "That's… that's not even accurate."
Rod dropped the flag. "GO!"
Beth's space car roared forward, thrusters flaring, while Morty's hover trike sputtered, coughed, and then rocketed forward like it had been insulted.
Rod's voice echoed in both their comms, smug and amused.
"Alright, Beth's in the lead, Morty's holding on to second by… sheer willpower?
No, wait—he's using the thruster kickback as a slingshot.
Bold move for someone who's about two seconds away from eating asteroid dust."
Beth swerved around a chunk of floating debris.
"Tell Morty to eat my dust."
Rod chuckled.
"She says you're pathetic, Morty."
"I can hear her, Rod!"
Morty yelled, wrenching the trike into a tight spin to avoid a collapsing meteor ring.
"And I'm not pathetic—I'm strategic!"
"Strategically about to get your ass kicked," Rod replied.
Ahead, the course split—one path glittering with easy open space, the other a jagged corridor through a collapsing asteroid field.
Beth took the corridor without hesitation.
Morty hesitated… then followed.
Rod laughed, voice crackling in their ears.
"Ohhh, so we're going for the danger route?
Alright, I'll keep score on who performs more spectacularly."
- - - - - - - - - -
The asteroid corridor narrowed to the width of a semi, chunks of glowing green rock crumbling into the void.
Beth swerved hard, clipping Morty's trike with her rear thrusters.
"Move it, you plasma-sucking meat sack! This is my lane!"
Morty spun but recovered, flipping her off mid-turn.
"Eat my Glapflap, Beth! I'm not—AHH—" A shard of asteroid the size of a bus whizzed past his head, slicing a panel off his trike.
Rod's voice came through the comms like a sports commentator on too much coffee.
"Oooooh! That's a clean hit from Beth, folks!
Morty's down a stabilizer fin—let's see if that turns into an explosive decompression situation!
Stay tuned, folks!"
Morty gritted his teeth and hit a side lever—deploying a spray of sticky, glowing goo from the back of his trike.
The substance splattered all over Beth's windshield.
"You quantum jizz monkey! I can't see!" she screamed, slamming her car into an asteroid wall and scraping paint.
Rod howled with laughter.
"Morty, you evil little gremlin.
Ten points for creative use of illegal tech!"
Beth punched a button on her dash.
A retractable claw shot from her bumper, snagged Morty's trike by the back, and yanked him sideways into a spinning asteroid chunk.
Morty screamed, "FUUUCK! You're gonna kill me, you stupid fuck!"
"That's the point, motherfucker!" Beth shot back, grinding her tires over an asteroid's surface for extra speed.
They burst out of the corridor into open space… and straight into a gravity well that twisted the entire course into a swirling spiral toward a pulsing singularity.
Rod's voice was pure joy.
"Ohhhh, we've officially entered the 'try not to get sucked into a black hole' portion of the race, folks!
My money's on Morty dying first, but Morty's got that underdog energy!"
Beth swerved, launching two EMP mines toward Morty.
Morty ducked under them, flipped his trike into a corkscrew spin, and fired a magnetic grappler at her rear bumper.
"Say goodbye, space bitch!"
Beth's car jerked violently backward—dragging both of them toward the singularity.
Rod was laughing so hard he could barely talk.
"YES! YES! MUTUAL DESTRUCTION! THIS IS WHAT I LIVE FOR!"
The singularity's pull intensified, warping light into jagged streaks.
Debris, broken satellites, and abandoned space stations whipped past like shrapnel in a blender.
An entire alien cargo hauler drifted too close—its crew of insectoid traders screaming in six-part harmony as their ship buckled and stretched toward the black hole.
Smaller ships tried to boost away, only to get caught in the pull, tumbling helplessly.
A floating food stand selling Meeseeks-on-a-stick spun past Beth's windshield before imploding into glittery dust.
Morty was holding onto his controls for dear life, teeth bared.
"O-Okay this is bad! Like—REAL bad!"
Beth, instead of panicking, smirked through gritted teeth.
"Oh, you think this is bad? Wait till I win."
"What the fuck are you talking about?!" Morty yelled, swerving to avoid a tumbling space yacht.
Beth let it slip, her voice rising over the comms.
"Rod's hosting a tournament between me and you, Morty! Winner gets god-like power!"
Morty's eyes went wide.
"WHAT?! You're now just telling me what I'm fighting for—oh hell no!
That's bullshit! I didn't even know there was a prize!
I thought this was just some fun vacation race!"
Rod's voice crackled through the comms, smooth and smug.
"Correction: I never said there wasn't a prize. You just didn't ask, Morty-boy."
Morty nearly slammed into a spinning asteroid chunk.
"YOU CAN'T JUST—HOLY SHIT—DROP SOMETHING LIKE THAT MID-RACE!"
Beth cackled as she maneuvered closer to him.
"Better step it up then, Morty.
You think I'm letting you touch godhood before me?
No way.
I'm already imagining the entire galaxy bowing down—"
A massive cruise liner, caught in the gravity well, spun between them, blocking their view of each other.
Behind it, a screaming pod of space-whales was being dragged tail-first into the singularity, their mournful wails echoing in every frequency.
Rod's voice rose with gleeful panic.
"Okay, update—our black hole hazard has officially upgraded to 'multi-species catastrophic event.'
Whoever makes it out of here alive and in first place gets… well, let's just say, the keys to the god-tier candy shop."
Morty growled into the comms.
"Beth, if I lose, I swear I'm haunting you for the rest of your immortal life."
Beth smirked.
"I'll keep a jar for your ghost, Morty."
The singularity didn't stop at pulling things in.
It spat them back out.
First came a geyser of random crap—half-melted vending machines, a terrified Zigerian con artist still holding a briefcase of counterfeit coupons, and what looked suspiciously like the top half of the Statue of Liberty… except it had Meeseeks eyes and was screaming.
Beth dodged the statue's arm as it swung through space like a flail.
"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THAT?!"
Morty swerved away from a shower of molten lava fish, his face twisted in pure panic.
"I—I don't know! Is that even physically—WAIT, is that a goddamn dinosaur with a jetpack?!"
It was. And it was angry.
Rod's voice crackled in, smug as ever.
"Ohhh yeah, baby, now we're talking!
The singularity's entered a 'chaotic regurgitation phase.'
Think of it as reality's drunk ex puking up all the bad decisions it ever made."
A massive, golden-furred gorilla in a tuxedo and monocle floated by, sipping tea calmly as it drifted between them.
It gave a polite nod before being yanked back into the void.
Then came the really weird stuff—things that definitely shouldn't exist.
An army of four-dimensional origami swans swooped across the track, folding and unfolding through solid matter.
A cube of infinite kittens mewed in overlapping time loops, some aging, some reversing into tiny mewling blurs.
One of them blinked out of existence only to reappear inside Morty's cockpit.
"AHHH! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!" Morty flailed at the air as the kitten stared into his soul, purring in reverse.
Beth roared with laughter.
"Don't worry, Morty, it's probably harmless."
Behind them, the black hole belched up a chunk of something so wrong the universe itself flickered—an entire mid-90s sitcom set with a live audience screaming in terror as their fake living room spun into open space.
Rod practically purred into the comms.
"Mmm, this is peak entertainment.
Reality is unraveling, my two little chaos gremlins are trying not to die, and I've got front-row seats."
Beth snarled, "Gremlin this, Rod—when I win, you're making me a god first thing."
Morty shouted back, "Over my dead body!"
The singularity groaned like something alive.
Then, without warning—something huge started forcing its way out.
The Cuddlevoid drifted in like a cosmic marshmallow, and the race instantly went to hell.
Ships swerved, engines roared, and alien pilots abandoned any thought of winning as the fluffy sphere bounced between racers like a slow-motion wrecking ball.
Every time it bumped something, it let out that adorable meow-ding noise and somehow left the victim's ship coated in glittery fur.
Beth's car got the worst of it.
The Cuddlevoid hugged her cockpit—actually hugging it—and the whole craft groaned as if it was being squeezed by a black hole made of pillows.
"Get OFF me, you fuzzy fuck!" Beth yelled, mashing the thrusters to shake it loose.
The Cuddlevoid only snuggled harder, spinning them around like a toy.
Morty's laughter came over comms.
"H-Haha! Oh my god, it likes you more! It's your space pet now!"
Beth snarled.
"Eat my thruster wash, dickweed!" She cranked the car into autopilot, stood up in the cockpit, and rolled her shoulders.
From a hidden compartment beneath her seat, she pulled out what could only be described as a seductive tank.
Matte black plating, chrome fangs on the front grill, and sleek curves that looked like a sports car mated with a heavy assault mech.
Rod's voice came in, amused.
"That thing looks familiar."
Beth smirked.
"Yeah, it should. Learned from the best.
Remember, first day you brought me back?
I took every class you threw at me—engineering, combat fabrication, weapons theory…"
The mech roared to life in her hands, folding out from a cube into something the size of a small fighter jet, armed with glowing cannons and lined with neon blue conduits.
"…And now I get to use it."
The Cuddlevoid stopped mid-hug, big button eyes widening.
Beth grinned.
"Round two, furball."
The Cuddlevoid blinked once, twice, then purred—right before Beth's mech snapped a massive grappling arm around it.
"Okay, snuggle-ball," Beth muttered, flicking switches like she was making a cocktail, "let's put that love to work."
The mech's back thrusters roared, dragging the Cuddlevoid with it like a tugboat hauling a continent of cotton candy.
But instead of shaking it off, she swung it into the nearest cluster of racers.
Fluffy chaos exploded.
Ships spun out of control, pilots screamed, and one Tralfamadorian's vessel folded in on itself like a soda can while still honking in Morse code.
The Cuddlevoid made delighted pfff-pfff noises every time it hit someone, as if the mass destruction was just a friendly game of tag.
Morty's voice cracked over comms.
"BETH! You can't—holy shit— you're using it as a—ARE YOU PLAYING SPACE BOWLING?!"
Beth laughed manically.
"Yeah, and you're the ten pin, Morty-boy!"
She yanked the control, flinging the Cuddlevoid down the course in a perfect curve.
It slammed into Morty's car mid-turn, sending him spinning into a singularity ripple.
Rod's voice was a low chuckle over the loudspeakers.
"Impressive shot, lil' devil. Extra points for style."
Beth smirked, clicking the mech into boost mode.
The machine's legs folded into a single aerodynamic spear, wings flaring wide with neon contrails.
She kicked it into overdrive, passing the last two competitors in a blur.
The finish line loomed ahead—until the Cuddlevoid, bouncing happily from its last victim, landed directly in front of her.
"Oh for f—" She didn't even finish the word.
The mech's chest compartment opened, vacuum-sealing the fluffball inside like a giant hamster ball holder.
Boost.
The combined momentum of the mech and the Cuddlevoid turned the finish stretch into a shockwave tunnel.
Barriers snapped, the track warped, and they shot through the final checkpoint like a rainbow nuke, Rod's rainbow wormhole colors spiraling in their wake.
The scoreboard blared: WINNER – BETH SANCHEZ.
Morty's car limped across the line two minutes later, smoking and missing half a wing.
He kicked the side hatch open, glaring.
"You fucking cheated."
Beth hopped out, hoisting the still-purring Cuddlevoid like a trophy.
"Nah, Morty. I win."
Rod appeared between them in a casual flash-step, sipping wine.
"Alright, round one goes to Beth. Cuddlevoid, you're free to… uh… go destroy someone else's dimension now."
The Cuddlevoid gave one last meow-ding and floated off, presumably to ruin another galaxy's day.
Rod clapped both of them on the shoulders.
"Now, you two better be ready, because round two's gonna make this look like a tea party."
Beth's grin widened.
Morty groaned.
And somewhere in the distance, the singularity still spun, leaking something that would definitely bite them in the ass later.
- - - - - - - - - -
Do you get any of that?
The road to success is hard, it'll take a lot of things.
And the most popular thing succeess love to take is time.
That's all, peace!