guy whos walking alongside a high stone wall made of purple bricks with purple grass and purple dirt and hes been walking for weeks, months, years, an unknowable amount of time, and its all purple. all he knows. so he keeps walking, and taking everything in. the lavender birds sing in their periwinkle nests on the amethyst boughs of indigo trees. hes even wearing all purple. at the end of the purple wall, the purple ground ends. now there's only sky above and below. but a few feet away, theres a floating mirror which shows him the other side of the wall. and everything over there is fucking green
The player's Salt Route run was successful: Every resident, bar from a few stragglers, have been done away with. Atop the mansion, Spamton asked the player if he made them proud, limping off back to his garbage can when they told him the truth. Desperate for a better ending, the player starts emptying their pockets of items before ultimately deciding to reset their save file altogether - and by freeing up all their pocket space, they unintentionally let loose a certain clown around town. A clown who, by sheer chance, saw everything Spamton was forced to do. In spite of the eventual reset looming over the save file, that same clown decides to pay his old trash-bound chum a final visit, hoping he can provide him with something less depressing than a lonely last night in a world doomed to destroy itself.
So THIS is the really messed up Deltarune fic I’ve been mentioning today. Needless to say this one’s pretty heavy and fucked up, just about everything that needs a content warning is there in the tags because there’s a lot. Its about 7k-ish words long because I love writing really detailed shit for no reason. I hope you all enjoy! Even though this is literally horrific to read through I still had a good time with it lmao
A very quick fic, unbeta'd and unedited about psychic wolves. Gen fic, canon typical violence.
.i
Rick steps out of a portal onto Earth. More specifically he steps onto Earth in Dimension AU-211 which, from what he can tell at first, is almost identical to his dimension. He doesn't waste time, he blends into the crowd, jacks a wi-fi signal and pulls up a map of the area.
He already supplies Bird Person's pet rebellion with advanced weaponry, when he can be bothered. Advanced schematics, ships, he's even been messing around with cybernetic augments for some of the less scrupulous members of whatever they call themselves these days. There's no reason for him to be ducking into an alley to circle behind an innocuous storefront in an Earth uncomfortably close to the one he left behind.
Except he'd overheard BP trying to work around a delay in their normal supply shipment. It'd mean rescheduling one of their tour dates on planet Cessphithion which boasts an exciting nightlife and interesting desert drugs, and, if one were to believe the travel brochures Squanchy had dug up, sheer rock faced cliffs and buoyant thermals.
They only need clothes and basics for a small group of refugees and the team escorting them. Rick figures he can scrounge up some military surplus in a fraction of the time BP's Plan B would manage to find alternate suppliers under the Federation's nose. Just portal some crates of backstock out of some chain supply store and be back before dinner. BP could redirect efforts to plotting a new transportation route, The Flesh Curtians would be free to continue on their scheduled tour.
Rick jiggles the handle of the back door of the store he'd scoped out. It's stuck, so he wriggles his pocket tool out of his jeans and unfolds it. He jams the pick side into the lock and taps the lever. These locks usually open after a few rakes and this one doesn't disappoint.
He pops open the door and looks around the storeroom with a sharp eye. There are several promising boxes, several more that he thinks he'll snatch just because. There's a couple of uniform vests hanging against a wall so he grabs one and sets about rearranging the storeroom.
Rick builds a little wall against one of the metal shelves out of useless boxes and then drags a couple of the supplies into the alcove. He wants to get everything in one place so he can shove it through the open portal and be out of here. He doesn't need anyone seeing the glow from his portal gun.
He drags over three boxes promising sturdy military surplus jackets and pants, some boots in different sizes, a box with these neat little camping cook sets, and a bucket of MREs. Are the nutrients compatible with whatever biological needs the refugees have? He doesn't know and doesn't care, he just wants to cover his basis.
At one point an employee walks past him and does a double take when they see Rick picking up one of the boxes.
"You new?"
Rick shrugs.
"Make sure you check in with Rhonda, man, we're gonna need help up front in a couple hours." Then the man pushes through the door Rick had picked open.
Rick decides, why not, and steps into the storefront proper. He immedietly spots a few more things be wants to take, namely some gloves and shoes in smaller sizes. He must take long enough just browsing that the man who passed him before finds him on the way back.
"Hey, man," the guy greets. "Rhonda!" He yells over the store. A woman by the cash registers looks up and Rick finds himself being led to the front of the store.
He grimaces, Rick had wanted this to be more stealthy than getting picked up to work a retail shift as if he doesn't have a universe of knowledge beyond normal human comprehension. Still, he follows, figuring he can cut his losses once they left him alone for a second.
Rhonda seems to be a cheerful woman, but her smile pulls double duty softening her butch haircut and the lines under her eyes. It's not until Rick gets up to the counter that he realizes there is a God damn wolf laying at her feet.
It's huge, way too large to mistake for a dog even at first glance, with mottled grey-brown fur. It's golden eyes look up at him when Rick comes into view.
He knows Rhonda is speaking but he tunes that out in favor of keeping all of his monkey-brain senses on the literal apex predator that slowly makes its way up onto its paws. It stretches like a yoga position, front paws out, before raising it's head to what has be level with Rick's stomach. God, it looks like it'd be taller than him if it reared back.
It does lean forward, and it's only because Rick knows running is what prey does that he keeps still while it does so. It's large black nose bumps against his hand and pulls back, then looks at him expectantly. After blinking, Rick holds his hand out as if for a handshake. This cannot be the craziest thing he's ever done.
The wolf snuffles against his hand and wags it's tail. Rick cannot remember if wolves wag their tail in excitement like dogs do. When Rick doesn't do anything it leans forward and pushes its head under his hand and he reflexively curls his fingers in it's fur.
"Oh," he breathes and pets the damn dog.
"She likes you!" Rhonda says, once Rick's hearing tunes back into the ambient soundtrack of this world. Rick digs his fingers into the wolf's fur, chances getting a second hand in the thick ruff around her neck. She's not wearing a collar but she still seems to enjoy being scratched where one would be.
"Yeah, yeah, rub it in." The man, Rick still didn't know his name, and honestly learning it was ranking somewhere far below learning this wolf's name, had taken a couple steps back from the wolf.
"Nate here is wolf blind," Rhonda says, as if explaining the reaction. "Shasta scares him, don't know why though, she's the best girl! Yes she is!" Rhonda breaks into gushy pet talk and the wolf lolls her tongue out and her tail thumps against Rick's leg.
Rick ends up staying long enough to find out what Shasta's favorite toy is and pocket the small boots. The first chance he gets he ducks into the back room and portals himself and his ill gotten gains away.
.ii
There is a planetoid which has a tree whose root can be ground into a fine powder that is mostly used as an exfoliant for species with an exoskeleton, but which can also be used as an ingredient in making a crystallized drug that makes one hallucinate in shrimp colors but doesn't leave behind a hangover. In most dimensions, including Rick's, this planet no longer exists. Unfortunately, it is usually hit by a meteor knocking it and it's hallucinogenic tree roots out of orbit, basically ending all life on it's small surface.
This is true for even dimension AU-211.
However, the unique thing with AU-211 is that a group of enterprising aliens picked up some drug sniffing dogs from the dimension's Earth, and managed to save some of the last of the viable roots.
Now it is Rick's turn to capitalize on that.
Morty winces and apologizes when he scrapes Rick's ship against the side of the aliens' docking side.
"Ah geeze, R-Rick I'm sorry,"
"I-if I wanted it p-p-perf—if I wanted it done right I would've d-done it myself, Morty." Rick snaps. "Stay put," he adds and jumps the short distance to the airlock.
He opens it easily and slides in and Morty, the little shit, glides in after him.
"I-I'm not staying be-behind to get tractor beamed!" He says after clicking the lock on the ship's key fob.
Rick rolls his eyes but lets Morty shadow him. The hallways are blinking red alerts as Rick pulls Morty behind him. Obviously they aren't undetected, but Rick doesn't care. He ducks into the fourth door on his right, takes a left, is forced to backtrack and take a right to avoid running into an alien with its radio on, and recalculates his route through what should be an unused store room.
He'd gotten the blueprints for the ship by trading some space pirates a lot of good liquor only found in Rick's home dimension, so he's pretty confident in the route he has planned. Morty keeps on his heels as he jerks them through corridors and doors, every so often playing look out and nervously sweating while Rick taps into one of the wall panels and sends a different alert to the ship's rudimentary AI control system.
Finally Rick kicks open the right door and sees several sacks of the root laying on open racks. He wrinkles his nose. Those need to be in a temperature controlled unit. Good thing he's taking them off these incompetent's hands.
"Is this it, Rick?" Morty asks, looking nervously around.
"Do I look confused and/or upset?" Rick asks.
"Uhh, I-I mean now you are k-kind of looking upset,"
"With things besides you!" Rick grabs Morty's hands and lifts them so his arms are held out. "Hold these," he demands, dumping two sacks into Morty's arms and grabbing another for himself. "And away we go!"
The door opens behind him and Rick sees three aliens in some kind of armor holding some kind of energy weapon.
"Oh shit. Run Morty! Run! They caught us, Morty! Run!" He pushes Morty forward until his grandson stumbles into motion. He presses a button on his watch and points behind him just in time to hear the beams of energy deflected away from them.
They dart through the door ahead and Rick takes the lead again; winding them in circuitous patterns through the ship. Eventually the only doors ahead of him and Morty are side by side. The keypad next to one blinks green and the other blinks red.
Rick slips a slim card out of his pocket and inserts it into the red one's display. He taps on the micro circuitry on the card and jiggles it a little. Locks like these normally open under a quick rake if you pump them with enough juice and this one doesn't disappoint.
He slides the door open, shoves Morty through, and then locks it behind him. With the pattern he set their pursuers should choose the unlocked room and leave him and Morty able to backtrack to their getaway.
"AAAAAAUughH!" Morty screams and Rick hears the distinct sound of two sacks filled with drying roots hit the ground. He turns, lungs full and ready to berate him, but he is cut off before his first word because a God damn wolf leaps at him.
He is nearly thirty years older than his monkey-brained youth so he doesn't freeze.
Rick puts up his arms instead of pulling out a gun or anything and the wolf latches its jaws on his arm and bowls him over like he's a tower of blocks.
Morty is still screaming and Rick is sure he is too but he doesn't register it. Morty's voice peirces his ears, high pitched and whining. His arm feels white hot and his mouth fills with the taste of blood. His eyes are watery, blurry around the edges and the pain is graying his vision.
He shakes his head, left and right, violently, his teeth clenched and he feels flesh tear, satisfying, like grass tears when you dig a hole.
Or when his portal gun tears a hole through universes, the green energy poking through reality the way a fang sinks into meat.
The screaming is still going on, annoying, breaking their cover. He growls. Even though his vision seems duller he can smell the metal-bright tang of blood very clearly, the fear scent rising in the small room, the smell of unclean mammal.
"Let him go! Let him go! I have—I, uh–"
There's a burst of stop stop stop and why and help and—
The wolf takes its teeth out of Rick's arm and color swarms back into his vision and he hears himself suddenly, not as mindless yelling but saying whole sentences, "What the fuck, holy shit, holy shit, this fucking hurts! Morty!" and he can't smell the blood anymore, not like it was gushing into his mouth and face like it had felt before.
"Thank you, th—thank you!" Morty is almost crying and when Rick gets the wherewithal to look in the kid's direction he has a puppy in his arms.
.iii
Dimension AU-211 happens to be unique for another reason. The Earth evolved literal psychic wolves.
.iv
"Y-You're lucky ya-you're puppy is cute." Rick spits as he lets the wolf and Morty and the puppy jump into his ship before him. If he doesn't let them go first he knows he would leave them all, including Morty behind.
"Th-they were just scared, R-Rick." Morty defends. "We-we scared them."
Rick knows. He can still feel the underpinnings of nervous, fearful energy, still smell it which, considering he'd done enough lines to burn his sense of smell in his late twenties, was unusual.
When he turns his glare onto the wolf he finds intelligent gold eyes already glaring at him.
"Well w-we didn't try to rip off their ah-ah—their fucking leg." He growls. "Fucking drive, M-Morty, you got the arms."
He refuses to let the wolf intimidate him—it knows it can't drive the ship without them so they have a truce—so he doesn't hesitate when jumping into the back and baldly shoving his arm under the wolf. It snarls and snaps but doesn't bite him and he grabs the hypo of regen-juice.
"Fffffuck," he hisses and stabs himself with the needle. His arm burns and then itches like a motherfucker as his skin knits together. The wolf whines and its leg thumps as it scratches itself.
Nice to know this bullshit feelings thing goes both ways.
The wolf growls again and Rick bares his teeth back at it. "Yeah, that's what it fucking feels like, bitch!"
"Rick!" Morty whines almost in the same cadence as the puppy in his lap.
Rick sighs.
The wolf is big, bigger than he remembers Shasta was. It looks like its fur was black once, but it's muzzle, chest, and shoulders are all grayed speckled with white. Its ears are uneven, looks a little rough around the edges, and it's teeth are yellowed but Rick knows first hand that they're still sharp and strong. Rick's blood has dried around it's lips.
Morty's puppy is all long limbs and big ears. It's a fuzzy chestnut color, it's fur whispy and soft. Rick refuses to be charmed by it.
Refuse to be charmed by you.
It's not words so much as a feeling, but Rick doesn't need to be an astrophysicist to understand what that eye roll means.
"S-so what are your names?" Morty asks. "I mean, if you have names, uh, or I—we? Could name you—" the wolves mercifully cut Morty off and Rick's nose is flooded with two distinct collections of scent.
The stronger one is spit cleaned fur, alcohol, and warm milk.
The second is electrical, like stripped wires waiting to electrocute you, with the sharp tang of some astringent solution underneath.
Morty tries to keep from wrinkling his nose at the scents but doesn't quite succeed. "Uh I guess that m-makes sense. Wolves wouldn't have, uh, people names."
"Why do you smell like a Kalaxian Crystal lab?" Rick wonders aloud and the black wolf responds by lolling its tongue out of his mouth.
"Kuh-lax-ian?" Morty sounds out the word, "Like the drug?"
Rick doesn't dignify that with a response.
"W-well. We can't actually ptonounce those names." Morty ends up saying, "Can I call you uhh, mmm—"
"You are not naming the wolf something stupid like Spot or B-Buddy." Rick's says.
"Sh-shut up! I wasn't going to say either of those. You'd name him something dumb, like, uh. Like the drink?"
"What drink?"
"The Irish, uh, the milky one?"
"Baileys?"
The puppy whines, and Rick understands that it wants to know what kind of drink a Baileys is. Morty's face contorts as he tries to convey whatever concept of Baileys he has.
Rick is already offering his own explanation, recalling the thick liqueur as it splashes his tongue. A creamy taste, with a warm undertone. There's barely an alcoholic sting hidden under all the sugar and cocoa and cream. Not his preferred drink but a smooth one.
Next to him the black wolf huffs a warm breath, Rick would count it as a laugh if he knew wolves could laugh. Hell, maybe these ones could.
The puppy is wagging its tail like it approves of the name even though Morty is shaking his head. "No, we can't, we can't call you Baileys that's like calling you're uh, your mom? Your friend Kay—ka, K-Lax. Or Crystal."
If Rick had been drinking he'd have spit it back out.
"Crystal!" He laughs, "You have some real winners today, Morty!" He thinks hard at the black wolf of pretty pink crystals, of the high the comes with them: all loose limbed and feeling the rhythm of the universe around you.
"No!" Morty tries to convince both wolves that there are better names but they seem to like Baileys and Crystal just fine.
Rick will never get tired of watching Morty get stuck naming things terribly.
.v
The drive back to Earth is long. At some point Rick switches with Morty so the kid can take a nap or something. Crystal gives Rick a summary of her life the further they get from the alien ship.
Just snatches here and there, of being a puppy caged in sterile rooms. Nose held to the ground. She knew they wanted her to do something but she didn't understand why they wanted her to do it and these dumb, wolf-blind creatures wouldn't tell her.
She had mostly been kept in a kennel. She didn't do her job right. Rick surmised that her job was meant to be sniffing out good drugs. When Crystal prodded curiously at him with her mind he drew up the vague image of a German Shepherd barking at a car and some uniformed douche getting a bag of pink dust.
Crystal had sent back a disdain so palpable Rick found himself curling his lip in disgust, before he caught himself and laughed.
"Yeah," he had said, "Too menial for you, Princess."
When one of the other wolves whelped, Crystal broke out of her kennel, grabbed one of the puppies and wrecked havoc. The aliens ended up locking them in that room, just to stop her rampage.
Rick could at least drink to that.
When Crystal goes quiet in his head, a silence that is expectant he wrinkles his nose at her. "This isn't quid pro quo, we aren't taking turns." He says. "If you weren't there with me, you don't need to know my life story."
Besides the fact that she is a wolf, Rick plans on dropping them off at whatever shelter will take them and then getting his tree roots back to his temperature controlled garage.
Crystal seems to sigh, and she puts her head on her paws.
In the passenger seat, Morty sleeps curled around Baileys.
.vi
"Th-they were nice." Morty says in response to a thread of conversation Rick hadn't been invited to.
"The—uh, the flesh sacks on—"
"The wolves!" Morty is quick to interject.
Rick blinks.
They'd left the wolves behind on AU-211's Earth just like he'd planned half a week prior. They hadn't really spoken of that adventure since, Rick focused on dehydrating the root and Morty doing whatever Morty did when Rick didn't need him.
"Baileys and Crystal." Morty prompts.
"Oh, I-I-I thought you were talking about the other wolves."
"Other wolves? Oh, y-you're making fun of me. It's just that, I kind of miss them? I know we didn't know them long b-but Baileys and I really. You know, hit it off." Morty says. His fingers rhythmically clench and unclench his shirt. Nervous.
Sometimes Rick still thinks he can smell it, the emotions. Fear sweat when Morty screams at something, and the roil of nerves that sits in Morty's stomach as anxiety eats up at him.
He can't though.
Once the portal closed behind them, he couldn't feel or hear Crystal any longer.
Which is better than fine. He hadn't minded it while it was happening, but in retrospect, suddenly sharing a psychic bond with something was uh, way more than Rick ever signed on for. He likes his thoughts to himself.
"I-it just feels like something is missing now, you know." Morty says and Rick doesn't know why Morty would call it missing. Rick definitely wouldn't call it that. More like, annoying.
Mentioning an off handed remark to Morty, it was the Zesparian Oranges Morty, the red ones, and then Morty would remember: biting into the fruit, through the pulp, then the dewy sweet syrup of it.
And Baileys would pick up on it and share it with Crystal, both wolves turning it over before Crystal would bring it to Rick, distorted through a wolf's mind: teeth piercing flesh, bitter pulp like teething on wood, then juice, like blood but sweet and saccharine.
Rick would remember his own experience: pulp a complex underscore to the sugar overload, but both in balance with the clear liquor in his flask and more than that the feeling of digging a fingernail into the outer rind and peeling it back in a satisfying circle. Cleaning the stickiness of his fingers while winking at someone watching too closely. Baring teeth in a smile that was more challenge than welcome.
"W-was that guy staring at us?" Morty asked, belatedly. "I-is that why you didn't care when the pillar fell on him?"
Annoying.
"We just left them," Morty says, presently, "They probably aren't used to that Earth, you know? Th-they're probably scared."
Alien blood smeared across the kennel bars.
"They're f-fine Morty." Rick says out loud, because there's no sense there, anymore, where Rick can pull up a memory and Morty can glean it through a wolf's eyes.
"B-But—"
"What's your point, Morty? Wh-what's—where are you going with this?"
Morty is quiet. And then, quietly: "I miss them."
Rick groans, long and loud and petulant.
.vii
Most humans and aliens outside of AU-211 are wolf blind, that is, they don't tap into whatever psychic bullshit the wolves have going on for then. That includes most other Mortys and Rick's, as far as Rick can tell.
Rick and Crystal have no problem with that.
"C-come on Morty! Run Morty!" He doesn't look behind him because Crystal is doing it for him, Morty's panicked flailing being shepherded by Baileys' nervous energy. Rick uses Crystal's eyes, calculates a trajectory and traces it backwards and into his own field of vision, and then shoots over his shoulder.
"Rick!" Morty screams as the bolt of energy slips past him.
It destabalizes the corner of a statue which slowly falls into the paths of the pursuing Ricks behind them. Crystal yips, like a puppy, pleased as punch, and Rick finally gets a chance to shoot a portal ahead of them.
Like he and Morty gave them human names, the wolves had scent-named them in return. Morty's is sweaty and citrusy, like drinking lemonade in a sunny afternoon.
Rick's is Mountain Dew Toxic, clear alcohol, and ozone.
Like taking a sip from his flask and stepping through a lime green portal.
