Hunting Rick Sanchez (Patreon)

"Wait! Hey! Elizabeth, not so fast!" a man's voice rang out behind my back and between that sound and the sharp clacking of my heels echoing through the empty corridor, everything around me was starting to feel more and more like the hallucination of a lunatic.

Fast, for fuck's sake. Fast? Was she seriously saying that right now? I'm walking in these goddamn heels, with this huge ass and tits that keep throwing me forward, or sideways, every time I take a sharp step, and she still has the nerve to tell me "not so fast"?

"I just want to finish this mission already," I muttered quietly, trying not to draw attention and, more likely, trying not to hear my own voice, while staring ahead into the long industrial hallway of Facility Number 8, owned by "Morgan", the body I was supposed to get, not her!

"And what if they aren't here? What exactly am I supposed to tell the board of directors when they find out I'm sneaking around here like some kind of thief?"

I stopped abruptly.

My heel twisted against the concrete floor with an awful squeal and instinctively I flung out a hand to keep my balance. The movement made my breasts sway heavily beneath the tight red dress, while my earrings smacked cold metal against my neck. God damn whoever invented female bodies with this much... inertia.

"Are you serious?" I snapped, raising my voice before immediately regretting it. God, I fucking hate these vocal cords.

I cleared my throat.

"Amanda, I am not spending a single extra second here! Do you have any idea what it's like being a woman in the 1930s?! Especially with these curves!"

Amanda, or rather "Morgan" as she was called here, let out an irritated breath and hurried after me. Or more accurately, tried to hurry, because even inside a male body she still moved too carefully, like she was afraid she'd do something wrong. For some reason that pissed me off even more.

"Keep it down!" she hissed, grabbing my elbow and squeezing my arm hard enough to hurt. "Do you want security hearing us?"

I jerked my arm away, naively thinking I'd have enough strength to break free, but immediately realized how much weaker this body actually was than I thought. Amanda barely even strained herself and I was already stumbling sideways. My heel slipped on the concrete again and I nearly slammed my unusually wide hip into a metal pipe along the wall.

"Would you let go of me already?!" I hissed, finally yanking my elbow free. "God, I hate all of this..."

I sharply brushed my hair back after it fell into my face again. The dark curls instantly spilled over my shoulders in a perfectly styled wave, as if deliberately choosing that exact moment to remind me they existed. I've been in this body for one day and I already hate everything about it. And God as my witness, I am not following the "standard protocol" that involves staying here over a year, carefully observing anomalies and identifying the cause. Hell no. I am not pretending to be some trophy wife who posed for adult magazines before marriage. NEVER!

A rustling sound came from behind us and both of us turned immediately.

At the far end of the corridor, where the yellow floor markings disappeared beneath the shadow of hanging pipes, a silhouette flashed by. Someone moved quickly between the metal containers and a second later, in the silence, came a sound impossible to mistake for anything else.

A portal gun.

"It's him," Amanda and I whispered at the exact same time.

And an instant later the corridor fell silent again.

Only the old pipes kept humming somewhere near the ceiling, while something inside me tightened unpleasantly. Because now the most important thing was not scaring him off. Otherwise... No. I'm not even thinking about that.

I took a step and instantly winced at how loudly my heel cracked against the floor, cursing as I nearly fell again because my hip shifted the wrong way once more.

"Motherfucker..." I breathed through clenched teeth, trying at the same time to keep my balance, stay quiet, and ignore how this damn body seemed to have a life of its own.

The dress stretched tight across my hips as I took another careful step forward, deliberately trying to place my feet slower now, but that only made my walk become disgustingly smooth. Like the body already knew how it was supposed to move. Like these long legs, narrow waist, and heavy breasts had existed for years instead of appearing less than twenty four hours ago.

No. No, this isn't mine. It's just muscle memory and nothing else.

"God..." I groaned quietly. "How does anyone live normally in a body like this?"

Amanda rolled her eyes and from the corner of mine I caught sight of Morgan's face, the face I'd seen in the protocol before the transfer into the past, the face I was supposed to control.

"Oh God, Elizabeth, stop pretending this feels unfamiliar," she hissed and hearing how natural her new low voice sounded in that body twisted something inside me all over again. "And if that really is Rick Sanchez, then we have maybe a couple minutes."

"Don't call me Elizabeth."

"Tsh..."

She whispered it and I nearly screamed right there. I would've too, if I hadn't spotted him myself that same second, that skinny old bastard in his eternal white lab coat, with messy bluish gray hair sticking out in every direction like he'd just survived an explosion and barely even noticed it.

Rick stood sideways to us near one of the massive metal doors, illuminated by a dim lamp hanging from the ceiling. His old lab coat was stained with something dark and in one hand he held the familiar silver gun with its blinking green ring.

And holy shit, he looked way too calm for someone who had just been cornered by the Time Patrol.

"Freeze," Amanda hissed, pulling a small chrono-pistol from an inner pocket.

I hesitated for a second because out of habit I instinctively reached for a pistol inside a suit jacket pocket, but instead my hands pressed into the soft skin of my breasts, which instantly squished heavily beneath my fingers right under the deep neckline of the dress. The sensation hit me like an electric shock. Warm. Real. Far too sensitive. I jerked so sharply that my long earring swung and painfully struck my neck.

"Fuck..." I breathed out, finally remembering where this walking disaster kept her chrono-pistol.

The purse.

Jesus fucking Christ. The purse.

I yanked it off my shoulder harder than I should have and instantly nearly lost my balance because the body immediately tilted sideways. My heel slipped across the concrete floor. My wide hip slammed into a metal crate near the wall while the breasts beneath the red dress bounced so violently they felt completely detached from the rest of me.

"Easy there, sweetheart," Rick said with a grin while I finally found the chrono-gun, pulled it out, and took a proper combat stance.

"I'm not your 'sweetheart', now drop the portal gun before we splatter you!"

The old man only smirked, spitting some purple sludge onto the floor.

"I'm serious!" I shouted, cursing the fact I could hear my own voice echoing off the walls and coming right back at me. Fuck it. Just ignore it, Stefan. This'll all be over soon.

Rick immediately turned his head toward us and raised his hands, although the expression on his face made it obvious this was more of a joke than an actual surrender.

"Ooooh, what've we got here, guys? A Chronometer 5870? Seriously? Did you know you're literally the only Time Patrol in every universe still using that piece of shit?"

Yeah. They warned us this old bastard would ramble about alternate realities and universes, try to talk circles around us, piss us off, make us question everything happening around us, but holy hell nobody warned me how irritating he'd be in person.

"You know what's really funny?" Rick continued, tilting his head slightly to the side. "Neither of you idiots realizes just how badly you screwed up."

"Shut up and drop the gun!" I barked, stepping forward, but my heel immediately skidded horribly across the concrete and I had to jerk my hip sideways to stop myself from faceplanting right in front of him.

"Yeah. Drop the gun." came a male voice from beside me, way too uncertain sounding. Though honestly I could forgive her for that. It was her first mission...

"Hold on a second." Rick frowned, but before anyone could react, after seemingly scanning us in less than a second, he suddenly burst out, "Ooooh! Now you guys surprised me!"

The old man even lowered his portal gun slightly, his disgusting amusement looking weirdly genuine.

"No, seriously," he continued, pointing first at Amanda and then at me. "I thought the Time Patrol just sent another pair of miserable bureaucrats with god complexes, but this..." He grinned broadly. "A rookie girl stuffed into the body of an industrial tycoon and some arrogant field agent shoved into his hot little wife's body? That's practically a sitcom."

"Shut your mouth!" I snapped before I even had time to think.

"Ohhh, you're sensitive," Rick dragged out mockingly. "You really settled into the bitchy wife role fast."

Oh fuck him! I snapped and pulled the trigger.

I didn't care. Didn't care what happened next. Didn't care if I'd get fired after this. I wasn't about to let some old lunatic who thought he was the god of time talk to me like that. No way.

The chrono-pistol jerked violently in my hand, erupting with a bright bluish pulse that shoved me backward hard enough to send me crashing onto the floor, smashing my hip painfully against the concrete.

"AHH! FUCK!" burst out of me and not only did my own shrill scream make me sick to my stomach, but the beam from the gun, which had looked so powerful a moment ago, simply vanished after striking the air directly in front of Rick, disappearing with some disgusting popping sound.

"Oh my God, seriously," the old man groaned, probably about to make another sarcastic comment, but suddenly stopped, like he'd heard some signal only audible to him. "Shit. Looks like it's time for me to go."

I had just opened my mouth to yell something like "Freeze!", when Rick suddenly tapped something on the keyboard strapped to his arm and it felt like electricity tore straight through me. Amanda too, apparently, because I heard a masculine groan escape her throat at the exact same time as mine.

"W-what are you doing..." I rasped, grabbing my throat.

"Helping you idiots," Rick answered casually. "Didn't feel like killing you, so now you get to live here for the rest of your lives."

What? Was he serious? He wanted us to stay here? But how? How the fu, fuck!

"No!" I shouted, desperately clinging to whatever remained of myself while unfamiliar memories flooded my head. "No, stop!"

Rick chuckled and though I couldn't see him anymore, I heard his boot scrape against the smooth concrete.

"Huh. She doesn't seem too upset about becoming a rich industrialist. Though honestly, I get you, bro. Maybe I should've turned you into his buddy instead?"

"Fuck you..." I forced out through clenched teeth, but my own voice already sounded wrong somehow, drifting, cracking, becoming both mine and not mine at the same time.

"Wow, rude. You know what? Fuck you too then!"

And something inside reality suddenly snapped.

A second later I wasn't sitting on cold concrete anymore.

I was standing upright with one hand resting against someone's massive shoulder beneath the lining of a suit jacket and for several seconds I couldn't even understand where I was because the smell of cigar smoke, expensive cologne, and overheated metal hit me all at once, while instead of the echoing industrial corridor there was now a huge office around me, flooded with warm daylight filtering through the blinds.

"No, I said the board of directors will arrive in twenty minutes... Not an hour, you idiot..." an irritated man barked into a telephone and I instantly recognized the voice belonging to the shoulder my hand rested on. Amanda's voice. Or rather Morgan's. Except now it sounded unexpectedly commanding and authoritative, making me instinctively flinch and pull my hand away from his shoulder.

I did it too suddenly and immediately almost lost my balance because my heel slipped across the polished office floor. My hip swayed sideways, my breasts jerked heavily beneath the tight red dress, and my hand instinctively shot toward the wall beside several framed diplomas to stop myself from collapsing beside the desk.

Fuck.

Why the hell wasn't the chrono-adaptation program working? Where was the muscle memory?

The man immediately shot me an irritated glance and it felt like ice water got dumped over my entire body.

That look.

God.

I knew that look far too well. He always looked at me like that whenever I did something wrong at home, like that time I told him my mouth already hurt from sucking his cock and he just stared coldly at me over his newspaper, like I wasn't complaining, just failing at my duties properly, then refused to give me money for a month afterward. Yeah, I know it's my responsibility, I was just honestly tired that time.

Wait.

No.

No no no.

That wasn't just a thought. Not a fantasy. Not some random association. The memory surfaced so naturally, so instantly, and with such horrifying detail that it felt like it had belonged to me for years. Real. Alive. With the smell of his salty cock, the feeling of carpet beneath my knees, the weight of someone's hand gripping the back of my head.

"...What?! No, I didn't hear you! My wife distracted me. Huh? Why the hell do you care, do you want those cylinders or not, Carl?"

Morgan irritably pinned the phone between his shoulder and ear, then pointed a finger at me.

"And stop stumbling around my office like a drunk, you're giving me a headache," he snapped at me without even looking in my direction before returning to the conversation. "No, Carl, not you. Jesus Christ, obviously not you. Though honestly after your reports, who knows..."

I stared at him while panic slowly rose inside me.

Especially because the more I thought, the more I realized I had absolutely no idea how to contact my people or return to the future, yet at the same time I knew perfectly well that Morgan was allergic to cheap tobacco, that he hated when coffee cooled before his second sip, that every Wednesday he met some Senator Wallace at a restaurant near the south pier while lying to me that he was working late at the factory, and even worse, I knew exactly what to do to avoid making him angry and how to be his "kitty"...

God damn it, Rick, what the hell did you do to us and who the fuck even are you?!