[Third Person]
The asteroid base became their new home. It was a labyrinth of metallic tunnels and large hangars, silent and isolated. Rick and Morty took over the main engineering bay, filling it with their usual chaos of inventions and experiments. Padmé set up a communications center in the old mine director's office, attempting to decipher the HoloNet's information flow to understand the state of the war.
Kaelen, for his part, found a spot in the station's observatory. It was a large transparisteel dome that offered an unobstructed view of the Rishi Nebula and the distant, swirling stars of the galaxy.
He spent hours there, just watching. He wasn't analyzing. He wasn't calculating. He was... contemplating.
He had spent his new life either running or reacting. Running from the Federation, reacting to the Sith, running from the Ricks, reacting to threats. His power, Rick's knowledge, had been a survival tool, a strange, chaotic voice in his head that he had to control, to fear.
But in the peace of his honeymoon, and in the promise of their future, something had changed. He no longer feared the darkness the template represented. He saw Rick's genius not as a curse, but as a tool. A weapon that could be wielded by a steady hand. His hand.
He stopped fighting the tide of knowledge. He stopped building dams in his mind. In the stillness of the observatory, with the view of a galaxy at war before him and the love of his family in his heart, he simply... accepted. He opened the floodgates.
There was no explosion of pain or torrent of madness. It was like submerging into an infinite ocean.
The entirety of Rick Sanchez C-137's knowledge—every equation, every weapon design, every alien language, every dirty trick, every bit of his nihilistic genius—flooded Kaelen's mind. He saw the creation of universes and the annihilation of galaxies. He understood the composition of time and the texture of dark matter.
But the flood didn't sweep him away. Because he already had an anchor.
His love for Padmé. The promise of their children. Loyalty to his strange friends. His own moral compass, forged in a life of loss and hard work. His identity, that of Kaelen Ror, was not erased. It became the solid shoreline that contained the infinite ocean.
The knowledge settled. It was no longer a strange voice. It was a library. A silent, orderly database, waiting to be consulted, not obeyed.
One last notification, serene and definitive, appeared in his mind.
ACCEPTANCE STATUS REACHED. HOST NO LONGER FIGHTS TEMPLATE, BUT CONTROLS IT.INITIATING FINAL DATA FUSION......SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETE: 100%Final Knowledge Fusion.Host Identity: KAELEN ROR - DOMINANT AND STABLE.RICK SANCHEZ C-137 TEMPLATE FULLY INTEGRATED AS SECONDARY DATABASE.WELCOME, KAELEN.
Rick found him there an hour later. He entered the observatory and stopped. "What the hell's wrong with you? You feel... different. More... quiet in your head."
Kaelen turned, and in his eyes there was neither the fear from before nor the cold hardness of his "commander" phase. There was a deep calm and absolute confidence. He smiled, his usual smile.
"I've been thinking," Kaelen said. He approached Rick. "Your portal gun. The Citadel one. It has a design flaw in the quantum fluid stabilizer. The energy collector feedback causes a 0.001% degradation with each jump. That's why you need to recharge it so often. I can fix it."
Rick's jaw dropped. It was a theoretical flaw he himself had suspected but never bothered to fix.
"And the war..." Kaelen continued, turning towards the galaxy view. "Palpatine will move the Outer Rim fleet to lure the Jedi into a trap in the Christophsis system in three standard rotations. Meanwhile, he'll use Count Dooku to initiate secret negotiations with the Banking Clan to secure funds for his second Death Star. We can stop all of it. Right now."
He saw the complete plan. Every move, every counter-move, every variable. He saw it not like a chaotic genius, but like a grand chessmaster seeing the entire board, from beginning to end.
Rick looked at him, and for the first time, he saw no echo, no parasite, no unwanted grandson. He saw something new. Something he had never considered possible. He saw an equal. And that terrified him more than anything.
Later, Kaelen went to find Padmé. She was in her quarters, resting. She felt a change in him the moment he entered.
"Kaelen?" she asked, her voice tinged with concern. "You seem..."
"Shhh," he interrupted softly. He sat beside her and took her hand. He kissed it, a kiss filled with all the love and warmth he had always had. There was nothing of Rick in that kiss. It was purely Kaelen.
"I've never been better," he assured her, his voice a calm murmur. "I see it all now, Padmé. Every variable, every possible future. And I know, with absolute certainty, how we're going to win."
She saw the confidence in his eyes, but she also saw her husband, the man she had fallen in love with. The personality she feared losing was stronger than ever.
He smiled. "No more running. No more reacting."
He stood and looked out the viewport at the distant galaxy.
"It's time to save the galaxy. And be home in time for dinner."