Somewhere between probability and bad luck sandwiches…
Rick was enjoying a perfectly good Tuesday. Which, for him, meant sparring with an interdimensional raccoon made of sarcasm.
Then he tripped on a book.
It wasn't just a book—it was glowing. It was humming. And it whispered things like "once upon a scream" and "flip me, coward."
Naturally, Rick picked it up and said, "Bet you can't eat me."
It did not, in fact, try to eat him.
It sucked him in.
He woke up in rhyme.
Literally.
Everything was colorful. Trees with faces. Clouds shaped like ducks in suits. Rick blinked.
"You've fallen in," a squirrel did say,"To the Book of Rhymes where you must stay!Until you rhyme, and find the end,You'll loop forever, my punchy friend!"
Rick frowned. "I don't do rhyme."
"Then you'll be stuck here for all of time."
Rick's fist clenched. "Don't make me punch a talking pine."
The squirrel gasped.The trees cheered.The sky dropped a rhyme counter shaped like a beard.
Let the Book Begin
Each "chapter" of the world was a page in a cursed storybook, complete with:
Rhyming puzzles
Singing goblins
Moral lessons that were way too preachy
Rick's first obstacle?
A bridge guarded by a goose named Doug, who only let you pass if you answered his riddle in rhyme.
Doug hissed, wings spread.
"To cross my bridge, you must reply,With words that bounce and twist and fly!"
Rick stared at him.
Then, with painful effort:
"I do not like your feathered vibe.Your bridge is weak. Your riddle's trite.I'll cross your path, and if you squawk—I'll fold you up like sidewalk chalk."
Doug blinked.
Then nodded slowly. "Fair. You may pass."
Loop Number Two: The Morality Maze
Rick ended up in a maze full of signs that screamed things like:
"Be kind or rewind!"
"Sharing is mandatory!"
"Violence is not the answer!"
Rick, being Rick, tried to punch the walls.
The walls said, "Please use emotional growth instead."
He screamed.
Lucky's voice echoed faintly in his ear from outside the book. "Hey! We're trying to get you out! Stall the rhyme logic!"
"HOW DO I STALL A NARRATIVE THAT RHYMES?!"
"With clever tricks and chaos loud,Just break the rules and make them proud!"
Rick froze.
He grinned.
"Oh. I can do that."
The Solution?
Start writing his own rhymes.
But make them awful.
So awful the book couldn't process them.
He stood on top of a mountain of cookies and screamed:
"I eat rocks for dinner! I flex on fate!I dated a dragon! We're still not straight!The moon owes me rent! I juggle knives!I once adopted twelve alternate lives!"
The book shuddered.
Pages curled.
Reality hiccuped.
"ERROR," said a rainbow-colored cloud. "STORY QUALITY BELOW THRESHOLD."
Rick laughed. "That's right, rhyme-world! You want poetry? I give you crime!"
He tackled a metaphor and set fire to an allegory.
The sky turned inside out.
The Final Boss: Rhymekeeper
A massive being appeared—part wizard, part typewriter, part unpaid English teacher.
"I am the Rhymekeeper," it said in verse."To beat me, your rhymes must be… worse."
Rick cracked his knuckles.
"Oh, I've been training for this my whole life."
What followed was a rap battle so bad it broke phonics. Rick rhymed "orange" with "door hinge," "pickle" with "tickle," and "existential dread" with "I punched a loaf of bread."
The Rhymekeeper short-circuited.
"Your verse… is cursed…My soul… dispersed…"
Rick dropkicked him into a semicolon and exploded the entire page.
Outside the Book
Lucky and a few timeline techs pulled Rick out of the burning, spinning storybook.
He hit the floor covered in glitter, ink, and irony.
She grinned. "You just broke the rules of children's literature."
Rick coughed up a limerick. "I'm never rhyming again."
"Good. Because something really bad is happening."
He stood, groaning. "Worse than what I just went through?"
She handed him a photo.
It showed a giant multiversal storm.
At the center?
A mirror.
And in it?
Rick. But smiling. Too calmly. With glowing red eyes.
To be continued…
In Chapter 11: Evil Rick. Multiverse collapse. A war across realities where every version of Rick must choose—fight the mirror… or become it. Want it?