14126/A Clean Break

A Clean Break
Date of Scene:	13 February 2023
Location:	Eastside - St. Martin's Island
Synopsis:	Something every neophyte magician leans is that the path to hell is paved with well-intentioned spells.
Cast of Characters:	Billy Kaplan, Victor Stone, Gar Logan

---

Billy Kaplan has posed:
"Let's see," Billy Kapan says, squatting on the warm sand, his hand clutching a long twig, "The circle is set, and the incantation..."

The T of the Titans' tower glistens in the sunlight, but the young mage isn't focused on that. He is focused on the visible trail of littler and refuse washed up on the shore. As of late, more and more debris and waste has been washing up on shore. While clean-up efforts were underway, this presented itself as a good opportunity to do some good- and test some things.

If intention is the primary guide, then he simply needed to shape the intention into the correct action.

"For the form..." he finishes the circle, enclosing the old Roomba in its circumference. It was old, and his mother didn't use it anymore. She wasn't going to miss it.

"For the intent..." he traces a line that connets the large circle to a smaller circle, into which he places samples of trash from the beach- a broken bottle, a plastic wrapper. An aluminum can.

He stands up and raises both arms, the makeshift wand pointing towards the shoreline, "And now... to release it-"



"SuckItAllUpSuckItAllUpSuckItAllUpSuckItAllUp!"

The spell crackles, reality shifts.

The young mage does not notice. He is fully preoccupied with the solitary Roomba, which remains completely immobile, to his great annoyance.

"Aw, come on," he says quietly, and gives the Roomba a nudge with his wand. Without noticing, his toe touches the first circle, breaking the figure on the sand.

Unperceived by Billy, a resonant wave of magic erupts from the old roomba and spreads, moving in the direction of the Tower, almost imperceptible. Like calls to Like.

Suddenly, the old Roomba begins to stir, and Billy lets out gasp. "Yes, yes. Over there," he gestures to the seashore, as if trying to coax a timid dog out of a hiding spot, "That's the way..."

Victor Stone has posed:
    Somewhere in the Tower, Vic is in the middle of a truly epic gaming session. Thus, he's not really paying attention to the slow blink-blink-blink that starts somewhere in his vision. He can handle that later--right now he's got to finish this level.

    In the meantime, out on the seashore, a Roomba pops into view behind Billy and starts looking for trash to clean up.

    And then another.

    And another.

    There's a whole army of Roombas in the Tower, after all. Things could spiral out of control very quickly.

Gar Logan has posed:
Naturally, Gar is right there with Vic as they waste time gaming. Though, is it really wasted time when they're having fun doing it? When it lets them look for the, well...

Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
That's why a bear can rest at ease
With just the bare necessities of life

Bear or not, something soon draws Gar's attention and it ain't honey, honey.

"Uh, dude? What just happened?" One of the Roomba Army was motoring about the room, and then it's suddenly...no longer there.

Billy Kaplan has posed:
"Yes!" Billy says, enthusiastically gesturing towards the water, "Just a little more-"

But the sounds behind him distract him, and he whirls to see-

An army of roombas moving towards the sea.

He stands aghast for a moment, going over in his mind for whatever could have faltered, and in doing so he takes a step back-

And there goes the other circle.

The Roombas begin to move like so many glittering crabs, but they are not ordinary roombas... even extra-ordinary by Vic's enhancement standards, for the glow of magic is about them. And, as they proceed across the sand, they seem to be able to vacuum up prodigious quantities of sand without even clogging their inner workings. At first, this is good because the debris by the beach is swept up effortlessly...

But it is not so good when a body of the army swerves away from the ocean and towards-

The boardwalk.

"Uh oh... that's... not good!"

He gesticulates and tries to form a coherent spell, pointing towards the rogue army: "IUnmakeYouIUnmakeYouIUnmakeYou-" assuming, of course, that he created these creatures. The spell is, of course, not effective, since he merely /transported/ them over.

"... crap."

Victor Stone has posed:
    "Stop trying to distract me, everything's--" There's a sudden blaring alarm in Vic's head as certain failsafe triggers get tripped. Large masses of Roombas are moving on their own. Outside the Tower.

    "Oh, sh--" He drops the controller and stands. "We've got an emergency," he says to Gar. "The Roombas... they've escaped." He starts running to head out of the Tower--he can fly right on over to the boardwalk, and so can Gar.

    He's preceded by a veritable wave of Roombas, flying from the Tower to swarm the beach. While one body goes to suck up parts of the boardwalk, /these/ Roombas seem to have decided Billy himself is a piece of trash and start angling to try to either suck him up or pick him up and dump him elsewhere. Erk.

Gar Logan has posed:
"I don't need to distract you to whoop your shiny metal booty," Gar retorts, before Vic realizes he's speaking truth. "Like I said..and I dunno if I'd say that one escaped as much as just, you know.." He gestures with his hands in a sort of 'poof' before questioning, "You didn't find a way to give them teleportation, did you?"

Whatever the truth is, he also finds his way outside rapidly, first as a bird, then a cheetah, closing ground quickly as he follows the bigger Titan who just happens to be one of his best friends. "Who's do...oh."

Round about that time, Billy comes into view as The Great Accosting By Roomba begins. "Dude, there's no way they'll be able to.." he calls out, before stopping himself to wonder, "../can/ they get him?"

Billy Kaplan has posed:
The young mage quickly noticed that he is now an option on the table, and he doesn't like it one bit. The nearest group of roombas (what DO you call a group of roombas? A Pulchritude of Roombas?) advances towards Billy, deeming him garbage and trying to take him out.

Incidentally, this is the first time anyone has shown any interest in taking Billy out. And that's sad.

"Gotta think, gotta think!" Billy mutters to himself, summoning his staff with a thought, and deploying a barrage of lightning with another, aiing to hit the nearest Roombas before they get to him. His clothes transform into the Wiccan outfit, in case there's people nearby that might get attracted by the goings-on. The lightning glancess off the shells of some of the roombas, the ones that aren't destroyed, and in turn end up magnetizing them. This results in clusters of roombas suddenly clinging to each other, while magic coruscates around them...

And the boardwalk, did we mention the boardwalk? The first timbers are already beginning to get absorbed, as the glittering mass of Vic's Little Helpers advance towards the unsuspecting populace and shops.

Victor Stone has posed:
    Vic flies in at top speed, braking as he skids near Billy. Or rather--Wiccan. "Did you do this?" he shouts over the sound of lightning and Roombas crashing together. "...What did you /do/?" It's half-exasperated, half-curious. He's already filing this away under 'cyan magic.' He's going to have to tell Nadia about this.

    Maybe Billy would be willing to be a lab subject?

    That's for later. For now, Vic holds out his arm and points his sonic cannon at the chunk of Roombas nearest Billy. "Let me just--" He fires off a wave of infrasound that topples the Roombas, stunning them momentarily. "Gar, can you stop the ones heading for the boardwalk?"

Gar Logan has posed:
Of course there's magical lightning, because why not on top of everything else so far? "At least Raven's magic is more predictable than whatever this is!" Gar shouts again, mixed in with a more cheetah-like sound as he scampers over and around a few of the roombas.

"Yeah, you go try to get Lightning Lad's magic to calm back down. Somehow. I got this. Hope you don't mind replacing a few." By this point he's turned himself into a nice, strong ape, snagging a couple of the cleaners in powerful hands before flinging them out to sea, stomping on another, grabbing two more and bringing them together like cymbals.

Billy Kaplan has posed:
"I- think so? Yes, I' sort of -" Wiccan knows the Titans, of course. He started as a Titan ally, way back in the day, although he hasn't had a chance to go on missions with them. "I was trying to-" zap "- do a spell but I think I got a little careless... I was trying to clean up the shore-"

He decidess to get out of the way and levitates off the floor several feet up in the air. A little ways off from the group that Vic stunned, another group starts clumping together and advancing in formation in vaguely in Vic's direction, spreading out in an attempt at a pincer formation.

Garilla, on the other hand, is managing quite well with the Boardwalk roombas, until a group of them not directly engaging him begin to clump together in a frenzy of movement...

And then, a few moments later, a construct of clumped roombas looms over the green Titan in the form of a tall and menacing... well, mini-Roomba-Kaiju, if you will. A Roombzilla, which now seeks to try to sweep Gar up, since he is such an obstacle.

Victor Stone has posed:
    "Well could you /undo/ it? Tell them to stop!" Vic aims his sonic cannon at another group of Roombas, but this time only stuns about half of them--leaving the clump turning in a circle as half floats in the air trying to suck things up, weighed down by the half that's stunned.

    "I can't seem to get at the override," he grumbles. Then raises his voice and calls, "At this point, just get rid of 'em! If I have to make new ones... at least they won't have any of my AI code or glitter in the gears." Yes, glitter. /That's/ been a whole... thing.

Gar Logan has posed:
Roombazilla? "What the f--.." Gar exclaims, diverting brief attention toward Vic, but now he's in the line of fire from the roombas as Wiccan continues to struggle with his magic. Has he ever got a spell quite right, yet?

"I'm starting to think it's time to just rebuild that whole army, yeah!" he adds as Vic gives the call to be done with the things however necessary. Along the way, he turns from ape to warrior, reciting:

"You should have acted.
They're already here.
The Elder Scrolls told of their return.
Their defeat was merely delay
Til the time after Oblivion opened,
When the sons of Skyrim would spill their own blood.
But no-one wanted to believe.
Believe they even existed.
And when the truth finally dawns:
It dawns in fire.
But,
There's one they fear.
In their tongue, he's Dovahkiin:
Dragon Born!"

Yep, Gar looks like the one from the game's trailer. Rising up to face the Roombas, he shouts, "Fus Ro DAH!"

Only nothing happens. After all, games are just games.

"Eh. It was worth a shot," the warrior shrugs, growing larger again.

In his place, the green elephant tramples his way through the opposition, trumpeting in defiance.

Billy Kaplan has posed:
Billy immediately takes VIc's advice to heart and begins chanting:

"GoAwayGoAwayGoAwayGoAWAY-"

In a cyan wave of magic, the Roombas facing Vic and Billy vanish into thin air-



==============================

-SOMEWHERE IN THE CARIBBEAN-

Herman had worked hard. He had been able to take over a relatively small island of little importance, but for its potentially strategic location... if it had only had the kind of landmass to justify establishing anything that could be potentially strategicaly advantageous. So much military equipment was bulky and needed vast tracts of land.

Unless, of course, you were a genius, which Herman T. Roth was, thank you very much.

The original inhabitants of the small island were no longer there, thanks to his dastardly deeds, and the boat in which he had arrived was no longer whole- but it had been dissassembled and recombined with some of the very important, very clandestine alien alloy he had smuggled out of a very secure laboratory and several borders. The resulting constructs gittered in the sunlit as they sprawled across the surface of the island in an intricate formation. Small, compact, but extremely powerful. Almost incomprehensibly so. All he needed was a few more minutes, and the solar batteries would be charged and then the United States would kneel in awe at the feet of Herman T. Roth. He'd start with Miami, he considered. After that Surf n' Turf special he had, he reckoned the city required someone to teach it a lesson.

Soon. He can see the consoles on each component slowly coming to life in the sunlight, and-

Wait.

Herman looks up, a small frown on his forehead, as something erupts across the sky- like a gash in reality- interrupting the beautiful blue of the sky.

Hundreds of Roombas begin to fall from the rupture, towards Herman T. Roth and his world-conquering filigree. "What the fu-

And he was never heard from again.



==============================

The construct that Elegar tramples through come apart under his stomps, releasing little pathetic electronic whines and dying.... not before, however, expelling glitter.

Purple glitter. Magical glitter, which then gets all over Gar. On the bright side, Gar has quickly made short work of his share of the Roombarmy and the Boardwalk is safe.

"... that didn't go exactly like I thought it would... " Wiccan says, lowering himself to the ground and uttering what could be considered as a candidate for the understatement of the year.

Victor Stone has posed:
    Vic actually holds his breath for a moment--will Gar shout the Roombazilla down?!

    No. He will not. He stomps them instead.

    Cyborg sighs, shaking his head, as nearly every one of his Roombas is destroyed. Even being teleported elsewhere leaves them damaged--though who knows? Maybe they'll start their own Roomba civilization on that far-off island.

    "Glitter again," he grumbles. "Magic and magic colliding. Although..." He picks up a stray Roomba, peering at it curiously. "I'm going to have to study this. Maybe if I can figure out how to get the Roombas to change the color of the magic, it'll make them clean better." Oh, no. No, no, no.

Gar Logan has posed:
Purple glitter? Of course. It showers around the big green elephant, watching as every last Roomba is just..no longer there. "Nothing ever goes the way we think it will. That's part of being a Titan, in case you forgot," he says, making his way closer with giant, lumbering steps before reaching closer proximity to the water.

At this point he does his best Flipper impression, so as to wash off much of that glitter. Purple is Vorpal's color, green the Cheshire Gar's, so sort of like a gender reveal balloon that's popped, it's immediately obvious who was more responsible for the Roomba Army's more sparkly side.

"I'd ask what this was all about, but some things are better off left unanswered. And, Vic..? You worry me sometimes. This is one of those times. You have /that/ look."

Billy Kaplan has posed:
Billy deflates, leaning on his staff as he surveys the desolation. Now the beach is even /more/ cluttered than before. And it's all his responsibity. He lets out a quiet sigh and mutters a spell, summoning a large trash bag and a shovel. He will need many more trash bags before he is done.

A crowd is beginning to gather now, and as people spot Beast Boy and Cyborg, phones come out. A few had already recorded the batte at the pier and there are people approaching who will probably want autographs.

Billy blinks at Victor's musings, though, and -bless his heart- he seems to be intrigued. "Um... I might be able to help you study that. Maybe it'll help me get a grip on some things, too."

Oh no. Oh no...

Gar Logan has posed:
With The Washing Off completed, the green dolphin returns to land - and his usual appearance - just in time for a crowd to begin gathering more properly. "My autograph-seeker senses are tingling."

Gar looks down at himself, realizing he isn't dressed properly. "Hold on, everybody! Don't go anywhere! I'll be right back!" While Billy tries to talk shop with Vic, Gar retreats swiftly to the Tower in order to do something, flying off as the same bird he returns as within about two minutes. Upon touching down as himself once more, it's seen that he's changed into his costume, the red and white one.

Spreading his arms apart, he smiles around. "Now, what can I do for you?" Autographs and photos commence, including him posing in various ways.

Gotta give the people what they want.