19396/Imps Gone Wild!

Imps Gone Wild!
Date of Scene:	04 November 2024
Location:	Lounge and Kitchen - Young Avengers HQ
Synopsis:	Imps run rampant through the Young Avengers' base after a magical experiment goes awry! Thankfully with some teamwork the only real casualty with a really nice stock pot!
Cast of Characters:	Billy Kaplan, Kate Bishop, Molly Hayes, Vivian Vision

---

Billy Kaplan has posed:
Billy Kaplan sits quietly at a desk inside the Young Avengers HQ, lost in thought as he flips through a tome of ancient magical texts. The quiet hum of the base and the soft glow of his surroundings provide the perfect backdrop for a bit of peaceful research. He's practicing a low-level summoning spell, nothing serious, just to test his ability to open small portals. As he whispers the incantation, a soft spark of magic flickers, and with a pop, a tiny imp appears before him. It's no bigger than a kitten, with glowing eyes and twitching wings. Amused, Billy smiles, leaning in to inspect the creature.

Before he can say anything, however, pop-pop-pop -- more imps materialize like popcorn from the spell! His eyes widen as five, ten, then twenty of the little creatures appear in rapid succession, zipping around the room. They knock over books, tangle themselves in his magical equipment, and start wreaking havoc on everything in sight. Billy's amusement quickly turns to alarm as the impish swarm grows even larger by the minute, filling the room with chaos. "Uh-oh," he mutters, standing up and trying to wrangle the nearest imp, but the torrent shows no signs of stopping.

Tapping his YA comm badge, Billy hesitantly says, "Young Avengers...if you're available to, um, come to the, uh, base we have an...have an emergency here." His tone sounds subdued and embarrassed.

Kate Bishop has posed:
So while Kate Bishop, the better looking and absolutely better archer known as Hawkeye may live in Titan's tower, the Young Avengers is the team she might possibly have more of her heart in.

And financial investment.

So when the message to get to the headquarters, she hauls pretty quickly. Though a good chunk of it had to be on foot because parking is always a pain in the city.

Luckily she came armed since arriving to find Billy and a few of her friends all dealing with a hoard of imps trying to trash the place she looks rather stunned for a moment.

"Soo, the futz caused all this? Artifact, spell? Did someone read ancient texts out loud again? You never read ancient texts out loud!" the tone of voice is clearly that of the big sister walking in on a little sibling throwing a party getting out of hand.

Molly Hayes has posed:
"I DIDN"T DO IT!" Molly Hayes shouts as she comes down from where she was playing with her phone on a very large beanbag. She was on the 238th level of Terrapin Laser Jet Ninja Popcorn and she needed seventy five more kernels of the Spicy Golden Blend if she wanted to have enough shells to spend to expand the size of her buckets and get the Tesla coils installed on them so shed have enough points to enter into this week's Buckets o' Fun giveaway drop box and...

"Oh crap, there's imps! I saw imps! Dude, there's imps! Billy, why didn't you say something? GOSH!" she says. She pulls down the top facemask of her special unicorn hat, the one with the pink sparkle mane tail that went all the way down her back but she had to cut it off cause a bad guy pulled it once and made her fall and she looked a big dummy but now it didn't have its mane and it wasn't as cool.

Focus, Molly.

"Can I punch 'em?!?" she shouts to anyone who has wisdom to offer. It's her first instinct, always.

Vivian Vision has posed:
There's no need for Vivian Vision to trigger a comm badge. She's got built in communications gear which can reach halfway around the planet. A subroutine of her personality devoted to handling calls (part of a virtual switchboard full of similar Viv subroutines) picking up the message and sending it up the chain for review. A higher tier of her awareness subconsciously tapping into the Young Avengers security system with the highest level of access her status as a recent recruit / long time ally allows.

The whole process lasts a fraction of a second.

"What sort of emergency? Should I alert the authorities?" she responds. It's highly unlikely she can look into the private bedrooms after all! "I can have the fire brigade there in a few minutes."

She might be young but she's got enough experience to know superhero emergencies and things being on fire often go hand in hand...

Between phasing and her flight abilities it wouldn't take long for her to fly from her apartment in New York to the Young Avengers HQ. She doesn't fly all that quickly, but when you can ignore pesky little things like solid objects you can take a very direct route. All the while she watches the situation unfold. Quite likely as Imps begin to spill out from Billy's room into the rest of the site.

"Ah. I see." A beats pause. Still phase flying her way in. "I'll arrange for a cleaning service and garbage disposal for.. when we're done. With... what are those things?"

Billy Kaplan has posed:
"I don't know what those things are!" Billy answers Vivian. He gazes with guilty eyes at Kate, the group's leader, when she inquires about the cause of the imp-festation.

"I might have been possibly practicing how to..." His confession is cut short as about a dozen imps all pick him up at once and hurl him at Molly Hayes. Billy is so startled that he doesn't even engage his flight. He's quite powerful but inexperienced.

As he is hurtling toward Molly he begins an incantation. <<Create a one-way portal to return these creatures home!>> For those who have never experienced the young spellcaster's magical words before, it might be startling, the enchanted equivalent of a deep bass that reverberates through body, mind, and soul.

Buuuuuuuut! He's presently being launched through the air so the spell doesn't *quite* work out *exactly* as Billy had hoped. An empty stock pot sitting on the stove vibrates wildly and glows, and inside the stock pot is the portal!

Kate Bishop has posed:
"Stuff like this is why we we should train on dangerous stuff with a spotter!" It's probably good advice. Kate's already lining up shots with her bow, using blunt tip arrows to start knocking imps down and out.

With the relatively confined spaces the Young Avengers call home, she's somewhat reluctant to let anything loose that might cause property damage. Or at least any that can't be cleaned up or fixed easy enough.

Plus not wanting to hurt her friends that are more melee oriented in their fighting.

"You can totally punch them, you can throw them, you can hit them with them, we want them stunned enough that Billy can have an easier time getting rid of these things. We're on crowd control!" she totally okays the beating up of demonic intruders.

There is a chuckle though to Viv. "I wouldn't bother hiring outside for this Viv. Billy can do the cleaning up after. He's still going to have to explain to America why the walls need to be repainted again after." That is probably way worse than the imps. There was a lot of work that went into the paintjob.

Molly Hayes has posed:
Molly Hayes just starts grabbing at imps, grasping with her right hand and stuffing them under her left, squeezing hard enough to make them yelp and wriggle but unable to escape, mashing them together into a big wriggling imp ball under her left arm. Disgusting. The smell alone. Yikes.

"Point me where to throw these things, please!" she yells at Billy. She'd try to follow his stream of magic to see where it ended up, but she didn't quite see it make it to the pot because she was too busy prying an imp off o her face.

"Yeah, we don't gotta hire nobody, we got this! C'mere you little grubber!"

Vivian Vision has posed:
Vivian triggers any security shutters and doors remotely. Opening and closing any internal locks to let the team move freely around the building while hopefully stopping the mayhem spreading into the city. She also adjusts the electricity, water, and other utilities so the Imps can't flood/burn/etc the place down.

"Crowd control protocols enacted," she notes into the comms. And then, just to Kate, she adds "I'll keep the orders on standby just in case. It never hurts to keep our options open."

When she finally arrives on scene she enters through the solid walls. Phasing in to place herself at the optimal position to start corralling Imps. Keeping them away from the exits as priority one and from the most critical locations where they could cause lasting damage as priority two.

Once on site her density increases. Becoming a near immovable object that's impervious to Imp attacks. Her golden yellow eyes lighting up as she experiments with different pulses of energy. Finding the most efficient way to herd them. Starting with low level microwaves that cause a stinging heat sensation.

"Oh Molly I didn't mean to /fight/ them. I mean to tidy up."

Billy Kaplan has posed:
With a crunchy sound, Billy thuds right into Molly. This is what happens when an Extremely Stoppable Force meets an Immovable Object: Billy groans and hits the ground painfully.

"Ouch!" "Yah!" "Bitch!" "OWWW!" "NYAAAAAH! and various other outbursts are heard from the imps as Vivian starts to herd them with her energy pulses. About a dozen or so imps respond by picking up anything that's remotely movable and hurling it at Vivian. A rain of books, lamps, coffee tables, pens, shoes, etc. torrents down on her.

From his position lying on the floor, Billy is not quite sure where his portal ended up. He felt its energy move toward the kitchen. "That way?" he grunts in discomfort, gesturing toward the kitchen in response to Molly's question. The stock pot is wobbling on the stove almost as if it had boiling water in it, and a distinctive purple glow is emanating from inside of it.

A small herd of imps picks up a dining room table like a shield and flies with it at high speed toward Kate, hoping to smash her into smithereens with the table.

Kate Bishop has posed:
There's a wince as Molly is hit by a flying Wiccan. In turn some more imps are hit with blunt tip arrows really, really hard. Usually this would be enough to knock a grown human out cold and leave them concussed for days.

"We can drop them in a pile so we can dump them in a portal in one go. Like sweeping up leaves. I think. I never had to do that." benefits of growing up rich. Though she'd never actually got to play and dive into a pile of leaves and undo the work as a kid."

Actual worry about Billy and Molly gets a more maternal tone. "You guys okay?" she asks while maybe looking at the imps like she maybe kind of wants to switch arrow heads to something pointy.

Again, it's having to explain to America Chavez why the walls need fresh paint after she and Kate already painted. And extra spackle for the holes.

Having to drop flat on her back to avoid having a table thrust at her like a bulldozer might be adding to reasons for changing arrows. At least for now she can always reclaim her spent arrows from the floor.

Molly Hayes has posed:
Molly Hayes feels Billy bounce off her shoulder and land on the ground next to her, "Oh, there you are, Billy! Don't sit on your butt, c'mon, we gotta get rid of these things. That you admitted you summoned! By accident, though, which hey, we all make mistakes, accidents happen, my parents always taught me that. But my parents are evil and psychotic, so maybe I shouldn't take any of the lessons they taught me to heart. Oh god, is my whole life a lie?!?"

"VIVIAN!?! IS MY WHOLE LIFE A LIE?!" she calls out to her roommate, BFF and general source of wisdom.

She stomps her way into the kitchen and glowing particles and radiance coming from the stove lead her to the proper pot, "Ah ha! Alright, you little sacks of crap, I'm gonna shove you in here and you're gonna go bye bye and then you're not going to come back, no matter what the local magicians do, because in this world there is a very strong girl who will make you go SQUISH if she sees you again!"

"Yeah, bring 'em to me and I'll feed 'em down the hole!" she calls back to Kate.

Vivian Vision has posed:
It doesn't really matter what the Imps throw at Vivian. Most household items aren't heavy or sharp enough to even hurt her. In the unlikely event something truly dangerous comes her way? Well she can just phase through it. Let it hit the wall behind her. Hands clasped behind her back. A faint scowl on her face.

The energy blasts are non-visible spectrum. So to the casual observer it's a little like she's merely scowling disapprovingly at the Imps. Driving them back through sheer scorn.

"Not everything bad people say is bad," Vivian points out earnestly. "And not everything good people say is good." Technically this is correct! Even if it does rather sound like she got it from a fortune cookie.

She snaps her hand out to catch a lamp. Placing it carefully down so the bulb doesn't break. No sense letting broken glass get into the carpets!

"You better get in the pot," she says sternly to the Imps. "Because making Molly bad is /not/ wise. She can squash /anything/."

Billy Kaplan has posed:
Billy peers upward at Molly, blinking rapidly. "Yeah, how inconsiderate of me." He slowly gets to his feet only to see a wave of imps being snowplowed by Vivian's invisible electrical charge in the direction of the pot-wielding Molly coming right for his head. He instantly drops back down to the floor just in time for the imps to buzz directly over him.

With a gleeful, otherworldly giggle-cackle, as Kate drops to the ground to avoid the table the imps simply release the table directly over her. The sharp edge careens toward her.

With a grunt, the wounded Wiccan climbs to his feet again. "Alright, I have had enough of this!" The room begins to fill with static-like power of his mounting magic. <<All imps will...MMMMMMPH>> Four of the creatures fly directly at Billy at high speed carrying one of Kate's fired-off blunt-tip arrows and ram it directly into Billy's mouth. He goes right back down on the floor to the delighted cackle of the imps! The spell is interrupted.

Kate Bishop has posed:
"Evil parents? Hey, mine too!" Kate can totally commiserate with Molly's parental anguish. Her dad was using the publishing company to help launder money and a few other less than legal endeavors.

The fact that he allowed a hit to be put out on his own daughter didn't sit well with Kate.

And Mom is a vampire. "Viv's right, sometimes bad people can actually turn out to be good parents. Yours had to have done something right if you were there result." she points out while dodging and diving about to reclaim arrows and use them to knock more imps out so they can be stuffed down into the portal in a pot.

Thankfully that last second rolling kept her head on her shoulders. "Do you WANT to be shot with arrows with pointy or explosive head? Cause that's how you get shot with pointy or explosive heads!" she yells pretty loudly at the last few imps still conscious. "Cause if you don't go into the portal and go home, my responses will be very pointed!" she threatens pretty angrily. That tabletop is going to need some polishing after that.

Molly Hayes has posed:
Molly Hayes considers, "I mean, well, I became what I became because I wanted to thwart their evil plans for world conquest, so I guess they did make me who I am, because i had to be totally different from them and not end up like them. And it was hard cause they were always nice to me before I knew what they were and I was kind of spoiled and it was great, I loved being spoiled and OH MY GOD CAN WE RUN OUT OF IMPS ALREADY?"

She keeps cramming more and more of the wiggling things into the pot until she finally slam dunks the last one in and seals it off with the lead, "Okay, Billy, close the portal. Oh please tell me you can close the portal, we can't have a pot witha portal to an imp dimension just sitting around HQ, I will end up making Ramen it and getting lost in space time.

Vivian Vision has posed:
Vivian continues her inexorable advance. Hands occasionally snapping out like she's playing some sort of sport. Keeping the Imp herd ahead of her. "If only I'd brought SPARKY with me," she laments. "I could have used him as a sheep dog." Probably it wouldn't have made things worse. Probably. SPARKY is a work in progress after all...

"We can always buy another pot Molly."

Practical as always.

Every now and again she phase flickers. Not to avoid damage, the biggest thrown object not even heavy enough to ruffle her hair, but just to keep herself clean. Okay maybe she's not /totally/ practical.

"If you need medical attention please let me know Billy. I can book treatment with a discreet professional." Hopefully he doesn't need an emergency dentist or worse. "And if you can't close the portal I'll arrange for a specialist disposal service."

There must be places which deal with the secure disposal of magical waste. In the same way there are places to contain unsafe scientific/industrial waste products.

Probably people just leave it with an unfortunate like Constantine...

Billy Kaplan has posed:
For the THIRD time, Billy gets back up to his feet. There is some minor bleeding drizzling down his chin and neck, but thankfully it all seems superficial. His teeth seem intact. The normally good-natured, warm, friendly Billy is Not Here Right Now. His eyes glow with arcane energy and his expression seethes with palpable anger. As he gathers his magical power the room fills with static, making people's hair go upward, like coming into contact with a Van de Graaff generator. <<The portal will vanish...>> There is a faint popping sound inside the stock pot as the portal ceases to exist on this plane and air rushes into the previously occupied space. <<...and that damned pot will go with it!>> There is a slightly louder popping sound as the stock pot vanishes from Molly's grasp. That was a high-end pot, too.

Billy walks over a chair that somehow didn't get thrown, knocked over, or hurled, and sits down on it, sighing. "Thanks guys for the assist," he says, groaning as he rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands.

Kate Bishop has posed:
"So Billy dodges clean up duty on account of possible concussion. Convenient." Kate doesn't sound pissed off. Back to that amused older sister tone. Most of the furniture can probably be saved, and just throw some blankets over to cover any stains, kind of like shared student housing.

Ordering a new pot won't be a problem at least. "Wanna grab Billy some ice, Molly?" she asks of the girl before grinning to Vivian. "Don't you have like all the knowledge to work as a doctor? Or can learn it pretty quickly? Save having to explain things to actual doctors that might do something silly like call the cops." Not that she's worried about medical bills but maybe not telling people what happened might be better for salvaging egos later on.

Molly Hayes has posed:
Molly Hayes hops up on the kitchen counter, swinging her legs back and forth. She's wearing pink sweatpants and an oversized pastel tie-dyed hoodie. She sips the tie for it back and forth, the lace twirled around her fingers. No hat today, just her brown hair piled into a top-knot held in place with neon-colored bands. "Ain't no thang but a chicken wing, amigo," she grins at Billy. "It's okay, we all make mistakes learning to use our powers. I threw a police car at a bad guy once and it missed and it went through a Walgreen's. Nobody got hurt, but I think they might've shut down that location, so I cost people, like, their jobs. Oh crap, that's grim. I may have starved children. I'm a monster," she reflects. She reaches over to open the freezer portion of the fridge, grabbing a bag of ice and tossing it down to Wiccan, "Here you go, Mr. Wizard."