This chapter has almost nothing to do with the episode. Truly. It was inspired by one of those blink-and-you-miss-it conversations between Sam and Callen, barely even a recurring joke. But it got me thinking, so it got Callen thinking.

Enjoy!


Season 6, Episode 7: Leipei


It was a week after the drone case when Hetty texted Callen just before midnight.

All it said was, "Really?"

He was awake, of course, and he started to laugh the instant he saw it. With every day that went by, he'd been waiting more and more eagerly. The idea had come from his discussion about robots and drones with Sam, and the fact that he'd pulled it off this long was almost a miracle. Which made it all the more enjoyable, of course.

"Something wrong?" he sent back.

The response was immediate: a picture of a tiny white disc bumping around in Hetty's master bathroom.

It had gotten itself partially behind the toilet, and looked like it was about a moment away from knocking over the towel rack. There was something scrawled across the top of it which wasn't legible in the picture.

Callen grinned as he typed a response. "Looks like you got yourself a pet!"

He could almost feel her exasperation in her reply, which was, of course, the point. "A Roomba is not a pet. And why on earth is it in here?"

"Well," he typed very carefully and slowly just to make her wait, "they're programmed to clean the floors and carpets on a single level. It probably cleaned the other rooms and found the door open."

"WHY is it HERE?"

Oh, I am in such trouble and it was so worth it. "That house is all one level. Seems an efficient solution. I know you hate vacuuming."

"And why, precisely, is it named 'Grumpy?'"

So much trouble. "They all needed names. It's not nice just to call it 'vacuum puck thing.'"

There was an ominous pause before the next text.

"Are you telling me there are SIX MORE of these things in my houses?"

"Your floors have never been cleaner," he replied.

Ten minutes went by without any kind of response. At last, one more text arrived.

"While I deeply appreciate your dedication to housekeeping, know that two can play at this game. And when I imitate the role of the powerful wicked queen, you will not enjoy the apple I feed you. In the meantime, I fully expect you to come over tomorrow for dinner and teach me how to program it — the idiotic thing keeps getting stuck in a corner."

The next day, G made a point of stopping at the other houses to check on the other Roombas before dinnertime, just to see if any of the others had gotten stuck. He discovered that she had beat him to them and had carefully renamed most of them.

Happy had become Nuisance.

Doc had become Incorrigible.

Sneezy had become Juvenile.

Sleepy had become Troublesome.

Bashful had become Ridiculous.

But Dopey was still Dopey and, upon arriving for dinner, he was greeted by an unchanged Grumpy as well.

It took G no time at all to realize that she had deliberately changed them all to refer to himself. It took him days to stop giggling about it.