by Shannon Hale
“I’m not doing that!” Squirrel Girl shouted, smashing another drone. “I don’t even know what that means! And don’t quote Star Wars! You’ll, like, sully it with your nasty self!”
While she was punching two micro-bots out of the air and swiping at two others with her tail, a fifth flew in low and cut her calf with its whirling blades.
“Ow, ow, ow!” Squirrel Girl yelled. She fell to the ground, but managed to land with her butt on the drone, smashing it.
Tippy squeaked an alarm. A cluster of some fifty drones were diving straight at Squirrel Girl.
From the corner of her eye Squirrel Girl could see Tippy and the other squirrels running back from the hole to help her, but they were too far away. This was it, then. She was going down in one last clash. She whirled around, eager to take down as many as she could before they took her down, but her claws only sliced through empty air.
“What?” She stumbled forward. “Happened?”
Most of the drones had stopped and fallen to the ground. One dove a few inches, backed up, and then scampered away. Others darted around erratically. They were quick but didn’t attack or move in formation.
“Chukka?” Tippy-Toe asked. A drone hovered down to stare at Tippy’s tail. She swiped at it. The drone dodged away easily, and then returned to stare at her tail again.
“Yeah, super weird,” Squirrel Girl said, getting to her feet.
“CHK! CHK! CHAK!” Suzie Skunkkiller yelled. A micro-bot had grabbed the acorn she had been using as a shield.
Other drones were attempting to scamper up the walls. Having no legs, they weren’t very good at it.
“Chk,” Tippy said.
“I know,” Squirrel Girl said. “It’s like they’re trying to be squirrels.”
“AAAAGGH!” the Micro-Manager shouted. He was pounding at his tablet. “The firmware is corrupted!”
“You know what?” Squirrel Girl said to Tippy. “I think Ana Sofía did this. That girl is awesome.”
“Fine!” He tapped on his tablet, tore it from his arm, and threw it on the ground. The drones exploded, littering the floor with pieces of plastic and metal, nothing left airborne but black smoke.
Squirrel Girl kicked through the debris toward him. “Give up and bring down that baby, or I’ll shell you like a nut!”
“Are you kidding?” He pulled a phone from his pocket and held it to his mouth. “Engage Sparta Protocol. Authorization: crawl, crawl, crawl.”
The ground beneath their feet began to shake.
“What was that?” Squirrel Girl asked.
“That,” he said, “is the endgame.”
He dropped out of sight. It was as if the floor opened its mouth and simply swallowed him whole. Squirrel Girl rushed forward, limping on her wounded leg. Now she could see a circular metal hatch right where the Micro-Manager had been standing. She scratched at it, leaving marks on the metal, but got nowhere in terms of opening it.
“Get that baby down!” she yelled.
The ground shuddered again.
“Phase three.” Mike’s voice came from a single loudspeaker mounted to the wall just above her. After the impressively creepy boom of his voice coming from several hundred flying robots, this sounded sad.
Squirrel Girl was at the pole, trying to climb up. It was slick and straight, and no matter how hard she jumped she couldn’t get more than halfway up.
“So are you going with ‘phase three’ or with ‘the endgame’?” Squirrel Girl yelled back. “It’d be less confusing if you just picked one. Personally I’d go with ‘endgame.’ It sounds more fun.”
“Most of my micro-bots, the flying ones, were never designed to do anything but observe people and chop meat,” the loudspeaker sounded.
“Gross!” Squirrel Girl shouted as she leaped at the pole for the twentieth time. “Those are gross things to be designed to do!”
“My ground troops, though,” the Micro-Manager continued, “they were designed to chew up concrete and stone. To march through the world and grind it to dust.”
“Chkka,” Tippy said. She was looking nervously at the trembling floor.
“They will emerge from the foundation of this building and wipe the neighborhood clean. Then the state. If I’m lucky, the world. You know what they say. ABE. Always Be Escalating.”132
“Check it out, Tippy!” Squirrel Girl said. She didn’t dare leave till Dante was safe.
Tippy-Toe and the other squirrels scampered to the hole in the wall, filing out one by one.
“You made me do this,” the Micro-Manager said. The rumbling from beneath her changed pitch. “If you’d just been good and died earlier, the city might have been saved.”
“How about if I play dead?” Squirrel Girl said. “Then will you shut the drones off and lower the baby?”
“Before the day is out, this entire neighborhood will be rubble. And it will be all your fault.”
“The squirrels and I will stop them, you know,” Squirrel Girl said, sliding uselessly down the pole, her claws making a squeeeeak against the metal. “We’ll smash them like the others. You should turn them off, get that baby down, and call it a day.”
She gave up and started to climb up the wall of the warehouse. Maybe if she got high enough, she could leap horizontally to the platform Dante was on?
“I have to admit the squirrels might have a chance against my ground drones with you fighting by their side,” said the villain on the loudspeaker.
The hatch he had disappeared through clicked and slid open, a platform rising to reveal a giant multiarmed robotic figure. It looked like a cross between Iron Man and several small construction vehicles plus some NASCAR stickers. The helmet slid open, uncovering Mike’s face.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “you will be otherwise occupied. I saw how easily you defeated my spider-bot. Trust me when I say that was child’s play compared to my deathcruncher.”133
Squirrel Girl gulped. Her mouth was dry. Her heart fluttered like a hummingbird’s. She’d barely survived phase two. There didn’t seem to be much hope she’d survive phase three, aka the endgame. She could almost hear the entire internet laughing at her: She’s just a girl with squirrel powers. What can she do against a Super Villain with an army of killer robots plus something called a deathcruncher?
Through the glass box, she could almost make out Dante’s muted cry.
TIPPY-TOE
I was the only squirrel still inside the warehouse when the giant robot boy attacked. Three of his fists pounded the ground, cracking the concrete floor. I could hear the calls of my cousins from outside, but inside was a monster bent on destroying my best friend.
Squirrel Girl leaped from the wall at him, claws- and feetfirst. He batted her away. She rolled across the floor.
Her groans sounded more like ouchie-ouchie-but-I’m-okay than tell-my-mother-that-I-loved-her, so I jumped onto her shoulder and asked, “What’s the plan?”
Another blow from the robot boy shattered the concrete floor. We separated, dodging, and then came back together.
“You need to go!” she shouted.
“You can’t do this alone,” I said. Metal projectiles flew from one of the creature’s arms, but we twisted, missing both.
“I have to save Dante,” Squirrel Girl said. “I’m his freakin’ babysitter, like I won’t! But out there? Those robot things are going to destroy the whole town.”
Puffin Furslide poked his head through the hole and shouted something, but I couldn’t hear it over the noise of the metal claw scraping a wall, barely missing Squirrel Girl.
“Go, Tippy,” Squirrel Girl said. “Find Ana Sofía, she can help you save the city! You and your clan are mighty!”
She leaped onto one of the attacking arms and scampered to the robotic suit’s head. Just like a squirrel would.
“I’ll join you as soon as I take care of this,” she shouted.
I felt uneasy leaving her, like I’d just eaten a nut two winters buried, but I darted out the hole after Puffi
n.
“We’ve been hearing something like a buried beehive,” Puffin said, pressing his head to the ground. “Like a hundred buried beehives.”
Suddenly a metal spider thing was upon me, slashing. As I dodged, Bear Bodkin caught it and Puffin tore out the electronics from its underside with a bucktoothed bite.
“Where did that come from?” I asked.
“There,” Puffin said, pointing to a sinkhole just beyond the foundation of the warehouse.
“We need to plug that—” I started to say, but just then, three more holes suddenly opened into the ground, all in a straight line along the base of the building. And out of each one came crawling more of those metal bugs. From the rumble beneath my feet, I anticipated hundreds more. My heart sank.
“Tippy-Toe!”
I turned to see Big Daddy Spud perched on a post. Behind him preened over a hundred groundies. “We thought you could use a paw.”
“Praise the leaves, you are a sight for beady eyes,” I said.
“Got a plan?” Spud asked.
“Take your top-branch diggers to fill the holes,” I said. “Slow those rot-bottomed bugs down.” I turned to the assembled tree squirrels. “Cortez! Stand our top-branch scrappers beside each hole to protect the groundie diggers. A bug gets through, give it tooth and claw.”
Fuzz Fountain Cortez nodded and darted away.
Throwing dirt into the holes wouldn’t be enough to keep all the ground drones buried, I knew. I needed to plug them with something bigger. I searched the group for a squirrel with likely talent.
“You! Groundie with the teeth! What’s your name?”
“Chomp Style, ma’am,” said the ground squirrel.
“You chew, Chomp Style?” I asked.
“Four-time log-gnaw champ, ma’am.”
“Solid bark. See that tree?” I pointed to the tall oak growing just outside the warehouse fence. “You and a crew are going to chew that trunk front to back.”
“Ma’am?”
“Honor to the tree, Chomp Style, but if we don’t knock over this one tree we might lose all the trees in this town.”
“On it,” Chomp Style said, and galloped to the tree.
“Everyone who’s just standing around swishing their tail, shadow Chomp Style. Chew together. Stop when the wood creaks and leans.”
Cletus the marmot hung back. “I’m not much for the chew,” he said, flexing his paws. “Never had much call for it.”
“Natch. No chew for you, Cletus,” I said. “I need you to thump.”
Cletus smiled. Cletus liked to thump.
One of the metal bugs broke through the line of scrappers and hurtled toward us. I crouched, ready to pounce on its back, but Cletus planted his feet and let the thing ram into his head. It bounced back, twitching, and while it did, Cletus tore its head off.
Cletus and I scampered to the tree, where the chew crew already had the thing almost tipping.
Chomp Style spat out a chunk of wood the size of my head. “One more bite ought to do it,” he said.
“Perfect,” I said. I scanned the tree, calculating the distance from the warehouse and the angle it would need to fall to plug those holes. I scratched an X into the bark with a claw.
“Thump it, Cletus,” I said. “Thump it like there’s honey inside.”
The marmot smiled, took a few steps back, and then charged the tree.
There was a splintering noise as he hit, and at first I worried it was Cletus’s skull. But then the tree began to tip.
“Everybody move!” I shouted to the front lines. “Out! Out! Now!”
The squirrels scattered, and the masses of bugs they’d been holding back in their holes surged forward, free to move for a single second before the tree crashed on top of them. The ground shook from the impact, and as the dust cleared I could see the tree fell nearly exactly where I wanted it. All four of the holes were capped with a ton of solid Jersey oak.
The crowd cheered, but I knew it wasn’t over. At best I bought us time, and the tiny robotic chainsaw sound I heard muffled beneath the oak told me that it might not be much time at all.
I leaped onto the fallen tree. Through the wood, I felt the vibrations of an army of robots cutting and digging.
“Squirrels!” I shouted, and without being told, my army gathered before me. They were dirty, some were wounded, but they were fierce. I spoke to them in the old tongue, with large words and deep meaning. I needed them to know this moment was important.
“The enemy is not vanquished! Even now they dig. Even now they cut through this tree! They destroy it as they would the world! But will we let that happen?”
“NO!” my assembled family yelled.
“This is where we hold them,” I shouted. “On this abandoned field, this is where we fight! Whether we crush them by acorn or shred them by claw! Remember this day, squirrels, for it will be yours for all time!”
“CHK-CHA!” the army responded.
“Squirrels, what is your profession?”
“NUTS AND DEATH!” came the reply.
“This day we rescue an ignorant world from destruction!” I said. “We protect a world that would call us vermin! Why do we do this? Because we are mighty! Because we are valiant! BECAUSE WE ARE SQUIRRELS!”
“SQUIRRELS!” shouted the assembled crew.
The tree splintered then, and thousands of robot bugs spilled out from the shattered wood.
“Give them nothing, but take from them EVERYTHING!”
And we held them, we three hundred squirrels. We held our own against that robot army. For a time, it looked like we might actually win. But when Cletus twisted an ankle and fell, the tide turned. It was all we could do after that to stay alive.
I thought if we could survive long enough for Squirrel Girl to come, she would help us turn things around. But she didn’t come, and that meant she was in trouble, maybe as much trouble as we were in. Was she even still alive? Minute by minute our numbers were dwindling. A squirrel is basically live energy wrapped in a fur coat. But when that energy depletes, it’s gone, and we have no choice but to sleep till we revive. All over the battlefield squirrels lay limp as corpses, too tuckered out to even twitch.
“They’ve stopped coming out!” Davey Porkpun shouted, and it was true. The hole in the oak that had spewed forth robot bug after robot bug was finally empty. But it was too late. There were only a dozen or so of us still able to fight and at least two hundred of the metal wretches to dispatch. While I grappled with three at once, a dozen charged past me.
“Tippy!” Big Daddy Spud flattened one of my opponents with his bulk. “A group broke through our line!”
“I know!” I said, gutting the other two. “We’ll have to chase them down later. There’s too many here—”
Spud grabbed my wrist and pointed my paw in the direction the group of robots ran. “They’re heading straight for the day care, Tippy. There are babies there. Babies.”
And then I heard the distant sound of crunching and knew they must have begun drilling through the day-care wall.
“Babies,” I whispered. “Why is it always babies?”
Spud and I were tackled from behind by a pair of the crawler drones. Spud grunted as his head hit a rock, and then he lay still. My attacker had one of its sharp legs jabbing into my back, pinning me to the ground. As I wriggled to get free, I saw Fuzz Fountain Cortez tearing her way toward me through the waves of robot bugs. I twisted, getting leverage with my tail, and managed to roll both the bug and me over.
“Go!” I shouted to Cortez, pointing in the direction of the day care. “Save the babies! I’ve got this!”
As if to punish me for my arrogance, the robot snapped its pincers at my throat, missing my neck by only a hair. My bow was not so lucky. The pink ribbon that Doreen gave me the day we met slid off my neck, caught the breeze, and flew away.
“You did NOT just cut off my bow,” I snarled.
The metal insect buzzed self-importantly, and I grabbed its head. I i
magined it was an acorn, and that I was very hungry. The robot did not buzz for long.
I looked down the street toward the day care, fearing it was already too late for the babies.
And then, from the fringes of the battlefield, I heard the call.
“The dogs are coming! The dogs are coming!”
For a brief moment my heart sank with the thought of another set of enemies, but then I saw them. The feral dogs from the lot, in battle formation, with Speedo Strutfuzz riding atop the back of the black-striped leader.
“Thought you could use some more fur in the game,” Speedo said from his black-striped mount.
“The day-care center?” I asked.
“Still standing,” he said. “The dogs stopped the digger drones. But looks like we’ve still got loose bots about, and if we don’t hook and crack them all, they might head there, too.”
“Then it’s time to send the rest of this garbage to the scrapyard,” I said.
Speedo nodded. “Let’s give ’em shell, squeaks,” he shouted to the assembled dogs. “Charge!”
The animals tore into the crowds of robots, chomping and snarling.
“Open a hole,” I yelled to the squirrels. “Catch the dogs’ scraps!”
Even with that extra help, it seemed useless. We were overwhelmed. Until—
“Tippy-Toe!” someone yelled from beyond the battlefield, but this time in human language. I scampered to the sound of Doreen’s human friend, the one who calls herself Ana Sofía. With her were three groups of people: one that smelled like scented lotion, another carrying swords and smelling of oiled leather armor, and the last carrying baseball bats and smelling of paint and trash.134
“Tippy, I brought the Squirrel Scouts. We’re here to help.”
“We took care of the attacking army,” I said, “but we have to hunt down and break apart every last straggler or the town won’t be safe!”
Ana Sofía stared at me, uncomprehending.
“Did that squirrel just talk to you?” one of the girls asked Ana Sofía.
“Yes,” Ana Sofía said.
“What did it say?”