by Shannon Hale
Ana Sofía sighed. “I don’t know.”
I pointed at the robots, and then at the neighborhood around us.
“What?”
I did the pointing again before realizing I had something better. I had the hand language that Ana Sofía and Doreen sometimes used. I struggled to remember a few signs.
Catch—robots—run away, I signed.
“What is it—?”
“It’s she, not it,” Ana Sofía said, “and I don’t…Wait.”
She crouched down to my level and watched me. I made the signs again. Ana Sofía gasped, her eyes widened. And then slowly, she smiled.
“I think she’s signing!” Ana Sofía said. “Do it again, Tippy.”
Robots—run—find, I signed.
I was so intent on my signing that I did not see a charging micro-bot until it leaped at me, pincers wide. Before it landed the attack, however, it was pinned by an aluminum sword.
“Have at thee, craven insect!” one of the humans in armor shouted, and then smashed the robot with a booted foot.
I gave the human a thumbs-up, and he gave me one back, smiling.
“Okay,” Ana Sofía said. “I think Tippy is saying that some of these robots have escaped and are in the neighborhood. We need to find them and smash them. Is that right, Tippy?”
I gave Ana Sofía a nod.
“You know what to do, Squirrel Scouts,” said Ana Sofía. “Charge!”
“Yeah!”
“We shall vanquish the metal demons, forsooth!”
“This is so awesome!”
The humans surged forward. Behind me the dogs leaped and snapped, destroying the remaining robots. For a few seconds, I just breathed and watched, so in awe even my foot-claws tingled. Last year, I would have been just fine if all humans and all dogs just disappeared and left the world to us. But today, humans and dogs were working with us to save that world. Now if they all disappeared? I think I’d miss them.
A little.
SQUIRREL GIRL
She shouldn’t have laughed at him. Because when it came to phase three,135 the Micro-Manager didn’t mess around.
Squirrel Girl couldn’t seem to concentrate. It was hard to anticipate his moves, hidden as he was inside that hulking deathcruncher suit. She tried to leap; he knocked her down. She tried to run; he stopped her with a sticky net shot from a robot arm. She cut through the net with her nails and tried to attack; his armor didn’t break. She eventually managed to worm her teeth into the joint of one of his extra robot arms and pop it off, but the electrical shock she got for it nearly knocked her out.
She started to get tired. Deathly tired. And that made her feel punchy.
“You know, you totally could’ve been a hero,” she said, dancing around to make herself harder to hit. “A Super Hero, even. You’re smart. You’re clever. You’re…You have great taste in polo shirts….”
A rocket exploded, and she rolled out of the way just in time. She could smell burning hairs on her tail. Never had she felt less like a Super Hero. She crumpled to the floor.
“What I am is maddeningly disappointed,” he said. “I’m broadcasting this fight live, you know, and I’d hoped for more of a show. After all this, you’re going to simply go belly-up. And oh dear, wut will happen to dat poor wittle baby…?”
He clicked a button. There must have been a microphone inside the glass box, because Dante’s cry, previously muffled, now was suddenly loud and fierce, broadcast through a speaker on the wall. Squirrel Girl could hear in the baby’s cry exactly how scared he was. Her throat closed off; her feet and tail turned cold.
“And there’s nothing you can do,” said the Micro-Manager.
Something clicked on inside her, some hot, fierce center. Her vision focused. Her senses exploded. She knew, without question, that she had it. Whatever it was that gave squirrels the ability to outsmart anything that was supposedly “squirrel-proof.” To adapt to any climate, any place on Earth. To survive. To win.
She leaned into that place. Her squirrel-ness. Or maybe it was her girl-ness. It was definitely her Squirrel Girl—ness.
She felt unbeatable.
Still down on all fours, she looked up at the Micro-Manager. And she smiled.
“W-what?” he asked.
“I hope you have a bus pass,” she said. “’Cause you’re going. Down. Town.”
Squirrel Girl attacked.
She bit. She scratched. She leaped and grabbed and scampered and twitched and dug and climbed, chatting all the while. Eventually she tore off another one of his arms.
“I have so many good phrases,” she said. “I keep forgetting. Which do you like better: ‘Are you a frog? Because I think you’re about to croak’ or ‘I’m not your mama’s squirrel-tailed super—’”
“STOP TALKING!” the Micro-Manager screamed.
Two of his robot suit’s four arms were on the warehouse floor, twitching uselessly.
“Okay, time for some real talk,” Squirrel Girl said, darting between his legs and scampering up to cling to his back. “Which of those arms do you miss most?”
“I don’t need the pincer arm to destroy you!” he shouted, slamming his back against the wall in an attempt to squish her. He’d tried that already four times, and each time all he managed to do was dent the wall.
“Ooh, the pincer arm was a good one,” she said, leaping off his back, onto his helmet, and then back to the ground. “You almost got my tail with that one.”
The building shook with the force of his robotic suit slamming against the wall. She rolled backward into the center of the room, coming to a rest next to the unpowered gnashmouth.
“Hey, gnashmouth,” Squirrel Girl said, talking to the inactive chopper. “No hard feelings, right?”
The robot-suited villain took a step forward. A panel on the suit’s chest slid open.
“ELECTRO-BOMBS!” he shouted.
A half dozen sparking metal spheres shot out of the suit, arcing toward her.
The shouting was a thing he’d been doing throughout the entire fight. Not to communicate over the noise, but to announce his moves or weapons by name. She’d tossed out a couple of good ones near the beginning of the fight,136 but after his “ARACHNO-POUND,” “STEEL VENGEANCE,” “DOUBLE STEEL VENGEANCE,” “ROBO-RAKE,” and now “ELECTRO-BOMBS,” she was beginning to worry that maybe she was supposed to keep doing it, too.
“Um,” she said, “CATCH AND RELEASE!”
She caught one of the electro-bombs, intending to throw it back, but as soon as she touched it, she was shocked, hard.
“YOW!” she yelled, dropping the thing and leaping away from where all the other bombs had landed and were now popping with electrical arcs.
“I am unstoppable!” the Micro-Manager yelled from within the helmet.
Squirrel Girl was pretty sure that wasn’t true, but who was she to slam his hopeful self-love?
The gnashmouth started chomping again, apparently repowered by the electro-bombs. There was nothing for it to chew, since Davey Porkpun was long gone. It just sat there, chomping the air.
She tore the base mount from the ground. She hefted the base, pointing the mouth, still gnashing, at the Micro-Manager, like a super-fat jousting lance.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“REVENGE OF GNASHMOUTH!” she shouted, charging the giant robot suit.
The Micro-Manager put out his hand to swat away his attacker, but the gnashmouth chomped it off at the wrist.
Squirrel Girl skidded to a halt. Both she and the Micro-Manager stared at the arm stump, shocked.
“Oh, man,” she said. “That didn’t, like, take off your real hand, did it?”
He shook his metal head. But the fact that his fleshy hand was safe inside the suit didn’t appease his rage. He screamed and swung his other arm at her. Instinctively she blocked with the gnashmouth lance, and off went his robot suit’s other hand.
“Golly,” Squirrel Girl said, looking at the gnashmouth in amazement. �
�It’s super-mega-ultra chompy. You did a good job with this thing.”
He tried to kick her, and his robotic knee came off in the teeth of the gnashmouth. After that, it was all downhill for the Micro-Manager. The gnashmouth lost its charge and stopped chomping right around the time the Micro-Manager lost his suit’s left foot, but by then he had already given up.137
Mike just sort of slumped to the ground as Squirrel Girl hopped about, pulling off his remaining bits of armor.
“Lower that pole down and let me get the baby,” she said, “or I’ll—”
“Mwa-ha-ha,” said Mike, though she could tell that he wasn’t really into it. “I’d hardwired the baby trap controllers into that.” He pointed to a crumpled blackened mass that had been part of deathcruncher. “You foiled your own heroics!”
“Well, crap,” said Squirrel Girl. She squinted up the pole. Her center was still white-hot, live as a wire, sparking with confidence. “Squirrel-proof bird-feeder-slash-baby-cage, eh? We’ll see about that.”
She left Mike sitting on the floor, the remaining pieces of the heavy robot suit on his legs keeping him pinned down, and she climbed the warehouse wall. On the slick parts, she pounded her claws into the corrugated metal to keep going up. A hundred feet up. And even more, up to the ceiling so that she was higher than the baby cage.
Perched there, she eyed the stand. Inside that thick-walled see-through box, Dante had curled up, his back rising and falling in sleep.138
“That glass is bulletproof, FYI!” shouted Mike from the floor.
“Bulletproof and squirrel-proof are not the same thing,” she whispered.
She shut her eyes and told herself, “Leap before you look, Squirrel Girl.” And then, screaming “For the love of nuuuuuuuts!” she leaped as hard as any girl or squirrel had ever leaped.
Only once she was in the air did she look. It was a good thing she’d jumped first, or she might not have had the courage. The distance was far. Impossibly far? Not for Squirrel Girl, apparently, because she managed to swipe the edge of the giant disk with her fingertips. Good thing she’d done Commander Quiff’s Fightin’ Fingertip Workout. She gripped with those eight mighty fingertips till she could pull herself up onto the disk and finally to the glass box.
With her claws, she cut a hole in the top of the glass, lifted Dante out, and tucked him inside her sweatshirt. “Poor baby, poor sweetie baby!” She swung over the edge of the platform and slid down the pole all the way to the floor.
Mike was staring wide-eyed. “What are you?”
“You know who I am,” she said. “Say my name!”
“S-s-squirrel Girl,” he blurted.
“Dang straight,” she said. She kissed sleeping Dante’s head. He smelled like lemon-scented baby shampoo. “So, how do I shut off the robots out there?”
“It’s too late,” he said, staring at one of the deathcruncher’s amputated limbs. “They will have destroyed half the city by now.”
“Hold on a sec.” She dashed to the hole in the wall, and with Dante tucked into her arms, she kicked the opening wider so she could duck through.
The ground outside the warehouse looked like a battlefield, torn up and scarred, burned in places. But all the “dead” bodies were robots. The dozens of limp squirrels were still breathing.
A few drones remained, buzzing and clacking and scrambling around, arms whirling. Squirrel Girl started forward to attack, but she only got a couple of steps when suddenly it was over.
Tippy-Toe knocked one drone with her tail, serving it right to Skunk Club leader Antonio, who smacked it with his bat. Other Skunk Clubbers were attacking a drone with cans of spray paint. The drone gurgled and sputtered as the paint got into its gears. The baron and two other LARPers were cheering as they summarily hacked three micro-bots with their swords. Vin Tang shot another drone out of the air with a bow and arrow, while the he-giant Derek Facepunch, wearing his iron gauntlet, punched a drone approximately in its face. The Somebodies were emitting high-pitched shrieks as they stomped on the last small cluster of drones as if they were cockroaches.
Ana Sofía looked around, put her hands on her hips, and let out a big breath. “Good work, Squirrel Scouts! I think we just helped save the day!”
“Huzzah!”
“Long live the queen!”
“We smashed the punks till they cried out for their robot mommies!”
“Chektt!” Fuzz Fountain Cortez leaped onto Ana Sofía’s shoulder and nuzzled her cheek.
“Wow,” Squirrel Girl said. “Looks epic!”
Tippy-Toe made a tiny salute. “Chk!”
“Your squirrels were awesome, Tip,” said Squirrel Girl. “Hey, Scouts! Hey, Ana Sofía!” She moved closer to Ana Sofía so she could see her face clearly. “You kill all the bugs?”
“’Tis certain, my liege,” said the baron.
“Yeah, I think so. You good?” asked Ana Sofía.
“Yep, and I saved this human baby, who I’ve never seen or babysat before today at all.”
She handed Dante to Ana Sofía. He nestled into Ana Sofía’s arms, snuggly and sleepy. Fuzz Fountain Cortez cooled off Dante’s damp forehead with sweeps of her tail.
“Aw,” said Squirrel Girl, Ana Sofía, the Skunk Clubbers, the LARPers, the Somebodies, and the squirrels all at the same time.
“Movies have taught me to never leave a Super Villain alone, so BRB,” said Squirrel Girl.
Mike was still slumped there, but he looked up with something like hope in his eyes.
“Is it all gone?” he asked.
“Yep,” she said.
He smiled and sighed. “Well, at least there’s that.”
“Yeah, good news all arou—Wait. I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing. When you say ‘is it all gone,’ what is the ‘it’ that you mean?”
“The neighborhood,” he said. “The city. All that mess the drones were supposed to destroy. I imagine the Avengers will take care of the bots before they hit New York, but at least I have this victory.”
“Riiiight,” Squirrel Girl said. “See, when I said yes to that question, I was talking about, like, all your stuff. The drones, the robots, you know? They’re all gone. Smashed.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending for a moment, then closed his eyes and slumped fully to the ground. “I’ve failed,” he muttered.
“Um,” Squirrel Girl said, crouching at his side. “Well, yeah. Evil is a butt.”
“What?”
“What I mean is, uh, evil doesn’t win.”
“Sometimes it does,” he said, turning to look at her. “If you’re good at what you do. I thought I was pretty good.”
His eyes started to fill with tears. Squirrel Girl had already felt bad for him generally, but now she felt like a heel for smashing up his awesome robot suit. She had to remind herself he had wanted to kill her. And innocent squirrels. And an entire city. Not to mention the baby.
Still, he was sad.
“Hey, look,” she said, “you were good. That suit? That was freaking awesome! Everything you made was awesome! This is Tony Stark—class stuff.”
“I’d hoped it was better,” he said.
“Well, uh,” she said, “better than what he was doing at your age, I promise you that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m ruined. My life is over.”
“Are you kidding?! You’ve got like, at least fifty more years. Right? How long do humans live?”
“All I ever wanted was for someone really evil to say good job, Mike. I’m so proud of you. You’re everything we hoped you’d be.”
“Really? That’s all you ever wanted? Never like, a pony, or to be an astronaut, or to have a tail or anything?”
“Don’t make fun of me,” he said.
Squirrel Girl held up her hands. “I’m not, really. It’s just that’s a kind of a, I don’t know, nonstandard life wish. But I get it, ponies aren’t for everyone. Allergies, amirite?”
“And now that will never happen,” he said
.
“I don’t know,” Squirrel Girl said. “It might. I mean, assuming you don’t change your ways and decide helping people feels better than destroying them.”
“No, not now. Everybody knows. The entire villain community saw this,” he said. “Saw you beat me. They’re probably watching right now, unless they got too bored.” He pointed to the last remaining loudspeaker. Right below it was a small wall-mounted camera.
Squirrel Girl scampered up the wall until she could stick her head in front of the camera. “Hey, creeps,” she said. “You’re on notice. Behave yourselves.”
She tore the camera off the wall, crunched it into a ball, and leaped back to the ground. “They’re not watching now,” she said.
“It’s too late. This was my shot. No way my par—uh, Hydra will take me in now. If I was good—really good—Hydra would be here already to recruit me into an unmarked vehicle driven by green-cowled lackeys and from there into an underground lair where they would train me to be the next whiz kid of Super Villainy. A thousand bucks says S.H.I.E.L.D. gets here first, which will be Hydra’s way of saying no thanks, you can have this one.”
“What does Hydra know anyway?” she said.
“Only everything.”
“You don’t need anyone to tell you you’re great for it to be true.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure about that,” he said. “But thanks. I guess.”
With a clatter, the outer door dropped off its hinges. Ana Sofía stood in the doorway with a big pair of bolt cutters. Behind her, a dozen squirrels were babysitting Dante, rocking the sleeping baby softly on their collective furry backs.
A distant, high-pitched whine grew louder, and louder. Squirrel Girl gave Mike a look.
“That’s not yours, is it?” she asked. “That machine noise? There better not be a postgame to your endgame.”
He shook his head. “Not mine. I’m finished.”
“You do still have to go to jail, you know,” said Squirrel Girl. “Or juvie. Is that what they call it for kids?”
“They have a special one for Super Villains,” he said. “I wish I could go to that one.”
Ana Sofía took a step into the warehouse and cleared her throat. “Oh, hello. Squirrel Girl. Looks like you saved the day.”