Squirrel Girl smiled. “Thank you,” she said, as if she understood what it cost Ana Sofía to trust her with it. And honestly, that helped.
As the squirrels scurried over the threshold one by one, Squirrel Girl lightning-speed typed their names into the hacked database of Hydra workers. The robot voice of the scanner announced them as they passed through.
“Tippy-Toe,” said the scanner. “Fuzz Fountain Cortez, Curd Spiderwhey, Cartwheel Kate, Elbow Hides-in-Fur, Stink Pampershield, Chet the Mound King, Lorraine Cuddlywink Cink, Timp Weaselrider, Stephan the Mud-Monger, Maxwell von Snort, Samich the Uneatable, Gary Branch-Walker, Handsome JJ, Marieke the Unblinking, Titus Glittersnoot, Sniffle Sidepockets, Teeter Furflint, Totter Furflint, Vegan Podburglar, Cellophane Sally, Pete Flipperpaws, The Innsmouth Creeper, Prince Ramon the Sub-Earther, Imperious Tex, Davey Porkpun, Dewey Decimate aka the Librarian, Platypus Kate, Bartleby the Scamperer, Calendar Earl, Kurt Poundofguts, Tablecarver Tito, Chomp Style, Millicent the Uncouth, Emo Pat, Shawn Swingsinger, Toot Trainskimmer, Squirm the Exceptionally Comfortable, Mighty Micah Fuzzfist, Thistledown Kistleback aka the Sizzler, Zoë Twig-Hunter, Violet ‘Spectrum’s End’ Nutsworn, Peggy Eggsbane, Polymorph Patty Who Was Once a Gerbil, Rebel Tablescraps, Indistinguishable Ben, Distinguishable Ben, Amy Danderbags, Joggy McSweatscourge, Tail-Pinned Pudu, DG Leaps, BATRA the Unforgiving, Jessica Harmfist, Sir Reggie Fuzzface, Spencer the Brave, Babs the Bubble Witch, Little Sissy Hotlegs, Big Sissy Hotlegs, El Fantástico, Campbell the Unsoup, Rich Reeders, Stu Swarm, Stony Germ, Grinbumm, Roxie the Rock Proxy, Ms. Gnomer, Edfur Cullen, Jacob Blackfuzz, Abbot Shamescuttle, Hotcap Hugglebum, Alexander Hamsandwich, Pardon Menot, Rictus the Screamer, Parking Strip Sue, Bedbug Ballyhoo, Startlekins the Unwieldy, Gary Gardenguard, Meep the Misunderstood, Lady Sportswear, Dirk Stircrazy, Jamie Grizzlechops, Dawn of the Bread, Lefty Girl, Not-That-Stark, Skylar the Twitchy, Skylar the Twitchier, Chive Alpha, Liberty Mel, The Muttering Scallop, Wiggy Nubknees, Puck Tenclaws, Gore Soupstain, Alias the Under-Toad, Pillbox Matt, Speedo Strutfuzz, The Last Empress of Pillbugs, Gordon Soondead, Gordon-Still-in-Waiting, Kit Hulu, Star Spawn of Kit Hulu, Hashbrown the Unspeakable, Diggen Fishlips, Horsebelly Hat, Gayle Bagley, Illum I. Naughty, Spot Welder, KURGAN, Purrmaster Nottacat, Pip Elf-Eater, Keebler the Unbound, Twitch Perfect, Moxie Spectacular, Plexiglass Jones, Fiddler Three, Stinky Boots, Mr. Lumpkins the Grave, Standard M. Lee, Catsy Walker: Halecat, Trespassers William, Silver Streak, Captain Tennille, Ryan of the North, Erica: Son of Hender, Precious Bagginses, Ellen Shuffleclaw, Lana ‘the Librarian’ Shelfstalker, Shannon Pursepaw, Gnome Chompsky, The Laundry Ghost, Humdinger Nelson, Nancy Grew, Bear Bodkin, Danger Mouse, Jessica O. Berrybits, Henry Manbug, Josephine Cream-Hoarder, Oliver Nutton, Kristen Shawl-Skulker, She Who Must Not Be Named, Thing One, Thing Two-and-a-Half, Gwynn Rummy the Card Shark, Fitzwalnuts Darcy, Michael S. Hat, Woodness Gracious, Flip Furstinger, Kip Furslinger, Pip Fursinger, Melon Brawl Betty, Slicktongue Tablescrap, Tillie Badmeal, Tasha ‘the Haunch’ Middlesbury, Gordie Gizzardfist, David S. Pumpkins, Humpty Skysword, Big Nod Jellyheart, Pam the Wig Ninja, Carlito Sway, Buddy the Branch Wizard, Keratin Bouquet, Wet William: Formerly Known as M.O.I.S.T., Slim Slickery Suit-Muppet, Table Chaw, The Marble Nugget, Glasstooth Wildebeest, Fuzzhopper Frogskin, Stepback Eyeneedler, Timothy Muffin-Crouch, Captain Ice Weasel, Unidentifiable Blur Junior, Shaka Wall-Faller, Orange Scream Machine, Westminster Wally, Chudslayer Rex, Marty ‘the Elephant Among Us’ Walnut, Six-Pack Miffy, Five-Pound Baggins, Stimpy Ape-Soul, Savannah Gnarl-Paw, Gravy Chickenskin, Cube-Gleam Kennedy, Creaky Speakeasy, Melanie Neverblink, Herbert Mustard: Crawlspace Commissar, Stevie Stippleback, Fabrizio Furslough, Electric Cashew-aloo, Judy Plume, Ana Sofía, Squirrel Girl.”
Once through the scanner, they nestled together in a narrow entryway, barely space for two humans and a couple hundred squirrels. Tippy-Toe volunteered to venture first into the unknown. After a few seconds she poked her head back to chitter at Squirrel Girl.
“She says when we go in,” Squirrel Girl said, signing, “be careful and stay close to the wall.”
Ana Sofía put her laptop into her backpack and didn’t hesitate this time to follow Squirrel Girl. Partly just to escape the locker room smell, but also because if her mother could see her, after Teresa Romero exploded with anger that her daughter would put herself in this situation, she most definitely would advise her to stick close to the girl with squirrel powers.
Ana Sofía passed through the dark, narrow passage and through an arched doorway toward a rush of fan-driven air. She clung to the wall as instructed and was immediately glad for it. They were in a circular room about forty feet in diameter, standing on a narrow ledge. Except for that ledge that wrapped around the wall, there was no floor. She held fast to a knob on the wall and leaned a little, looking down. It was a legit Star Wars kind of shaft—metal and plastic walls, blinking electronics, going down, down maybe a hundred feet.
There were no stairs. There did not appear to be a ladder.
“So, about those proportional squirrel abilities?” said Ana Sofía. Her voice felt trembly in her throat. “Did you know squirrels can fall twenty feet and be fine? Well, if a squirrel is one foot long and takes a twenty-foot fall no problem, and you’re about five feet long, then proportionally you should be able to fall one hundred—”
Beneath her hand, something clunked within the walls, and Ana Sofía got no further in her analysis of squirrel super powers. Apparently they’d been detected. Robotic arms shot out of the wall at ankle height and began sweeping along the ledge. Squirrel Girl had walked around the ledge to the other side of the shaft. When the sweepers hit her feet, she leaped up, clinging with her claws in the wall.
Squirrels, too, leaped out of the way, popping up around Ana Sofía like popping corn. Ana Sofía jumped over the sweeping metal arm, but no sooner had she landed back on the ledge than a second arm shoved against her ankles.
She fell. Fell into the chasm, face-first, staring at the dark gray spot where she would no doubt go splat in a few seconds.
She fell and fell. In the two and a half seconds it took to fall a hundred or so feet, her adrenaline-spiked brain went through every stage of grief about her upcoming death:
1.denial (No way I am seriously falling into this random chasm!)
2.anger (Stupid Hydra, I’m going to tear them apart!)
3.bargaining (I promise I’ll never lie to my parents again if somehow this isn’t happening.)
4.depression (Cruuuuuuud….)
5.and finally, acceptance (Um…)
Never mind; she didn’t quite make it to acceptance. She pivoted back to anger, a space of comfort and familiarity for her, and when one is falling to their death, one really yearns for some comfort and familiarity. Ana Sofía Arcos Romero was royally cheesed off to be dying at age fourteen before she did all the amazing things she was sure she’d do, and in such a stupid way.
Stupid Hydra. If she wasn’t about to die, she would totally make them pay.
Leap before you look. That was Squirrel Girl’s motto.69
So she leaped. And then she looked. She was falling down a smooth metal shaft, about forty feet wide. One hundred feet down? Maybe it was. It sure looked like more. Did she really have all the proportional abilities of a squirrel? Could she take the impact? Welp, too late to stop now.
She dove, arms forward, hands in prayer position, head and tail tucked in to be sleek, aerodynamic. Ana Sofía had fallen a half second before her, but she flailed as she fell, and Squirrel Girl was able to catch up. She grabbed Ana Sofía’s long black hair and pulled her into a tight hug. Now she fluffed up her tail, hoping to slow their speed.
This was a daring rescue for a hero without flying ability. So much talk about flying squirrels! But they’d been born with awesome skin flaps connecting wrists to ankles so they could glide. Where were her awesome skin flaps?70
As the floor came rushing in, just a couple of seconds after she’d leaped, her adrenaline-zapped brain thought of a million
things at once. Had she finished her history homework? Wasn’t that essay due on Monday? How did Ms. Schweinbein feed all those animals on a teacher’s salary? The second season of That’s So Speedball! really wasn’t as good as the first, and the subplot about his cat, Hairball, didn’t really go anywhere. And even if she could take the jolt of landing, could Ana Sofía?
So in midair, she tossed Ana Sofía up. Squirrel Girl landed on her feet, her knees bending, her head whiplashing back, her every bone vibrating, her tail out straight to balance her jarring touchdown. A millisecond later, Ana Sofía came at her. Squirrel Girl caught her, letting her arms dip with the weight to ease her impact. Then she set her friend on her feet.
“Whoa,” said Ana Sofía. Her eyes looked wobbly in her face.
“Yeah,” said Squirrel Girl. Or more squeaked. Her voice seemed to be having trouble. Probably because she’d spent the past several seconds screaming.
The bottoms of her feet were hot, her spine felt compacted, the landing kind of squishing her all together. Honestly she wouldn’t be surprised if she was a couple of inches shorter than she had been. She lifted up one leg, shaking it out. Then the other. Lifted her arms and stretched.
“I’m sorry, miss,” said a voice in the darkness. “You must have mistaken our high-security underground lair for a yoga studio.”
A man stepped forward into the light of the shaft. He was wearing full body armor with a helmet, all pea green, the chest emblazoned with a yellow Hydra emblem—not the smiley face of the mall, the real one with the tentacled skull. And he was holding a glowing blue weapon that Squirrel Girl figured must have been a plasma gun because that’s the sort of thing guys like that preferred to tote around.
Behind him, a dozen more people stepped up. They were all men. All pale-skinned, and all wearing green shirts with yellow belts and yellow suspenderlike stripes to form big Hs on their torsos.71 Their eyes and scalps were covered with cowls that were also green, and to be honest it wasn’t a great color for them. As a fellow pasty-skinned person, Squirrel Girl knew that certain shades of white skin couldn’t be paired with green or it just made them look sallow and sickly.72
“Aha, so you detected our clever break-in!” said Squirrel Girl.
“Um, yeah,” he said. “High-security underground lair, you know.”
“Also because of all the screaming, sir,” a guy at his elbow said helpfully.
“Yes,” he said with great authority. “Also because of all the screaming.”
“Riiiight,” said Squirrel Girl. “Screaming. Ana Sofía, remind me to work on my sneaky skills.”
“Uhhhh,” said Ana Sofía. She was patting herself all over, as if feeling for any missing parts. Squirrel Girl didn’t have a lot of experience in nearly-falling-to-her-death, but she suspected Ana Sofía was going to need a few moments.
She turned back to the Hydra guy, who on closer inspection was wearing a name tag that identified him as “Garry.”
“Garry!” she said, super-friendly.
“What?” he said, sounding like a grade-A grump, in Squirrel Girl’s honest opinion.
“Garry, you’re in charge here. That’s so great. I bet you felt like a million bucks when you got promoted to head-Hydra-guy-thing, huh?”
Garry shifted uncomfortably. “Not like I was promoted recently or anything, I’ve been in a managerial position for years,” he said, speaking over his shoulder as if for the sake of the guys flanking him. “In fact, I was recently given this brass tentacle pin for all my loyalty and ingenuity and stuff.”
“Again with the pin,” another agent mumbled.
“I bet this whole mall idea was partly yours?” said Squirrel Girl. “I bet you were an integral part in this clever scheme.”
“Well…I definitely added to it,” said Garry. “I said, there’s got to be a fountain, people will rush into a place that might be dangerous as long as there’s a soothing fountain, and, you know, they did listen to me and added a fountain into the mall’s main massacre plaza.”
“Hey, Garry, isn’t there a rule against confirming Super Heroes’ clever deductions of our evil plans?” asked a guy behind him.
“Totally,” said another, pulling a small white booklet from his pocket and flipping through the pages. “Here it is! Article Two, Section Nine, Paragraph One Thousand and Twelve: Under no circumstance should an agent fall for the trap of ‘monologuing,’ i.e., revealing to a captured Super Hero our devious plans, or to in any way confirm said Super Hero’s postulations of said plans—”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Garry, “but it doesn’t matter now, because they’re about to die.”
“We are?” asked Squirrel Girl.
“Yep,” said Garry.
“When?” asked Squirrel Girl.
“Now,” said Garry.
He shifted his feet. He cleared his throat.
“And now”—Garry raised his plasma gun—“you will die!”
“Wait!” said Squirrel Girl, both hands up. “Can’t we keep talking for just a minute? Um, so, you like green, huh, Garry? I like green. I also like shelling and eating nuts. And amateur cobblery. The shoe kind. Well, also the fruit kind. Nothing like a piping hot peach cobbler, am I right, Garry? So…what hobbies do you enjoy?”
“Actually,” said a Hydra guy, “I really do like peach cobbler—”
“Silence!” said Garry. “There will be no chitchatting. We are Hydra and we will destroy you!”
“Well, I’m a Super Hero,” said Squirrel Girl, “and since Hydra is a super-evil organization—”
“Thank you,” he said.
“—I am here to take. You. Personally. Down.”
“Oh yeah?” he said. “You and what army?”
Oh. Oh! Oh-oh-oh! He said it he said it he totally said it! And, even better, at just that moment Tippy-Toe chittered a plan from one hundred feet up. So Squirrel Girl lifted out her tail and fluffed up its fur, just as one by one squirrels leaped from above, landed on her tail, and with a trampoline-y bounce, shot back up a little ways and landed feetfirst on the floor. Within moments, she was surrounded by two hundred black-eyed, blinkless furry warriors.
“THIS ARMY,” said Squirrel Girl.
“Ah,” he said.
“Yes,” she whispered to herself. “YES. Nailed it.”
Tippy-Toe jumped onto Squirrel Girl’s shoulder and ticked her tongue at the green-clad gathering. “Chkt-icky-tickt,” she said with an eye roll.73
“I hear you, Tip,” she whispered. “But there are a dozen of them. With plasma guns—”
Tippy-Toe chittered something rude about men and their fondness for plasma guns.
“And I don’t want Ana Sofía to get caught in the cross fire. Give her a guard, okay? I don’t think talking them out of it is going to work here. We’d better—”
“CHKKT!!!” said Tippy-Toe.
She leaped, and dozens of squirrels leaped after her, claws out. They landed on the Hydra agents and began to chew holes into their shirts and cowls.
The agents screamed and fought, plasma guns firing randomly. Ana Sofía ducked. Squirrel Girl was busy dodging Garry’s blasts, all aimed right at her.74
“These…squirrels! They’re too much!” shouted one agent. “I toss one off and two more take its place!”
“Impossible!” yelled Garry. “That’s our thing!”
Tippy-Toe leaped at Garry, gnawing on his helmet. She chittered madly.
“Squirrel-proof armor, you say?” said Squirrel Girl. “There’s no such thing!”
Her favorite character to play in the video game Ultra Maria Sisters was a leaper, jumping on top of heads to squish evil fungus men into submission. So, like Savage Princess Maria, Squirrel Girl leaped. Plasma bolts exploded around her, fizzling in the metal walls where she’d just been. She landed right on Garry’s head, perched there like a bird. He crumpled beneath the force of her landing.
“That’s the spirit!” she said. Mostly to herself, but also to him for gamely collapsing just as she’d hoped h
e would.75
She leaped from the now-prostrate Garry onto the head of the next agent, and the next.
“Sproing,” she said with each leap. “Sproing…sproing…” Behind her they all fell to the ground, knocked out by her impact.
“Oh, man, now I totally want a Squirrel Girl video game. I would dominate! Sorry, Mr. Evil Hydra-Man,” Squirrel Girl said, stepping off the shoulders of the Hydra soldier who had just crumpled beneath her.
Another green-suited man scrambled up to her and she readied to pounce, but instead he dropped to the ground beside his unconscious comrade.
“HIS NAME WAS LARRY! LARRY!” the newcomer shouted. “AND HE LOVED JAZZ! Jazz…and…and the sound of monkeys in the rain….”
“Um…” Squirrel Girl said, looking around. It appeared as though Larry’s friend had been the last of them putting up a fight. A turret-looking thing high on the wall was still randomly shooting plasma around, but it wasn’t doing a very good job hitting anything. The last few conscious Hydra people were either pounding on the locked doors, trying to escape squirrels or doing whatever Larry’s friend here was doing.
“WHY? WHY? WHY COULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN ME, LARRY?” the man wailed from beside his friend.
“You…uh…know he’s not dead, right?” said Squirrel Girl, as she dodged a plasma bolt from the turret.
The man wiped his eyes with the back of a green-gloved hand. “What?” he sniffled.
Squirrel Girl leaped closer to check Larry’s pulse, just in case.
“Nope,” she said. “Just unconscious. I was super-careful.”
Larry groaned beneath them but did not open his eyes.
“Larry!” the man gasped. “You scared me half to death! How could you do that to me? You’re cruel, Larry! Cruel!”
Larry, still unconscious on the ground, lay still as his friend shook his limp body. A plasma bolt struck the ground next to them, scorching the metal floor.