“You know, maybe don’t…” Squirrel Girl said, climbing up the wall and tearing plasma guns out of the turret. “I mean, he’s already down. I think I heard somewhere that it is bad to shake unconscious people.”
The agent let go of Larry as if stung. “Right! Of course. Of course. I’m so sorry, Larry!”
The door at the end of the corridor, the one the remaining conscious agents had been pounding on, finally slid open. Beyond the door were dozens more agents dressed in heavy armor.
Agent “Larry’s Buddy” saw the reinforcements and grinned. He drew a plasma pistol from a holster at his waist, and Squirrel Girl leaped back.
“Whoa!” she said. “Hey now! I thought we were sharing a moment here! You know, poor Larry, let’s not shake poor unconscious Larry be—”
He fired.
There was nowhere to hide. Behind them was the metal wall of the chasm where Ana Sofía had fallen. Ahead, a corridor now swarming with new Hydra agents firing plasma guns while fighting off swarms of squirrels, the floor littered with the unconscious Hydra agents downed by the unbeatable Squirrel Girl and her mighty leap.
She watched as Squirrel Girl dodged a direct plasma shot then leaped onto the agent’s shoulders, downing him beside his comrades. How long could she keep it up before one found its mark?
Nowhere for Ana Sofía to hide. And nothing to do to help Squirrel Girl. She leaned her back against the wall and breathed.
The only lights came from below—yellow emergency lights in the baseboards shining upward, casting shadows, making their faces look skeletal. There was a low, constant buzzing, though Ana Sofía wasn’t sure if it was ambient sound or if all the electrical equipment was reacting oddly with her hearing aids. Or maybe the buzzing was coming from inside her own body. Her stomach certainly felt like it was full of angry waspy butterflies. Her pulse pounded in her temple and shook her vision with every beat. She blinked hard, trying to clear her eyesight.
A couple dozen squirrels had formed a circle completely around her feet. When she stumbled back, they moved with her every step. A furry layer of protection, like socks, once-removed. Their presence made her feel braver.
Note: presence of friendly squirrels increases sense of both safety and belonging.
Ana Sofía took out her phone and began to record. If they didn’t make it out of here, she wanted someone to know what had happened, at least. She’d videoed for just over a minute when a plasma shot burned into the wall right by her head. She crouched lower and hurriedly uploaded the video to her TuberTV channel. Now if they died, at least there was some evidence.
At her back, she felt a closed door. Ana Sofía tugged on the handle. Locked.
The squirrels at her feet all stood up on their hind legs as if responding to some warning she hadn’t noticed. Reinforcements had arrived: several Hydra agents marching down the corridor dressed in the “squirrel-proof” armor. The intimidation factor of robot-like body armor and full helmet was lessened somewhat by the green color.
Like pea soup, Ana Sofía thought. Like Abuela’s sofa.
But they still looked pretty alarming. The alarming effect was in no small part due to the horse-size plasma canon they were setting up.
It fired. A huge plasma glob streaked through the dim basement, as bright as deep-sea jellyfish.
In the exact moment the glow-in-the-dark blue ball of fiery plasma shot out, the plasma cannon was knocked awry by several squirrels slamming into the tip, pushing its aim slightly off. Instead of burning a hole right through Ana Sofía’s head, the blast hit the door, burning a circle where the door handle would have been.
She stared at the hole in the door as the plasma cannon fired again, the ammo whizzing just above her head.
I should go to there, she thought confusedly.
But thinking seemed to be an entirely different function from actually moving. Her whole body felt made of hard plastic, like a molded toy with no moveable parts. Instinct should make her run. She’d never before imagined that when in great danger, she’d freeze instead.
She looked down at her legs and glared at them, glared so hard they just had to be frightened of her. Glared so hard she got them to shuffle her forward.
Ana Sofía leaned against the damaged door and fell in, away from the blasts. It appeared to be an office—concert posters for Your Racist Uncle adorned the walls, a bouquet of dusty plastic daffodils sat sadly on the desk. And…yes! There was a computer. She sat down and got to work.
“You okay out there?” she called as she typed at super-speed, trying to hack her way past the passcode. Got it.
Squirrel Girl replied with words she couldn’t make out but the tone seemed cheery.
Through the doorway, she could see Squirrel Girl leaping around, landing on Hydra agents’ heads, knocking them flat. In her periphery she saw one agent pulled down by so many furry bodies he appeared to be wearing a bear suit. Unless it was a Hydra agent actually just wearing a bear suit, which she supposed wasn’t out of the question.76
The most recent folder opened on this computer was titled Hate Initiative. The folder locked when she tried to access it without the right password. So she searched for those words in the e-mail program.
From: Team Leader Gamma
To: Undisclosed Recipients
Subject: Hate Initiative
Hey, team!
Great work out there. As we head into our final week before d-day, make sure you keep your squirrel-proof armor at hand, your plasma gun
nozzles clean, and keep working the comments sections of news stories and Friendbook posts. We need to up, up, up the animosity!
Remember to take excellent notes. This is just Phase 1, after all. After the Hate Initiative destroys Shady Oaks, we will be taking it wider. “How wide?” you ask. Why, from sea to shining sea. ;) Easiest way to destroy something is to trick it into destroying itself.
metaphorical hugs,
your Boss
This e-mail message may contain confidential material. If you are not an intended recipient, please destroy all your belongings in a fire and run as far away as you can. We enjoy the chase.
“Oh no,” Ana Sofía said aloud. The Hate Initiative? D-day was at the mall tomorrow. And what happened there would destroy Shady Oaks. And then the entire country? This was way, way huger than what a couple of middle schoolers could handle.
A blue plasma ball sizzled through the wall. Ana Sofía ducked a moment too late, and felt the heat of it pass over her head.
“Everything okay?” she called.
She couldn’t detect a reply, but she could see squirrels and Squirrel Girl still leaping around out there.
Holy crud. What on earth were they doing? This really was the real Hydra, and she thought they could somehow take them on? They needed an adult hero STAT!
ANA SOFÍA
Hydra is planning to unleash something called the hate initiative on my town and then the whole country and we don’t really know how to stop them? So prolly u shld come to the basement of the mall and save the day before everybody dies?
THOR
Can’t come
Presently
Texting between
Punches
ANA SOFÍA
Who is getting punched you or them
THOR
Both
Tis a veritable punch fest
ANA SOFÍA
Ok just thought i’d check
THOR
You and squirrelly friend
Are powerful
You will be vic
Sorry interrupted by punching
YOU WILL BE VICTORIOSAS
ANA SOFÍA
Gracias Thor
Yeah, thanks a lot, Thor. How in the egg-shaped world was she supposed to take care of this? She was definitely not powerful. And sure, her squirrelly friend had the proportional abilities of a squirrel, but what was that when faced with a Hydra army shooting plasma cannons all over the frickin’ underground lair?
She
searched around through the parts of the Hydra security system that she could access. Both the mall and the basement lair had microphones in the ceilings to pick up voice-activated commands—commands like shutting and sealing all the mall’s exterior doors at once. That felt ominous. Also extinguishing all interior lights, setting off fire alarm systems, and turning on disco lights. The code for that last one was “Let’s party, bros!” Ana Sofía rolled her eyes. Probably for their victory bash.
Most of the command codes were linked to the voice of an individual marked as LB. She couldn’t remove the codes entirely but managed to change a couple of words in the commands, for what good that might do.
She peeked her head out the door, wincing in case of plasma blasts. No blasts. All quiet on the basement front.
Several dozen armored Hydra agents were lying unconscious on the floor. Plasma burn holes decorated the metal walls with black craters. Squirrels crouched on various prostrate bodies, breathing hard.
“Whoa. You did it,” said Ana Sofía. “How did you do it?”
Squirrel Girl shrugged. “These poo-green jerks needed to be stopped, and I was here, so…”
Ana Sofía nodded. Her neck and back ached, and she realized she was hunched over. She’d taken up a permanent crouch posture ever since falling into the basement lair, half-ducked in case of sudden weapons fire.
Párate derecha, she seemed to hear her mother say, reminding her to watch her posture. She had become more slouchy the taller she grew—four inches in just the past year alone—and tended to curl in on herself even when she wasn’t in a Hydra lair ducking lethal plasma shots. She straightened. Her spine aligned. She took a deep breath and felt a whole lot more Ana Sofía than she had a minute ago.
Gracias, Mami.
A firm decision began to fill her up. Her mother was working the night shift at the hospital, unaware that her fourteen-year-old daughter was in a Hydra lair. Thor and the Avengers were in space. Who knew if they’d ever come back? But Hydra had to be stopped, and they were here.
She was here. Ana Sofía Arcos Romero was most definitely here. Wobbly knees and all, goshdarnit.
“What now?” asked Squirrel Girl.
“I don’t know exactly what Hydra intends to do,” said Ana Sofía, “but I know it’s bad, and this is their base. So…so I guess we need…” She cleared her throat. “Squirrel Girl, we’ve got to shut it down.”
Squirrel Girl’s smile nearly split her face in half. She looked around at the metallic walls, the shut and locked doors, the control panels with flashing lights.
“Squirrels?” she said.
Hundreds of black, blinkless eyes stared up at her. Squirrel Girl nodded once.
“Smash,” she said.
We surged forward like light at the break of dawn, covering the floor, the walls, and everything on them. One of the downed men either screamed or laughed hysterically as we passed. I couldn’t tell the difference, and I didn’t care.
I am the best there is at what I do. And what I do isn’t very nice.
My dear departed uncle, Skiptama Lou, may he rest in trees, always said that a squirrel’s body is simply a delivery system for claws and teeth. And claws and teeth, they aren’t for being cute. They’re for tearing and cutting. For ripping apart.
But my pink bow, that is for being cute. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to be one or the other. You can be both.
Chomp Style ran, gouging chunks out of the wall at regular intervals. Others followed behind, darting into the holes to chew and claw everything within. The walls sounded like a tree trunk with a bad case of borer beetles.
Big Sissy Hotlegs broke into rooms, scampered across desks, slammed into anything not nailed down. As I watched, she kicked a monitor with her back legs. It toppled, crashing to the floor.
A green-suited agent yelped as Chive Alpha poked him with a sparking wire she pulled from the wall with her teeth.
She noticed me watching. “He was quick-snatching for a gun!”
The agent scrambled away, slipping on broken glass.
“RUN, VERMIN!” Chive Alpha chittered at his back. “FLEE FROM YOUR DESTRUCTION! I AM THE FIRE AMONG YOUR BRANCHES!”
“Alpha!”
The young squirrel gave me a look.
“Keep it up,” I said.
She gave me a slow smile, and that girl sure looked like she had more teeth than most of us.
There was joyful noise as we worked. Scampering, skittering, chomping, and scratching. The sound of nature being fulfilled and good honest destruction being done. The walls rattled with the passage of my people behind them. Lights flickered, electronics sputtered and died in our wake. The pads that controlled the doors out of the bunker were a shattered, sparking mess.
I surveyed the field of battle, and was hard-pressed not to declare our victory right then. Doreen had left dozens of the green-suited men unconscious on the ground, and those left standing pounded on metal doors that would not open to them, trying to escape the terror of our work.
Those men were overconfident. With their machines and their size and their ignorance, they had forgotten to fear the squirrel.
Behind the hiss and rattle of battle and the screams of terrified men I became aware of a new sound. A wrong sound. The squeal of squirrel fighting squirrel.
Fuzz Fountain Cortez tumbled out of a hole in the wall, wrestling with Wiggy Nubknees. A chunk of Cortez’s ear was missing and Wiggy was snapping and scratching like he’d got the mange.
I pounced, anchoring my rear legs around Wiggy’s tail and twisting my forepaws under his and back around his neck. I pulled him off Cortez as he struggled crazily.
“Wiggy!” I shouted. “Wiggy!”
“Stink-rot in the walls!” Cortez chittered frantically. “A tube. Wiggy gave it a gnaw and got a snoutful of gas!”
“Die! Die! Die!” Wiggy yelled, finally making some sense. Sort of.
“Wiggy!” I shouted. “You’re with friends! This is your nest!”
“DIE,” he said, and then fell limp in my arms.
“Is he…” Cortez asked.
“Still breathing,” I said.
All around me the noises of squirrel destruction stopped, heads turned toward me. Toward Wiggy. We squirrels do fight each other, sometimes. But never like this. Even when warring against other clans, it’s about dominance. There’s no murder among squirrels. Something had happened. Something wrong.
My cousins eyed each other nervously, and I knew I was not the only one to feel it. Something was in the air. Something was coming. It was like the click-clack of dog paws behind you. It was like the smell of a tree on fire. It was like Little Bobby Furflint stealing your first harvest acorn.
And a man was coming. A human man was there, bad air hissing off him in plumes, smelling so strong I could almost see it. Odor of rot and grease and fear fear fear. I turned to attack him, but he was gone. How not there?
Now only they were there. All those black blinkless eyes staring. All of them, trying to get me, trying to kill me, trying to stop me.
Stop me.
Can’t stop me.
Fear! Rage! Will tear, will rend.
Swipe and claw, strike and bite.
Who skulks
no
get you first
I’ll chktt
chktt
chkit
kkkktt
Half the squirrels stopped mid-destruction, as still as prey in the grass. They all looked over toward Tippy-Toe and those around her. Squirrel Girl paused just before biting a pipe in half to see what had caused the alarm.
The rest of the squirrels were still swiping and biting, breaking and tearing, but now their destruction was not focused on Hydra’s base but at fuzzy, adorable each other.
“Squirrels! What in the heck are you doing?” said Squirrel Girl. “CALM THE FREAK DOWN!”77
Many of the affected squirrels climbed into holes in the walls—holes most likely created by Chomp Style’s stylin’ chomps. Others
shivered or ran back and forth or curled up with tails over their eyes and shivered. But Tippy-Toe and Fuzz Fountain Cortez were engaged in full terrifying buck-toothed-and-tiny-clawed squirrel combat.
Squirrel Girl grabbed them by their tails.78 They continued to writhe and claw at each other. She held her arms farther apart.
“Tippy! What’s gotten into you?”
Chive Alpha climbed up to Squirrel Girl’s shoulder.
“CHKTT-ITI!” she scolded the two squirrels.
But they didn’t seem to hear her, still squealing and twisting.
“I’ve never seen them like this,” said Squirrel Girl.
“I’m afraid their higher brain function is halted. Ha! You know, assuming they had any to begin with!”
She whirled around at the sound of the voice. The squirrels reacted, too, running up her arms to shiver on her shoulders.
A shadow emerged from the dark end of corridor, where berserker squirrels had already destroyed the emergency lights. Slowly he moved into one of the un-squirreled, remaining lights.
“Bryan?”
Bryan Lazardo smiled. He was not dressed in the cargo shorts and T-shirt he’d used in the promo video. Instead he had on a gray-green mottled leather unitard that wasn’t quite big enough for him and wrinkled around the elbows, stacking up at the knees over his green galoshes.
“Sooo, look, I know this is totally a weird time to ask, what with the fighting Hydra and all and the sudden squirrel freak-out,” said Squirrel Girl, “but what, um, what are you wearing?”
He held up his arms to admire his outfit, and the sleeves slid back to his elbows. “This?” he asked coyly. “This is my battle suit!”
“Sweet!” She cinched her hood a little tighter and patted her shoulders. “This is my battle suit! We have more in common than you think, actually. Maybe. So we should talk about that, all the things we have in common.”
She took a step closer but stopped. Even though Mr. Lazardo didn’t look regular evil-guy dangerous, he still worked for Hydra and was probably troubled in some way. A Super Hero had to exercise caution.