UnbeatableSG: Quick update for all my followers: I'm still a #squirrel!
StarkManTony: I thought you said you'd be back to normal by Monday?
UnbeatableSG: Listen
UnbeatableSG: Transforming one living creature into another with the power of science is hard!
UnbeatableSG: And weren't you allegedly just an AI at one point?
UnbeatableSG: So you don't get to make fun of me
SewWithTheFlow: Brb just found out my friend @UnbeatableSG is in the hospital
SewWithTheFlow: Well, she's at the vet. But still. I hope she's okay
YoItsTippyToe: Chtty chuk chrrrrt cht
SewWithTheFlow: Thanks Tippy, that's a relief. But I'm on my way anyway
UnbeatableSG: Thanks for everyone's kind messages and well-wishing! I'm alive, and I'll be back to full health soon!
UnbeatableSG: Pro-tip for my followers: getting run over by a bulldozer hurts
"I'm booooooored," Doreen complained from her comfortable spot on Nancy's pillow. Nancy had just returned to the bedroom with a batch of freshly-baked peanut butter cookies.
"Well, what do you want to do?" Nancy asked.
"Eat nuts and kick butts."
Nancy smirked. "Not till your tail is better. Until then, here's a cookie." Doreen bit into the cookie eagerly, pleased at the delicious warmth.
"Thanks, Nancy," she said, cheeks stuffed with crumbs. "But I'm still bored."
Mew entered the room and casually knocked over a basket of yarn, scratched a spot on the wall, and leaped onto the bed to curl up next to Doreen.
Nancy picked up the spilled yarn. "Now you can't get up or you'll disturb the cat. Look how cute and comfy she is!"
Doreen narrowed her eyes at the traitorous feline. "You two are plotting against me. I know it." The cat purred in response.
"You're plotting against yourself," Nancy retorted. " You'll never get better unless you relax."
"I'm very relaxed. I'm just also bored."
"You could write those 'programming picture books for kids' that you've been thinking about," Nancy suggested jokingly.
"I posted that idea online so that someone else would write them. I don't want to do it! I just want them to exist!"
"Well, you could go over the lecture notes from the class you missed yesterday." Nancy handed Doreen a stack of paper.
Doreen began to peruse the papers. "This is mostly Cat Thor stories."
"Yeah, the lecture was really boring, and you and I already reviewed the material together. The actual notes are on the back of the first page."
Doreen skimmed the lecture notes, making a mental note about the homework assignment listed at the bottom. Then she flipped the page back over to read about Cat Thor versus Lokitten. The hand-drawn comic was an epic battle with an anticlimactic ending and lots of witty banter. Doreen loved it, as she loved all of Nancy's cheesy fanfictions.
When she'd finished, a whole five minutes had passed.
"Is Tippy back yet from hanging out with Brain Drain?" Doreen asked.
Nancy didn't even look up from her knitting. "It hasn't even been an hour."
Doreen let herself get distracted by the rhythmic movements of Nancy's knitting needles for a moment before falling back into boredom. Then she occupied herself by petting Mew, until the cat decided she no longer wanted attention and fled the room.
"I wish something interesting would happen," she complained after another moment of sheer boredom.
A knock sounded at the door, as if summoned by the universe itself to appease Doreen's boredom.
"That could be interesting! Let's see who it is, Nancy!"
Nancy set down her work in progress. "I'll see who it is. You stay in bed."
Doreen scowled. "Fine. But whoever it is, you should let them in to see me. Even if it's a traveling salesperson."
Nancy nodded her agreement and left the room. Doreen tried to listen to the conversation. The voices were too muffled to make out any words, but she heard Nancy and a distinctly masculine voice. Then two sets of footsteps approached Nancy's room. Nancy walked in first, followed by --
"Tony!" Doreen greeted her favorite avenger. "You came to see me!"
Tony Stark looked down at the squirrel on the bed. "Is that really you, pard?"
Doreen nodded, since he didn't know any Squirrelese. But she was pretty sure her ecstatic grin didn't need to be translated.
"I saw online that you hurt your tail, so I wanted to personally give you my condolences, and also a bag of mixed nuts." The bag was enormous, filled with nuts that even Doreen had never seen.
Doreen beamed, "Aw, Tony! Thanks!"
"Also," Tony added, "someone told me you were bored, so I spent the morning working on...hold on, these jeans are a little tight." He struggled with his pocket for a minute and pulled out a small gift box that fit comfortably in the palm of his hand. A small card was attached to the decorative ribbon around it.
"To Squirrel Girl, Get well soon. Until then, Enjoy this new prototype designed to be squirrel-sized."
Doreen tore open the package to see a tiny video game controller that fit perfectly in her hands. "Aw, Tony! You don't know how much this means to me!"
"I figured, even when you get back to normal, maybe you can teach your squirrel friends to play. And, I brought you a game as well."
The outside of the game had clearly been hand-drawn by Tony himself. It was titled Unbeatable, and he'd drawn pencil sketches of himself, Squirrel Girl, and a few enemies she'd beaten. Doreen's eyes were wide as saucers.
"No way!!! Is this what I think it is? Did you design a personalized game about me so I can virtually kick butts and eat nuts????"
"She's excited," Nancy translated.
"I could tell," laughed Tony. "And I've got some free time today to test it out."
Doreen stood as high as her four little paws could hold her and chattered excitedly. Squirrelese had a nifty feature where some sounds just signified excitement without having an actual translation, and these were the sounds she was making on repeat. Nancy carried Doreen to the living room where the gaming consoles were set up.
Soon, Doreen and Tony were virtually brawling every villain that either of them had ever beaten. Doreen (via Nancy's translations) notified Tony of any improvements that could be made for his squirrel-sized controller.
Tony was using cheat codes he'd personally implemented to use the "Squirrel Girl Tactic" of befriending half the villains and bringing them to his side. Doreen didn't have these cheat codes...yet. So she was beating the enemies the old fashioned way.
Suddenly a gigantic purple foot appeared on the screen. "That's not fair!" Doreen squeaked, button smashing in a futile effort to do damage to the foe with a million hit points.
"Sorry, I can't understand you," Tony said as he made his avatar climb up Galactus's leg.
"The only way to beat Galactus is to befriend him! I know that from experience! Give me those cheat codes!"
"I tried to include every villain either of us have faced. And you've beaten Galactus, so I had to add him."
Nancy laughed. "She's asking for your cheat codes."
"But that would be cheating!" Tony said in a fake-offended tone. "It's not cheating when I do it, because I invented the game."
"Then you've made an impossible game," Doreen grumbled, still button smashing.
"She says the game is impossible," Nancy dutifully translated.
Tony shook his head as he pressed the buttons to allow himself to converse with Galactus. "It's not impossible. There's drop items from previous enemies that, combined, let you beat him. I'll leave that up to you to figure out while you recuperate though. Cause I just won the game!"
Tony stood up and dropped the controller like it was a microphone, and immediately Nancy and Doreen protested.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don't drop that! I can't afford a new one right now! If you broke that, you owe me a new one!"
"That wasn't even a good mic drop! I can't believe you'd try that here! With stuff that isn't even yours!"
Tony gave a sheepish grin. "Sorry, I'll, uh, be back later with a new one." He picked up the controller, which seemed to be in one piece. "How about a goodbye hug, pard?"
Doreen rolled her eyes with a smile, and ignored her bandaged tail for a moment to leap into his outstretched arms. "Thanks for the game, Tony."
He didn't respond. Probably because he didn't know what she said. Then he set Doreen gently back on the sofa and left.
Doreen and Nancy spent the next few hours trying to figure out either the powerups or the cheat codes to their new game, but could only ever get halfway to beating Galactus.
Brain Drain soon showed up with Tippy Toe, and the two accepted Doreen and Nancy's invitation to play. Somehow, Tippy managed to button-smash her way into befriending a minor villain and adding them to her team roster.
"How did you do that?" Doreen asked.
"No idea," Tippy said. "I guess I'm just the greatest video-game-playing squirrel in the world!"
Doreen laughed. "That doesn't surprise me one bit!"
Nancy excused herself from further playing so that she could focus on her knitting and her homework, so Doreen and Tippy took turns competing against Brain Drain (who, admittedly, wasn't very good). They didn't get very far without Nancy.
About an hour later, Mary arrived announcing that she'd made a list of theoretical solutions for transforming Doreen back into her usual squirrel/human hybrid self.
"Are all of the things on your list real possibilities?" Nancy asked, curious.
"They're theoretical possibilites," Mary said. "Most of them are science fiction. More fiction than science. But they could help us think of something realistic."
"In a world where people routinely time travel, get cloned, and use magic, I wouldn't call anything impossible," Doreen said.
"That's... honestly fair," Nancy said. "So let's see that list."
"Number one: Magic spell." Mary looked at the other two expectantly.
"I think Loki uses illusions more than real magic," Nancy mused.
"And I have no idea where to find Dr. Strange," Doreen added. "Besides, I'm not sure what kind of side effects a magic spell would have. But that's definitely a for-real option in case nothing else works."
Mary nodded, adding handwritten notes under the entry. "Number two: create a clone body of your human self and then transfer your consciousness to the clone."
"Assuming the clone isn't sapient, that remains a viable option," Nancy said hesitantly. "But then we're left with an empty squirrel body that used to be Doreen and I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with that emotionally."
"That's a good point," Doreen agreed. "And I would prefer to have my original body if possible."
"Okay, last...resort," Mary wrote. "Number three: Machine that turns animals into humans."
"Even if we can make something like that," said Doreen, "I'm not exactly a normal human. What if it messes something up? Or makes me lose my tail!" She hastened to add, "Not that there's anything wrong with being a regular human, but--"
"But it wouldn't be you," Nancy smiled. "I'd miss your tail, too."
"We're getting a lot of 'last resort' options here," Mary said. "We need to actually try something!"
"Well what's next?" Doreen asked.
"Number four: shoot the Atomic Blaster 8311 at a human and have that person bite Doreen to try to recreate the effects of the original cause."
"No," Doreen and Nancy said simultaneously.
Nancy said, "Besides being unsafe, untested, and unethical, we'd still have the same problem of potentially getting rid of all Doreen's squirrel DNA, even if it works."
"Alright," said Mary as she crossed that option out. "Number five: find a way to go back in time to prevent this from happening."
"But that would create a paradox, and then the me in this reality would either cease to exist, or still be a squirrel, because instead of solving the problem, we just created another reality. Although, I do enjoy time travel, and it's always fun to meet my alternate selves. But there's a very nonzero chance that it won't actually solve anything."
"Okay," said Mary. "Adding 'recreational time travel only' to that entry. Number six: time travel to the future to learn how we solved the problem."
"Nope, that is the definition of a bootstrap paradox! If I learn something only because I already learned it, the knowledge appeared from nowhere."
"Darn, that was my favorite one," muttered Mary as she crossed it out.
"Although," continued Doreen, "since I know about the bootstrap paradox and don't want to cause it, future-me would probably not actually give present-me information. Just hints to lead me to the right track."
Nancy added, "That's assuming we actually solve the problem in the future. There's a possibility that Doreen just lives out the rest of her life as a squirrel, and going to the future doesn't help at all."
Doreen frowned. "It's not like me to give up, though."
"No, but you do enjoy being a squirrel," Nancy said.
"True," Doreen conceded.
Mary frantically rewrote the option and added a "maybe?" to the end.
"Number seven -- don't judge, I was running out of ideas! -- Die and hope to be reincarnated into a human."
Nancy stared blankly at Mary for a moment. "You can just cross that one out."
"Well, that's all my ideas," Mary said after crossing off number seven. "Thoughts?"
"We're left with two feasible options: magic or a transformation machine," Nancy summed up.
Doreen frowned. "As much as I love science, I think magic might actually be the more realistic solution in this case. We just need to get into contact with a magic-user first."
"If Loki would just give me his phone number," Nancy muttered.
"While you two work on that, I'll get started on a machine to try to change you back," said Mary.
"Didn't you try that already, the first day? Will you be getting input from other engineers this time?" Nancy asked.
"That time, I was trying to do it under time constraints which forced me to make a bad design. Now that you've already gone to school as a squirrel, we have more than a weekend to make it work."
"I worry about what you're going to do to me," Doreen deadpanned.
"It'll be fine!" Mary said. "I'll even let you see the blueprints for it and everything before we test it."
"That's acceptable," said Nancy.
Mary left to get started on her invention, muttering excitedly about various designs.
Nancy asked Doreen if she was feeling any pain anywhere, to which Doreen responded in the negative.
"Then let's head to the home of the sorcerer supreme. You've been there before, right? It's our best option for finding someone who can use magic. And possibly finding Loki if he's still staying there."
Nancy gently carried Doreen out of their apartment and together they made their way to the sorcerer supreme. Halfway there, however, they were stopped by a frantic squirrel. A familiar squirrel.
"What's wrong, Lady Acorn-alot?" Doreen asked from the safety of Nancy's arms.
The squirrel was crying. "My kits! My kits! They were kidnapped!"
"By who?" Doreen asked, eyes wide.
"A human came and took them! And he said-- he said, 'Tell that blasted Squirrel Girl I'm doing this for her. Tell her to come alone and I'll let them go'."
"Come where?" Doreen asked.
Nancy shook her head. "You're still healing. I'm coming with you."
"Of course! But don't show yourself until the kits are safe. Where did the human say to meet him?"
Lady Acorn-alot stammered an address, but she struggled so much that no one could be certain the concluding location was accurate. Regardless, Doreen squirmed in Nancy's arms until she could jump to the ground... only to faceplant because her tail actually played a crucial role in allowing her to land upright.
"I'm fine!" Doreen exclaimed before Nancy could ask. "Let's get those kits!"