UnbeatableSG: Why does recovery have to be so boring?

UnbeatableSG: I've counted all the leaves on the tree out my window. Still bored.

StarkManTony: I have a solution

UnbeatableSG: What's the solution?

UnbeatableSG: Tony?

UnbeatableSG: OMG! Tony made me a custom video game and a tiny squirrel sized remote!

UnbeatableSG: Criminals are now required to come to me for their beating. I will be playing this game till the end of time!

SewWithTheFlow: SG no, criminals are now required to turn themselves in to the police.

UnbeatableSG: Anyone know where I can find someone who can magic me back to normal?

UnbeatableSG: Yelp is no help. I look up magic and it only shows me card shops

UnbeatableSG: brb on my way to track down a sorcerer

UnbeatableSG: BRB ON MY WAY TO TRACK DOWN A SQUIRREL KIDNAPPER!

The building loomed over Doreen like a mighty fortress. She'd never seen such an imposing suburban home before. It looked like the rest of the houses on the street, but small details stood out: the dry yellowed grass; the rusted rake lying in the middle of the yard; the doorless garage with a myriad of threatening tools.

This must be the right address. The house was the only one that looked abandoned.

She didn't want to enter through the front door. This was partly for the sake of stealth, but it was mostly for the sake of her dignity. She didn't want to scratch at the door until it opened, which was her practice when Nancy was home.

Doreen circled the house and found an inviting hole under the back porch, which weaved all the way through the crumbling brick and drywall.

The hole opened into an unfinished basement, all concrete and wooden planks. She didn't hear anything yet, but decided to investigate first down here.

As suspected, she did not find the squirrel kidnapper.

So Doreen scaled the stairs. The main floor was nearly as unfinished as the basement. Dust, drywall, and power tools littered every available surface, aside from the kitchen island which contained two cages. The mewling squeaks confirmed that the cage contained the kidnapped kits.

Doreen ran for the cages, but stopped short upon noticing a human who had previously been hidden from view. At this angle, the counter and cage obscured his face, but the logoed green and black pants revealed his identity as EpicCrimez.

"Let the kits go, EpicCrimez!" Doreen cried.

"I'm guessing you're Squirrel Girl? Either that or the mother."

Squirrel Girl resumed her run toward the cage. "Yeah, I'm Squirrel Girl! And you're toast! Not even the good kind of toast with peanut butter; just plain, boring burnt toast!"

It was probably good he couldn't understand her, as that was not one of her best battle cries.

EpicCrimez approached her and kicked her. She flew into the wall and slid down until she collapsed onto a pile of nails. Only luck kept her from getting stabbed. She wasn't sure if a tetanus shot would be available to a squirrel or not.

"Definitely Squirrel Girl, then." Something was off about EpicCrimez's demeanor. Something was missing. His tone was darker, more menacing.

Doreen ignored her sore body, and the pain in her tail that told her she'd ruined the vet's hard work. She shot toward the cage, dismissing EpicCrimez entirely. Her only goal at the moment was to free the babies.

EpicCrimez used his unfairly large stride to reach her again, and he picked her up by the tail.

Ow! Even if he thought this was an appropriate way to pick up a squirrel, the bandadging should have clued him in to her injury!

Doreen cried out in pain and then managed to silence herself as EpicCrimez began to speak. "I'll let them go. I'll unlock the cage and never bother them again. But only if you get in the other cage willingly."

"I'll free them myself, you Big Jerk!!"

Doreen managed to scratch her captor hard enough to drop her. She quickly regained her footing after faceplanting, and leapt up onto various surfaces which led to the kitchen island.

EpicCrimez watched her with a smug smirk.

She reached into the cage to sooth the crying kits. "It's okay, little ones. I'll get you back home." The squeaking didn't cease, but it did lessen.

Now to unlatch the door. Doreen found the mechanism and squeezed with all her might, but squirrel-sized squirrel-strength was no match for human-sized human-strength. The door remained closed.

"Our deal still stands." EpicCrimez gestured to the empty cage next to her.

Now she knew what was missing. This was the first time they'd interacted without his phone recording everything. Rather than speaking to his viewers, he was speaking directly to her.

She looked from the kits to the empty cage to EpicCrimez and back again. And she knew there was only one option. She was trapped here either way. EpicCrimez could easily grab her again and force her into the cage, and then he'd have no reason to release the kits.

And Nancy was still waiting safely outside. She'd notice if she didn't come out, or if the kits came out without Doreen.

Doreen trusted Nancy to have her back. So she entered the cage.

EpicCrimez laughed. "Yes! I caught the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! The most epic crime I've ever done!"

He opened the cage with the kits and then picked up Doreen's cage.

"At least take them outside to their mom, you monster! They're too young to climb off this counter themselves!"

But EpicCrimez ignored her distress. He brought her outside to an incredibly nondescript vehicle. Doreen didn't see Nancy anywhere, but shouted, "It's EpicCrimez, but the kits are still inside the house! Help them home, then worry about me! Nancy! Free the kits!" At least she could take advantage of the one benefit of not being understood by EpicCrimez.

Said criminal threw the cage into the back seat, which jostled Doreen into smashing her tail against the side. The vehicle began to move, but from her vantage point, Doreen could see nothing. It would be impossible to guess where he was taking her.

The transit included lots of fast stops and sharp turns, to the extent that Doreen was certain he was driving purposefully violently in order to hurt or bother her. She doubted anyone could be allowed on the road if they drove this bad.

After a few minutes of rolling around in a cage in the back seat, the car made its most jarring stop yet, launching the cage forward onto the floor. The car turned off and the cage was covered by a blanket before EpicCrimez began to carry her somewhere else.

Doreen tried to listen to anything that could reveal her location, but as soon as keys started jangling, the cage was loudly banged against something, and her attention was focused on reorienting herself.

There was more jostling and banging and footsteps, but she seemed to be inside now.

After all of the slamming and shaking, EpicCrimez set the cage down with surprising gentleness. But the blanket remained.

"Now what?" EpicCrimez sounded exhausted. "This was a stupid idea! What do I even do with a squirrel anyway?"

Then came the sounds of a computer keyboard and the occasional electronic music. This lasted a long time. Definitely at least an hour. If Doreen had been bored this morning at home, she was definitely bored here, in the dark in a small cage with nothing to entertain herself. Nothing to eat either. She could really go for a cashew salad right now. Or even just the acorns she'd buried with Tippy Toe yesterday.

More time passed, and the sporadic typing and music playing changed to the deliberate clicking and typing of video game playing. She heard EpicCrimez roast a few opponents with all the wit of a twelve-year-old noob.

Doreen curled up against the side of the cage, trying to keep her tail elevated as the vet recommended. Eventually she fell in to a fitful sleep, despite the discomfort of the hard plastic bottom.

She tossed and turned and didn't feel rested at all when she awoke to the sound of EpicCrimez's voice.

"Hey, everybody! Welcome back to another EpicCrimez' epic crimes video! I have something super exciting to announce, but first, a message from my sponsor!"

Doreen could see nothing through the thick blanket which covered her cage, but she could unfortunately hear every word of EpicCrimez's praising of a popular VPN.

"Okay, I don't know if you guys have been following me, or various superheroes on social media, but there was an announcement from my personal nemesis, Squirrel Girl."

Doreen had no idea that EpicCrimez saw her as a nemesis. She saw him as a nuissance, but she was flattered, in a way.

"Basically, the gist is that Squirrel Girl has somehow been transformed into a squirrel. An actual, for-real squirrel."

Doreen's cage jostled and the blanket disappeared to reveal a bedroom stocked with all manner of mysterious technology.

"This squirrel, as a matter of fact!" Doreen could see EpicCrimez's crooked grin in the screen of his computer, and again, peering through the bars of her cage.

"I know what you all must be thinking: 'that's probably just some random squirrel you found in the park'. And that's a good point. How can I prove that this is actually Squirrel Girl?"

Doreen figured she could easily pose as an actual squirrel, and make him lose credibility (especially since she'd always acted like a squirrel, even when human). Maybe she could plan her escape by grabbing some of his miscellaneous junk? The only thing nearby was an odd button labelled "Do Not Press". Of course, now she wanted to do nothing but press the button.

EpicCrimez opened the cage and grabbed her. (Again, by the tail! What was his deal with that?) "I decided to go the classic route, and put her in this maze. I know, she's not a rat, or mouse, or whatever usually solves mazes. But whatever.

"And here's the genius part. This isn't a normal run-of-the-mill maze where the mouse (or in this case, squirrel) just has to follow the smell of food. No, this is a death trap, that can only be survived if the squirrel can read."

"Tippy Toe can read!" Doreen argued. "I taught her, but still."

EpicCrimez set Doreen into... Tupperware? Some sort of plastic container. But when he put the lid on, her only option was to follow a narrow tube in the wall. (She'd tried the lid, but apparently EpicCrimez had some seriously industrial strength tupperware).

EpicCrimez was still talking, but the words were muffled by the plastic walls that seemed to eat the sounds that tried to pass through. Doreen decided she didn't want to solve his stupid maze, so she just stayed where she was.

The lid opened the tiniest crack and EpicCrimez put his mouth so close to the window that she could smell his rancid breath. "You didn't seem to hear me, so I'll say it again: you have thirty seconds to start moving before I drop a snake in here. And I'm sure you know what snakes do to squirrels."

Doreen pushed on the lid again, hoping that the small opening would have loosened the rest of the edges, but she had no luck. As the lid closed, the force of his words hit her. She was a squirrel, and a snake would eat her. She couldn't pick up a snake, nor did she have a viable route to fight a snake with her current size and strength.

So she ran through the tunnel. The walls were still clear. She thought he must have made this particular part with packing tape and saran wrap. Unfortunately it was at least 5 millimeters thick, and relatively impenetrable.

She soon came to her first intersection. A post-it note was adorned with horrible handwriting which read "Go left". Rolling her eyes, she went left.

The sound of hissing reached her ears, and she ran faster. After a minute, she ended up in another room (extremely large tupperware?) with a floor made of thin Lego bricks. A pile of unused bricks filled half the room. The post-it note on the wall said "Block the snake's path"

Doreen used the blocks to build a wall in front of the entrance. Her heart pounded as the snake came into view before she'd finished. Fortunately, the opening was too small for the large snake to squeeze through. Unfortunately, legos were not the strongest building material, and a slight nudge from the snake caused the wall to topple. Doreen backed away as far as she could, but there were no other paths out of this container.

She was abruptly reminded that she had an audience when the ceiling disappeared and EpicCrimez grabbed the snake in the hand that wasn't holding the plastic lid.

"See, I don't think a normal squirrel could have built a wall out of interlocking brick toys," EpicCrimez was saying, ignoring the hissing snake in his hand.

"But for those of you who still don't believe me -- stay there Squirrel Girl --" Doreen was pushed back into the container -- "I have more proof."

The lid was returned, and Doreen was left alone in muffled silence. Left to her own boredom, she decided to head back into the maze to explore. She wandered past the broken Lego wall and chose the unexplored path.

This path contained more sticky notes, all with variations of "This is the wrong way", "Turn around", or "dead end ahead", so it wasn't surprising when the tube abruptly ended with a wall of tape. The tube was too narrow to turn around in, especially with her bandaged tail, so she was forced to either stare at the wall, or walk backwards. Part of her wanted to wait here, since there was no obvious way for EpicCrimez to grab her from here. The other part of her wanted to walk with her ankles rotated again, 'cause that had been pretty cool.

Doreen had always been the kind of person to do what she wants, so she decided to rotate her ankles and walked backwards through the tube.

She hadn't even made it back to the forked path when the entire tube tilted. Doreen was poured back into the room with the Legos.

The lid was again removed, and EpicCrimez reached in. Doreen scampered onto his arm before he could attempt to hold her by her tail again.

EpicCrimez faltered at her complacency, but swiftly regained composure. "I'm going to give you the opportunity to say whatever you want to my viewers. Since you've somehow been able to update your twitter, you can obviously type."

Doreen wasn't actually being complacent, however. She leapt from his shoulder before he could grab her, and made a point to press the distracting button she'd seen earlier. Anticlimactically, the button emitted a fart noise.

She scampered along the shelves of the room, hoping for some good luck and some useful device. Everything was labelled, but none of the labels were helpful. They said things such as "Thing found in spaceship raid", "Stolen from some kid in park", "Does something weird to birds", and her personal favorite "WTF".

"Bleeping squirrel! Bleeping super hero!" Doreen laughed at EpicCrimez censoring himself to avoid demonitization. Did villain streams get monetized in the first place? If so, YouTube should really refine their algorithm.

She tripped over a laser pointer in her scamper to evade his grubby hand, but the blast somehow cleaned a rusty screwdriver across the room, making it shiny and new. In her surprise, EpicCrimez managed to grab her tail.

Doreen was dumped back into her cage, but now half the space was occupied by a small wireless keyboard. She could see a blank document open on his computer screen.

"The only reason the snake isn't here with you is because I need you to prove you're actually Squirrel Girl. You better write a good introduction, or else." EpicCrimez's words were whispered with almost as much venom as the snake probably had.

Doreen shuddered and began to use the keyboard. "i am squirrel girl. i let epiccrimez catch me so he would let baby squirrels go back to their mom. also plz stop holding me by my tail. its still healing and it HURTS."

EpicCrimez grinned. "And now that I've proven my claims, it's time for the real fun: I'm going to take a hero against her will to commit crimes she's powerless to stop!"