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- MARVEL GIRL
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- SQUIRREL GIRL
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- THE TINKERER
RUN FOR COVER
By Matisse Mozer
Kamala Khan was a nerd.
She’d seen a lot of Kung Fu movies.
That thing where the bad guy puts his hand forward, then glares at the heroes, and clinches it with a “Hm”? And then his goons rush out and attack the heroes?
Terminator did that exact thing.
The first two men came at Squirrel Girl on both sides, one with his bony fists up in a boxer’s stance, and the other flailing his arms in a muscled tornado. Squirrel Girl kept her fists up and locked, kept her feet grounded and her tail pointed…and then the men came within range.
It was a flash of pain.
The boxer-stance one threw one fist out; Squirrel Girl punched out and into his fist. His hand’s bones shattered, loudly.
The man pulled his arm back, but before he could wail in pain, Squirrel Girl kicked out with her powerful thighs. The heel of her foot dug square in his lungs.
He heaved foward; Squirrel Girl carried her momentum forward and cartwheel kicked—cartwheel kicked!—the man in his head.
The man flew backward, head-first, screaming a pathetic, painful scream until he landed, hard, onto the marble of the bank teller front desk.
Squirrel Girl landed from the cartwheel kick in a crouch.
“Thanks for the morning stretch,” Squirrel Girl remarked.
The second attacker threw out a wild punch.
Squirrel Girl swept his footing out from under him with a snap of her leg, and as he stumbled, she stood upright and delivered a left hook that Kamala could only describe as ‘savage’; the blow knocked two teeth from the man’s mouth. His face hit the tiled floor at an uncomfortable-to-watch speed.
…He wasn’t getting up anytime soon.
“Bring the money to our boss,” Terminator demanded to his remaining lackeys.
One of the men still standing took all the bags of cash he could carry and ran toward the back of the building. The other hesitated.
Terminator glanced back. His voice boomed. “Go.”
The remaining man did as he was told.
Now it was just Squirrel Girl and Terminator, with Kamala bloodied on one end, and two men unconscious on the other.
Terminator tore the top half of his suit off with one hand. His dark skin was tight against defined abs and pectorals. He was smooth, but plasticky.
Like a render in an old CGI movie, Kamala thought.
“Eew!” Squirrel Girl groaned. “Dude! What is this, a strip fight? Put some clothes on!”
“Police arrive in two minutes and twenty seconds,” he said. “In that time, you will be dead. I will be gone.” He leaned into a crouched pose, his fingers splayed. “And I will have to explain a mess.”
Terminator didn’t just close the distance. He soared.
Terminator grounded himself before Squirrel Girl, and began throwing out blows. Squirrel Girl went on the defensive, her toned arms blocking each metal fist, her torso swerving from an uppercut.
Terminator pulled his left arm arm back for the follow-up punch, but his right arm was still out–
It was an opening–
Squirrel Girl’s roundhouse kick was lightning. THWOK!
Terminator’s feet left the floor. His innards howled a CREAK as they tried to re-adjust under the skin.
Squirrel Girl hit him with a second roundhouse and carried the momentum through, balancing her weight on her tail, and she struck out again, and then came the right hook–
WHAM!
Terminator went airborne! He landed with a metal, sickening grind. Like a car crash, except person-sized.
Squirrel Girl rubbed a gloved hand on the bridge of her foot. She groaned. “Ow! That was supposed to dent you, not me!”
Dozens of sets of tires peeled out on the corner. Kamala felt the blood leave her face.
The police were here.
She had to move.
She had to get away. She couldn’t put her family through anything like this, not after Control…
But she couldn’t move.
Squirrel Girl leapt clear across the bank lobby to Terminator. The battle wasn’t won yet.
He threw out a volley of punches, but they were all slower, weaker. Squirrel Girl dodged each one effortlessly. She dodged the last fist, and this time, she grabbed the attacking arm at the wrist.
She held it there, and stared into Terminator’s machine eyes.
“Here’s the deal, robo-killer,” Squirrel Girl said. “You’re telling somebody about who you work for. It’s either me or the fuzz. And to be honest, I’m the better deal.”
Terminator spat at the ground. He ripped his arm free from Squirrel Girl’s grip and punched out again.
He missed. Squirrel Girl would not.
Squirrel Girl punched Terminator square in his elbow. The metal skeleton cracked. Wires and oil poured out from the broken skin.
Terminator screamed–like, a bloody murder scream–and collapsed on his knees. His lower lip trembled at the pain.
Kamala heard car doors opening and closing behind her. Police officers on their walkie-talkies.
Squirrel Girl brushed her hands off on her thighs. She wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t tired.
She wasn’t even breathing that hard.
“I’m gonna ask you again, Mister Robot,” Squirrel Girl said. “Who do you work for?” And then she sang, “Who do you work for…”
“The Tinkerer,” Terminator said. “Oh god…And he’s gonna kill me for telling you that much.”
Squirrel Girl knelt down beside Terminator and put a hand on his shoulder. She pushed her body weight into her hand, and the machine-man was pinned to the ground. “Where can I find him? So I can pre-empt robberies five, six, and seven.”
“I only ever get instructions. I’ve met The Tinkerer once.”
“Neat! Where was that?”
“He will kill me,” Terminator repeated.
“Buddy, you’re going to jail either way. If you help me out, I can get Tinkerer behind bars before he does…you know, that thing bad guys do to snitches.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll tell you.” Terminator sighed. “Fifth and Main. There’s a fire escape in the alley. It’s a drop point. That’s where I get my orders. It’s all I know.”
Squirrel Girl stood back up. “Now that’s something I can work with.” Her squirrel sidekick landed from the ceiling and perched on her forearm. “Take it easy, robo-face,” Squirrel Girl said.
Kamala had to close her eyes. The swelling was too much, too painful.
“Don’t worry about us, fellas,” Squirrel Girl announced to the police. “The robot dude’s the one you want. And I’ll save you some trouble: he’s not a doombot!”
“You said that last time,” one of the officers said.
“Was the guy a doombot?”
“…no?”
“Well, there ya go.”
Kamala felt herself being lifted like the last time, up and over Squirrel Girl’s shoulder.
Then came the burst of speed.
They zoomed down the street, followed by a few sharp twists and turns. Kamala was glad she skipped the Meal of Hate tonight, or it would have become the Half-Digested Meal on the Sidewalk.
There was the sudden burst again, vertical this time, as if Squirrel Girl were legit running up a wall.
Finally, Kamala was lying down again. She’s recognize the plush feel of her bed anywhere.
“I’ll find you tomorrow,” Squirrel Girl said. “Just…like don’t make a big deal out of this, okay? People might freak out.”
People, Kamala groaned. Imagine how they’d react if she had to stay home tomorrow…which she definitely would.
…Until about 7:45 the next morning.
Kamala’s dad banged on her bedroom door. “You’re late, beta. If you miss your train, there’s nobody to drive you to school.”
“I can’t go,” Kamala mumbled. She huddled under the covers, only keeping one eyeball exposed. She hoped it was the good one, as opposed to the bruised-so-bad-it’s-swollen one.
“What was that?”
She repeated it, louder this time, “I’m not going. I can’t make it.”
Her bedroom door slammed open. Kamala worried for its hinges.
“Is it the bullies?” Hr father asked.
“I haven’t been beaten up at school since third grade.”
“Did the government put tracers in the school water?”
“…no?”
“Oh,” he said. “Then why in the world would we let you stay home?”
Even when he was stern, or trying to be stern, he was still her father, the jokester.
The jokester who would never let his kids stay home without a 100-degree fever or higher.
Kamala sat up slowly. “Please don’t freak out,” she said.
So much for being a superhero.
Hey dad, check out my bruises and broken bones.
“I’m not being bullied,” she said. “I just…got in some trouble after school.”
“I’m catching your mother’s wrath for that, by the way. Who’s supposed to eat last night’s leftover salmon?”
Moment of truth.
Kamala let the blankets fall off of her torso as she sat up.
She counted the long seconds, waiting for her father to see her wounds and straight-up lose his mind.
Five seconds later…and still nothing?
Kamala’s father groaned. “And you slept in your clothes again? We’ve talked about this. You’ll get sick, beta.” He squinted as he examined her outfit. “What keeps happening to this sweater?”
Kamala glanced down.
She was still in the hoodie from last night. It now sported bullet holes, fabric tears at the midsection, scrapes, tears and dirt…But no blood. No visible bruises.
Kamala was…fine?
“I…keep…falling in it,” Kamala said. “I fall down a lot. In my hoodie. Only in my hoodie.”
Kamala’s dad shook his head and frowned.
“It’s disorienting,” Kamala said. “In its comforting-ness.”
“Get up,” Kamala’s dad said, rolling his eyes. “You’re late, and don’t let us hear about you getting detention.”
He left the room and closed the door.
Kamala counted to ten–okay, more like three–and jumped out of bed.
Kamala patted herself down. No bones screamed. No torrents of blood flowed out like some kind of religious prophecy.
She had been beaten half to death…and survived because of the stretchy powers that were also apparently somehow healing powers?!
This rookie superhero thing was, officially, too much.
Kamala showered, dressed, and left for school. She was in her desk seconds before the morning bell.
The homeroom teacher nasally voice droned. “Kamala Khan, you have a summons.”
Kamala walked to the front of the class. “The guidance counselor wants you,” the teacher said.
There were a handful of “oooOOOOO” chants from the back of the room.
Kamala went to the guidance counselor’s office. She’d met the guidance counselor twice: once on her first day, when her class schedule was a train-wreck with three math classes in it, and again when she came back from Control.
The guidance counselor, Mr. Johnston, was one of those older guys who would wheeze when he would try to move. Bruno once wondered if he was in the last one or two years before retirement. Nakia had asked if he was a year or two away from a coffin.
The guidance counselor’s door was open. The desk chair was turned around and facing the window, which overlooked the Jersey City streets. Kamala closed the door behind her, then took a seat.
“Did I do something wrong?” Kamala asked the chair’s backside.
“Absolutely.” It was a girl’s voice. “Going out in the middle of the night and getting beaten up by criminals! Not on my watch, bucko!”
Kamala’s face flushed. “E-excuse me?”
“I’ve got the whole department breathing down my neck about this! It was good work trying to get The Tinkerer, but I’ve got no choice. You’re off the force, kid.”
“…What in the world are you talking about?”
The chair spun around.
Doreen Allene Green, age eighteen, sat with her arms folded and her eyebrows pointed. Like a cartoon character, Kamala noted.
Doreen tapped her fingers. She whispered, “Say your line!”
“What line?”
Doreen groaned. Her arms fell helplessly. “This was the part where you go, ‘no way, sir! The Tinkerer is still out there! I can feel it!’
“But then I go, ‘You’re a loose cannon, Khan.’
“So, you slam your badge and gun down on the desk and leave, but then you ditch the rest of the day and go catch the bad guy! That’s how that works!” Doreen pursed her lips. “Have you never seen 80’s crime shows?”
“…You have?”
“Never mind that!” She leaned forward and smiled slyly. “So…what’s your name out in the field?”
“I’m not on any sports teams.”
“I know! Neither am I,” Doreen said. “It’s just, your whole running-around-in-a-hoodie thing is kinda un-original. You’ve gotta have a code-name, or something! If you’re trying to get noticed by the, er, bigger leagues, especially. They’re always complaining about how the newbies have zero imagination.”
“Bigger leagues..?”
“Hel-lo?! The capital A-V-E-N-G…”
The realization hit Kamala with concussive force.
“Squirrel Girl!” Kamala shot up and clenched her fists. “That’s you! From last night!”
“Woah, woah, woah. Ex-nay on the Quirrel-Say Irl-Gay, would you?” Doreen put a finger to her lips, and then mimed zipping them, locking them, and throwing away the key. “Yeah, that was totally me. How do you think I knew who you were?”
Kamala remembered: Squirrel Girl had called her by her name.
“And then,” Doreen continued, “Like, what, you think you just woke up in your house? Who do you think looked up your address in the school computer?” She tapped a few keystrokes, and the computer gave a satisfying ding. “And that’s me getting your cell phone number,” Doreen said.
Kamala felt uneasy.
“Why were you looking me up?” She asked. And then, the million-dollar question: “And if you’re a superhero… why are you at tutoring at high school?”
“That’s a lot of questions, and I can answer…probably half of one of them before Mr. Johnston hobbles back here for his desk.”
“This…isn’t your office?”
“No way. Old Man Johnston’s my supervisor.”
“You can’t make fun of him for being old,” Kamala said. “That’s ageist.”
“Please. Like I’m the only one to make those jokes?”
Kamala waved her hand. “That’s different, I don’t say them out loud–”
“But you do think them! Ha ha!” Doreen shot a fist in the air. “Doreen wins again!”
This was headache-inducing.
“…Can I go back to class now?” Kamala asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Just do me a favor and don’t schedule anything after tutoring, okay? That whole location-of-the-informant thing from last night is super time-sensitive. If we don’t scope out the joint today, we’ll lose our shot.”
“How do you ‘scope out the joint’?”
“You’ll see,” Doreen said, with a wink.
The bell rang. Outside, a cacophony of footsteps trudged from homeroom to first period.
Doreen put her hands on her hips and grumbled, “Get out of my office, Khan. I shouldn’t have had to say it more than once.”
“You didn’t tell me to–”
The door opened behind Kamala.
A tired, annoyed, but mostly tired Mr. Johnston put his hands on his hips. He wheezed. “Get out of my office, Green. I shouldn’t have had to say it more than once.”
“You’re the boss, boss,” Doreen said. She was beaming as she followed Kamala out.
The rest of the day was a blur. Kamala was lost in her own thoughts.
And after the thoughts of ‘how badly am I about to fail AP Euro History,’ and ‘what’s for lunch’, it was a riddle for the ages…
…Was Squirrel Girl incompetent, or something?
During the last twenty minutes of Algebra II, Kamala hid her phone under her sweater and jumped onto Google. Because: when in doubt, do your research.
Just because Kamala Khan from Jersey City had never heard of Squirrel Girl, that didn’t mean Squirrel Girl was a nobody.
Particularly as one link after another said the opposite story.
CNN’s headline from May: ‘Squirrel Girl foils Doomsday of Doom,’ with a shot of in-costume Doreen surrounded by dead robots.
Then there was piece in the Daily Bugle: ‘Squirrel Girl Avenges Avengers,’ with a picture of in-costume Doreen punching the heck out of an evil, orc-looking Captain America and dodging an attack from a half-reptile-looking Thor. There was an ominous-looking portal in the background.
Kamala told herself not to overthink that one.
Kamala’s phone buzzed. She jumped in her seat.
One new message, from an unknown number.
Hey there! It’s Mike. I asked Bruno for ur number. Pls don’t get mad.
Another buzz. It was four emojis, all with eyes-bugged-out-and-nervous-looking expressions.
Kamala had spent the night getting her organs rearranged by robo-fists. She hadn’t even thought about Michaela, the girl in her tutoring group who wasn’t either a bully or a superhero.
Kamala typed back. Nah. Getting mad takes energy. Wats up?
Buzz as Mike’s reply came in. Can we talk before tutoring? It’s serious. Deathly-so!
Kamala rolled her eyes.
How serious could the normal-person definition of seriousness be?
When the last bell of the day sounded, Kamala gathered her things and headed for the library. But first, she needed to meet Mike at the third-floor water fountains.
If it was as serious as Mike made it sound, it was probably something to do with parents, or homework, or mean-girl drama, or any number of high school nonsense.
Kamala smiled at the thought. High school nonsense.
It made her feel so grown-up.
…Not that she wasn’t still a fifteen-year-old from Jersey City. But it was the principle of the thing.
Mike was pacing back and forth. She held her textbook and notebook close to her chest, and she was mumbling to herself.
Kamala waved. “So, what’s the super-serious business?”
Mike took three long breaths. Then a fourth, for good measure.
“Kamala, I know we don’t really know each other,” Mike half-said, half-mumbled. “We don’t even eat lunch together. I know…but I sorta wanted to ask a favor. I need some help with something.”
“Sure,” Kamala said. “Did you wanna talk about it on the way to tutoring, or…”
Mike shook her head at Mach 2.
“Nope, no talking on the way,” Kamala said.
“No, because Bruno will be waiting for me,” Mike said. “He has one of my comics and he wants to return it…”
“Huh. Which one?”
“Green Lantern. The start of the Geoff Johns run.”
“Weird. Bruno’s more of a grounded science fiction guy,” Kamala mused.
“I know. He’s gonna say he hated it. He should have read The Flash, they’ve got this great reboot…”
“Right?! That reboot is killer!”
“We’re getting off topic!” Mike said loudly. A teacher glanced at them as she passed. Mike gave an apologetic wave. “I don’t want him to hear me…or us. Hear us.”
Why was she so nervous?
“I was wondering…um…This is embarrassing. I’m sorry. I’ve never asked anyone for help like this before.”
It was for a project, right? Homework or a test or…
“I really like Bruno, and I want to tell him, but I don’t know what to do, and you’re his best friend, so please, Kamala, please help me get him to go out with me!” Mike exhaled. “Huh. I feel lighter.”
“Yeah, that was a mouthful,” Kamala said.
“I’ve never told a boy I like him before,” Mike said. “And I…I don’t want…Never mind.”
Kamala waited.
“I don’t want him to laugh at me,” Mike said.
Kamala barely knew Mike. But she knew Bruno. The last thing Bruno would do was laugh.
…But did it have to be Bruno?
This whole superhero…thing was because of Bruno.
“It’s kind of stupid,” Mike continued. Her face flushed crimson. “A-and if you’re uncomfortable, that’s fine! Really! In fact, don’t even remember this conversation!”
“Mike, wait–”
“I’m just going to go to the bathroom real quick,” Mike said. She took off at the most hurried non-run Kamala had seen.
Kamala stood there. The silence of the after-school hallway drummed on her ears.
What was she supposed to do?
Bruno was outside the library waiting, right?
This was easy.
Kamala could go ask him if he wanted to go out with another girl…and the thought made her chest spasm.
She could not help Mike…and maybe that was the right thing to do. Don’t get involved in a problem if you’ve got a conflict of interest.
…But Mike had been brave enough to woman-up and ask for help. Kamala couldn’t throw that back in Mike’s face.
There wasn’t a good answer.
Kamala beelined for the front doors.
When you can’t do choice 1 (go to tutoring and ignore Mike) or choice 2 (help Mike with Bruno), you make your own third option.
Fifth and Main, here I come.
Kamala had lived her whole life in Jersey City. Once she was within a mile of the location, she knew exactly where she was going.
Rand Corporation had started building locally-owned banks to offset the skyrocketing prices of real-estate in the Jersey City. Anything around the banks tended to be affordable, well-maintained, safe, and pretty to look at.
Not everyone had taken to CEO Daniel Rand’s Jersey City expansion, though.
The one corner downtown that hadn’t seen any benefits from the Rand banks?
Fifth and Main.
The storefronts had been left abandoned since before Kamala got her powers. Squatters had taken over the abandoned restaurants and shops. The renters in the building’s lofts moved out soon after.
Nakia had thought of it as what would happen if one corner of the city just, straight descended into hell.
Kamala found a fire escape a few blocks away and took to the rooftops. Once there, she changed out from her school outfit to the ole’ jeans and blue hoodie. The hoodie’s neckline ripped on a jagged-edged pipe.
How many hoodies did rookie superheroes go through?
Kamala moved from rooftop to rooftop. Her instincts guided her powers: Kamala’s legs extended to cover the distance between the streets and sidewalks. It was like walking on stilts.
She stopped at the corner, on top of the office tower beside the Fifth and Main portal to hell.
(Kamala sincerely hoped that that wasn’t accurate.)
Her phone buzzed, and buzzed, and buzzed, and buzzed.
Kamala had made sure to text her parents about a phony late-night spent studying at the school library. Bruno and Nakia hadn’t texted her in ages.
That left one person…
Kamala ignored it.
If Doreen was really all that mad about Kamala going out on her own, then she’d wrap up her tutoring thing and get in costume, too.
Two trucks had pulled up in front of the abandoned building. Heavy-set workers began hauling wooden crates onto dolly trucks and bringing them inside. The men wore convincing-enough blue overalls and hats, but the white trucks they drove lacked identifying logos or license plates.
Kamala jumped onto the building. She found the stairwell entrance, gripped the locked doorknob, and pulled. Her arm bulked up, and the door tore off the hinges. The wood splintered. She couldn’t put it back in place, even if she’d wanted to.
No turning back, now.
Kamala descended the dimly-lit stairs and exited onto a steel scaffold.
The building had been hollowed out since its days as an apartment complex.
Kamala’s eyes traced the scaffolding. It wrapped around the entire interior, with staircases connecting three separate levels. The workers in overalls, all on the ground level, brought the boxes to the center of the space. More workers used crowbars to open, remove, inspect, and finally pass on…they looked like metal parts. Joints.
Men in camouflage suits stood on the edges of the space, guns at the ready.
Kamala felt herself shrink back against the wall.
Holy shit.
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
This wasn’t stopping a robbery, or a mugging, or even a car chase.
This was…what, Spider-Man tier?
Definitely not in the range of Kamala Khan, age fifteen.
“Get that cable wrapped,” a cold, metallic voice droned. It sounded aged. Like Scrooge McDuck, put through a bad telephone connection. “And where is my infantry?”
The workers carried on, but the men in camouflage turned toward the back of the room. Kamala crawled along the scaffold, making double-sure that her hood was pulled all the way up.
“Rifle units are standing by at location two,” said one of the camouflages. “Infantry units one and two are en route.”
“Not good enough. That traitor talked,” the old man said. His voice whined at the end. Nails on a chalkboard. “JCPD should have been here yesterday.”
“Enhancements three-forty-seven through four-eighty-five are accounted for,” another camouflage said. “ETA for departure and initialization is within minutes.”
Kamala let it sink in.
Enhancement parts, like the joints they were moving. Metal bones. That explained how Terminator became all Terminator-y. And there were…what, almost five-hundred of them? Yikes.
The whole operation would be cleared out in minutes, huh? Doreen would have had them get here way too late.
…But what did ‘initialization’ mean? Kamala took out her phone and looked up the word (and ignored the zillion text messages from Doreen asking why she skipped tutoring). It seemed to be a computer term…something to do with assigning new variables? Starting something over?
Kamala scanned the room again.
And there was the answer: the blinking red lights around the room, on every story, with each one attached to a small yellow parcel that had been stuck onto the wall. Explosives. Within minutes.
Adrenaline coursed through her veins.
It was, do nothing and let a building in downtown Jersey City get leveled in the middle of the day, causing who knows how many casualties…or jump in, the day after you got beaten to a pulp, and maybe save those people.
…Nick Fury didn’t save Kamala so that she could let maybe stop her from saving lives.
That’s how superheroes worked, right?
Kamala dashed a text at Doreen. At the evil lair! It’s set to blow up in a few minutes and I’m pretty sure that Tinkerer dude is here. Sorry about cutting tutoring. =)
She took three quick, short breaths, and then, before she could think about how straight stupid it was, vaulted over the scaffold railing.
Kamala landed on top of the boxes, in the middle of the room, which was in the middle of the building, surrounded by armed men and workers. And she landed with a THUD.
“Ow,” she mumbled.
“Who,” the metal old-man voice howled, “in the hell let a teenager off of the street walk into our facility?!”
Only one person in the room was an old man hunched over like a vulture, with thick glasses, and a nose like a hook, with a microphone held to his mouth.
Only one person had ten more soldiers behind him, all watching Kamala studiously.
Kamala had found The Tinkerer, all right.
“I didn’t wander off the street,” Kamala said. “The stairwell on the roof needed a better lock.”
“Insolent brown girl,” The Tinkerer droned. “I’ve heard of you. The one who caused me to lose one of my best men.”
“You don’t mean the robot dude, do you?” Kamala folded her arms. “He wasn’t all there. And I do mean in the literal, having-a-body sense.”
The Tinkerer’s laugh was a slow drag of metal against metal. A groaning facsimile of happiness. “You’re terrified,” he said. “Aren’t you, little one?”
“No, I’m not,” Kamala said.
Baritone-voiced chuckles erupted around her.
“Did you think this was original?” The Tinkerer asked. He snapped his fingers. The soldiers behind him marched toward Kamala. The men around the walls aimed their rifles. “Did you think you were the first teenage would-be hero to stumble onto me, The Tinkerer?!”
Kamala had to push away the fear, push it away like she always did before a fight, but now there were so many men. Men with weapons, men with money, men who could make her disappear…
Kamala had seen a lot of kung fu movies.
She knew that the villain tended to blab on about their evil plan while the goons got into position. Once The Tinkerer was done, his goons would open fire.
Not on my watch.
Kamala leapt forward, fist first, at The Tinkerer.
WHAM!
The Tinkerer staggered back from the blow. He shook it off. Raised a hand to his jaw, even poked around at the inside of his mouth with his tongue.
Kamala landed in front of him, and she was clutching her hand, and biting her lip to keep from screaming. She’d hit solid metal. At least one bone in her hand had to have shattered.
…That was the only way to explain why she’d bounced off of an old man.
“You’re a Terminator too, huh?” Kamala grimaced.
The Tinkerer held a hand up, as though he were asking a question in class. The guards lowered their weapons.
“We prefer the term Augmented Human,” The Tinkerer said. He put the small microphone down beside him.
He reached down and pulled Kamala, throat first. She choked on her own saliva as The Tinkerer held her suspended.
His eyes were the only human part about him. His skin was a rubbery imitation; his breath smelled like airplane air conditioning. But the eyes..they were old. And they were furious.
When he spoke again, he didn’t even have a voice. It was grinding metal, forming words.
“We are trying to do good here, girl,” he droned. “There won’t be a need for Avengers, or Rand Corporations, or teenagers in sweaters once the world has seen what my augments can do.”
“That’s the plan?” Kamala choked. “Lousy way of advertising it.”
“Well, the AI in soldier units isn’t there yet. And when Augmentations go public, there will be riots. Losses. But I suppose you need to spend money to make money.”
“You mean steal money.”
“Indeed.” The Tinkerer’s eyes narrowed. “Fortunately, there won’t be anyone around to remember that.”
Kamala felt her windpipe giving out. She was losing feeling below the neck. It was now or never.
She told her body to kick up and out.
Her instincts reacted…and then some. Her thigh and calf grew to twice, triple their size as she kicked The Tinkerer square in the jaw. She felt the impact, but her overgrown muscles barreled through.
The Tinkerer howled. He threw Kamala aside and cradled his jaw. It hung, dislocated where Kamala had kicked.
Kamala landed on her feet. She took a breath, and to her lungs, it was the most delicious air in the world.
The military men were still simply watching. Kamala remembered what The Tinkerer had said. These men were AI.
The Tinkerer snapped his jaw back into place. He held a hand up again, and gave a swirling motion.
The soldiers aimed their weapons. And ten bucks said that AI had pretty accurate aiming programming.
…Oh, shit.
One gun fired a RATATAT of ammunition…It hit the ceiling, right where squirrels were dropping from the scaffolding. The squirrels landed on the soldiers below them, two or three squirrels to a soldier, and the small critters got to work. They bit into fingers and severed ligaments. They bit into eyeballs.
The soldiers recoiled. Most of them dropped the guns. Not all of them.
Kamala figured she could fight off…one metal soldier? Definitely not a whole squad.
But then came the voice from above.
“Kamala! Get the Tinkerer!” Squirrel Girl yelled.
Squirrel Girl descended from the scaffolding in a somersault. She landed behind Kamala in a three-point landing, her tail taut and ready.
Kamala had seen kung fu movies. Plenty. Too many, even.
She hadn’t known that three-point landings were…you know, possible.
“I’ll handle the Robocop wannabes,” Squirrel Girl said. She stood up and took her offensive stance.
“Is that another 80’s cop reference?” Kamala asked.
“God, you’re such a baby.”
“We’re the same age!”
“Fifteen and eighteen are like, worlds apart! Now get to work!”
Squirrel Girl tackled an incoming soldier. One of his–its?–allies tried to rush Squirrel Girl from behind. Bad idea–her tail whipped him clear across the room.
Kamala nodded at the scene.
If Doreen Alene Green, age eighteen, could take down a platoon of cyborgs, then Kamala Khan, age fifteen, could take down their one leader.
Kamala got to her feet. She rolled up the sleeves of her hoodie.
When she turned to face him, The Tinkerer was waiting. He’d removed his shirt, but unlike Terminator, he had no humanoid skin or musculature. He was all metal. All wires.
The Tinkerer nodded. “Try what you’re here to try, brown girl.”
“My name is Kamala!”
Kamala charged The Tinkerer.
And then, the room erupted into chaos.
Squirrels flew overhead like confetti on New Years, each one being flung off of a soldier only to bounce off the wall, and land on another cyborg, teeth-first. If the squirrels biting into wiring and motherboards didn’t cease a cyborg’s function, Squirrel Girl’s assault did. With each uppercut and spin kick she delivered, flimsy robotic joints snapped, and artificial limbs sparked and fizzled.
Smoke filled the room as cyborgs began to combust.
Kamala had learned to keep her distance after the fight with Terminator. She let the adrenaline, let the urgency take her over. She ducked and dodged The Tinkerer’s attacks, knowing that even just one blow the head would render her unconscious.
She couldn’t punch with her dominant hand. Not if she wanted the bones in it to heal.
But then again, she didn’t need to punch. Her arms stretched, over and under The Tinkerer’s defenses and finally, grappling inside of his body. Kamala grabbed whatever wires she felt at her fingertips.
She retracted her hands. The wires ripped out of their sockets. Sparks shot from The Tinkerer’s chest. His neck had begun smoking.
There was a WHAM-POW-WHAM behind Kamala, and then Squirrel Girl was rolling along the ground beside her. Squirrel Girl’s face was covered in smoke. Her knuckles had gone a deep, painful red.
“Hey, question,” Squirrel Girl said. “What did you do to Mike?”
Two cyborgs rushed the girls. Kamala extended her legs and swept them under the soldiers. They collapsed like Jenga towers, their damaged joints pushed past the breaking point.
“I didn’t do anything,” Kamala said. “How is that important right now?!”
“Tutoring had to be cancelled, ya know!”
Squirrel Girl held her forearms up. A dozen squirrels jumped to her, steadied themselves, and then tackled two poor soldiers as they tried to reload their weapons.
“You ditched,” Squirrel Girl continued, “Mike was a sobbing mess, and that Zoe girl was the only one who actually did the homework! And she’s the worst!”
Kamala scanned the room. The cyborgs were down, save for the two walking sets of severed legs. The Tinkerer was gripping his insides.
Was the fighting over?
It felt…too easy.
“And Kamala, this is gonna sound bogus, but when I see a cute guy standing outside the library where I’m tutoring, and one girl he knows is AWOL, and the other one is in tears…”
They had taken care of the soldiers.
The Tinkerer was crashing and burning. What else was there..?
Lights blinking along the walls–
“BOMB!” Kamala shouted.
“Explosives,” The Tinkerer drawled. “Too late…to stop.”
“I call foul!” Squirrel Girl leapt onto his chest, knees-first in a Muay Thai kick, and both of them went to the ground. Squirrel Girl pinned him with her legs. She started in–THWAM, THWAM, THWAM–until his head popped clean off.
Kamala thought of how much hitting The Tinkerer had hurt. She thought of what Squirrel Girl’s knuckles looked like…
Yikes.
“Delivery of parts failed,” The Tinkerer said in monotone. “Data backup complete. Detonation of site…imminent. Twenty…nineteen…”
The C4 lining the walls had incessant, blinking red lights.
“Hey, Squirrel Girl?” Kamala asked. “You know how to stop a bomb, right?”
“…No?”
“What?!”
“They don’t teach bomb disarmament at Empire State, okay?!” Squirrel Girl stood up and bounced on the balls of her feet. “Think fast, think fast, think fast…I got it!”
Squirrel Girl put two bloodied fingers in her mouth and whistled.
The squirrels acted as one. They raced to the walls and chewed around the walls. The C4 packs fell, and other squirrels caught them before they could hit the ground. Within seconds, the squirrel brigade had all of the explosives.
“Now what?” Kamala asked, her eyes glued to the blinking lights.
“This will sound insane…”
“What is it?”
“You can make your arms all long and big, right? Well, make your hand big, grab all the bombs, and chuck them in the sky!”
“That is literally the worst plan–”
“I’m a computer science major! If you chuck them hard enough and make your arm long enough, they’ll explode at like, a thousand feet up! There are calculations!”
“That doesn’t sound like real science.”
“It’s better than imminent death, Kamala!”
Hard to argue that point.
The squirrels ran to the main double-doors facing the sidewalk. Squirrel Girl leapt ahead, feet first, and kicked the doors wide-open.
Kamala followed.
She’d never controlled her powers on purpose before.
What had The Tinkerer said? Try what you came here to try.
She took a breath. Focused her hand. It grew to the size of her torso, and then to the size of a person…she needed it larger…larger…larger–!
“Kamala, that’s it!” Squirrel Girl said. She whistled again. The squirrels ran into Kamala’s open palm.
The explosives were beeping, faster and faster, now. Counting down.
This is gonna be close–!
Kamala’s hand had grown to the size of her entire bedroom.
She closed her fist, wound up her arm, and stretched it, as high as she could.
The squirrels leapt out between Kamala’s humongous fingers, each one landing gracefully onto nearby trees and buildings.
Kamala felt the velocity in her grip. She had to hold the bombs a moment longer. Her hand was above the skyline, above any trees, there were no helicopters in sight…
NOW!
Kamala let go, and her cargo left her hand like a baseball from the pitcher’s throw.
The wad of C4 erupted in a cascade of orange, red, and black.
But at ten thousand feet up, it was like daytime fireworks.
Kamala’s arm and hand shrank back to their normal size. She felt a weight come off of her chest. She felt lighter. Breezier.
Almost…cold?
“Dude?” Squirrel Girl said. She pointed to Kamala’s arm. “Dude, your sweater’s all messed up.”
Kamala glanced at her throwing arm.
The material had been shredded from her stretching. Kamala Khan was the proud owner of a one-armed hoodie.
…But as far as the day could have gone, that wasn’t half bad.
Squirrel Girl’s hands were beyond busted up. White pus had started forming around the open blisters at her knuckles.
“It’s fine,” Squirrel Girl had said. “I’ll get them patched up. Good ole’ superhero healing, you know?”
Kamala did know of that. “But…you need to disinfect those. And some bandages wouldn’t hurt.”
“Also food,” Squirrel Girl said. She shrugged awkwardly. “I don’t suppose you know a non-hospital place like that?”
“No hospitals? Is that the secret identity thing?”
“Naw,” Squirrel Girl said. “Undergrads at Empire State have lousy insurance.”
Fortunately, there was a place nearby.
It was dark by the time Kamala walked through the front door of her home. Her father yanked her off of the doorstep and enveloped her in a bear hug. “There you are! In another minute, your mother was about to call the police!”
“I was gonna call the Avengers!” Kamala’s mother hollered menacingly from the kitchen.
“Channel Five thinks they’re a little busy, love,” Kamala’s father said. He pleadingly whispered to Kamala, “Please be hungry, beta. We’ll both have to run for cover if another dinner goes in the fridge.”
When Kamala first got back from Control, her mother couldn’t stop cooking.
It was a habit.
Kamala stole a peek at the living room television.
The explosion over Jersey City was making the nightly news, right alongside reports of a warehouse with stolen machinery on the edge of downtown.
“Oh, beta,” her father said, finally noticing the sorry state of his daughter’s hoodie. “That’s it. I’m gonna have to call the school tomorrow.”
“It’s nothing bad! Honest!” Kamala stepped to the side. Doreen stood on the front porch. “Dad, this is Doreen Green. She’s my tutor at school.”
Kamala’s mom shouted, “You have a tutor now?”
“It’s nothing bad!” Doreen said. “Ole’ Kamals is a pretty neat student so far.”
“Hm.” Kamala’s father furrowed his eyebrows.
“Doreen’s a computer science student at Empire State University,” Kamala said. “She’s doing tutoring at my school as an elective.”
“I’m giving back to the community!” Doreen said, launching a fist in the air.
“Doreen! Your hands!” Kamala’s father’s face bleached. (Which was kind of hard for a complexion like his to do.) Her knuckles had already started to scab over, thankfully. They would shock a normal person, but it wasn’t worthy of a 911 call.
“Doreen was tutoring me downtown,” Kamala said. She was shocked at how effortlessly the lies came to her, now that she wasn’t lying on her own. “When the explosion happened…”
“It was crazy! Fire dudes and cop-guys everywhere!” Doreen said.
Kamala’s mother raced out from the kitchen. She still had her apron on and her hair tied up. “This city is a nightmare,” she said.
Kamala could only imagine.
“Kamala,” her mother said, “Take your friend upstairs. We have bandages and rubbing alcohol in the cabinet.”
“On it,” Kamala said.
The two girls started up the stairs. Kamala’s mother called after them, “Doreen is welcome to stay for dinner. The salmon’s almost ready.”
“Aw man, for real?” Doreen said. “I love salmon!”
Kamala stared at her hoodie as it lay across her bed.
There were bullet holes. Tears. Shredded elastic.
Plenty of blood.
One entire arm missing.
“You know,” Doreen said. She was sitting at Kamala’s desk and fiddling with Spotify on the laptop. “You’re gonna need a better costume if you’re gonna keep doing this.”
Doreen double-clicked the mouse. Smooth jazz filled the room.
“A name might help, too,” Doreen said. “Sweater Girl doesn’t quite have a ring to it.”
“You told me that this morning.”
“Well, that’s how important having a name is.” Doreen stared at the hoodie. “Oof. I feel like this guy’s done his time, Kamals.”
“Why are you calling me that?”
“Because,” Doreen said ambivalently. “If we’re gonna be a crime-fighting duo, we’ve gotta be buddies in real-life. That’s how 80’s cop shows work.”
“Who said anything about a duo?”
Doreen winced as she held up three fingers. “One: you have no idea what you’re doing, and you’ll get yourself killed without my help.
“Two: The Tinkerer said something about a backup. This isn’t over. If you don’t work with me, you’ll just get in my way.”
Kamala hated it, but that was right.
“And three: it’s never over. This world you stumbled into? It’s for real. You aren’t going to wake up from it, like it’s a dream, or something. If you don’t protect the real life you have, then the superhero one will take it over. Take from someone who knows…you need a rock.”
Doreen sighed.
Kamala chose not to look into that.
“If we’re gonna be a duo,” Kamala said, and when Doreen’s eyes went wide like plates, Kamala reiterated, “IF, that is…I am gonna need a better hoodie.”
“I’ve got an employee discount for Stark’s fashion line. Doreen Green is on the case.”
“Tony Stark has a fashion line?”
“It’s for material that’s resistant to bullets, tears, skids, and losing arms. And if I’m gonna get you one,” Doreen said, “then you need to do something for me.”
“What is it?”
Doreen nodded to Kamala’s phone, lying unsuspecting on her desk.
Kamala felt her heart sink. “Doreen, Mike is–”
“From what I’ve seen, Mike wants to be your friend. And you don’t get many of those when you’re busy saving the world.”
“…Can we settle for just saving Jersey City?”
“The point still stands.”
Kamala stretched her arm across the room and took the phone.
Her superhero life was starting. Doreen was right. Her normal life needed some attention.
She opened her text messenger app.
Hey, Mike. Sorry I had to run off before tutoring. I owe ya one.
Kamala thought for a moment.
Wanna eat lunch together tomorrow?
To be continued
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