Team
By: 1000th Ghost
*This story is dedicated to Kirstin. Who else would willingly go see Monsters vs Aliens with me?*
It was the expected thing to do. She didn't know why it hadn't occurred to her before.
Link and B.O.B., they were different. They had nothing to compare it to. Link had hundreds of screaming fangirls, and B.O.B. had his jello. They had never been human, never had to deal with having (or not having) those kinds of emotions. They could pretend, but they were monsters. And monsters could not love.
Humans could love. She had been a human. She had loved. She had lost love. She had firmly decided never to go back.
Dr. Cockroach had been a human. But he had not loved. He did not know what it was like to feel so insignificant, simply because of the words of one person. He had no reason to not want to return to "normal".
The machine had not exactly been perfect, but it had been close enough. The physical metamorphosis was, to be sure, an unwanted side effect, but the general purpose of his experiment was still a success. He would have published his discovery to the world, had he not been captured in his monster-form before he could undo the change.
How long had he been locked up for? She wasn't exactly sure, but it was certainly long enough for him to dream of nothing but returning to his human shape. And now that they were free…what was stopping him?
The answer was absolutely nothing. The next time she saw him, he was unrecognizable, even when she kneeled down to his level for a better look. But he bowed and called her "my dear", and she knew it was him.
"If you'll step into my laboratory for a moment, I will reverse your condition as well," he informed her, taking her by the tip of her finger as naturally as if he had taken her by the hand.
"Oh, um…"
It was the expected thing to do. She didn't know why it hadn't occurred to her before.
Why be a monster when you could be a human?
"I-I thought you didn't know how to make me normal," she said unsurely, as she stared at the hundreds of strange blinking and beeping contraptions.
"No, no, I was just unaware of HOW you had acquired your powers. Now that I know that it was nothing but QUANTONIUM!" He laughed, as if the solution should have been as simple to her as it obviously was to him. "Well, it's only a matter of removing the Quantonium, is it not?"
She wasn't sure exactly how to respond, so she nodded briefly and wondered if she should point out that he was still holding her fingertip.
He looked at her.
"Are you ready?"
She glanced about nervously.
"A-actually…" She detangled her fingertip from his grip and took a few steps back. "I…well, I like being Ginormica. I like being special and powerful. I like people to respect me and think of me as…" She knew she was rambling, but he was aptly paying attention.
"And before, when you were just Susan…did you not get respect?"
She sighed. "You know I didn't. I was just…the wife-to-be of a weather reporter." She narrowed her eyes. "A selfish jerk of a weather reporter."
"Ah. So that's it."
She arched an eyebrow. "What's it?"
He attempted to scuttle up to her shoulder like he had countless times before but found that his new body made that utterly impossible. He settled for sitting in the palm of her hand, and she brought him up to her eyelevel.
"Derek. It's still Derek."
She shook her head in defense. "No, it's NOT Derek. It's ANYTHING but Derek. I HATE Derek."
"Yes, my dear, I know you do. But not only because he was a…selfish jerk, did you say? No, not only that. You loved him. You loved him, and he turned you away when you became a threat to his personal gains." He paused. "He could not respect you because you were different. So, you had to prove that you deserved respect. Now that you are indeed respected as Ginormica, you are afraid to go back to Susan. Who would respect Susan?"
A single tear rolled down her cheek. "No one. No one would respect Susan. Not Derek or-"
She was silenced as he brought his lips to the very edge of her much-too-large ones in what could vaguely be considered a short kiss.
"I would respect Susan. I would respect Ginormica. Not because she was beautiful and sweet or because she was powerful and unstoppable, although she very well is. But because we could all do with a Derek…a Derek as you wanted him to be. A teammate, not a competitor."
She sat in shock. "Y-yes. I…I want to be part of a…a team." Suddenly she felt very self-conscious…why was being almost fifty feet tall a good thing? "Um…have you always…I mean…when we first met, did you…?"
"My dear, I might have had the appearance and abilities of a cockroach, but I can assure you, I was very much a man. You know as well as I do that humans have certain things that make them different from other life forms…goals, feelings…desires."
She smiled slightly and blushed. "I think you can make me small now."
The process was quick and painless, and he explained that it would only be a matter of seconds before he could transform both of them back into their monstrous figures, should the need to save the world ever arise.
She nodded and then looked at the (now much closer) floor. "Doc?"
He stared at her, uncertainty evident in his features. "Yes, my dear?"
She raised her eyes to his. "Are we a team yet?"
A relieved smile played across his face. "No, not yet."
His human arms wrapped around her human waist and pulled their human bodies together. Her human cheeks were redder than a rose, and their human lips were now the right size, and his human brain was convinced that his human heart had stopped. How had he managed to make his Susan fall for a cockroach? But she deepened the kiss, and he decided that their shared humanity simply made physical exteriors inconsequential.
As he carried her to his cot, her human hands running through his human hair, he mentally noted that he had not confirmed that they were in fact a "team".
Then she moaned softly, and he clutched her tighter, and it was evident that she already knew.
The End