Mo roughly got up, half human and half gorilla, still in his giant size, holding his injured arm, growling and huffing before his eyes widened in horror as he saw the robot's foot high in the air, about to take a step, and Susan was in the way of the step.
"Susan!", Mo roared as he quickly moved as fast as he could to try and get to her; despite his injuries. The machine's foot slowly started to come down before Susan slowly started to come back to... just to see the foot about to land on her before she felt herself being pushed out of the way by Mo for a brief moment before the foot crushed on top of him.
"MO!", Susan screamed out, suddenly wide awake as her mind quickly caught up to the present before she screamed and threw the largest energy sphere that she could throw that knocked the machine so hard, it started to tilt over and come crashing into the ground on its side.
That caused Dr. C to lose his balance as he was getting close to the mouth, falling and landing, and the robot clearly had a dent in its side, but it was still working as the robot rotated its arms to push off the ground slowly and awkwardly, putting itself upright.
Susan grunted, getting up and running to Mo who was bleeding everywhere, "Mo!", and Mo smiled bloodily, "Susan...", seeing her alive and well as he's having a minor concussion, thinking that Susan is saying one thing while she is actually saying another.
"Mo, why the hell did you do that for?!", Susan's imagined words came out when she actually said, "Mo, can you move at all, anything?!".
Mo chuckled weakly, "I know y-you weren't looking for love, but you found it...I-I am i-in love with you...Always have since the day we met...".
Susan didn't know what to say... she was still in shock by everything that had just happened. The hit she took, her injuries that she was sure were healing much too fast than normal, nearly getting crushed, Mo taking it for her and saving her... and now this confession of love.
"Now you tell me?", Susan started to sob as she laid her head on his chest. "Come on, Mo... you can't die... not like this... not after that!", she sobbed. He still barely made that out but did get 'you can't die'.
"Would you... can I at least have... one kiss...?", Mo moaned in pain as Susan started to cry and nodded. She leaned forward and pressed her lips against his.
Mo closed his eyes and relished in the kiss, the sweet, wonderful, and incredible kiss, feeling like he's complete at last, slowly reaching over to cradle her head with pain and the last bit of strength as they kissed, unknowing that Susan's Quantonium and Super Soldier Serum felt the despair, horror, bittersweet happiness, and sadness, and after realizing that she has found her soul mate in Mo, the Super Soldier Serum decided to lend a bit through the kiss, pouring into Mo, infusing into Mo's Quantonium.
Mo hung on for as long as he could before he was certain that death would claim him. The moments of him kissing her soon moved to seconds, then longer, where he was then sure it had been a full minute since they started before his body ached for air. He broke the kiss before he quickly coughed up some blood.
"Easy! Easy!", Susan shouted as she tried to help clean him up a bit. He took a deep breath as he started to feel the pain slowly start to die down, not because he was dying, but more because he was somehow healing.
Susan then gasped as she saw all the cuts and wounds on Mo healing up just like hers, and blinked in surprise, "Mo, Mo, do you feel pain inside your body?".
Mo slowly shook his head as he tested all his limbs, "No...it's disappearing...I can move and breathe...", a smile coming across his face, "How is this possible?".
"I don't really know... maybe me?", Susan wondered as he smiled. "Maybe... you're looking less like you took a hard hit from that laser.", Mo chuckled as he clutched himself.
"Easy, don't laugh, you're still very tender.", Susan whispered as she gently rubbed his chest. "Just rest easy for right now... you clearly can heal like me, but you need some time...".
"Right...", Mo nodded as he reluctantly agreed. He was itching to get right back to where he left off. "Where's the robot?".
Susan looked over and saw the machine was moving once more, "I don't know what it's trying, but it looks like it's heading straight for the Golden Gate...". Mo widened his eyes, "Oh, shit! If he destroys the bridge, that's a major landmark and people rely on it!".
Bucky in his large wolf form, carrying Dr. C and Bob on his back, made it to the duo, and shifted back to his werewolf form, with Dr. C and Bob landing on the ground, "We gotta do something. Dr. C was so close to getting into the mouth!".
Dr. C nodded, "I believe the control center is right behind the eye. The mouth is a straight shot to the control center. We need to get that robot distracted again or somehow stuck where it wouldn't revolve around...".
"And it's heading right for the bridge...", Susan bit her lip. "Where the hell is Insecto and Link?", she asked.
To answer her question, Link was in the bay, swimming right towards the area of the fight before realizing that the robot was trying to get into the bay waters. Quick thinking on his part, he was certain he could get close to the robot's foot in water and then crawl up it before getting inside. Link felt sure that something inside was controlling it and to wanted roundhouse-kick the heads off of whatever little grey men were inside.
At the same time, Insecto, with Tara riding along, was getting close to the bridge themselves as the choppers were trying to lead Insecto to it. However, Tara was unaware that the robot was actually targeting her even if it wasn't knowing it.
Its primary programming was to recover the Quantonium asteroid that it had followed and had detected its trace energy to the region but lost the true origin of it... only for it to appear once more and start getting stronger and stronger as it got closer. Due to the specific trail that it was following, it didn't detect the Quantonium in Mo, Bucky or even Susan as hers were mixed with a different source of Quantonium that canceled out much of what she and Tara gained.
The team on the land ran to the bridge, with Mo roughly shifting down to 12 ft tall, riding on Susan's shoulder, with Bucky and Dr. C and Bob riding on her other shoulder, hoping that they would somehow distract the robot from walking straight through the bridge.
Then they saw Insecto around the corner of the bay hills, on the other side of the bridge far away, and the helicopters turned off the lights, earning Insecto to blink and then focus, bellowing.
Tara shouted, "Alright, Insecto, do your thing!", and Insecto bellowed, shooting tons of snot at the robot which it destroyed with its beam easily, and Susan narrowed her eyes, making balls of force fields again, throwing them at the robot in the back.
Insecto kept firing snot at the same time, walking closer and closer, but avoided the bridge as he climbed around the ramp part in the land for Tara kept telling him to not break the bridge as the robot was revolving back and forth, and to their amazement and joy, the loads of snot gummed up the revolving part on one side, with the force fields denting the places where Mo hit earlier.
"That's it! I think it's working!", Tara cheered before the eye looked right at her and narrowed red. Fear suddenly struck her as the others saw it. "Is that...?", Susan asked.
"Is it locked on to her?", Dr. C wondered. "Whatever it is... I think it clearly is going to kill her if we don't hurry!", Bucky shouted.
The robot then shot at Insecto who screeched out in pain, with Tara jumping off, screaming as Bucky screamed, "TARA! Mo, throw me!", and Mo, finally back to normal, used his super gorilla strength to grab and throw Bucky as Mo leaped off Susan's shoulder, shifting into giant form.
Bucky, in his large wolf form, went as fast as Mo could throw him as he flew right towards Tara as she continued screaming. He got close to her before he grabbed her in his paws just before they crashed into the water, with Bucky turning his back to the water. Bucky's quick timing helped spare Tara from any real injuries. She'd be sore for a bit, but that was the worse that would happen to her... at least at that moment.
The two of them quickly surfaced back above the water as Tara coughed. "Bucky...", Tara muttered as she looked at him while he smiled.
"You alright?", Bucky asked, now in his werewolf form as she nodded. Tara then suddenly went wide-eyed as she gasped. Not only was Insecto seriously hurt by the beam the robot delivered but once more it was focused on her.
"What is it that I did for this thing's attention?!", Tara screamed as one of the robot's crusher hands was reaching out for her.
Bucky narrowed his eyes, shifting back into his large wolf form, and dived, and then swam up just as Tara was about to be grabbed by the crusher hand, but Bucky took her place, biting and clawing at the metal, and Tara screamed, "Bucky!", reaching just in time to grab into the outside of the crusher hand, and climb up.
Susan screamed out with her hands around her mouth, "Go for the eye!", and Tara heard her, ran up the arm before the robot was even able to get her with its other crusher hand, and took a deep breath, focusing all the frustration, anger, annoyance, and determination in all one punch as she jumped, breaking the glass of the eye, creating a hole in the eye that's barely enough to fit a normal-sized person, or say, a Link-sized person.
Link, successfully having climbed up the robot when it wasn't looking, got into the hole, and seeing no little gray people or anyone else manning the robot, he decided to go wild, still bent up, wanting to kick and punch, causing the robot to twitch, malfunctioning, letting go of Bucky who fell back into the water, looking up at Tara who was holding on.
"Link! Do you see anything!?", Tara shouted as Link kept smashing up things. "Nothing! Whole damn thing is automated! Feel like tearing it apart might shut it down!", he called out from inside.
"Well, keep going! I'll get Bob and Doc to get in there to help!", Tara said as she slid down the other arm, skateboarder- like before landing near the area of the others.
Susan heard the short conversation, and grinned at Tara, "Already doing it. Ready, boys?", and Dr. C nodded, "Go for it, my dear.".
Susan then threw Dr. C and Bob with all her professional pitcher talent, perfectly on target, with Bob creating a soft landing for Dr. C as they plopped on the eye, and with swift speed, they got into the hole, joining Link.
Mo whistled lightly, "You know, I never complimented you yet for your pitching skills, Susan... You are fantastically incredible.", with a warm smile. Susan blushed pink, smiling shyly, "Thank you, Mo.", before slowly reaching out to hesitantly touch his hand, and Mo noticed, happily taking her hand in his.
Tara was surprised to see Susan blushing, and her eyes widened as she looked between Mo and Susan, "Apparently, I missed out on something...", as the robot finally shut down, with Bucky swimming to get into shore, with the boys emerging out of the eye, cheering before Link saw the downed Insecto, "No, Insecto!".
Clearly, they had succeeded in disabling the robot, the look on Dr. C's face certainly proved that, but obviously everyone's attention was focused on Insecto's injuries.
"What happened?!", Link asked in a frantic state as he got next to the giant bug. "He took one of those beams head on, Link...", Tara admitted as Link crawled up on Insecto.
"Come on, buddy, just hold together, you'll be alright... that overgrown tin can couldn't have killed you!", Link was practically screaming at what essentially was his closest friend and almost child in certain ways as it still was a baby.
Insecto only breathed deeply, rumbling, and gave a slow exhale as some sort of white membrane thing is enveloping him steadily. Link sobbed as he couldn't hear the heart of his most beloved friend and child, unknowing that he's going into hibernation, going through metamorphous.
The rest of the monsters bowed their heads in grief and sadness...Today was a day of victory for they had earned it, with their freedom at last, but in the end, one of their family, one of the monsters, have lost their chance of freedom even before it started...
"I'm sorry, Link...", Bob placed a hand on Link's shoulder as Link sniffled, "I know... I thought... I honestly thought he'd be alright, that he could take so much more than the rest of us.".
Dr. C sighed, "Apparently, whoever built the robot was determined to make sure that his or her devices would stay up to date and their expectations...After all, one of the beams nearly took Susan off guard...".
Susan looked at Link apologetically, "I'm really sorry...My Quantonium and Super Soldier Serum is different compared to Insecto's nuclear radiation infusion...", and Link sighed, "It ain't your fault, Susan...or anybody's...Insecto w-wanted to help out...He s-saved the world.".
Bucky replied, "A-Are you going to stay with him?", and Link nodded, "I need to be alone...pay my respects...Look, girls, I know you want to go see your parents and Derek...I'll be fine...".
Mo replied, "Are you sure?", and Link smiled bittersweetly, "Yeah...You guys go without me, especially you, Doc and Bob.".
"If it's all the same with you, Link, I'd stay... but only to look more at that machine while the army probably comes along to dismantle it... they might need my help.", Doc said.
"And I'd rather stay with you too, Link... you look like you could at least have someone else be here with you. I'll just turn off my brain... oh, wait, don't have one... I... I, uh, will stay quiet.", Bob added.
Link gave a small nod, "Alright then; just try not to say too much Bob... unless you're giving a eulogy or something."
"A eulo-what?", Bob scratched his head. "Some nice words for him.", Link replied.
Bob smiled widely, "I can do that!", and little smiles came around the group, and Mo nodded, "Looks like it's me and Bucky who goes with you two.".
Tara nodded, "Brilliant! Come on, let's go home, Susan!", and Susan chuckled, squeezing Mo's hand, "Don't worry, Mo... We'll tell them that we're just starting out...".
Mo smiled softly, "Of course, Susan. There's no rush...I just want to be with you.", and Susan blushed softly, smiling happily, seeing that Mo isn't like Derek at all.
Bucky grinned, "Congrats, you two. And don't worry, Tara, we'll tell you the story on the way.", and Tara nodded in understanding, so curious to know how this happened, and so the quartet left, heading for the field where the plane's waiting, telling Monger of the boys deciding to stay behind for Link's sake and all.
The flight wasn't too bad, though obviously cramped as Tara had to lay down at her minimal 25 feet, Cockroach believed it was because she was carrying child which was why she couldn't be a more reasonable Amazonian height like the rest of the Quantonium trio.
"So, it was basically just a love at first sight sort of spark?", Tara said as Mo and Susan finished explaining their now budding relationship. "Well, for me at least, not sure about Susan.", Mo chuckled as she smiled.
"I'd be lying in saying I didn't at least drink you in at first," Susan joked as Tara laughed, "You're lucky I have Derek, Sue, or I might have tried to steal Mo from you!".
The joke didn't land as no one else was laughing; though that was because they knew the Derek truth, not because of Tara's flop of a joke. "Okay, that probably wasn't that funny, sorry, sis.".
Susan spoke, "It's okay, Tara.", mostly calm, though she's a bit pissed off, not about the joke, but the fact that Tara is still blind to Derek's manipulations and all. Bucky replied, "I hope your papa doesn't freak out again at the sight of me. I'm human, yet I go wolf out at will.".
"Don't worry, Uncle Bucky, Papa and Mom will like you...I only wish Daddy and Mum and Henry would be here...", Susan sighed deeply. Mo squeezed her hand gently and replied, "I am sure they're coming as soon as they can...After all, they must have thought that showing themselves in their illusions during the fight back there would distract you more than...well, you know...".