Things were coming to a head in the battle.
Yet something troubled Dan, there was something off about his adversary. He seemed too calm for someone that was apparently losing the fight.
Their respective monsters stood over them in their vast size, waiting to perform the next move.
His own, Vexos Dragonoid, resembled a great, black and red dragon, with four orange wings flaring from his back, hip guards, a golden spike on his snout as well as similar spikes running down his neck and tail which ended in a tree-pronged barb.
"There is something wrong with him, Dan." Vexos told him. "We better get on with this quickly."
It was there that his opponent, Emperor Barodius, held up something: a Forbidden Ability Card. Dan gritted his teeth, while he was expecting him to have one, this was not one he had ever seen, or even heard about.
"Ability Card Activate! Vore X" He yelled, smiling. A sentiment that was echoed by his Guardian Bakugan, Phantom Dharak.
He was similar to Drago in the sense that he too resembled a dragon, though he was drastically different in many ways. He was mostly black in color with blue armor plates on his shins, tail, shoulder spikes, arms and head. He had four crescent winglike structures on his backside, and curved purple horns. There were spikes along his belly, and thin, leaf-shaped spines on his thighs. This flashy, yet complicated appearance began to change before Dan's very eyes though, as a purplish aura enveloped the Bakugan.
Then, he simply... grew.
At first he couldn't notice it, as Dharak was already taller than Drago -who himself was around 70' tall- by a good 20' or so; but then it became apparent. He soon rose past the 100' marker, before other things about him changed as well: his frame became ever so slightly wider, and his comparatively short arms extended and thickened to take on a more humanoid look, while retaining the claws and superficial blue plating. Those same arms then proceeded to swell and thicken, rapidly filling out with brawn that seemed to come out of nowhere. All the while he moaned and chuckled in intoxication. His chest beefed up, the green v-shaped visor-like structure on top of it got pushed outward by his developing pecs. The dragon's eyes glowed a sick shade of royal purple. He stopped soon after at 150' tall.
Dharak wasted no time, and tackled Drago onto his back thanks to his now considerable size advantage, pinning him down.
"Drago!" Dan screamed.
"Now... watch." He laughed, yawning his jaws extremely wide open and enclosing Drago's head inside. He squirmed, cursed and protested, flailing his wings and punching his foe in those bedrock-solid abs of his, to try and get free.
Meanwhile Dharak's jaw had already engulfed the other dragon's neck, in spite of all the spines.
But to add insult to injury, things would go on to become even worse.
Just as a purple aura oozed from Dharak, scarlet flames of Pyrus energy began swirling around Drago. For a moment, Dan hoped his Guardian Bakugan would go through the same changes, so they would still have a fighting chance, but sadly, it had the opposite effect.
Drago's physique seemed to wane in size, transferring even more energy to his assailant and exacerbating the difference in their power levels. The golden spines along his hide, including his horn, retracted inward, and Dharak reared backwards, lifting up Drago so his feet were up in the air, allowing the dark monster to close his jowls around his shoulders, while he seemed to grow once more, from 150' tall to 165' tall. The golden spines that had vanished from Drago teethed out of his own backside, and a third golden horn appeared between his original pair.
"All too easy." Barodius said, a visible look of superiority flashing over his face.
Dharak had swallowed Drago up to his knees by this point, his spike-lined belly distended and bloated out to make space for him to fit, and more changes occurred: the vaguely wing-shaped structures on his upper back started to lengthen and mutate to the sound of bones popping and reshaping: dark blue webbing came to be, in a shape that Dan was all too familiar with.
Those were wings he was growing, moulded after Drago's wings. They went on to expand until they measured one and a half times their owner's height, which again surged to 180'.
With one final push, Drago was swallowed whole, and Dharak relished in the result, rubbing his full, bloated stomach which dragged on the ground due to the size if the meal, but Dan found himself expecting it, sadly, to shrink back, having gotten a clear understanding of how this new ability card worked. He recalled all the battles he had fought alongside Drago, who over the years became first a mentor, then arguably his dearest friend.
His knees grew weak, he bowed his head in respect. "Goodbye Drago. We sure showed them..."
But Barodius laughed again at the young man's mourning, and looked up in pride at Dharak, whose stomach, as Dan was expecting, shrank.
"So good, soon I will be more powerful than any other of my kind!" The dark Bakugan roared, his purple aura flaring with more violence, purple arcs of energy crackling around his form. He grew again, passing 200' in height, gaining a second tail, with a tree-pronged barb on its tip, just like his prey's. The leaf-shaped blades on his thighs retracted, allowing a pair of armored hip guards to grow out, and then reappear, sharper than before on top of those armor plates.
He roared, and perhaps involuntarily firing out a column of fire in ecstatic rapture.
"Now, allow me to introduce you to Vexos Phantom Dharak. He will soon become the most powerful of all Bakugans, and I will use him to rule all of existence!"
Dharak blinked once but immediately afterwards he roared again, the energy arcing around him began to flash more erratically, white cracks in the black, ethereal void around the two brawlers began to form, accompanied by a sound akin to that of breaking glass.
"What are you doing?"
The former emperor laughed again, and the landscape changed. Now, they were in the middle of Wardinton City, Japan.
The masses of people in the streets stopped what they were doing and looked up in awe at Dharak, who began walking around, before releasing yet another roar, that shattered nearby windows and made Dan kneel to the ground in pain.
"He is calling out his next challenger. He won't stop until he finds one." Said Barodius.
Eventually, one challenger answered the call: another Bakugan, name Viper Helios, arrived on the scene.
He too resembled a great dragon, one with dark red scales, sporting segmented armor plates covering his back, all the way to the spaded tailtip. The plates on his arms, knees and chest were decorated with metallic barbs.
Despite the fact that he stood less than half the height of his opponent, he nevertheless reared his horned head back to charge up an attack. He used General Quasar to conjure an explosion of flames, which struck Dharak forcing him to stumble back into a building, wrecking it. He recovered and used his Photon Gladiator ability; the curved spires on his shoulders lit up purple, and they went on to fire twin blasts of energy at the smaller dragon.
Helios flapped his wings to try and get out of harm's way, though he still got hit, and badly fell down to earth with a thundering boom, crushing a condominium under his mass.
"How... did you manage to..." He muttered, trying to get back up but being grabbed by the tail by Dharak who started slamming him around not unlike a human using an oversized fly swatter.
Just as the dark Bakugan was about to finish him with a blast of fuchsine flames, he used his burst core ability to nullify the attack. Though it was abundantly clear it wasn't a permanent solution.
Dharak's fist bursted right through the domed shield, snatching him up and shoving his head into his mouth. Helios' arms and wings were thrown into disarray, clawing at the much harder scales of the black dragon, whose unhinged jaw began to creep down the prey's body, gulping and sucking and slobbering all the while.
Barodius watched in wicked amazement, while Dan was already running, he understood to have no chance of stopping this monster by himself, he needed to consult with his group of Brawlers.
The spheroid of Dharak's belly now protruded outwards a good 60'. Inside, Helios flailed and beat his wings, splashing stomach acids and kept clawing and biting relentlessly.
Dharak winced from the mild stomachache his almost defeated foe was causing him, but endured, knowing that the reward would be worth the nuisances.
Understandably not wanting to be digested, Helios went all in. He charged up for one last attack: Maximum Quasar. A torching heat welled up in his throat and the spiked Bakugan volleyed out a raging vortex of fire from his mouth that went on to superheat the pred's insides.
But Helios was not aware of the fact that this would make things even worse. He was a Pyrus Bakugan, and Dharak had just absorbed another of the same attribute; as such thanks to the Forbidden Ability Card's effects, the confines of his belly vacuumed up the blazing fires coming from Helios, feeding him with even more G-power to grow from 210' to 250' tall.
And digesting the feisty prey, more changes ensued.
He scaled upwards, to 285' tall, the barbs on Helios' shoulder pads grew on his own shoulder guards, while a row of blue spikes knifed out of each of his outermost wing-fingers. A second pair of horns protruded out of his skull, just as a second set of glowing eyes broke open beside his original one.
He trumpeted out a roar of challenge yet again, even deeper and more ear-splitting than it was previously.
"Yes! Yes! Don't stop now! I am so close!" Barodius yelled out. Dharak tilted his head to the side, eyeing the gundalian.
"Don't you mean 'we're close'?" Asked the dragon.
"Yes.... of course..." He coughed.
And so, the next challenger arrived.
A female wyvern-like Bakugan with milky white scales, magenta-hued spots and feather-like quills running down her spine.
Dharak recognized her, as she was Wavern, one of the White Ones and the custodian of the legendary artifact known as the Infinity Core. Its miraculous properties would certainly be of great interest to Dharak.
He inhaled, then used Photon Gladiator again, blasts of purple Darkus energy, which together measured nearly as thick as the street he was stomping around in, tore across the skyline in a downward trajectory, aiming right at her head.
The resultant explosion razed to the ground the surrounding buildings, but she did not scream, or yelp. Rather, what Dharak's ears registered sounded way too much like a moan of beatitude. A sound that was quickly followed by the stretching of muscle and the cracking of bones. Through the cloud of smoke and dust, she saw Wavern grow.
From around 70' tall to 90... 100... 120'....
She swelled up at incredibly fast speeds, laughing before his incredulous gaze in a ecstatic frenzy. He stepped back, maw agape.
Horns styled after his own original pair jutted out of her skull, her scales shining brightly with a multitude of colors, and the muscles under them bulged bigger. Her wings moved to her upper backside, so that a pair of wingless arms could explode out of her sides, they wasted no time surging with developing brawn. Thighs thickened, heaping on mass. The magenta spots on her also glowed not unlike powerful strobe lights with additional energy.
Growing to 300' tall, her snout and tail lengthened, giving her a more fearsome appearance without discarding any of her graceful feminine qualities, rather enhancing them further.
That was when it clicked: the Infinity Core allowed her to dispel darkness and nullify the attacks from Bakugans of his attribute. And it was probably because of his mutated nature that the energy of his attack had powered her up. This was going to be a problem.
"Well, thank you for giving me a boost, it is much appreciated!" She said, grinning and showing off her bigger body.
"It was not intentional." He replied back.
"It doesn't matter. Let's get this over with." She opened her mouth before firing out a much more extreme version of her Big Bang Blaze. The ray of light struck his chest armor, discombobulating Dharak and making him fall over onto his ass. Wavern flew in to close the distance, slamming into him and dragging him along the ground for several hundred meters, before straight up decking the Phantom Bakugan sending him tumbling out of the city and relocating the scuffle to the Japanese countryside. A couple fangs flew off only to grow back.
""Now... I am pissed." Dharak stood back up, and used his Thunder Gladiator ability; two spheres of purple energy formed from the 'mouths' of his shoulder guards, and rocketed off at tremendous speeds towards the incoming Wavern. But quite expectedly, she called upon the power of the Infinity Core once more, and happily slurped up the bubbles of power, surging from 300' in height to 400'.
"Ahhhhh...." She sighed softly, landing in front of him, still posing vainly.
But he used that split second to his advantage, and pounced on her, finally enveloping her head inside his hungry, dislocated jowls. He snatched up her shoulders and hefted her up and further inside his gullet.
She thrashed, flailed and muttered curses, but he persevered: at the same time his own absorbing abilities kicked in, and the dazzling white aura that gleamed around the wyvern ebbed, flowing into Dharak. At last, he grew again.
Wavern shrank to 350' tall, but he surged to that same height, and proceeded in snarfing down the once-larger Bakugan with a brutal efficiency. Lunging his neck to and fro, gulping down her torso, her wings, her legs, her tail.
"The gall of you! My brother wil-" She protested, trapped in the unforgiving pool of his stomach, which twitched around her in expansion, becoming as tall of a spheroid as its owner, who soon after, shrieked in rapturous ecstasy, twitching and hissing in rhtym with the contracting of his belly. A sound that sent chills up the spines of every other Bakugan in the region.
And across the region, Dan Kuso and his friend Joe Brown, of whom Wavern had been Guardian Bakugan up until extremely recently, were watching a news broadcast about the whole thing. When a siren suddenly wailed across the suburbs, and the news anchor changed subject, to the matter of the government having decided after much pondering and consideration that the most effective way to deal with those rampaging monsters was a good ol' nuclear bomb.
20 minutes later, the house they were in was abandoned.
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Dharak evolved again, increasing in size from 350' to 400' and kept going, entering a new transformative phase: feather-like quills appeared between the two rows of spines on his nape and back, a third feather-tipped tail pistoned outward. His musculature blimped larger still thanks to the immense energy of Wavern's Infinity Core. He gained a grotesquely ripped ten-pack, veins thicker than trucks snaked around his swelling quads and hamstrings. His biceps got so big he couldn't manage to bend his arm at an angle greater than 90°. His snout stretched longer, his fangs enlarged and his claws sharpened in turn. From the back of his head came a pair of black quills like those Wavern possessed.
Hitting 700' tall, he turned his head towards the sky, where, as she had said, her brother, Silent Naga, made his grand entrance, smashing his immense pawprints into the earth upon landing.
He had the same white coloration as Wavern, but his body was adorned with black veinlets all over. His horns were twice the length of his head, while his wings also had veinlets, as well as a sickly pinkish hue. Encrusted in his chest, was the Silent Core, huge orb of pure negative energy from the very center of the Bakugan homeworld Vestroia, of which Naga was the ruler.
"Of couse you arrive late to the party." Dharak taunted, getting into a battle stance, unfazed by the fact that his new opponent was over two times his size.
"How repugnant of a beast you have become. Even at my most despicable, I always respected my sister for her choices. You treated the bearer of the Infinity Core as a damned SNACK?" Boomed the White One.
"Maybe there is truth in whst you're saying, but I can't be stopped now."
After a long staredown, both monsters readied themselves to erupt into an all-out brawl, when...
"What's that?" Dharak demanded, pointing up to highlight a swiftly moving black speck in the otherwise clear sky.
"Is this how you plan on saving yourself? With a cheap trick only a fool could fall for?" Naga asked, even more unamused at the current situation.
"No, seriously, look." The dark Bakugan insisted, though Naga's eyes did not move.
But Dharak's four eyes did, and he couldn't help but smile from ear to ear, understanding what a treat the humans were throwing at him.
So, he yawned open his mouth as wide as possible.
Meanwhile, in the clouds above, flew a lone fighter jet loaded with the most dangerous weapon known to man. The hatch beneath the plane opened, dropping the warhead down towards Dharak's awaiting maw.
When Naga realized what was about to occur, it was already too late.
-GULP-
A hurricane of euphoria exploded inside Dharak, whose frame pulsed larger yet, saturated to the absolute max with atomic energy. One second later he was 900' tall, and the one after that he was 1100', soaking up more and more power with hedonistic abandon.
His neck extended, becoming twice as long as his widening torso, another pair of horizontal shoulder guards jutted out of his shoulders, as his original ones metamorphosed into a second and a third head to match his trio of tails. A second pair of barbed wings grew just below the OG, and as he matched, no, overtook his opponent in the size department, Dharak smiled smugly, draining whatever scrap of G-power remained in the Infinity Core, mushrooming at a truly ludicrous pace to 1600'... 1700'... 1800'... 2000' tall.
"Any last words?" He asked Naga, who was utterly speechless. "No? I had figured."
He grabbed the Silent One and shoved him down his central throat.
What followed suit was a multitude of final changes: the veinlets on Naga's body went on to appear on Dharak's, though his were white, and pulsed with all kinds of power. Onto his chestplate, the Silent Core manifested, and on each of his three heads a third pair of bony horns protruded out.
One final spurt left him at 3000' tall, and at this point, both the Silent Core and the Infinity Core inside him reacted, bestowing upon Dharak the power of all six attributes. His eyes glowed white, his entire self was overfull with titanic strength; he cackled wildly in his nightmarishly deep voice, flexing his muscles as arcs of elemental energy flashed around his hands.
It might have seemed obvious, but achieving godhood felt so good.
In the midst of all that however, he heard Barodius' voice, calling out to him.
"At last." He said, flying around on a small hoverboard. "With you under my command, I will finally rule all reality!"
After he had finished speaking, Dharak threw him an almost pissed off look with all twelve of his eyes, growling as the leftmost head filled the despotic gundalian's field of vision.
"What the hell are you blabbing about, mortal?"
There was a puff of smoke coming from the hydra's nostrils, a prelude to the small gout of scarlet flames that he exhaled upon hearing Barodius' reply, incinerating the would-be dictator.
He understood now how little thought he had put into things up until this point, blindly following the orders imparted to him by Barodius. He was his own being, and now he had a chance to right the wrongs he had caused to his own kin.
Plus, yeah, becoming godly felt extremely amazing.
A bright flash of light engulfed the entire Earth, and just as time would stop wherever one decided to initiate a brawl between Bakugans, this time, it rewinded.
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[Vestroia...]
"You really did it." Wavern said, admiring the new version of their home dimension that Dharak had just recreated. "I didn't think you would have done it. You never seemed like the type that was keen on rebuilding."
"Yes." Dharak replied, from his throne. "I realized that the only way to start over was to get rid of Barodius, both for myself and for us."
"So, what's next?" She demanded.
Dharak smiled. "I have a few ideas..."
