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, leafshaped
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 oncelarger
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.
__________________________________
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 feathertipped
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.
-GULPA
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.
_________________________________
[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..."
