One day, all these cards started falling from the sky, like rain, or frogs. Together with my friends on an awesome Twilight forum, we created a FAR-OUT game, and for a while it seemed like harmless nonsensical fun. But on National Bakugan Day when the beasts within started slapfighting, we knew they weren't harmless.
My name's Dan. Together with my friends Runo, Marucho, Julie, not to mention (SHUN IS NOT APPEARING IN THIS EPISODE AND DOESN'T DESERVE TO BE MENTIONED -Editor), and Alice, we are...the Bakugan Battle Brawlers!
Bakugan! One goal, two worlds!
A, a-a, a-a, TWO worlds COL-LIDE! On the inside! Gone, gone, gone, this is Bakugan!
Episode Eight
Time After Time
In the last episode, my (Marucho's) family moved into the huge Momo-Rutabaga Tower and threw a big party (even though my parents are never home). I invited Dan and Runo, and we found an unexpected guest who called himself Preyus. He was kinda dumb. Later the Super Sing Sound Extravaganza (no, I have no idea what that means) dropped in. What we DIDN'T know was that they were working for Mask the Money and trying to eat our Bakugan!
We discovered that Preyus had a special attribute-changing power, and that Jen and Ten weren't actually girls! What's gonna happen next!? Well, my calculations suggest Dan and I win...
"Alright," Jen declared, "time to get busy! Bakugan Brawl!" She tossed a blue marble onto the scene. "Ready to brawl, Danny?"
"Ihh! Stop pretending I have a crush on you!" Dan shivered.
"Come on, you know you're interested!" Jen winked.
"Aah! I'm straight!"
Before Jen could say anything to that, Feardipper emerged from his capsule! Similarly to Fearripper and Deerripper, he was a big-clawed humanoid.
Dan went into his thinking mode. "Alright, HIS monster's sitting there at about 300 G's, but I've got a feeling she's just like those magicians Ken and Men and is about to TURN UP DA HEET. Well, Dan da Man's gonna turn up the heat for ya! Bakugan Stand!" Birdman soon stood triumphantly behind Feardipper. They both had 300 gogos of power.
"That's your best move, huh?" Jen said in response.
"Please! You act like you've never brawled me before!"
"B-b-but I haven't! I don't know anything about you! Honest! Your move, Ten!"
"Okay, girl!" she said to Marucho. "You ready to party?"
"I'm not a girl!" The nerd was disturbed.
She did the Batman again before saying, "Bakugan Brawl!" She'd sent out another brown marble. "Make room for Rhinotron!" Everyone's favorite rhinoceros Bakugan (or ALMOST everyone's) rose!
"RHINOTRON AT POWER LEVEL 320 G'S. BIRDMAN AT POWER LEVEL 300 G'S."
"Get ready to be cooked like a rhino-burger on a rhino woodfire grill. Gate Card, Open! Ring of Fire!" Predictably, a ring of fire circled around them.
"BIRDMAN POWER LEVEL INCREASED TO 400 G'S."
"Your marble," said Dan, "is about to go between two bread slices and right into my mouth."
"Ability Card, Activate!" chanted Ten. "Wet One meets Terry!" In the air hovered a hologram showing an uptight mother taking some Wet Ones out of a package, about to wipe down her table. The Terry-attribute Rhinotron roared with energy! Now he had some disinfectant!
"It's a trap!" Luckily Marucho didn't have to ask about this, as he had researched the dumb specifics about this cheap doomy card.
"POWER LEVEL INCREASED TO 420 G'S."
"I'd say," said Ten, "you're about to get creamed like corn and stuffed into my belly like Thanksgiving dinner!"
"Aw, snap! I didn't even know you celebrated Thanksgiving!"
"I didn't! Attack his Birdman!"
With his trusty quarterback charge, Rhinotron slammed straight into Birdman and gave him several chest injuries. Indeed, Birdman was sent packing right into Ten's big mouth.
"FATALITY."
"It's gone!" Dan stated the obvious once again. "Good thing I have ten more copies back home!"
"Too bad. It must be hard to have your trusty buccaneer devoured by some girl."
"Hey! We're only tied one-to-one! The Awesome Action All the Time tag team's gonna come up strong, right, Marucho?"
"I sure hope so!"
"Girls rule, boys SUCK!!" They stuck out their tongues at them.
"Easy for you to say. Or should I say HARD to say, since you're ALSO boys! Heh heh! You suck just as much as I do!"
"Only harder!" Marucho defended.
"Just don't let your guard down, both of you," Drago concluded.
"I get it," Marucho continued. "They combined their Terry and Wet One attributes to create a cleaning, working-class mother! Wait…"
"…And what else does that mean?" Dan cocked his head.
"The rules you established for Bakugan are complicated, but I hypothesize that you may not be able to combine the attributes of Pirate and Wet One! Boy, this game sure doesn't make a lot of sense."
"You KNEW about this!?"
"I told you, the rules are very complicated! And besides, if you established them, you should be the one who knows all about them!"
"Not true." Dan crossed his arms and stuck out his tongue.
"The answer's pretty obvious as to how we can gain this power-up. With Preyus' ability to change attributes, we can simply change him into his ghastly Terry color scheme if we wish for him to combine forces with one of my Bakugans, or change him into a horrifying Marcus mode and allow him to join forces with YOUR Bakugan."
"Now you've got it!" Preyus congratulated. "Smart, smart boy!"
"It's far from over! We can still do this! Bakugan Stand!" Marucho launched out a Wet One Gamera! "Ability Card, Activate! Water Refrain!" Some blue stuff pulsed throughout the field, like a watery Doom card would! "According to the card effect, this will prevent any other player from using any Ability Cards this turn!"
"Well…we can still beat you! Bakugan Brawl!" Jen launched her Rhino Torpedo, which was simply a blue Rhino Demon, out next to the turtle.
"We rock~! Oh yeah!" The girls high-fived.
"When I say Hillshire you say farms. Hillshire." But nobody paid any attention to Ten, slightly hiding her true identity once again!
Drago noticed that two water Bakugans were pitted against each other. Marucho was clearly deep in thought, while Dan was twiddling with his thumbs. "Dan?" Drago asked.
Dan was thumb wrestling with himself, handling his hands as if they were an intense video game! "You're not gettin' me THIS time!" he yelled to his appendages. "Woah, that was a CLOSE one! Whoop, almost got me there! I'm catchin' up! Aw, missed!"
"DANIEL! DANIEL!! STOP TWIDDLING YOUR ****ING THUMBS AND LISTEN TO ME!!"
"Aw, come on! Let me finish this game first! I've almost got it – oh, left one dodged again! But he'd better watch out, 'cuz I write better with my right hand!"
While Dan wasn't looking, a giant tsunami washed over the field! "****ING DAN NEVER ****ING LISTENS!! YOU TAKE THESE *******S ON YOURSELF, MARUCHO!! MARUCHO WHO'S NICE ENOUGH TO CALL ME BY MY REAL ****ING NAME!!"
"Break it up, everyone!" Preyus demanded. "My ears, they're stinging! Give a thumb wrestler a break, will ya?"
"No," Marucho decided, "we have to work together on this. The only way we can defeat them is by using the abilities of both players to counter the strategy they're setting up. Dan, finish your thumb wrestling game and do something strategic!"
"Good, because my left hand just won! Gate Card, Set!" He completed the Windows symbol again! "Bakugan Brawl! Snakerake, Stand!"
"Gate Card, Set!" retorted Ten, giving the symbol one square too many. "Bakugan Brawl! Rhinotron , Stand! Again!" And Rhinotron stood again.
"So we just power up and power through!" Dan decided. "I just activate another ability care, right?"
"You could do that," Marucho said, "but I could also play a Chaos-attribute Bakugan to complete our line of defense. Playing a Chaos-attribute Bakugan will combine the three to make the triangular symbol of Pirate, Wet One and Chaos! Personally I much prefer fire, water and light, but I don't make the names…"
"And doing that will boost their power, right?"
"Precisely! I don't have a Chaos Bakugan with me, so we will just have to use Preyus!"
"WHAAAAAAA!?!?" Preyus shrieked. "You're gonna risk sendin' me into THEIR mouths!?"
"We already risked that!" Marucho replied. "You didn't say anything that time!"
"I should've!" He made a weird, long, slurping gasp.
"Don't worry! We believe in you! And believing always works!"
"Oh, you're right. Such a smart boy! I could never resist smart boys!"
Marucho loaded Preyus into the spring-loaded launcher and cried "Bakugan Brawl!" in the most intense voice Marucho-ly possible.
A curtain appeared. It slowly opened to reveal a guy with an umbrella! Then it revealed that the guy was a jolly Preyus! He said in a weird, high-pitched and scratchy Gilbert Gottfried's voice, "Mind if I play?"
"Ihhhh! Gross! Hug me, Jen!" Then Jen hugged Ten.
"Good job!" Marucho pumped his fist! "Your gross-out tactic's working!"
"I didn't know this was a gross-out tactic! Just let me do my REAL tactic…my really COOL tactic! Let's change into something more…CHAAAOOOTIIIIIC!!!" His stomach glowed this time, showing that your stomach acid is the most chaotic part of the body! Or maybe it was the most like Marcus, because it gave him a dark color scheme! "Oops, my bad!"
"That's not a tactic at all! Please stop being stupid!
Dan gasped. "I've never heard him use that word before…he means business!"
"Well, whatever, y'all," Jen said, relieved the strategy failed horrendously. "Gate Card, Open!" The field turned all earth-y, just like it did earlier. Rhinotron gained some orange energy!
And they just stood there until the BakuGantlet declared, "POWER LEVEL INCREASED TO 390 G'S."
Instantly, Preyus freaked out. "DAAAAH!!" He started running away, biding for time while Dan and Marucho thought of something! "Help, somebody! Call 911! HU-RU-RU-RYYY!!"
"Keep running around like that while we think of a plan!" Marucho hollered.
"Not sure how long I can keep this up, but okay!"
"WATER REFRAIN NEGATED."
"Huh? What caused that…?" Marucho wondered.
"Do something!" Dan shouted. "You're the small smart guy!"
"Still getting' chased around here! Get an ambulance because someone's tryin' to KILL me!"
"Ability Card, Activate! Pirate meets Marcus! Not as strong as the triangular formation, but it'll have to do!" A pirate met a fat kid, thus combining their powers successfully!
Preyus instantly felt the surge of power handed over by Snakerake! He smiled a devilish grin and said, "Here's what you get for chasing me around." And in one swift uppercut, Rhinotron was down for the count!
"Hey, Jen," Ten said timidly, "never suggest that your enemy might be a Killer Klown again."
"I might be a klown, but I'm a killer too, and don't you ladies forget it!" Preyus was sucked back into Marucho's hand.
"Preyus," Marucho said sternly, "if you had turned into an attribute like Air Vent I wouldn't have had the proper card to fuse you with anything! Then you would have lost your life!"
"Lighten up, I won! Just teach me all the attributes and how they look again so I don't mess up like that later, okay, Honcho?"
"I'm not Honcho."
"Sorry about that, Honcho."
"Now I know how Endymio feels…"
"Who's Endymio? Is he someone I should know?" Dan asked.
"I'M ****ING ENDYMIO!!"
"No, silly. You're Drago!"
"THAT'S THE NAME YOU FORCED UPON ME, YOU—"
"Holler at ya, girlfriend!" Jen hollered from across the field. "It's been nice playin'-"
"-against a sista who backs what they're sayin'!" Ten hollered.
"You da bomb, girlfriend!"
"And this match is about to end!"
"We're not cross dressers!" Marucho corrected. "You're the crossdressers!"
"I'm not your girlfriend!" Dan joined in. "I'm not even a girl! That's your girlfriend, right there! Yeah, right next to you! Because you've got incest there with your little lesbian friend, and you ain't got SPIT on us when it comes to playing Bakugan! Bet you couldn't even save your own CATS! Unh!"
Jen grunted with rage! "Hurrrr! Bakugan Stand! Bakugan Brawl! Aqua Seed!" She, too, had a seed which erupted into a blue knight! "I LUV this game! Because that's just what girls say, and that's just my style! Holluh!"
"Huh," Aqua Seed said gruffly. "Fancy seeing YOU again."
"Well, I don't fancy!" Dan cried.
"Girl, time to get your swerve on!" Ten said, and we assume that must be encouragement.
"Ability card, Activate!"
They declared in unison, "Tsunami Wave!"
"It's a trap!"
Aqua Seed's eyes glowed. He spun his spear around, and suddenly he had a roaring wave at his command!
"Heads up!" Dan shouted.
They waited a few moments. Then the wave FINALLY carried every single Bakugan on the field into Jen and Ten's mouths except for Aqua Seed!
"FATALITY."
"Yum~!" Jen and Ten said, rubbing their quickly-shrinking bellies.
Marucho stood there, mouth hanging open.
"There was nothing in the Bakugan handbook about GIANT WAVES. Oooooh. Ihhhhhhh."
"Come on, you guys!" Dan shouted. "That's cheating! That's even more cheap than the Doom card! And look what you did to poor Marucho! He's petrified!"
"It's not so much the killing of Bakugans…it's the fact that they're actually enjoying it…and eating it…"
The two laughed maniacally and in a disturbingly-manly fashion. "Sorry, boys…" they said in chilling unison.
AAAND the brawlers will be back right after these messages.
And now, back to Bakugan Battle Brawlers! Now in disturbing surround sound! RAAAH
"You twisted twins, you cheated!" Dan said, angered.
"PRESENT STANDINGS: GAME TIED AT ONE GAME EACH. EVEN THOUGH MARUCHO HAS AN EXTRA DEFEAT SYMBOLIZED BY A LIGHT. SO REALLY, THEY'RE NOT TIED AT ALL. MY BAD."
"So whaddaya say we play by their rules, Marucho?"
"No holds barred? Alright!"
"Gate Card, Set!" He dropped a card, and it grew. "It's up to you, Drago," he murmured to his turkey baster.
"I'm not even going to try correcting you.....*******."
"Bakugan Brawl! Stand!"
Drago was unleashed, the guy we've all been waiting for! "ENDYMIO!!" he said like a Pokemon.
"Bakugan Brawl! Terry, stand!" Terry the Centipede, who looked a LOT like Mark, appeared in front of hm.
"That's peachy with me! Gate Card, Open!"
"Ring of Fire!" Drago's voice commanded the infamous ring of fire to circle around them!
"POWER INCREASE TO 420 G'S."
"Do it, Drago! You've got enough power to smack that centipede silly!"
"RAWR!!" he rawred, breathing heavily into Terry the Centipede's face. He didn't take this very well, and prepared for action!
"Ability Card, Activate! Hookin' up Wet One to Terry!" Ten said, revealing her card. In it, a Wet One had fallen onto an uptight mother's head! It was exactly the same as the other card, but different!
"It's a trap!"
"Oh NOOOOOOOOO!!"
"POWER LEVEL INCREASED To 440 G'S."
"That's not all, y'all! Ability Card, Activate! A Trogdor!" But there was no Trogdor. However, a path DID open up in the flames. "This allows us to toss another one into the fray!"
"It's a trap!"
"How...CHEAP!!" Dan was disgusted by their repulsive, icky cheapness! "You cheapos! You fiends! Why, you remind me of two fiendish little boys I once fought. They were called Ken and Men, and they both SUCKED."
Aqua Seed drew his lance-spear, spun it around a few times, and stood gallantly in the midst of oncoming war! "And this time, I expect to win!" he declared. "Putting up with another warrior will have to do for now!"
"CHALLENGER INCREASED TO 530 G'S. 530 G'S…530 G'S…530-"
Marucho hit his BakuGantlet. "Phew. I was HOPING nothing major was wrong with thing."
"Soory, but you're gonna lose this time!" Ten smirked.
"Wait, I've never fought you before!" Dan stated. "Why do you act like you know me from somewhere!?"
"Th-that's the thing! I-I don't!"
"I'll trust you THIS time." Dan crossed his arms soon after rubbing his nose.
"It's impossible for us to lose!" Marucho jammed a bunch of buttons into his BakuGantlet and concluded, "According to the BakuGantlet's complex assortment of algorithms, there's a 99.9% chance that we win, unless our lives are more dramatic and serious than what we have originally percieved!"
"So basically we pull out a combo to finish the game!"
"You're smarter than I thought sometimes, Dan," Drago said.
"Thanks, Drago!"
Marucho declared, "Counter Ability Card, Activate! I'm thinking that if I combine Pirate and Marcus again, the power boost will be enough to combat against both of our opposers! Go, Preyus!"
A guy with an umbrella named Preyus stood on the field again! "Hey, Ms. Lady Dragon, wanna be my dance partner, huh?"
"I'M NOT A LADY!! PAY ATTENTION NEXT TIME!!"
"Since when did the rules say BOTH sides were affected by A Trogdor? No fair!" Jen declared.
"You haven't let us finish the turn yet!"
"The SCOUNDRELS!" Dan said. "They're soiling the good name of Bakugan! Hmph. Trying to tell us this is against the rules…they should know they've been BIG CHEAPOS this ENTIRE TIME."
"Exactly! And through some strange rule in the book, something called a diagonal attack can counter A Trogdor!"
"But A Trodgor is invincible, I tells ya! INVINCIBLE!!" Jen frowned, having lost hope in her card.
"Attribute Change!" Preyus did a bunch of weird poses, eventually gaining the dark color scheme! "Let's change into something Marcus is gonna love! You know what that means, boys and girls…MARCUS!!!"
"It's working!" Marucho said happily.
The two laughed maniacally before going on the offensive. "I hope this is gonna be your last stand, Ken and Men!" Drago wisely figured.
"I don't know who Ken is OR Men is, but they sure don't sound like nice people to meet and know!" Preyus wisely deduced.
"Ability card, Activate!" Dan brought out the next piece of the combo!
"BOOSTED DRAGON!" The dragon was instantly boosted!
"AAAAHH!!" The two boys hugged each other! "WE'RE GONNA DISAPPEAR LIKE A LADY IN A SAWED-IN-HALF BOX AT A MAGIC SHOW!!" Jen shrieked.
"HILLSHIRE FARMS CAN'T SAVE ME NOW!!" Ten wailed.
"POWER LEVEL COMBINED AN DINCREASED TO 1020 G'S…1020 G'S…1020 G'S…1020—"
"And now the BAKUGANTLET hates us, too, y'all!" Jen cried. "EVERYTHING'S gonna be hatin' on us now! Y'AAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL!!"
Even as Drago boom-bubbled the two opposing marble guys, Aqua Seed stood bravely in the face of death. So did Terry, but everyone forgot about HIM.
"Yeah!" The Awesome Action All the Time duo caught their marbles as they came to them!
"We did it, Dan! Just as I figured!" Marucho lunged towards and glomped Dan.
"Yeah, totally!" Dan hugged him back.
Jen and Ten sighed. "At least they didn't figure out our true identities, except for maybe that dragon…" They sighed again. "But they make a lovely couple!" They looked at each other and gasped. "But WE make a lovely couple!"
Runo's hair stopped shaking in the breeze. The pigeons were shot down by a lucky hunter, who had to move into the city since deforestation was going on.
The blue-haired girl took one look at them and said, "Huh?"
Dan, still hugging Marucho with one arm, said whilst wiping his nose, "Heh. Too easy."
She ran up to them saying, "So come on, guys! Answer two questions for me! Did you win?"
"Uh-huh!"
"Were they lesbians?"
"No, but we found out something even MORE disturbing…they're gay."
"But isn't that the term for male homosexuality?
"Exactly."
Runo shivered. She realized she recognized the hugging Jen and Ten from somewhere, but decided she would be shaken to her very core by the revelation. She didn't think into it much further than that.
"You know, girls…boys…wh-whatever," Marucho said, "just like drugs, teaming up with Mask the Money can have harmful effects on your health, both physical and mental. Mostly mental, in this case."
"Mask is whack!" Dan said, for some reason. "So don't do it!"
"Well, maybe we LIKE being under Mask the Money!" Ten said, crossing her arms now.
"Yo, yo, yo, we gotta roll!" Jen waved goodbye. She gasped. "I, like, totally forgot!"
They both said to one another, "We've got a SHOW to do tonight! Motorbike!" they hollered to the skies.
Some 80's music started playing in the background as a two-seat hoverbike cruised in from above. Jen took the driver's seat. They wiggled their arms in the air as the hoverbike cruised on away, shouting, "SUPER SING SOUND SENSATION RAWKS!!" They dropped their launcher-things!
If you're lost you can look--and you will find me…time after time…If you fall I will catch you--I'll be waiting…time after time…
Time after time…time after time…
Drago sighed. "I don't have a full understanding of the English language just yet, but I believe the word for those two would be…cross dresser?"
"You are SO right on that one, Drago," Dan said bluntly. "SO right."
"But the problem is not the fact that Ken and Men are cross dressing and pretending we don't know their true identities."
"True identity what now?"
"Never mind that, Dan is totally clueless. The problem is that Mask the Money is our prime target here, and he's the one hiring all these idiots to work and play marble games for him!"
"I say we challenge that varmint to a showdown!" Preyus jumped up and down on Marucho's head. "Mask the Money sounds like a perfect name for STEALING! Sounds like a real rascal, that one!"
"Well, what do YOU think, Drago?" Dan asked his shoulder buddy.
"Hmmmm…"
In the TV-that-doubled-as-a-computer room…
"Come on, Drago!" Julie demanded. "I KNOW you can do it! Explain what happened on Bakugan Day more!"
"I believe now it is time to tell more about the universe I come from," the red marble said solemnly.
"You mean Vestroia, right, Drago?"
"Don't ruin it for everyone, Dan.
"Vestroia is an alternate universe comprised of six different worlds all held together by a circle of force. Fire, water, earth, air, light, the dark side of the force…humans would know them well. In the center of our universe lie two cores, one red, one blue. The red one is Infinity, the source of all positive energy, and Silence, the source of all negative energy. These two opposing forces maintain the precarious equilibrium of our dimension. Don't ask me about that one. I'm clueless, too.
"But there was one Bakugan who wished to seize all control for himself. This had never happened before. His name was Naga, and he wished to penetrate the core – stop laughing, Dan! You're so ****ing immature. Anyways, he wished to penetrate the core of our universe. This had never been done before. Somehow, however, he didn't succeed and released ALL the negative energy. It infected Vestrioa and has spilled into your world. And how did it spill into your world, you ask? Well, you should know by now…
"…in the form of a trading card/marble game."
Wow, this is all starting to make sense now! In a weird way! It's kind of like if somebody wanted to take over the Sega game company, accidentally destroyed it, and sent some of his tainted money into the rest of the economy of another world! It's like some kind of wormhole sending these creatures into our dimension, in the form of a sort of Yu-Gi-Oh/Beyblade/Battle B-Daman game thing! The crazy thing is, them appearing in the form of a game made everyone think it was a marketing stunt! And the "marketing stunt" worked! Boy, were we wrong! Wrongy wrong wrong WRONG!
"Did you think I came here on my own health?" Preyus interrupted Dan's thoughts. "Because that would have been CRAZY! I would NEVER do that! I used to be just a peace-lovin' young Bakugan enjoyin' the summer of his young life…"
His imagination featured Preyus fighting Rhino Demon in a ring of fire! "Oraoraoraoraoraoraora!" he punched. "ORAAAAA!" He knocked the enemy out! "Heh heh! A good ol' knuckle sandwich gets 'em every time!" Then a Windy One Gamera fell onto his head and knocked HIM out!
"Liar!" Marucho said. "We can all see your thoughts!"
"Okay, okay, Honcho! No more lyin'! Anyways, when I woke up in your world I was FREAKED!! Imagine wakin' up in a stranger's home in the form of a handheld marble! It's a real-life nightmare! My past was but a foggy memory. All I knew was that I had to dig deep down and find the Preyus I always knew I was! And now I have…in battle!"
"Please let Drago keep talking," Marucho asked.
"Like I was saying" - he looked at Preyus strangely - "when Naga was messing up our universe and sending everyone onto your planet, one human had crossed over – into Vestroia."
They gasped. "A human was able to cross over!?" they all shouted.
"Yes…a human was able to cross over."
"A human was able to-"
"Alright, alright, THAT'S enough. So like I was saying, this guy crossed over, and he was the one who showed Naga how to find the center of the world. He gave him the key to opening the portal. That was the last I saw of Naga. Well, he was pretty annoying, so…I was glad to see the last of him. The negative power corrupted the hearts and minds of the Bakugan who lived there…except for me and a few others."
"…Why?" Marucho inquired.
"Why? BECAUSE WE'RE AWESOME!!" Preyus screeched ear-splittingly.
"The violence escalated, and it seemed there would no end to our ferocious all-out one-on-one slapfights. That is when I decided to step into your realm and put an end to the insanity."
"Wait, now my mental timeline is all messed up," Dan said, grabbing his head. "I started playing Bakugan, what, a few months ago? And I've only known Drago for one of those months!"
"Time paradox?" Drago guessed.
Everyone shrugged.
"Anywho, when I crossed over, it was in the middle of one of Dan's games. That's the first you saw of me."
"I kinda remember now…that fight was WICKED! Giant robots and dragons dukin' it out! If only it were longer!"
"Oh…well, wow." That was all Runo could say…until she continued by saying, "So Halo Tiger, how long have you been on Earth?"
"Just after Drago left, I followed."
"Wait," Marucho stopped her. "How did Drago leave?"
"How? BECAUSE HE'S AWESOME!!" Preyus screeched.
"Oh, okay. Gotcha."
"Continuing from where I left off back there, I too realized that our world was in danger of falling apart. I had to come to your world. Just when I left, I saw the Infinity core leaving to enter your realm – forever!"
"But isn't that GOOD?" Dan asked. "Positive energy? It'll make everyone happy!"
"Dan, a positive world is no better than a negative world. There will be no excitement, as every moment feels identical, and those who are unaffected will certainly become suicidal…what a cruel, cruel world." Halo Tiger shivered.
"In order to return to our homeland," Drago said, "we must return the two cores; otherwise, Vestroia will be DOOMED. We must destroy the human who corrupted Naga's mind."
"But who IS he?" Dan wondered. "Hmm…it couldn't be Mask the Money, now, could it?"
"Actually, it probably IS him," Marucho said.
"If I remember correctly…"
"It's Michael," a chilling voice announced from…somewhere. We're not sure.
"Michael who!?" Dan yelped in surprise.
"Like, hold on!" Julie dug through her stuff. "Michael, Michael, Michael…oh, here it is!" She pulled out a magazine titled "Pop Weekly". On the cover was a blurry picture of a shady man dressed in all black, except for his white shirt and white gloves! The headline read, "Celebrity Ghost Sighting?"
"That's him!" Drago declared. "Looks blurry, but it's definitely him!"
"Everyone knows he's deceased," Marucho added. "In fact, that's a reported and photographed sighting of his ghost. That's the last news I've heard about him, which is surprising since he was all over the news for months after his death."
Dan snorted with laughter.
"What is it?" Alice asked, actually saying something again.
"That guy's totally creepy!" He had to laugh in his palm. "There's a hilarious joke they made on Family-"
Alice's eyes started watering.
"What, what is it? You're not RELATED to this guy, are you?'
"I hope not, 'cause this guy needs a TOTAL makeover and QUICK!!" Preyus said. Marucho scooped him up angrily!
"Be more considerate! Don't you see Alice is about to cry!?" He turned to the rest of the gang. "Guys, I know this is gonna sound weird, but is it possible that instead of Michael going to heaven or whatever the normal place is, he went to Vestroia instead? I mean, there's no logical explanation. He wasn't even a scientist, so he couldn't have invented very much."
"Naw, sounds too far-fetched to me," Dan said, crossing his arms.
"Wait a sec," Runo said. "You think there's some connection between Mask the Money and this Michael guy?"
"Probably…probably NOT," Dan said. "Because as I should know, Runo is usually WRONG. Because she SUCKS."
"I keep telling you, I don't suck!"
Alice started dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.
In Mask the Money's little hidey hole..
"Hey there, Hal G.," he said to a face on the wall. Quite disturbingly, the face started to talk back to him!
"How is my little plan coming along, Mask the Money?" the face said, in a voice a bit higher-pitched and softer than you'd expect.
"Let's just say…it's going better than I'd expected…Hal G. The more we battle, the more our Bakugan evolve. Soon we'll have just what we want…the Infinity core. Muahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa….."
Alice gasped. It couldn't be true! She looked at a picture of her with Michael. After all these years…you couldn't have. Grandfather Michael…are you in Vestroia? It…it can't be…
"Yes," Mask the Money said, "soon the Infinity core will be ours…"
Hey, this is Runo, and coming up on the next episode of Bakugan Battle Brawlers we get on the ICR to pick up Alice! Dan kind of ZONES OUT there. There we also meet Ben and Ken, who challenge us to a brawl. Wow, we've been fighting a LOT of twins lately, but…I don't wanna know. Marucho is totally pumped about the battle, and everything starts out okay, but how will it end? We win as always! If we didn't, one of our main characters would be gone! Wait, now that you know the ending of the battle, there's gotta be some other way I can get some viewers…uh…it's gonna be WICKED!!
Bakugan Brawl! Let's do this!
We leave our audience today with...the Bakugan dance.
Dooby da doo DEE dooby da doo DEE, dooby dooby doob DEE dooby dooby doob DEE, dooby da dooby doo dee!