The Regression

Gumball's sleep had become unrestful as the surroundings of this shadowy realm. He dreamed of being confronted by a very irate Penny, who had Mr. Cuddles with her, but this wasn't the Mr. Cuddles Gumball knew and loathed. While Mr. Cuddles was known for being a big spider, being a tarantula, this Mr. Cuddles was the size of a gorilla, frothing beneath his fangs as he lunged at Gumball, but was held back by a leash held by Penny. However, she was in the process of undoing said leash, with the obvious intent of releasing her pet turned attack dog upon him. Gumball pleaded with Penny not to do it, but her only response was a cold glare as the leash was unclasped from Mr. Cubbles's manacle-like collar, setting him loose.

Gumball screamed and fled down the corridor of Elmore Junior High behind him , but didn't get far before another bane of his existence came around the bend in front of him. It was Tina, her scales now undisguised, showing off her true colors of vibrant pink; her secret he had supposedly exposed to the whole school. She came barreling towards him at full speed, the hallway lockers bursting open in her wake as she let out a savage roar.

A larger than average Mr. Cuddles behind him, an exposed, angry Tina before him, Gumball had no way to escape. All he could do was crouch to the floor, cover his head and let out a cry of fear as he waited for the two to descend upon him, but before that could happen a fierce roar tore through the corridor, shaking the whole building. It didn't sound like Tina's roar, it sounded much more, savage? And when Gumball looked up, he saw not two massive individuals who sought retribution from him, but two massive eyes of luminescent orange, the slitted pupils of glowing yellow gazing not just at him but almost seemed to peer right through him, into his soul.

—

Gumball awoke with a start, panting heavily in order to catch his breath and try to still his drumming heart. He was still within that realm of swirling darkness, suspended within an orb of pulsating green plasma. It didn't take long to locate his captor, for Green was the kind of…thing…that was really hard to miss. Currently though, his focus wasn't on Gumball, but on Rob, who he was continuously shocking with snaps of his claws, letting out ominous chuckles as Rob screamed in absolute agony.

Gumball had felt vindication when he last saw such a sight, for even now, his relationship with Penny was continually deteriorating because of Rob's scheme and he had wanted to see him suffer for it, but now, the sight was completely unnerving. Rob was undoubtedly suffering immensely every time he was zapped, and Green seemed to draw nothing but amusement from his pain. Gumball was no stranger to bullying, having been the target of ridicule many times over, but this wasn't the same. This wasn't just mean, it wasn't even just malicious, it was borderline sociopathic.

Green, he was the type of character Gumball had only seen in movies before, and it was a whole nother experience to witness such brutality and cruelty in person. Green had been right, he was a true villain.

"Ah, I see you have awakened," chuckled Green upon noticing Gumball bearing witness to his actions. He ceased snapping his fingers, nudged the bound Rob deeper into the swirling shadows with the three blades at the end of each of his tail tips and proceeded to hover around Gumball's prison, slithering through the air like an eel. "Good, that means we can finally begin. Would you like for me to reveal to you what my intentions are at last, Gumball?"

"Oh, the anticipation is killing me," Gumball tried to sound sarcastic, but couldn't suppress a note of fear from entering his voice. After all, no matter what, Green's form was immensely intimidating. "So what's it gonna be? Torture, like with Rob? Or are you just going to eat me?"

"Oh, you'd like that, would you?" said Green with a sinister smirk. "You're of the mind that such things couldn't be worse than losing the love of your life, maybe even hoping it would put you out of your misery. It would even be somewhat expected, given my appearance. After all, don't antagonists of monster movies eat people? However, I hate to disappoint you, Gumball, but my appearance is misleading to my goals. I do not intend to end you in any way, like a casual nemesis, quite the opposite, in fact."

For the first time since he had met Green, Gumball was more confused than afraid. "I don't get it. If you don't intend to hurt me, what do you intend to do?"

"It's quite simple, my boy," whispered Green sinisterly, slithering around Gumball as he coiled around his "cage". "You are Gumball Watterson, viewed by the people of Elmore as a nuisance, a wimp and a dunderhead…"

Gumball crossed his arms and huffed in annoyance and slight embarrassment, his cheeks tinting pink. "Tell me something I don't know!"

"I INTEND TO!" Green practically shouted, raising his voice for the first time since Gumball met him, and the little tween kitty soon found himself realizing he prefers his nemesis's ominous hiss more, though he didn't sound angry, but confident. "Gumball, so pathetic and weak, I intend to turn you into something that the people of Elmore will fear! By the time I am through, the very mention of your name or the slightest glimpse of your image will be enough to instill soul wrenching terror in everyone!"

Gumball could only blink. This was his new nemesis's master plan? He would have chuckled if he could; partly because he just couldn't scrounge up any humor whilst in the presence of such a foreboding creature, but mostly because his heart still aches from his recent encounter with Penny.

"You can't be serious," said Gumball, unable to stop himself from at least expressing how ludicrous the notion sounded to him. "How do you intend to do that? Everything you listed off about me is pretty much the opposite of what anyone would be afraid of."

"You underestimate yourself, child," said Green, his voice returning to his sinister whisper. "You have all the potential of being the object of everyone's worst nightmare within you."

"How, by annoying them to death?" inquired Gumball sarcastically. "Oh wait, maybe you think I can convince Penny to strike fear into people on my behalf. Sorta like an attack dog and master, right? Oh wait, she isn't my girlfriend anymore, she won't do me any favors."

"Oh, that's not what I am instigating at all, Gumball," hissed Green, rearing up and towering over Gumball's spherical prison. "The potential I speak of is your own."

"Potential? What potential? As you, and everyone else says, I'm pathetic," said Gumball angrily, before growing downtrodden. "I can't even keep the girl I love happy. I couldn't even instill enough trust for her to believe I wouldn't do something so cruel as to ask her to choose between me or her pet."

"Oh, I'm not arguing that fact, Gumball," said Green, draping himself over Gumball's prison and angling his head to where he stared up at Gumball from beneath his feet. "But the potential I speak of doesn't belong to you alone. I refer to the potential of your lineage…"

Gumball stared at Green's massive head beneath him with a look of confusion. "What now?"

Green snapped in front of Gumball's prison and held out a massive book that, from Gumball's perspective, was the size of the roof of a house. "It's amazing what you can find in books, is it not?"

Gumball immediately recognized the massive book as the one his mom had shared with him a few days ago, scaled up incomprehensibly. Gumball might be a bit of a dunce some…most of the time, but even he was able to pick up on what Green was instigating now.

"You refer to my family's connection to the abyssalis cats?" he asked.

Green merely nodded with a sinister sneer.

Gumball, however, still wasn't impressed.

"Look at me?" he asked, pointing up and down his body. "Do I look like the creature described in that book? My family discarded those traits long ago. We're nothing like them anymore. The only thing from that part of our history left is what happens when one of the more feline of us gets overly worked up. We get a little stronger and go somewhat berserk, but nothing more." Gumball looked downtrodden again, his ears folding back as he remembered when it happened to his mom, but doubts it would ever happen for him. "And I can't even access that part of my lineage yet. In fact, I doubt I ever will."

"Now you are underestimating me, child," Green snarled. "I refer not to the lingering dregs of the abyssalis cat leftovers still active in your genes. I refer to the whole thing."

"The whole thing? What do you mean?" asked Gumball.

"What I mean is I don't intend to make you into an overly pumped up version of yourself, like some members of your family can do when pushed over the edge," explained Green, leering. "I intend to unleash the real thing! I intend to revert you back to the state of your savage ancestors; the most lethal predator for the time it walked the earth. You know about DNA, Gumball, since you once made a very impressive demonstration on how it functions, so you must know that, apart from programming every aspect of your body, DNA also has the aspects of your ancestors recorded within, like a history book. I intend to awaken that part of you."

Gumball swallowed nervously, remembering when he once explained the concept of DNA. "How long have you been watching me?"

"Quite a while, Gumball. Quite a while."

Now it was out, what Green truly intended for Gumball. He intended to turn him into the beast that was the start of his family; at least on his mother's side. But Gumball didn't believe it. It sounded almost like DNA regression, and that was impossible. Gumball had once tampered with his own DNA by manipulating his DNA avatar when he was trying to win the approval of Penny's father, Patrick Fitzgerald, but it hadn't panned out how he had wanted, to say the least, and it certainly hadn't turned him into the beast that was his ancestor.

"This isn't possible," said Gumball, though his earlier doubt in what Green intended for him was fraying a little. "DNA regression can't be done. It's the stuff of sci-fi movies…"

In the blink of an eye, Gumball found himself yanked out of his spherical prison, which dissipated upon his exit. A black claw had seized him by the chest of his sweater, and looking forward, Gumball realized that Green had changed size. Now he was no bigger than Tina, though this still left him with an imposing visage.

"Again, you doubt me Gumball," he said, though his tone now had a tinge of anger, frustration, and sounded a little bit psychotic. "Remember, I am no second rate schemer like your last nemesis! Unlike him, I don't rely on a slightly above average intelligence alone! I am a being of true power. Power beyond anyone's comprehension. And through my abilities… I WILL UNLOCK THE POTENTIAL OF THE FIERCE ABYSSALIS CAT THAT LIES DORMANT IN YOUR DNA!"

If Gumball wasn't truly afraid of Green before, he was now, especially when Green held him before his chest, which suddenly began to split open horizontally. The brightest green light yet billowed from the slowly growing open spot. At first Gumball thought some kind of chamber with a single bar running down the entrance was opening up upon Green's body, but he soon realized that it was in fact a massive glowing eye, and that bar was the slitted black pupil.

"Look into my eye, Gumball, and feel the savage beast that slumbers in your DNA awaken!"

A stream of thin green light flooded out of Green's singular eye on his chest like a luminescent gust of wind and washed over Gumball. His body seized up and his eyes grew wide as he looked into the infinite depths of Green's gaze, within which he saw his mother, then his grandmother, then her mother before her, the images flying past him like a slideshow. He saw blue cats first coming over to a new land on pilgrim ships, then saw them participate in a revolution, then saw primitive caveman versions beating each other with clubs and so on. Lastly, he saw the image of a feral beast identical to what he had seen in the book, only animated, rearing and snarling loudly.

The DNA avatar bearing the likeness of Gumball's head mounted on a DNA strand appeared above Gumball's head, expression just as blank. The base pairs flew away from the strand, swirled around for a second, then reattached in a different order. The representation of Gumball's head on the avatar snarled, rippled a second, then changed, now resembling the head of the long extinct abyssalis cat, which growled and snarled, before the whole avatar disappeared.

For Gumball, the experience instilled a sensation that was indescribable. It wasn't painful, quite the opposite. It was blissful, overwhelmingly blissful, so much so it also rendered him without a sense of self. Every fiber of his being felt alive, as if he had ceased being Gumball and instead became a multitude of different individuals that made up a singular body. In layman's terms, every strand of his DNA felt alive.

Then everything stopped, Green smiling as his single eye closed.

"It is done," he hissed to the unresponsive Gumball dangling by his sweater in his clenched claw. "And just to prove how generous of a nemesis I am, I am going to throw in a couple of tidbits of information that weren't in the book. Firstly, apart from immense strength and the ability to generate electricity, the abyssalis cat also possessed the ability to teleport over short distances. Some things just aren't recorded in the fossil record. Secondly, the creature was nocturnal, so I think it's only fitting that by day, you are the same old Gumball, though with a few…differences, but by night, the true beast within you awakens."

Gumball heard these words but didn't respond, not quite feeling like "himself" yet.

Green chuckled sinisterly and hovered over to a steadily opening portal back to Elmore. "Elmore is going to find quite the contender in you. And just so they know how much they should fear you right off the bat, I've already picked who your first victim shall be."

Within the portal the Elmore Wrecking Yard could be seen . More accurately, Tina could be seen, sleeping in her "bed", clutching Daisy, the pull string donkey once owned by Anais.

"Go, Gumball," said Green, rearing the arm that held Gumball back in preparation to throw. "Go and show that lizard who the superior predator is."

He then threw Gumball through the portal…

—

…who impacted the back of Tina's head with enough force to jar it forward a little bit. Gumball proceeded to roll down the pile of scrap metal that made up Tina's nest and to the floor of the warehouse that acted as her bedroom. He landed on his chest, the sensation finally snapping him out of the euphoric stupor Green's actions had sent him into somewhat.

Looking forward with a groan and half lidded eyes, Gumball saw, through the open door, the sun beginning to set in the distance, the sun letting out a yawn as it sank further beneath the horizon. The light of the day dimmed into the beginning stages of twilight, and as more of the light faded, Gumball felt something within him stirring. It was akin to when you know it was time to wake up, and Green's words replayed in Gumball's mind, finally able to comprehend them, now that he was thinking more clearly.

"By night, the true beast within you awakens."

Was it true? Was he really going to turn into a abyssalis cat by night? Something was definitely happening within him as he watched the sun set, and that had definitely never happened before. In fact, if he thought about it, the sensation did sort of feel like he was changing.

He remembered what the book had said of the nature of abyssalis cat's, how fearsome and dangerous they were. And he was about to become one of those things? Green had been right, Gumball would come to regret jumping into that portal so willingly. He had thought whatever Green had in store for him couldn't have been worse than what he was going through with Penny.

He was wrong.

The sound of clattering metal behind him finally snapped Gumball to full awareness, turning over onto his back to see Tina stirring from her undoubtedly brief sleep, dropping Daisy and rubbing the back of her head.

"What hit me?" she asked in her deep, guttural voice. Her eyes wandered her "bedroom" for a moment, until landing on the form of Gumball splayed out on her floor on his back, looking at her with wide, fearful eyes. She growled and stood to her full height.

"GUMBALL!" she roared, stepping down the pile of metal debris and towering over him. "First you humiliate me, then get me suspended, now you have the nerve to come to my house and wake me up?"

At first Gumball looked at Tina with the same usual fear, but as the sun continued to set outside that feeling was steadily being replaced. He was beginning to see Tina not as a threat, but as…competition?

"Apparently, you didn't learn your lesson the first time," snarled Tina, stepping closer to Gumball, her footfalls echoing with each impact.

But Gumball could barely hear her anymore. As the sun set further Tina's words grew more…illegible to him. They sounded like nothing but random noise.

"Tina…stay away…" Gumball warned as the last dregs of sentient thought drained from him, crawling backwards on his hands somewhat.

"What, don't want me to unleash my fury on you, Gumball?" Tina growled, leaning in and pressing her head over Gumball's petite form. "You should have thought of that before ticking me off!"

With an angry roar Tina reared up and thrust her left arm towards Gumball. She was going to rip him off the ground and throttle him within an inch of his life, then maybe she would chew him like a literal gumball. it would serve him right after all he'd done. But she never got the chance. Just before her claws made contact, Gumball looked down at his chest, thrust his arm up and caught her wrist…halting her arm in place apparently without effort, Gumball not even budging from the impact.

Shock and surprise the likes of which Tina had never experienced coursed through her being at that moment. Never before had someone blocked one of her attacks like that, let alone so effortlessly. She growled in frustration and tried to yank her arm back, only to find out, to her further amazement, that she could not break Gumball's grip. She tugged and thrashed, but Gumball's hold of her was like a vice. Now Tina was becoming somewhat confused. How was Gumball, of all people, overwhelming her like this?

"Gumball, let go!" she commanded with both anger, frustration, and a slight bit of unease.

But Gumball didn't respond or heed her words, having sat up and was looking down at his chest, huffing deeply. Then he began to do something Tina would never have expected in a million years. He began growling. A low pitch, aggressive growl one might expect from an enraged animal.

"Gumball?" Tina inquired uncomfortably, something within his growls sparking something deep within her being, a sort of instinctual warning that something immensely dangerous was approaching. But that was absurd. Gumball, dangerous, especially to her?

Impossible!

Then Gumball began to tilt his head up towards her, and once they were staring at each other face to face his clenched eyes flew open. And for the first time in her life, Tina the T-Rex felt fear. Gumball's eyes were no longer the subtle white scleras and black pupils he was known for. Now the scleras glowed a sinister orange, the pupils now slitted and glowing a menacing yellow. Tina stared on in shock at Gumball's new, and admittedly intimidating expression, and Gumball stared at her, his leering eyes now complimented by an equally aggressive snarl. Then he jerked her wrist…

…and Tina let out a roar of pain, the distinctive sound of a bone snapping reverberating throughout the warehouse that acts as her room.

She collapsed against her nest of metal debris, growling and whimpering in pain, Gumball having finally released his grip on her. She lifted up her arm and inspected it, whimpering in pain the slight movement alone caused. Her claw dangled from the end of her forearm limply, seeming only attached by skin and sinew. The bone hadn't just been fractured, it had been shattered completely. Through the immense pain Tina felt a sense of incomprehension. How did this happen? She was Tina the T-Rex, the toughest student in Elmore Junior High. No one should be able to do this to her, let alone such a pipsqueak like Gumball.

And speaking of said pipsqueak…

Tina looked up and found that Gumball had stood to his full, diminutive height and was leering at her with his new, foreboding eyes, the setting sun seen behind him through open doors. At that moment the sun finally disappeared beneath the horizon, giving way to night at last. The moment the darkness draped over him, Gumball began to twitch and spasm, clenching his eyes shut and gripping his head. Throughout his mind and subconsciousness Gumball felt sections of his personality that had been dormant for generations stir, the locked doors that had held them back bursting open as his DNA reconfigured itself to a time long passed. After a few seconds Gumball looked up and glared at Tina once more…

…then his body was draped in what appeared to be black smoke, which soon exploded outward in a great cloud that hovered before the door.

Tina watched all of this play out from where she lay on the debris, transfixed by what had transpired, despite the immense pain radiating from her shattered wrist. She stared at the cloud that had engulfed Gumball, thick as oil, unable to see what was going on within. But she did hear something. Another growl. A feral, sinister growl that continued to rise in volume until it practically reverberated through Tina's bones, intact or otherwise.

"Gumball?" she inquired nervously.

The response was another growl that sounded even more savage. Then the cloud of smoke began to disperse, a bulky figure steadily being revealed. Tina's eyes widened in genuine terror this time as the cloud fully dispersed, a hulking limb ending in a massive paw slamming into the ground, equipped with claws the size of swords. The creature before her now looked nothing like the demure little Gumball she was familiar with. It bulged with muscle, which bristled and tensed aggressively. Its basic shape was feline, like a mountain lion or a tiger, but its appearance was far more viscous. Its fur was navy blue, streaked with red in a few places, its four limbs each equipped with huge claws. But that wasn't the worst of it.

It was bigger than any breed of large cat known, easily outdoing lions or tigers by a wide variety. Tina wouldn't be as terrified as she is now, for she easily could dwarf a lion or a tiger, but this thing…it was easily equal to her in terms of mass. It stared at her with the same glowing eyes as Gumball had prior, though on a more massive scale. It peeled back its lips on its thick whiskered muzzle in a fierce snarl, revealing a mouthful of long lethal fangs. It reared back…

…and for the first time in thousands of years, the call of the abyssalis cat reverberated throughout the air.