Seeing the tag lying inside his backpack, Axel couldn't help but blink.
'Rayquaza worked for days without managing to drop this tag, and yet this little Gible just bit it out like that?'
'Is this what they called beginner's luck?'
Instinctively, Axel turned his gaze toward Dialga.
Dialga immediately backed away, hiding behind Rayquaza with a terrified look, scared that the dreadful little shark at Axel's side might set its sights on him next.
'Too ridiculous, he even managed to bite off Palkia's teeth.'
Axel: "..."
'I pulled Palkia's teeth, what are you running for?'
'Do you really think I'm some kind of tooth-pulling maniac?'
If Gyarados hadn't been equipped with a special tag and already had a precedent of attribute mutation, Axel would never have gone this far.
'Dialga's teeth?'
'Sorry, even if you offered them up, I wouldn't want them.'
Ignoring Dialga's nervous thoughts, Axel placed the four teeth onto Gyarados's body and equipped him with the newly obtained tag.
"Hold onto these teeth. You'll probably need them soon."
Gyarados looked bewildered, completely unsure what to do with the four Dragon Fangs.
He wasn't a Gible, surely he couldn't just eat them, right?
Normally, shouldn't the Trainer cook or refine these things first?
But soon, Gyarados understood.
Under Axel's promise that "if you can beat Gyarados, you can leave," Palkia let out an ear-splitting roar.
He finally realized, Axel had wanted his teeth to give them as a gift to Gyarados.
'That bastard! I'll make you experience what it's like to lose teeth!
With a furious roar, dragon energy surged in Palkia's hands, forming an enormous dragon claw.
That claw was huge, nearly as large as Gyarados's whole body. It tore through space and came crashing straight down at Gyarados's face.
BOOM!
With a deafening explosion, Gyarados didn't even have time to react before the massive claw struck him, slamming him to the ground.
A huge crack spread from the center of the villa courtyard, turning the whole place into ruins amid a cloud of dust.
Where Gyarados lay, a pit more than ten meters deep had appeared.
Thin streams of blood trickled out from between his scales, forming a small pool in the center of the crater.
Especially around his face, swollen all over, with teeth completely knocked out and scattered who-knew-where. He looked utterly miserable.
Seeing Gyarados's pitiful state, Axel, Rayquaza, and Mewtwo all frowned in unison.
This guy really didn't know his limits.
They'd told him to spar with Gyarados, not to beat him half to death.
Rayquaza silently floated forward a few meters, unleashing a flood of violent pressure like a tidal wave.
From the ruined building, Ho-Oh and Eternatus slowly emerged. Normally cheerful and smiling, even they wore rare expressions of seriousness.
Under the stares of everyone present, Palkia suddenly realized—
'Crap! I messed up.'
He'd gotten so angry that he completely forgot where he was...
'Is it still too late to act submissive now?'
While the other Pokémon were thinking up excuses to beat Palkia down, and Palkia was wondering how to redeem himself, a dragon's roar suddenly erupted from Gyarados's body.
He struggled to pull himself up from the crater, using Water-type energy to lift the four Palkia teeth and force them into his mouth.
Each motion made Gyarados growl in pain.
It was clear, this hurt. Badly.
But still, Gyarados pressed on, step by step, fusing Palkia's teeth into his own.
Scenes from his time with the team flashed through his mind, training with Archaludon, the guidance of Garchomp that his Trainer had nearly sacrificed himself to obtain, and even the personal tutoring from Lord Rayquaza... His Trainer had done so much for him, yet he'd always been the tail-end weakling of the team.
Even that Dragonair who slept twelve hours and played twelve hours every day was stronger than he was.
Now that his Trainer had arranged this opportunity to spar with a god, how could he not seize it?
"Roooar!"
'Come on, hit me again!'
With a thunderous roar, Gyarados jammed the last tooth into place.
In Axel's vision, the "Attribute Enhancement" tag on Gyarados suddenly lit up.
A dense surge of spatial power overflowed around him, centered on his head, rapidly reconstructing his body.
The scattered Dragon energy in the air condensed into purple light specks, draping over Gyarados like a shimmering veil.
But soon, there was a problem.
Gyarados had just touched the power of space, and with his body in such a severely injured state, he couldn't possibly control power of this magnitude.
The Dragon energy gathering around him was quickly blown away by the surrounding spatial storm, leaving too little power to complete the transformation.
Axel frowned and began rummaging through his backpack, looking for some pure Dragon-type food from Dratini to help Gyarados recover.
["No need,"] Rayquaza suddenly said, interrupting Axel's movements.
["This guy hit too hard. Otherwise, Gyarados wouldn't be in this state, unable even to grasp the energy."]
Rayquaza's body coiled as its gaze fell on the trembling Palkia.
Its thick tail, brimming with Dragon energy, whipped out and struck Palkia hard.
Fiery divine blood spilled freely, splattering all over Gyarados.
That blood seemed almost the same origin as Gyarados's; there was no rejection. It seeped along his scales, altering his condition from within.
Even the spatial storm around them seemed to recognize its master. It grew calm, no longer blowing away the lingering Dragon energy around Gyarados, instead helping it merge into his body.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
In the silence, Axel could almost hear Gyarados's powerful heartbeat.
The divine blood's power hadn't yet faded; it still circled Gyarados's body.
"ROOOAR!"
Almost naturally, Gyarados let out a mighty roar. A massive rift in space appeared beside him, gathering all the Dragon and spatial energy together.
Under the influence of this power, Palkia's blood flowed, slowly dyeing all of Gyarados's scales red.
Through this evolution, Gyarados not only awakened the power of space, but became the Red Gyarados.
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