Shmup ability ideas?

Score=performance is the most important for me. The better you are doing, the more crazy pomegranate you are capable of doing....

I thought about doing this as an incentive to score more, so you can become more powerful, so you can score more, so you can become more awesome, etc.

bonus point if it lowers or even removes cooldown on any dodge skill that may be in place after a certain point is reached;

My idea was for a "hyper chain", where first activation gives you a temporary invulnerability period. During hypering, you'd gain an additional set of weapons that allow you to either counter bullets and/or damage enemies. Enemy bullets have varying strength/damage required to counter. Normal hyper charging applies, separate from your current hyper mode's hyper charge. Hypering ends when you trigger it to, or when you run out of your current hyper charge. In either case, when hyper ends, a small sort of explosion happens, which cancels all enemy bullets around you. Bullets countered in this manner add to your next hyper charge.

I'm trying to think of appropriate incentives to not ending hyper early, other than the lack of survivability due to prolonged intense enemy fire. It could range from introducing a short cooldown at the moment you ended hypering, to bonus points from a naturally expiring hyper. Or even a larger hyper explosion, depending on when you ended hyper mode, with a bonus radius length when it naturally expires.

Oh, and skimming enemies should give bonus points! That makes it so perfectionists like myself are constantly forcing near-misses so they can max their score out!

That... doesn't sound fun. It's just so arbitrary.