Fulfillment

Wow. It's been a while, huh? Sorry about that. Been busy out here in the real world and whatnot. Well, I suppose I should get right down to it, eh? This one might be a tad short, but it's just some backstory for our resident villain. Figured you guys deserve it for being so patient and not giving up on me. Here goes:

Chapter 10

The ship was silent, save for the heavy panting breaths of the Captain. His eyes darted back and forth at the sights around him.

Members of his crew scattered about in pieces.

His one remaining crew member, staring blankly, mouth agape in shock at the sheer terror of their situation.

The sharp needle tip of that tail pointed a mere inch from his face.

And finally, they settled on the creature's eyes. Glowing pools of orange, locked dead upon the captain, refusing to even blink. Eyes filled with hatred as he spoke.

"My name is Cell. So very nice to meet you… Captain." A smile crept onto his features. "What's the matter? You seem a bit…" he flicked his tail across Ginyu's nose, leaving a faint scratch. "…Tense."

The Captain began visibly shaking. "W-w-what do you want from me?"

The monster's eyes narrowed, and the glow in them intensified. "What do I want?" He thrust his tail forward, embedding it in the wall behind the captain's head, causing a large tear from floor to ceiling. "I want you to pay!" he shouted.

"Pay for what?" the captain whimpered. "I swear, I've never even seen you before. I didn't do anything…"

Cell clamped a hand around Ginyu's throat and lifted him up off the floor. "You're the one responsible for putting me in that hell hole I spent most of my LIFE in! YOU told them to sell me! Treated me as if I were some… some PET!" Cell roughly hauled him into the air over his head. "And now…" He took a step forward and hurled him through the wall, an eruption of sparks and metal shards flying around him.

"…Now you pay, dear Captain."

"CAPTAIN!" Cell turned his head just in time to see a blur of orange as a knee slammed into his face, forcing him to take a step back. Taking advantage of his opponent's disorientation, Jeice threw himself forward, firing a flurry of punches and kicks into the creature's midsection. "I'll turn you into slag, you freak!"

"JEICE! Move away, now!" Upon hearing his captain's order, the white-haired warrior reflexively threw himself to the side, whirling to see his captain holding a very familiar gun. Ginyu pulled the trigger and a green glob flew forth from the nozzle, slamming into the monster's left leg and pinning it to the hull behind him.

Cell tried to yank his foot away, but to no avail. It had been stuck fast to the wall, the substance maintaining a rubbery quality that proved quite resistant to breaking. He yanked hard, pulling with all his might, as the green goo was stretched seemingly to its very limit, and snapped back firmly into place, slamming his foot harshly against the back wall. He glared fiercely at the now grinning captain. "You fool. You think this will stop me?"

Harsh laughter filled the room. "Oh, I'm relatively certain it'll be sufficient for the task at hand. But just to be sure…" the captain fired off three more shots in rapid succession, pining Cell's midsection, other leg and right arm securely into place. "I like these odds a whole lot better! You're a strong one you are… and I'm sure we have yet to see exactly how strong." The Captain dropped the gun. And raised a hand to the device he wore over his eye, pressing a button. "Jeice, I want a good reading on this guy. Rough him up a little, would ya? Let's see what happens when he gets mad."

Jeice cracked his knuckles in anticipation. "My pleasure, Cap'n." He chuckled. "Seems I get to have the fun this time, eh?" The creature just glared and pulled lightly at his restraints as Jeice took a step forward. "Not feeling so cocky now, are we? That's understandable, I s'pose. After all…" Jeice suddenly leapt forward and viciously slammed a fist into the creature's midsection. "…If I was about to get my ass kicked by me, I'd be pretty nervous too."

Cell, made a retching noise as the fist was slowly removed from his gut. "Aw, what's the matter, big fella? Got a sensitive tummy, have you? Well here, lemme help you forget it!" His foot flew straight up and connected with the monster's chin, snapping Cell's head back so hard that it left a dent in the wall behind him.

He slowly lowered his head and glared again at the red-orange space pirate, the ear to ear grin on his red-orange face eliciting a low growl from the creature ensnared before him. 'I warn you, little fool… it would not be wise to anger me furth-" A sharp slap across the face cut him off from speaking further.

"And what exactly do you think you can do, green boy?" Jeice taunted. "You're in a bit of a sticky situation at the moment." He thrust forward a fist. "And right now, I call the shots!"

Ginyu watched with amusement as his lieutenant continued to pummel the green creature, the number on his Scouter rapidly climbing as he did. 'Well well, he thought to himself, 'this is turning out much better than I had hoped. That high already…' He smiled to himself. "That's enough, Jeice," he ordered. Move out of the way. Now."

Jeice turned to look at his captain. "Aw, c'mon! I was just starting to have fun!" Ginyu shifted his gaze to the creature and saw an arm, the one loose arm, raised in the air and a fist flying toward the back of Jeice's head. "JEICE, LOOK OUT! NOW!" Jeice spun back around just in time to see the fist that slammed into his eye, as he felt exploding pain, blood erupting from the socket as his right eye ruptured from the impact. The short man took a knee and screamed, his snow white hair now stained with his own blood.

"Damn it Jeice, when I say to move, I mean MOVE!" Ginyu barked as his lieutenant scrambled away from the reach of the now smirking creature's arm. "Now I have to waste time sticking you in a healing chamber." He looked back at the monster, mirroring the smirk on the creature's face. "As for you, I must say, I'm impressed. You peaked at nearly 300,000. Mighty impressive indeed. I haven't seen power that high in quite some time." He nodded over at the gun on the floor. "Unfortunately for you, the more power you put out, the stronger the stuff in that gun gets. Feeds off your own strength. Ingenious, no

Cell lightly rolled his eyes. "Oh yes, ever so clever of you to invent a glorified children's toy."

"You scoff, and yet… you seem to be the one stuck, don't you." Ginyu laughed and wagged a finger at him. "There IS a trick to getting out of it, though. Pity you don't know it. And for the record, we didn't 'invent' anything. That happened to have been invented by one of those Earthling scientists that have become so famous lately."

Cell's smirk faded. "Really now? Pray tell, how did the likes of YOU manage to come across it then?"

"I'm a pirate, fool! How do you think we got it? Raided a cargo ship full of all kinds of…" His eyes widened. "Wait… That's where…"

Captain Ginyu looked out on the wreckage of the cargo ship floating no more than a few hundred feet from their ship, the elongated hull nearly snapped in half, its engine pods stripped clean away and floating through space… his latest conquest. She'd been a lightly armed craft, built for speed, not for combat, counting on being able to outrun rather than outfight any potential attackers.

Not the best idea against a ship like his, he noted with deep satisfaction. The only pirate in space with an actual warship to his name. Normal tactics were insufficient against his ship; it was fast, rivaling the above-average cargo ships', it had weapons that could hold their own even against hunter craft… it made him unstoppable. And the precision with which those weapons fired was nothing short of amazing, allowing him to merely cripple ships that other ships would have wound up destroying and thus ruin their opportunity for plunder.

Plunder, he noted with glee, that he was in no way lacking as the retrieval ships were making their fifth run back from the ship, some carrying plunder, others with salvaged parts from the ship. Never hurt to have free spare parts around, did it? It was looking like all those years of being Lord Frieza's stooge had finally paid off for him.

A knock on his door stirred him from his thoughts. "Captain. We have a ssssample of the plunder ssssir," a reptilian voice called from the other side. Ginyu's smile changed to an outright grin as he walked over to his console and pressed a button. "Enter!" he called out, rubbing his hands together eagerly. Nothing was better than getting his hands on his new acquisitions.

A small blue alien with yellow hair stepped through the door. 'Captain," he hissed, a thin forked tongue darting out between his lips "Jeice ssssent me up here with a few thingsssss. I hope they are to your liking." He entered the room, pulling a small hover cart behind him. "It appearsss we encountered something shipping experimental weaponsssss."

Ginyu reached into the cart and rifled through the weapons within, most of them long nozzeled guns. "What exactly do these do?" he asked. The small alien shuffled his feet as his tongue darted rapidly. "Well, it would sssseem that it firesss some sssort of green ssssubsstance. It wasss used on those sssssSaiyans quite effectively. Held them in placcce while we managed to raid…"

Ginyu rubbed his chin and smiled. "Interesting. These things could be useful… but it's not like those monkeys to take live prisoners." He turned the gun over and inspected it carefully. There, placed at the base of the gun's grip was a strange insignia, a sort of letter c inside of a larger c. "Who made these?"

"Well, the ship wasss headed for the ice planet Hikoori, sssir." The alien replied. Mossst likely from their recent conquessst."

"So they came from that Earth planet, huh?" Ginyu tossed the gun back into the container. "Seems they were more intuitive than King pointy-hair gave them credit for, eh?" he fished through the cart again and came up with three other devices that appeared to be explosives, each with a ribbon with the letter R inscribed on each side as the insignia this time. "Multiple factions, eh? Must've been one hell of a fight for 'em." He dropped the devices back into the cart. "Well, I suppose these will be useful for our future ambitions." He looked up fondly at the straw hat sitting on the shelf above the door. "I WILL be King of the Space Pirates one day…"

"Well sssssir, there IS one more thing that we found. Seems odd that it was being shipped along with dangerouss weaponssss, but…"

"Well don't just stand there, bring it in, Scaleface!" Ginyu berated the little blue lizard, who scurried out the door and came back in with a much smaller cart, the only opening being a narrow door in the front. "Thissss was in the back locked up under triple lockssss."

Ginyu bent down and peeked inside. It was quite dark inside, with very little light making it more than a few inches past the opening, but he could just faintly make out the outline of something coiled in the back…

Suddenly it sprang forward, slamming against the door of its cage and forcing the captain to take a step back. "What IS that thing?" he bent back down to see the creature, a little quadruped creature, mostly green with flecks of black across his skin. A large orange beak appeared to serve as a mouth. Making the creature appear as some kind of bizarre mix of lizard and insect. "Is that an Earth creature?"

"Unlikely, sssir. I doubt they would capture only one earth creature for ssstudy or otherwise. But it ISsss most interesting." The blue alien raised a claw to scratch his head. "What should we do with thisss?"

Ginyu stood and waved dismissively. "Sell it to some merchant for all I care. Say it's an exotic pet. We'll be able to name our own price that way." He walked back over to the window and resumed observing the final moments of the raid. Still, he couldn't help but feel as though that little creature had been watching him, listening to his every word…

YOU! That… that little thing in the cage was YOU!" Ginyu took a step back. "H-how?"

Cell grinned. "I'd been discovered shortly after I'd exited my larval form. I was a juvenile." His grin faded. "And you sold me as a pet."

Ginyu steadied himself and the old smirk came back. "I see. Well well, seems you've grown up to be a big strong boy, eh? Well that works out all the better for me." He raised his arms straight out to the side. "You see… I have an ambition of my own. One that I'd like to see fulfilled." His eyes flew wide. "AND YOUR BODY IS JUST THE THING TO HELP ME DO IT!" A strange aura began to glow around him. "CHANGE…!"

Cell quickly whipped out his tail and wrapped it around the leg of the still wounded Jeice. Faster than either of them could react, he hauled him up off the ground and threw him at Ginyu with all his might.

"NO-OOOF!" Ginyu's breath was knocked out of him and the aura faded as Jeice's skull collided with the captain's midriff with enough force to crack his armor. The two of them fell into a heap in the middle of the floor, one still sobbing about his injured gut, the other now unconscious.

Cell quickly flicked his tail over the slime globs covering his body, neatly slicing through each of them and made his way over to his victims. Ginyu lay gasping, struggling to regain his ability to breathe evenly, when he felt the needle-point of Cell's tail at his throat. "You're right captain," a cold gravelly voice spoke. "I did grow up. In a cage. A cage you put me in. For months I wanted nothing more than revenge, to slice you open and feed you your own entrails." The tail moved away from his throat. Ginyu looked up in shock at his attacker, still gasping for air.

"But then, captain. A voice spoke to me. The voice of my creator. And he told me of my purpose, explained why I existed. And suddenly little else mattered." He closed his eyes and smiled the deranged smile of a madman. "Especially when I recently experienced part of that goal… and learned how to complete the rest of it." His eyes snapped open again and he glared at the captain. "But you see, I cannot do it alone. On the ground I would be fine, but it's getting there that's the trouble. And that, oh foolish one is where you come in."

Ginyu rolled over, and rose to his hands and knees, still shaky. "H-how am I supposed… to help?" He *felt a sharp kick to his shoulder and fell back, forced to look the creature in the eye. "You have a home base, do you not? Some kind of haven for you and your fellow scum?" He nodded weakly. "Good. That's our next stop." He pointed his tail at the heap of Jeice lying on the floor. "And heal this one, quickly. Can't afford to have him die… yet." Ginyu watched in fear as the creature walked over to the entrance he had busted in not so long ago and grabbed the headless body of Burter before starting down the halls of the ship. "STOP!" he called. "Where are you going?"

The monster known as Cell looked over his shoulder and flashed that same evil grin. "To have myself a little… snack."

Well, that's it for this time around. Hope you guys feel it was worth the wait. Thanks for sticking with me guys. You rock. And if you like, don't like, whatever, please review. Be nice to know who all's still following this one. ;) Later.