This was the moment Guldo had been waiting for. Seven lakes were available to him, his hand was full, and he was the last to go. He would finally win a match of Arcanum the Collecting.
He tapped two of the lake cards, turning the pieces of thin metal sideways to signal their activation.
"I tap two of my lakes for blue karma so that I can summon my first creature. Go Chrono Shuttle!" Guldo slammed his card onto the circular table face side up. A holographic creature emerged out of it, a black spaceship covered in clocks of every type. The hologram was no bigger than his fist and above it floated two green numbers separated by a slash mark that read a measly"500/500."
It was a weak card, falling thousands of numbers shorter than Captain Ginyu's Lavender Whale and Recoome's Mighty Mega Max. Even more worrying was Burter's six copies of the same 100/100 Crank Dwarves, those pickaxes weren't scary by themselves, but bludgeoned by half a dozen of them in one turn was.
But he didn't need power or speed, he had technique.
"I tap all of my remaining lakes to get five karma." Guldo's sneer grew as all of the other members of the table recoiled.
"You don't need to do this," Recoome said.
Jeice held his cards close to his chest. "You're gonna regret it if you do."
"Oh, I don't think you'll be alive long enough to make me worry about that." Guldo looked at his captain's placid face. Easy target. "I activate Chrono Shuttle's ability Stolen Time on you, captain! Draw three cards from your deck and give me the first monster you draw!"
Ginyu nodded and started drawing, happily whistling to himself as he drew each card one after another, slow as could be.
"You're all just gonna let this resolve?!" Jeice pleaded with the table as he looked at his defenseless board, he had zero monsters and only one karma available. His bad luck was a sight that only made Guldo's snickering grow louder.
Ginyu flicked his snake tongue as he finished drawing his cards. "Way its gotta be."
Guldo held his hand out and Ginyu slid the card into his hand, hiding its identity from the rest of the table.
"Oh, oh my!" Guldo wiggled and wobbled in his chair, jutting the card up and down before placing it next to his Chrono Sphere. A horned demon rose from the card, towering over the rest of the creatures on the table with piercing red eyes. "Devil the Manipulator! With a Brawliness of 3000 and a Burliness of 3000, it seems your time is up, Jeice! Those 2000 Life Hearts are mine! Now, my devil, attack!"
The devil rose its hands high, purple lightning crackled from its fingertips as it glared at Jeice.
Jeice's eyes went wide as he stuck his arms out, futilely hoping that he could defend himself. "No! Please! I didn't even get to play a card!"
He hadn't ever won a game of cards with his squadron before. Guldo couldn't care less about somebody trying to beg him away from greatness. "DIE!"
"Nah." Ginyu said as he tapped all of his silver fields karma cards, and the devil ceased. "I activate Lavender Whale's special ability, Ssssssssswallow!"
"Impossible!" The rest of the table shouted out, but the captain shook his head at their foolishness as his whale ate the Chrono Shuttle.
"Now I can activate Chrono Shuttle's ability, and use it on Recoome!" The orange haired giant was shaking in his chair, sweat ran down like a faucet as he pulled out the cards, then gave it to Ginyu without looking at it.
"Oh," Captain Ginyu said, "Dumptruck? Hits the field and every monster is eliminated? Well don't mind if I do!"
All of the monsters were destroyed, and there were celebratory cheers for Captain Ginyu, and his entire squadron hoisted him into the air. Sure, they had only completed two rounds of their game, and of course they still had plenty to play, but a good move was a good move. Guldo wished he was closer to winning, but even he took part in the cheers, because that was just what friends did for one another.
They were so enraptured with their joy, shutting their eyes tight as they screamed as loud as they could, that they didn't notice the bright neon green light that flashed over them for only a moment.
The cheers lasted until the windows of their spaceship sounded like they were being hit with a torrential downpour. If they were on a planet, that may have been normal, but regardless of the collective intelligence of the Ginyu Squad at any given moment, they knew that it didn't rain in space. Furthermore, when it did rain, it didn't come out in large brown chunks.
"Huh," Recoome said as they all stood shoulder to shoulder, looking at the window facing the planet, and seeing a cloud of brown chunks surrounded their ship, "I think it's wood."
"Wood?" Jeice said. "In this part of the galaxy? At this time of the year?"
"What?" Recoome's face lit up "Is there somewhere where trees grow in the middle of outer space?"
"Well … no!" Jeice said. "But if it was here, I think we would've heard about it, right?"
"Yeah!" Burter added in. "We would've made an event out of it!"
Saddened by the loss of something he didn't even know he wanted, Recoome tried to laugh it off like his excitement was only a joke. "Yeah! … yeah, that's something we would've heard of."
Together, they were all disheartened at a miracle turning into something much worse, a mystery. Tragically, this would require actual research.
Ginyu stepped forward, and pointed at planet Throhbaq. "That right there boys, seems to be our culprit!"
They all nodded their heads at each other, glad this mystery had been solved after a sufficient amount of research.
"How'd you figure it out, Captain?" Guldo asked.
"Because it is the closest thing to us and there's a hole in it. That's all the evidence we need!"
There was no argument more foolproof and, much more importantly, no argument presented to make it appear foolish. When they squinted, the group noted that the planet even looked a little grayer than they remembered it looking, but that was probably in their heads. The group agreed to investigate it post haste, just as soon as they finished playing out the round of Arcanum the Collecting. Regardless of it being in outer space, clumps of trees were still just clumps of trees, nothing to write home about.
On Jeice's turn there was raucous banter, alliances formed and broken, attacks threatened and halted, all with such intensity that they didn't even notice Vegeta getting thrown off of the planet and chased after by Turles. If one of them had been looking out of the window, perhaps their scouters would've picked it up, but who has time to watch a scouter when a good game is going? Being among the best of friends, they had all put their scouters on standby, what were they going to measure the power levels of? Their cards? The vastness of space?
No, there attention wasn't drawn until a dim purple light lit their windows. It was the familiar sight of a Galick Gun, but it was unusual to see it blasting off of a planet. It left just as quickly as it appeared, but all of the Ginyu's gave each other a knowing look, only their eyes were visible with their cards pulled so close to their faces, but their eyes said enough.
"Ya know," Burter said, "I don't remember Vegeta being able to make blasts that big."
Their heads all bobbled in agreement, and Recoome dispensed his sage like wisdom, "If he had hit me with a blast like that, it might do even more than blow my armor off. Might even blow my undies off."
"Blow ye undies off?" Jeice asked. "That's about fatal, you keep those things right protected. Looked downright planet shattering to me."
Captain Ginyu laid his cards down and stood up with his fists on his hips. The rest of the Ginyu Squad did as he did, mimicking him perfectly as he paused for dramatic effect. Once the tension was highest, Captain Ginyu said, "Boys, I think we may have to stop playing Arcanum, there's a body to snatch."
The descent to the planet was not quick. First, obviously, there were the aerobic warm ups to do. There's nothing more embarrassing then going to steal a body and pulling a hamstring. Then they had to put all their cards away and back in their lockers. Recoome thought that using plastic sleeves to protect his cards was unmanly, but going sleeveless also made them harder to pick up. He dropped an entire fistful of his cards, him and Guldo bonked their heads together trying to pick them up, and Burter had to give them both a therapeutic massage, but eventually it was resolved.
The strangest issue came with parking. It was standard protocol to land the spaceship on a flat surface, or at the very least, a stable one. However, this planet's surface looked like a cracked eggshell. At best they were parking somewhere where the ship would get damaged landing on an uneven surface, and at worst the ground would collapse underneath them and they would fall into the planet.
To make matters even more annoying, not only was there ability to broadcast and communicate with their scouters gone, they were also glitching. Some power level kept appearing and disappearing every couple of seconds. They'd all have to send their scouters in for repairs when they got back.
They thought it would be easiest to just ask one of the Saiyans about where to put the spaceship, but as soon as they got in the planet's atmosphere, their scouters stopped working. Luckily, they saw two of the Saiyans' pods leave the planet off in the distance, and made their way over there. Only two pods leaving meant that at least one Saiyan had seen them coming and decided to wait for them.
It was strange that two of them left without boarding the Ginyu Force ship, but none of them could ever accuse the monkeys of being too smart. Hell, they were even going in completely opposite directions, it would take them ages to get back to Frieza.
No matter, they were certain that once the Saiyans helped them with finding a spot to park, they'd do a little body transferal, congratulate Vegeta on his new body, and be on their way.
Ginyu thought that convincing Vegeta he was getting the better end of the trade would be a tough deal, but what was he going to do? The prince could whine about it all he wanted, but at the end of the day, he was still ranked lower than them, and Frieza would find it hilarious.
The Ginyu Force landed where the Saiyan pods were, and found no Saiyans. They didn't even sense a single power level on the planet.
This moment was when the Ginyu Force thought something may have been wrong.
"Burter," Captain Ginyu said, "Search the planet."
"On it, captain!" Burter dashed away in his regular search pattern, forming a grid around the planet would take him only five seconds to scour its surface.
Four seconds later, an explosion that shook the ground beneath them. The four Ginyus sighed in unison. Somehow, all of the Saiyans had messed up on their mission.
"Alright boys, it's seems we're in a serious state of affairs," Ginyu said. "Everyone split up and -" He noticed his scouters communication abilities had turned back on.
"Oh, that must've been a jammer that blew up!" Guldo said.
Ginyu nodded as if he'd come to the same conclusion. "Jeice, join up with Burter and have the two of you do a second sweep for anything interesting. Us three will go to the site of the explosion and keep you updated on our scouters."
"Yes, sir!" His three subordinates shouted in unison as they struck their graceful poses of warrior pride, thrusting their pelvises and butts with pride, and sped off.
Only Jeice and Burter found anything of note. Burter carried in one hand a purple skinned man with two horns who wore a white suit, in the other hand, and a robot's head. Jeice found Nappa's body along with some weird pale beast's, both surrounded by dunes, and that is where they all reconvened.
Burter held out purple skinned man with two horns to Ginyu. "Seems this guy has a pretty high power level, for it to even be in the hundreds when he's like this. Plus, he looks just like that card you have! You want the body?"
"Sure," Ginyu said, "May as well get something out of this trip. I don't even sense the Saiyans power levels." He did a double take at the robotic head, and a shiver ran through his body. "Why do you want that creepy thing?"
Burter juggled it at the speed of sound. "Found them both in some weird subway, had to outrun the explosion. Thought it would be neat to keep something in the souvenir collection. Don't mind it, do ya?"
"No," Ginyu said, "Just keep it in your own collection, gives me the heebie jeebies. Matter a fact, lets go to where you found this, might be more of them."
The five of them flew off to the subway, that unbeknownst to them, Raditz had entered through hours ago. They blasted the metal to try and destroy it, watched their blasts soak into it, and stared in silence for a moment.
"Recoome," Ginyu said, "Blast everything around this metal until we get too see just how much of this subway goes. Could be a robot factory."
"Sir!" Recoome went to task without any questions, happily blasting away everything surrounding the former Tuffle base as the rest of the Ginyu Squad ascended to a safe distance.
"Hey, Captain," Jeice said, "What's got you so concerned about robots?"
Ginyu's face scrunched at the question. "You can't swap bodies with them, they cheat at boardgames, and most of 'em don't even know how to dance. What is there to even like about them?"
Recoome finished his job quickly. The group floated over a single fused together clump of metal that went on for miles and miles underneath the ground.
When Guldo was a child he used to fill ant hills with molten hot metal and pull out the structure when it cooled. That's what the structure underneath them reminded him most of, but he thought it better to keep that peculiar thought to himself.
With nothing left to do, Ginyu said what they were all afraid to think about. The chances were low that it would go over well, but the soldiers still had a duty to fulfill. "Team, it's time to call in Frieza."
Many a man would've had a hesitancy in doing so, but Captain Ginyu was not like most men. In fact, Frieza himself had told him that his disregard for his own death was his most admirable feature.
"What is it?" Frieza said in a tired voice. "I was taking my heat nap and was planning on watching the mission's replay during my nightly bubble bath afterwards, so this better be good."
"Oh it's better than good, it's surprising!" Captain Ginyu said.
Frieza's response was silence.
They got to solid ground and Ginyu looked to his friends for support, and they stomped in a circled around to rally his strength. "The surprise is they're dead! Everything is dead!"
"What?!"
"Whole planet? Dead!" Ginyu bent forward and thrust his butt into the sky. "Civilians? All dead!" There was an opening in the circle around him, he jumped into it forward and slid on his knees. "Nappa's body? Found!"
"Well what the hell happened?!"
Huh. None of them had thought that far ahead. Ginyu rested on his knees and looked back to his group. They had all stopped dancing and were waiting mid step. It was the easiest thing to forget, their boss liked good surprises. Surprises that were unequivocally beneficial for him. This was just a surprise.
Ginyu would not let a little lack of any and all knowledge stop him. "Well, you see, we've been running some forensics. Nappa is dead."
"You already told me he was dead!" Frieza's shouts were loud enough to make each of the Ginyu's squint.
"But what I didn't tell you was that we had a theory. See, Kakarot challenged Vegeta to a Prekku before the mission started."
"...What? Is that some sort of morning pastry?" Frieza asked.
"Not quite, sir," Jeice said, "it's a battle between two Saiyan warriors to prove who's the strongest. Usually entitles a rising of rank."
"Ah. Yes." Frieza paused for a moment before adding, "I do remember Kakarot saying something about that gibberish. Continue."
Ginyu gave Jeice a thumbs up, and Jeice gave him one in return. "So, Kakarot challenged him to that Prekku, right. That's our first clue in this investigation. Then, obviously, Kakarot just slaughtered Vegeta. Decimated him, blew him to bits. They were at each other's throats before we even got on the ship, so it only makes since they'd he'd rip him apart like a feral ape! Nappa tried to step in, but Kakarot likes him a little more, has sympathy for the guy because he's dumb like he is. But Kakarot is just having too much fun killing, kills him too, but feels bad about it so he buries him. Raditz probably tried to talk to him, but Kakarot didn't feel like talking to the coward, and destroyed even his own brother as a flex. All for you, Lord Frieza. Now he and Broly are back on the way to your ship now."
"Captain Ginyu," Frieza said with restrained fury. "Why would Kakarot kill his own brother and not Broly?"
"Oh, well, we need our baker to be alive," Ginyu said.
All of them voiced agreement at this flawless logic, listing off all of the baked goods Broly had made over the years. Quite frankly, without Broly in the kitchen, the Frieza ship wouldn't be the same.
All of their scouters made a low pitched beep and their conversation stopped. Another person had joined their conversation. The only people who had authorization to join a conversation with Frieza were his own family.
"My my my," Cooler said, his pride through their scouters with each word. "What an astute observation your boys have made."
The sarcasm was wasted on them. "Lord Cooler? Great to hear from you, sir! But how'd you know what we were talking about?"
"Captain Ginyu," Frieza said.
"Yes, Lord Frieza?"
"Get off of this call."
Cooler laughed at them. "Oh before you hang up, don't worry about your baker. There's only one Saiyan leaving that planet, and it's mine."
Turles didn't hear Frieza's shouts. His body burned to a crisp, his nerves and muscles torn, he was in an agony beyond imaging. Despite Frieza coming in loud and clear over the video screen, the pain kept him away from focusing on anything specific he was saying.
Something was said about bastards and revenge, but nothing that could snap him out of the pain or the surreal reality that covered it. He had won. He had been sent out personally by Cooler to destroy his brother's favorite toys, and he had done it.
He tried to will his body to sit up on the cold metal slab he was on, but it was too much to bear. Despite years of training to be the perfect soldier, he screamed like a newborn. He wanted to cry like one too, but there wasn't enough water left in him to make tears. Instead, his eyes bulged open, gazing into the familiar domed lights of the medical room as his shout echoed across the room.
"Ohohoho!" Kakarot's laughter. No, it was Frieza's. The shock of hearing it ceased his yells long enough for him to hear Frieza say, "Oh, is that your so called 'Elite' making those noises? Sounds like my men won't have much competition then."
There was the click of the screen shutting off, and he knew Frieza was gone.
He was alone with nothing but himself, but he had done it, hadn't he? He'd won against the other Saiyans, he'd beaten them, he'd known he had. So why was Frieza laughing? His Lord Cooler should've been the one to laugh, he'd proven his superiority yet again to that arrogant child. Frieza's five monkeys had been defeated by just one of Cooler's elites, the younger Cold should've been embarrassed.
Turles thought it was madness, until he remembered how he got on the ship. Raditz brought him here.
Despite everything he'd done, Frieza won, and he was still a failure.
"How dare you embarrass me like this." Lord Cooler's voice made his pain dim, muted by the shame that came over him. "I gave you one job to complete, and this is how you handle it?"
His lord's voice wasn't filled with the hot anger he'd experienced from the Saiyans. Lord Cooler spoke with a precise and measured tone, each word weighed to exact the perfect weight on his conscience.
He tried to speak, but that was beyond what his body would allow him to do. He could only stare at Lord Cooler, as blankly and stupidly as the most inept of soldiers could.
"All you had to do was take out five pieces of trash. Hell, only one of them was supposed to be even remotely troublesome! But you fell to Kakarot." He closed his eyes and made a deep sigh, then glared at him. "Of all the monkeys to lose to, it had to be to Frieza's favorite."
"Lord Cooler, this soldier needs to get to a healing chamber. If he's left out for much longer, there's a high chance he'll die to infection." The doctor realized his error as soon as he had spoke. Cooler's dark red eyes glowed purple as he charged his death beam, but the doctor stuck his hands up, and Cooler ceased his attack, letting the doctor leave the room.
Turles heard about half a dozen people leave the room, he'd been aware of none of them. Worse than wanting to die, he deserved to die.
Cooler ran his hand along the side of his metal slab, then stopped next to his head. "Do you know why we have you wear those scouters?" Turles couldn't respond. "To record everything, to have it on the record. I was going to use your recordings as a show of force to the galaxy, to show that I would be the next true ruler of this galaxy, and what do I have now? You getting lectured to like a child by the clown. I'll put the recordings in the archive, but every time you falter, every time you get even an inch away from your mission, that moment will always be what rings in my mind, the moment you made a complete embarrassment of yourself."
He wasn't going to kill him?
"I should've known that having you work alongside with those Tuffles was a mistake, you aren't even close to competent enough for the task, but I thought there couldn't be any harm in it. Let you work with the Saiyans old enemies, the only person who could even be close to competition for you was Vegeta, so what did I have to lose? You should be thankful that they helped carry your pathetic hide to a successful mission, or at least that's what the first reports are going to conclude." Cooler sensed his confusion and a smile crawled out from the corner of his lips. "But that's not what happened, is it?"
Cooler's hand tenderly brushed against his chest, the pain was overwhelming as his palm rested on his heart, but he didn't even think to scream. It was a level of affection from his Lord that he'd never felt before, and he knew that it meant he had done right.
"Tell me, Turles" Cooler said, "The doctors said many of your wounds look like an evolution of how the fruit from the Tree of Might affected you. Are they correct? Blink once if I'm correct, twice if I'm wrong."
All of his memories after eating the fruit of might felt like a fever dream, but there were still bits and pieces he could recollect, they just felt more like emotions than true memories.
He blinked once.
"So your mission continued after your scouter was destroyed. Did you fight Vegeta?"
He blinked once again, vividly remembering what his defeat felt like as his spine shattered on his knee. Complete Triumph.
Then he remembered something else, a golden aura around Vegeta and his black hair moved like flames. The change didn't matter, there was a final clash, he stood over their bodies, and then Raditz spoke to him. He had won, hadn't he? Raditz must've been delusional when he spoke to him.
"You fought and defeated all of Vegeta Squadron, Frieza will no longer have his own private army of little monkeys?"
He had. He knew he had. He stood over their bodies, all defeated underneath him. But why could he remember Raditz talking to him? The weakling had told him to say that they had all died, that he had killed them all they would never be seen again, but he had. Anything else would've been impossible, and admitting what the impossible could mean, that five monkeys could succeed against a Cold, wasn't a blasphemy he would tell his lord.
Nappa's was split open by his hand. The old man had tried speaking Saiyan to him. Why was that sticking out to him now?
He blinked once.
"And the second pod was sent off to mock my brother, to give him false hope for his inadequacies?"
He blinked once.
"Exactly as I told my brother you would, I always taught you its best to leave your foe with a message. Good work, Turles." Cooler closed his eyes, satisfied with the answer, and made a confident nod as he removed his hand from his chest. "I knew saving you would have its purpose. Now maybe that little brother of mine will realize his proper place in the pecking order. Our victory today may have been pyyrhic, but it's a victory nonetheless. I'm just glad I made you to be so much better than the rest of those monkeys."
He could've killed him, but he didn't. He could've punished him, but he refrained. Intelligent, kind, powerful, Lord Cooler was the man worthy of ruling the galaxy.
Lord Cooler walked to room's exit, when the door opened, the doctors were still waiting patiently on the other side.
"Put him in the healing pod," Lord Cooler said, "he's earned it."
The doctors said something about how it would take months to heal him, how his body would never look the same after the damage he'd sustained. There would be scars over every inch of him, he'd need another month of training to even get back in fighting shape, but he didn't care. He had earned it, he'd earned the right to live.
Once he got out of here, his lord would probably reward him with a promotion, and if he didn't it was rightly so. He had done well, but not perfectly. Next time, he would perform with no faults, no errors, only the perfection that Lord Cooler's Empire deserved.
He was slid horizontally into an empty healing pod, once the doctors attached the monitoring pads to him, it filled with regenerative fluids. The room hummed as the cylinder's hydraulics shifted itself upright, floating the Saiyan in the tube with enough space to stretch his arms and legs out, a goal weeks away from even being close to possible.
Instead, he closed his eyes and entered the deepest sleep of his life. There were no dreams.
Occasionally he would awake to laughter and taps on the glass, but it was three months into his healing that he realized what it was. Lord Cooler's Armored Squadron had been visiting him. The trio of powerful warriors never held him in positive regard, but they were respected warriors of Lord Cooler, so he respected them as he was supposed to.
There was Salza, their blonde haired and pompous leader who used to be a mercenary captain, Dore, his second in command who was the brawn of the operation and had followed them from their previous mercenary company, and Neiz, a famed criminal who gelled perfectly with the two of them despite his eccentric behavior.
In fact, it seemed as if the three of them had been performing group bonding exercises for some time now.
From top to bottom Turles's healing chamber had comments from them drawn on it: "Monkey Corpse" "Lord Cooler's Zoo" "Banana Enthusiast" "Swings from trees, loses easily" "Tail gone, brain gone" The insults went on and on, letters shrinking in size as they made sure to save space for more, but they had finally run out.
Salza laughed with his squad mates as he wrote the last comment on the glass of Turles's pod. "Oh, finally waking up, mon ami?"
Turles blinked once.
Dore slapped his large palm on the glass. "Better like all the nice comments we left ya, boy! We spent ages coming up with these."
"Yeah! Yeah! Had to get creative," Neiz said, cackling between his every word.
Turles looked down at the last thing Salza had written, "Galaxy's Favorite Monkey."
"Well, we should be on our way then," Salza said, "don't forget to get well soon!"
The three all laughed with each other as they left, and Turles stared at the wall of insults.
There was no one to wipe them away, and no one ever did.
