Following the prison transport had proven to be more uninteresting than difficult.

We'd tailed it for at least an hour, weaving in and around both crowds and buildings that were in plentiful supply. The rain remained in varying strengths, but not enough to completely soak my hair and clothes if I kept moving. Korravi walked alongside me compliantly, not often speaking unless necessary, though I could feel her watching me when my own eyes were focused elsewhere.

The spare time had given me the mental space to think (at least when the stare being levelled at the back of my head wasn't too uncomfortable). Things still weren't adding up regarding the pair whom I now knew were deserters, including the one I was stuck with at the moment despite her willingness to cooperate for the most part.

Her truant friend had to be either very stupid or knew something I didn't. Even if he was banking on the chance he could kill me, which would have to be a miracle, what was his plan after? He'd have no way to escape the Sons that would try to avenge me. Did he even care about escaping in the first place, or did he want to be found? He'd specifically chosen to take my sword, and had also left Korravi behind despite the two of them seeming... close.

They were different, all right. What kind of man willingly tattooed himself like that? And how many Saiyan women were so powerfully built, or spoke with certain weak consonants, long vowels and a lisp, unlike any accent I'd ever heard?

I glanced at the woman in question. Intelligent eyes blinked back at me from behind the mask, as if to challenge me for staring back.

"It's a miracle you haven't fallen on your face since you seem incapable of watching where you're going, let alone following our target," I remarked, passive-aggressive.

"You told me to follow you," she countered in a way that was definitely cheeky and not naive.

"Does 'follow' translate to you as 'glare holes in the back of my head'?"

"I was wondering if that was your natural hair colour."

I narrowed my eyes. "Of course it is. You really are weird."

"Me? What do you call this then? Next you'll tell me it grows like some kind of plant," she said, actually having the audacity to reach out and flip a lock of my hair.

"Don't fucking touch me," I hissed, jerking away while we walked. "If you do something like that again, I'm going to hit you in the face. And for your information, it does grow. I don't have to have some onerous mane-thing like you."

"Some of us have to earn charm through our wit, Prince."

I felt my face warm. "You must speak from experience, being covered in spots."

This seemed to amuse her more than insult, but before she could reply her eyes shifted beyond me to the horizon.

The districts around us had steadily gotten dumpier and unpopulated, making us have to gain more distance from the transport to avoid standing out. However, by this point we had a much more physical roadblock up ahead: visible in the distance was a large purple dome, formed completely by an electrical field. The vehicle had been headed right towards it. And what better use for a massive force field than to keep things contained, or to keep intruders out from both the ground and the air?

"That has to be it," I said. "What else would you expect to find protecting a prison full of Saiyans?"

"Assuming there are actually living Saiyans in there."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "What do you suggest we do, then? Assume there aren't and go on our merry way of aimlessly trying to track down Daikon?"

"A prison break sounds like more fun than walking around with a scowling prince all day, I think."

"Scowling prince has a name that you could try using sometime." I crossed my arms, turning to focus on the problem in the distance.

We had two options: sneaking in or busting in with brute force. The latter option would probably be easier, although we risked alerting everyone to our presence. Then again, it wasn't like anyone would recognize who I was, especially if I had glowing blond hair.

Could we get past the shield, though? I knew fields like that usually ran on a self-generating circuit, which meant they could take a lot of impact – like the ones used around spaceships. But they could be overwhelmed with a significant amount of strain at once, or disturbed electrically. Or both.

"I'm going to take down that shield by force," I said.

"Oh? No more sneaking around?" She put her hands on her hips, cloak shifting with the movement.

"If you have any better ideas, I'd love to hear them."

"I'm never one for good ideas."

The periphrastic 'no' meant she was in agreement, then. So reckless option it was.

I wasn't sure what my father would be doing if he were here, travelling with us and trying to make things right. But the facts were that he wasn't here. No matter whether any of us were friends, deserters, or half-bloods, I was the prince. And if my father died, I... I would be king. Either way, it was my job to fulfill that responsibility in his absence, to protect my people. Therefore, if there was even a chance of Saiyans being in there, I was beholden to rescue them, survival of the strongest be damned.

And turncoat or not, if I was willing to allow Korravi's presence, she was under my protection also.

I turned back to her. "If I take down the shield, I'll be the one attracting the attention of any soldiers inside first. It's probably best to keep it that way so I'm taking the majority of any damage they might dish out – I can handle it in my Ascended form. We can bulldoze right through the prison that way. Can I trust you to have my back?"

She tapped her fist against her chest in a mockery of a salute and smiled again. "I can keep it up, if you can."

"Hmph. Just watch," I said.

Without another word I blasted off into the air.

Below me, the dilapidated architecture quickly petered out as I soared over, giving way to completely barren land. The long stretch of emptiness was only interrupted by the force field ahead. Inside loomed a massive metal structure, cold and jagged, punctuated by its sprawling width rather than having towers like most other areas of the planet I'd seen.

The dome was much bigger up close. It covered a giant swath of the wasteland beyond the walls of the penitentiary, and halfway up to the clouds it seemed.

I slowed once I was within a couple feet of its exterior, closer to the top than on the sides. It appeared to shift like light shifted on water while holding its shape. The rain sizzled off it like a thin mist. I reached out and touched it before retracting my hand at the electric crackle that stung at me, as expected.

When I looked down, I could see the small area where the opening presumably was to get through, or rather, a transport making a trail from one particular spot on the dome's edge. Probably the same transport we'd followed here, but getting both in and out that way without taking down the shield would be tedious. No one had noticed me up here yet, but that was understandable, considering the distance between myself and everything below made it all seem speck-sized.

I breathed out, letting my ki release out with it. Once again, it felt like a good stretch after so much time keeping it contained. I saw the shield reflect the light I was giving off in its ripples, but I wasn't going to stop at Super Saiyan.

When I pushed myself further to the Ascended state, I could feel the air become charged with polarity, a few stray bolts of my energy sparking out towards the force field. The rain was dissolving in my aura now before ever touching me. I noticed a wind had picked up in the altitude.

I reached out my hands and placed them on the dome while bracing my boots against it. The reaction was immediate – its energy seized and struck through my body, a show of electrical bolts flaring around me as I began forcing my ki into it.

I heard, felt it sparking all around me, attempting to rebound the energy I was pouring into it, though there was no pain. I saw the surface start to warp, only within proximity to me at first, then spreading in a wider and wider radius from where I was.

A memory of welding panels of steel together when I'd been helping Mom make our capsule ship went through my mind. Of doing it when I was younger, in the repair hanger back home, when she was teaching me how for the first time. I'd done that with my hands, too, except now I was trying to tear something apart instead of melt it together. One would think it was easier that way around.

Below, I could dimly see some of the specks had gathered, probably wondering what the hell was going on. I grit my jaw and narrowed my eyes a little against the flares of light and powered up even more. A slight numbness was starting to bloom along my hands and forearms. The damn thing has to be at its limit by now! Indeed, it was deforming as far as I could see, like waves in harsh wind, bolts spurting randomly from it all over. Oh-so-close to shattering, just needing that one extra push –

To my left a shape belted into the shield with all its might, whole body thrown into the blow. I briefly had time to identify it as the Saiyan woman before the force field burst like a supermassive water balloon, the last vestiges of its energy washing over me in a quick flash of light without pressure.

The hiss of rain was faint now, coming only from my own burning ki. The prison stood unprotected.

I turned to say something to the woman, but she was already diving through the air, headed for the impending battle. I flew down after her for the second time that day.

The ground approached rapidly, and I struck mere moments before she did. I came down at an angle so that when I landed I slid in the dry earth, boots digging a trench until I came to a stop and stood up straight. Several feet away Korravi hit the dirt from free-fall with all the grace of a meteor, using her whole weight so that the ground actually shook and cracked beneath her.

Before us, a gathering of about a hundred PTO soldiers waited, spaced across the region in front of us, eyes wide and arms ready.

"Try not to draw too much attention to yourself," I said only loud enough for Korravi to hear as I analyzed our frozen opponents. I didn't expect an answer from her and I didn't get one before I surged forward into the midst of the enemy.

I was certain half of the soldiers hadn't even seen me move and didn't know what had happened when the nearest ones were blown back, offset from my mere movement. From there I darted at my first unfortunate target still standing, knocking him out with a single blow to the face. He dropped like a rock and I leapt over him to the next one, visually marking my intended path towards the prison.

Not wanting to kill anyone unless I had to, and likely none of them were capable of killing me, I restricted all my blows as much as possible to incapacitate my opponents only. The second soldier had it cut pretty close – I swung my heel from a back-kick into his head, feeling his jaw and more turn to powder before he careened away. I flipped over the shoulder of the third to drop my elbow on the fourth before swinging back and driving a hammer fist into the third's side. Five, six and seven had actually started to run at me before I summoned a ball of energy to my hands and blasted it in their direction.

I stopped counting after that, leaping over the fallen or dazed people to continue onward. I sensed a ki attack coming at my head and made a sliding stop and leaned back to avoid it, then back-flipped to dodge the next two that had been aimed at my legs and torso. Three more enemies jumped at me and I sprang into the air, watching them collide hard into a heap. When gravity tugged me down again I used their backs as leverage to jump forward, right onto the next one whom I drove my knee into the face of. He was still coherent enough to grab my leg, prompting me to somersault midair and use his firm grip against him to yank him up and around before slamming him into the ground.

I flash-stepped around another pair and used the element of surprise to simply grab their heads and smack them together. They crumpled in pain and I looked up.

One of the strange cannon weapons was pointed right at me, a soldier wielding it from less than ten feet away. A split second passed before the end glowed like an ember and then flashed, launching a fireball-like projectile several times my size that swallowed my vision.

Acting on instinct, I raised my hands and felt the mass collide, all sizzling heat and blazing light. But it went no further than my arms, unable to break solid as I stopped it in its tracks.

I was surprised I could feel it at all, not expecting any PTO-made weapon to have the strength needed for such a thing. But despite the prickling where it contacted me, it wasn't enough to knock down my defences.

I used my own energy to surround the blaze, concentrating and pushing it inward. The ball began to densify, shrinking smaller and smaller until I could contain the compressed energy between my palms as if I'd made it myself.

And then I let it fizzle out, not breaking eye contact with the alien who'd fired it.

There were burns on my hands, signifying their presence with the sting that still remained. Surface wounds, but I didn't dignify their existence by looking, instead continuing to stare down my enemies.

The soldiers were no longer lunging at me. In fact, they were all keeping their distance, each afraid to make the first move. A few I'd knocked down had gotten up from the ground, and some of them had even started running or flying away.

"Cowards!" one of the remaining ones yelled. "There's only two of them! As long as we keep them separated we can take them down!"

"Oh, really? Since you're so keen on it, are you offering to fight the one on fire who we can barely see move and just dissolved that attack, or the goliath over there?" another countered bitterly.

I'd temporarily forgotten about Korravi, expecting that she'd be holding her own. I spared a look in the other direction, just to confirm she didn't need a hand.

I was just in time to see someone driving the transport at her – and she was running right back towards it, away from a retreating crowd of soldiers.

The vehicle was massive enough to do some damage if it hit at that speed, unless you were an Ascended Saiyan maybe. But Korravi was not one of those, wasn't even an ordinary Super Saiyan. Several hundred tonnes of metal barrelling down and unless she was bluffing, there was no way that wouldn't bruise like hell –

At the last second before it struck she jumped and ran up the face of the transport until she was on top, and then kept going until she'd travelled the length of it and reached the back. The vehicle slowed down, braking hard in an attempt to throw her off but she seized the upper support of the cage and held on. She then moved so that she had both hands on the metal protrusion and, with a flex of her arms, snapped it like a twig.

The electrical bars zapped out of existence and almost immediately people were falling or jumping out the back, rolling into the dirt. However, Korravi stayed where she was until no more people were tumbling out – then she disappeared behind the rear of the transport and after a moment I heard a loud metallic squeal begin.

I watched the transport unnaturally slow, like something was pulling on it, and then it simply began to heave up further than its normal levitation would allow before the whole thing was lifted into the air.

Movement in the corner of my eye drew my gaze back to the enemies at hand. They still weren't moving to attack – in fact, they were rapidly spreading out, away from me and away from the former thick of the group.

My attention flicked back to Korravi. She was partway into the air, holding the prone vehicle above her like she was about to throw it. I wasn't sure she'd be able to muster enough leverage in a base form like that to actually toss it very far, instead of just carry it, but I quickly rethought that when she tensed.

The thing was sailing through the sky a moment later, over my head and then plunging into the ground some distance ahead between the prison and I. The shockwave it sent was nowhere near enough to move me, but any nearby enemies were blown off their feet by the impact and succeeding explosion.

"What are you waiting for? Keep going!" the Saiyan's voice echoed over the wasteland. I saw her running forward several dozen metres to my left, prompting me to snap back into action.

I flew into the air, the ground zooming below me as I adjusted my flight pattern to soar over the destroyed transport. I watched it pass beneath and then glimpsed behind me. The freed prisoners had long begun running the opposite direction, away from the scene of the battle. No one seemed to be pursuing them.

When I focused ahead of me once more, what I presumed was the prison's main entrance was coming up fast, a relatively large set of metal doors sealed shut.

I didn't want to blow the planet to smithereens – I just needed to get through the entrance. A sufficient impact of, say, an Ascended Saiyan Prince would be more than enough to tear the barrier off its hinges, and startle the soldiers I knew were going to be inside.

In the last few seconds I increased my speed while crossing my arms in front of my face and moving my knees up so that those parts of me would strike first.

When I finally hit, the metal twisted and ripped like paper in the swath of my aura and momentum, and I breached the threshold in a storm of energy before letting my feet touch ground.