A golden streak cut across the sky and braked to a dead stop high above the Grand Elder's spire.
Vegeta hovered with arms folded, tail flicking once, watching the show below with the lazy interest of a lion watching house cats fight rats.
Sara and Dodgett Zarbon's leftover pets were already mid-sentence, chests puffed, bragging about their "ten thousand" and "eleven thousand" power levels like they mattered.
Krillin and Gohan exchanged one quick glance.
Then they moved.
Dodgett fired first: a fat red beam from his wrist cannon, smug grin already forming.
Gohan didn't even bother dodging.
He crossed his arms, took it square in the chest, and let the explosion bloom around him like fireworks.
Smoke cleared.
Gohan was still there, clothes barely singed, eyes burning with the kind of anger only kids can carry.
Dodgett's grin died.
Gohan blurred.
One kick to the sternum folded Dodgett in half and launched him across the plateau like a rag doll.
At the same exact moment, Sara opened his mouth to threaten Krillin.
He never finished the sentence.
Krillin was suddenly inside his guard, fist already traveling.
Crack.
Sara's head snapped sideways, blood spraying in a perfect arc.
A knee to the gut lifted him off the ground.
Krillin cupped his hands.
"Ka me ha me HAAAA!!!"
The blue beam hit Sara dead center and kept going, erasing him from existence in a flash of light that lit the spire brighter than Namek's twin suns.
One second. Maybe two.
Two of Frieza's elite: gone.
No drama. No struggle. Just deletion.
The watching Namekians stood frozen, mouths open.
Nail's arms slowly uncrossed, suspicion replaced by something dangerously close to respect.
High above, Vegeta's lips curved into a slow, approving smirk.
"Not bad, bald man. Not bad at all."
He dropped from the sky like a golden meteor, landing between the Earthlings and the Namekians with a soft thud that still cracked the stone beneath his boots.
The wind from his descent whipped everyone's clothes.
Gohan spun, eyes wide.
Krillin took one involuntary step back.
Bulma, standing at the entrance with Dende, felt her heart try to climb out of her throat.
Golden hair.
Teal eyes that looked right through you.
An aura so calm it felt like the planet itself was holding its breath.
Vegeta swept his gaze across the group Namekians, Nail, Dende, the two shaken Earth warriors and finally settled on Bulma.
She swallowed.
He looked… different.
Still terrifying.
But the murderous chaos that used to leak out of him like radiation was gone.
Replaced by something colder.
Absolute.
Vegeta spoke, voice low, casual, and final.
"I'm going to kill Frieza. Now."
He let that hang in the air for three heartbeats.
"Anyone who wants to watch is welcome to follow. Anyone who gets in my way dies with him."
He turned to leave, then paused, glancing back over his shoulder at Krillin and Gohan.
"Oh, and Earthlings…"
A small, sharp grin.
"Try to keep up."
Golden fire ignited around him: silent, perfect, godlike.
Then he was gone.
A sonic boom rolled across the planet a full three seconds later.
The message was clear.
The prince had finished warming up.
Frieza's execution had a start time.
And the clock just hit zero.