"Oh? How can you tell?"

"Nooo," she whines. "Please don't make me say it."

Smirk. Got 'em.

"I think you'd be a fine addition to our bonding exercise. A third person would let me demonstrate teasing for 2B."

"Nope! Nope nope nope nope nope."

She starts giggling. "Awww..."

"I think that was effective."

"A very good example of teasing?"

"Yes."

"Though the offer for private bonding exercises was sincere..."

"I appreciate the offer."

Softer smile. "Alright."

"So! We should work out a backup plan in case we fail to breach the prison with the ship and also don't die, I think."

She has ideas! Many of them are even better than 'just improvise' - and it'll be risky using her magic anywhere she's not shielded, but that adds a lot of flexibility to their plans...

That's good! Both the flexibility and not just improvising!

She can also fill out Nines' existing information on Asgard's main city layout. 

Ooh, data.

Data!

Fuckin' nerds. Ash is gonna go find something else to fill the travel time.

She can nerd out over weapons with Rocket!

Yeah, all right.

Good ways to pass time all around. 

Makes the trip go smoothly.

And then, they arrive.

Asgard somehow makes even less sense as a layout than Knowhere had - building inside the desiccated skull of a Celestial, the air kept in by force fields, makes an audacious kind of sense. 

Asgard does not care about looking like something that reasonably exists. They care about bragging, and the very architecture of their main city is one big I can kick your fucking ass. The city sprawls across an enormous chunk of landscape - entirely artificial landscape that's hovering in the vast depths of space. There's no visible force field even pretending to keep the air in. There's no clear way for the truly excessive waterfalls cascading down the sides to return their water to the top; the waterfalls eventually leave Asgard's enormous sway and dissolve into the misty cloud swirling just past its sphere. 

Asgard is a realm that tears open holes in reality, stabilizes them, and then dresses them up as natural or low-tech phenomenon, so that water can gush through for fountains the size of mountains. Asgard is a realm that continuously uses powerful magic to command the wind to stay, and that summons or conjurs more air if needed. Asgard is a realm richer than nearly any other, ruling over eight of the poorest protectorates in the galaxy. 

The palace gleams golden in Asgard's equally artificial sun, and any incoming ships are made to wait a very, very long time before being given permission to dock.

Asgard is, however, a realm that knows it's rich. Why waste your luxurious time on a professional force capable of maintaining the border when your king can strike any enemy down with a wave of his hand? 

And there's something that Asgard is hiding, that Thanos and therefore Gamora know - that Odin is aging, and that he currently sleeps for long stretches, and that the heir able to wield magic effectively is imprisoned for treason and the sole loyal heir would rather help the protectorates Asgard has long exploited or neglected. Thanos has chosen not to act on this information yet; Gamora doesn't care about showing someone else's hand. 

So in other words, the only protection they've got is the illusion of a wall. Ash is more than happy to fly right through that illusion, straight at the prison wall.