Chapter Text
The boardroom of Fujian Heavy Industries was an expanse of cold steel, tempered glass, and silence. It occupied the entire top floor of the tallest skyscraper in East City, offering a panoramic, god-like view of the sprawling metropolis below. Yet, for Juyayo, the view was nothing but a gilded cage.
At twenty-six, Juyayo Lee—known to her family and the global market by her birth name, Juyayo—was the undisputed sovereign of this empire. Her silhouette was sharp against the floor-to-ceiling windows, her posture impeccably straight in a tailored, charcoal-grey suit that screamed quiet luxury. She possessed a striking beauty: long, silken black hair cascading down her back, piercing almond eyes that missed absolutely nothing, and a jawline set with the stubbornness of a dynasty that had survived centuries.
"Miss Juyayo," a voice coughed, breaking the heavy silence. It was Chairman Li, a man easily three times her age, his face wrinkled with years of corporate warfare and traditional arrogance. "The quarterly projections for the aerospace division are... acceptable. However, the board feels your personal investments into experimental gravitational tech are a drain on our liquid assets."
Juyayo turned slowly. Her heels clicked against the polished marble floor, echoing like gunshots in the quiet room. She didn't sit. She merely leaned forward, resting both hands on the edge of the mahogany table, her gaze pinning Chairman Li to his high-backed leather chair.
"Acceptable?" Juyayo's voice was smooth, carrying the deceptive calm of a calm ocean just before the stormi. "Chairman Li, the aerospace division has seen a four-hundred percent increase in global shipping efficiency since I restructured the logistics network six months ago. As for my 'personal investments,' they are the future of planetary defense. If you cannot see past the next fiscal quarter, perhaps it is time you retired to your estate in the mountains."
The board members shifted uncomfortably. None dared to speak. They all knew the truth: Fujian Heavy Industries was second in the world only to Capsule Corporation, and it was entirely because of the young woman standing before them. She was a prodigy of engineering and business, a titan on this very planet.
"Meeting adjourned," Juyayo declared, waving a dismissive hand.
As the older men filed out, muttering under their breath, Juyayo let out a long, exhausted sigh. She pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling the familiar, throbbing onset of a migraine. Running a multi-trillion zeni empire was easy. It was the people—the constant, suffocating expectations—that drained her.
Her smartwatch buzzed against her wrist. A notification flashed on the holographic display: Dinner. 7:00 PM. The Golden Lotus. Do not be late.
It was from her grandmother.
Juyayo's stomach plummeted. Another blind date. Another heir to some shipping conglomerate or banking dynasty her traditional family deemed "worthy" of their bloodlines. In her family's eyes, her genius and her wealth were secondary. She was a woman of the Fujian province first, and her ultimate duty was to marry for power, not love.
"Cancel my afternoon appointments," Juyayo said to her secretary, her voice devoid of emotion. "I have a date to attend." She sighed.
The restaurant was a masterpiece of traditional Chinese architecture, draped in crimson silk and glowing lanterns. The air smelled intensely of jasmine tea, roasted duck, and the suffocating perfume of conglomerate society. Juyayo sat at a private corner table, her posture rigid, her face an unreadable mask of polite indifference.
Across from her sat Mr. Go, the arrogant son of a real estate tycoon. He had spent the last forty-five minutes talking exclusively about his luxury car collection and his golf games, barely asking her a single question.
"So, as I was telling my father," Mr. Go boasted, swirling a glass of incredibly expensive baijiu, "women in business are fine, but eventually, the maternal instinct kicks in. When we are married, I expect you'll step down from your CEO role. I can have my people absorb Fujian Industries. It will be much less stressful for you, Juya."
Juyayo's eyes darkened. Juya? He didn't even use her proper name.
"Mr. Go," Juyayo interrupted, her tone glacially polite. "Tell me, do you know how to calibrate a quantum-flux engine?"
He blinked, clearly taken aback. "A what? No, of course not. That's what mechanics are for."
"Do you know the exact melting point of Katchin steel when exposed to atmospheric re-entry?" she pressed, leaning slightly forward.
"I... no. Why does that matter?" His smug smile was beginning to falter.
"It matters," Juyayo said softly, placing her napkin neatly on the table, "because I do. I built my first sub-orbital engine for NASA missions when I was fourteen. I manage a global workforce of three million people. I do not need you to absorb my company, and I certainly do not need a man whose greatest achievement in life is being born to a rich father. I do not need a nepo baby by my side"
Go's face flushed a brilliant, angry red. "Listen here, you arrogant—"
"Thank you for the tea, Mr. Go," Juyayo said, standing up. She dropped a stack of large-denomination zeni notes on the table, more than enough to cover the exorbitant meal. "Give my regards to your father. Tell him the arranged marriage is off the table. Permanently."
Without looking back, she strode out of the restaurant. The moment the cool evening air hit her face, she felt a profound sense of isolation wash over her. She had everything money could buy on Earth, yet she had never felt more alone. She didn't want a business transaction; she wanted a partnership. She wanted someone who looked at her and saw her, not a bank account or a political stepping stone.
As she approached her sleek, hovering limousine, her secure private comms line suddenly shrieked. It was a high-frequency override, a channel only one person on the planet had the codes to access.
She tapped her earpiece. "Bulma? It's past eight. Why are you overriding my secure comms?"
"Juyayo!" Bulma's voice crackled through the earpiece. It wasn't her usual confident, bossy tone. It was frantic. Breathless. Borderline terrified. "Where are you? Are you at the lab?"
"I'm leaving a disastrous blind date my grandmother setted me up on," Juyayo replied, her brow furrowing in immediate concern. "Bulma, what's wrong? You sound like you've seen a ghost."
"Worse," Bulma said grimly. "I need you at Capsule Corp. Now. Drop everything. Bring your master access codes for the Fujian manufacturing plants."
Juyayo stopped dead in her tracks. Bulma was her best friend, her only true intellectual equal on the planet, and a friendly rival in the tech industry. For Bulma to ask for access to Fujian's manufacturing power meant Capsule Corp's massive infrastructure wasn't enough.
"Would you mind telling me what it is for?" Juyayo asked, her voice dropping to a serious whisper. "Is it Cell again? Or Buu? Did someone mess with the Androids?"
"No," Bulma said, the fear palpable even through the digital connection. "It's Frieza. He's back."
Juyayo's blood ran cold. She wasn't a fighter. She had no ki, no ability to fly, and no superhuman strength. But she knew the stories. She knew the tyrant who had blown up planets and tortured her friends.
"Goku and Vegeta beat him before," Juyayo reasoned, climbing into the back of her limo and gesturing sharply for her driver to take off. "They have those new god forms. Ultra whatever."
"It's not enough this time," Bulma's voice cracked. "Juyayo... he found a Hyperbolic Time Chamber on a conquered world on Universe 12. He trained for ten years. He unlocked something new. A 'Black' form. Goku and Vegeta fought him on Planet Cereal... and he one-shotted both of them. At the same time. While they were in their strongest forms."
The silence in the back of the limousine was deafening. Juyayo stared out the tinted window at the glowing city lights below. Goku and Vegeta, the two most powerful mortal beings she knew, swatted away like flies.
"What do you need me to do?" Juyayo asked, her CEO persona instantly taking over. Cold, calculating, efficient. Panic would not save Earth.
"Goku and Vegeta are training desperately, but they are terrified it won't be enough," Bulma explained rapidly. "We need a contingency. I've designed a massive Gravity-Distortion Field Generator. If Frieza comes to Earth, we can theoretically trap him in a localized pocket of 100,000-times Earth's gravity to slow him down and give the guys an opening. But Capsule Corp can't build it fast enough alone. The materials require your proprietary Katchin-alloy foundries."
"Consider my Katchin-alloys yours," Juyayo said without hesitation. "I'm redirecting my driver. I'll be in West City in twenty minutes."
"Thank you, Juyayo. I mean it," Bulma breathed a sigh of relief. "Hurry."
The flight to West City was a blur. Juyayo spent the entire twenty minutes on her youPad, aggressively re-routing supply chains, halting civilian aerospace production, and ordering her top engineers to prepare for immediate, top-secret fabrication. She was burning billions of zeni by the minute, but money was useless on a vaporized planet.
When her helicopter touched down on the sprawling lawn of Capsule Corporation, Bulma was waiting on the landing pad, a datapad clutched tightly in her hands. She looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes and oil smudges on her usually pristine lab coat.
"Juyayo," Bulma rushed forward, pulling her friend into a tight hug. "I'm so sorry to drag you away from your life."
"My life consists of old men yelling at me about profit margins and grandmothers trying to sell me to real estate heirs," Juyayo replied dryly, stepping back and pulling up her own holographic displays. "This is a welcome vacation. Show me the schematics."
As they walked briskly through the sterile, white corridors of Capsule Corp's underground labs, Bulma projected a massive 3D blueprint of the Gravity-Distortion machine. It was a monstrosity of engineering—a sprawling array of rings and conduits designed to manipulate the very fabric of space.
"It's brilliant," Juyayo murmured, her eyes tracing the complex equations combination of physics, chemistry, and every mathematical computation floating in the air. "But your power source is flawed. You're trying to use a standard hyper-matter reactor. It's going to overload before it hits 50,000 Gs."
(G means Gravitational Force.)
Bulma frowned, staring at the numbers. "Damn it. You're right. I was rushing. What's the alternative?"
"We use our Fujian cold-fusion core, synced in parallel with your tech," Juyayo said, her fingers dancing across her tablet as she merged their two proprietary technologies. "It's highly unstable, but if we modulate the output..."
"It just might work," Bulma grinned, a spark of hope returning to her eyes. "This is why you're my best friend!!"
Suddenly, the ground beneath their feet trembled.
A massive shockwave rattled the reinforced walls of the underground laboratory, followed by the deafening boom of an explosion far above them. Dust fell from the ceiling.
"What was that?!" Juyayo gasped, grabbing onto a heavy console to steady herself. "Is he here? Is it Frieza?!"
"No," a deep, gruff voice echoed from the doorway.
Juyayo turned to see Vegeta standing there. The Prince of all Saiyans was battered, bruised, and covered in soot. His chest heaved with exertion, and the fabric of his training suit was torn to shreds. The intense aura of his Ultra Ego form was slowly dissipating from his body, leaving him looking more exhausted than Juyayo had ever seen him.
"That was just Kakarot and I sparring in the gravity chamber," Vegeta growled, wiping a streak of blood from his chin. He looked at Juyayo, his dark eyes narrowing. "The Fujian woman. Bulma said you were coming."
"Nice to see you too, Vegeta," Juyayo said, forcing a polite nod.
Vegeta didn't return the pleasantry. He walked over to a nearby medical station and grabbed a senzu bean from a small pouch, tossing it into his mouth. The bruises faded, but the heavy, dark look in his eyes remained.
"Are you making any progress?" Bulma asked gently, walking over to her husband.
Vegeta slammed his fist into the steel wall, denting the reinforced metal. "No! No matter how much we push, it isn't enough. The gap between us and that... that monster... it's huge. He didn't just beat us, Bulma. He humiliated us. He let us live just to mock us."
Juyayo watched the exchange in stunned silence. Vegeta, the proudest Saiyan warrior in the universe, was admitting defeat. The reality of the situation crashed down on her shoulders like a physical weight.
Black Frieza wasn't just a threat. He was a tyrant going for revenge after he was defeated multiple times by the Saiyan Warriors.
"We'll build the machine," Juyayo said, her voice cutting through the tense silence. Both Bulma and Vegeta turned to look at her. She stood tall, channeling every ounce of authority she possessed as a CEO and a woman of the Lee lineage. "Vegeta, you and Goku focus on breaking your limits. Bulma and I will give you the battlefield you need. Frieza won't take Earth without a fight."
Vegeta stared at her for a long moment, a ghost of respect flickering in his stern gaze. He gave a single, curt nod. "See that you do, Fujian woman."
As Vegeta turned and marched back toward the destroyed gravity chamber, Juyayo looked at Bulma. The fear was still there, but now, it was tempered with a desperate, burning determination.
They had a world to save.
Little did Juyayo know that her involvement in this cosmic war was about to rip her out of her mortal life entirely. Her journey was about to take her far beyond the boardrooms of Earth, past the stars, and straight into the halls of the gods, where an aloof, lonely Angel was waiting for a disturbance in his perfect, quiet universe.