A/N

So, am I the only one who looked at the trailer for Jump Force and went "huh?"

Judging by what I've read, probably not. I'll admit, I don't really know who any of these characters are outside Goku and Frieza (though I've heard of some of them, such as Naruto), and the anime aesthetic is really out of place in regards to the more realistic stages, but demi-gods fighting on our Earth and tearing it up in the process? Could be some potential there.

Anyway, drabbled this up.

Mother Earth

It was Earth, yet it wasn't.

This place shared the name of the planet that had become its home. The sky and moon were the same. The gravity felt the same. The air, before ash started to be carried by the breeze, tasted the same. The people (when there'd been people), had looked the same. And yet, it was different. Or had been different. When the buildings had been standing, they'd used a different architectural style than his own world – less rounded, less smooth. They stood in front of the landscape rather than complementing it. The vehicles were different as well, using wheels rather than hovering above the ground. And the people, while human, were only human. The animals here were simple animals. If Puar had been here, he'd have been a pet. If Oolong had been here, he'd have been lunch. If Shenron had been summoned to this world, he had the feeling that the Great Dragon would have changed everything by his mere presence.

But that had been then. This was now. He hovered above the broken city. The air around him crackled, sparks of his own ki joining that of the embers that faded into nothing. The city was burning. The world was burning. He'd seen worlds destroyed before, but he had never seen anything like this. He began to drift through the air, looking…feeling…for any sign of life. There was none. Nothing beyond the charred skeletons in the street. Some had been in their vehicles, some hadn't. Some had run for their lives, some had tried to fight. In the end, it had come to nothing.

This shouldn't have happened.

He didn't say the words out loud, for none bar himself would hear them. This shouldn't be the state of this world. If he had been drawn here first, he could have saved it. Would have saved it. Just being here, he could feel his strength being suppressed – this world, this universe, was different, as if a being like him wasn't meant to tread upon its soil. But he would have fought. He would have won. He would have done everything he could to protect this world, not just because it bore the name of his own, not just because humanity had called this world home in this universe, but simply because it was the right thing to do.

"Hello monkey."

The right thing to do. Even now, he could do that. A small part of him cautioned against the action he was about to undertake, but that time was long gone.

"Frieza."

He'd been there on Namek all those years ago. He'd seen the monster then, and now, soaring through the choking air, he could see the same monster again. Back then, he'd made the mistake of granting Frieza mercy.

"Do you like what I've done with the place? I was in the neighbourhood and just had to redecorate."

He wouldn't commit such folly again.

"Well?" the tyrant asked.

He didn't say anything.

"Nothing to say? No glib remark? No lamentations for the worms beneath us?"

'Us.' His eye twitched at the use of the word.

"Do you think I'm fazed by the silent treatment any longer? You think I-"

He ploughed into the tyrant, sending both of hurtling through a collapsed building. Dust and stone filled the air, before raining down as damnation upon the world. The brief attack hadn't harmed Frieza, nor him. But he'd made his point.

"I have nothing to say to you," Goku said.

That wouldn't stop him from making it further.

"Hmm." Frieza stood there, brushing off a fleck of dust. "You're different, monkey. I'd have thought by now you'd have given a long tedious speech about the injustice of putting other vermin in their place."

He didn't say anything. But he frowned as he saw Frieza smile.

"You feel it, don't you?" the monster whispered. "This place? How it's…different, I suppose? As if our power is being repressed?"

"I've felt it," Goku said.

"And the others?" Frieza said. "Have you seen them?"

He didn't say anything. No, he hadn't seen "others" as Frieza put it. But if Frieza wanted to tell him about this world, about the force that had taken the two of them into it, then he'd let the monster say his piece.

"Well, I have. More people prancing around. Or moping. Or doing any number of things that I just find so tedious. You can hardly blame me for wanting to blow off some steam and having some fun." He gestured with his arms, to the rubble around him. Of the bodies of those fallen, and the buildings still standing, as if tombstones reaching to the heavens. "Millions in this city alone. Some even thought they could fight me. Well, ants may have delusions of besting the bird, but-"

Goku charged, but this time Frieza was ready. He grabbed the saiyan in mid-flight, altering his body, and his attacker's trajectory. Goku quickly landed back on the ground, but his mind was racing.

This place is different.

Frieza was powerful. But in this form, the same form he'd spent most of his time in on Namek, he should have been little match for the saiyan. Here though…

He's right.

Frieza's power appeared the same. It was his that had gone down. Either Frieza wasn't affected by the dampening effect of this world, or there was an intelligence behind it. Possibly the same intelligence that had drawn them into this world in the first place. The intelligence that had deposited a monster into this city, and not done anything to stop the slaughter.

Millions.

Frieza was smiling. "Takes you back, doesn't it? Why, if you had some speech about how you're the hope of filthy monkeys everywhere and that you were going to stop me, then it would be déjà vu." He flipped his hand. "Well, go on then monkey. Do the yellow hairdo, if you can. I find blue so tedious these days." He spat. "Blue skies on this dung heap as well. Of course, not that that's a problem right now."

Goku didn't say anything. Frieza, for the first time in ages, was in control. For the first time in ages, Frieza was his equal.

"Well, monkey?" The tyrant folded his arms. "Get to it. Or do you need to round up some of your friends that I have to kill to make you all indignant?"

"You're a monster Frieza."

"A monster, a monster," he sneered, pitching his voice like a child. "That's what they kept saying before I reduced them to their atoms." He bent down, fishing something out of the rubble, pulling out a skull from its skeleton. "Other times they'd ask me 'why' or 'what are you', but 'monster' was the most common utterance."

Goku clenched his fists again. Hard. Frieza appeared to notice, given how he was smirking at him.

"Oh good, you're going to do the super saiyan screaming nonsense." He let out a chuckle. "Though I'm left to ask what it is to you?"

Goku unclenched his fists. "What?"

"Why you're so angry. I mean, I could understand me popping off one of your filthy friends setting you off. You even managed to get all buddy-buddy with Vegeta before I put that traitor in his place."

Vegeta. For a moment, Goku wondered where his friend/rival/something else was. Wondered if by now, the saiyan would have attacked Frieza already.

"But this world…"

Probably would have.

"…this world isn't yours, is it? Its people aren't yours, its cause isn't yours, and the only reason we're here is to amuse someone, so why lose sleep over that?"

"It doesn't matter which world I come from."

"Doesn't it?" Frieza spat again. "You're a filthy monkey which came from a filthy planet named Vegeta, which gave rise to a filthy race that did my filthy bidding. If you did what you'd have supposed to, your planet, your Earth, would have been like this one years ago. In a better world, you'd be no different from I."

"But I'm not."

"No, you're not," Frieza said. "But you are the one who sheds a tear for this world, when I've done the same thing a thousand times to billions." He smiled. "So go on then monkey. Get all upset. But when we get to the fighting, and the cursing, and when I do to you what I should have done years ago, just remember that while you were frolicking around with dinosaurs and dragons, I was doing this for years."

Goku said nothing, but instead, closed his eyes. Thinking of a world far removed. Of a world long gone. Frieza was right, in a sense…he hadn't been there. On Namek, he'd barely given it any thought. The devastation Frieza had unleashed upon the world, his genocide of the namekians…at the time, he'd barely thought about anything outside his friends, the world, and Frieza himself. Not from malice, but from need. But right now, in this place…he would avenge this world. Avenge its people. He would do so with them in the splinter of his mind's eye…but not just them. Them, and every other life Frieza had taken. Across time and space, they would know that this time, he fought for all of them. That now, this time, in this world beyond the reach of any afterlife…it would finally end.

Lightning crashed in the sky, as if the world, this Earth, had heard his vow. As if it uttered the words "enough." Clenching his fists, drawing back his chest, he began to yell. As his war cry, or his epitaph, he couldn't say.

"Ah, here we go," Frieza sneered.

But it would happen either way. His body glowed. His hair turned the colour of the sun. The ground cracked under his feet, and the rubble began to levitate.

"Hmm," Frieza said. "You really can't go further can you?"

At first, he didn't say anything. He was in his super saiyan form. Just reaching it had been a struggle, whereas before, outside this world, it would have been as nothing compared to his full power.

"Oh monkey, this is how it should have always been," Frieza laughed. "You, me, no pesky friends, and no oversized bowling balls to bring either of us back."

"You won't be coming back," Goku said.

"Perhaps," he said. "But when you finally pray for mercy, and I crush your body under my feet…" He smirked. "Well, I guess there's no 'perhaps' about it then, is there?"

Goku didn't say anything. It briefly occurred to him that whoever won, there was a strong chance that nothing of this city would be left standing by the end of it. That even if he did win, no-one would be here to know of his victory. He could only avenge the dead in this place, not bring them back.

But that had to be enough. Through one eye, he had to see the monster before him. In the other, he had to see the lives of those who had been taken. On his Earth, this Earth, or any other, he would fight.

"Well monkey? Are we going to start? Or do we need a narrator to lead us in?"

Goku didn't say anything. Instead, he hit Frieza. Hard. Sending him through this building, and then the next.

The first attack.

But not the last.