Work Text:
A few decades ago, long before the very idea of a hero association existed, and a time where powerful individuals like Blast, a younger Silver Fang and Bomb, and other old fighters were the only heroes in the world, they could not be everywhere at the time. The world was a scary place to live.
Natural disasters left and right, wars and disputes over territories, and undocumented monster attacks. The world was cruel and chaotic.
Blast would usually deal with all of those problems pretty easily, but today he was unfortunately occupied with cosmic forces. This was the worst time for Blast to be occupied, as a local hospital situated in a city that would eventually become “City A” was being attacked by a malevolent monster.
Malicious and vicious. It had overwhelmed and overpowered a bastion of soldiers and armed guards trying their very best to stop its rampage. Doctors, nurses, and some medical patients who can run had fled the hospital. Some escaped and some died.
But fate focuses on a specific medical patient. Small, frail, yet ever so innocent six year old child. They were on the hospital bed and hooked onto a machine to measure the child’s heart rate and other important necessities for one's health. The child was dying and they knew it. The doctors, nurses, other medical patients, and even their own parents had abandoned the dying child to fend on their own.
With monsters running rampant, people fighting each other with unnecessary wars, and with Blast being occupied…the child’s life was on the verge of death. Either due to their own medical condition having worsened or the monster got to them as they can hear it tearing apart those who couldn't leave their hospital beds. The child knew how bad the world was at the very moment and simply …wished there were more heroes like Blast.
But today, knowing they will perish either painlessly or painfully. They grabbed a few things they can get their pale hands on. A sheet of paper and a set of crayons. Black, red, and yellow.
The child began to draw. Not Blast, not a happier life, but a hero they want to exist.
Using the black crayon first, the child drew the hero figure. A simple body, a simple hero costume with boosts, gloves, a belt, and a cape. They finished the head in the shape of an oval, two simple dots for the eyes and a small smile.
Next came yellow. They used yellow for the entire jumpsuit of the hero they imagined in their slowly fading head. It was bright as the yellow sun, even though most adults will agree the actual color of the sun is white. But for this bedridden child, it was enough.
Eventually came the color red, they filled the boosts and gloves with the defiant color red. The color of roses and firetrucks.
But they soon ran into a problem, the white crayon was on the floor, too far to reach in the condition they were in. So instead, they left the cape empty as the sheet of paper was white to begin with.
Their train of thought comes to an end when they hear the malicious monster marching down the halls. They wanted to draw more, they wanted to give more to the drawing…but they decided it was good enough.
Once they finished drawing their goofy little drawing of their ideal superhero. A hero they imagined. With the red crayon, they wrote these words underneath the hero they created.
[A Hero who can never lose]
With the last bit of life they had left, they pulled the drawing close to their chest. Pressing the drawing against their hospital gown, a single tear runs down their cheeks as they slowly pass away clutching the crude, yet important drawing they made with their idea of what a hero should be. A hero who can defeat anyone. No flare, no need for complexity, just a hero who will save the day.
The child was able to die peacefully as the monster burst in and feast on the now lifeless child. But the drawing was left untouched in their small and frail arms.
The last wish of a dying child rippled across the flow of fate itself, it didn't disappear or fade away. It stays, flowing throughout time and space to find a vessel who can fulfill the child’s promise. It skips those the very wish itself finds unworthy for the very narrative of invincibility to fulfill a dead child’s dream. A hero who cannot be defeated.
A decade or so later, it found the very champion it seeks. A twenty-two year old depressed salary man who's down on his luck, and on the verge of giving up on life, until a sudden burst of adrenaline allowed him to save a child with a literal butt for a chin from a giant crabman monster in underwear. His name…was Saitama.