Hanuman is Flexing

At last, Hanuman and his party had discovered where Sita was taken. Well, they at least knew what the vulture had told them--Lanka. Though they had no proof themselves, this was their only lead and it was at least worth a shot. According to their vulture, the demon king held Sita in captivity within the fortress of Lanka. The only problem? Lanka was many, many miles across the vast ocean. The monkeys did not have ships to traverse across the ocean. While the distance was a problem as well, the hundreds of miles of ocean that was between the monkeys and Lanka was full of water demons and serpents. That is, this would be a problem if not for Hanuman. While the rest of his monkey brethren were good warriors, they were limited by the laws of physics. Hanuman, on the other hand, had been blessed with magical powers from a very young age. The distance across the ocean to Lanka would be trivial for Hanuman; he had once jumped across all of Asia in a single leap. Hanuman's best friend, Dave, looked over at Hanuman with an assured smile. "I would wish you luck, I doubt you'll need it though," Dave laughed. Hanuman shrugged humbly. "I'll take all the luck I can get, I suppose," Hanuman retorted back. Deep down Hanuman knew he wouldn't need any luck. In fact, he was excited to travel to Lanka. It wasn't very often that Hanuman was able to open up and use the extent of his powers. He was going to feel freedom. Without even taking a running start, Hanuman took a deep breath and launched himself over the waters. He smiled feeling the salt of the sea spray as he flew--this is where Hanuman felt the most at home. He felt free. As he soared through the air going thousands of miles an hour, he noticed the water beneath him starting to get rougher. The water splashed up around the flying monkey's ankles. He noticed there were hands reaching for him as he flew past--heads were beginning to pop up as water demons rose from the water with their target acquired. Hanuman was no stranger to traveling across the ocean and having to defend himself. Hanuman smiled to himself--he was going to have a little fun.

All of a sudden, a hundred water demons popped out of the water, eager for a snack. Hanuman reacted instantly by spinning around in circles at a break-neck speed. His limbs were hardly visible as they were instinctively kicking and punching at water demons all around him. Hanuman made quick work of these initial demons, and after taking out around fifty, he flew up in the air to get some space. As Hanuman peered down upon the waters, a thousand more water demons rose up from the sea. "Good...I'm all warmed up!" Hanuman thought to himself. He flew down straight in the middle of the demons, going so fast he created a sonic boom that demolished all demons in every direction within five hundred feet. Demons flew out of the water as Hanuman shot past. As he sped up, he began shooting lightning bolts out of his hand at the demons that continued to rise from the water in front of him. "You think they would have learned their lesson," Hanuman chuckled to himself. Abruptly, an enormous water serpent a hundred stories tall shook upwards out of the water. Reacting instantly, Hanuman flew straight into its open mouth and in 0.001 seconds had flown through the length of its body and burst out the back end of it, the whole time spinning and shooting lightning bolts to ravage the beast's insides. Hanuman arrived at Lanka about thirty seconds later, not even out of breath.

Author's Note: The inspiration for my story comes from F. J. Gould's prose version of the Ramayana. The specific story is within section 7, and details Hanuman crossing the ocean to Lanka. Hanuman and his crew needed to cross an ocean in order to see if Sita was in captivity in Lanka. Hanuman is the only monkey capable of making the journey, and proceeds to jump to Lanka in a single leap. He actually does meet a water serpent and defeats it using his magic. The original story I read does show this fight in very much detail, and I wish it would have. Different versions however show a more detailed account of this epic story. One version which uses more detail is the Ramayana by Valmiki!

I really enjoyed reading about Hanuman's character so I knew I wanted to write about him, and going into this post I just started with the story of Hanuman's leap not exactly knowing where I wanted to go with it. By the second paragraph, I realized I wanted to go into detail about Hanuman's magical powers and I wanted to make him fight an army as he crossed the ocean to Lanka. I added way more enemies for Hanuman on his travels to Lanka. I also boosted Hanuman's powers by an extraordinary amount. It was fun to make this character absurdly powerful!

Bibliography: The Divine Archer by F.J. Gould