Voices Pt.2

"I'm not Superman," El tells himself.

"Correction, El. You aren't 'Superman.' But everyone, including you, has a power."

The voice is familiar now. El closes his eyes, but a throbbing headache distracts his focus of escaping the darkness that engulfs him. The discomforting pulsation is momentarily diverted by a childhood memory of his first Transformers action figure: Windcharger, the heroic robot warrior El received on his eleventh birthday. It is now the voice that guides him.

"Freedom, Eu El, is the right of all sentient beings."

"That's what Optimus Prime would say," El answers with inspiration.

"El," Windcharger says, "your sister is in trouble."

The boy sulks back into a quiet depression, defeated by the reminder of what is awaiting on the other side of the door.

"Hey, keep your chin up," the familiar voice continues. "I'm your alter-ego, remember? Like me, you're fast. It says so on the back of my tech spec. 'Fastest Autobot over short distances.' Remember?"

A spark of enlightment fuels El's young spirit. "W-w-we're... alike!"

"We're not just fast, Eu El. We can do what only a few are capable of."

"What's that?"

"Eu El," Windcharger whispers, "in times of darkness, look toward the light of YOUR matrix; there, you will find your answer."

Eu El peers back into the dark emptiness of the room, his baby sister's giggling turns into cries of pain. The shadow, a frightening sight from afar, lifts its frozen touch from his sister's forehead. El sees the shadow reach into a cupboard that seemed to materialize behind her.

Though his fear grows, he is able to whisper a familiar battle cry that he softly breathes to himself.

"Transform and roll out."

With childlike uncertainty, naive to whatever consequences awaits him from behind the door, El takes a step into the infinite darkness. He walks toward the shadow as it continues searching through the cupboard.

El moves, but the room and everything inside stretches away in a convincing illusion that almost teases his sister's crib in front of him like a light at the end of a tunnel that never gets closer.

Quickening into a full sprint, El again hears Windcharger's encouragement, "Remember my motto, Eu El!"

"'Quick action equals quick victory!" El reminds himself.

Eu El, his nature innately calculating the degree of acceleration, realizes that running at superhuman speed is the only way he can reach his sister.

Like a calculator, he factors into the equation the variable of the moving crib that is distancing itself at a faster, increasing rate.

He knows what must be done, but he does not know how to achieve the physical impossibility of superhuman speed.

He searches for a strength that could transform his doubts into the miracle his sister needs; something beyond the average that no dark supernatural power could compete with, nor defeat. Whether or not he was capable to run that extra step, or two, between each rest of his frightened heartbeat, Eu El knows for his sister's sake that he must try.

In his hesitation, a second of peace passes as he discovers the answer which hid dormant in his young, distracted mind all this time. A solution which he could believe in:

Making a choice.

He forces an effort of speed fueled by belief, where belief was almost unspoken of in his reality. And, in his acceptance, he becomes that something he never imagined he could become.

Within the darkness, he lights the way with a glowing streak of a blurred blue bolt of lightning trailing behind him.