[COLOR=SLATEGRAY][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3] P A S T - P A R T O F T H E W O R L D A T W A R S T O R Y[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR] [CENTER][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/t7lbzrP.png[/IMG] [b][h3][color=Red]T H U N D E R[/color] A N D [color=yellow]L I G H T N I N G[/color][/h3][/b][/CENTER][COLOR=red][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]L O N D O N E N G L A N D[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][INDENT][sup][color=silver]September 7[sup]th[/sup], 1940 - 10:55M | [i]A City on Fire[/i][/color][/sup][/INDENT] Though the sun had set, the clouded sky wasn’t dark. It burned with the reflections of the fires in the city below. At the moment, things were calm, relatively speaking, but the tension in the air was palpable. One did not need the wisdom of Solomon to know that the Germans would return for another run. Billy Batson [i]had[/i] the wisdom of Solomon though, and he was currently using it to access historical accounts of battles and warfare that might assist him in determining where the next assault might come from. So far, he hadn’t gleaned anything useful. He wasn’t sure that Solomon actually had any knowledge pertaining to aerial superiority or the weaknesses of the german Heinkel 111 bomber. He was contemplating the limits of this particular facet of his powers as he assisted in putting out fires where he could, and moving rubble to free trapped people. The civilians and authorities were wary of him at first, several military officials had initially trained firearms on him, but once he had made his intentions clear, people seemed to relax, and several people he had never seen before insisted that they had been saved by another like him quite recently, though he didn’t know of any others like himself. He was too busy to question anyone about this phenomena, but he certainly made note of it. He alighted on the roof of a (mostly) intact building, and took a moment to survey the surrounding area. There was a large tenement building which had been toppled by the concussion of one of the german bombs. There was a lot of noise in the city, even now, and it was hard to isolate sounds, but he thought it unlikely that the building had been safely evacuated. He took flight, and as he neared the building, he increased his speed, sure now of what he thought he heard before. Several voices, a family, perhaps more than one, were calling for help or groaning in pain. This wasn’t the first situation like this he had found. He was confident it wouldn’t be the last. He rocketed toward the building from the sky, concerned now that the fire would spread and burn the people alive. As he approached, flying above and parallel to a street intersecting with the one the building was on, he heard a rush of air, and the crackle of electricity from below him. He looked down, barely making out a red and blue streak moving swiftly in the same direction as him. The thing, whatever it was, also seemed to be producing a trail of lightning behind it, and moving quite a bit faster than himself, he noted. Billy was stunned. Faster than Mercury? What [i]was[/i] that? The electrified blur shifted direction suddenly, pausing just long enough for Billy to make out that it was a man. At least, it appeared to be, but it certainly didn’t move like anyone he had ever met. The man shot off toward the flames, and started running circles around them. Billy didn’t have time for introductions, and this gale-force-made-man seemed to be helping, so he instead focused on the task at hand. As he reached the building, he began to move the rubble, dislodging the smaller pieces with ease, until he came to a large slab, the culprit behind the civilians predicament. He gripped the slab in both hands and heaved, floating into the air and keeping the giant stone above his head. “Better hurry, folks!” He said to the dumbfounded families who stood staring up at him in awe. He noticed that some of them were wounded, and likely couldn’t walk. He had shifted the rubble in so much that he couldn’t drop the slab without dropping the entire building on them now though. For a moment, he panicked, then he looked over at the man-shaped lightning bolt putting out the fires, “Hey, they can’t all walk, and I can’t let go. Can you help, mister?” He called to the man, then cursed himself inwardly. [i]Mister? You can’t talk like a kid anymore![/i] [hr] It was another day, another bombing. Part of him wondered when the time would come that Britain or the United States turned around and went ‘No, that’s enough’. The time was coming, that he knew. Though it wasn’t coming fast enough for him. Jay sped through the city, by this point people knew what the sirens meant. The call to shelter, the sound of bombs. He had been nipping between cities for the past month, living as close to the coast as possible and trying to predict the destinations of any planes that flew overhead. His sole mission was to warn the people who could make a difference, dim the lights and man the guns. Once that was done, it became a job of evacuation. Jay grabbed people, moving them to the underground. Shifted debris out of paths of the emergency services and in general did as much as quickly as possible before the bombs came anywhere near the city. By the time he could hear the bombers approaching he was standing atop a building overlooking part of the city. Obviously not everyone was evacuated, it was a massive city after all. Instead he tried to predict where the Germans might strike, he’d find out soon enough how good his predictive skills were. As he heard the first bomb drop there was a break in the clouds, Jay caught sight of the bombers and was off in a flash speeding towards the target of the bombings. Jumping over obstacles and running around fire engines and ambulances. He spent the better part of half an hour rushing people to hospitals, and putting out fires. As the bombing let up he paused for a brief moment, looking for the next source of flames he turned and ran as fast as he could. He ignored the stench of flesh, the taste of smoke. Approaching a fire near a building he began to run around it in a circle, a new trick he had recently learnt. That if he run around a fire fast enough, the ensuing vortex would starve the fire of it’s oxygen putting it out. Faster than running back and forth with buckets. He didn’t even notice the flying man - dressed in a similar outfit - land nearby until he spoke up, and Jay had to take a moment to get around the fact that he was holding a significant chunk of building above his head. Jay couldn’t really judge however, I mean he was able to run faster than anything he had ever seen on the planet. With no real prompt necessary Jay ran underneath the slab of concrete, grabbed someone and then ran towards the nearest hospital. Then back again, grabbed another and back to the hospital. He saw everything going past him, while to anyone watching the exchange he would have just been a blur grabbing people and then disappearing before returning for another. As he returned to the building once cleared he gave the man a tap on the shoulder, before running back out from below the concrete. “You can drop that now, buildings clear.” Billy watched the man zip in and out of the building, and in less than a minute, the man gave him the go-ahead to drop the slab, and the rest of the building with it. When the dust settled, he got a chance to look at the man finally. The lightning bolt… “Do you know the Wizard? He didn’t tell me there were others.” Billy said, raising an eyebrow in curiosity before putting one hand forward, “You can call me Shazam. What’s your name?” Jay clasped the man's hand, and shook it. A considerably larger hand, with more muscle than he had ever seen. It didn’t seem really possible, what was happening to the world? “Names Jay Garrick-” What was weirder than the name was the mention of a Wizard. Was it some kind of alias? That would make sense. “Also I don’t know this Wizard fella’, he some kinda scientist responsible for-” Jay gestured to ‘Shazams’ entire body “-Well… that?” Billy was taken slightly aback by Jay’s response, but he quickly corrected the look of confusion on his face, and smiled, “Scientist? Uhm, yeah. Something like that. Maybe I’ll explain later. For now, I think we were pretty effective working together on this one, Jay. Let’s keep it up, wadda ya’ say?” Billy was more than curious as to how this man could do what he could and [i]not[/i] be mystically empowered, but he figured he’d ask the Wizard when he returned to the Rock of Eternity. “Well, try and keep up. We’ll speak after.” With that Jay turned and sped off in the direction of another building, part of him liked the idea of someone else like him. Another part couldn’t help but be suspicious that someone else just so happened to turn up also using the symbol of lightning where he happened to be. Billy did try to keep up, but after a few hours of working with Jay, it became apparent that he would need to leave the speed to him, and stick to the heavy lifting. Regardless, their alliance proved a successful venture, and stories of the Thunder and Lightning duo would be told in years to come by many British survivors, and lucky German pilots.