The usual legal Disclaimers apply here. Bellisarius Productions owns the fictional NCIS and all things related thereto. I make no money on this, darn it. Only Original Characters such as Dr. Samantha Sky are mine.
This story takes place outside of my ongoing series of mysteries. Actually, it's outside of a great deal, so pull up a chair as we join

Abby in Wonderland
By JMK758
Chapter One
Storm of the Millennium

The lightning storm that assaults Washington and turns the midnight sky into a day and night strobe is the worst - or best - that Abby has seen in years. Cloud to ground bolts stab the night in a billion volt spectacle as great as the torrential rain.

Dubbed by the NWS 'the Storm of the Millennium' it unleashes, in near and distant blasts, fingers of power that slam the city. Abby and her roommate Sammy Sky stare at the devastating display and Abby feels it's as erotic as it is devastating. The thunder is a thrilling, continuous series of deafening blasts, some of which shake the building with their power. Their ears barely have time to recover from one explosion before being assaulted again, and those bolts that crash behind the third floor apartment brighten the sky and street to nearly daytime intensity, while the nearly blinding flashes before them precede by instants blasts that seem to batter their bodies even through the closed windows.

One could easily fancy that Thor and his fellow storm gods of a hundred religions have declared war upon humanity.

x

"Oh my GOD!" Sammy Sky, bent beside her at the window, exclaims. Abby knows she loves thunderstorms, the more violent and spectacular the better, so as she clutches her white nightgown at her chest Abby's not sure if it's an illusion of shielding or semi-orgasmic delight? Her voice rises nearly three octaves as a bolt crashes down six blocks away and thunder shakes the building. "That was INCREDIBLE!"

The petite blonde normally speaks the language of emphatics and this time the excitement is justified.

"We think it's the sunspot activity making things so intense," Abby declares, linking herself with a city full of impressed meteorologists.

"OH GOD!" Sammy screams, barely heard over the explosion of a blast that touches ground half a block away. This close, the lightning cracks like a whip snap independent of the thunder, startling in its intensity and volume. Each snap makes the women jump in their skins.

Sammy presses to the glass, trying to see more and better. Torrents of rain make it hard to see beyond three blocks, but nothing can mask those fingers of power.

"Aren't you glad to be up here?" The phenomenally mirthful ME trainee had wanted to go to a Club. Fortunately, she'd watched ZNN.

"You kidding?" Less than half a mile away a thick bolt splits to stab two spots in the beleaguered city and the simultaneous explosion rattles what had, until now, seemed secure panes of glass. "We'd be fried out there!"

x

Normally Abby would consider such a declaration to be hyperbole but today she considers her friend to be trying out some rarely attempted understatement. As she watches another half-dozen jagged spears stab various parts of DC - far and uncomfortably near - she considers the potential damage of this storm.

Sunspot activity indeed. Gamma and other radiations pelt the Van Allen belt each second of every eon, but tonight they must be pounding it with a cosmic sledge hammer. She wonders if an aurora is visible above the clouds that cover the city in a thick blanket.

She's turned her computer off and unplugged everything; no possible surge protector could deal with amperages of this magnitude, but tomorrow she expects to hear lengthy stories of-

A blinding flash and deafening *SHZRACK-BOOM* drive her back from the window, Sammy's shriek lost in the masonry-obliterating blast.

"FRACK!" Sammy yells, probably because she too is half-deafened, "that was right across the fracking street!"

"Sammy..."

"Come look! It turned that tree into toothpicks!"

Abby returns to her place. Toothpicks is an exaggeration but the tree is definitely stunned and missing quite a few pieces. Looking through the fire escape she sees one branch, as thick as her waist, lying on the sidewalk. Only the torrential rain eases concern about fire from the smoking limb.

Leaning on the windowsill, Abby reconsiders this front-row seat for the FX show of the millennium. "I really think that's enough for now."

Sammy turns up to her. "You kidding? When'll we ever-?" SHRA–BOOOOOOMMMMM!

Abby, blind and deaf, has a second's sense of flying backward.