Max Claiborne

Whirlwind

Max Claiborne

## Biography

### Background

When he was in high school, Daniel West was a jock through and through. He took pleasure in everything, but he especially loved sleeping around. A cheerleader at Fallville County High School named Helen Claiborne caught his eye.

After his senior year Prom, Helen and Dan went for a ride through the country where they slept together in the back of Dan’s pickup truck before he dropped her off at home, with a promise to call her soon.

However, that night, Dan picked up his buddy Malcolm Allen to drive him home and the two were never seen again, with only the abandoned truck with the seats slightly burned ever found by police.

A few weeks later, Helen was brought in for police questioning, during which she had to excuse herself to vomit in the bathroom. What she first wrote off as nerves she soon discovered was something else - she was pregnant. She told her parents soon after - causing an argument that would later be a factor in their divorce, and her mother, Elizabeth offered to care for the baby so her daughter could pursue the life she wanted to live. On November 5th,1990 Max Claiborne was born.

### Early Life

Max grew up believing that Elizabeth Lawrence and Jonathan Claiborne were his happy parents who got lucky and had a surprise child later than most did. He first discovered that the former was untrue, as Elizabeth and Jonathan were anything but happy - constantly bickering behind closed doors and just out of earshot of young Max.

Elizabeth was heavily involved in local politics, while Jonathan was a freelance photographer and journalism teacher at the local community college. When Max was eight, the two got divorced, and Elizabeth moved her and Max to National City, where they lived in the same apartment building as his “sister” Helen.

In Washington, Helen used her connections to help slowly move Elizabeth up through government positions, so she was often gone, leaving Max in the care of Helen or a number of hired nannies. While home, Max was fascinated by the growing metahuman boom he watched on TV.

### Kid Flash

On Max’s sixteenth birthday, he came home from school to find his mom, sister, and father all seated together at the dinner table. There - they told him the truth about his heritage and of his missing, believed dead father and of the deception that had been fed to him for most of his childhood.

Rather than lash out in anger, Max was understanding, but he needed time, so he decided to go take a walk and attempt to clear his head. While out walking, a van pulled up and kidnapped the boy, rendering him unconscious.

When he awoke, he found himself locked in the basement of an abandoned church, with a needle injecting Velocity-9 into his arm and a spire protruding from the cathedral in an attempt to fuel lightning into the boy. A masked man calling himself Cicada told Max that he was being offered as a sacrifice to Savitar.

As a storm brewed outside, Max braced himself to die, but through some form of divine intervention - a speedster saved him, but not the expected one, rather this one was a zombie-like man with skin melting off his charred face and a trail of smoke behind him. This in fact was his father, Daniel West, who had become a sort of ghost tethered to the Speed Force.

While he saved his son, Dan’s appearance in that moment infected Max with energy from the Speed Force. Combined with the Velocity-9 already in his system and the electricity from the storm outside, Max fell unconscious, where he was found by Team Flash. They managed to get him to a STAR Labs facility in record time which was able to stabilize his vitals and effectively save his life.

After nearly a week in a coma, Max awoke to find his mother and grandmother comforting him, as well as introducing him to the rest of Team Flash and a collection of STAR Labs scientists who were ready to help him test his new abilities - most of them had been through the test with Barry and/or Wally before.

In record time, Max figured out his powers, where he also discovered something unique to him versus the other speedsters. His grandmother had been a minor metahuman superhero named Liberty Belle during the era of the Justice Society, where her powers included minor manipulation of sound waves - a trait that had been passed on to Max.

While Wally was away at college, Max debuted as the second Kid Flash and was invited to join the Titans - where he was part of a group nicknamed Titans East due to his origin being from the East Coast. After a few years on the Titans, Max felt like he outgrew the moniker of Kid Flash and tried to change his name, and briefly went by Max Mercury, before Batman himself chastised him for using his real name.

### Whirlwind

Shortly after this, the Titans and Justice League were both shut down. Max decided it was time to start focusing on real life stuff and went to college. Max got a special full-ride scholarship to Ivy University and so he packed up his things and moved to Happy Harbor. Max studied astrophysics there, where he fell in love with a fellow student named Tina McGee, who studied nutritional sciences. The two began dating during his sophomore year.

When college ended, Max graduated near the top of the class and he convinced Tina to move to Central City with him. Thanks to Barry’s connections, he got a job at STAR Labs and Tina began doing research at Central City University. Shortly after, the two got married. During their honeymoon, Max revealed to her his super abilities - and she revealed she already knew and gave him a kiss.

Max has continued serving on Team Flash since then, even after Barry’s death. He’s been spending more time with them as they observe the Rogue War that appears to be brewing in the near future. Since Bart has taken up the Kid Flash moniker, Max has started going by Whirlwind, which he isn’t the biggest fan of, but has yet to think of anything better.