The Chemist
Name: William "Bill" Bender
Occupation:Criminal
Age: 40
Nationality: American
Marital Status: Separated
Affinity: Himself
Aliases: Redox, The Chemist, The Chemical Wizard, The Modern Merlin, Skullface, the Wizard of Gothic
Base of Operations: Gothic City
Origin: Who is Bill Bender? That is the question of the hour. The answer? He was a normal man, before his skin fell off. It all started when he began to see electrons. Just little, vibrating dots. It wasn't so much seeing them as feeling them. He watched them shake, shooting off into other orbitals, trading places whenever a chemical reaction took place. Then he started touching them.
After a few weeks of this, he woke up next to his wife of five years, missing all of his skin. No organs, no flesh, not a single ounce of sinew or muscle on him. Needless to say, she left him, screaming. Things started to go South for a little while, but they've been looking up since then. He hasn't heard from his wife, but he's had no problems with money. After all, a gold bar is just a touch away. As for what he does...well, he's not sure yet. After so many dull years, he's looking to live life to the fullest. He might have been thrown a bit of a curveball, but that's not bothering him at all.
Indulging in the high life and making lots of new friends (and a few enemies), Bender's finally seizing the moment. He's made the Large Hadron Collider obsolete, for one thing, but he's not going to cash in on that little jackpot just yet. He's thought about going to therapy, but hey, what do they know? Nothing. So right now, he's just moving on, having a blast, looking for a cause. He's got nothing to lose...and everything to gain.
Yeah. He's a little dangerous. But just a little.
Personality: Bender's smart, first of all. Quick with a joke, and quicker with an answer to whatever solution may be at hand, he'd rather think his way out of a dangerous scenario than use brute force. He's also a little bit unstable, given his unique condition. Having previously been married, and possibly with a child on the way, Bender was understandably distraught when he lost all of that along with his organs. He's gotten over it, though, in his own special way. He's a lot more reckless now, and doesn't always give heed to important things, like the law or civilian endangerment. But he's still a good guy, he says. Still a good guy.
Powers
Bender is an altered human with an extraordinarily powerful gift; his vast potential for both creation and destruction makes him extraordinarily dangerous. The ability in question? Bender manipulates subatomic particles.
A superpower that is far beyond mere brute strength or flight, Bender's gift lets him bombard substances with electrons, altering their charge, resulting in vast differences in their properties; he can rip away a positron from an unstable element, forcing it to spontaneously decay into another; he could turn the water in your body into hydrogen gas, then ignite you from the inside out with a click of his fingers. His potential is limitless; his capacity for rage, wrath, and pride, uncanny. With undetermined motives and the power to rend apart the atoms that compose the world around him, Bender is truly a force to be reckoned with. He's very much like a wizard, except his powers are all based in real science. They make sense and follow natural laws...usually.
Bender has an intrinsic understanding of chemistry, brought about by his unexplained development of superhuman abilities.
In short, Bender has telekinesis, except his power extends not to things we can see, but to the very fabric of reality itself: atoms. He can mentally manipulate electrons, neutrons, and protons, forcing them to move via a telekinetic field. This field can barely be detected by conventional means; Bender merely thinks about changing the structure of an atom, and it happens. He can direct the particle away from it, or absorb it into a small ring of energy, commonly wreathed about his head while in use. All of his powers become easier or harder to use based on how much he needs to alter the subatomic configurations of each substance. He cannot easily turn fluorine into francium, but nitrogen to oxygen would be easy; merely add a proton, electron, and neutron, and voila! The various categories Bender uses his powers for are as follows:
Alteration: Bender removes subatomic particles, or even atoms themselves, from a compound, changing it into something new. For example, he could tear away the two oxygen atoms from a water molecule, leaving explosive hydrogen gas behind. Alteration is a relatively simple ability for him to use, and enables him to drastically affect the world around him. He can break the bonds that comprise compounds, forcing them into their basic chemical states as elements.
Destruction: Bender steals away the very particles that compose something, keeping them for himself. This results in the material decomposing completely, torn apart on a molecular level. Because matter cannot be created or destroyed, Bender can merely move it from one place to another. Keeping it intact, however, is another story.
Nuclear Transmutation: Bender can also manipulate nuclear particles, inducing subatomic change by extracting particles that are not located in the orbital shells of an atom. Bender has demonstrated the ability to induce nuclear decay in atoms by making them highly unstable, thus turning them forcibly into another element. This power is highly limited; Bender can only turn substances into others that are nearby on the periodic table, and thus mostly alike in their properties. Bender has also demonstrated the ability to induce a fusion reaction (the simultaneous combination of alpha particles so as to create energy from matter), but doing so is so extraordinarily dangerous without containment that he would never willingly do such a thing.
Creation / Synthesis: Bender can chemically combine substances by merging their electron fields, developing a new compound. An example of this would be forcing a reaction between oxygen and iron, causing the iron to rust at extreme speeds. Bender's synthesis works, of course, only with elements that can actually be chemically combined.
Kinetic Energy Dispersal / Control: Bender can excite the atoms of a substance, pushing them towards higher and higher levels of energy. This can induce extreme heat, and can cause targets to burst into flame. Bender can also reduce the heat of a substance, forcing it to become cold. This power is typically used in conjunction with other abilities, such as igniting hydrogen gas that Bender creates from water.
"Skeletal" Physiology
Prolonged use of his powers has caused Bender to develop a solely skeletal physiology. The cause of this is unknown; how he survives in such a state is a mystery even to him. He is exceedingly fragile, but he can rebuild himself from being scattered; while such an endeavor is painful, it does not cause him lasting harm. When scattered, however, he is incapacitated for a long time. The entirety of his skeleton must be in the same place for him to reconstitute. They are no longer composed of calcium and other biological aids; rather, they are now chemically reinforced, making them borderline indestructible. His skeleton is held together by intermolecular forces; the harder he focuses on maintaining these forces, the more difficult it is to scatter him about. He can control his own disembodied bones even without the skull being attached.
Bender's five senses have been replaced with new ones, each connected to the chemically imbued bones that were within his form. He can "feel" through the ends of them, the atoms within reacting precisely to all manners of stimuli imaginable. Now seemingly a psychic force possessing his skull, Bender is still by all means alive. He no longer requires food or oxygen to function, but still likes the feel of a cigar between his bony teeth.
Bender speaks by manipulating the molecules in the air to produce sound waves, mimicking his voice through vibrations. While such a precise task would theoretically be impossible, it was actually the first thing he learned to do, just as simply as regular speech.
Bender has been known to wear masks and skin-like gloves to disguise his condition.
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