Okay, now, me - I'm no science whiz. But I'm betting more than a few of my fellow Legion Worlders have earned their merit badges in chemistry frrom then Young Junior Space Explorers. So, you tell me, what can Chemical Kid do, unaided by Element Lad, other than make stuff rust away to nothing really fast?
Posted by the Hermit on :
Seems to me he should be able to make things spontaneously combust.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
I'm pretty sure he could help a drunk Polar Boy sober up really quickly.
Posted by Invisible Brainiac on :
And give enemies lots of gas.
Chemical King once sped up his own metabolism to give him some uper strength/speed, but it lasted only a few seconds. Chemical Kid also slowed down Night Girl's metabolism once.
Posted by Set on :
By speeding up or slowing down (or just flat out stopping!) the chemical reactions that occur when a nerve fires and relays a signal to the next nerve in the chain, Chemical King / Kid could cause someone to have super-fast reactions and reflexes (which they'd likely have zero experience with, leading to them spazzing out and convulsing and stumbling all over the place), or such deadened reactions that they'd feel like they were moving in slow motion, or just flat out paralyzed.
If he could fine tune that, he could also exacerbate or diminish someone's awareness of pain (or other tactile sensations, like pressure or temperature), causing someone to collapse in agony from the sensation of their own clothing against their skin, or to be able to function despite a terrible injury, in a critical situation.
Waking people up or making them pass out by affecting chemical states in the brain should be pretty basic, placing someone straight into a deep sleep, or forcing an unconscious ally to wake up.
Shutting down someone's metabolism, for most species, wouldn't have any great effect on a micro-scale (the duration of most fights), but interfering with the body's ability to process oxygen (preventing oxygen molecules from chemically bonding with iron / hemoglobin in the blood, for instance) could cause someone to pass out from oxygen deprivation, in a room full of air, futily gasping. Enhancing that functionality could allow someone to breath and function normally in a lower-oxygen atmosphere (or operate for a few minutes longer without oxygen at all, say, underwater), or cause a normal person to become 'drunk' (or even die!) from 'too much oxygen' despite being in a completely appropriate oxy-mixture for their species, as their body metabolizes it *too* efficiently!
Even the most super of folk, such as Daxamites and Kryptonians, seem to eat and breathe (even if they don't necessarily have to) and have nervous systems and sleep cycles and all sorts of other human-like body chemistry events going on that Chemical Folk should be able to tinker with, either enhancing them, crippling them or even killing them. More recently, Levitz has suggested that Chemical Kid can tinker with a Daxamite's ability to 'metabolize solar energy' and shut down their powers, suggesting that this is also a chemical process (or one dependent on Daxamite body chemistry).
What would probably have made even more sense, would be to tinker with the chemical formula that gave the Daxamite his lead immunity, causing it to wear off, or whatever chemical process it was using to give him that immunity to fail to function, or even to function too well, causing it to wear off faster, or somehow interfere with other Daxamite body functions (unable to interact with other elements that he needs to survive, like iron to metabolize oxygen, or something, and not just lead).
Even if Chemical Kid couldn't affect the anti-lead formula itself, due to a lack of knowledge of how it worked, he might still be able to affect the Daxamite's body chemistry, causing it to react as if lead was present by greatly enhancing the Daxamite's chemical reaction to lead so that contact with *anything* triggers his 'allergic reaction.'
As an interesting bonus, assuming that the reactions that occur in a Daxamite's body in response to lead exposure, or a Kryptonian's body in response to kryptonite exposure, are indeed chemical reactions and not, like, magic curses or something, Chemical Folk should be able to shut down that reaction in an ally, preventing them from being affected by lead (or kryptonite) for a time.
This might be something of a 'Hail Mary' if Superboy had a chunk of gold K thrown at him, and everybody flinched, afraid that he'd just lost his powers *forever,* only for Chemical King to smile and say that he'd prevented Superboy's body from reacting to the gold K, and it would be best to get it away from him now...