QUICKSILVER

 

QUICKSILVER

Real Name: Pietro Django Maximoff

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #4, March 1964

Powers: Quicksilver is a mutant who possesses superhuman speed, created and maintained by a number of complimentary mutations. His powers were enhanced dramatically by exposure to Isotope E, a radioactive evolutionary aid created by the High Evolutionary. He has superhuman strength and durability across his entire frame, especially concentrated in his lower body. Pre-Isotope E estimates gave him the ability to lift 1,000 lbs with his upper body, and marked his legs as having Class 1 strength. Pietro's durability allows him to resist the adverse effects of air friction, of striking the ground with intense force while running, and he has a unique lubrication in his eyes that prevent them from drying out at high speed. His joints are also specially lubricated to make them move faster and with more fluidity than normal. Pietro's body does not produce fatigue poisons as we do, making his metabolism almost four times as efficient as a normal person's and giving him phenomenal endurance. Originally clocked at 175 mph, Quicksilver became capable of exceeding Mach 4.2 to an unknown degree after his exposure to Isotope E. His perceptual abilities and reaction time have been enhanced as well, enabling him to properly recognize sights and sounds in his environment even while moving at his top speeds. He is capable of a number of feats such as dodging bullets, speed-reading, running across the surface of water or up vertical inclines, and just generally performing different actions far faster than the human eye can follow.

After losing his mutation on M-Day, Pietro regained superhuman powers by exposing himself to the Terrigen Mists of the Inhumans. He now possessed the ability to travel forward through time at will, by vibrating his atomic structure so that it shifts in relation to time's flow. This ability only transports him through time, not space, as every time-jump causes him to rematerialize in the future on the exact spot he was standing in the present. He can jump anywhere from a few seconds into the future, to weeks and possibly months further along the timeline. There seems to be a set limit to the amount of time he can hold the temporal vibrations that engage his time-jumps, and he will return to the present whenever he exceeds this limit or consciously chooses to return. Pietro's return jumps carry him back to the exact instant he time-jumped into the future, keeping him linearly present through the timestream. He does not necessarily return to the exact spot he time-jumped from, however. If Quicksilver moved to a different spatial position before returning to the present, he will rematerialize in that new spot. As a result, if he time-jumps forward and then returns to standing on the exact spot he materialized from before returning, someone observing him in the present would see nothing more than a slight blurring vibration come over him for an instant to indicate he time-jumped; if he moves physically while in the future, his return to the present can make it look as if he instantly relocated across the room or vanished entirely, depending on how far away he traveled spatially while time-jumping. He is capable of bringing small inanimate objects forwards and backwards in time with him. Because he always returns to the exact instant he leaves, every time Quicksilver time-jumps there are two of him running around in that time-frame. If he chooses to, Pietro can multiply this effect by doubling-back on his own timeline, effectively duplicating himself many times over. To accomplish this, he jumps a few seconds into the future, creating a version of himself which will eventually jump back in time to the instant he left. Once his present self reaches the point in time where his traveling self materializes, he jumps ahead a few seconds again, and the cycle continues. This technically means that every Quicksilver but one will have already lived through the period of multiplicity at least once.

This new power was seemingly taking its toll on Pietro's health and body, but the full extent of this is unclear. The mists were supposed to only restore his powers temporarily, and he needed additional exposure to the mist in order to maintain them. However, after immersing himself in the mists for an extended period of time, Pietro has absorbed the Terrigen compound into himself, making his abilities effectively permanent. Furthermore, Quicksilver merged with the Terrigen crystals physically, shattering them directly into his flesh. He gained the power to release the mist upon command to restore powers to mutants on M-Day. This effect could also be used on existing mutants, overloading their powers with a form of bio-feedback that temporarily incapacitates them. Since having pulverized the crystals out of his body, Pietro can no longer reactivate mutant powers, and his time-jump power vanished. He has since regained his superhuman speed.