Calvin Rankin

**Calvin Montgomery Rankin**, also known as ***Mimic***, is a Class 5 mutant from the United States and one of the X-Men.

## Biography

### Early Years

Calvin Rankin was the son of a scientist who was working on various dangerous experiments. As a child, Calvin was not allowed in his father's quarters where the experiments took place. However, at a young age, curiosity got the best of him, and he entered his father's lab. While exploring, he accidentally knocked down a beaker filled with an experimental chemical, causing the formation of a red gas which he breathed in. The experiemtn his father was working on altered his body and caused his latent mutant powers to manifest.

Calvin soon became the best at every sport, mimicking the abilities of the best players without anyone knowing. He started to become hot-headed and arrogent as his powers grew, and soon, all of his friends and classmates began to dislike and distrust him, referring to him as some kind of robot. Calvin eventually lost all of his friends, but he blamed it on their jealousy, noting that he did not need any of them and was better than all of them.

When Calvin's father found out what was going on, he knew that, eventually, everyone would turn on Calvin, so he moved them into the middle of nowhere in the hopes of curing his son. For months, Calvin's father worked on a machine that would remove his son's powers in the hopes of giving him a normal life. However, he never told Calvin what the machine really did, instead telling him that it would make his mimicked powers permanent. Unfortunately, people in a nearby town heard about the machine being built on the Rankin residence, and a mob set out to attack Calvin and his father. To prevent them from reaching the machine, Calvin's father set off an explosion but was accidentally killed in the blast. Calvin managed to survive the explosion and swore that he would exact revenge on the people who forced this all to happen.

### X-Men

Calvin first ran into the X-Men when he was trying to get a date with Vera Cantor, who, at the time, was dating Beast. Being the hot-head that he was, he pushed Beast to attack him, who was shocked by Calvin's Beast-like defenses. When Iceman intervened to help Beast, Calvin retaliated by throwing a snowball he had created at Iceman's head. Some nearby construction workers saw the fight and quickly assumed that Calvin was a mutant who was attacking two normal teenagers. Calvin quickly used his newfound powers to escape from them but became frustrated when these powers began to fade, realizing that he was mimicking the powers from the two men he was fighting. He decided to find the rest of the X-Men so that he could gain all of their powers permanently with help from his father's machine.

Some time later, Calvin happened to run into Phoenix and followed her back to the Xavier Institute. Although he returned the following day, Professor Charles Xavier correctly guessed his intentions, and the X-Men engaged Calvin in combat. Despite Calvin besting them at first, the X-Men were able to use their teamwork to get the better of Calvin in the end. Ultimately defeated, Calvin burst into tears at the loss of his father and the desperation and loneliness he now felt. Xavier removed Calvin's memories of his fights with the X-Men, hoping that Calvin would be able to live a normal life, which he did as he joined the X-Men.

## Powers and Abilities

### Powers

**Power Mimicry:** Mimic is able to copy the knowledge, skills, and powers of every individual within a certain radius of himself. This applies to both superhuman and "normal" abilities, as shown when he duplicated the athletic skills of football players in high school. He has shown the capacity to manifest numerous abilities with the same level of skill as the original owner. However, he occasionally shows difficulty in juggling multiple powers, and his body can be overloaded by absorbing too many at once. Mimic usually loses his duplicated abilities once he is out of range of the user.

### Abilities

* **Biochemistry:** Mimic is a self-taught biochemist.

### Weaknesses

**Bipolar Disorder:** Mimic suffers from bipolar disorder.