Mark Allan

## Personality

Mark Allen is an ambitious and intelligent individual. These two factors make him a driven yet dangerous combination. Inspired by his father’s success to outshine, he desires to utilize his intellect to try and become wealthy. He sees money as a sign of status along with pride outdoing the competition. However this also leads to Allen being willing to take hazardous short-cuts or risks when it comes to his endeavors in applying his intellect in becoming wealthy.

However, he is not a bad person per say. Mark Allen is a good man who cares very much for his father, his biological and step mothers and especially his younger sister. In fact, some of his motivation is to ensure their quality of life. This does blind him to the dangers, especially combined with his temper. While not a short fuse, he can be hot-headed and when agitated, his intellect goes to the wayside because of it, causing him to make mistakes.

## Powers & Abilities

***Molten Epidurium Infusement*-** Mark Allen was coated in an extraterrestial-sourced epidurium, bonding with his skin at the cellular level due to being bombarded by unstable amounts of vita radiation, with the process giving Allen limited control over the applications of the exotic metal.

* ***Superhuman Durability:*** Thanks to his metal coat, Allen is heavily resistant to physical injury, much more so than an ordinary human. He is capable of withstanding high caliber bullets, great impact forces, falls from great heights, powerful explosions, and temperatures well in excess of 500 degrees Fahrenheit without sustaining permanent energy.
* ***Superhuman Stamina:*** The energy that caused the organic metal to bond to him also augmented his stamina to superhuman degrees, likely to be able to handle the greater weight and mass of his metal skin.
* ***Superhuman Strength:*** The organic metal and process also augmented Allen’s musculature, augmenting his strength to be able to lift up to 10 tons.
* ***Superhuman Temperature Production:*** The unstable process of the metal being bonded means that intense stress or energy causes the metal to become highly energized and thus, Allen radiating large levels of heat, increasing his temperatures up to 500 degrees Celsius
* ***Molten Metal Production:*** The process that bonded the metal to Allen's skin on the cellular level means Allen's body can rapidly produce large amounts of the metal within the modified cells. This metal produced can be excreted and shaped by Allen to a degree, usually as streams or as clay-like piles.

## History

### Making a Mark

Mark Allan was born the oldest child and only son of Wilson Allan, owner of the popular upper-middle class venue, the Avenue Dinner Club and an unknown Puerto-Rican woman. Growing up, Mark was primarily under the care of his mother, who he adored dearly and later his baby sister Liz. However, when he was ten, the unknown Ms. Allan passed away from unknown circumstances, of which the only details known are by Wilson Allan. This left the young boy heartbroken. It was for this and personal reasons the Allan family relocated over to Queens and going to Midtown. He was twelve at the time. Around this period, he also left behind the original site of the Avenue Dinner Club, it opening up once anew in Queens.

Despite this period of financial instability, Liz remained an upbeat force within the house, which helped him persevere as the big brother, throwing himself in his studies. However at the same time, he would sometimes get in trouble, usually in attempts of trying to earn some extra income for the family. However, Mark's life changed once more when his father brought home a new woman that he had been seeing, Doris Raxton. She had been a loose friend of the family, but grew closer over the years. Doris became Mark’s step-mother when he was fifteen. His relationship with her was complicated, especially since she could not exactly replace his mother. At the same time, she helped ease the burden of being by himself and Doris’ support during his time in high school helped him deal with his issues.

Eventually, he would graduate around the time Liz entered high school. He began pursuing a college degree in the sciences, seeing it as a fast-growing area where he could apply his smarts to make his way onto getting a solid job for himself. He would do well in his classes and get a good job helping to manage the Avenue Dinner Club to earn some income. At the same time, his reckless side came out more here in his growing sense of gambling.

### Becoming Molten Man

Eventually, he would land an internship with Dr. Miles Warren, a biochemistry teacher over at Empire State University. He would help manage the various scientific equipment though he couldn’t also resist taking a peak and wondering what were the experiments Warren was getting up to. One morning, after a weekend meteor shower, he saw a strange rock on a platform. Warren revealed that it was a fallen star composed of a strange metal, later revealed to be a type of "proto-epidurium". Allan spent his time on it as his personal project, realizing its properties and hopes to be able to try and do more with it. However, he would then see Warren doing his own research by super-cooling the metal into a powdered state before blasting it with vita radiation, having stolen it from Mark.. An argument escalated and Allen grabbed the container, just as the machine fired. The energy hit Allen and caused him to fall, the container cracking on him and cutting him, the metal now bonding to his flesh. Mark Allen would run out, going into hiding.

Suspended for his disappearance, Allen needed some money and it would not be long before he heard of the mafia’s massive bounty on Spider-Man, thus began Molten Man's manhut for the Web-slinger

## Trivia

* Mark Allen initially called Doris Raxton “Ms. Doris” or refer to her as his stepmother before he grew close to her and called her “mom.” When he speaks of his biological mother, he refers to her as his *“mamá”.*

* For his college tuition, he won a scholarship though he supplemented that with money he made by gambling, notably card-counting via blackjack.

* Allen on occasion would visit back the high school to pick up his sister, especially after her study sessions with Peter Parker. He admits that Peter will quickly surpass him regarding his knowledge.

* Mark Allen has a tendency of saying “it’s a lock” whenever he is at the cusp of a major success, breakthrough or guarantee of something.

* He was the one who came up with the idea of combining last names for Doris’ sakes. He notes that he wanted to make up to her for how he was a bit rocky with her at first.

* Beyond card counting, his preferred method of gambling was betting on horses. He claims it was because he could empathize with their need to win.

* His bookie during his track gambling, Blake “Blackie” Gaston is a manager of the Big Sky Lounge and is rumored to have mob connections.

* During the months of the internship, Mark noted he was never entirely comfortable with Miles Warren, noting there was something very suspicious about him. During a review of finances, the sketchy transactions had him consider reporting Warren for suspected embezzlement of university resources.

* After his accident, “Blackie” Gaston was the one who told him of the bounty and that with the money, it could persuade the officials to clear any suspicion using certain people. Allen’s suspicion of Warren increased when Gaston muttered something “knew Warren was bad news”, but chose not to pursue that line of inquiry for now.

* The process that bonded Allen to the epidurium was unstable. According to Allen's own observations, he hypothesizes that prolonged bonding would lead to overproduction of the metal-bonded cells could lead to permanant damage through the cells and damaging bodily functions, along with the unstable heating element possibly overheating him from the inside.