Captain Atom (New 52)

*"Given the scope of it all. Time. The Universe. All existence. It's easy to get overwhelmed."*

## **Summary**

**Captain Atom**, whose real name is **Nathaniel Adam**, is a central character in the New 52 DC Universe. Originally a U.S. Air Force officer, Adam became Captain Atom after a military experiment went awry, causing him to be atomized and subsequently reintegrated. Now with god-like powers, Captain Atom struggles with his humanity while seeking to understand the extent of his abilities and use them for the greater good. As Captain Atom, Nathaniel Adam possesses almost limitless potential. He can manipulate matter at an atomic level, allowing him to transmute substances, create force fields, and unleash devastating energy blasts. His abilities extend to time manipulation, flight, and near-invulnerability. Despite these impressive powers, his new atomic nature also brings with it the risk of losing control and causing destruction on an unthinkable scale. Captain Atom's relationships are often strained due to his altered state. However, he has been both a member and ally to various superhero teams, including the Justice League. His significant adversaries include Major Force, a similarly powered being born from the same project that created Captain Atom, and the destructive entity known as Monarch. Captain Atom's attempts to control his powers and prevent them from harming others often pit him against military and governmental agencies. In the narrative of the New 52, Captain Atom's storyline involves him trying to balance his immense power with his lingering sense of duty and morality. He often wrestles with existential questions about his place in the universe and the nature of his existence, while also being drawn into conflicts that threaten the Earth. Captain Atom's journey is a tumultuous one, marked by battles with cosmic entities, temporal anomalies, and his own internal struggles with power and identity.

## **Base**

### **Output:**

#### Transmutation

* Atomizes some mechs, and saves his air force friends in their dogfight.
* Turns a villain's mech into air and dust with a wave of his hand.
* Absorbs all the energy from a nuclear meltdown, turns lava and magma into snow, makes the new volcano formed under the reactor inert.
* Goes into a child's body at cellular size and cures him of cancer, with some struggle due to this being his first time attempting something like this.
* Grabs a man's shoe with a board as he falls, gives a woman superhuman strength to save her kid, disintegrates bullets as they are fired at civilians, pulls an overdose of pills from the body of a woman, and pulls off other feats of heroics as he tries to help people across the planet.
* Contains and absorbs the blast of a nuclear weapon as it goes off.
* Releasing the excess as a small blast that destroys the ground.
* Disintegrates a barrage of missiles and then turns some fighter jets into feathers.
* Ranita, using powers gifted to her by him, uses them to disintegrate a jeep being used by marauders.
* Was the one that created the sudden volcano in New York when being jostled through the timeline.
* Fights off future versions of himself.

### **Defense:**

#### Blunt

* Tanks getting whacked through multiple walls by the Quantum Field lab rat mutated into a store.
* Fights off future versions of himself.

#### Piercing

* Guns are utterly worthless against him.

#### Energy

* Flies into a reactor having a meltdown when a volcano suddenly arises into it, bathing in the nuclear energy as he disperses it.
* Withstands some time in an energy projector specifically meant to use his weakness of having to maintain his form, breaking out with some seemingly cosmetic damage at most.
* Bathes in the fires of the sun.
* Withstands being blasted by an energy cannon created by Dr. Megala.
* Withstands being attacked by a sphere created by his future self's church with his energy, then being forced through the ground into magma, and the shot out into the timestream again.
* Fights off future versions of himself.

#### Regeneration

* Reforms himself after being atomically dispersed during his work to save New York from a reactor meltdown, forming in a nearby river.

### **Speed:**

#### Combat

* Captain Atom and Flash converse in microsecond time as they intervene in the Libyan Civil War, destroying weapons and vehicles, stopping gunfire, and moving people around. The two fast enough to witness and intervene in a nuclear explosion going off in slow-motion to them.
* Weaves through attacks from a mutated lab rat that was also affected by the Quantum Field.
* Fights off future versions of himself.

#### Reactions

* Atomizes a mech chasing a jet mid-flight.
* Travels across the world helping people as he can.

#### Travel

* Can fly into the outer atmosphere of Earth in a short time.
* Travels from California to New York in 1 second and 14 microseconds.
* Takes Dr. Megala from Earth to the edge of the universe in a short while.
* Travels from Earth to the moon in an instant.

### **Misc:**

#### Physiology

* After being atomized in a Quantum Field experiment, he reforms himself, now as Captain Atom.
* The atoms of his body are constantly in a flux comparable to nuclear fission, giving his body great amounts of energy.
* After reforming himself once from a nuclear reactor incident, he can now passively detect and read into all kinds of waves and energies, starting to overload his mind as everything hits him suddenly.
* Learns to use everything he is perceiving to a focus, able to hone in on a video feed of a kid in a hospital with cancer to go help him. After arriving at the hospital, it's shown he can also make himself imperceivable.
* Continues to help people across the world while invisible.
* Before full control of his powers, just touching him caused a friend of his to burn her arm severely and leave her comatose.
* Can feel everyone killed and absorbed by the Quantum Field lab rat by touching it.
* Deflects missiles being shot at the Quantum Field lab rat to stop it from absorbing all the energy.
* Reluctantly kills the Quantum Field lab rat by overpowering it and making it fade into non-existence.
* Once more adept with his powers, he heals his friend from the burn on her arm and comatose state caused by exposure to his power earlier.
* Creates clones to scour the Earth in the future to find his future self.
* Can see data as it travels.

#### Transmutation

* Creates a flower in his hand while in space, then letting it instantly wither.
* Transmutes the air around Dr. Megala into nitroglycerin to subdue him.
* Ranita, using powers bestowed to her by Captain Atom, freezes the deserts near Mecca to stop some raiders.
* Ranita then heals a woman who was shot by the raiders.
* Absorbs a future version of himself to fight an even further version of himself.
* Creates a living copy of himself in mortal form to allow him to experience a normal life.
* As he rests in the Continuum Facility while his mortal body is on a date, his wandering mind accidentally grants the ironic wishes of the staff at the facility.

#### Time-Space Manipulation

* A version of himself comes from the future to contact him.
* His future self pulls him into the timestream itself and other versions of himself converse about the possibility of changing the timeline and how his future selves cannot do it.
* Goes back in time to undo saving the life of a boy to avoid himself ever getting a God complex.
* As he rests in the Continuum Facility while his mortal body is on a date, his wandering mind accidentally grants the ironic wishes of the staff at the facility, even pulling from their past and making their memories manifest.

### **Weaknesses:**

#### Time-Space Manipulation

* Cannot freely alter the timeline as he wishes.