Martin Walsh

Egomaniacal. Misanthropic. Curmudgeonly. Spiteful, stubborn, petty, childish, shallow, arrogant, condescending, patronizing, mischievous, narcissistic, deceitful, cynical, irresponsible, curious, fearless, heroic.

Genius.



"A child prodigy, watched over by a bitter and cynical genius, taught to value the ingenuity of the human spirit above all else. Now a man, living in a dead world, hoping only to reach the apex of human potential before the Earth around him suddenly realizes its passed mortality and succumbs to its own toxic fatuousness. Thus the stage is set for the tale.

"A tale that begins, as so many of mine do, in my Dark Den of Dank Discovery. This time it's in the Ukraine, though unlike the last three moves, thanks Indian government you self-righteous bag of dicks, this particular set up was actually pretty stable for about a year. Just enough time to really kick into gear one of my dream projects: a quantum propulsion system! Designed to fuel amazingly fast transportation using only the inherent atomic energy of whatever it's propelling, plus, through use of some pretty trippy quantum mechanics that I really don't feel like diving into because honestly who has time for that, you're here to learn about me, allow said propelled object to give a big middle-finger to Newton's Third Law of Motion. If that sounds like a rehearsed pitch, that's cuz it is, cuz you really don't have much time to woo a bunch of angry Eastern European paramilitary leaders when you're asking for a disgusting amount of money and creative freedom. Notice I said 'paramilitary groups', not 'terrorist groups', I'm usually not a terrorist, hell I'm not even a great paramilitary, I just take their funding and build fun crap. I mean, what they use it for is their own bag, not my responsibility to tell them how to play with the toys they bought. Wow, that sounds really morally questionable out loud. Man, that raging alcoholism is gonna kick in sooner or later.

"Anyway! So Lenin or Gorbachev or Dracula or whatever their names are set me up with this nice rig and let me start working on this thing. Year goes by, I'm having a blast barring the few poorly-attempted coups that I got caught in the middle of, which sucks cuz I don't even do coups, too passive aggressive for me, but year goes by and I've got this whole big thing set up. My baby! Quantum propulsion system, hooked up to bleeding edge quantum computing systems, powered by communism or starvation or whatever they have over there instead of electricity, the literally poor bastards. First test subject: a bike, because apparently we could afford mad-goddamn-science but not an automobile. But apparently I picked just the worst day to be alive, let alone be turning on my machine. As I'm fiddling with the final calibrations, bam! Shooting! Explosions! Angry Ex-Soviets shouting in Angry Ex-Soviet! Black ops troopers coming in hot from all sides, abort abort abort! And prom's tomorrow!

"Turns out the U.S. government wanted a certain Eastern European paramilitary organization stomped into fine red white and blue mist. Why, God only knows, they had practically ran themselves into the ground by the time ol' Uncle Sam showed up, but who am I the question the infinite wisdom of the United States? Those guys have never blundered ass-first into anything, after all. They were probably there for me, but no one should have been able to track me down. Anyway, so they're raiding this base, they've got us pinned, they were not screwing around, and I'm stuck in the lab. Now I'm a slippery scoundrel, but even I needed a speedier exit than was available to me. Unless, of course, you counted the utterly untested, prototypical Weird Science thingamabobber that I had at my disposal. Trusting my big lovable burly guards to soak up bullets for me, a job they performed fantastically I might add, I rigged the whole thing up to go and get me my Hot Wheels. But as in all great science, there are unexpected variables. In this case, massive amounts of high explosives being chucked willy nilly into the lab. Long story short, I screwed up the procedure bad, and wound up being the first quantumly propelled object.

"I didn't find that out, of course, until I tried to stumble my way out of the room and ended up in Germany. Literally Germany. What a way to find out you have super powers, am I right? One second it's all borscht and 'да', next second, hey, Wall's down and we won the Cold War! So I drunkenly stagger my way around whatever schnitzel eating hellhole city I was in, it's all a daze, I can't really remember, and by the time I wake up the next morning I am pissed. Those freedom loving bastards corked up my project! I start trying to hit up my old contacts, y'know, shady officials, scientists, espionage folks, and nothing. They're all dark. No one was around to tell me why I had stormtroopers all up in business outta nowhere. Suspicious. But I needed a plan, regardless.

"So here I am in the nation of lederhosen, lost and confused and righteously pissed at America, with amazing abilities at my disposal. Realizing I was on my way to becoming Hitler, I went with option two: go be a superhero in my hometown, Boston, where I could get all up in the government's grill and screw with them as much as I wanted out in public where they couldn't even stop me. Quick trip across the pond, I set myself up in one of my old safe houses, whipped out my real name because why the hell not, not like they have it on their watchlist or anything, and start coming up with superhero ideas. I figure I really wanna rile 'em up, so I go with the most obnoxious, 'hail citizen, lovely weather' jackass I could think of just so I can be a media darling, and dress up like I just walked out of a bad steampunk cosplay convention. Start calling myself 'Doctor Mercury' cuz, y'know, science and speed, makes sense, start running around saving people, meanwhile good ol' Martin Walsh is just working on his science in his basement, still trying to figure out how to get back at the people who messed up one of his favorite inventions.

"But of course, someone had found and robbed one of my cash stashes, so here I find myself in need of a day job just to pay the damn rent. Whatever. Whip up some wildly over-qualified credentials, find a crappy work environment, get some dirt on the bosses, bada-bing bada-boom, I'm a science teacher at the local high school. Why, you might ask? Because I get off on lording my intelligence and authority over you, as I am a massive hypocrite.

"So to answer your question, James," Martin wrapped his speech up to his mostly-comatose class, "no, you may not share the 'badass' story about Doctor Mercury you saw on the news. The character is supposed to be a fool and you should all be smarter than idolizing him, dammit." Sometimes his overwhelming genius was a difficult burden to bear in a world full of dullards.

"Gonna be honest, Walsh," James retorted, "I stopped listening, like, immediately, man."

"You're high schoolers. Literally everything I say throughout the course of the school year will be ignored by you. Why do you think I told you my whole, insanely illegal life story?"

The bell rang.

"Welp, that's the end of class. I guess just go home and get blackout drunk or smoke crack or play hopscotch with meth drawings or whatever it is you kids do these days."

"It's like 11 AM, man," one of the students called as she gathered her things to leave.

"You know," he said, "I don't even bother to keep and eye on the clock. I just have too darn much fun being paid to tell other people they're wrong."

Originally designed to be a physics melting revolution in motion, Martin has been subjected to the effects of his bleeding edge quantum propulsion system. He can use his atoms' quantum energy to propel himself at over twenty-one hundred miles per hour and incite and control quantum fluctuations in his atomic structure to side-step Newton's Third Law. He can move without breaking his bones, grab things without shattering them; or he could channel that latent kinetic force into steel-crushing blows, or into burning things with sheer friction. Acceleration, momentum, inertia, and other binding laws of movement have become his playthings. With his mind having been similarly affected, Martin can shift his perception of time to match the speeds of his body. The seconds in his world are as to centiseconds in others'.


His mind having been turned into a sort of biological quantum computer, Martin experiences a sixth sense that links him to all material quanta in the universe, effectively tying every piece of matter in existence to his proprioception. This allows him perfect regulation of his body and a near-omniscient sense of his surroundings. Most of this information is not consciously registered; while theoretically he should be able to read the entire physical plane at once, his brain is not physically equipped to handle that much information, and he can only get even the faintest hints of information up to a mile out from his location, but beyond that, fuzz. Even then, much as tuning out background noise or peripheral vision, Martin senses but files away most of the input he receives from the Quantum Sense. Like one would use any other sense, he can focus it to analyze more closely specific stimuli. He could, for example, read a book with his eyes closed by zeroing in on the structure of the ink, though he would be less able to process information from other sources and would be dulling his perception of his other surroundings.

In practical terms, the Quantum Sense allows Martin to have perfect equilibrium and constant 360-degrees awareness. He can sense even slight shifts in movement, read a room like an X-ray, run an obstacle course blindfolded and hogtied. It acts as both a radar and a danger sense, tying in to his super-fast reflexes. Additionally, he can use it to navigate and perform simple functions at super speed without also speeding up his perception; he could run a mile in an eye blink both to an onlooker and to himself.


Martin's body is cultivated to superhuman levels by the guidance of the Quantum Sense. His regulatory systems operate at perfect efficiency, his every biological function runs precisely in sync with the others. He heals rapidly from even the most grievous injuries, has massive pain tolerance, is almost immune to toxins and disease, has minimal need for food, water, and sleep, and has nearly limitless stamina and athleticism.

Martin is hesitant to push the upper limits of his speed, as the amounts of unstable quantum energy needed could potentially induce rapid radioactive decay on his atomic structure and kill him.


While potent, Martin's Quantum Sense is limited by the processing power of his brain. With a large amount of loose, electrically charged, or otherwise chaotic matter in a close space, Martin's ability to make sense of the Quantum Sense can be effectively overloaded, nullifying his situational awareness and equilibrium.


The Quantum Sense struggles to interpret material magical phenomena, resulting in distorted and fuzzy imagery, forcing Martin to "read the negative", as it were.

As one of the world's foremost mad scientists, Martin has untold genius. He is one of the most intelligent people alive, and spends a great deal of his time on whatever physics-breaking pet project happens to have caught his attention.


Martin maintains two entirely separate personas; one as the oafish, cartoonishly good-spirited superhero Doctor Mercury, and the other his real identity of the embittered mad scientist Martin Walsh, using a media sponging alter ego to both distract from his projects and schemes, and to annoy the US government for having had the audacity to interfere with his research. He can't ever let his identities slip, lest the ruse be up and his trollish amusement be ruined.


The Quantum Sense grants Martin a constant comprehensively detailed sphere of situational near-omniscience a short distance from his person. Under normal circumstances, it is nearly impossible to ambush, trap, deceive, or otherwise surprise him. Also through the Quantum Sense, he is almost always able to intuit the most efficient movement or physical course of action in a given situation.


Martin can perceive time in centiseconds, as opposed to standard seconds, allowing him to essentially slow the world down around him.