Mick Rory

"Why do they call you people the heat? I'm the heat!"

- Mick confronting the CCPD

Mick Rory, nicknamed Heat Wave by Cisco Ramon, is a pyromaniac criminal and former accomplice of Leonard Snart. After selling his team out to Time Pirates, Leonard planned to kill him. Snart, however, spared Mick and left the latter unconscious with the intention of coming back for him. Eventually, he was found by the Time Masters and was brought to the Vanishing Point. Mick was, then, trained by the Time Masters and became the temporal bounty hunter known as Chronos.

Biography
In 2014, Mick was working on a job with Leonard Snart, however it went wrong. Half of Rory's body was burnt in a resulting fire, and despite being taken to the hospital for medical attention, he escaped from the ambulance and fled.

Teaming up with Captain Cold
Later that year, Snart gave him a handheld flamethrower and offered to work a few more jobs with him in Central City. Mick, pleased at the offer and the heat gun, gladly accepted. Snart had him learn how to fix up the flamethrower when needed, which proved handy.

The two men began by crashing through a frozen door in to a building. Snart had hoped to wait for The Flash, rather than steal the expensive cars inside, though he failed to appear, resulting in them leaving the scene. Back at their base, Snart revealed his plan to steal an expensive painting, Fire & Ice, to Mick, which was being brought back to Central City by a rich couple. Sometime later, the men intercepted the couple as they were leaving their plane with the painting, requesting that they call the cops.

When the police arrived, Snart attempted to use his cold gun to freeze them, though it was no match against their specially-made shields. Instead, Mick showed himself, instead using his handheld flamethrower to burn them. He was momentarily mesmerised by the flames, but he was stopped when Detective West shot through his gun from afar. They returned to their base, where Mick began fixing the minor damage. Snart quickly approached him with his gun pointed towards him, arguing that his obsession with fire would get the better of him, as with their previous job. Mick in turn pointed his flamethrower back, rebutting that Leonard was just as obsessed, but with precision on their heists. Mick wished to simply stop at the painting, but Snart wished to further kill The Flash. He reasoned with Mick, who decided to burn Fire & Ice and continue on.

Realizing that The Flash had partners, they tracked down Caitlin Snow. They took her to their hideout and recorded an ultimatum for The Flash, asking him to come to a location at sundown. Mick tied up Caitlin, who remarked upon his third-degree burns over his body. He claimed to have had fire reveal his "true self". He wished to find out her true self, but was stopped by Snart, who wished to leave. Mick gagged Caitlin and placed a bomb attached to a tripwire under her seat. At the crossroads of their meeting with The Flash, they began shooting, missing him almost every time.

However, they were able to hit him, knocking him down. Before he could be killed, Detective Thawne intervened with an element-proof shield. The Flash rushed him to safety and returned, deciding to take the blasts. He led the two beams towards each other, cancelling each other out and knocking the men away from The Flash. From there, they were arrested and taken back to the Central City Police Department. Mick attempted to escape, but was held back. They were soon on their way to Iron Heights Prison, before Leonard's plan came in to affect. The truck was intercepted and the back doors were opened by Leonard Snart's sister.

Aiding Rip Hunter
1 year later Snart and his partner Mick Rory conducted a heist on Central City Bullion exchange and making their escape in a mini-van when they were intercepted by Rip Hunter, who took them to Star City alongside the other heroes. At first, he was a helpful member of the team, working along side the others.

After finding out that he was only recruited by Rip because he was a package deal with Snart, Mick betrayed the team. No longer trusted to be around the team safely, Snart brought Mick to an unknown time period and seemingly shot him with his cold gun, Snart however, intentionally missed and instead knocked Mick unconscious with the butt of his gun.

Hunting Rip Hunter's team
Mick was found by the Time Masters and brought to the Vanishing Point. Mick was trained by the Time Masters and became the bounty hunter, Chronos.

Mick was sent by the Time Masters to bring Rip Hunter in after he commandeered the Waverider. Mick arrived in 2016 shortly after Rip Hunter's team departed to 1975. While investigating, he killed two onlookers whom he deemed to not be integral to the timeline. He then traveled back to 1975 in pursuit of Rip, where he found a camouflaged Waverider with only Jefferson Jackson inside. Mick began an assault on the vessel in an attempt to break through the hull, but was interrupted by Rip, Carter Hall, Kendra Saunders, Ray Palmer and Martin Stein, along with Aldus Boardman. They were soon joined by Sara Lance, Leonard Snart and his past self. The Atom and Firestorm tried their best to fend him off, before the team were able to time travel away to safety. During the battle, Aldus was dealt a mortal blow by one of Mick's weapons, and he passed away aboard the Waverider shortly after.

Mick later followed the Waverider into 1986 into Soviet Russia. At the same time, a Russian jet intercepted them, which Rip tricked into disabling Mick's ship. Surviving the crash, Mick worked with Time Master Druce into luring Rip into a trap with a false promise of amnesty. Before Mick could execute Rip, the latter revealed that Rory warned him of the betrayal, as his team come out of hiding and force both Mick and Druce to retreat.

Mick later pursued the Waverider in the timestream, the resulting dogfight causing the Waverider to emerge in Star City 2046.

Mick then tracked the Waverider down in 1958 and began to attack the team while inside. The Waverider was then forced to flee, leaving Ray, Kendra and Sara behind.

Mick knocked Rip unconscious and captured Snart aboard the Waverider, just as Jax and Stein merged together into Firestorm. Back on his ship, Mick revealed his retrieval by the Time Masters and conversion into Chronos after being knocked unconscious by Snart and abandoned, vowing that he would kill Lisa again and again, forcing Snart to watch each time. Mick tracked down the rest of the team to Nanda Parbat in 1960 where Kendra, Rip, Ray, Firestorm and Sara engaged him in combat where he was ultimately subdued by Ray. Before any further action could happen, Snart (now with his right hand missing after freezing it with his Cold Gun and shattering it to escape his handcuffs) stopped the team and forced Mick to reveal himself as Chronos. Mick lunged for his gun but was knocked out by Sara and woke up in a holding cell aboard the Waverider. Mick vowed to kill everyone once he got out with Rip and the others (minus Snart) believing that they could undo the Time Master's training and get their old team member back.

Personality
Mick is obsessive, unstable, a pyromaniac, hot-headed and sometimes loses focus. He is highly impulsive, combative, and is somewhat hyperactive as he despises sitting around and doing nothing. He is certainly a man of action who prefers getting things done as opposed to analyzing them as thoroughly as his.

Despite his less than sophisticated demeanor, Mick is incredibly philosophical in his view of the nature of fire itself. He had poetically described it as being ever-changing, indefinable, and transformative. He views his burns as revealing the truth of who he really is, and as such, he has embraced this self-determined truth of who he is: A man who burns the world to reveal its own inner nature as it did to him. This is an unusual trait, but does show that he is much more than the image of the unstable pyromaniac that he projects himself as.

In spite of Mick's nature, he still has a code of honor, even though he initially claims to Ray Palmer that his only loyalty is to Leonard Snart. During the rescue mission from the Russian gulag, Mick refused to abandon Ray, despite Leonard's insistence to leave him behind after Ray insulted the interrogator's mother and took a beating in order to keep Mick from being tortured further. However, it appears that any shred of loyalty and honor he has regarding Rip Hunter's team was gone when he learned that Rip only recruited him to the team to sway Leonard into joining and viewed him simply as a dumb psychopathic arsonist, causing Mick to betray Rip to the time pirates to give up The Waverider in exchange to be sent back to the present day; proving that he is a selfish man in the end.

Abilities

 * Peak of human physical condition: Stemming from his violent nature, Mick is in top physical condition, shown to be very muscular. He is very resilient, as he was unyielding to most forms of torture.
 * Expert marksman: Mick has the skill to hit multiple police officers, although they were using shields to protect themselves at the time.
 * Expert hand-to-hand combatant: Despite his unstable and hot-headed demeanor, Mick is a very capable unarmed fighter. When seemingly taken captive by a mafia boss, he and Leonard quickly broke free and killed all of the mafia boss and most of his men with ease. He was even able to fight on par with a highly skilled assassin, Sara Lance.
 * Skilled engineer: Like Cold, Rory has shown himself to be adept at mechanical engineering and repairs, as he regularly repairs his heat gun and has memorized the entirety of its design and functionality, being more than capable of repairing the secondary internal fuel chamber without assistance.

Equipment

 * Heat Gun: Can generate a beam of absolute hot temperature. When fired, the heat gun increases the temperature of the air dramatically, like some sort of "extreme heat wave". This wave achieves "absolute hot", or Klein temperature. When activated, certain lights on it turn red, in contrast to the Cold Gun's blue. The weapon can burn almost anything. The flame blast projects to any location and burns anything in its path.
 * Goggles: Mick also wears a pair of black wraparound goggles, which are designed to protect his eyes from the flashes given off by his heat gun.

Trivia

 * His mom played Captain & Tenille records back in the '70s.

Behind the scenes

 * In the DC Comics continuity Chronos is an alias used by three different, but loosely connected, super-villains, two of which being enemies of The Atom. The first was David Clinton (first appearing in The Atom #3, 1962), a meticulous thief who based his crimes on precise timing and used gimmick time themed weapons. This character did, in fact, create a time traveling machine which latter became the basis of his successors' own equipment. The second incarnation of the character is Walker Gabriel (debuting in Chronos #1, part of his 12-issue mini-series), an actual time traveler and a reluctant hero. The third incarnation of the character is Jia (intoduced in The Atom comics run of 2007), a Chinese woman who had been in a relationship with Ryan Choi, Ray Palmer's replacement as The Atom. She partnered up with Clinton in a scheme to torment Ryan Choi and destroy his life.
 * As the name implies, the characters relate to Chronos, a pre-Socratic Greek deity who personifies time.
 * Chronos has been called Darth Vader and Boba Fett, two characters from the Star Wars franchise.