Oxidation is a chemical process where an element or compound, usually a metal, reacts with an oxidant, which has a high oxidation number or high electronegativity, that removes electrons from the initial material (as you said). This cause the growth of the oxide. Since the process needs both the oxidant agent (e.g. oxygen) and the reducing agent (e.g. titanium) it both consumes and grows on the surface of the latter (the final material as an higher volume). Since the mechanical properties of the resulting oxide are usually much lower than the initial metal, and that a natural oxidation is full of impurities from the air, the metal loses its initial shape and if the process is sufficiently advanced can even break. Anyway is a very very slow process, even considering an abundant quantity of oxidant gas or liquid and very high temperatures (I'm talking about a thousand degrees).
This would require an outrageous amount of time so it probably is not a classic thermal oxidation process or better is not an oxidation process at all. Moreover, even if it transforms the enemy completely in oxide it wouldn't be disintegrated but transformed (and not all the elements can be oxidized).
Okay, thanks, so if the attack managed to disintegrate the target in a matter of seconds, it would be a safe bet that it remains at that level?
In that case the feat itself describe the scale of destruction. If the attacker has a complete control of the oxidation process the scale should vary from microscopic level to the target dimension in the feat.
Fair enough, I mean, to clarify, the attack does completely disintegrate most targets, and those that don’t do exhibit oxidation as more of a byproduct.
Yep, then it's a supernatural form of oxidation. As I've written before it should be a type of Matter manipulation (which imply also Durability negation). I said Matter manipulation because it oxidize the target in seconds. Otherwise the visual attack seems more an Energy manipulation attack, from the description you gave.
Okay, even when the target would be full on disintegrated into almost nothing?
Okay, actual when you mention earlier about thermal oxidation, the projectile has thermal as a molten projectiles with electromagnetic energy, don’t know if that changes anything
Prolly so, that's what Sentinel's gun does to Ironhide, Ironhide's head rusts into nothing.
By thermal I mean that the oxidation process is thermally based. Practically a higher temperature means faster oxidation. For processes like controlled induced oxidation, the temperature is around one thousand degrees, and that depends on the material considered, since some materials melt in that range of temperature. Anyway, as I said before this is valid for real physics, In the story you're considering it could be different.
Okay, thank you both for your answers
