Author notes

PLAYING WITH FIRE, Page 2

alschroeder

on April 1, 2013

Part of being a superbeing is the urge to show off–to see what they can do.
One of the things that always bugged me in comics is how casually the law of conservation of mass-energy is violated. 160 pounds of Bruce Banner became a thousand pounds of Hulk. 180 pounds of Ray Palmer became fifteen pounds of Atom. Beast Boy could become anything between a mouse and an elephant, with no explanation of where the mass came or went from.
Poul Anderson, in his "Operation" series, pointed out his werewolf hero changed to a hundred-eighty-pound wolf—truly a monster wolf. Wolves tend to be between eighty and ninety pounds. But it preserved conservation of energy….
Flickerflame changes into animals, a la Beast Boy/Changeling. But he conforms with the law of mass-energy conservation. He can't become an elephant or a t-rex—but he can become, say, two wolves—or two eighty-pound baboons, any one of them which are stronger than any man—or twenty eight-pound falcons—or eight hundred vampire bats–or thousands upon thousands of wasps or flies.
He can set a time limit on the conversion, and have the seperated selves gather together at a certain time and turn into the fireball again….and from thence to Flickerflame.
He can't change into something unliving. If he changes into something without a way to breathe, a metabolism, etc, he'd die.