Quick Observation

You ever notice that there are some powers that good guys don't usually have? Think about it for a second...here is a list of a few I can think of off the top of my head:

• Life Drain
• Various Forms of Possession
  
• Raising the Dead
• Fearful Presence
• Cause Pain
  

These aren't all either. In the Wild Cards series there are two characters who both get their powers in a similar fashion. The bad guy gains his power though death while the good guy gets his through life. On the show Heroes there are two very similar characters (or there were until recently), Sylar and Peter Petrelli. Both can assume the abilities of other people. Peter has to merely be close to the person to mimic their power, but Sylar has to open their skulls and mess with their brain to take the power, resulting in death in all but one occasion. Peter's father, Arthur Petrelli, also can gain other's abilities, but he has to remove them from the person in order to do it. One of the former level five prisioners, Knox, becomes super strong when those around him are afraid.

I would like to see a new breed where this line becomes blurred. Good guys struggling to use stereotypical "bad guy powers" in the cause for good. Imagine a good guy choosing to save an innocents life by draining the life of a bad guy, and the moral dilemma that would follow.

Just something I thought....

Look at me, I'm someone else!

Shape Shifting, Shape Changing, Morphing... It goes by many names but it boils down to the same thing; the alteration of one's self into the appearance of someone (or something) else. This power, like so many others has seen so many different incarnations. Some, such as the Animorphs series, require direct touch but are limited to animals, while others, such as Mystique from X-Men, can only imitate people that they have personally seen and can recall, and still others, such as Mr Nobody from Wild Cards, can turn into anyone or anything they can imagine. Other varying factors have been size and duration.

This power also exists in some very specific forms in literature and mythology. Werewolves are one the most obvious examples. Their change is solely to the form of a wolf (although the interpretation as to what exactly this entails varies widely) and is usually dictated by the cycle of the moon. Sometimes werewolves will gradually take on aspects of the wolf as the moon approaches full and gradually lose them as it approaches new. Other interpretations suggest a radical transformation only under the direct full moon. Aside from the werewolf, there is also the vampire. The myth is that a vampire can turn into a bat, and in some instances a cloud of mist. Like the werewolf, the interpretations vary widely, not all vampires can turn into one or the other or sometimes either. And there is the glossed over transformation into the vampire itself. All of these things are the shape change ability, albeit in very limited forms.

To speak of self reconstruction, we must look at two main questions. First, what can be changed into? Can only human forms be taken, only animals, only one form? A specialization, such as only humans or only animals is often made in my observations, but I think this power would be best if there isn't a limit to what can be changed into. Which then brings up the next question, are there size limitations? If you are simply changing your form into that of something else, the conservation of mass/matter comes into effect either limiting your selection or forms to those whose body mass reflect your own or shifting into any form and scaling the form down to fit your mass, such as Kid Dinosaur in Wild Cards. The flip side of the coin, is that you can actually change shape and size, such as turning into a 20ft King Kong or a 3in high mouse. In these cases would conservation of mass/matter apply? If it did then when becoming something huge you would need to absorb energy or matter from somewhere first, and be able to bleed it off when you want to change back.

It is also interesting to think about a few other questions in relation to this power. My favorite being, does the creature (be it human, animal, or other) need to be real in order to be changed into? Unless your power requires you to actually have the subject present when you change into it, I see no reason why you should be limited to what is real. When you change you will be creating a picture in your mind of the form you will be taking, thus, you should be able to become something you imagine, because that is basically how the ability works to begin with. Second, would you take on mental as well as physical aspects of whatever you change into? What I mean is, if you change to look like President Bush, would you seem like a very awkward (ok moreso than he already is) Bush, almost like you were someone pretending to be Bush or would you have changed your mind a bit as well to filter your thinking through his mannerisms and method of speech? If this isn't the case, you may look like a dead ringer for the person, but you will never pass as them to anyone that knows them because everyone has little things they do and ways they talk that are unique. The other side of this then is, if you become an animal, do you have that same 'filter' I mentioned in regards to humans? Again, if you don't, not only will you look awkward trying to walk on two legs if you are a four legged animal, but you wouldn't be able to fly as a bird without practice, and you wouldn't be able to focus each seperate eye if you became a lizard. Each animal is wired a little different to accomodate their different strengths and weaknesses, and if there isn't some primal filter in place there is no way a shape changer could make any animal form work without years of practice for each form.

Up in the Sky!

Flight

• The motion of an object in or through a medium, especially through the earth's atmosphere or through space.

Who wouldn't like to fly? Some might say that those afraid of heights wouldn't want to, but I say 'Nay!" Fear of heights is merely a fear of something which we can't control. If one could fly there would be no reason to be afraid of heights, cause if you fall...well you won't fall long. But I digress.

Flight comes in many forms. You can fly in planes, on hang gliders, with a jet pack, from a sling shot, or through the eyes of another on video. Superheroes and super villains often fly either with wings or through some means of inner propulsion; control over wind, energy burst, or sheer force of will. I will discuss more of this in a minute, but something I have not see much mention of is that of how they survive it.

When you fly you generally travel higher up in the sky which means the air gets thinner and things get colder. Also, when you fly you are subject to air friction, and the faster you fly the more friction you are subjected to. All the superheroes that can fly as fast or faster than planes, how do they handle all these factors, especially those that wear those skimpy suits. For those with bird like wings, it is probably safe to assume they have the extra lung capacity and air sacs to accommodate breathing in the thinner colder atmosphere. For those that use a control over wind, why not assume they keep an unconscious flow of warm air coming over them. The jet pack or hang glider users would obviously be bundled up and wouldn't be moving faster than they could withstand. Those that use some sort of energy burst could be assumed to be surrounding themselves with enough to bleed off the excess friction and warming the air. Those that can just fly, with no visible physical cause are the oddities. I prefer to assume that because there is no visible cause for their flight, there is also an unseen cause for their ability to withstand the pressures of flight. I friction specific field that surrounds the flyer and protects them from those effects, but I think that they should still be effected by cold and thinning of air.

Moving on from the effects let's look at the means of flight. For this setting I will focus on wings, energy burst, and force of will. Beginning with the easiest, the energy burst, this requires the person to propel themselves much like a plane or a helicopter. Simple enough right? But what about the surrounding area when they take off or land? Would the expulsion of that much energy damage the surrounding area to say nothing of the people. And wouldn't this method of flight tire you out very quickly. Not to mention that your speed would be limited by how much energy you can put out quickly. Now wings present an all new set of problems. To lift your average human the wings would have to be enormous. The idea that Gail Gerstner-Miller (Creator of Peregrine from the Wild Card series) James Patterson (Creator of Maximum Ride) have run with is that of hollow yet strong bones, much like those of birds. This allows the wing span to not be gargantuan. Still, wings either would have to take the place of the arms, or have a whole separate set of muscles and lots of practice in controlling both arms and wings at the same time. And finally the tricky ones...those that fly under the force of their own will such as Superman and Nathan Petreli (from Heroes). I won't try to talk about how it works, because I'm sure there are thousands of ways it could be explained, but I would talk about the advantages and disadvantages. First off, there aren't muscles to use you simple will yourself into the air and there you are. This means of flight doesn't cause destruction nor would it drain your energy as much as the others. And the biggest advantage would be that you are most likely to be able to hover and take off quickly. All in all, while the wings would look cool, I think the most effective would be being able to fly under force of will. It offers more flexibility.

Trump Power

Telekinesis or TK:

• The movement of objects by scientifically inexplicable means, as by the exercise of an occult power.
• The production of motion in objects (as by a spiritualistic medium) without contact or other physical means
• The power to move something by thinking about it without the application of physical force
• The direct influence of mind on a physical system that cannot be entirely accounted for by the mediation of any known physical energy.

Basically, the ability to move things with your mind. The extent of this power varies greatly from story to story. My favorite measure of the strength of the power has to be the interpretation from the Wild Cards series. The "Ace" I'm referring to is The Great and Powerful Turtle. In the books, his TK is only limited by his confidence in himself. So theoretically he could move buildings and fling them into space if he was in the right frame of mind. It seems to me that if your confidence is the way you measure your TK strength...then the best way to insure you can always use it strongly would be to work out your TK. Like you would with your body, lift things of increasing weight and size. If you were to do this consistently, you would always know that you can lift up to a certain weight, unless your mind were supernaturally or chemically altered.

But why do I consider this the "Trump Power"? Well, mainly because it can mimic most of the major powers people think of; flight, super strength, super speed, super jumping, force fields, etc... Not to mention that proper application can render the TK being almost invulnerable to harm. This isn't to say that they can't cut themselves while performing everyday functions, but that basically no one else could cause harm to this super powered person while they are conscious. By studying up on locking mechanisms and security systems they could easily by-pass them to steal objects or information, or to ambush a "bad guy". TK could even conceivably be used to block another's abilities, assuming they have a physical component, by imagining a wall to block or a slide to redirect another's power. The possibilities are nearly endless, and the more a person were to exercise their power, the more they would know they are capable of doing and thus the less likely they would falter.