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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....
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.
