How might a superhero gain heat control powers?
Our hero is a normal teenaged boy, living in north central California. Somehow he gains the ability to manipulate heat. My original plan for his origin was a "freak snowboarding accident involving a flamethrower", but that is just embarrassingly unbelievable, and I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas.
Having heat manipulation powers means he can:
- Sense the temperatures of his surroundings, like infrared vision
- Move heat; make things hotter and colder by moving heat in and out of them. He could, say, take heat out of the air to light something on fire, or take heat away from fire and spread it into the air to put it out, or take heat away from water to make ice... lots of possibilities!
- It'll be some sort of telekinesis, he's doing it with his mind (insert suspension of belief here)
It can't be too obvious that whatever got him his powers gave him powers, because he needs to have a secret identity.
He didn't get powers on purpose (probably wasn't given them on purpose either, though I guess that's an option)
I am hoping for something besides radiation exposure, being born with it, magic, or having his DNA modified with a specially made virus.(These are going to be used for other people, and I don't want things to get repetitive.)
Obviously this isn't actually possible, so I just need something that seems mostly plausible (insert more suspension of belief).
This would be in an universe mostly like ours except there are superheroes.
(I'm thinking about making his code name "Thermal". Any thoughts?)
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1 answer
I don't know about moving heat, but seeing and generating it would be interesting.
We all produce heat, and our bodies let off infrared light. If you had an IR camera you could see someone in the dark.
So the guy is out snowboarding, loses control and smacks his head. This causes some damage, and his brain heals itself by routing around damage. As brains will do. Because how how the brain routed around, he started being able to see into the IR spectrum, to see how warm and cool the surrounding area is.
He also became able to control his own body heat, and with practice was able to focus the IR light coming from his body, to make a heat ray.
You could also say that if he's able to control his own body heat, he'd be able to move it around, so hold two glasses. One hand gets really hot, and one gets really cold.
This is if you don't want to go full on psychic with the origin story.
Edit: Also, because he can control his IR emissions, he doesn't need his remote control any more...
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