So one day you’re hit with a blast of radiation from an experiment gone wrong, or maybe struck by radioactive lightning, or caught in an interstellar radiation storm, or hit by a radioactive bus, or somehow otherwise exposed to radiation. It takes a trait, skill, or ability you already have and multiplies it, and/or gives you a greater degree of control over it. What’s your super power?
My body temperature runs a little on the hot side, I’m always warmer than anyone else. My wife says I’m like a furnace. So my super power is the ability to heat up to white-hot temperatures. In fact, The Furnace might be a good superhero name. I’ll have to start working out - a little eye candy for the ladies now that I’ll be burning my clothes off all the time (save for the asbestos briefs I wear).
I’ll go a classic approach. I want evil, multi-purpose rays that come out of my eyes. They need to be narrow like a laser, but bright red, and visible for their entire length from any angle. Tractor rays, death rays (1920s style or otherwise), etc.
Well, if we are picking whatever we want, I will go with telekinesis. If we are picking something that is already a trait of ours that gets amplified, I would become Volume Girl! I have a hearing problem that makes me damned loud all the time, and I am sure the radiation will only make it that much worse. I would be able to crumble buildings, make combustable things explode, and render an enemy helpless-not to mention deaf.
I would become Macintosh Repair Man! (no relation to Bicycle Repair Man!), i have this bizzare ability already to intuit what’s wrong with a sick Mac by simply touching it, and many times, me touching it is enough to fix the machine, as long as it’s not a defective hardware issue…
it’s actually vaguely creepy, i can pick up, say, a closed and powered off PowerBook G4 Aluminum, and instinctively feel that it’s got bad video ram, or a bad hard drive, or something before i even power it up…
If a trait gets magnified, I would be able to walk really, really fast instead of really fast like I do now. I would be able to just walk on interstate highways with the normal traffic and almost everything, even clear across the city would be reached faster by just walking.
I was told once by someone I quite disliked that my super power was making friends. I could make friends with anyone if I made the effort, and I could make the people around me get along more often than not.
If I could amplify that into a real super power, I would be more than content with it… I could be The Negotiator! I could bring world peace, or maybe just some local peace.
In real life I am the proverbial Pedestrian Woman. I am she who possess the right of way and I am not afraid to use it. Radiation would probably give me the power to cross streets in a flash or stop car accidents.
I can fall asleep more quickly than anyone I know. I can cross one eye, or hold one still while the other one looks all around. I can solve math problems in my head. I can find the blessings in whatever odd situation is occurring.
So, I’m Cross-Eyed Pollyanna Math Morpheus.
No one wants me as part of their Fab Four, or Justice League, but I know that’s for the best, because an even better super-power clique is waiting just around the corner, wanting me to estimate the ratio of my area of wandering vision to my straight-ahead vision…
ah, this is tiring, trying to wrap all these powers together, so I think I’ll take a na… snurk.
My real-life superpower is the ability to master new skills up to the point that it takes someone who really does know what they’re doing to be able to improve on me at it, except that frustratingly I tend not to get any better than that. Thus, I was able to perform on the trumpet within four weeks of picking it up(albeit with a 15-piece band to hide behind) but, five years on, the Haydn concerto is not significantly closer now than it was then.
So post-cosmic-ray-incident, I am “Renaissance Man”. With half an hour’s study I can beat the world champion at Go, teach physics at the post-graduate level, hose Tiger Woods at golf and play the stock market like a violin. Give me the workshop manual for any motor vehicle known to man and I can strip it down and rebuild it blindfolded. I can sit down with a stack of foreign-language dictionaries and by tomorrow I will be able to translate lesbian love poetry from Urdu into flawless, idiomatic Serbo-Croat; and my sushi is to commit seppuku for.
I’d be Assman. I’d be able to float the world’s worst biscuits and be able to waft streams of noxious clouds from my posterior and direct them at people. I’d of course use my powers for good, where I’d send my anal minions through the ventilation ducts and make everyone’s eyes tear up simultaneously at work. Maybe i could even ventrili-fart and make the sound and smell come from someone else at will.
Think about it! I wouldn’t even have to lift the covers off in the morning! Of course, I’d probably have to peel them off the ceiling and put new, non-curling wallpaper up, but hey, a man can dream, can’t he?
Who WOULDN’T want me in their super fun, cool, hip superhero group? You’re either having me on your team…or against me! You don’t want that.
I have the uncanny ability to make traffic lights turn red just by approaching them. Enough so that I am usually surprised if I make it through a light.
I would have the ability to bring traffic to a stand still by turning all the lights everywhere red.
I would be able to pick someones brains in 3 seconds flat
at present it takes me about 30 minutes
not at all difficult, as people like to talk about what they are interested in, and provide you ask intelligent and leading questions they pour it out.
they really like it if you play it back at them using meaningful metaphors/analogies
my uncle taught me - he was the master at getting people to ‘spill’
