Real name is Rafael "Rafe" Lafferty. Twice married, had three kids by his first wife, Angie, (whom he married when he was twenty) and has two small children by his current wife, Gwen. Born and raised in New York City, Lafferty's in his late thirties. His father was a crime boss, later stopped by Sage. He started to train as a priest, later as an FBI man, never finished either, later becoming a repo man and warrant server.

POWERS: Able to transform into energy---and the only thing that keeps the fireball he becomes from destroying half the American continent is that the other part of his energy becomes a magnetic "bottle" holding his power in--and from then into other living beings. (A nickel's worth of matter was turned into energy to become Hiroshima's destruction.) The law of conservation of matter dictates that he can't become anything too big--he can't become an elephant or a whale, for instance. He weighs 160 lbs...which means he could turn into a huge and massive wolf--or two 80 pound wolves. Or two eighty pound baboons, each of which has strength surpassing a man's. Or twenty eight-pound falcons. Or a huge swarm composed of thousands of flies or bees or wasps.He can set a time-limit for the transformation, when the beings he becomes instinctively come together and transform back to Flickerflame's human form. (The longer he stays in a beast-form, the more bestial and dim his thoughts get.)

He can imitate most human forms with ease. (One of his favorite disguises is to become a little old bag lady.) Think of him as a combination of Mystique and Beast Boy/Changeling, with a conservation of energy/matter limit.

Origin: Like the others of the Next Level, he was an experiment of the Zha'Tahn, methane beings from another star system who are most comfortable in frigid gas giants like Jupiter, where they have built a colony. Managed to escape by himself, a feat that earned Sage's respect.

Group Affiliation: The Next Level, sometimes called the Command. Position within the group: advisor, negotiator, operative, troubleshooter. Known for his quick wits and planning.

Motivations: He actually resents the Next Level as a heavy-handed fascist group drunk on power and holding humanity back. He's determined to bring them down and let humanity decide its own destiny. Secretely examining the group for weaknesses to exploit.

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