Part of being a superbeing is the urge to show off--to see what they can do.

One of the things that always bugged me in comics is how casually the law of conservation of mass-energy is violated. 160 pounds of Bruce Banner became a thousand pounds of Hulk. 180 pounds of Ray Palmer became fifteen pounds of Atom. Beast Boy could become anything between a mouse and an elephant, with no explanation of where the mass came or went from.

Poul Anderson, in his "Operation" series, pointed out his werewolf hero changed to a hundred-eighty-pound wolf---truly a monster wolf. Wolves tend to be between eighty and ninety pounds. But it preserved conservation of energy....

Flickerflame changes into animals, a la Beast Boy/Changeling. But he conforms with the law of mass-energy conservation. He can't become an elephant or a t-rex---but he can become, say, two wolves---or two eighty-pound baboons, any one of them which are stronger than any man---or twenty eight-pound falcons---or eight hundred vampire bats--or thousands upon thousands of wasps or flies.

He can set a time limit on the conversion, and have the seperated selves gather together at a certain time and turn into the fireball again....and from thence to Flickerflame.

He can't change into something unliving. If he changes into something without a way to breathe, a metabolism, etc, he'd die.