History Main / LiquidAssets

* ''Franchise/Mistborn'': A Feruchemist can store youth inside an atium metalmind, temporarily becoming physically older than their chronological age, and then draw the youth out again to become physically younger for an equal amount of time.

* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', Bartholomew Kuma is able to push EVERYTHING with his hands. Sounds useless, right? He can push even physical conditions out. So far, it has been shown only with pushing pain [[spoiler:out of Luffy,]] which manifested as a giant red bubble. [[spoiler:It then made a viable projectile, with a small bit of the bubble knocking Zoro to his knees. And then he took it all in. [[MadeOfIron This trope's image]] is the end result. You can't see it in the picture but he is more or less unconscious. While standing.]] The wounds weren't healed, but the 'donor' felt great after waking up.

* The movie ''Film/{{Lifeforce}}'' and the book it was adapted from, ''The Space Vampires''.

* ''Literature/NowhereStars'': Discussed and Lampshaded; the main character is a MagicalGirl who uses her LifeDrain abilities to sap "health" from people, staving off her own terminal illness. When she meets with a doctor who specializes in the overlap between magic and medicine, the doctor points out how this makes ''no sense'' from a logical standpoint, since "health" is just a word that means "the absence of illness" and isn't an energy source you can drain and stock up on. This is to demonstrate that magic doesn't care about things like "logic" or "laws of nature" and so it works anyway.

* Franchise/MarvelUniverse villan Selene, in her earlier appearances in ''ComicBook/NewMutants,'' was an energy vampire; as she sucked the life out of her victims she became younger and more beautiful; as she used her powers up, she would look older.

* ''Series/BabylonFive'' features an alien artifact that transfers life energy. It can be used to heal illnesses, wounds, etc., but does not visibly alter the age of either the donor or the recipient.
* One episode of ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' involved a [[ProudWarriorRace Luxan]] holy woman undergoing a psychic ritual with D'Argo, which unexpectedly resulted in her becoming far younger, because she was accidentally draining energy from [[SpaceWhale Moya]], who underwent accelerated aging.

* ''Series/RedDwarf'': One episode reveals that the MegaCorp M-Corp graduated to using Time as currency. The result is that when Lister swiftly exhausts his credits, they start draining his time, causing him to drastically age. They also made thinking a taxable event, which they used to dissuade people from rebelling against their control.

* In the ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' episode "Redux" the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Freak of the Week's]] power to absorb life energy immediately becomes apparent as the victim rapidly ages.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Man of the People: An ambassador uses Troi as a dump for all his negative emotions, which in turn ages her rapidly.
** When the effect was undone, Troi immediately reverted to her younger self, including her grayed hair returning to black.
** And it happened to Dr. Pulaski when her aging disease was cured, only justified as the [[DestructiveTeleportation transporter]] basically restructured her body.

* In the ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "The Quality of Mercy", an alien device used by a disgraced human doctor transfers life energy between the people attached to it. [[spoiler:The device was actually for executing criminals, a use to which it gets put by the end of the episode.]]
* In ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' when the "Wonder Twin" heals people infected with his sister's illness not only do they get healthy, but their black tears somehow disappear.

* In the ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}'' original episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E12TheEmpath The Empath]]", the titular mute alien could heal others, but suffered concurrent damage to herself. If she healed someone badly enough injured, she could die.

* A similar example in ''Series/TheXFiles'', wherein a monster would [[spoiler:eat people, and later vomit them out again into a mold where they took their original human form after a time]]... this had the effect of healing the people entirely, but passing all the symptoms onto the monster. The monster thus stacked up symptom after symptom, a living hell, until finally he [[spoiler:ate John Doggett]], who was dead at the time, thus passing the death onto the monster, who was finally free of the pain of disease-ridden life.

* The various ''Franchise/StarTrek'' series have had instances of rapid aging caused by diseases, etc. During a ''[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Next Generation]]'' episode, an away team was also turned into children in a transporter accident.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/ChipAndDaleRescueRangers'' features recurring villain Professor Nimnul [[CutLexLuthorACheck trying to make an honest living]]. He had invented an aging ray, and tried to demonstrate it by turning a huge bottle of milk to cheese. Not that cheese works that way, and the convention hall full of the dairy industry should've mentioned that ... and the ray does work to age things. Notably, the two cops and the police car, as well as one of the Rangers.

** Averted in ''Franchise/{{Justice League|of America}}'', when a few 'Power Disruptors' are stated by WordOfGod to simply be neural disruptors that prevent then from using their natural abilities. Hawkgirl gets shot by one and retains her wings.

* A particularly egregious example can be found in Michael Crichton's sci-fi novel ''Literature/{{Prey}}'', when the main character uses an electromagnet to force parasitic nanobots out of his wife's body for about thirty-second intervals (then they swarm right back in). During that half-minute, he describes her as becoming withered and old-looking without the nanites and more normal as soon as they flood back into her.
** Probably not an actual example, as this troper recalls pretty clearly that the woman actually was starved and abused, but the nanites were essentially acting as a layer of disguise, which the magnet pulled off of her.

* [[Wiki/SCPFoundation SCP-]][[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-590 590]] is an empathic healer who follows this trope. When he heals someone's serious physical injury, he feels the pain they felt when they received the injury, and a scar appears on his body to correspond with the injury's location on the individual being healed. Unlike most empathic healers in fiction, he doesn't have an accelerated healing factor, so the damage he heals constantly accumulates in his body. When the Wiki/SCPFoundation took him in, they had him heal several cases of mental retardation, permanently leaving him with the intelligence of a three-year-old child, thereby making him less able to resist his new role as the foundation's repository for suffering. It's also treated as a partial MercyKill: ''hopefully'' there's not enough of his mind left to properly suffer all that agony.

* ''LightNovel/AccelWorld'': Dusk Taker's power is the ability to steal the powers of other burst linkers, such as when he stole Haruyuki's Flight ability and manifested a set of demonic looking wings. The power was limited in that he could only permanently take powers from those who'd suffered mental trauma similar to his own, hence why he couldn't just straight take Like Bell's time ability.

** Played straight and then averted to a hilarious degree on the 90s ''WesternAnimation/XMen'' cartoon. While in the Savage Land, all the mutants temporarily lost their powers. For some reason this enabled Professor Xavier to walk, even though his inability to walk is related to a spinal injury and has nothing to do with his powers.[[note]]{{Lampshade|Hanging}}d later by Mr. Sinister: "I hadn't realised a side-effect would be your renewed ability to walk. I do hope you enjoyed it."[[/note]] When villains inevitably arrived, {{ComicBook/Wolverine}} announced "I've got news for ya, bub! There's nuthin' mutant about these!" and released his adamantium claws. However, without his healing factor he nearly passes out from the pain of ''grievously injuring his hands''.[[note]]Wolverine also lampshaded this after falling off a cliff: "I could really use some mutant healing power right about now."[[/note]]

** FridgeBrilliance kicks in when you realize that the strength and speed of earth ponies and pegasi are clearly impossible and must be magical, and cutie marks are basically representations of a pony's spirit, which are perfectly valid things to "drain" in a magical setting.

* The villain Mad Mod in ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' used a magic cane in his second appearance to suck the youth out of Robin and into him. He then proceeded to rule over reality (or at least one city's worth of it) like a [[Music/TheBeatles Beatles]] - and ''Creator/MontyPython''-obsessed God until the Titans put him back in his place. It somehow sucked the youth out of Robin's ''[[MagicPants clothes]]'', turning them into old and worn-out with faded colors, and made Mad Mod's clothes regain their color and look new again.

* In ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' when the [[FanNickname Wonder Twin]] heals people infected with his sister's illness not only do they get healthy, but their black tears somehow disappear.

** In the sequel, Gruntilda has become a zombie and plans to restore herself by draining the life force out of things. [[spoiler:The ray also goes in reverse in order to revive characters who had been killed earlier.]]

* In the 2002 ''Film/{{The Time Machine|2002}}'' film, [[spoiler:the Morlock leader]] gets partially thrown out of the time machine in overdrive and rapidly ages, similar to the Indiana Jones example above. This is even more strange, as this means he was basically hanging for centuries without trying to do anything about it. Actually, his hands should've been cut off the moment he left the temporal bubble.

* ''WesternAnimation/Ducktales2017'': "The Forbidden Fountain Of The Foreverglades" reveals this is the power of the series' version of the Fountain of Youth. It's discoverer, Ponce DeLeon, having run out of crewman to feed to the fountain, has set up a Spring Break resort using the Fountain's waters as pool water to syphon unsuspecting teens' youth by [[{{Squirm}} drinking said water afterward.]]. He has dozens of bottles of such water in his office, literal liquid youth, which he uses to maintain his vitality. At least until the McDucks check in.

** In one particularly absurd example from ''WesternnAnimation/SuperFriends'', a power nullifier caused Batman and Robins' ''{{utility belt}}s'' to disappear.
** Played straight and then averted to a hilarious degree on the 90s ''WesternAnimation/XMen'' cartoon. While in the Savage Land, all the mutants temporarily lost their powers. For some reason this enabled Professor Xavier to walk although his inability to walk is related to a spinal injury and has nothing to do with his powers. When villains inevitably arrived, {{ComicBook/Wolverine}} announced "I've got news for ya, bub! There's nuthin' mutant about these!" and released his adamantium claws. However, without his healing factor he nearly passes out from the pain of ''grievously injuring his hands''.
*** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d later by Mr. Sinister: "I hadn't realised a side-effect would be your renewed ability to walk. I do hope you enjoyed it."
*** Wolverine also lampshaded this after falling off a cliff: "I could really use some mutant healing power right about now."
** Averted, optionally, in the ''TabletopGame/MutantsAndMasterminds'' superhero RPG, where superpowers can be deemed Innate, not powers at all, and thus immune to effects that drain powers.
*** Poor word choice, as the power 'Drain' specifically doesn't care if a trait is innate or not. If you have a strength Drain, you lose that innate Super-Strength too. What innate protects you from is things that target 'powers', such as Neutralize or Nullify. So if your PhysicalGod gets hit with a Neutralize, maybe he loses his lightning blasts and what-have-you, but the strength that lets him juggle small mountains? That's just the natural physical capabilities of his race, therefor is 'innate' and not technically a power, thus it is not affected.
** The Fifth Edition TabletopGame/HeroSystem RPG introduced the advantage "Inherent", which has the same effect.

** There are also numerous cases of Franchise/{{Superman}}'s powers being transferred to someone else (including normal humans), despite the fact that his powers are a product of his Kryptonian biology.
*** In UsefulNotes/{{the Silver Age|OfComicBooks}} and [[UsefulNotes/TheBronzeAgeOfComicBooks Bronze Age]] it was a general property of anything whatsoever from Krypton, including dogs, monkeys, and inanimate objects like his costume. This was completely separate from the structure of any specific item, so transferring it is more plausible.
*** So they were transferring Krytonianness?

** In ''WesternAnimation/XMenEvolution'', Rogue drains powers and life energy, but not physical traits. For example, when she touches Cyclops, she absorbs his eye beams, but not his PowerIncontinence, since that is an effect of physical trauma and not an innate part of his power.
*** There was one inconsistency regarding physical trait draining - once Rogue touched Sabertooth, she grew fur and abnormally big fangs. Reason for it? [[RuleOfFunny Making a joke about leg shaving, apparently]].