A trick those with Elemental Powers can do is absorbing their own element(s). For example, one may think someone with fire powers wouldn't be helpful in stopping a forest fire, but that person could simply absorb the flames and either store it or release it in a safer way. Or someone with wind powers can suck the air out of an area. And so on.
See also Feed It with Fire (when this is done to restore health) and Energy Absorption.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- In Digimon Adventure, WarGreymon's Signature Move is Terra Force (Gaia Force in Japanese), which gathers energy from the atmosphere and hurls it as a giant fireball. He retains this ability in the 2020 reboot, with the added property of being able to absorb the Digital World's light and become even bigger, able to one-shot ZeedMillenniummon. Digimon X-Evolution's WarGreymon X has a similar attack called Poseidon Force, which instead gathers water into a hyper-pressurised sphere to the same effect.
- Part and parcel of Dragon Slayer (along with other types of 'Slayer' magic) in Fairy Tail. Users can produce, manipulate, and are immune to one element (Natsu is fire, Gajeel is iron, Wendy is air, Laxus is lightning, Cobra is poison, and so on) which they can also eat to heal and power themselves up. Acnologia answers the obvious question of what happens when applied to a Non-Elemental (and not even a more "fantastical" element like "Ghost" or "Blade"), which translates to a full-blown Magic Eater and Anti-Magic.
- Dragons in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid can regain mana by absorbing their respective elements. This can lead to cute moments like Kanna having her own personal outlet so she can plug in her tail or Ilulu carrying around a lighter for snacks while at work. They can also use the ambient mana that Tohru produces, but Ilulu claims that it tastes awful.
- In Pokémon: The Series, most of the abilities that do this from the games such as Water Absorb and Sap Sipper appear with their effects from the games. Blows up in Malva's face in Mega Evolution IV when she Mega Evolves her Houndoom which replaces its Flash Fire ability and allows Alain's Mega Charizard X to beat Houndoom via Blast Burn.
Comic Books
- Captain Marvel: Carol Danvers can absorb a number of forms of energy, at one point using electricity as a pick-me-up.
- Fantastic Four: Johnny Storm can do this, although if it's heat (rather than fire), it's a strain, and dumping the energy absorbed is a problem. In such cases, he usually has to gain high altitude and then release the energy in a serious flare, after which he is usually only semi-conscious and needs someone to catch him.
- Firestorm: Killer Frost from absorbs heat in order to power her ice powers. Since you'd expect An Ice Person to be weak against fire, this tends to be a dangerous surprise for heroes facing her.
- Justice League of America: Scorch does it to prevent the Martian Manhunter from spawning (It Makes Sense in Context), but can only hold it for a few minutes — long enough for the Justice League of America to defeat him, though.
- The Mighty Thor: Thor can absorb electricity.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Like Ghidorah, Monster X can drain and feed on electrical energy from other bio-electric Titans and manmade technology to strengthen themselves and charge their own electrical powers.
- Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger: In addition to having control over all the elements, the Maidens are also able to absorb any of the elements and fuel their magic with it. Cinder uses this power to redirect Darth Nihilus's Force lightning during their battle in "Death".
Films - Animated
- BoBoiBoy Movie 2:
- All Retak'ka is left with after escaping his Crystal Prison is remnants of his Gamma power. When BoBoiBoy Solar shoots a solar eclipse blast at him, it grants him back some of his old power before he absorbs it completely from the elemental himself. He shoots a gamma blast at BoBoiBoy's other elementals and absorbs Thunderstorm, Cyclone and Thorn to use their powers at the 3rd tier (Voltra, Tempest, and Darkwood). His goal for the rest of the movie is to steal the elements of other planets to enhance his own powers, which leaves them barren in the process. His final destination is one that has all of the elements, Planet Earth.
- Ochobot was used to absorb the Elemental Powers from Retak'ka prior to his imprisonment, and he is the key to absorbing the elements back. Hang Kasa seemingly betrays BoBoiBoy by using Ochobot to take his Quake power, which Kasa uses as its 3rd-tier Crystal to fight Retak'ka. When that goes south, the main heroes use Ochobot's "Elemental Drain" to take the powers back from Retak'ka.
Films - Live-Action
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): King Ghidorah is a Psycho Electro, and during the Boston battle, he's able to supercharge himself by biting down on a power sub-station and feeding on the entire city's power grid; gaining enough energy to fire a Beam Spam of lightning arcs off of his body which spontaneously decimate the entire military.
- In X2: X-Men United, Rogue absorbs Pyro's powers and uses them to put out the fires he had created, though she doesn't directly absorb the fire.
Literature
- Done from time to time in Codex Alera.
- Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files does this on occasion. How do you escape a boat? Freeze part of a lake. How do you do that? Absorb the heat and release it as a fireball. In Changes he becomes the Winter Knight, doing this to Chain Lightning dozens of mooks. Even Lea is impressed.
- Anna in Finding Gaia. She can use her own energy to grow plants, but can also reverse the process and drain surrounding flora to compensate for lack of sleep or heal injury. Jason's power works in a similar way, but with life force.
- Dragons in The Last Dragon Chronicles can swallow a flame, putting it out. This goes for candles, fireplaces, and forest fires (if the dragon is big enough). Most of the dragons in the series, however, are only big enough to swallow candle flames.
- In the Sword of Truth, this is actually impossible without Subtractive Magic, and there's only one person Richard, naturally who has been born with this power in three thousand years. It was the Temple of the Winds leveling the playing field, because Jagang wasn't supposed to exist, either. There are a few people who managed to pick up Subtractive Magic, and thus this ability, by studying. There are also noted Banelings, including Darken Rahl and the Sisters of the Dark.
- In The Wheel of Time, a quirk of the Mars and Venus Gender Contrast in the One Power lets male channelers absorb and redirect the heat from a fire; female channelers can absorb the heat, but things go toastily wrong from there.
- In the Wild Cards novels starting from Inside Straight, the Amazing Bubbles has the power to absorb kinetic energy and store it as body mass to be released later as telekinesis. In Busted Flush, this ability allows her to survive giving an Action Bomb a Cooldown Hug.
Live-Action TV
- Ace Lightning: Ace can recharge his power by absorbing electricity.
- In Kamen Rider Fourze, the heroes learn that Fourze's Fire States can absorb nearby fires in order to power up its flamethrower weapon; conveniently, the Monster of the Week likes to burn things. This may have been inspired by a scene in Kamen Rider: The Next in which V3 sucks the flames from a burning building into his Double Typhoon belt and uses the energy to kick villain butt.
- In Space Cases, Rosie and Bova have the power to expel massive amounts of heat and electricity, respectively. On one occasion each, they were shown to absorb them when the ship's engine overheated or overloaded.
Roleplay
- In the climactic fight of Alanna, the Familiar Franklin jumps between Alanna and an onslaught of lighting magic. He absorbs the attack and grows to gigantic proportions.
- Simon from Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues has the ability to control plasma, which also allows him to absorb it and its sub-properties fire and lightning. This is taken to its extreme when Luna, who can turn herself into lightning, is temporarily absorbed into his body.
Tabletop Games
- Many elemental creatures in Dungeons & Dragons tend to do this.
- In 3 ed. even a PC race, genasi can learn to heal from one's element.
- The Totemist class can invoke this using a soulmeld.
- The Absorb Elements spell allows the user to absorb some incoming elemental damage, gaining resistance to that type of damage until their next turn. They can then use the absorbed energy to empower their next melee attack.
Toys
- BIONICLE: By default, most Toa are able to do this with their element. The only exceptions are Gravity and Psionics. However, it's pointed out this takes a lot of concentration depending on how much of their element they're trying to absorb, and if they're not careful they could destroy their surroundings in releasing the element back out.
- Vakama managed to defeat a Fire Entity simply by absorbing all the heat in the area.
- Matau managed to defeat a Sonic Entity by sucking the air out of the improvised container the Toa Metru made to trap it, then letting another of the Metru attack it (since sound can't travel in a vacuum, it couldn't counter the attack and died instantly).
- A type of Rahi, called the Tunneler, has a similar ability, which allows it to take the physical properties of a material used to strike it, like rock, crystal, or fire. In the novels, Vakama and Onewa defeat it by causing to absorb glass, which forces it to remain still, since it was around twice the size its species is normally, so it would crack if it moved.
- This is one part of Vezok's Power Copying abilities. He can absorb a Toa's elemental powers and even use it against them.
Video Games
- In Azure Striker Gunvolt, Gunvolt and Asimov is able to absorb electricity thanks to the titular Septima, even recharging lost electrical energy. However, it's possible to disable this ability through specific circumstances and take damage from electricity, usually involving burning up so much power at once the body outright can't keep up or a sufficiently devastating Power Nullifier.
- Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: Ordinarily, the Dragon, Warslug, Mystic Beast and Holy Dragon's passive abilities allow them to No-Sell any special skills that are respectively Fire, Ice, Wind and Non-Elemental-typed. Their respective Lover specialist (which only spawns on any Rank 5 or higher item they've worn for ~35 consecutive battles) upgrades their passives to this. Notably, only the player gets to benefit from this.
- In Dragon Age: Origins, you are able to do this in the Fade portion of the Circle Tower quest line. You have to be the fire man to do it, but you can still do it — and it's really handy.
- In The Elder Scrolls series, this is a power of Atronachs, a type of unaligned lesser Daedra which are essentially the Elemental Embodiments of the elements they represent. The most common are the Flame (also known as "Fire"), Frost, and Storm varieties. Others include Air, Flesh, Iron, and Stone. In addition, they are immune to magic of their respective associated element and, in some cases, can even absorb it to increase their health/power.
- Epic Battle Fantasy series: Any party member or enemy that has a resistance to an element higher than 100% will heal when attacked by said element, healing more the higher the resistance is. This can usually be seen on the party with lategame-level upgraded gear, and certain builds can take advantage of this to heal against stronger enemies. The enemies themselves that get healed by a particular element tend to be mid-lategame and are usually composed of the element in some way.
- In Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, any unit whose resistance to a given element is greater than 100 will be healed by attacks of that element. Pektites will take advantage of this by blasting themselves with their own spells if they’re hurt.
- In Final Fantasy games, monsters affiliated with an element are either immune to it or are healed by attacks of that element (be they spells or attacks with an elemental weapon). Some bosses can even change their elemental type during the fight, so you must figure out which one it is before attacking again. Fortunately, the player characters get access to the ability to absorb specific elements themselves in many games, whether by using high-level Elemental Materia, junctioning enough elemental spells to your Elem-Def stat, or (in most cases) by merely donning equipment that comes with such an effect.
- Conduits in inFAMOUS recharge their powers and heal themselves by absorbing their element. If they absorb enough energy in one go (or Ray energy), they can unlock more powers or augment their current ones. As stated in the main page, Delsin Rowe from Second Son may be considered a Conduit whose element is Conduits.
- Certain Heartless from Kingdom Hearts (mainly the ones that look like flying lanterns) can do this. Physical attacks and forms of magic other than the one they use and especially one that's opposite their own (i.e., blizzard->fire or fire->blizzard, etc.) will cause it damage. Getting hit by a magic attack that's of the same element as their own restores energy. Blue Rhapsody uses and absorbs Blizzard attacks. Red Nocturne uses and absorbs Fire attacks. Yellow Opera uses and absorbs Thunder attacks. Green Requiem absorbs all magic attacks and heals itself and other Heartless. Aquatank, a fish-like Heartless who uses thunder magic in Atlantica will regain health if hit by thunder magic (Re: Chain of Memories).
- The Organization XIII members seem to absorb their own elements as well. Of course, since the Kingdom Hearts games only have a very short list of elements you can actually use (even more so after they removed Gravity, Stop, and Aero for II), the only ones who might ever actually get hit by an attack of their own element are Axel, Vexen, and Larxene in Chain of Memories.
- In 358/2 Days, all thirteen elements are present as attacks in some way shape or form, and each member has a natural resistance to their element ("Nil" for Xemnas, Moon for Saix, Light for Roxas, etc.) that starts at 10% at level 1 and rises another 10% every ten levels. Mickey, Sora, Donald and Goofy also have a natural resistance to Light. The only character who doesn't have a natural resistance to an element is Riku, perhaps because Darkness isn't present as an element in the game.
- Bosses in Lunarosse will do this sometimes. Dark is a common element for them to take in.
- Luxaren Allure: In a bugfix patch on Dec 29, 2019
, Force Ghosts lost the ability to do it with Physical damage due to interactions with Chisa's HP drain skills that cause a crash.
- In MARDEK, if a character's elemental resistances exceed 100%, incoming attacks with that element will heal them. This means that if they have 100%+ resistance to all 8, they'll be pretty much invincible.note This is why characters never have Thauma resistance of any sort, and bosses get the Inversion: X attack which hits you with Thauma proportional to your resistance to X.
- This is essential to the gameplay of Overlord. Certain obstacles can be absorbed by sending out the correct type of minion (Reds for fire, Greens for poison mist, etc.).
- Some Pokémon abilities passively allow the user to absorb damage from an element and restore HP (Dry Skin, Volt Absorb, Water Absorb, Earth Eater) or completely neutralize damage of a specific element (Flash Fire, Motor Drive, Lightningrod, Levitate, Sap Sipper, Storm Drain) and possibly raise stats.
- Boss in Rakenzarn Tales are prone to this, mostly commonly with whatever elemental attacks they're slinging about. Starting with Version 2 of the game, many party members are able to absorb at least one element to restore their health.
- This is a constant concern in the Shin Megami Tensei series, especially more recent entries, where demons can resist, repel or even drain attacks of certain elements — including physical attacks in some cases. Fortunately, the protagonist and his allies can gain these same Elemental Absorption abilities.
- Temtem has three traits that cause a Temtem to be healed when hit by attacks of certain types; Electric Synthesize for Electric, Water Synthesize for Water, and Strong Liver for Toxic.
Webcomics
- Fyre from The Beast Legion uses a form of elemental absorption by concentrating any form of heat and transforming it to flame.
- Champions of Far'aus: Monstrovs have two sets of Elemental Powers out of a list of tennote and can absorb/get energy and/or mana from things that correspond to said power sets, and can be a pain to fight if, for example, fire magic is used on one with a fire power set, all it will do is give the monstrov a boost.
- Discussed in The Rant of Grrl Power about the pyrokinetic character Heatwave. In the strip, she's using her powers to put out fires by absorbing enough heat to drop burning objects below their ignition point. The character herself isn't very fond of doing it, describing absorbing heat instead of creating it as feeling "oogie". Ironically, Varia gets the ability to completely absorb heat from contact with Heatwave, allowing her to easily freeze objects.
- In The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, an arson-obsessed villain/hero with a crush on a fiery superheroine makes a Deal with the Devil to absorb heat. Unfortunately, it creates cold, absorbing even her powers, and she flat-out rejects him.
- Fred, a fire elemental in What's Shakin' absorbs fire magic, which is why he hunts fire mages to consume their powers.
Web Original
- Phaeton has more than one person who can do this, but Trayen uses it to pull of his greatest attacks.
- RWBY: Nora's Semblance allows her to absorb electricity to boost her already impressive physical strength. However, this doesn't mean that she's outright immune to being electrocuted. When Hazel grabs her after enhancing himself with yellow dust in "Downfall", she screams in pain as he holds her down and zaps her.
- Nacht of the Whateley Universe has magical darkness powers, and can absorb light-based attacks and make herself more powerful. Blot just absorbs all energy radiating on him all the time, which is why he looks like a human-shaped black spot all the time.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Some Firebenders can use their abilities to stop fires, most notably Fire Lord Sozin who was able to absorb heat from magma in order to stop it from flowing. Done even better when benders redirect lightning by having it pass through their body.
- Ben 10: In "Washington, B.C.", Heatblast absorbs the fire in a burning building while saving the people trapped inside.
- Bloom in Winx Club can absorb and put out fire.
