Ability Absorption is the ability to physically take away another evolved human's abilities through tactile contact. This means that the absorber will gain the ability of the willing/unwilling donor, whilst the other loses their ability for the same amount of time. However, though Arthur Petrelli, the most well known user of this ability, has taken away powers from evolved humans permanently (such as taking Peter's Empathic Mimicry) we have seen other victims of Ability Absorption regain their abilities through some sort of catalyst, accelerant, or just overtime, such as Hiro regaining his Space-Time Manipulation through Matt Parkman Jr.'s ''touch and go'' Activation and Deactivation ability to jump-start it.
Although we have seen users like Arthur Petrelli take numerous abilities from multiple evolved humans, we don't exactly know how many abilities a user of Ability Absorption can handle at a time. A speculation of this is that they can hold the same amount as anybody with similar abilities such as Intuitive Aptitude or Empathic Mimicry before it starts to effect them physically and mentally. However, a possible prevention of the destabilization of the user is to absorb a Regenerative Healer's ability to constantly heal from any damage taken (such as when Arthur Petrelli stole it from Adam Monroe).
The ability itself works by severing the connection of the evolved human and their evolved genes through some hostile interception upon contact. At the same time, the user of this ability rewrites their DNA, copying the genes of the person whose connection is now biologically severed; think of it as a hostile takeover in the business world, or one looking through a one sided mirror to see a person checking themselves on the other side, the user on the see through side then jumps through the mirror, steals a shard of the mirror they just broke, and checks themselves like the person on the non see-able side did.
Known users of this Ability:
- Arthur Petrelli
- Tommy Clark/Nathan Bennet
- Benedict Barnes-Labbett