Umbrakinesis

Umbrakinesis
Phoebe manipulates her shadow.
Held by:	Phoebe Frady (deceased)
Ability to:	Manipulate light and shadows
Examples of umbrakinesis

Umbrakinesis is the ability to manipulate light and shadow. Phoebe describes her ability as "[stealing] light" and "[channeling] darkness". The ability appears to have the capability to nullify nearby evos' abilities and disrupt electrical appliances in the user's immediate surroundings.

Characters

Confirmed

• Phoebe Frady has demonstrated this ability. (Dark Matters, Part 1)

Unconfirmed

• Darkmoon is said to be able to manipulate shadows. (Purpose)

Limits

Phoebe first began experimenting with her ability by playing with her shadows and making them move independently of her (Dark Matters, Part 1). She also plays harmless tricks on others, like when she turned off the lights on a South Western College professor. As she grew stronger, her ability sometimes worked without her active concentration, like when shadows crept along a wall as she experienced a nightmare (Dark Matters, Part 3). Her powers seem to be at least partially affected by her emotions, as seen when she accidentally blew out a light when she was angry with her brother (Dark Matters, Part 3).

Phoebe's abilities are able to affect the abilities of other evos, nullifying their effects and affecting their use. She has so far made a levitating guitarist fall, extinguished a pyrokinetic's fire, prevented Malina from using her powers, and stopped Miko from entering Evernow. Most notably, she generated enough shadows on June 13, 2014 to nullify the powers of every evo present at the summit, including both Mohinder's and Hiro's abilities. When stopping abilities from working, she actively projects darkness, generating tendrils of shadow from her hands to negate the power she wishes to disrupt, or producing a large field of darkness in midair. The latter causes an eclipse to appear in the sky (The Lion's Den, June 13th, Part One). It appears that she has developed this aspect of her power mostly under Renautas's employment.

The shadows she produces also seem capable of making physical contact with objects, being able to hold down her brother's gun hand and also causing bleeding and fatal injuries when forced into his mouth (Game Over). Her ability also seems to disrupt electrical systems, as seen when she shuts down the lights in a lecture theater, blows out a light when arguing with her brother, and causes multiple computer screens and fluorescent lights to flicker when entering a room. (Game Over)

When using her powers actively, Phoebe's eyes change color. Initially, they glowed purple; when working for Renautas under the alias "The Shadow", rings of glowing iridescence would form around her irises (Dark Matters, Part 3, Game Over). It is noted that generating large amounts of shadow was "painful" to her as of June 13th, but it appears that it is no longer as strenuous to her as it was then (Game Over, June 13th, Part One).

Malina has shown the ability to blow back the shadows generated by Phoebe's power with her own, but Phoebe was eventually able to overpower her wind and block her powers. (Send in the Clones)

The following abilities have been shown to be suppressed by Phoebe's darkness:

• Flight (Dark Matters, Part 3)
• Pyrokinesis (Dark Matters, Part 3)
• Elemental control (The Lion's Den)
• Miko's ability (Game Over)
• Enhanced strength (June 13th, Part One)
• Freezing (June 13th, Part One)
• Space-time manipulation (June 13th, Part One)
• Elemental control (Send in the Clones)
• Luke's ability (Send in the Clones)

Selected Examples

• 
  Phoebe manipulates her shadow to wave independently of herself.
  (Dark Matters, Part 1)
• 
  Phoebe plays a game with her shadow.
  (Dark Matters, Part 2)
• 
  Shadows creep along the wall while Phoebe has a nightmare.
  (Dark Matters, Part 2)
• 
  To stop others from fighting, Phoebe's eyes become purple...
• 
  ...she makes a levitating guitarist fall...
• 
  ...and she makes pyrokinetic fire disappear.
  (Dark Matters, Part 3)
• 
  "The Shadow" extends shadowy tendrils out of her arms...
• 
  ...that serve to negate Malina's power.
  (The Lion's Den)

Trivia

• On her Instagram page, actress Aislinn Paul said that to create the effect of her holding the ball of light and shadow in The Needs of the Many, the effects team put lights inside her sleeves so they could use a mix of practical and digital effects.

See Also

• For the similar ability to absorb light, see light absorption.
• For the similar ability to negate others' powers, see Mental manipulation.