@Crow
Really? What do they look like? I can see them fine from my end, so I don't think the BBCode is wrong...
That's what I had in mind. Also, it can't nullify things inherent to the body, in addition to the contact rule, so super-strength punches rely on Glasya-Labolas's natural durability to defend, and if his opponent is intangible... Oh boy.
The point of the power-copying is that he has to visualise what he's trying to do
completely, i.e. both the end result and the processes involved, so he can't just, for the sake of argument, watch Cosette turn a car into a black hole and instantly do the same thing. Instead, he'd be more likely to yell "HOLY CRAP WTF" and run for cover. If, however, an Alchemeister were to sit down with him and go through how alchemy works in enough detail that he could figure out what she's doing in spite of using Aether, however, he still couldn't just use it because he still needs to completely visualise the end result too.
tl;dr: Even if he sees the power used first, he needs to learn how it works, and then see it used
after he understands it. So he can come up with new applications for it like using a lightning magic for electromagnetism, but he can't come up with new uses for it like using a water magic to create ice.