Misaki Shokuhou

"But you are always like this. Perhaps that is the proper form for our relationship ability. No matter how many times I ask or our paths cross, the answer is always the same. Saying this will probably make you angry just like back then, but perhaps that is my punishment for having this power. After all, these repeated coincidences cannot be explained logically☆"

- Misaki Shokuhou

Misaki Shokuhou is the fifth ranked Level 5 esper and a student at Tokiwadai Middle School that goes under the alias "The Queen". This refers to her having the largest faction and influence within Tokiwadai Middle School due to her ability.

Background
Not much is known about her past. Like all Level 5s, there are research facilities dedicated to her. In the past she was part of a project to train her powers for the Exterior Project, being able to use her powers to brainwash people like Makuwa to think melons are apples. Part of this project was the development of Exterior, which is a giant brain to significantly increase the reach of her powers and how many people she can control at a time. For that project, part of her cerebral cortex was taken from her to create Exterior. During the project, she was asked to brainwash a girl that is known as Dolly, which the scientist required for data, into thinking she is her friend that left her after discovering the machines implanted on Dolly's person. Misaki somehow acquiesces and begins pretending as Dolly's friend. This ultimately ends in tragedy when it is revealed that Dolly's condition is steadily deteriorating even with Academy City's powerful medical technology, and by the time the two have become close Dolly falls ill and dies shortly after -- supposedly a foregone conclusion and necessary to the Exterior project. A crestfallen Misaki soon turns against the facility and its researchers, exerting her influence and control over everybody involved in the project. She learns that the Clone Dolly Workshop is related to the Exterior project, and also that the scientists are to dispose of her once Exterior is completed. By the time she enters Tokiwadai Middle School, Misaki has effectively hidden Exterior and its capabilities completely, though later had help from people apparently loyal to her to maintain it.

She speaks to Seria she seems to have a bit of rivalry between them though it is unknown how this developed (One possibility is because of Touma). Finally, it has been revealed that she has knowledge of Touma prior to his memory loss and aware of his Imagine Breaker ability, though by the way pre-memory loss Touma refers to her unassuredly as the "Level 5 at Tokiwadai who can remove people’s memories just by touching them," it was most likely not a deep one or that Touma does not connect the 5th Level 5 and Shokuhou Misaki as one and the same. According to her own words, their paths have crossed many times before their meeting in Daihaseisai, and by the way Touma was acting towards her during the Agitate Halation Arc, he must've been often preoccupied or busy to pay attention to her. Furthermore, she has stated that Touma was once angry at her and that it might be the fate of having her kind of power. This may imply that Touma was once angry at her for doing something with her powers. She has shown complete trust towards Touma despite the unscientific and ridiculous things he speaks to her.

Appearance
Misaki appears as an elegant beauty of Tokiwadai Middle School, sporting long straight hair of golden color. She wears a pair of white gloves and stockings, both adorned with lace. She is also seen holding a shoulder bag with a star adorned on the middle. Her eyes are also gold colored, however, one notable feature of her eyes is that it has a star design on it. Literally, she is a starry-eyed girl. She claims that she was born that way.

Her large breasts are a point of jealousy for Mikoto, who mocks her for it. She even once suspects Misaki of not being a middle school student based on her bust size, to which Misaki replies that it may be possible with her abilities that she is not.

Personality
Coupled with her cute face, Misaki exudes a seemingly playful and childish personality, as seen with her interaction with Misaka MikotoMikoto. This is backed up the fact that she has a taste for sweets and likes to do silly and cutesy poses that even other people such as Kumokawa Seria try to jokingly emulate. However, with this facade belies a much more cunning nature, as she demonstrates her power to intimidateMisaka Mikoto by controlling the entire student body that was currently inside the Tokiwadai Middle School library; despite this ruthless exterior, she is not necessarily a bad person as she had greatly valued her friendship with the now deceased Dolly.

As one of the two Level 5s of Tokiwadai, she and her followers have a rivalry with Misaka Mikoto and her fans. She never shows herself in public, instead using her followers or mind-controlling people to act as her representatives when talking with individuals. It is hinted that she has a strong dislike for public appearances, and this is why whenever the school needs a "face" to promote certain public events, she and her faction will simply stand aside and let Misaka MikotoMikoto hog all of the attention and responsibilities. She seems to prefer working alone, even if it is with a Level 5 like Misaka Mikoto, though she is able to work well with Kamijou Touma. She is also terrible at athletics, and a mere jog, according to Misaka MikotoMikoto, will quickly tire her. Unlike most girls in School Garden, she has described herself as someone who is not a pure girl who knows nothing of the world, after describing that girls from School Garden are either those who go out or those who stay in. She can be described as being similar to Laura Stuart because of her frivolous outward personality that hides a layer of cunning scheming, though much more downplayed.

She uses the word ~ability or ~power as a suffix to certain words, like "relationship ability" or "brainwashing power".

Abilities
Her ability is Mental Out, a very powerful ability involving the human mind which includes mind control, reading other people's memories, telepathy, changing a person's personality by means of brainwashing, revelation of feelings, memory elimination, destruction of will, institution of illusions, transplantation of emotions.

Moreover, it has also been shown that she can somehow prevent the use of powers and movement of other people using the remote. Also, unique to the power is that some of the people that have been tampered and controlled by Shokuhou display star markings (Misaki's eyes have stars on them) on one or both their eyes. She can take-over a person and use his or her body to interact with other people in long distance. She has the ability to control up to ten people at once using her full power. She can also control large number of people but she can only give them simple commands. Using her powers, she was able to give preset commands to each student of all five schools in the School Garden, and is able to switch between them constantly if she needs to. In addition, she can remove people's memory just by touching them. It is unknown if there are other applications of Mental Out that involve tact instead of the use of remotes. She is also able to use her ability on herself and apply mental blocks to prevent Mental Out being used against her, though these blocks only work while she is conscious. She can even use her ability to swap out concepts, like the concepts of limiter release code and self-destruct code, in people's minds, as she did on herself to trick Gensei.

Through the use of Exterior, she can increase her reach and the number of people she can control. In the first instance the audience sees her use it, she forces kilometers wide of drivers to move out of the way in order for their car to drive through. She still requires the usage of a remote controller to do this however.

Drawbacks
There is most likely a limit to the number of people she can control. Her powers apparently have so many applications that she does not have a stable control of it unless she creates "boundaries" for herself. Repeatedly, Misaki is shown to use a remote to use her powers. According to Toaru Kagaku no Railgun's editor, Misaki's powers has too high a degree of freedom, so she uses a remote to provide a basis to control her powers. She does not have a single remote. She uses different remotes depending on what type of power she wishes to use. The bag she carries around is filled with many different remotes. It is possible for her to use her powers without a remote, but it is very difficult, so she generally prefers not to as it has a too high degree of freedom. This is backed up by the fact that Rensa, the cyborg which can mimic the powers of all Level 5s execept the 7th ranked one, is forced to dumpster dive for a television remote for her to use her powers against Touma. The fact that she tried to use a television remote taken from the trash, implies that Misaki can use any sort of remote control, even things like a Wii remote control.

Mikoto's electromagnetic barrier, which surrounds her body, prevents Misaki from using her powers on her. It is unknown if this applies to other Electromasters as well. Although, knowing that Misaki requires the use of random remote controls to focus her powers, as well as use her powers to provide a multi-layered protection on the Misaka Network against electric viruses, it can be assumed that Misaki's powers are at least somewhat electromagnetic in nature.

Finally, Misaki cannot control animals or anything that is not human. This is seen when she is desperately trying to get escaped zoo animals off of her and resorts to controlling a hero to save herself by shooting ice at the animal that had pounced on her.

Other abilities
Misaki is very intelligent and a skilled tactician. She is able to predict how a large number of people will react and to make plan to counter or use them to her advantage. This is exemplified when she helped Touma to get around the School Garden, as she was able to keep everybody from realizing who he was by dressing him with an Anti-Skill uniform and to quickly make everybody focus on something else, and when she outwitted a brilliant mind as Kihara Gensei using bluffs and taking double-edged gambles, like to manipulate her own mind, to deceive him, leading him to self-defeat.