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| “ | You have to dirty your hands to give the dead a clean end. Only the one killed can know how the one killed feels, but only the living can act based on their feelings for the dead. Rejecting that and running away is not being honest or being a pacifist. It is being a coward. | „ |
| ~ Mugino to Accelerator. |
Shizuri Mugino, also known as Meltdowner, is a major character in the A Certain Magical Index franchise.
She is the fourth-ranked Level 5 esper of Academy City and the leader of ITEM, one of the many criminal organizations on the Dark Side, which is at odds with another team, SCHOOL. She is the former archenemy of Shiage Hamazura, due to him leaving ITEM to protect Rikou Takistubo from Mugino's vengeance.
She is voiced by Ami Koshimizu in Japanese and Lydia Mackay in English.
Appearance[]
Mugino is a teenage girl with a tall stature and slender figure. She has long soft red hair and macthing eyes. After her first defeat at the hands of Shiage, the injuries she suffered would scar her face, take away her right eye, and destroy her entire left arm from the shoulder down. After World War III, one-third of her face was artificially treated with cosmetics and her missing eye and arm replaced.
She has a wide vareiety of stylish clothing. In Railgun, she wears a violet dress with shorts, along with black thigh high socks and white boots. In the main series, She wore a bright short sleeved coat with a belt and checkered pattern ascot. She also has yellow stockings and a sweater underneath. In New Testament, she now wears a jacket over a shirt with a bolo tie, undeneath a camisole.
Personality[]
At first glance, Shizuri Mugino appears as a calm, mature and rational individual who acts as the big sister to the other members of ITEM, which goes well with her position as the leader. While she behaves warm and friendly, Mugino is actually quite merciless, brutal and cold-hearted, given her occupation as a mercenary of the Dark Side. She does not mind killing people who get in her way or go against her, regardless of whether they are enemies or allies. She is also very arrogant and prideful, looking down upon lower-level espers (especially Level 0s), due to her status as a Level 5 and regularly belittles Hamazura for his numerous shortcomings. However, her ego is badly bruised when she loses a fight against Hamazura, who is an entirely powerless Level 0.
Despite her calm demeanor, Mugino has an extremely vicious temper and will become incredibly homicidal towards anyone who angers her. When Mikoto knocks her out in their fight, she wakes up a few minutes later and kicks her in the stomach, enraged by the small head injury inflicted on her. Moreover, Mugino can be extremely unrelenting and deranged when it comes to achieving victory, to the point of inability to let go of her target until they are utterly destroyed. Her pathological need for revenge becomes more prevalent in latter half of Old Testament, as shown by her drive to defeat Teitoku Kakine and SCHOOL which eventually led to the disbandment of ITEM, and especially her twisted obssesion with Shiage Hamazura after being defeated by him twice to the point of pursuing him all the way to Russia in the middle of World War III. Shiage sumises her radical behavior as someone who is unable to accept that they can't complete a video game with 100% accuracy and will fly into a blind rage if they slighty mess it up. He also states that if she isn't able to get 100% accuracy she instead goes for a high score to compensate. An example of this is after she failed to kill Mikoto Misaka and lets her go after discovering she was trying to stop the Level 6 Shift Project in order to see her suffer against the Dark Side of Academy City more.
However, in spite of all her bad traits, Mugino has a softer side to her. She does genuinely care about her teammates and truly felt remorse after killing Frenda, even visiting her grave and protecting her younger sister Fremea as a testament to keeping Frenda's legacy alive. By New Testament, after reconciling with Hamazura and the remnants of ITEM, Mugino has become tamer in her aggressive outbursts towards her teammates, though she still retains a particularly violent side towards those she deems her enemies. She also becomes more kinder and patient towards others, as shown by her interaction with Last Order when she teases her because she can see her panties. Mugino simply laughs and walks away, while the old Mugino would have probably killed her on the spot. She also starts learning how to cook in an effort to be more normal. When a naked Cendrillon appears in her apartment, she takes the whole thing in stride, only losing her patience after Cendrillon teases her about her feelings for Shiage.
Biography[]
While Mugino's full background hasn't been completely revealed yet, she is a daughter of the Mugino Family, which is among the five wealthiest families in the world, making their fortune in wheat on the surface, but also secretly deals in various criminal enterprises, such as money laundering through banks and casinos. Unlike many, she wasn't forced to join the dark side, but was rather born into it.
Powers and Abilities[]
Meltdowner: Mugino's esper ability which allows her to control electrons and rearrange them into an abnormal state that is both particle and wave, turning it into an unstable destructive matter. She utilizes this ability to create a powerful and destructive beam of high-speed electrons known as a "Particle Waveform High-Speed Cannon", that is able to pierce through a target at the same velocity that it was fired. Her ability is so powerful that she unconsciously holds back part of her power due to her survival's instinct so as to not damage herself with her own ability. When her anger over Shiage hurting her despite being a "worthless level 0" reached its peak, she blew up her own left arm from wrist to elbow while trying to kill him with her power. Since her ability is a form of electron manipulation, she can also manipulate enemy electric or electron-based attacks and bend their trajectory away from her.
- Meltdowner Beams: She can fire beams of destructive electrons which are said to be stuck in a state between particles and waves. Mugino initially could shoot four laser-like beams or release one concentrated blast. Normally, her rate of fire is a little slow since Mugino takes her time to perfectly aim and calculate the output of every single shot. She can also fire her Meltdowner like a rocket engine to move at speeds exceeding Mach 20. After World War III, Mugino has trained her ability to the point that she can create up to 20 Meltdowner beams at once. Wounds inflicted are completely cauterized.
- Silicon Burn: Mugino is able to disperse her Meltdowner into several smaller shots that cover the area through her special silicon cards to compensate for her usually slow firing rate.
- Meltdowner Shield: Mugino can generate round-shaped formations of her Meltdowner to block incoming attacks. The shield annihilates everything that comes in contact with it thus protecting her. Mugino can supposedly also erect a full body barrier to protect herself from all directions, solely as a last resort.
- Meltdowner Arm: After her mutilation, Mugino replaced her lost left arm with an energy-like Meltdowner Arm which can move according to her wishes yet carry the Meltdowner's properties. She can freely expand the arm in size.
- Meltdowner Eye: After her mutilation, Mugino replaced her lost right eye with a Meltdowner eye. While is not known if the eye is a functional replacement that allows her to see, she can use it to fire a Meltdowner beam.
Body Crystal Overload: When Mugino ingested a small amount of Body Crystal she was able to shoot tens of thousands of Meltdowner beams around her, presumably much stronger than her normal powers. Since she's constantly shooting beams the sphere around her looks like a solid energy construct. She can also focus the beams in one spot to construct a single arm almost 20 meters long that easily melted down snow and the earth below it when swung, creating a phreatic explosion; or shoot the tens of thousands of beams into one direction. Since Mugino is not actually one of the rare espers compatible with Body Crystal, the drug greatly tires her out, running out after a few minutes at most and leaving her very weakened afterward.
Other abilities[]
Genius-Level Intellect: As one of the seven Level 5s esper in Academy City, Mugino is extremely intelligent and has a calculation process much faster than most supercomputers of Academy City, which are 20 years ahead of the world. She is constantly calculating possible outcomes and means of best exploiting her beam's destructive power. She is also a capable leader and was able to deduce Mikoto Misaka as the perpetrator behind the attacks on the facilities affiliated with the Level 6 Shift Project.
Expert Combatant: Outside of her esper ability, Mugino is very capable in hand-to-hand combat, being able to deal out both strong punches and kicks, experienced by Shiage Hamazura and Mikoto Misaka, both of whom had an urge to vomit after being hit in the stomach. In her youth, she was capable of knocking out a white tiger with a single palm strike to its face.
