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| “ | This is a difference in the freedom our powers give us. And that difference is insurmountable for you. I need not even do anything. I do not simply have an infinite supply of Dark Matter. My inspiration also knows no bounds. No matter how many cards you gather in your hand, I can push it back with brute force as numbers mean nothing to me. …Nothing you do will ever even reach me. To reach me, you first need to climb over the wall of infinity that continues on eternally. | „ |
| ~ Teitoku to Accelerator |
| “ | Aleister's a fan of failsafes and always moves multiple plans forward concurrently. But he also comes prepared with an alternative option for each of them, and I am the alternative option for YOU!! | „ |
| ~ Teitoku to Accelerator during their battle. |
| “ | THIS IS MY WORLD, ACCELERATOR!!! | „ |
| ~ Teitoku Kakine's breakdown. |
Teitoku Kakine, also known as Dark Matter, is a major character in the A Certain Magical Index franchise.
He is the second-ranked Level 5 esper of Academy City and the leader of SCHOOL, one of the many criminal organizations on the Dark Side. He aims to become the new 1st ranked Level 5 esper and directly deal with the General Superintendent, Aleister Crowley. He is the arch-rival and counterpart of Accelerator, who he seeks to defeat and replace.
He is voiced by Masaya Matsukaze in Japanese and Daman Mills in English.
Appearance[]
Kakine is a young man with shoulder-length dirty blond hair and black eyes. He often seen wearing a cocky smile on his face. He normally wears a dark maroon colored suit with a white collared shirt, both unbuttoned, revealing a red v-neck under them.
After being revived through Dark Legacy, his body becomes ghostly white, an effect of his power being regenerated from his Dark Matter. His eyes have changed becoming more sinister gaining yellow irises and dark sclera. A deep darkness could be seen when he opens his mouth. However, he still wears the same clothes as before.
Personality[]
Teitoku Kakine is a very ruthless, arrogant, cold-blooded and overconfident individual who strives to be known as the strongest, even if it means killing off Accelerator. He is willing to kill and torture others to achieve his goals, as shown when seaching for Last Order to use as bait for Accelerator, he violently pinned Kazari Uiharu to the ground and demanded answers, and was even about to kill her. He also grievously stabbed Aiho Yomikawa in front of Accelerator just to provoke him, even after the former saved his life. He is also quite sarcastic and condescending towards others, both during or outside of battle. While he possesses many antisocial traits, Kakine isn't without honor, as he will avoid involving any innocent bystanders unless they get in his way. To Shiage Hamazura, this actually makes Kakine slightly nobler than Shizuri Mugino, who would happily kill anyone who makes her mad.
Furthermore, he will often leave his opponents alive if they are completely helpless or already dying, just because he thinks it would be beneath him to waste energy on them. Such is the case when he willingly spares Rikou Takitsubo after realizing that she is dying from Body Crystal overuse and Shiage can't do anything to hurt him, so he just leaves the ITEM base despite his original goal being to kill Takitsubo due to her AIM Stalker ability. Kakine is even able to demonstrate some degree of pity to those who have suffered, such as Ringo Yuzuriha, a survivor of the Dark May Project. He even went so far as to try and save the brainwashed Ringo instead of killing her, and when the young girl died in his arms, Kakine demonstrated some grief at the innocent girl's death.
Despite his ego and arrogance, Kakine is actually rather insecure and self-deprecating, as he openly refers to himself as a scumbag and a mongrel twice in OT Volume 15. He also believes he is unable to protect anyone. Moreover, he is extremely resentful and envious towards Accelerator due to his status as the main plan and his right to directly communicate with Aleister Crowley. He seeks to defeat Accelerator and prove his supriority so he can gain Aleister's attention. Deep down, Kakine despises being treated as a mere cog in a machine over a person with thoughts and feelings as acute as those who use him and sympathizes with those who are treated similarly. Its heavily implied that one of the reasons he's so desperate to negotiate with Aleister is that he wants to change the city so that people like his childhood friend and Ringo don't have to die anymore.
Biography[]
Kakine's personal history and background is largely unknown, however, it is known that he tragically lost his childhood friend in the past, which led to him walking a path of darkness. He is also aware of Aleister's many plans and detests the fact that he is the spare plan. At some point in time, he became the leader of SCHOOL, a criminal organization from the Dark Side of Academy City.
Abilities[]
Dark Matter: Kakine's esper power which allows him to generate and manipulate an exotic type of matter that defies the normal physical laws and is able to warp the laws of physics as a result. It should be noted that the term "Dark Matter" is not to be confused with the true "Dark Matter" which is among the components of the universe. In addition, 'unknown matter' here does not mean "matter that has not been discovered by humans" but "matter that did not exist until it was created by Teitoku Kakine".
Kakine's Angelic Dark Matter Wings
- Dark Matter Wings: Kakine can create six white wings made out of Dark Matter that allow him to fly. These wings can be several tens of meters long, and can be used as blunt, stabbing or slicing weapons that can casually slice a building in half vertically.
- Light Diffraction: By diffracting sunlight through the countless unseen gaps of his Dark Matter wings, Kakine can change light's nature to one that doesn't follow the laws of physics, instead using its own set of laws. This light can be used to burn opponents.
- Wind: Using his wings, Kakine can create a powerful gale wind strong enough to send a person flying.
- Explosion Creation: Kakine is capable of creating explosions around him at will. These explosions are capable of shaking buildings, destroying all windows in a large area and blowing a bench to pieces while also sending Saiai Kinuhata flying through a wall.
- Defensive Measures: Kakine appears to be capable of using Dark Matter to protect himself from danger, as he's not bothered by his own explosions or the attacks of Saiai, and was completely unharmed after Accelerator reflected his ramming attack.
- Energy Manipulation: Kakine can infuse his Dark Matter and the attacks launched by it (such as the diffracted light or wind caused by his wings) with 25,000 different types of energy that he can produce by twisting the laws of physics.
- Invisible Pressure: Kakine can create pressure through an invisible force that is strong enough to crush a human.
- Intangible Matter: Kakine can create a type of dark matter that only interacts with people, phasing straight through any other kind of matter.
- Anti-Brainwashing: The brain's electrical signals can be influenced by light and sound. Kakine was able to use that fact to produce light and sound that undid the brainwashing imposed on Ringo.
- Transmutation: Kakine's Dark Matter interacts with other matter in highly unusual ways, modifying the normal matter according to laws other than the laws of physics. One notable application of this is that he can create a type of Dark Matter that upon contact with a human, turns the human's entire body into sand.
- Dark Matter Analysis: Kakine can calculate and predict all effects his Dark Matter has on his surroundings.
Post-Revival[]
Dark Matter Physiology: Due to Academy City using his power while he was incapacitated, Kakine learned to make human cells out of Dark Matter, a knowledge he used to replace his body and organs with Dark Matter replicas. He now no longer distinguishes between his actual body and the parts fabricated from his power. All Dark Matter is now part of the existence known as Teitoku Kakine. Because of this he is no longer getting older and does not need to eat, sleep or breath, while still keeping most of his previous powers. He additionally theorized he could construct full Personal Realities of other espers, but hasn't displayed the ability to do so before being defeated.
- Dark Matter Network: All Dark Matter created by Kakine is connected to his will, as seen with him affecting Byouri Kihara's Equ.DarkMatter implants from Academy City while she was in Eastern Europe. This allows him to perceive the world and act from any of his Dark Matter. Destroying individual pieces of Dark Matter is useless. Trying to damage the whole by interacting with an individual block is also ineffective, as there's no direct connection between Dark Matter blocks (it freely communicates and transmits signals between each "block" without any "wires") so an attack cannot reach the rest without being cut off. However, other Dark Matter users can interfere with the network, and the specialized esper, Rikou Takitsubo, was able to interfere with his Personal Reality and incited Beetle 05 to overthrow the Kakine Network. Upon his defeat, Mugino and Accelerator posited they were only fighting the very outer layer of Kakine's mind, before the data defining Kakine was overwritten. Currently, Beetle 05 keeps himself from cloning too often in fear of the malicious portion of Kakine appearing again in a single independent piece.
- Nigh-Immortality: As long as Dark Matter exists in the world, Kakine will never die, granting him some form of immortality.
- Regeneration: Kakine can easily rebuild his Dark Matter body, as he requires no organs to survive. Even if completely destroyed with something like Meltdowner, he can recreate it from another Dark Matter pile/puddle. The same applies to his creations. Kakine now lives through his own ability, and claims to be able to regenerate as long as there's Dark Matter left in the world.
- Postcognition: Kakine is able to cover an area in Dark Matter to read the information on the surface as if it were a record or a CD. He can see the events that occurred there, up to a few months back into the past. Kakine can get enough information about these past events to even recreate the humans present for them, including their thoughts.
- Dark Matter Spears: Kakine can release a storm of countless white Dark Matter spears from a Dark Matter puddle.
- Shapeshifting: Since their body is made of the Dark Matter that they hold control of, Kakine and Beetle 05 can easily change its shape. For example, Kakine showed he could transform his right arm into a giant wing with feathers as sharp as blades that can stretch like spears with tremendous force and bend their paths to attack the enemy from all directions, and he could melt into a giant puddle of Dark Matter and recreate himself in another point of the puddle. Beetle 05 has shown he can freely change between his white beetle form (Either as small as a regular beetle or as large as his original form) and his human form.
- Absorption: The Dark Matter permeates the object as if it were flowing through it. The object gets disintegrated and is absorbed into the dark matter.
- Wallcrawling: Kakine can now stand and walk on walls.
One of Kakine's White Beetles
Dark Matter Beings: Teitoku is capable of creating an army of hundreds of Dark Matter beings, which are all connected to his Dark Matter Network. Kakine does this by splitting his own personality into independent minds that can join back together into a single consciousness when he joins back together. They all follow the wishes of the existence known as Teitoku Kakine, even though there's no actual large consciousness controlling them, because they are all the individual known as Teitoku Kakine. Because of this, even if the Dark Matter Network is jammed, the individual pieces can act on their own and will follow the will of the original.
- White Beetles: The most notable of Kakine's creations are the large 15m white rhinoceros beetles made out of Dark Matter. They are unable to feel physical pain and their armor can resist several shots from the cannons of other White Beetles. They also weigh several tons.
- Detection: The bodies of the beetles are equipped with an organic antenna that uses the structure of the ampullae of Lorenzini that sharks use to find their prey.
- Wings: Using their wings, the beetles can lift their large bodies off the ground and fly. By vibrating them at high speed, they can convey their thoughts in human language and speak, or if the Original Kakine Teitoku needs to, his own voice through the beetles. They can also use the vibration of their wings to divert shockwaves, a technique adapted from Accelerator's vector control. By vibrating his wings in a certain amplitude, they can allow certain small objects, like Last Order and Fremea Seivelun, to levitate.
- Cannon: The beetles' horns are cannons that can fire Dark Matter shells on targets, apparently exploding on impact. It does not use gunpowder; it does not smoke when fired. Instead, it uses a spring system to fire the shells. The shells detonate by breaking the hardened outer coating with sponge springs, as such, their acoustic effect is only 36% to 50% than that of a normal shell, making it infeasible to weaponize the shockwaves generated by the shell on impact. The cannon is as strong as those of warships.
- Clones/Self-Duplication: Kakine showed the ability to create Dark Matter replicas of himself. The clones can create his signature Dark Matter wings.
- Misaka Sisters: Dark Matter versions of clones of Mikoto Misaka. They can move as fast as a motorbike, they can make abnormal leaps like wall jumping, and have enough strength to easily destroy a human face with a punch or tear a human apart with their nails. It should be noted that they can not use esper abilities.
- Dragonfly: Giant dragonflies 5m long made out of Dark Matter. They are mainly used for recognition and search.
