KNOW YOUR RAILDEX: MUGINO SHIZURI

Today's candidate is Mugino Shizuri!

What's really cool about Raildex is that nearly the whole damn cast has powers that would beat the shit out of a lot of Marvel or DC groups. I'm serious! It's like everybody who is anybody won their powers in some kind of supernatural lottery. Super strength and speed is old and cliched, but still provides for some awesome fight scenes, but the writers of Raildex clearly wanted to turn all their characters into freaking badasses! Here's another part in a series of features focusing on some of the characters and their unique Esper abilities.

Catch up with the first installment looking at "Kuroko Shirai"
Catch up with the second installment looking at "Accelerator"
Catch up with the third installment looking at "Takitsubo Rikou"

Esper power: Meltdowner

Shizuri is a member of ITEM, a mercenary group in the dark side of Academy City that Misaka encounters in Railgun S. Being the fourth ranked Level-5, Shizuri is the most powerful member of ITEM and the closest opponent after Accelerator to give Misaka a real run for her money.

Like all Espers, Mugino's power comes from the thin AIM field she creates around herself. Although it looks like a simple SCI-FI energy blast, Meltdowner is actually Shizuri's Esper power to control electrons in an ambiguous state where they are a particle and a wave at the same time. This is unnatural for an electron, hence the ambiguous part. When she uses this power to attack objects and people, the electrons are unable to react either as particle or a wave because of this 'Mugino' state their put under. In normal circumstances, electrons possess mass closer to zero, but because they are stuck in this 'Mugino' state, they take the form of a seemingly solid object, which becomes a kind of artificial barrier that Mugino uses to deflect Misaka's attacks. 

Mugino can also create a highly destructive beam of high-speed electrons (the Meltdowner beam attack) that pierces through a target in the same velocity that it was fired. This sounds a lot like Misaka's Railgun attack and it's true. Meltdowner is a form of electromagnetism, so Mugino is allowed by the laws of physics (well the pseudo ones in Raildex) to affect Misaka's electric attacks. This includes redirecting them away from her or stopping them entirely.

You might've also seen Misaka redirecting Meltdowner in some of the clips I've shown. Well that is a two-way street. Since Meltdowner functions a lot like Railgun, Misaka can bend Mugino's Meltdowner away from her. Consider the fact that Mugino is also a Level-5 Esper just like Misaka. The only difference is, unlike Misaka, ITEM works together as a team which makes taking them down nigh-impossible.