Kihara Ransuu

Kihara Ransuu (木原乱数) is a character introduced in "Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index" as part of the infamous Kihara family. With two of his relatives, he is sent to destroy Baggage City and the Natural Selector tournament.

Etymology
As part of an apparent trend to the Kihara family having names related to science or mathematics, Kihara Ransuu's given name (乱数) can be translated as "Random number".

Appearance
Ransuu appears as a lean young man. He wears a red and blue track suit with small metallic nodes attach all around it with matching gloves, which looks similar to that of a motion capture suit. He wears sunglasses, and has wavy blond hair. His most prominent feature is his face itself, showing a seemingly perpetual sneer and demeaning look on his face with his beady eyes, which is similar to Kihara Amata. According to Kiyotaka Haimura, he designed Ransuu with that similarity in mind.

Personality
Like many other Kiharas, he has the natural affinity towards science and cruelty. He is shown to be deceptive, a complement to his powers, and what's more, incredibly sadistic and cruel, and has no objections to killing large numbers of people. However, he is surprisingly referred to as the most sane Kihara to have appeared during the Baggage City Arc, and is described as someone who would easily understand people.

Background
Not much is known about him, but Ransuu is referred to as being middle-low tier of his family, and worked by looking at the people who were watching a sports ceremony and considering about those things.

Some point in time he developed derivative technology based on the attempts on making a FIVE_Over for Shokuhou Misaki's powers, and somehow gained information regarding Kamijou Touma.

Baggage City Arc
He is the first Kihara to appear in the arc. Immediately after "Kamijou Touma's" warning of he, the Kihara's, and Academy City forces arriving in Baggage City. Here, he appears before Weissland Strainikov who is rendered immobile, inside the top floor where he stayed not a long while. Here, Kihara shows Baggage City is burning before his eyes, that they may have killed hundreds if not thousands of innocent people, that he may have killed Útgarða-Loki of GREMLIN, that he has killed the other leaders of Science Guardians, and finally tells him that since he "finished his quota" he will be killing some time until the other Kiharas are finished. He complains to Weissland that the job was "too easy" and begins his altered game of Russian roulette; showing footage of Weissland's family being held hostage on his mobile phone.

In a sadistic game of choices, Weissland is forced by Ransuu to choose from either his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and two of his grandchildren, which one to shoot, as Ransuu had prepared five guns, with only one of them is loaded. Ransuu states that if no bullets comes out after he chose, then they all go free. After much terror, Weissland is forced to choose one, his son-in-law. However, Ransuu reveals that the footage was from the past, but the touchscreen of the mobile phone (which Weissland touched), is linked with the trigger. In other words, it's as if he pulled the trigger himself. What's more, Ransuu lied, all the guns were loaded, meaning it wouldn't matter who Weissland chose, he still would've shot someone. Weissland falls into despair. However, Ransuu suddenly notices something, the hostages are missing, and have been freed from their bonds. Suddenly, "Kamijou Touma" appears on-screen, who states that he will be taking care of things soon, and destroys the camera. Ransuu, however realizes that something so convenient could never happen, and assumes that he is an illusion.

It is unknown when, but Ransuu somehow drove Útgarða-Loki to the verge of death, but somehow manages to set up an illusion against Ransuu. He then proceeds to smash a heavy pile of papers on his head. However, he is then greeted by "Kamijou Touma".

It is only revealed until later that both Ransuu and Útgarða-Loki that somehow caught each other in each other's illusions, drawing a stalemate. Kihara Enshuu later visits the hotel and discovers the bodies of Ransuu and Útgarða-Loki, here she begins creating an agar to cultivate microbes to create moldy air taken from Ransuu, as a biological weapon to eradicate the population of Baggage City.

Kihara Yuiitsu later marks him as a loss during her negotiation with a policy maker of the Science Guardians. It is unknown if any of the things he has done or referenced were real or merely illusions.

Abilities
Ransuu is a Kihara and has a natural affinity towards science. He is a researcher that worked on the development of chemicals that affect the brain, his efforts are apparently derived from creating a FIVE_Over from Shokuhou Misaki's powers.

He originally was skilled at controlling emotions of a certain kind. For example, he could use a command like: "I don’t know why, but the door handle just feels strangely scary," which leads to the conclusion, "I don’t want to go out."

He can use chemicals such as Red Fury 03 and Blue Fear 07, to create a combination to form an appropriate illusion for targets depending on how he mixes them.Combined with his illusion inducing mold cultivated from live humans and corpses, he limits his target’s movement before killing them off with a gun or a knife. Although, that's just for convenience's sake, as the true reason he uses the chemicals was to kill time, as it would be too boring to kill the enemy too early.

Design evolution
Kihara Ransuu's apparent similarities with Kihara Amata were intentional in Haimura's part. Basing on the fact that cover had entirely new characters, Haimura designed Ransuu to look like Amata in order for the reader to make him recognizable, which in this case, make him look related to Amata.

Quotes

 * (To Weissland Strainikov, from NT4): "When I attacked my quota or section or whatever, it all ended way too easily!! Since it seems like it’ll take some time before the other Kiharas are done, I decided to have some fun with you to kill some time."
 * (To Weissland Strainikov, from NT4): "Now, wait just a second. Quit acting like you’re some kind of just hero. Surely you know the difference between justice and a sense of justice. But then, I hate both."
 * (On the nature of man, ibid): "My specialty is world peace. Oh, is that not enough of an explanation for you? Think of it like this. There are various famous international competitions in things like soccer or track and field. People around the world get all excited and have fun while obeying common rules. In that time, things like race, belief, and national borders no longer matter and people feel a strong unity. Now what would happen if that kind of thing was artificially created?"
 * (Commenting on Touma, ibid): "You’re clearly in opposition to him. No matter how irregular a hero he may be, this world isn’t the kind of place that allows him to do that at a point like this. If it was, we Kiharas would have lost our place in the world long ago."
 * (Ibid): “Who the fuck interfered with my fun! I put a lot of effort into this, so who the hell do they think they…hmm?”
 * (Ibid): “Is this... an illusion too...?”