Toaru Majutsu no Index Wiki:Featured articles/This month's featured article/2021

Openers for articles that have been featured in 2021.

January
A new year, a new beginning. Perhaps somewhat fitting, the first Featured Article of 2021 is for the Beginning Child, the first modern esper and the beginning of Academy City's Power Curriculum Program.

Half a century before the present day, this student was trained based on 's data and became Academy City's first artificial esper, possessing the ability to remake the environment of her immediate surroundings into one ideal for the survival of a nearby life-form. The system used for her became the foundation of the modern-day Power Curriculum Program.

However the public of the time did not believe the Beginning Child had special powers, and she had to endure continual attacks from newspapers and skeptics. She eventually disappeared, supposedly unable to bear living under these conditions, but she was actually frozen and preserved, with technology of the time having apparently not been enough to control her. A year before the main events of the series, she had ended up in the possession of L.S.S., and their attempts to awaken and exploit her played a key role in the Biohacker incident Kamijou Touma was involved in during his third year of middle school.

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Recently featured: Total Human Cyborg Replacement Project

March
The first magic-related Featured Article in quite a while, this time it is for a group of powerful spiritual items which appeared near the climax of Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index - the Divine Mixtures.

Created by the Anglican Archbishop as capital defense weapons and a countermeasure against a certain infamous magician, with the likely used as a reference, the Divine Mixtures originate from twisted interpretations of ancient Egypt and its mythology by Europeans, specifically the ancient Greeks, distorted by their own biases, misconceptions and preconceptions. The Divine Mixtures themselves are based on the Greeks matching Egyptian gods to their own gods with similar roles, with their names consisting of an Egyptian deity followed by their Greek equivalent.

Taking the form of decorations made of gold and diamond when inactive, on being activated and connected to the ley lines, the Divine Mixtures assume gigantic forms with destructive power reflecting their associated combined divinity, while also transforming the surrounding landscape into that of ancient Egypt as viewed and imagined by the Europeans. While possessing considerable might on their own, the Divine Mixtures only exhibit their true potential when a person offers themselves up as a host and fuses with them, granting them what a mere tool lacks.

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Recently featured: Beginning Child

May
The Featured Article this time around is one which was featured previously six years ago and has been overhauled since that time; the home, stronghold and base-of-operations for Academy City Board Chairman Aleister Crowley - the Windowless Building.

Located around the middle of the city in School District 7, as its name suggests, it lacks windows, ducts and visible entrances, with a teleporter acting as a guide into the building. Inaccessible to the general public and with extensive security around its proximity, the building holds a closed-off environment, blocking external radiation and capable of producing its own oxygen, built from special materials and designed to withstand a nuclear attack.

Within its formidable defenses is the chamber where Aleister resides, along with his life-support system and other tools, connecting to and controlling many of Academy City's core functions and systems, including the Underline monitoring network. The Windowless Building also possesses a number of other special traits and plays a role in various parts of Aleister's Plan, revealed during the course of Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index.

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Recently featured: Divine Mixture

July
The Featured Article this time follows on from another a few years ago - Cannibalization, a hybrid magical technique created and used by Leivinia Birdway, based on stories and ideas from, to save her sister Patricia from Sample Shoggoth.

A melting pot of tribes, cultures and legends, Africa has often been a destination for European magicians who have reached a dead-end in their magical research, being just across the Mediterranean. Unable to find a solution with the resources of the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, Birdway turned to Africa like many others before her.

The primary aspect of the magic, from which the name Cannibalization is derived, is a concept from food-related legends, where a person can restore a sick body part to health by eating a healthy corresponding part from another. Another is the use of corn substitutes in place of a sacrifice.

Utilizing these concepts, a corn-based organ or 'fruit' would be grown within a body and then fed to the patient to restore them (in Patricia's case, restoring the fat consumed by the parasite and displacing it). An animal skin dress, based on the tale of Nya-Nya Bulembu, would provide protection while the host was weakened from the strain.

Knowing the fatal repercussions, Birdway left her cabal to secretly act on her own, though her sister rejected her sacrificial method and sought to make her give up, their conflict over who would be saved eventually crossing over with that of Kamijou Touma and Kamisato Kakeru.

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Recently featured: Windowless Building

September
The Featured Article this time is about the HsAFH-11, also known as the Six Wings due to their distinctive design features, an unmanned Academy City attack helicopter, used by the city's air defense unit.

A state-of-the-art unmanned weapon, each costing 24-25 billion Yen, the Six Wings are deployed on command from Academy City's Air Superiority Preservation Control Center and have a top speed of Mach 2.5, assisted by rocket engines when in transit. When the craft switches into attack mode, the wings split into three (hence Six Wings), with each wing having joints that allow them to move like human arms and aim their weapon at difficult angles.

Aside from machine guns mounted on the wings, the Six Wings also have frontal missile launchers and countermeasures which can cause missiles to explode at a distance. They also use Flame Crash, frictional bullets that heat up to 2500 degrees in flight and burn out internal circuitry and fuel after piercing armor.

The Six Wings have been deployed multiple times during the series, with one notable instance being during Block's rebellion on October 9th, decimating the hired mercenaries the group were bringing into the city.

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Recently featured: Cannibalization

November
The Featured Article this time around is about the Elements, life-forms created through a combination of science and magic, appearing during an incident in the latter half of Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index.

The Elements are giant, reduced life-forms, with translucent carbon-based bodies formed in the shape of animals and plants, using a reverse of the process which converts their remains into petroleum over long periods of time, and a magic-based core which is used to animate it, in the shape of a will-o'-the-wisp with color and power corresponding to one of the four elements.

In addition to their strength from their size (doubling in minimum size for each class, starting with 3 meters for Class 1, with the largest few over 100 meters) and their elemental powers, the Elements also specialize in mimicry and can blend in with their surroundings.

Although their internal structures are inefficient copies of regular creatures, Elements can continuing moving even after damage which would kill a normal creature, but they will cease functioning and fall apart if their core is destroyed. Their activity is also reduced in temperatures exceeding 42 degrees Celsius.

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Recently featured: HsAFH-11