Wanigawa Raifu

Wanigawa Raifu (鰐河雷斧) is a character introduced in Toaru Kagaku no Railgun. Initially appearing as a competitor in the jailbreak trial, she is later revealed to be part of a group who used the event to engineer a real jailbreak.

Appearance
Raifu is a little girl with light teal hair. She wears a pink sweater with long sleeves.

Personality
She presents a facade of helplessness and cowardice, influencing people to come to her aid. However, as Yamashiro Shoubu has noted using his power, she reeks of malice, which is proven later by her vicious beating of him. She is willing to threaten and hurt her own subordinates. She believes that humans would be evil if they were true to their desires and impulses, and can't understand "heroes who fight to protect everyone". Because of this, she desires to fight such heroes and enjoys defeating them. She believes that justice needs power to back it up and anyone she can defeat is merely a fake hero.

It was later revealed that some of these traits weren't originally part of her personality and instead the direct result of being subjected to an experiment where parts of her brain were either expanded or removed in order to see how it affected her ability.

The side effects of these experiments to her mind was fully shown during her late childhood in the research facility, where due to the modification to her brain, Raifu was seemingly reduced to a near conscious vegetative state, where she would mindlessly stare out into nothing for hours a day and do no other activity and becoming near unresponsive to anyone and simply babble whatever was in her mind randomly, rendering her nearly helpless to do anything herself, as seen where she literally had to be carried around frequently by her friend Honoka in order to move and needed to be cared for by Kimi and Tsurigane due to her constant intoxicated like state.

Background
When she was at the age of five, Raifu would often being bullied because she is a child error and Shirakinu Honoka would save her much to her happiness and even copy her. She lived in an orphanage along with Kimi, Tsurigane, Honoka with Aohoshi who often would doctor her. After Aohoshi left the orphanage, she leaves Raifu and her friends at an orphanage to take care of younger child errors.

At some point, Raifu became part of a group with Kimi, Tsurigane and Aohoshi. Kimi was captured and imprisoned in a private juvenile hall, so the others plotted to break her out and to find a skilled hacker as well. Raifu and Tsurigane would take part in a jailbreak trial taking place at the juvenile hall. Raifu's role was to take out any powerful non-hacker competitors.

Jailbreaker Arc
Raifu was a participant from the very beginning of the competition, and likely took advantage of Misaka Mikoto and the others creating an opening in the outer wall of the facility. Inside the girl's building, she met Yamashiro Shoubu, who wears a tanuki mask which she constantly mistook for a bear, while fleeing from guard robots. Raifu took advantage of him, allowing him to bear the brunt of the facility's security system.

She was later separated from him and chased by centipede robots, coming across Mikoto's group as they are surrounded by more robots. However, she snuck past them and went off without any of them noticing where she went. Her whereabouts were unknown for the remainder of the trial, which ended with Uiharu Kazari successfully hacking the facility and breaking out the target prisoner, who had actually been switched with her imprisoned comrade Kimi.

During festivities afterwards, she encountered Yamashiro Shoubu again and was asked to follow him into a secluded area. There the 'masked hero' threatened her with his wooden sword, sensing how she reeks of malice. Not long afterwards, she beats him up, showing her true colors. She later met up with Aohoshi, Tsurigane and Kimi in an abandoned building, happy that the latter was finally free.

Raifu played cards with Kimi and Tsurigane. Aohoshi then told them that she had found the registration data of the winner, Uiharu Kazari. The girls were amused on how she was able to hack the system. Raifu commented on how Uiharu was with the Railgun, which suprised Kimi when she ws informed that the Railgun is the third-ranked Level 5, and that there were now seven Level 5s in the city since she was incarcerated. Kimi eventually won the card game.

Raifu and the others kidnapped Uiharu and took her away in a recreational vehicle (RV). Raifu mentioned that Uiharu's capture was easy, but Tsurigane said that it was at times like these that they should be ready for anything. However, the RV was attacked and brought to a halt by Kuroko and Mikoto, who were attempting to rescue Uiharu. Kimi unleashed her dragon to fight Mikoto. The dragon transformed Mikoto's iron sand into a white substance and then charged at her, forcing Kuroko to teleport her away. Raifu coughed and complained about something salty (presumably the white substance). They then fled in two other vehicles, using the entrance-way road that leads to School District 11.

Raifu waited near a garage in District 11, setting a trap for Mikoto. She pretended to be a helpless girl and had a subordinate pretend to take her hostage. Mikoto didn't fall for the trick, so Raifu decided to reverse the hostage situation. The subordinate was angered and tried to shoot Raifu, but the bullet pierced her own foot instead. Raifu then ran into the garage with Mikoto in pursuit. They engaged in battle, which eventually led to an explosion.

Raifu escaped the now-burning building with her wounded subordinate, who she ordered to leave lest she be attacked by the approaching Six Wings. Raifu then headed for the wall, attracting the attention of security robots. Mikoto caught up to her here. After a brief conversation, Raifu ran up to and along the top of the wall, causing the Six Wings to attack her and hence allowing her to redirect the attacks to Mikoto. She then jumped onto a Six Wings and sent it flying at Mikoto, though it gets destroyed by a Railgun. Raifu thought to herself that her odds of victory were increasing as the battle went on.

She sent another Six Wings at Mikoto to make her use her Railgun to intercept it. This allowed Raifu to redirect the Railgun back at Mikoto - her plan all along. However, to Raifu's surprise, Mikoto managed to just barely dodge the Railgun. Raifu revealed claw-like weapons from within her sleeves and closed in to deliver the finishing blow. She diverted the electricity that Mikoto attacked her with. When Mikoto tried launching a gas tank at her, Raifu used gravity to bend light and throw off her aim, then redirected the tank and seemingly hit Mikoto. She attempted to slash Mikoto with her claws, only to discover that she'd hit a decoy made of dust. Mikoto used this opening to shock Raifu. Raifu analysed the situation, noting that she couldn't feel her limbs or use her power and that her odds of victory were low, but attempted one more attack. Mikoto kicked her in the head and shocked her again to incapacitate her.

Abilities
Raifu is a skilled combatant, able to defeat Yamashiro Shoubu after he picked up on her malice, and to take out many of the competitors in the jailbreak trial without them noticing.

Her ability, Gravity Sling allows her to redirect harmful objects in motion in a manner that is comparable to the effects of Accelerator's Vector Control. She can change the trajectory of anything that would hit her, such as a bullet or a falling car, to make it hit someone else. She can also use gravity to bend light to make enemy attacks miss.

As weapons, Raifu uses large translucent claws that cover the ends of her fingers. These are normally hidden by her long sleeves.

Raifu has considerable physical strength, enough to overpower a girl who is both taller than her and armed with a gun. She is also resilient enough to continue fighting after being shocked by the Level 5 Mikoto (albeit Mikoto was likely holding back to avoid killing her).