Shundan Kimi

Shundan Kimi (春暖嬉美) is a character introduced in Toaru Kagaku no Railgun. Initially a prisoner in private juvenile hall, she was freed after her allies took advantage of the jailbreak trial to break her out.

Appearance
Kimi is a young woman with long light blue wavy hair, which covers the left side of her face. She has notably sharp teeth.

Personality
She has a vicious personality, using two innocent guards to test her newfound powers. However, she seems to be kind to her subordinates, being willing to let them do what they want once they finish a job.

She is a fan of the musical group Mariophanie and is shown to be both singing and listening to their songs, though she dislikes the material they've released after her escape.

Kimi appears to be apathetic to her surroundings. She paid little attention to the conversations of other prisoners to the point of being unaware that there are now seven Level 5 espers.

It was later revealed that due to the experiments done to her in her childhood where certain parts of her brain was expanded or cut out in order to see how it would effect her Esper power's development and the death of her friend Honoka during their escape, Kimi had seemingly begun developing her apathetic and somewhat nihilistic personality traits during her return to the orphanage and subsequent years growing up as the result of the experiment, with Kimi herself noting that "something" was missing ever since that day.

Background
When she was at the age of seven, she lived in an orphanage along with Raifu, Tsurigane, Honoka with Aohoshi who often would doctor her. After Aohoshi left the orphanage, she leaves Kimi and her friends at an orphanage to take care of younger child errors. Later Kimi and her friends were sent to a 'power-boosting' facility she ponders about herself being a level 0. As she watches Raifu is raised to level 2, Kimi is still being level 0 and she notices Honoka depression about her power dropping to level 1, she tries to cheer her up as she is still level 0 but Honoka leaves in anger. Tsurigane sneaks into their record file room finding more about their experiments that they are only affecting their power levels instead. She hides while two researchers arrive and talk about Kimi's unknown development as only a level 0, wanting to know more about her they decide to expand their research data for Kimi.

Afterwards two researchers discover Kimi's power and they start on calling Kimi's more often, Raifu suggesting to bring her some food but Kimi refuses so, she mentions she doesn't even feel the taste of food anymore. Honoka is afraid that Kimi's going to get killed when she was told by Tsurigane what she heard earlier. Two researchers forces Kimi to come along for another exam, but are knocked out by Tsurigane and Honoka, when Tsurigane suggests escaping she goes along them. However the researchers find out about their escape plan and authorize killing them. While running in the hallway they send off a Spriggan, they hide and Kimi finds out another one, she then suggests to exit the facility through the emergency stairway. Honoka praises Kimi for she might be an esper and keeps on complementing her out of jealousy lamenting herself for being weak. Kimi says they're only after her and that's it. As a Spriggan catches up to them, when they reach the door exit, Honoka let go of Raifu whom she was carrying and she kicks them both off the stairway.

After being kicked off by Honoka's "betrayal:, the Spriggan catches both Kimi and Raifu. She watches as the guards shoots and kill Honoka. Before she is executed by the Spriggan it breaks apart. Later after successfully escaping the facility they burn it out. Kimi apologises to Honoka but Tsurigane points out she doesn't have any reason to be responsible that of which Kimi agree's on. She mentions she doesn't feel anything at all even though Honoka's dead but she doesn't feel any emotions, they think it's probably due the program they were in, as they must of have messed up with their brains. Remembering her past life with Honoka, Kimi remembers her final look in her eyes.

Later upon escaping the facility together with her friends, Kimi was shown having returned to the orphanage, returning to her normal life and moving on as she settled back to normalcy. However as noted by Kimi, that ever since that day she escaped from the facility and on the wake of Honoka's death, Kimi had felt as if "something" was missing from her, seemingly beginning her gradual descent into an apathetic, bored and nihilistic daze as her life passed by and progressed as she carried on with her inner emptiness, with the only thing even giving her a moment of emotion being her remembering the "look" in Honoka's eyes as she "betrayed" her, leaving her constantly wondering on what exactly this "look" meant.

Eventually one day, while wandering around Academy City's back alleys, Kimi had come across a single girl being harassed by a group of delinquents. Uninterested, Kimi proceeded to ignore the entire mess and simply continue with her wandering as she turned away from the scene. However, unexpectedly Kimi's hand was then taken by the victimized girl, begging for her to help her. In response, Kimi gave her a hand knife and told her to "do it herself". As the girl took the knife and fought back, Kimi began to notice the glint in her eyes, recognizing the same look of clustered emotion Honoka had during her final moments, unexpectedly bringing a flare of emotional joy back into her body, as she realized that seeing someone weak fighting back against someone strong brought a thrill to her inner emptiness as she joined the brawl.

Kimi had been a prisoner for three years prior to her escape. At some point, Kimi seemingly managed to attain the "Angel" Dragon that somehow escaped from Kamijou Touma's right hand during the events of the Daihaseisai, but could not use it due to the effects of the AIM Jammer in the facility. Kimi was able to contact her ally Aohoshi, who had infiltrated the juvenile hall staff as head of security. Kimi told Aohoshi about how she had managed to obtain the dragon, though Aohoshi was incredulous at this.

Jailbreaker Arc
She was a prisoner in the private juvenile hall prior to the start of the Jailbreak competition, in room 42. When the jailbreak trial was devised, her allies took advantage of the opportunity to engineer her escape, including Aohoshi. She was to be switched with Iizuka, one of the jailers who was playing the "prisoner" which the competitors were supposed to break out. With the jailbreak trial coming, she and Aohoshi managed to modify the security of the facility in order to test the best competitors and find the best hacker in the competition.

The plan ultimately succeeded, when Uiharu Kazari successfully managed to break her out and through hacking alone. Prior to her breaking off her chains and escaping in earnest, Kimi managed to have a conversation with Uiharu, where she revealed her method of hacking, amazing Kimi. As the event wound down, she was left alone with two guards. Now out of the AIM Jammer's range, she summoned the dragon to eat through her chains and attacked the guards to test her newfound ability. She later regrouped with her accomplices, Aohoshi, Tsurigane, and Raifu, and began the next phase of their plan, to get the best hacker they know: Uiharu Kazari.

Kimi played a card game with Tsurigane and Raifu. Aohoshi revealed that she has obtained Uiharu's registration data. Raifu commented on how Uiharu was with the Railgun, which surprised Kimi when she is informed that the Railgun is the third-ranked Level 5, and there are now seven Level 5s in the city since she was incarcerated. Aohoshi remarked that the information regarding the Level 5s should have been passed around by prisoners to which Kimi revealed that she simply wasn't interested. Aohoshi said that the city's strongest espers are claimed to rival a navy cruiser's in firepower, thought Kimi seemed unimpressed, as she won the card game.

Later on, Kimi's group manages to abduct Uiharu. They take her away in a recreational vehicle (RV), driven by their female minions. Kimi apologises to said minions, saying that neither she nor her friends can drive, and tells them that they can go wherever they want after the job is over. The RV is attacked and stopped by Mikoto and Kuroko, the former ordering the minions to release Uiharu. Kimi tells the minions to ignore Mikoto and go, then greets Mikoto as the Railgun. She tells her that she only wants Uiharu to do a quick job and will return her unharmed afterwards, which Mikoto does not accept. Kimi unleashes her dragon, unsettling Mikoto as she recognises it as the one that emerged from Touma previously. Mikoto attacks with iron sand and demands to know why she has it, but Kimi replies that she doesn't know. The dragon transforms the iron sand into a white substance that easily crumbles, and then destroys a building with its charge. Raifu asks if Kimi got Mikoto, but Kimi denies this as Mikoto wouldn't go down that easily. Kimi and her group flee in two vehicles, using the entrance-way road that leads to School District 11.

Abilities
The exact nature of Kimi's esper ability is currently unknown. During her time at the 'Power Boosting Lab', researchers noted that she wasn't emitting an AIM diffusion field at all, speculating that either she hadn't met the conditions for her power to manifest or that it had but they were unable to detect it. After grasping the nature of her power through further experimentation, several of the researchers involved decided that it was too dangerous to continue and tried to have her killed, even killing their own lab chief when he wished to continue regardless.

Kimi appears to have somehow obtained the escaped "Angel" Dragon from Kamijou Touma's right hand, which was unleashed during the events of the Daihaseisai. Unlike Touma however, she has shown some control of the dragon, directing it with her right arm, and doesn't need to have her right hand ripped off in order to use it. However, her right arm has been shown to become deformed from its usage. The effects of AIM Jammers prevent Kimi from making use of the dragon.

The dragon can be manifested at various degrees of manifestation. It can be slightly manifested to consume and break physical objects like chains, or partially manifested to shield Kimi with its wings. The fully-manifested dragon is strong enough to destroy a building with its charge, and its wings can defend against a point-blank railgun shot with only slight damage. It can launch feathers from its wings as projectiles. These feathers can be attached to an individual to apply a form of hypnotism, placing them under the control of Kimi and her allies but also leaving them unable to think for themselves. The dragon also has the ability to transform a target, including iron sand and possibly other substances, into a white substance that crumbles easily (implied to be salt, from Raifu's reaction). This ability causes a cross on the dragon's head to light up, and leaves a similar cross mark on whatever is transformed. This attack can be blocked by placing an adequate obstacle between the dragon's cross and the target.

During her second battle with Mikoto, Kimi made use of black lightning to neutralize several of her opponent's electrical and iron sand attacks, directing it with her left hand. She also used it to reproduce Mikoto's Railgun, using a broken guard robot thrown at her as the ammunition.

Aside from her supernatural capabilities, Kimi also has a decent amount of street-fighting experience, having gotten involved in many fights while growing up.

Quotes

 * "The weak are trapped below the heels of the strong, but even they can tear out throats if they grow fangs. They won't need heroes like you to save them. The heroes can't reach all of the weak, so isn't it more fair to give the weak weapons so they can fight back?"