Hamazura Shiage

Shiage Hamazura (浜面 仕上) is a Level 0 and former Skill-Out leader as well as the third male protagonist of the Science Side in Toaru Majutsu no Index after Accelerator. He is a former lacky of ITEM.

Personality
Shiage is considered a balance between Touma and Accelerator. Like most members of his Skill-Out gang, he is lawful; however, while he and Touma share some of the same traits, such as their reputations as delinquents, their victories over higher-ranked espers through tactics, and their interference with Aleister Crowley's plans, he isn't as idealistic or as nice as Touma, at least not at first. In battle, he prefers to avoid fighting if possible or to finish the fight as quickly as possible, which is somewhat like Accelerator's personality.

He falls in love with Takitsubo Rikou, and because of this, he decides to fight the 4th-ranked Level 5 esper, Mugino Shizuri, also known as Meltdowner, in order to protect Rikou.

As far the plots advances, he began to develop a nicer side similar to Touma, as seen when he aids russian villagers during pirate attacks, convinces Acqua to don't give up on life, or how his reclutancy to fight Mugino leads to forgive her and express his desire to get back everyone together as ITEM again.

Shiage is suggestive to anything sex-related, as shown when he got a nosebleed simply by seeing Kinuhata Saiai putting a stuffed bunny doll behind Rikou to give her a bunny girl look.

Profile
The reason Aleister decides to eliminate Shiage isn't that Shiage is a threat in general but that he's an anomaly that goes against Aleister's plans. His victory over Mugino is considered something that should have never happened: he is a nobody and Mugino is a Level 5, but every attempt to kill him so far has failed, and Aleister's plans have begun to go awry ever since.

Aiwass once comments that Shiage is someone who is never noticed by people and does not have any talent, but for the sake of the person he loves, he’ll become the hero.

Skill-Out
October 3rd.

After Accelerator kills the former leader, Komaba Ritoku, by orders of the Board of Directors, he becomes the leader of his Skill-Out gang. On the same day he becomes the new leader, he accepts a deal with the Board of Directors to kill Misaka Misuzu in order to prevent leakage of students because of the Roman Catholic Church's allegations in Volume 13 after Vento of the Front's attack. If Skill-Out kills Misuzu, then the Board of Directors would allow Skill-Out to continue existing and not be destroyed completely like their previous boss. He looks for ways to fake her death, but ultimately the plan ends in failure as they are defeated by both Touma and Accelerator.

After that humiliatation, he leaves the gang's leadership to his friend Hattori Hanzou, and becomes a chauffeur and informant for ITEM, where he falls in love with Rikou.

Enemy Level 5
October 9th.

He gains a more active role during the battles between the underground organizations of Academy City. While under ITEM, he helps drive them around among other things as a grunt, jacking cars on the spot for use as getaway vehicles. While ITEM and SCHOOL are fighting each other at Kirigaoka Girls' Academy, in which powers such as destroying half a building in one blast are used, Shiage sees a car, and has the sudden urge to steal it due to its beauty. Before he could try, he is found by Yomikawa Aiho; in his words, "though she is a top-class beauty", she's still an Anti-Skill: the natural enemy of Skill-Out members like him. Yomikawa had once caught Shiage fourteen times in one night and thrown him into a cell personally. Before Yomikawa can arrest Shiage, he is told by ITEM's leader Shizuri Mugino to follow SCHOOL, leaving the scene and managing to escape Yomikawa.

After discovering the murder of Frenda, he betrays and fights Mugino to protect Rikou who was being forced to use the Esper Essence (a more refined version compared to the one from the Railgun anime) in order to activate her powers and track down Kakine Teitoku, which in turn quickened the deterioration of her own health. Shiage manages to defeat Mugino by stabbing her in the eye, which makes her lose control of her power and disintergrate her own left arm after shooting at him; and shooting the rest of his bullets into her. After Shiage leaves Mugino for dead on that battlefield, Hanzou shows up and offers Skill-Out's leadership back to Shiage, but Shiage refuses since he wants to focus on saving Rikou.

Brave in Hand
October 10th.

However, Shiage's actions interfere with Aleister's plans and later sends his assassins of the entire dark side of Academy City on a massive hunt to eliminate him. During the time met with Accelerator, who was looking for a terrorist group was near the same location that Rikou was. Shiage misunderstood him, thinking that his presence was due to another of his dirty jobs, and that Rikou might end up dead just like his friend Komaba Ritoku.

Shiage said then if Accelerator wanted to kill someone who no longer wants to stay in the dark side, then he'll take him down. Accelerator knew it was a misunderstanding, but still complimented him for his action and bravery, then charged. Shiage planned to force Accelerator into a situation where even a bullet would work on him, taken from his experience against Mugino. He then got blasted back by the air pressure created by Accelerator, but Shiage blew apart a passing security robot and threw it at Accelerator, hoping the magnetism from the broken robot will affect the collar Accelerator wears. But before the robot reached Accelerator it got blown away. Accelerator then charged right into Shiage and held him up by the collar, then blew him across the room. While Shiage was crawling up, Accelerator told him if he stays down he'll let him live, if he gets up he's dead. Shiage refused to give up, and told him they both have reasons to do what they do.

Accelerator was going to turn Shiage to mush right there, but when he saw Rikou stumbling towards them. He told Shiage if he planned to use her as a shield to keep fighting, he'll do Shiage a favour and rip him apart. But if the girl gets worse from fighting it'll be troublesome for him, and he'll retreat, saying that's how a villain should do things. Accelerator then manipulated the vectors under his feet and disappeared in a blink of a eye. Shiage finally realised he misunderstood the situation, went to hold Rikou and cursing himself for being so useless. Rikou said Shiage wasn't useless, since for her, he's willing to fight in a building where the Anti-Skills can't. Shiage isn't convinced, thinking if it was a 'main character' then Rikou wouldn't be hurt. However, he also thinks that though he's not a top-tier villain like Accelerator, it doesn't matter if he's a punk as long as he can protect Rikou and make her smile.

After that, while trying to escape from Aleister's assasins, he met once again with Shizuri Mugino. She survived her wound thanks to Heaven Canceler's Dark Legacy, now in hands of Aleister Crowley. After seeing Mugino toying with Rikou he finally had enough and decided to step out and fight head on with Mugino once more. After getting Mugino to chase him, Shiage managed to hide in a hanger filled with cutting edge weaponry, and tricked her to blow up a fighter jet she thought he was hiding in, and ends up blowing the whole place up with a chain reaction while Shiage away as fast as he could.

After the massive explosion, he went back to check to see if she was alive, and found she propelled herself using recoil force from her own attack like a rocket engine to escape the blast, and got ambushed by her. Shiage ran again and hid himself, but then Mugino pulled on his sympathy, saying how she and Kakine ended up like this and how bad it is, before kicking him while he’s distracted. After that, Shiage crawled into a testing room for the new jets and their defence, and activated the program that engulfs the whole room except his location in a fierce combination of gale and heat. Mugino was blasted away.

After a hard battle of fighting her and protecting Rikou from her attacks, Mugino, who now has a sense of twisted love for him gives up and helped him and Rikou to escape Academy City by allowing them to steal a jet which was programmed to fly to Russia and shooting down their pursuers.

Fiamma of the Right and World War III Arc
October 30th.

After reaching to Russia because Shiage didn't know how to pilot the jet, he and Rikou, using a parachutte, jumped out of the jet after setting it to self-destruct, and landed in Russia close to Elizerina, the country where Vent took Sasha to.

As they travel in a small car near the Elizarina border, Shiage plans to rob a corner store next to a petrol station for some supplies wanting to avoid hurting the employees. When he charged inside there were already 3 robbers in there that have tied up the female employee, threatening her with a dagger. When the Russian robbers asked ‘who the hell are you’ in Russian, Shiage just replied “A robber, so put your hands up!” in Japanese without understanding a word they said.

After hearing many gunshots, Rikou sees Shiage coming out of the shop with merchandise, such as food and warm clothing. When she asked if it went well, Shiage replied he got thanked by the employee and got all the things for free, even fuel for the car. They drove off again with Rikou remaining confused about what happened.

As they drive along, Rikou says that she's planning to find the balance in the scales of the situation, so that even though Shiage’s a small piece if he can get in the right position to tip the scales they can then make demands towards Academy City. Suddenly Rikou’s physical situation got worse, and Shiage panicked and stopped the car. After that a Caucasian man tapped on the windows, and Shiage reached for his hidden gun then lowered the window. The Caucasian was a tour guide before so he can speak Japanese, and is offering Shiage a “equivalent exchange”: taking Rikou to their village’s doctor, in exchange for some fuel since their electricity generator just ran out of fuel.

The doctor treats Rikou, but says there’s nothing he can do due to the difference in technology, and it is risky to treat her. All Shiage cares now is for her to feel as little pain as possible. Rikou said Academy City started this war for a reason, and if they can get to that reason they can use it as a bargaining chip. Shiage is resolved to head off alone to find the cause since he don’t want to burden Rikou.

The blonde man who brought them there is named deGroux. He and Shiage ends up talking, saying the village is nervous since people from nearby villages was taken by the Russian military into concentration camps, but they were fortunately enough to be saved by another Asian youth and many managed to escape to this village. Shiage is feeling guilty since he’s from Academy City that’s responsible for this, but deGroux says it’s not his fault since this village is close to Elizerina Republic and the Russian Military had their eyes on here for a while now.

To prevent Elizerina taking over this area the Russian Government have spread a large amount of landmines near the area. The villagers here make a living by unearthing those landmines and trade them with NGOs for food and other supplies, even though it might be safer detonating the mines on the spot. The soldier mentioned they were waiting for a convoy to deliver something before they got attacked. Though he’s from the opposing side deGroux said he’ll still save him, though he did mutter they have a lot of guests today. Shiage then thought of that ‘something’ will be delivered and think it might be what he and Rikou are looking for.

Then a ten year old girl ran out of the clinic Rikou is in and told them something urgently in Russian, which deGroux translated for Shiage and told him the Pirates are coming. The Russian government have reinstated the medieval practice of hiring mercenaries to rob the resources of other countries and making it their own, with a large share going to the pirates. This has the benefit of weakening opposing countries and strengthening their own.

The incoming pirates have armoured vehicles and due to the snow it’s hard for the villagers to run. Shiage hids Rikou under the clinic inside the basement. deGroux can hear 2 tanks making their way down, and says conventional reasoning on how military people work don’t apply to these people. Suddenly the tank dropped down from the ceiling, apparently the pirates didn’t realise this will happen when they rammed the building. As the pirates are coming out of the hatch Shiage and the others are climbing up, just in time to avoid the building being ripped apart by gunfire. A explosion suddenly appeared in front of them and blasted both Shiage and deGroux off their feet. deGroux then carried Rikou for him. Shiage see a machine gun turret behind a sandbag wall 10m away, and run/crawled there to try and take it.

Shiage then found one of the tank’s anti-aircraft guns is changing its aim towards a 30yr old mother running away with her 10yr old girl, while holding a baby in her arms and saves them firing the tank to make it barely missing the mother and young girl. With a voice louder than gunfire, he yelled out for them to keep running.Then the tank focused it’s attack on him and the machine gun got blown apart. He saw deGroux running towards him with Rikou in his arms. Shiage is angry to the point he wants to start fighting back, and asked deGroux to take care of Rikou for a while. The man asked what is Shiage going to do, since they don’t have Rocket-Propelled Guns or AK guns and the boy replied he’s going to use the landmines the village have dug up.

Shiage took a landmine and set it up, with the villagers made some sort of device to enable the landmine to be able to detonated like a hand grenade, just pull the pin and wait for something to go over it. He threw a landmine at the tank, but since the landmine is set to explode towards one direction it missed the turret and blew upwards, not stopping the turret’s turning. It turned out Shiage was aiming for that to begin with as the blast destroyed the stone building the tank is next to and the debris came down and stopped it from turning, and the tank can no longer move. Then Shiage walked up to the tank, since these are not conventional soldiers they didn’t have weapons to shoot foot soldiers equipped on the tank. He told them “It’s a cold day today” in Japanese, not caring if they understand it or not. “It’s a nice day for a barbecue” then Shiage chucked a Vodka bottle into the air hole. Then when the pirates came scrambling out of the tank thinking it’s a ‘Molotov Cocktail’ he readied his handgun without hesitation. The pirates came out of the armoured vehicle due to it being stuck and decided to fight on foot, but found if not taking into account proficiency in fighting, the villagers have more guns and people than the pirates. The attack on the village stopped.

deGroux told Shiage the villagers have locked the pirates up in a unused shelter. Normally the pirates deserved having their legs broken and be devoured by the wild dogs, which some villagers are actually advocating to do so. If Shiage, the one that stopped a tank, didn’t beg not to kill them nobody would have stopped. Shiage felt his gun’s weight more keenly after that. In the end against the hated enemies who was frozen in fear against Shiage after running out of the tank, Shiage didn’t open fire. If his life was at stake Shiage wouldn’t have hesitated, but as he had time to think about it he can’t shoot another human.

Then the villagers raised a alarm, three helicopters each over 30m long are heading their way. These are probably all pirates. deGroux told the villagers to scatter and hide in the forests, since the pirates might have heat and magnetic sensors. Shiage decides to stay and fight, using one of the anti-aircraft gun turrets from the tank he immobilised. After removing the rubble using heavy machinery normally used to remove snow, they found the twin-linked gun have one of its barrel broken. As Shiage climbed in deGroux smiled mournfully and said that just one person can’t operate that – they’d need at least 3 people; one to move the vehicle, one to shoot, and one to command and look at their surroundings. deGroux planned to ask some of the villagers to come and help, but Shiage don’t want to – it’s one thing to risk himself but it’s another to risk others’ lives. The soldier they saved earlier decides to help them, he says that he wants to pay back the debt of them saving his life. Shiage decides he absolutely cannot lose, for the girl that he holds more important than his own life, and for the villagers that took care of her.

The Pirates fired missiles at the turret which Shiage have driven back into the forest, and after they blew out a clearing in the forest it gave Shiage's group a chance to fire back without the trees getting in the way, and managed to take out a helicopter. The other two helicopters decided to not use missiles and just pepper them with shots, and chased after the turret using the sensors in the helicopter. The sensors says they've hit their target, but later found it is metal from the cars the villagers hid in the forest to confuse the sensors and ended up being open to return fire by the turret.

The remaining helicopter is about to shoot Shiage and the others, before a 3.5m long sword ended up stabbed into the helicopter from the side. Acqua then pulled out the sword and landed, with the helicopter crashed behind him and burned brightly in orange flame, but the snow around Acqua turned to water and put out the flames, with the rest moving unnaturally. Acqua then said he might not know what happened here but he'll help.

115 kilometers away from Elizerina, Shiage sees Acqua attacking a russian fortress. The battle ends in just 110 minutes, and Shiage gets and eerie feeling just by looking at this one sided slaughter. Shiage is analyze that exceeds the limit of human realm. Shiage reunites with Rikou and the villagers and decides to go to Elizarina Independent Country Alliance. The villagers sadly say goodbye to them, and the little girl says Shiage to take care.

Later, they're trying to get away from academy city's infantry and armors as they got really close to Elizarina border. As they enter into Elizarina, one of the armors still pursues them, but they're saved by Accelerator. In the country, Rikou is healed by magic procedure, but the damage is already done and the recovery long.

During the fight against Fiamma, Gabriel and the Star of Bethlehem, Shiage and Rikou captured one of Russia's special op agents setting up the biological attack, and asked the ex-soldier who came out looking for a missing child to go back and warn everyone about the incoming attack. Shiage then went to find the abandoned nuclear base, and told the ex-soldier if he doesn't call back in 30 mins then evacuate anyway.

Later, when Acqua lost all his ability to perform magic and messed up his body draining a third of Gabriel's Telesma, Shiage and Rikou came across him while they are trying to stop the biological attack from Russian Military, and Shiage asked Rikou to heal Acqua as they took out some bandages. Acqua asked them to stop, as on the battlefield resources are limited and those can be better used by saving someone else, to which Shiage just told him to shut up. Acqua continued saying he achieved what he came to do, and they should just leave. Shiage then replied in a pained voice, "What about the ones waiting for you to come back?", and Acqua froze up. Shiage continued saying Acqua has saved so many people, just like when he came to save that village and him, there's no way he'll be alone as those people follow in his footsteps; so what about everyone he'll leave behind? The narrative said Shiage's words are like nails pinning Acqua down, preventing Acqua from sliding off into oblivion. Acqua flashes back to many people, the Knight Leader, the ones he saved, and most importantly - 3rd Princess Villian. Shiage grabbed Acqua by his collar and yelled at him to stand up. Blood spurted out as Acqua tried; he may have lost all his abilities as a Saint and one of the God's Right Seat, but even now as a "Ordinary Human" he clenched his teeth to stand back up.

Academy City forces wiped out the troops planning a biological attack, but Shiage and Rikou got caught up in the blast and Shiage fainted. When Shiage finally woke up Mugino is right behind him and he narrowly avoided a eye-beam by her.

Mugino engages in fight against him and uses Crystalized Esper Essence, but the effect is to much to handle and she ends losing the fight. Then, Shiage as he see a powerless and trembling Mugino at the ground, decides that even if he choose to save his loved one, Rikou, that doesn't mean that he can't forgive Mugino and try to save her too. As he always regretted fighting with Mugino all that times and as he released what’s from the bottom of his heart Hamazura Shiage finally saw the image of their ‘true enemy’. It’s not monsters like Mugino. It’s people that can turn a normal girl into such a monster. He doesn’t want to spout lines like it’s due to the failure of society or circumstances. Just like Mugino’s disaster is something that can never exist in nature, she was that kind of nightmarish existence.

Shiage reprimends her, “So, you have to have the resolve to apologise to Kinuhata, even if it might means putting your life on the line. And say sorry to Takitsubou, and cry for forgiveness in front of Frenda’s grave. Then…” Shiage finally got the words he wanted to say out, “Then, we can go back to being ITEM. We can definitely go back!”. After that, he swore that he, a Level 0, will protect all of them.

After their talk, Academy City’s bomber planes drop three units to silence them. They are attacked by soldiers 「Equ.Darkmatter」. Mugino and Shiage defeat them, but Rikou is kidnapped.

Shiage and Mugino decide to declare war against Academy City to rescue Rikou.

Abilities
Hamazura Shiage is a true level 0 with no esper abilites. As a result, if he wants to survive, he must think ahead and rely on other weaponry.
 * Firearms - He's demonstrated that he's somewhat proficent with firearms. He was able to successfully shoot 3 people holding Rikou hostage while falling out of a helicopter.
 * Intellegence - He's constantly outsmarted higher level espers, such as when he tricked Mugino into attacking a jet while he escaped, leaving her caught in an explosion.