#mikoto's growth is not exponential

[tvckerwash]

someone on the toaru subreddit was asking about potential power ups for mikoto, and ngl I think I cooked with this response (utc because it's kind of long lol)

mikoto doesn't necessarily need a power up imo as her issue in index is that she's trying to be something she isn't. mikoto wants to be by kamijou's side, and she thinks that the best way to achieve that is by being strong enough to fight his battles for him. mikoto is not an A team combatant though, and her best fights in index are when she's taking on the B team such as her fight with thor against sylvia and bruinhild in nt6, or when she takes on opponents that are problematic for kamijou, such as hound dog in ot13.

mikoto acquired the AAA after she had been put into a situation where she was completely helpless despite trying her hardest to succeed, and to add fuel to the fire she was told outright that she was holding back the person she was trying to help.

for mikoto the AAA was meant to function as an opposing parallel to accelerator's black wings, though while the wings, and the pain accelerator was forced to go through by aleister in order to receive them, was a necessary step for his growth and development, mikoto was never meant to get the AAA, and it was only ever going to be a temporary fix to the pain she is unnecessarily forcing herself to go through by chasing after kamijou's back.

in a similar vein, mikoto teaming up with misaki in an effort to get stronger by gaining more power has, and will likely continue to be, a temporary solution to her dilemma. in her mind if she could not achieve her goal even with something like the AAA, the obvious solution to tackle her problem is to have someone else help her, doubling her firepower. this resulted in her being able to break into the windowless building with the liquid proof railgun, which was again an unnecessary development, hence why she was “betrayed” by misaki in nt22r, and why the AAA was destroyed in gt2—there's no point in her having access to those abilities, as they were not helping her grow as a person.

where exactly mikoto is going to go from here is unknown, though considering kamachi has said mikoto is never going to stop chasing after kamijou, and if the blurb from item volume 2 below is anything to go by, I unfortunately don't think we'll be seeing a solution anytime soon.

There are reports of the Railgun using EM waves to produce a macro reflected wave radar, but there are no examples of her using electrons themselves to cut anything. She has a tendency to avoid that and instead uses magnetism to vibrate iron sand. It is unknown if this is because she was only recently recognized as a Level 5, or if it is a permanent problem.

—Item #2, Pg179-180.

I do know that I for one would kill for mikoto to have some sort of corruption arc where she gets a temporary demon form, resulting in a scenario where she'd clash with kamijou and he'd finally fight her seriously like she's always wanted him to. it would be very fitting thematically for her to find herself in the same situation accelerator was once in, where she's so deluded that a wake up call via a fist to the face is just what she needs to get her head on straight and kick-start her character development, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see 🤷.