Mut Thebes

is a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal, introduced in Souyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index. Chapter 2 Part 5
==Etymology==
 (meaning "mother" in ancient Egyptian) is a mother goddess and primal deity associated with the primordial waters of Nu, often said to have been the husband of the solar creator god and mother of the lunar god . She was a patron deity of , Egypt's capital city and site of the , where the three were worshipped as the .
==Appearance==
Mut Thebes looks to be a skinny girl of about 15, with blue eyes, long wavy blonde hair and brown skin. Contents She wears a revealing outfit consisting of thin belts and pure gold ornaments, exposing her skin to support her magic.
==Personality==
Matching the symbolism of a mother protecting her children or a queen protecting her people, Mut Thebes will apparently do whatever it takes to protect her decided territory, currently the Bridge Builders Cabal.
==Background==
In Egyptian mythology, Mut is a mother goddess of protection and war whose symbol is the vulture, which devours unclean dead flesh. Unlike other deities, which may grant happiness in the afterlife, Mut is said to have visited Thebes and physically fought to protect the city and her people from enemies. She was also said to have been identified as both a goddess and the wife of the pharaoh, with the queen and Mut being seen as one and the same, though some suspect that she was actually created later on as the top god Amun needed a wife.
The background of the individual who took on the identity of Mut Thebes as a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal is currently unknown, Chapter 3 Part 6 other than the fact that she outdid other candidates to earn the position she wanted.
==Chronology==
===Souyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index===
====New Year's Arc====
On January 2nd, Mut Thebes was present when Alice brought Kamijou Touma's group to the cabal's newly established consulate in School District 12, as Trismegistus told the boy of their intent to execute Anna Sprengel for her betrayal.
Mut Thebes was also present when Touma's group had dinner with Alice and other Transcendents. When Touma left to see the Bologna Succubus, she assured him that she would make sure that Trismegistus would not try anything with his friends while he was away, emphasizing that she simply did not want anything to ruin her meal time and that she happen to like sharing her meals with people who were enjoying themselves. Chapter 3 Part 2 Chapter 3 Part 5
On January 3rd, having completed her own role in the cabal's ceremony beforehand, Between the Lines 1 Mut Thebes was unleashed against Anna Sprengel, pursuing her, as well as Kamijou Touma and Aradia who were with her throughout January 3rd and 4th. Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Part 6 Chapter 1 Part 7 Chapter 1 Part 8
On the morning of January 4th, Mut Thebes was searching School District 6 while feeling the cold. While being warmed by a heater and hot cocoa brought by park workers, she learned of the capabilities of the HsAWACS-05 and acquired its radar to track down her targets, but was intercepted by Anna Kingsford and Aleister Crowley. Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Part 5 Chapter 2 Part 6 Chapter 2 Part 7 Defeated but left alone, she then found the prototype aircraft cruiser Fugaku. Between the Lines 3 Chapter 3 Absorbing multiple copies of the ship, she reached her targets in School District 15, alongside a replacement Aradia, and managed to hit Anna Sprengel with the Shrink Drink, before engaging in battle with Kamijou Touma. Chapter 3 Part 5 Chapter 4 Chapter 4 Part 1 Chapter 4 Part 3 Chapter 4 Part 5 Chapter 4 Part 7 Epilogue
Mut Thebes was one of the surviving Transcendents capable of acting after the cabal was devastated by the summoned "CRC". Chapter 1 Part 8 On January 5th, she was involved in action against "CRC" in effort to stall his destructive march towards Heaven Canceller's Hospital, along with Touma's allies and Academy City's forces. Chapter 2 Part 4 Chapter 3 Part 3 Chapter 3 Part 9 She was kept in reserve at the third defensive line in School District 18, given her potential for long-range firepower, but was taken out by a ranged shot from CRC in School District 23 shortly after the second defensive line fell.
On the night of January 6th, Mut Thebes, along with Aradia, Bologna Succubus and Good Old Mary, was heading to help Touma meet with Alice but they were stopped at a certain iron bridge by Blodeuwedd, Vidhatri and 2nd Saga, three other survivors who had scattered after Alice's apparent death and opportunistically returned after the end of "CRC"'s rampage and learning that Alice was alive again, standing in their way as they were not willing to risk losing their power. Chapter 2 Part 4 She slipped away at the start of the ensuing battle and returned after acquiring the drone carrier Kagenui, but ended up falling under the influence of the Acute Kotatsu Syndrome that Alice was causing as she did so. Chapter 3 Part 4 Chapter 3 Part 6 Once her comrades managed to turn the tides and win due to Anna Sprengel's intervention, Mut Thebes came to her senses and soon afterwards fought Alice's toys alongside them at Touma's school, Chapter 3 Part 9 engaging in a fistfight with Dinah, after absorbing enough shadows to equal her giant size, around the time Aradia made contact with Touma and Alice. Chapter 4 Part 2
==Abilities==
As a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal, Mut Thebes is said to be powerful enough to rival the regular magic side on her own under the right circumstances. Chapter 2 Part 1 Besides her roots in Egyptian Mythology, she apparently specializes in punishment and execution, and has been called an expert in executing Transcendents.
One tool for executing Transcendents, Chapter 3 Part 1 which she was lent for dealing with Anna Sprengel, Chapter 3 Part 5 is the Shrink Drink, a spiritual item derived from Alice in Wonderland and containing a portion of Alice Anotherbible's power. It takes the form of 150cm long javelins with glass spearheads containing a fluorescent pink liquid and the words "Drink Me" engraved on the shafts, storable in a shrinkable binder. In the story, the drink physically shrank the imbiber, and the Shrink Drink is intended to similarly diminish a Transcendent by stripping them of power and weakening them to the point of death.
Besides her primary use of weapons, she is capable of levitation and seems to be able to sense when her weapons take a life. She is described as specializing hunting people down, and is capable of tracking via trails and sound, the latter within a certain range. Like other Transcendents, she uses common tone creation to translate and synthesize her speech into unfamiliar languages. Chapter 3 Part 2
===Dead Phoenix===
The nature of Mut Thebes's primary magic, in both its basic and enhanced modes, is described as that of a ,There is a slight difference between the few references to Mut Thebes's power as the Dead Phoenix in and . In the former, the term is first used after she releases her seal, with her full, boosted power after departing human territory referred to as the Dead Phoenix (or her Dead Phoenix mode), while in the latter (with one possible case in Volume 8), her standard power to absorb shadows and use them as her weapons is referred to as the Dead Phoenix. with Mut Thebes describing it as a vulture devouring both dead flesh and the flames enveloping it, such that all is reborn anew. The vulture, which devours the unclean flesh of the dead, is the symbol of the goddess Mut.
In terms of function, this magic allows Mut Thebes to acquire weaponry by absorbing the shadows of objects that come into contact with the shadow cast by the skin of her body (hence her attire), which she can then deploy from her body and wield as her own, increasing the firepower and methods of supplying punishment at her disposal.
In order to add an object to her arsenal, the shadow must be in contact with Mut Thebes's shadow, regardless of the distance to the target. There is a short time lag before the absorption can begin and the process takes longer for larger objects. If a single object is casting multiple shadows, Mut Thebes can absorb them to acquire multiple copies of that object. She has sometimes used light sources in order to extend an object's shadow to achieve contact with her own or to have it cast multiple shadows for her to absorb.
Once Mut Thebes has acquired an object's shadow, she can deploy it at will, with the shadow manifesting from her body as a white copy of the original object (or part of it), possessing the original's capabilities and functionality. These white shadows operate according to her will, even if she is not directly connected to them. If a manifested shadow is destroyed, Mut Thebes loses it from her stock of absorbed shadows and cannot manifest it again. As products of Mut Thebes's magic, the shadows and their attacks are susceptible to Imagine Breaker.
During the events in Academy City, Mut Thebes was known to have absorbed and utilized multiple 120mm tank guns (from the Predator Octopus, or similar mobile combat vehicles and tanks), a ladder truck's stabilizing legs, a car's wheels and suspension (and possibly its air bag), a large reel of wire from a construction site, a piece of composite armor (and potentially reactive armor), an AWACS's radome, wheels from a security robot, multiple Fugaku aircraft cruisers (including the onboard contingent of HsF/A-49 fighters and Snakehead drones, its propeller, water jet propulsion device, boiler and grounding plate), Trebuchet linear artillery, and a Kagenui drone carrier. She also made a failed attempt to absorb an anti-NBC decontamination vehicle or a revolving grenade launcher.
Aside from the shadows of objects, Mut Thebes can also absorb peoples' shadows in order to replicate their abilities. Any differences to the process and results when absorbing an object's shadow are currently unknown. During the battle with "CRC", she considered absorbing her fellow Transcendents' shadows as insurance in case something happened to them, in particular with Good Old Mary's resurrection.During the subsequent escape from "CRC" shortly after this consideration was voiced, where Mut Thebes was grabbed and dragged away by Aradia while standing defenseless in preparation to absorb the incapacitated Good Old Mary's shadow - with it being noted that greed in this case would get her killed, it was noted in the narration from Touma's point-of-view that while absorbing "CRC"'s shadow might have turned things around, that similar greed would have also gotten her killed - with their enemy sure to kill her during the time lag before she could start absorbing. Whether or not attempting to absorb "CRC"'s shadow would have worked as thought is uncertain.
====Transcendence====
Like many other Transcendents in the Bridge Builders Cabal, Chapter 4 Part 2 Chapter 4 Part 4 Chapter 4 Part 6 Epilogue Mut Thebes can release a seal in order to draw on power transcending that of regular humans, with an incantation involving the declaration of and . In the case of Mut Thebes, the nature of her seal is a , Chapter 4 Part 3 while the power's nature is that of the Dead Phoenix. When activating it, Mut invoked several dualities including , the pure and impure, the quiet and noisy, holy and evil, and the correct and incorrect.
In this mode, Mut Thebes appears to display greater capability with her absorbed shadows, enabling her to change the size of manifested objects (such as shrinking a warship propeller over 10m across to a diameter of 3m) and apparently granting her more flexibility in utilizing an absorbed object's components and functions, allowing her to use them in unusual ways.
==Character Art Designs==
===Gallery===
File:Mut Thebes (Full).png|Mut Thebes, as she appears in the contents of Souyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index Volume 8 by Haimura Kiyotaka
File:Mut Thebes (Design).jpg|Mut Thebes's character design by Haimura Kiyotaka
==Trivia==
*In Haimura's designs, Mut Thebes is nicknamed .
*Similarities have been noted between Mut Thebes and her fellow Transcendent Aradia, given their use of shadows and the snowball effect that can occur with their magic.
*Fitting Mut's symbolic association with the vulture as well as her own association with the vulture and the phoenix, Chapter 2 Part 2 some of Mut Thebes's movements and mannerisms have been compared to those of a bird, with her weapon deployments being likened to a bird's wings, and her shadow ship formation being compared to a giant bird.
*In the afterword of , Kamachi Kazuma mentioned how he chose the as he wanted an image from Egyptian mythology directly tied to for Mut Thebes as the punishment expert and wanted to give her a spell which emphasized how to kill her target rather than the simple act of taking a life. Afterword
**He also mentioned that Mut was meant to have the vulture as a symbol and hoped he did a good job of fusing the vulture, which lives off dead flesh, with the phoenix, which burns itself away and is reborn in the flames. However, he also added that there were theories that the phoenix was actually never a part of Egyptian mythology, perhaps all the more fitting for a Transcendent.
==Notes==
==References==
==Navigation==
Category:Characters
Category:Magic Side Characters
Category:Magicians
Category:Bridge Builders Cabal