Hollow

* Hollow
* Shadow
* Devil

### Occupation

Student (Nagatenjouki Academy, by proxy, Former)Superintendent of Academy City (Current)

### Affiliation

GROUP (Former operative)Qliphah Puzzle 545 (Companion)

## Abilities

### Esper Power

[Demonic Shadow Symbiote]共生の影(悪魔の影の共生)Kyōsei no kage (Akuma no kage) lit. "Symbiotic Shadow")

## Media

### English VA

Brian Beacock
Johnny Yong Bosch (Devil)

### Appears In

A Certain Magical Index Ep.10
A Certain Scientific Railgun S Ep.7
A Certain Scientific Accelerator Ep.1

**Hollow** (ホロー, Horō) is the 1 1/2st-ranked Level 5 and the second strongest esper in the Academy City.

He is the Triantagonist of the Science Side in the Toaru Majutsu no Index series. The first appearance in *Toaru Majutsu no Index* as an antagonist, he later becomes the male protagonist of the Science Side after Riku Ozaki defeated him. His journey to a more "heroic" role in the story progresses after meeting Accelerator and saving Last Order from the message from Accelerator and is forced into an ironic twist of fate where his life now depends on the Sisters, clones he previously killed by the thousands. He is also a second major antagonist in *Toaru Kagaku no Railgun* and the second protagonist of *Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator*.

## Appearance

Hollow has short black hair and brown eyes. He is repeatedly described as a fragile-looking, handsome man with a beautiful face by other characters in the novels. However, he is also described by the same characters as appearing mischievous or otherwise unsavory. His eyes turned purple when he activated his shadow

His regular outfit consists of a black coat with brown fur lining that goes down to his hips, along with a plain black long sleeved v-neck, pants, and dark brown shoes. In the novels, he occasionally dons a longer version of his coat that reaches down to his ankles.

His new outfit consists of a cool jet-black leather outfit with ragged feather-like details that resembles that of a raven. What makes this outfit popular is the dark hood that covers the entire face in the darkness and glowing purple eyes.

## Personality

Hollow most distinguishing features are his maniacal laughter and psychotic smiling. He is brutal, arrogant, disrespectful, murderous, and sadistic.

Due to the potential of his ability, Hollow has been targeted by assassins and researchers throughout his life. As a result, he only believes in the power and trusts no one. While fighting, he invokes fear, has a sadistic tone, and his maniacal laughter. He willingly joins the SISTER experiment to gain a reputation as the most powerful and feared esper so that no one would dare to be foolish enough to challenge him and won't hesitate to kill anyone who gets in his way. The Sisters' memories of his behavior during the experiment may suggest that he is, in a way, a pacifist; because his power won't disappear, the only way he sees an end to the fighting is to be so strong and sadistic that no one would dare to raise a finger against him. He even seems to attempt to frighten the Sisters out of fighting or otherwise encourage them to refuse their battles.

After meeting the Last Order, he strives to protect her but ignore her.  He saved her from Amai Ao's plot and from being pursued by the Hound Dogs. He similarly treats Index, such as when he buys her lunch while searching for Last Order and by protecting her from the Hound Dogs.

## Background

    Much of Hollow's past is unknown, but he mentioned that he once had a "normal name" which has yet to be revealed and most likely never will, as Hollow himself forgot it. The novels state that his last name consists of two kanji and his first name three, yet his name had no real meaning in it. Ever since taking the Power Curriculum Program, and realizing his powers, Hollow was sent to a "special class", most likely, the Special Ability Institute, and spent much of his childhood there until he turned nine-years-old, before being moved into another special class. Both of these had him as the only student. It can be presumed that this occurred before the incident involving the military. When Hollow was a child, he couldn't fit in with the other children due to his powers, harming those that tried to get close to him. Around the age of ten, a particular incident with children escalated with Academy City being deployed against him, and he later "gave up", and was sent to a special class. This has made him something of a loner and distrustful towards other people. After some time, Hollow was discovered about his power, who trained himself on how to control and obtained his powers and influenced him enough for Hollow to adopt his personality. It can be assumed that the Dark May Project started after Hollow acquired the cool personality he now has from now on.

    Hollow ability made him the subject of an experiment attempting to create the first Level 6 esper; according to the city's best supercomputer, Tree Diagram, this feat could only be achieved by killing Misaka Mikoto, the 'Railgun', 128 times and killing Erina Fukumoto, the 'Divine Element', 200 times. However, because it was impossible to create 128 of these 'railguns' and 200 of these 'divine elements', due to the 'Level 5 Mass Production Plan' only being capable of producing a sub-standard clone of Mikoto and Erina at a power of Level 2-3, a substitute plan was arranged where Accelerator would have to kill 20,000 Misaka clones in a variety of methods and Hollow kill 15,000 Misaka clones and 40,000 Erina clones. He willingly joins the experiment to gain a reputation as the most powerful and feared esper so that no one would be foolish enough to challenge him ever again and fear his curse. By the beginning of the Sisters Arc (index), Hollow has already killed the first 5,000 Misaka Clones and 15,000 Erina Clones and during the arc, kills clones 5,000 and 15,000 before the experiment is ultimately stopped. Later it is revealed that he originally wanted this reputation simply so that no one would ever get hurt trying to attack him, resulting in their destruction, though as he went deeper into Academy City's dark side his goals slowly became more and more twisted and more and more deadly.

## Abilities

### Demonic Shadow Symbiote

    Demonic Shadow Symbiote (共生の影(悪魔の影の共生)Kyōsei no kage (Akuma no kage) lit. "Symbiotic Shadow")?) a curse esper ability which allows Hollow to control the silhouette of the Demonic-like Shadow to attack and devour any esper power, magic power, and other divine abilities. The Symbiotic Shadow is the cursed meaning "bond the chosen one to survive." When people trained for that curse, the curse binds you but the people will be unable to unbind the curse because the curse is consuming your soul and people died when the dark curse consumed it and eats away all your soul until you are nothing but a ghost. Hollow is the only one who can control its power and unbind before he loses control and becomes a demonic black symbiote. After the events of Volume 5, his right ear has been damaged including where the brain and he has to rely on an earbud-looking electrode and connects to his choker-style for Hollow that connects him to the Misaka Network. The brainwave network allows him to use language, as well as making up for his lost ability to make calculations, although it is stated that it's less than half of what he once had.   Furthermore, the network enables Hollow to reflect and devour ultraviolet rays even when he isn't in esper mode. When using the network in esper mode, the battery of the electrode initially only lasts twenty minutes. That changes in when he joins GROUP and its technical team cranks his time up to 40 minutes. He does not need the Misaka Network to use his abilities when in a demonic state. He is shown to be far the second strongest than any other Level 5 in Academy City but much as the same level as Accelerator,  being able to easily defeat everybody who is lower than a level 5 and also defeats the #2 Level 5 esper Kakine Teitoku without the use of his demonic shadow.  It should be noted that this fight took place after Hollow's brain and ears were damaged and he was forced to rely on the Misaka Network to do his calculations, which reduced him to having less than half of his former calculation abilities. Hollow has stated that as long as he has experienced it, he can analyze forces unknown to him, by following the curse that has reapplied, nearly like the immune system. He used this ability to understand Aiwass's"inexplicable laws."