Does magnitude matter for Accelerator's vector redirection?

[Lord-Of-Creation]

To settle this question once and for all.

Does the magnitude of an attack matter when Accelerator simply redirects the vector and doesn't touch the magnitude?

 

[DontTalk]

Given that you are asking this (or are supposed to ask) a bunch of people that are not familiar with the series you will have to explain the circumstances a bit better. And you will have to add in quotes about how his ability is described in the novel. For one thing how his ability is stated to work and a few relevant feats for demonstrations of his ability (The reflecting pebble thing, the manipulating the wind thing etc. just a few cases of him using the ability). Just through quotes the people judging can make sure that they get a unbiased description of the whole circumstances (in case of quotes remember "as long as necessary; as short as possible" is the guideline).

It is work intensive but necessary.

 

[LazyHunter]

The question is if magnitude affects Accel's reflection. No, it hasn't so far, it's been said to work on all harmful physical vectors and everything points out that it's true. His reflection is not a physical barrier that can be destroyed, it's a passive use of his powers that inverts harmful vectors. His reflection is actually one of the most simple applications of his power and doesn't require him to make conscious calculations since he's not altering the magnitude of the vectors. The only thing limiting his ability is proccesing power, things like wind control are much harder to do than reflection.

The attacks that have hurt him have done so by bypassing his reflection completely (IB, vectorless magic and attacks with unknown laws like Aiwass' wings and Fiamma's Telesma attack) or by taking advantage of its mechanics (Kihara Counter and Kakine's Dark Matter). Gremlin magicians once hurt him by tricking him into using magic, which I guess could also count as an indirect attack.

I'm aware that while his power is fine in the confines of the Index series it could be considered a no-limit fallacy for vs battles. If its power needs to be limited for this type of debates I think it's logical to pick the greatest amount of energy he has manipulated as the limit, since there's no way to measure his processing power. Now for quotes.

Volume 3 - Accelerator's Power

However, the lightning spear she had fired at the boy rebounded and struck her in her own chest.

"Gah…!?"

The girl was knocked back to the ground with a shock that felt like she had been struck in the chest with a hammer. Her breathing stopped and every muscle in her body moved irregularly. The girl's trembling lips managed to put together a single word.

"Re…flection…!?"

"Sorry, that's not entirely wrong, but it still doesn't get to the essence of what I can do!"

The girl somehow tried to distance herself from the boy, but her body would not do what she told it to due to the electrical attack she herself had fired.

"The answer is vector transformation! Motion, heat, electricity. I can alter any kind of vector that touches my skin. I have it set to reflect by default, though!"

[...]

That boy could alter all vectors be they motion, heat, or electricity, so he would not be injured even if he were directly hit by that last resort of a nuclear missile. He would just reflect the shockwave that would blow everything way, the heat that would scorch everything, and the neutrons and radiation that would kill everything.

[...]

Accelerator's foot suddenly caused the gravel behind him to explode. He had altered the vector for the motion of his foot. As if a rocket were firing from the bottom of his foot, he shot 7 meters forward like a bullet in one step. Misaka Imouto tried to jump further back, but Accelerator heartlessly flew forward many times faster than she could move.

[...]

Accelerator stepped on the ground again.

He must have converted the vector of that shock in some way because a steel rail lying at his feet stood up on end like there had been a spring under it. Accelerator used a backhanded blow like he was brushing a spider web away and knocked the rail flying.

His action had been nothing more than the slight strike one would use on an unreasonable child, but a great noise like a church bell resounded throughout the switchyard. The steel rail bent into a shallow V-shape and flew straight for Kamijou like a bullet.

[...]

Kamijou immediately kicked up the gravel at his feet toward Accelerator's approaching eyes.

Of course, that would not stop Accelerator.

"Hah hah! Did you really think that would work? If you're gonna try that, at least make sure you go all the way…like this!!"

Accelerator manipulated the vectors of the gravel that struck his body so that it was reflected back at Kamijou at double the speed.

[...]

Accelerator's power allowed him to change the vectors of anything he touched. Motion, heat, electricity. Whatever kind of power it was, he could freely control it as long as it had a vector.

"Kukaki."

That meant that, if he could grasp the vector of the wind flowing through the atmosphere, he could bring the motion of the giant wind flowing throughout the entire world into his hands!

"Kukakikekokakakikukekikikokakakikukokokukekekekokikukakukekekokakukekikakok ekikikukukukikikakikukokukukekukakikukokekukekukikukikokikakaka!!"

Accelerator lifted his hands above his head like he was trying to grab the invisible moon.

With a roar, the flow of the wind started to swirl around.

The look on the other boy's face changed, but it was too late. A large atmospheric swirl that looked like a hole had opened in the earth had taken a spherical form above Accelerator's head. Gravel in the area was swept up with it and that giant swirl of destruction with a radius of a few dozen meters gave its joyous birth cry.

Accelerator laughed and yelled "kill".

That sphere of destruction created from the world's atmosphere sliced through the air.

It became a spear of wind flying at 120 m/s. At that speed, wind could easily lift up a car. That spear of wind very easily blew away the boy like he had been struck by the hand of an invisible giant.

[...]

But it was still incomplete. Unlike his automatic reflection, he had to think about the original vector and the altered vector when he was altering vectors under his own will.

Wind, the flow of the atmosphere, required complex calculations that involved chaos theory, so it could not be completely predicted without the use of Tree Diagram.

He doubted that the flow of the entire world's atmosphere could be calculated in a single human's head.

He had only managed to manipulate the wind within Academy City and that had still been imperfect.

Volume 13 - Amata takes advantage of Acceleror's Reflection

Kihara Amata would reverse the direction of his punch just before it hit Accelerator. He would do so in the instant when he was just barely touching the thin protective film of Accelerator's reflection. That forced Accelerator to pull the backwards moving fist forwards.'

This just meant he had to alter the vector control ability protecting his body, but Kihara's fist made minute adjustments in the direction of its turn as if the man had predicted the changes Accelerator would make. It seemed the intellect that had directly developed the esper power known as Accelerator was quite something.

Volume 13 - Accelerator takes 5min worth of enegy from the Earth's rotatio

Accelerator stuck his hand into a nearby concrete wall. He manipulated the vectors so his arm sank in as easily as if the wall was made of tofu. Accelerator shouted so loud blood came from his throat and he moved his arm complexly around in the wall.

He took control of all of the vectors.

A great roar exploded out.

In that instant, earth's rotation slowed by about 5 minutes for September 30.

His arm took the massive energy of the planet's rotation and used his vector control to transform it into a demonic strike.

The concrete wall he forcibly gouged out was thrown with frightening speed. Accelerator stood in an alley surrounded by buildings, but the several buildings between him and his target were torn through like paper.

Volume 15 - Kakine's Dark Matter uses a loophole on his Reflection

As Kakine finished his sentence, his white wings let out a 'swoosh' and projected a brilliant white light.

"?!"

A burning pain forced Accelerator to back away from Kakine involuntarily. At the same time, he noticed the change in the situation.

Accelerator who could reflect all vectors was actually hurt by an outside attack.

"That was diffraction. Light or electromagnetic waves change direction when passing through narrow gaps; this is common knowledge even in high school textbooks. Using multiple gaps at the same time will make the waves interfere with each other."

Simply put it was by diffracting light through the countless unseen gaps on the wings to change the nature of sunlight and use it to attack Accelerator. It was not that the white wings gave off light, but that the light itself was changed by diffracting through them.

[...]

"… Go back and study up on physics, you idiot. No matter how you diffract sunlight it doesn't change the nature of it into something like a beam of light that kills."

"Hm, that is indeed the case with the normal physics of this world."

Kakine's six wings curled up and gathered strength.

"But! My Dark Matter is matter that does not exist in this world! It completely disobeys the laws of physics of this world. Sunlight that gets diffracted by the Dark Matter will also have its own set of laws! Foreign bodies are like this: by just mixing in a little bit, the world will completely change!"

Fwoom! The six wings blew up a gale wind towards Accelerator. Accelerator used his reflection to subdue the wind while trying to figure out his opponent's aim. Looking closely, he found Kakine smiling.

"Reverse calculations, complete."

"!?"

When Accelerator heard that he tried to dodge, but the six wings had already begun to strike. However, unlike before the six wings were used solely as blunt weapons for hitting.

A series of *gacha gacha* sounds exploded out from Accelerator's body.

Accelerator, who could reflect all vectors, was blown over 10m away, hitting one of the trees on the sidewalk. The thick trunk of the tree got snapped by that one blow.

[...]

"The sunlight and wind affected by the Dark Matter are infused with 25,000 different kinds of energy. Then by observing your reflection and using a filtering system that judges which energies are deemed 'harmful' or not, I can use the energies that are subconsciously accepted as not harmful to attack you."

Even if Accelerator changed the rules which his reflect was based on, Kakine Teitoku would immediately use his Dark Matter to inspect the change. The repeated attack and defense this way would only make Accelerator's wounds get worse and worse.

Volumes 19 & 22 - Aiwass' wings and Fiamma's Telesma attack ignore his Reflection

Aiwass did not even attempt to evade. It stared at Accelerator with its arms still spread out. Accelerator charged in and stuck out a hand with its fingers spread out. He just had to alter the vectors to destroy Aiwass from the inside.

But an unexplained shock struck Accelerator on his upper body in a diagonal line.

It was a decisive strike with something like a heavy blade. Immediately after Accelerator was aware of that, he hit the floor and rolled a few times backwards. An unbelievable amount of blood gushed out. It wasn't just coming from the wound on his upper body. Blood was flowing from his mouth and nose as well. It may sound like a joke, but it seriously seemed like a mystery that his organs didn't come spilling out of that large wound.

"Gh…bhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!?"

He didn't know what had happened. People like Kihara Amata and Kakine Teitoku had pierced his wall of reflection in the past, but Aiwass was different. That strike had not been based on some theory that allowed it to slip past the reflection. Even after receiving that decisive blow, he was still unable to analyze what had happened to his own body.

"Oh, whoops. That was my mistake," said Aiwass sounding completely calm.

Something grew from its back pushing its long blonde hair aside. They were wings. The wings were emitting a too brilliant brilliance that gave the feeling that it was worse for the human body than a nuclear explosion. That must have been what had sliced Accelerator.

The wings were very odd.

They were not simply gold colored. They were a palely glowing platinum that had a white core. …That wasn't quite accurate, but it was how Accelerator expressed it in his brain. The wings gave him a very strong out-of-place feeling because he could not comprehend what he was seeing.

[...]

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, hm?"

However, Aiwass shook its head while looking at those black wings.

Accelerator had no way of knowing, but what Aiwass had just said referred to the central pillar of a certain magician and had been recorded in the Book of the Law.

"Unfortunately, that is from the wrong rggrAEONipiregj. Your rsgPOWERnophe is from Osiris's time. With that, you cannot truly hosefOPPOSEqierd one from Horus such as myself."

[...]

"But it wasn't that the attack did not have vectors. I'm sure I had those unknown laws inputted into my body from Aiwass back then."

Thinking back on it, that had been what had happened.

Aiwass had not just erased his powers like that Level 0.

The being had not worked around his powers like Kihara Amata or Kakine Teitoku. Aiwass had used a completely straightforward attack and its vectors had directly struck Accelerator. In that case, that information should have been transferred to Accelerator.

[...]

The mass of golden power that was being taken in from above and stored underneath was mercilessly thrown downwards. Accelerator could feel the pressure on his cheek as a stinging numbness. Just like his white wings, that power truly was not a normal power. Most likely, his reflection would not work on it. It would just pierce straight through like when he had been defeated by Aiwass.

 

[GreatestSin]

To settle this question once and for all.
Does the magnitude of an attack matter when Accelerator simply redirects the vector and doesn't touch the magnitude?

theoretically it shoulnt, but the object will get destroyed ince accel can only change the vectors of the attack who touches his skin, imagine a fist sizes iron ball, it will be reflected, but a country sized iron ball wont fly back after touching accelerators barrier, it will get destroyed at the point whre the "reverse of the vectors" happened ^_^

at least this is how i imagine the pysical manifestation of such a theoretical event

btw, LazyHunter, accelerator was never exposed to "vectorless magic", at most he speculated that it could be harmful but it was never stated that curses can have a effect (it was never explained how they worked)

 

[LordAizenSama]

I did mean to do this sometime ago but I ended up forgetting about this, my bad.

in short,no, Accelerators reflect is not affected by Magnitude at all

while I do think Accelerator can manipulate Magnitude (or simulate that effect,a discussion for another time) as a active use of his calculations, a passive use of his calculations can only redirect which way vectors are heading as a passive use of his power, as described below

"For an esper, using their ability was no different from moving their limbs. Other tha

Level 0s, who lack any significant power, the involvement of powers could be roughly

classified into two categories.

One was "active", when the ability user himself controlled the use of his powers.

The other was "passive", which activated reflexively when the ability user sensed danger" -Volume 3 Page 12

"Active" is him manipulating the laws of his AIM Field, which he shows vs misaka #10,031 (can be left like that) or Increasing/decreasing the magnitude of objects, actively controlling vector directions etc etc

"Passive" is Accelerators AIM field sending Vectors in different Directions, but leaves it on 'reflect' most of the time


As for some proof that it is just Redirection when it comes to reflection, no increasing, decreasing of magnitudes:

All of the shells that made a direct hit rebounded back. Almost like a video rewinding,

the shells had their ballistics reversed, cleanly plunging back into the muzzle of the antitank

rifle like a Kendama game, and the Metal Eater burst into tiny fragments. -Volume 3, page number something close to the previous quote I forgot it lol.

It is described as almost watching a video in rewind, this would imply that it is redirected at the exact same speed it had been when fired at Accelerator, and since accelerator can't passively increase/decrease the magnitude of objects, and had his AIM field set to reflect, it can only be redirected back where it came from. magnitude is completely ignored.

when you think of NLF claims on the ability of his, think about it a bit like this:

A person who can become intangible has shown that it is successful against the likes of bullets

But if you used a rocket launcher, it will work because it hasn't been shown to work against anything higher than the likes of bullets

Obviously, that makes no sense at all, but it is essentially what you are saying when you say Accelerators ability is NLF to higher grades of DC (Though it does have limits like exotic/divine/unexplainable attacks)


NLF is also described as being something that is unexplained, but Accelerators ability is clearly explained as to how and why he is unaffected by vectors.

If you read all that, you did well, lol.

 

[DontTalk]

Well, the fact that reflection doesn´t change the magnitude doesn´t really prove that it doesn´t involve magnitude.

But I will add a note about the possibility in the profile, I guess.

 

[LordAizenSama]

I just went looking through the LNs abit and found this quote

"Your reflection isn't an absolute barrier."

Kihara slowly walked forward.

Accelerator could not move.

"It only reverses the vector of any force heading into it. That makes it simple to beat the

shit out of you. I just have to pull back my fist the instant before hitting. You could say

the trick is stopping at the last second." Volume 12 pg 152


How i interpret that is, it only reverses the vector (Direction) of any force (magnitude) heading into it

EDIT: the anime episode describes it that way aswell

"all you are doing is changing the Direction in which force vectors head" at 12:00 minutes

 

[LazyHunter]

How i interpret that is, it only reverses the vector (Direction) of any force (magnitude) heading into it

There's a small mistake in what you said. Vectors like velocity, the one that Accelerator uses most of the time, have both a direction and magnitude (speed in case of velocity). A vector is not just direction, magnitude is part of the vector, not the other way around. It would be better to say that he normally reverses the direction of the vector without touching the magnitude.

But yes, that's how his reflection works. He can alter the magnitude or direction of a vector, but that needs a conscious effort on his part unlike the reflection, which he does unconsciously. The direction is clearly independent of the magnitude.

 

[LordAizenSama]

^you're right, however i did know about that Lazyhunter,

I thought about it for a bit. it says Force right after vector, what point would there be in mentioning vector, and then force when force is apart of a vector? probably just a mistake on kamachi's part on not understanding vectors completely or something. i dont know. it makes much more sense when you read it as direction.

and it's why I wrote my interpretation of it, to try make sense of it better.

So I had a look at the anime to see what they translated it to, and they described it the way i expected.

 

[LazyHunter]

Oh, okay then. You're right, it's probably either a mistranslation or Kamachi's mistake.

 

[LordAizenSama]

I Probably should of mentioned that part of it though, my bad

 

[LordAizenSama]

found some more info related to this: 1

 

[DontTalk]

Hmmm... that is the most interesting one to this point. I technically I would like to see know if this was entirely correctly translated.

Either way I guess I will link to this thread and change the site a bit, to accentuate this interpretation more.

 

[Verivici]

So what is the limits of his vector manipulation/redirection?

 

[LordAizenSama]

any hax magic, reality warping, ability, it's really a case by case basis. he did have some troubles reflecting magic attacks before (it just dispersed in random directions and not straight back at the attacker) ,but that was before he learnt about magic and how it worked