In Another World I'm Called A Total Nerd
In another world I, Lyra Heartstrings, was a normal girl attending high school. It was a normal high school with normal magical battles against terrible ancient darkness and monsters from other realms. It was your average, everyday secondary school experience, just like in my Hipponese animes!
When we graduated, I thought I had missed my chance to be great. As everyone knows, once a girl leaves their teenage years they are no longer qualified to save the world, pilot mecha, or master martial arts. The best I could hope for was discovering my girlfriend was some kind of otherworldly demon with magic powers, but despite all the unicorns, nature spirits, cyborgs, and changelings around, she remained frustratingly normal.
Not that I didn’t love her - I just also wouldn’t have minded if she was secretly the Dark Lord of the Demon Realm.
I was returning home one day from work when it happened. I was distracted, thinking of the datanis waiting for me. It was one of the latest models, with a custom payload that would help Bonnie and I really connect.
I don’t mean in a sexual way but I do also mean a sexual way.
It was raining, dark, and I was dashing across the street to try and make it from one spot of relative cover to another. The car’s headlights weren’t on, so I never even saw it coming until the Pinto hit me. As I fell into the darkness, everything felt heavy, and I heard a voice calling out to me…
“You’ve met with an unfortunate fate,” said a kindly, strangely familiar voice.
“Not as unfortunate as someone’s insurance premiums,” I mumbled, trying to stand. A warmth enveloped me, dragging me to my hooves.
Hooves?
I gasped, looking at my legs. Instead of hands and feet, they ended in, well, the hooves I’ve mentioned twice now. It’s probably not as surprising to you as it was to me, but I didn’t have narration preparing me for it.
“Calm down, my little pony. Everything is just fine.” The voice echoed around me, everything white and blindingly bright. I looked up into the most beautiful, majestic thing I’d ever seen. It was a horse. Please don’t tell my girlfriend that I thought a horse was beautiful, she’d take it the wrong way.
“You’re a pretty horsey!” I gasped. In my defense, I would have been more eloquent if I hadn’t just been in a serious accident.
“I am Princess Celestia,” she said. “You were in a very bad accident.”
“Wait, I think I remember…” I closed my eyes against the radiance, trying to think. “Oh wow! I get it! I got really hurt and now I’m in another world!”
I looked up to see mild surprise on her face. “Oh! I didn’t think you’d remember. We were very worried about your condition. You have a major concussion.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I didn’t actually get the specifics but I’ve read about this kind of thing a lot. People get hurt and they get sent to another world in a new body! I’ll miss Bonnie but I guess it’s better than dying.”
“Ah, that’s not precisely…”
“So what kind of cheat powers do I get?”
“Cheat powers?”
“Well yeah, obviously,” I scoffed. You’d think the horse goddess had never done this before. It was a good thing I was a veteran who had seen over a thousand episodes of Glaive Art Online: Shut Up and Jam. “When someone goes into another world because they get summoned as a hero or reincarnated, they get unique cheat magic.”
“Is that so?” Princess Celestia smiled gently.
“Yeah. I don’t want anything really game-breaking, though. Otherwise there’s no struggle and it’s hard to sympathize with the characters. Oh! I know!”
“Mm?” Celestia tilted her head, waiting for me to continue.
“Magic beans.”
“Magic… beans?”
I nodded. “In my world, beans are at the cutting edge of technology. Like the beanis!”
“Oh. Yes, I believe I’m familiar with it from…” she sighed and looked to the side. “...hours of my life that I will never get back.”
I even had all the newest bean tech! Like I had this datanis that… that…” Why couldn’t I remember? It was on the tip of my tongue. It seemed important for some reason. “Well, it’s not important exactly. But if I had magic beans here, I could be the one at the forefront of evolution! With the power of beans I could become a god who saves the world, or a demon who destroys it!”
“...So you want… beans.”
“Right!”
“I’ll make sure the nurse has some waiting for you. Why don’t you just take a nice nap until you’re feeling a little better and the head trauma isn’t as severe?” Her horn blazed with golden light, and my eyelids slammed shut like steel curtains.
“Just don’t reincarnate me as a low-level random encounter!” I gasped, jerking awake.
I was still a little sleepy and a little concussed, so for a long moment it just seemed like a normal hospital room.
“I guess it was all a dream,” I sighed.
It was disappointing. I thought I was going to meet a princess and maybe get into some kind of complex love dodecahedron, but instead I was just going to get a hospital bill. I groaned and sat up, imagining all the things Bon-Bon would tell me about not looking both ways when crossing the street.
When the sheet over my body slipped down, I immediately realized two things.
First, I was naked. This was not standard hospital procedure.
Second, I wasn’t really naked because I was covered in fluffy minty green fur. I mean, I was still naked but it was naked like a cat instead of being naked like a naked human. There was a very big difference that involved what was acceptable around company.
“The dream was real!” I gasped. “But what about…”
I looked around, and then I spotted it. Sitting on the table to the side of my hospital bed, there were several cans. Cans of beans. I reached for them, trying to stretch and grab them without getting up.
“Come on…” I grunted, the cans glowing with a golden light as they finally floated closer so I could get a better look at them.
They just looked like normal cans. Normal floating magic cans of beans.
I gasped.
“I can control the magic beans with my mind! This is the best power ever!” It was effortless to move them through the air, like an extension of my body. It was the first step on the road to a glorious future, and with my advanced knowledge of the tropes of magical fantasy worlds, I could carve a path through any obstacle before me!
“Carve… a path…” I mumbed, trying to get a grip on the door knob approximately ten seconds later.
As it turns out, having incredible cosmic power was pretty insignificant when you didn’t also have thumbs. My new body was cute but lacked a lot of features I’d taken for granted. “If the doorknob was just made of beans this would be easy,” I mumbed, then gasped. I had a sudden, brilliant idea!
The cans floated at my side, and with my indomitable willpower I slowly moved them to the door, carried by the magic beans within, gifted by the white horse goddess who had sent me to this world. With infinite care, I rubbed the edge against the knob, trying to find traction.
When they kept slipping I got a little frustrated and just started hammering on the knob until something popped, the door opening an inch.
“I did it!” I grinned from ear to ear, which was even further than usual because my ears were on the top of my head instead of the sides.
Stepping out into the hallway in the improvised clothing I’d put together. I’d wrapped the hospital blanket around myself as sort of a combination toga and cloak. It was pretty cool but I was going to have to get some proper adventuring gear soon.
“Maybe plate mail,” I mumbled. “With magnetic coating on the joints to increase mobility from the base model.”
Now, normally I wouldn’t slip out of a hospital in secret but I couldn’t afford a hospital bill right at that moment and I promised myself I’d come back to pay what I owed after I’d earned a giant pile of gold coins.
“I’m going to check on the patient in room 101,” someone said, from around the next corner.
I stopped and pressed myself against the wall, listening.
“Isn’t that the one the Princess brought here?” someone else asked.
“Apparently they’re a special case,” the first voice said. “Very hush hush. I want to see what could be so strange about them.”
“I heard it’s Discord.”
“It could be a criminal. Maybe it’s a villain! You know the Princess loves redeeming villains.”
I carefully peeked. There were two small pastel horses talking to each other, both of them dressed vaguely like nurses, if nurses were horses and didn’t wear pants. Maybe no one here wore pants. Maybe I could invent pants and cause a social revolution! If I was going to get away, I’d need to slip past them. I could see doors leading outside just past where they were standing.
I levitated one of the dented cans of beans at my side and rolled it across the hallway like a tactical marine ducking from one piece of cover to another. Once it was there, I focused all my efforts on it, picking it up and tapping it against the wall.
“What’s that?” the nurse ponies asked. I ducked back into the shadows, waiting for the right moment. They trotted past me, looking the other way, and I bolted. Quietly. Walking on hooves was sort of like being on tip-toe. The can slipped between their legs, unnoticed, following me as I escaped into the wild.
“What do you mean there’s no adventurer’s guild?” I asked, gasping for dramatic effect.
“There just… isn’t one?” The horse I was speaking to really reminded me of my old homeroom teacher from Canterlot High. There was just something about her hair. And the way she spoke. And the color of her fur. I didn’t know her actual name, so I decided to just mentally tag her as Cheerilee.
“Then how am I supposed to get money?” I didn’t want to have to become a bandit, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to join the country’s elite military. If they learned about my bean-based magic they might use it to start a war of conquest!
“You could always play the lyre,” Cheerilee suggested.
I gasped. “How did you know I could play an instrument?!”
“Well, I mean, even if I didn’t just know, it would be obvious…” She looked past my eyes. I glanced back and didn’t see anything.
“Oh!” The truth came to me in a flash. “I get it. You’re looking at my status screen. I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that.”
“...What?”
“I know,” I sighed. “It’s the basics of the basics but I’m sort of new here. I know you can probably see it already but I have some really awesome mystical powers. Try not to tell anyone.”
Cheerilee sighed. “It’s one of those weeks again, isn’t it? Are you pretending to be the dark lord? Do you have a magical eye that can kill with a glance? A mystical sword that speaks only to you?”
“No, but all of those sound really cool.”
“Just promise me you’ll stay out of trouble,” Cheerilee said. “I really don’t want the foals copying you again. Their parents wrote so many angry letters…”
“Don’t worry. I can-not be defeated!” I held up a can for emphasis.
I don’t think she got the joke.
“Inventory,” I said, looking around. “Item box? Storage! Hammerspace.”
Unfortunately, a window didn’t appear in front of me with my equipment helpfully arranged in an extradimensional grid.
“What’s this?” A voice asked, directly behind me.
I gasped and jumped back, holding the cans between us to shield myself from any attacks. A blue unicorn was there, and she was obviously a wizard because she was dressed with class-appropriate armor. She had a look on her face like the rival character from my favorite dating sim game, looking down on me even though we were the same height.
“How did you get there?” I asked. “Some kind of teleportation technique?”
“The great and powerful Trixie has so many ways of getting there that she doesn’t even have time to tell you about them,” the unicorn said. “Trixie used her amazing powers to determine that you were having problems with even the most basic sorcery.”
She swept the hat off her head, reached inside, and pulled out a rabbit.
I gasped and jumped back, again!
“So you can use that sort of magic,” I said. “Does that mean you’re a person from another world?!”
She scowled for a moment, then put a hoof to her mouth and laughed. “Oooohohohoho! Perhaps I am! The great and powerful Trixie’s amazing greatness and powerfulness are otherworldly!”
I couldn’t afford to back down. After all, I was a special person chosen by a goddess (or at least a very large horse) to be gifted with an amazing cheat ability.
“I challenge you to a duel!” I shouted.
Trixie gasped. “A duel?!”
“And whichever one of us loses will be banished to the Spooky Realm!”
Trixie licked her lips. “I- I do like magic duels. Especially ones that end in banishment.”
“You can go first,” I said. If I couldn’t handle whatever special talent she had when I could see it coming, it meant I wasn’t worthy of the trust the horse goddess had put in me.
“What a terrible, foolish decision!” Trixie declared. “I will defeat you in a single move! Behold, my ultimate move!”
She dramatically unfurled her cape, glittery sparks falling from the edge exactly like tiny flecks of foil. It was obvious she was gathering her energy for a super powerful attack.
“Ultimate Special Attack!” Trixie yelled. “Trixie Beeeeam!”
I saw the glow around her horn only a moment before a powerful beam of pure photonic energy lanced through the air between us. I had only light-seconds to act.
“What?!” Trixie gasped.
My three cans circled in a triangle formation between us, forming the corners of a powerful bean shield.
“You can’t defeat me with such a simple spell,” I said. “I was able to deflect it! Looks like your ultimate attack was ultimaten’t!”
“Hmph! That is only the least of Trixie’s 108 secret spells!” Trixie declared.
“First, you’ll have to survive my own attack!” I smirked. “I’ll show you the power that comes from being reborn into another world! My all-range attack using bean bits!”
I could see it all in my mind’s eye. The whole world, visible from space, like I’d seen long ago. Sure, it had been internet videos but they’d been really cool. So cool that they had been enough to free my soul from being weighed down by gravity.
The cans orbited Trixie silently, so I made some cool wooshing sounds on my own.
“You don’t have any way to escape now,” I said.
“Trixie hasn’t lost yet!” she cried out, swooshing her cape and making her own dramatic sound effects to counter mine. I could tell from the way she made laser sounds that she was also a super-evolved being.
Suddenly, a terrible darkness fell over us.
“What is going on here?”
The purple horse that demanded this looked at us with the kind of look I’d only seen before when I tried to explain my hobbies to my parents.
“W-we’re just talking,” Trixie said, taking a step back with obvious fear. What kind of power level did this purple horse have that could cause a powerful sorceress to back down? She hadn’t even been afraid of my all-range attack!
“Trixie,” the horse said. “You know Princess Twilight said you’re not allowed to duel anypony.”
Trixie made a high-pitched sound like a pouting tea kettle. “But Starlight, she challenged me!”
Starlight sighed. A glow appeared around Trixie’s ear, and the cans around her were torn from my control. I stumbled back in shock.
“The unicorn has some kind of anti-newtype technique?!” I gasped.
“Sorry about all this,” Starlight said, putting the cans down at my hooves. “I’m going to have a little chat with Trixie about falling off the wagon again.”
“Wait!” Trixie said, as she was being pulled away. “Foolish pony, I may be foiled this day, but, um, there is one even greater than I!”
“Where?”
I looked up at the dread castle of the greatest, most powerful force in the land, someone so strong even the Great and Powerful Trixie, who had been my most difficult opponent and nearly my equal, had considered the apex of might.
I swallowed down my fear and knocked at Death’s door.
“H-hello?” Asked a hesitant voice from within, the portal cracking open just a fraction of an inch.
“Trixie said, um,” I coughed. “She said I should come here and tell you that I challenge you!”
“Lyra?” The door opened a little more, and I saw a flash of yellow and pink in the shadows beyond. “Oh! Um, give me a moment to get ready, please.”
I nodded and sat down to wait. A moment later I felt a terrible chill run down my spine. She’d known my name even though I hadn’t told her! I’d been thinking of myself as invincible because I had the magic of beans on my side.
Before I could contemplate this, the door flew open, smoke pouring from inside.
“You are a fool for challenging me,” an ominous voice said from within, echoing in exactly the way a voice should echo from an endless smoke-filled vortex inside a picturesque cottage in the woods. “Do you think you can make me use even one percent of my power?”
She stepped out into the shadows cast by her looming thatched-roof cottage, her killing intent washing over me and freezing me to the spot. Her kimono was all black with red flames, the two most powerful colors, and the silk-screened dragons and ninjas only made it even stronger. It was probably an ancient artifact.
“I-I have to wear this eyepatch to contain the power of my cursed evil eye,” she said, touching the eyepatch over her left eye. “If I used it, your soul might be torn from your body!”
I gasped in surprise. “And the other eyepatch?”
She posed dramatically. “As a half-vampire half-demon half-pony, I can hypnotize you with a glance. I, um, I wore this one to avoid bewitching you. Also, this one has the mark of the hidden Pegasus Ninja village a-and the other one has the ancient Hipponese symbol for strength and I couldn’t decide which one to wear so I put both on.”
She paused.
“D-does it look okay?” she whispered.
“It’s really cool,” I admitted. “Like a double pirate.”
She smiled and tried to pose again, slipping on the rocks she couldn’t see and barely catching herself, dramatically pointing very nearly almost in my direction.
“N-now you have to tell me about your powers!” she shouted, yellow cheeks burning red. “Um, if that’s okay with you.”
“Well, I don’t have a special heritage like you,” I said. “Or at least that’s what I would say if I wasn’t facing a worthy opponent. The truth is, I’m from another world.”
“Oh my,” she said. “Another world?”
“That’s right. I was reborn here with special powers and all the super-advanced knowledge I got by having a basic high school education in my advanced society.”
“Like algebra?”
“...well, actually I failed algebra.”
The yellow pony coughed politely. “I got the highest score in my class.”
“Yeah, but did you take shop class?”
“No. Mostly pegasus ponies build things out of clouds.”
“Well there you go! I have super-advanced woodworking knowledge,” I said, smugly. “Also I have my ultimate trump card, this!”
I held up the can of beans.
The yellow half-demon half-vampire half-pony didn’t say anything. The silence started to get awkward.
“I-I could totally use echolocation to look at it, if I wanted, but, um, maybe I could take off an eyepatch for a second to see?” she asked.
“No need. I’ll tell you what I have.” I smiled. “I brought magic beans from another world.”
Her cheeks turned bright red. “Beans? Oh, oh my! I didn’t think we were doing that kind of scene! T-then it’s obvious what terms you want to fight for. Whoever loses will become a slave of the winner and do-” she licked her lips and swallowed. “Whatever the winner wants.”
“Is this a sex thing?”
“I just assumed- the beans and, um, is it not a sex thing?”
“Hold!” A regal voice echoed across the valley. I looked up at a shining form, as bright as the sun and with a butt that could bring life and warmth for billions of years.
Also there was a familiar purple horse.
“Starlight?” I asked.
The violet equine looked offended “What? No! It’s me!”
“...Trixie?” I guessed. “Of course! You must have achieved a new form that changed your hair color!”
“I’m Twilight Sparkle!” she growled.
“...Weird. I know a girl with that name! Two girls, technically.”
“Yes! Because you know me!”
I gasped. “You mean…”
“That’s right.”
“You’re two girls!”
Twilight sputtered and took a step towards us before a big white wing flapped out in front of her like a wall made of swans.
“No, Twilight! Don’t get between them!” Princess Celestia said. “Can’t you sense the surge of killing intent? Their power is unlike anything we’ve ever faced!”
At least one of them recognized my amazing power.
“So even the goddess who gave me this power would rather stay in heaven because she lives in fear of what she’s created,” I said.
“I must ask both of you to stand down,” Celestia decreed. “I cannot allow such terrible might to be unleashed. All of Equestria could be destroyed.”
“W-well that’s fine with me,” Fluttershy said. “I mean, um, I don’t know if I’m really okay with doing a scene like this in front of other ponies, especially Princess Celestia…”
“Instead,” the huge white pony said, “I have a way we can resolve your differences without putting other ponies at risk.”
“Talking,” Twilight said, nodding and smiling.
“Modern ponies solve their problems by discussing them,” Celestia agreed. “But in old Unicornia, we had these.”
She produced two knives, thrusting them into the dirt a few paces apart.
“In Unicornia they called it the ugnapeigh ortemmeigh ladiogeigh,” she continued. “It means knife-edge death match, and I think that’s beautiful.”
“I don’t think you’re going to be invited back for tea,” Twilight said. I sniffed at the sandwich she’d put in front of me. It looked distressingly like she’d just shoved a bunch of grass between two slices of bread. Was that something horses ate? Would it be rude to ask for a salad instead?
Princess Celestia didn’t seem to have a problem with her own meal. “The ugnapeigh is extremely traditional. I thought she would appreciate it!” She punctuated the statement by stabbing one of her sandwiches and eating it from the blade.
“You tried to get Fluttershy to fight to the death!”
Celestia rolled her eyes. “Despite the name, very few ponies died from the duels.”
“How few?”
“Just over half. It was a wonderful spectator sport.”
“So this is nice and all,” I said. “But I’ve got to hone my powers and become an S-ranked adventurer with maxed-out stats.”
“What does that even mean?” Twilight asked. “Actually, I don’t want to know. This must be how Sunset feels all the time. I should write her a letter…”
“Did she get reborn into this world too?” I asked.
Princess Celestia laughed. “Oh, my little pony, you really haven’t realized, have you? You didn’t get reborn.”
“But… I’m a horse!”
“Temporarily,” Twilight explained. “For some reason humans that go through the portal turn into ponies, and vice-versa. Once you go home, you’ll be back to normal.”
“I remember being hit by a car. That’s a classic beginning to this kind of scenario.”
Twilight hissed through her teeth. “That car was a company car. The owner very politely asked if she could have you transferred here, in return for some consideration.”
“What kind of consideration?”
“It’s the latest model!” Twilight reached under the table and grabbed something that I recognized instantly.
“A datanis?”
“Yeah!” Twilight rubbed it against her cheek, the tip leaving a sticky green trail that glittered faintly with the promise of carnal education. “This one is loaded with over seven hundred gigafaps of research papers and documentaries!”
I gasped, suddenly remembering.
“That’s right! Before I vanished into another world, I had something important to do. Something vitally important! If I don’t go back, Bonnie will be lost forever!”
“Something important?” Twilight asked. “Like a book report?”
“Even more important!”
“A foal’s card game tournament?” Celestia suggested.
“No, even more important than that! I was going to use a datanis to inject Bonnie with all seventeen seasons of Glaive Art Online! Then she’d understand my references and stop looking at me funny!”
“Ah, young love,” Celestia said, smiling and nodding with approval.
“I have to go back right away!” I said, standing up. “If I don’t, she might end up watching some awful show like Hoofshakers or Kobold Killer!”
“Sure!” Twilight said. “You just have to sign this.”
She pushed a thick packet of paperwork into my hooves.
“What’s this?”
“It’s an agreement that releases Beanis Inc. from all liability resulting from the incident with the company car, with a standard NDA and a line that requires you to seek medical treatment from any resulting injuries only with approved company doctors, who are all based here in Equestria for tax reasons and not because anything is being covered up.”
“I don’t understand what any of that means,” I said, signing on the dotted line.
I kicked my front door, dramatically failing to open it because it was dramatically locked. I fished around for the spare key under the potted plants, then tried again, succeeding because hard work and courage always wins in the end.
“I am here!” I declared, posing.
“Lyra?” Bonnie asked, sitting up and peering over the back of the couch sounding confused.
“That’s right! I’ve returned from another world! And this hospital gown is backless and they didn’t have human underwear! My butt is super cold.”
“I can explain,” said a voice that sounded strangely familiar. A second head appeared over the edge of the couch. I was looking into the eyes identical to my own. “It was Twilight’s idea!”
“The one that’s two girls?” I asked.
“No, the one that’s a pony,” my double corrected.
“What’s going on?!” Bonnie demanded, shooting to her feet. My eyes were drawn to her bouncing bon-bons. She was wearing even less than I was. “Why are there two of you, Lyra?!”
“Apparently someone decided to get frisky with my girlfriend while I was gone,” I said, rubbing my chin. “I can’t blame you. She’s quite the catch.”
“Her hands are amazing,” OtherLyra whispered.
Bonnie looked at both of us.
“I’m going to bed. When I wake up, there had better only be one Lyra. Is that understood? I’m in enough trouble already with work and the last thing I need is paperwork about my own relationship!”
She stormed off and slammed the bedroom door behind her.
“The pony version has a nicer butt,” my double said.
“Mine has a better chest!”
“It’s bouncier, but less fluffy,” OtherLyra said. She groped herself. “This is such a weird place for these…”
I frowned. Her chest looked bigger than mine. It was either dark magic or an optical illusion.
“I guess I’d better leave,” she sighed. “It’s too bad. I was gonna watch all your animes. We don’t even have most of this stuff in Equestria!”
“You don’t?” I asked in growing horror.
“Nah. Mostly we just have the manga, and it takes like, forever to get the translated versions!”
“Then we have to watch as much as we can,” I said.
“But we’ve only got a few hours! There’s no time for more than a few episodes.”
I rubbed my chin, and the solution hit me like a blast of protein to the face.
I grinned. “Have you ever heard of a datanis?”
Author's Note
This is it. The worst thing I've ever written.
Some awesome alternate cover art by Hearty:
