A Beautiful Lie (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Become a Totalitarian Dictator)

by Leondude

Magic 101

“Ow, my head.”

Tom struggled to get up from his latest hangover. He had absolutely no idea where he was nor was he sober enough to figure it out for himself. He looked down at himself and, through his blurred vision, he saw that he was more hairier than usual. Not only that but his body was a violet colour. He lifted up his arm and noticed that his hand was missing.

“What the hell?” Tom muttered to himself.

“Are you okay?” a familiar voice asked Tom.

Tom turned his head towards the door of the room and found a purple alicorn standing at the doorway. He could tell from the way her mane was styled and how she was shorter than the other princesses that it was none other than Twilight Sparkle. In spite of his inebriated state of mind, it did not take Tom long to realize that he was in Equestria and that he had turned into a pony.

Please be a unicorn, Tom thought to himself as he lifted his hooves up to touch his forehead, Please be a unicorn, please be a unicorn.

As Tom felt up his new head, he found a hard, bone-like thing that he hoped was a unicorn horn and not a compound elevated skull fracture from falling under the statue. Though, given the way the horn felt, he would most likely be dead or severely brain-damaged if it was a skull fracture.

“Never felt better,” Tom happily replied.

“That’s good to hear,” Twilight said, “And just between the two of us, I know how disorienting those portals can be the first time around.”

“True but it’sh worth it to escape the human world,” Tom casually slurred.

Twilight shot Tom a befuddled look, “Did you say you’re from the human world?”

“Yep,” Tom replied, “Where did you think I wash from?”

“Well, I kinda thought you were a pony like me considering most humans freak out when being turned into ponies,” Twilight replied.

“No, I think it’s jusht your human counterpart that doesh that,” Tom casually slurred as he got up, “Also, I’m a bit washted-faced.”

Tom collapsed onto the floor, a consequence of trying to control his new pony body while struggling through a hangover.

“You got a bucket?” Tom asked, “I think I’m gonna puke.”

---

After spending an hour bedridden due to his attempts at walking making him dizzy and causing him to vomit everywhere, even and especially after he had some breakfast served to him, Tom finally got out of the bed and gentilly stood on all four of his legs. Since that walking was going to be a huge pain in his ass, Tom decided to practice levitation magic. Specifically, practicing it on himself. After all, if a baby unicorn can levitate himself, why not him? He closed his eyes and concentrated his magic on lifting himself.

He immediately shat himself from concentrating too hard.

“Okay, that was embarrassing,” Tom said as he turned around to face the semi-solid mess he left on the floor, “Time to do what the witches and wizards of old did when they needed to relieve themselves.”

Hoping his next attempt at magic doesn’t result in another shitty mess on the floor, Tom focused on the puddle of shit and made it disappear with his magic. He knew he couldn’t just make things disappear since he was just a simple unicorn, he just picked a random place to teleport his shit. If it wound up in somepony’s mane, that would have been both the most disgusting and hilarious thing he ever saw.

Surprisingly, his attempt at cleaning up his own mess actually worked.

“Okay, what the fuck?” Tom asked himself as the shit vanished without a trace.

Knowing he could do teleportation magic, Tom decided to turn it up a notch. He pictured the Castle of Friendship’s library in his mind and focused on teleporting himself there. Surprisingly, he materialized smack dab in the centre and not in the middle of a bookshelf like he initially feared. Finding it weird that he could teleport himself but not lift himself, he tried using his magic to levitate in the air again. And if he messed up, he could always teleport the mess away.

In a surprising twist of events, and as if the author of this fic remembered he was supposed to be setting up a punchline, Tom effortlessly floated in the air.

“Okay, this is bullshit,” Tom said to himself, “There’s no way I would have mastered all of these spells that quickly! Unless...”

A disturbing thought occurred to Tom. There were two logical explanations as to why and how he managed to perfect his magical skills so easily and none of them were good. The first one was that he was a Gary Stu while the second one, which was more plausible, was that he was an overpowered bad-guy. Despite the second one making more sense than the first, he refused to entertain the possibility that he might be a bad-guy destined to be reformed because it was usually the most overpowered bad guys that turned over a new leaf and the ones that didn’t reform suffer a fate worse than death at the hands of the writers, which was having their smarts stripped away and being reduced to pathetic and easily-defeatable shells of their former selves.

“Nah, it's fine,” Tom reassured himself as he gently floated back down, “Just because I’m good at teleportation and levitation doesn’t mean I’m like a mini-Sombra or a gender-bent Starlight. I’m just overthinking things like I always do. Lots of unicorns are good at levitating and teleportation. Doesn’t mean they’re destined to be supervillains. Though it wouldn’t hurt to read up on something more complicated like a mind-control spell or two.”

Tom levitated a random book towards himself and flicked to a random page to see if he would randomly come across the Fiducia Compelus spell or something like that. Unsurprisingly, it worked. And on the next page was the Cogeria and Persuadere spells. While he did find it concerning that Twilight didn’t ban those spells after Starlight’s little mishap, he wasn’t surprised since this was the same Twilight that would have reformed Discord by force if he hadn’t eaten all of her reformation spells.

“How would a reforming spell even work?” Tom asked himself, “Meh, questions for later.”

Suddenly, Tom heard hoofsteps and turned around to find Starlight entering the library.

“Eek!” Tom squeaked as he accidentally blasted a bolt of magic at Starlight.

The room flashed a bright white after Tom’s little accident. After the second blinding light he had to deal with this week faded away, Tom noticed something was off about Starlight. She had a blank expression on her face and her irises had shrunk. It did not take long for Tom to realize he accidentally cast the mind-control spells on her.

“Uh...karma much?” Tom said before giggling nervously.

Author's Note:

I bet a lot of you are now thinking "this is the titular totalitarian dictator?! You gotta be shitting me!" and...well...how familiar are you with character development and do you think it would be enough to turn a pathetic drunken loser into the ruler of Equestria?

Comments

[Redundant]

Stumbling into villainy! not the most glorious method but it works.

[Kadigan]

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Rule #1: you don't dispute results. ;]