A Certain Mental Isekai, written by Eotyrannus, is a Self-Insert Fic of A Certain Magical Index, with some caveats.
The story follows Shokuhou Misaki, one of Academy City's Level 5 espers, as she goes through her life, and she has got many concerns. Besides studying and dealing with school politics, she has to contend with her so-called "rival" that she has reasons to be wary of. At the same time, she is increasingly aware of the city's darker side and has to deal with the ghosts of her past, while stopping nefarious plots that would have the city burn down around her.
She also wonders if she actually remembers a past life.
In any case, in Academy City Science is God, so let Reason have mercy on her.
Besides the main story, which is told solely from Misaki's point of view, there are three prequel side stories currently in progress, which show the perspective of other significant characters and shed light on their backstory:
- A Certain Cerebral Fanatic, narrated by one Tatsuki Mirei and set in the previous school year, during her first days in Misaki's employ;
- A Certain Violet Shadow, focusing on Kouzaku "Michan" Mitori and the circumstances under which she met Misaki;
- A Certain Rampage Dress, viewed from the perspective of Hokaze Junko and set early in Misaki's first school year.
The story and discussion thread can be found here
on SpaceBattles.com.
A Certain Mental Isekai contains examples of:
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Misaki and Mikoto. As Misaki is less aggressive and haughty here, their rivalry is less pronounced than in canon. Though Misaki is rather wary of Mikoto for several reasons, this is entirely one-sided, and their relationship eventually evolves into a friendship.
- All for Nothing: Ayu's entire plan. Everything, all the people she hurt and killed indirectly and directly, shooting Dolly V2, betraying the other survivors of Ideal for their own sakes, letting herself be partially mentally subsumed by someone she brainwashed for more power, it all ended up being for nothing in the end. Her goals to have everyone in Ideal reach Level 5, and to have Touma rescue her again, both failed. Hokaze reached Level 5 on her own without relying on Ayu's plan, making the sacrifices she'd made pointless, and despite nearly every single Level 5, Anti-Skill, virtually the entirety of the Constitutionals, and the Rail Gang all mobilizing to stop her, he never came.
- All Your Powers Combined: While looking for means to save the Sisters, Misaki and her friends contact Dr. Kiyama to create a derivative of the Level Upper, dubbed "Mental Upper". When active, it enables Misaki to use the abilities of all the members of the network while boosting their power. However, there is a big risk: if Misaki dies while Mental Upper is on, the psychic backlash will kill everyone who's still in the network.
- Anti-Hero: The main character. While normally fairly friendly and compassionate, Misaki has a darker side to her, especially evident during a crisis.
- She's got no qualms about paying evil unto evil and letting others do the same; the mere prospect makes her very happy, although she feels conflicted about it and tries very hard to keep her sadistic streak under control.
- Misaki has also killed people, albeit in self-defence. Several Deadlock members ended up dead a year ago, and there is also the DA member who was killed by his own gear when Misaki tried to disable him. She won't lose any sleep over it, though. Her solution to Exterior is straight out mass murder of senior project staff; granted, they had planned to get rid of her once it was complete anyway, and they weren't planning to use it for anything good.
- Misaki is rather cavalier about reading people's minds to acquire critical information or soothe her own paranoia. The only ones who don't have to worry about privacy violations are people she trusts and people who are either immune to her powers or have got a really filthy mind.
- Athletically Challenged: Averted. Unlike her canon counterpart, this story's Misaki takes pains to stay reasonably physically fit, and running is one of her hobbies. It has even saved her life once.
- Beneath the Mask: As the plot progresses, readers and characters alike see more and more glimpses of what hides behind Misaki's public "passive and polite Ojou" persona, and it's a traumatized, socially awkward young woman with many deep-seated issues and a violent streak.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Played with. Shokuhou after Mitsuari successfully unbalances her enough emotionally to lower her AIM defenses and hit her with Mental Stinger. However, Misaki becomes a barely-cognizant weapon in Ayu's hands, and Ayu herself is not a particularly sane or stable individual either.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Downplayed.
- In her confrontation with Accelerator, Misaki manages to exploit a vulnerability in his defences and land several hits on him. However, he quickly figures out what is happening and counters it. By the time the fight is over, Misaki is injured so severely that she is hospitalized and temporarily left wheelchair-bound.
- To defeat the Taowu, Misaki has to access a magician's mind and read a grimoire fragment. She succeeds, but the act gives her minor brain damage which manifests in somewhat reduced self-control. This becomes important in the consequent arc, which deals with the fallout of the incident.
- Creepy Child: After the dimensional reader incident that left her with an adult's memories in her head, Misaki is mentally much more mature than her age suggests, which has caused her to give off this impression in the past. When a tiny slip of a girl displays mannerisms that would better fit an adult, it can be rather unnerving.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
- Misaki versus the Taowu. Not only does she coordinate her teammates' efforts, she is also the one to disable the entity and finish it off.
- During Daihaiseisai, Hokaze becomes a Level 5 and stops Misaki's unwilling Level 6 Shift.
- Enemy Mine:
- Late in the second arc, Misaki and Michan team up with Meltdowner to rescue the rest of her team, who are under siege by Disciplinary Action and Scavenger.
- The climax of the second arc features Misaki, Michan and understrength ITEM teaming up with Scavenger to stop the arc villain and kill the Taowu before it kills them all.
- Fastball Special: Hokaze's intervention during the climax of the first arc is this. To stop Accelerator before he can kill Misaki or the Misaka clones, she literally throws one Kamijou Touma at him. It works.
- Freak Out: Downplayed. Misaki has a few temporary ones in the first arc as she realizes that the unethical research programs she's gone through are not the exception from the norm. She ends up dealing with the Level Upper incident, discovering Academy City's dark side and stumbling across the Level 6 Shift project, and she doesn't take the subsequent revelations well.
- Gamer Chick: Playing video games is a hobby of Misaki's. Her latest acquisition, the space-based RTS Worlds of Steel, serves both as stress relief and the means to practice multi-tasking and parallel processing.
- Heel–Face Turn: Tatsuki, before the story began. She used to be focused on advancing science at all costs, regardless of safety hazards or morals, and had no personal ethics. (Though, this could be said for a large majority of AC's adult scientist population as well.) She originally joined the Constitutionals as a method to get access to more resources for her experiments as well as advancing her power's level, but slowly grew to really be loyal to those she started to see as actual friends, and started being a better person, doing more careful experiments. Tatsuki's well aware that her parents, who encouraged her earlier attitude to science, might not be the best people, and she's terrified of Shokuhou mind reading them and revealing whatever the truth is now that she knows more about her beyond Mental Out.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Misaki counts as one. Because of her sadism while fighting enemies and the horrors she committed in the name of justice in the past, many involved with the dark side, with differing degrees of morality, consider her an insane monster worse than even them rather than a "pesky hero". It doesn't help when Touma ends up getting all the credit for the heroic deed of stopping Accelerator's massacre of the clones because he landed the last punch, when in reality she was the one that did the most work involved with the fight and suffered the most for it, doing much more damage to Accelerator's morale and body than him. Her reputation plummets even further to others when two Tokiwadai students with psychic point of view abilities find out that she had stabbed the Taowu to death while a human being was within it while laughing and monologuing maniacally. Luckily this gets suppressed from coming out to others by MEMBER.
- Loophole Abuse:
- Misaki is supporting the school's "Competitive Ambulation Club" to have an excuse to wear sportswear for non-competitive jogging and running (as the actual running club is taken). A number of Tokiwadai students are members as well.
- During her first encounter with the Sisters, Misaki uses Mental Out to convince them that she has correct access codes. This gives Last Order an opportunity to bring Misaki and her friends onboard as "consultants" for the Level 6 Shift Project, so that she could talk to them. As she hasn't broken the rules, the ruse works.
- During the preparations to apprehend Baba Yoshio Uiharu is willing to overlook where the video evidence came from and even helps mask its origins."But it looks like all the metadata is messed up for some reason?" she added, blatantly ignoring that this had happened five seconds ago on her own keyboard. "I don't think I can find the source of it, Miss Shokuhou, Miss Misaka."
- Make It Look Like an Accident: This is how the SI got rid of Exterior along with senior research staff. The trope is subverted, however, as the powers-that-be and Dark Side actors are well aware that she is responsible.
- Mundane Utility:
- At one point, Accelerator uses his power to consume an entire pot of yoghurt at once, then prevent Last Order from trying to do the same.
- Hokaze uses her electrokinesis to help maintain her Regal Ringlets.
- Being the point-of-view character, Misaki is seen using her power for mundane things:
- Misaki has a habit of ransacking people's brains for useful skills and knowledge, contact data and cooking recipes.
- She can go to sleep at will and mess with capillaries and heat receptors in her skin to better cope with the summer heat, which is useful when she is in a building with no power or air conditioning.
- Misaki is shown routinely using her power as a glorified day planner, making lists and literal mental notes. She has also used telepathic prompting to lead and moderate her clique's meetings.
- Since her power is hydrokinetic in nature, Misaki uses Mental Out to make sure that her tea is always perfectly brewed. It also serves as practice of sorts.
- After figuring out cryokinesis, Misaki has used this skill to ice drinks and making sure her cold tea stays cold.
- At one point, while writing her web novel, Misaki uses her powers to compensate for the fact that she left the other half of the chapter at home.
- During Daihaiseisai, Misaki uses Mental Out to slightly optimize her biology in order to last longer in a race. She also generates some water in her throat and hair to aid with cooling.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Misaka, Kamijou, and Team Shokuhou beat Accelerator by inducing this. Misaki in particular stalls him long enough for help to arrive and is willing to risk her life for the Sisters, who are just as willing to return the favour later in the fight. Ultimately, it takes Kamijou and Hokaze's intervention and Misaka 10037's desire to stop further bloodshed to make Accelerator realize what he has done, but after that he gives up without a further fight.
- Nerf:
- Zig-zagged in Misaki's case. Unlike her canon counterpart, she eschews physical mnemonic devices; instead, she uses entirely mental mnemonics akin to a command line interface. While less dependent on external devices and more flexible, this makes her noticeably slower on the draw than her fellow Level 5 espers (or canon Misaki), taking multiple seconds to set up and execute an attack or command. At the same time, this also makes it impossible to disarm her or tell whether she's using her powers or not. Misaki's psychometry and mind control skills have also been somewhat neglected; at the beginning, she's less powerful than her canon counterpart, but she makes up for it with long-range, non-line-of-sight mind reading and intelligence gathering and greater flexibility.
- Michan has to make do with oobleck instead of her preferred liquid metal mixture, as the black mark on her record, caused by her interference with Clone Dolly, has made it impossible for her to acquire the latter outside the school or use it without attracting srcutiny. While oobleck is serviceable enough, it's still inferior. During the story's second arc, she manages to obtain some liquid metal from a downed Coffin for later use.
- Neural Implanting: Misaki uses this to acquire new skills and knowledge. She will readily steal any knowledge that's relevant to using her powers (neurology, biology and mathematics), her hobbies (drawing skills, cooking recipes) or physical skills, such as ambidexterity. As per the word of the author, she has also used it to adjust her habits and improve her work ethic; as such, procrastination is not a concern for her.
- Next Tier Power-Up:
- What Mental Upper is for Misaki. When active, it allows her to use the abilities of everyone in the network, while sharing processing power and boosting their powers. This allows her to contribute in a much more direct manner in the field.
- Misaki's involuntary Level 6 Shift.
- Oh, Crap!:
- During the Sisters arc Misaki and her associates stroll into a lab due to being technically a part of the project. The scientists in the lab are horrified to learn that Mental Out herself is in the same building as them.
- Misaki herself experiences this when held at sword point by angry Stiyl (who is concerned about Index's involvement with her).
- Hokaze and the other cast present experience this when Ayu manages to mind-control Misaki and trigger her Level 6 Shift.
- Parental Substitute: Misaki has shades of it in her treatment of Scavenger, despite their traumatic background and large bodycount. After finding a new job for them, she checks in on them and makes sure they take care of their health, eat healthily, keep their new apartment clean and so on.
- Power Gives You Wings:
- During the fight against the Taowu, Misaki disables the entity by directly manipulating the magic of its talisman, armed with Esther Rosenthal's knowledge and using Accelerator's borrowed power to mitigate the backlash. In the process, she briefly manifests energy wings. This happens again later, when she destroys an offensive magical spell to save Misaka.
- During Misaki's Level 6 Shift, she manifests numerous wings made of exotic energy and ice. Sakibasu also manifests energy wings while using magic to help the Constitutionals survive and stop Misaki's rampage.
- The Power of Hate: Played with. When Hokaze confronts her, Mitsuari Ayu calls her hatred the power that will let her prove she's worth something.
- The Power of Friendship: Hokaze uses her desire to save Misaki as the final stimulus she needs to overcome her fear, and break the barrier of intense pain that stopped her so many times before, to become a Level 5. She even uses this as a rebuttal to Ayu, and states that it's the reason she's become so much stronger than anything the latter can throw at her.
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Hokaze rescuing a brainwashed Misaki and an increasingly unstable Ayu who's struggling to control her. She takes on a Mental Out who is quickly progressing towards Level 6, while having to dodge shots from subverted espers including Sogiita, Accelerator, Meltdowner and Maidono at the same time by herself. Nonetheless, she wins and saves both girls.
- Sanity Slippage:
- Played with in Misaki's case. In the climax of the second arc Misaki is forced to read Esther Rosenthal's mind in order to recover countermeasures against the Taowu. Skimming through a corruptive magical text has given her minor brain damage, which manifests in reduced impulse control. As such, she has become somewhat easier to provoke, more liable to divulge sensitive information and worse at hiding her sadistic tendencies. Her schoolmates and friends are understandably concerned by this.
- Ayu was hit even worse than Misaki with this. Even before the events of the main plot, being separated from her friends at Clone Dolly: Ideal, resentment of Misaki and being under the patronage of Kihara Gensei has resulted in a bitter, hateful and unstable person. However, during Misaki's Level 6 Shift her sanity unravels further as her plans get derailed and Misaki fights her influence. Eventually, she is outright raving about her hatred for Misaki.
- Self-Insert Fic: The premise of the story, with some caveats.
- The story begins ''in medias res''. The point of divergence is set nearly a decade prior to the main plot, when the young Shokuhou Misaki participated in a "dimensional reader" experiment that resulted in her prior memories being overwritten with those of a person from our world, creating the Misaki this story follows.
- As she has zero foreknowledge of the setting and no reason to think that she's in a fictional world, her actions, opinions and personality are shaped solely by her "past life memories", the experiences she has had in Academy City and the decisions she has made. Over the years, she has caused deviations from canon.
- The incongruity between her downloaded memories and the actual world she lives in has occasionally led Misaki to question whether her memories of a different world are true or if she's just delusional.
- Shout-Out: Being who and what she is, Misaki makes quite a few references to real world Internet memes and pop culture, although she is not sure if any of the concepts and works in question actually exist.
- One of her hobbies is writing fanfics, such as What Makes a Slugcat and The Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, which enjoy some popularity (at least one member of her own clique reads the former). As the respective franchises don't exist in this world, she has no problem presenting her writing as original work and taking some liberties with the material.
- In the first arc, right after her first encounter with Accelerator, Misaki responds to Saten's comment about gambling by off-handedly mentioning a picture of dogs playing poker.
- Late in the first arc, when Team Shokuhou meets up with Misaka 10037 to infiltrate the Level 6 Shift Project and talk to Last Order and Hokaze broaches a topic of nicknames for the Sisters, Misaki suggests "Rei" as a nickname for 10037. While the newly-christened Rei likes the nickname, Misaki is mortified.
- When Misaka 10044 complains about carrying the temporarily disabled Misaki up and down the stairs while helping Last Order recover Accelerator's personal effects, Misaki tells her to "git gud".note
- When Tatsuki Mirei is first introduced in the story, Misaki straight out describes her as her clique's "token evil teammate".
- In a particularly bizarre example, when discussing with Meltdowner the consequences of messing with a Level 5 esper, Misaki uses a combination of the FAFO meme and Thomas Fuller's quote about playing with the devil's toys.note "I wouldn't go that far, given how many times I've almost been killed this week alone," I countered, "but… basically, yeah. To butcher a few quotes- 'those who proceed to fuck around, shall be brought by degrees to subsequently find out'," I summarised, sagely.
- Tatsuki is mentioned to say that "there's science to be done". Misaki is rather sure that Tatsuki has picked up that figure of speech from her.
- Tatsuki's sidestory, set a year prior and shown from her point of view, shows her arguing with Misaki about the importance of presentation in clique politics:"Hmph! If we're really doing this 'trading advice' thing? It's not about how much space you need," I stated, "it's about presentation."
"So… we're a clique," [Shokuhou] said, the rhythm of the sentence slightly off as she said it, "but not a super one…?" - While discussing the possibility of Hokaze upgrading her abilities to fire low-power particle beams from her hair drills by using math derived from Meltdowner's equations, Misaki asks her friend, "Why not let your drills be the drills that pierce the heavens?"
- Soulless Bedroom: Downplayed. While by no means empty, Misaki's dorm room has got little in terms of personal effects that doesn't have to do with her schoolwork or hobbies. The only decoration is a photo of her, Michan and Dolly. As a result of Character Development, Misaki considers setting up a fish tank to liven her room up a little.
- Sufficiently Analyzed Magic:
- While not an example of magic per se, Misaki bases her psychometry on a technique she got from a long-gone acquintance, based on the Tree of Sephirot. After doing some research, she is inspired to use the concept as a framework for processing non-mathematical ideas and phenomena, which she dubs "TreeESP. Using TreeESP, she develops minor yet usable cryokinesis as a proof of concept. This also improves her power strength.
- Later on in the story, the Shokuhou clique's science club starts researching how esper powers and magic interact, as well as how to defend against magical attacks or mitigate risks of using magic for espers. Eventually, they produce usable results; having Index Librorum Prohibitorum as a consultant helps greatly in that. Under Index's guidance and with the Nihilists' help, Misaki eventually casts her first magic spell.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Over the course of the year that she spent in Misaki's clique, Tatsuki Mirei turned from a budding Mad Scientist into a kinder, more compassionate person.
- Troll: Misaki can and will mess with people just for the hell of it, mercilessly teasing friends and acquintances whenever an opportunity presents itself.
- True Companions: Shokuhou Misaki, Hokaze Junko and, from the late first arc onwards, Kouzaku "Michan" Mitori. Besides being Misaki's best friends, Junko and Michan appear to be the only ones whom she treats as equals, confides in and turns to for help and advice, and they reciprocate it. She still keeps some secrets from them, though.
- Unreliable Narrator: Even in the privacy of her head, there are some things that Misaki won't admit or dwell on, especially when it comes to her past. She can also misinterpret a situation due to lacking context or having a rather skewed perspective. The fact that she has numerous blindspots regarding her school friends doesn't help either.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Because of her foreign memories and accumulated life experience, Misaki is mentally more mature than her age suggests. Consequently, she also holds herself to much stricter standards of behaviour than she does her peers, and she takes her obligations, self-imposed or otherwise, very seriously. The downside to this is that it makes it harder for her to treat fellow children as equals or connect to them.
