My name is Anansi Dredd, of the family Dredd.
With a totally average backstory. Unlike the other me, who insists on adding explosions, dragons, and unnecessary thunder to basic life events.
This is my twentieth year of life.
It's also the day I'm supposed to receive my starter Pokémon from Professor Oak's laboratory. Right now, I'm sitting in the middle of the opening ceremony.
For reasons that still hadn't been adequately explained to anyone sane, Professor Oak had been forced to cancel all starter distributions for three months. The delay had been severe enough that the League extended this year's Rookie circuit by a full year—something that had not happened in recorded League history.
Which, naturally, meant speeches.
So many speeches.
This ceremony felt less like the beginning of an adventure and more like being trapped in the worst parts of high school. It had already gone on for thirty minutes. Thirty long, soul-draining minutes. Just like middle school assemblies, it was unimaginably boring, but I still managed to keep my posture straight and my expression attentive.
If nothing else, I was good at pretending.
The other me and the girls hadn't gone through any of this.
That thought gnawed at me.
Whatever happened back then had been bad enough to rewrite League schedules, disrupt regional planning, and force Oak himself to actually do his job.
Which meant—
Something had gone very wrong.
XxX
"Explain this to me again."
Charles Goodshow had lived longer than most people in recorded history. Not immortal, but close enough that the distinction had stopped mattering. He had outlived political regimes, three regional League restructurings, and one particularly embarrassing era where Johto briefly tried to outlaw Poké Balls smaller than regulation size.
He did not enjoy surprises.
Especially not ones that involved a masked intruder breaking into the laboratory of a former Champion, upgrading said lab with technology that blurred the line between science and sorcery—which, according to the latest reports, was not a metaphor—and then casually introducing entirely new Pokémon species into the Kanto ecosystem.
Goodshow sat behind a long table of polished black stone, fingers steepled, eyes sharp. Around him were representatives from the League, environmental analysts, and two people who had not slept in at least forty-eight hours.
One of them swallowed nervously.
"Yes, Chairman," the aide said. "The intruder identified himself as Kamadeva. He deployed multiple unknown devices, temporarily removed Professor Oak's Pokémon from the area, remodeled the ranch infrastructure without authorization, and—"
"And stole Pokémon," Goodshow cut in.
"Yes. Two. A Charmander variant and a Shiny Eevee."
Goodshow exhaled slowly through his nose. "And Professor Oak survived."
"Unharmed," the aide confirmed. "Angrier than we've ever seen him, but unharmed."
"And the Pokémon?"
The room hesitated.
"They're... adapting," another official said carefully. "The introduced species—what Kamadeva referred to as 'Delta Pokémon'—are integrating into the local ecosystem at an accelerated but stable rate. Oak insists that removing them now would cause more damage than leaving them."
Goodshow leaned back in his chair.
A masked lunatic had broken into Oak's lab, deployed technology beyond current League comprehension, fought his Pokémon without killing them, improved his infrastructure, introduced new species responsibly enough that Oak agreed to keep them, and then left.
That wasn't a villain.
That was a problem.
"And the motive?" Goodshow asked.
The aide hesitated again. "He claimed... rivalry."
Goodshow blinked once.
"...Rivalry."
"Yes, sir. He stated he was 'voluntarily complicating the lives of multiple protagonists for their growth.'"
Silence.
Goodshow pinched the bridge of his nose. "I am going to assume that sentence makes sense to someone."
"No, sir."
"Wonderful."
He looked out toward the massive window overlooking the League complex, eyes narrowing.
"Then extend the Rookie circuit. Monitor Oak's ranch. Flag any trainer matching that description. And quietly make sure every new Rookie today is properly briefed."
A pause.
"Someone get me a beer," he added. "I really need it right now."
XxX
Back at the ceremony, I shifted slightly in my seat as Professor Oak finally reached the end of yet another speech about responsibility, balance, and the importance of not destabilizing regional ecosystems.
I tuned him out when this girl appeared out of nowhere.
She was a beautiful girl with wavy golden blonde hair, crimson-red eyes, and a porcelain complexion. She was clearly my age but had a large chest and a striking figure. She wore an open chaotic school coat uniform with a white shirt that showed much cleavage and a mini skirt with sneakers, and she was staring at me with a dead serious look on her face—while she floated upside down in the air.
"Hello, are you Anansi Dredd? Quite a badass name for such a cutie with different colored hair." For some reason, she knew my name.
Also, I'm a man. I'm not pretty or cute, thank you very much. I'm not Johnny Bravo.
But there were more important questions to address right now. Who was this girl? Why was she floating in the air in a mini skirt... with long... legs...
Damn my eyes. I eyed the girl up and down in confusion and something else, and the boy wearing glasses who sat next to me was staring at me suspiciously. It felt like only I could see or hear her.
"My name is Bowsette, nice to meet ya." The girl began to introduce herself, even though I hadn't asked her name. And she was a little too friendly.
Wait. Hold on a second.
Did my past life love Bowsette so much that the current me is having a hallucination? A delusion? A... ghost? I didn't want to be seeing any of those, and if I was, it was bad news. This was a big problem, but I was in the middle of the opening ceremony for new trainers. Unlike Ashlyn, Gigi, Leaf, and Yellow—unlike them, the rest of the trainers had to go through this ceremony by not being in the top four in the region in the PTLEs.
How do I respond to this? I'm supposed to be the normal one while the other me is out doing cool mercenary stuff, living out dreams.
"Yo? My dude! Can't ya hear me?" Bowsette yelled at me while I ignored her. Sorry, lady, but normal is best for me.
Some people might say normal is boring, but if you asked me, I'd tell you that those people didn't know what normal meant. A normal life had time for hobbies, or for playing with friends. Was there anybody who didn't like hanging out with their friends? If you insisted on being different from other people, you lost out on things like that.
Which meant that being normal was the best way to be happy.
Well, at least for this version of me.
"Babe? Hot stuff? Does that not work, either? Anansi? Hmm, is that a little too formal?" No, first name basis is about as informal as you can get. It's not that I can't hear you. It's that I'm ignoring you. And why are you so friendly, anyway?
"All right, small dick bastard! Can ya hear me? Answer me, damn it!"
Who are you calling small, lady? I'm black in another world, which means my package is very large, thank you very much, and it doesn't cause problems with blood flow at all! Also, why are you talking about private matters? That's quite rude. Did I do something? Did I do something that would make you call me small? I did not! No... don't give in. Hang in there! If you scream, that's just what she wants.
"My dude, you have a nasty booger on your nose and on a hair too," Bowsette said, as she pointed at my nose.
Huh? Seriously? I moved my hand to my face without thinking.
"Not your right side. Your left. Your left." Left, huh? Got it. I need to yank it out before someone notices... Wait, there's nothing there?!
"I lied. And you fell for it! Punk ass—"
"Are you trying to pick a fight with me or something?!" I blurted out, cutting off the girl from finishing that sentence.
One: She does not have the pass.
Two: I'm very surprised that word even exists here in the first place.
"So you can hear me, after all."
"Oh no." Crap, I didn't mean to say all of that out loud.
Then things got worse. "You, new student. Who are you picking a fight with?" said Oak. Looking at him, I saw the old man was very tired, but his eyes held excitement.
What Anansi and Kamadeva didn't know was that after the first three days, Samuel Oak was as excited as he'd been during his first year as a Professor. The sheer joy of learning about new Pokémon from entirely different regions made the regional professors jealous.
It wasn't just Oak who was looking at me—it was the entire 2025 rookie trainer class, and even the parents were staring at me.
Aahh! "N-No, it's nothing."
"Sit down. Now."
"Yes, sir..." It hurt to have them all looking at me. I felt like I could die of shame. In fact, I wished I would. My head felt like it was about to reach its boiling point.
"Well, I knew you could hear me when you put your hand to your nose." This girl! It was all I could do to keep from screaming.
"Since I've succeeded in making first contact, I'd like to get right to the point. Is that all right?" It wasn't, but if I ignored her, who knew what she'd do?
Was there a way to talk to her without standing out? Maybe there was. I took my Rotom Cell Phone 25 out of my pocket and opened the text message screen.
Unlike the other me, I have to use the basic stuff. It was kinda unfair how a normal guy does it.
Tap-tap-tap-tap. "Who are you?" I typed in a message, and then motioned for Bowsette to read it.
She spun around in mid-air and looked down at my hands.
"This is quite an old communications device, isn't it?" Old? I'd just traded in my phone for a new one not too long ago.
"I guess that's natural, though. I've come from the future, after all. The System sent me."
The future? "Did you just say the future?"
"That's correct. I'm from the future." The future... seriously? Wait, the System the other me has? Why would it do that?
I decided to put aside my confusion and start asking questions.
"Can anybody but me see you?"
"No. Only you can see and touch me, Hot Stuff."
"I can touch you?"
"Correct. And I can't touch or speak to anyone but you. You know what that means, right?" A smile formed on her face that made her very scary to me.
"..."
"I don't think the '...' merits being typed out." I ignored her and asked the biggest question on my mind.
"What do you want with me?"
"I've come to save the future. I've come to change the future that's been ruined by you, Kamadeva, and the Dredd bloodline. The System had way too much fun with Kamadeva and let him just run wild. Not that you're any better." Bowsette said.
What do you mean, ruined? My goal in life was to be normal with some style, a little passion, and fun along the way for the current me, so it was hard to see me having any effect on the future.
But I had some small idea of what she might be talking about. My father (who is not dead, by the way—it was just something the other me thought would be badass to not have one) had told me about my blood—the Dredd bloodline.
That had just happened three months ago, before the System appeared in my life. Also the reincarnation too.
XxX [Flashback: Three Months Ago]
"Congratulations, my boy! You passed that test with gusto! Yahoooo!" The sounds of noisemakers filled the Dredd mansion with loud sounds and confetti that the son would be cleaning, since the father of the household told the cleaning staff that I would do all the cleaning from now on.
"Don't point those things at me. And don't say 'yahoo,' Dad."
"Boo! You're so boring, my son. You need to live a little and with gusto!"
The idiot, who was far too old to be puffing his cheeks out like an angry puppy, is my dad, Tahmn Dredd—or just Tom, because people say his name is too Kalosian or Unovan from the South. He was a good-for-nothing but loving stay-at-home dad with a look that could be part of a gang in an NTR manga (with great art, by the way), but despite his looks, he was also very loving. All the delicious-smelling food on the dining room table was stuff he'd made. Even the cake was homemade, which I thought was honestly pretty impressive. I wished he hadn't written "Anansi, I love you!" in chocolate icing on the cake, though.
It's just not manly at all.
"All right, let's start eating."
"Mom's not here yet. Neither is sister."
"Mom's busy getting ready for tomorrow. So she says we can start without her. Lita already went to Galar for her studies in Fighting with Gusto!... And a minor in Dark Types."
"I see." He was probably talking about Mom's job transfer tomorrow.
My mom was a talented career woman, and she'd been given the honor of transferring to her company's HQ in Kalos. Since she was congenitally incapable of doing any chores on her own, Dad had decided to go with her, but I'd decided to stay in Kanto to compete in the Kanto Rookie Circuit this year. I passed the exams but landed in fifth place, which wasn't good enough to earn one of the Kanto Starters.
My seventeen-year-old little sister, Lita Dredd, is a young woman of above-average height with an athletic build. Her large blue eyes, a striking feature, mirror the shape and size of our grandfather's. Her hair cascades past her neck, framed by two thin bangs on each side of her face.
Her outfit is a black zipped-up vest, a studded armband on her upper right arm, black jeans, a black belt around her waist, and black high-heeled boots.
My sister is a total punk-goth-rocker chick of every boy's wet dreams. She also has some issues. Lita gets a huge thrill out of fighting (too much of a thrill, actually) and maliciously beating her opponents. Her dream is to find Pokémon that fit her playstyle. She attends some martial arts school in the Galar mountains to find herself.
Today, my dad decided to celebrate me passing the exams and becoming a Pokémon trainer.
"Want me to put the candles on the cake?"
"No way." Blowing out birthday candles was a little too childish for me. And it was kind of lame, just having your birthday with your family.
"Did you not invite Misty or the others this year?" I asked. Because my mom and her oldest sister Daisy are best friends—and no, I can't tell their ages apart. Misty and I tended to hang out all the time growing up. Misty Waterflower is older than me by three years and is in training to take over her family's gym in the future. For a tomboy and a know-it-all who hates her sisters being more performers than battlers (that doesn't mean shit because they're still Elite Four-level trainers at the end of the day), Misty is very crass when you get to know her.
She smokes, drinks, cusses her mouth off, and gets a Slasher Smile when she goes Water Wrath Mode during battles. Though saying she's completely masculine is simply untrue—Misty frequently lets her hair down, is good with children, looks pretty damn hot in just about everything, and she refuses to wear jeans, only shorts and skirts.
It was hell during puberty. Ashlyn was better. Don't know why the other me pretended not to know them, but hey, he is evil and I'm pure average fellow. Gigi is going to kill me when she finds out.
"That's right. She wanted to come, but I had something important to talk to you about, so I said no."
"Hmph."
"Oh? Are you lonely without her?"
"Huh?! A-Absolutely not! Just, you know... We've always had our birthdays together, so it feels a little weird." We'd had our birthdays together for the past ten years. Of course it felt weird. Same with the others.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Shut up. Stop grinning, old fart!"
"Right, right. Sorry!"
Why did my dad always like to screw around like this? I didn't hate the guy or anything, but I wished he'd grow up a little.
I was a little curious about what he meant by "something important," though.
"So, what did you want to talk about?"
"Hmm... yeah. I guess I should tell you." Dad chewed on a piece of cake as he began to talk.
"We Dredds have a special bloodline, you see. Well, the guys at least."
"A special bloodline?"
"Yeah. I guess you could call it the Dredd bloodline. Whenever a Dredd becomes a man, he becomes... well, something special. Something a little unusual."
"This is the first I've heard of this. It makes me sound like the hero of a manga or light novel or something."
"You're pretty sharp, Anansi."
I had been joking, actually, but for some reason he gave me a compliment. What was sharp about that?
"This special something makes you rather like the hero of a manga or light novel."
"Do I turn 2D or something?"
"I kind of wish I got the chance to do that. You might not be able to come back if you did, though."
"My head hurts..." At this point, I decided my dad was just making things up.
"So what is our 'bloodline,' exactly?" I asked, intending to mostly ignore him. The trick to achieving a happy family life was not just telling him to shut up.
"It's hard to explain, meow."
"Don't say 'meow.' It's creepy."
"I'm trying to be creepy-cute! So anyway, it could be a manga or a light novel. Just imagine a story where a demon kidnaps a princess, and a prince comes to save her."
"A story?"
"That's right. But let's say that in the story, the prince loses in battle to the demon. Or let's say he never existed. What would happen to that story, you think?"
"A bad ending, right?"
"That's right. And when that happens, Dredds get called into the story to take the hero's place. That's just one example. A story can be any kind of weirdness that we find ourselves in."
"A story, huh?" It was a little abstract, but I got what he was saying.
"Basically, our bloodline has a tendency to get caught up in strange things. Also, we have a tendency to run into aliens, psychics, and people from the future, yo."
"Don't say 'yo,' either. I don't care. You are not that street. And I don't know anybody like that." I didn't want to get caught up in any stories, anyway. Not that any of it seemed in the least bit plausible.
Also, I'll avoid Ashlyn whenever she starts MC stuff. I like living.
"But..." As I chewed the lettuce in my salad, I thought to myself... If this was true, I'd just run away and leave the story behind. If I was just a bystander who was getting caught up in it, that meant it was supposed to be somebody else's problem, right? So I wasn't really obligated to help anybody. And no way in hell was I going to.
"Sounds pretty rough."
"Hahaha! You don't believe me at all, do you?"
"What, did you really expect me to believe that? If it was true, wouldn't you be off creating world peace right now or something?" I looked at my dad, who was chowing down on a chicken wing. He was clearly nothing but an ordinary stay-at-home dad.
"It depends on the individual, but from the records our ancestors left behind, it seems like once you become an adult at a certain age, the 'stories' stop coming for you."
"That sounds pretty convenient for you."
"You don't trust me, huh? Well, that's fine. Once you find yourself caught up in a story, you'll have no choice but to believe. So anyway, get ready for that to start tomorrow."
"Sure, okay." Were we finally done?
Well, it was a pretty entertaining way to spice up a birthday. I could give him that.
"Oh, there's one more thing."
"There's more?"
"Yeah. This is important." My dad put down his chopsticks.
I looked up from my food to see what was up, and saw my dad had a surprisingly serious expression on his face. I sat up straight without even thinking about it.
"A lot of really difficult things are about to happen to you. We're just normal people, so we can't solve all the problems like a real hero could. If you think your life is in danger, it's okay to run. But... I don't want you to just give up on the stories you find unfolding around you. Can you promise your dad that? Also, make sure your Pokémon know this too." I hadn't seen him looking this serious in a long time.
When I was still a little kid, I'd once found a sick Pokémon in a cardboard box that was floating down a flooded river. While I stood there panicking, my dad ripped off his shirt and jumped into the water without a second thought. Then he'd taken the sick Pokémon to the vet, and once it was better, he'd run all over our neighborhood trying to find it a home. To a kid like me, he looked like a hero.
"Yeah, I've got it. I don't know if I can be the hero of a story, though." Maybe I'd remembered how he'd seemed to me back then, because I nodded.
I still thought this whole bloodline thing was a joke of my dad's, though.
My mom finished her packing for tomorrow and came into the dining room.
"Hey, guys!"
It might be weird for me to say this, but my mom was really pretty. She was often mistaken for being a decade younger than she really was. I had no idea how my dad had managed to land someone like that.
"You're late, hon! The food's almost gone! And I worked so hard to make it, too!"
"I'm late because I've been doing all your packing, Tommy."
Ew...
"You were the one who said you wanted to do it."
"And I said that because if I let you do it, your stuff wouldn't have fit in the trunk."
"Hahaha, sorry."
Mom sat down, and we all started to talk. It was our last night together, so we talked for a long time. I forgot all about the stuff Dad had said about the Dredd bloodline.
XxX [End Flashback]
In my defense, it's kinda hard to remember all that when you're a reincarnated fellow who also dreams of being a villain. Well, the other me does, but the current me wants to be normal and become champion of the Kanto region. Speaking of flashbacks, turns out I'm actually friends with Ashlyn and the others.
For my safety, let's not tell the other me that he's their rival now. Looking at the girl, I glared at her.
Why was Bowsette talking about the stuff my dad said? "What gives you the right to talk about my bloodline?"
"You're the person most responsible for causing the League of Memes. I've researched you and everything else concerning the Dredd bloodline."
I don't get any privacy, huh? Wait, more importantly...
"The League of Memes?" The disbelief on my face spoke volumes about how much of this was bullshit.
"Just what the name implies. A war that involves unthinkable amounts of destruction and nanomachines, son. I'm unable to tell you most of the details."
"Why?"
"Because they're deeply connected to my mission."
"Saving the future, was it?"
"Yes. Your father, Tahmn Dredd, told you about the Dredd bloodline, right?"
"Yeah."
"At this point, I expect you don't fully believe it. But please understand, before I continue, that everything you heard is true." Bowsette seated herself in a formal pose in mid-air.
"In the future I came from, Anansi Dredd was involved in many stories, and saved many, many girls at the center of them. Heroines, you might call them."
"Heroines?"
"Princesses of fantasy kingdoms, mysterious transfer students, that sort of thing. Almost every story has a heroine, right?"
Well, that was probably true.
"By the way, Anansi."
"?"
"You're indecisive, and you don't know how to deal with girls, do you?"
"Bwah?!" Where did that come from? I almost yelled. The boy in glasses next to me was looking at me funny.
"W-Well, I guess I've never had a girlfriend. Does that matter?"
"Of course it does. In the future, you will save countless heroines, and cause them all to fall in love with you. But you never actually do anything about it. In the end, the girls you ignored will start a massive war over you—the Love Stinks War."
"Really?" Why did that quote sound familiar?
"Really. Otherwise I wouldn't be here, and the War wouldn't have taken place."
"Wait a second! He told me that when I grew up, the stories would stop involving me!"
"Even if you're no longer being caught up in stories, the girls you save don't simply cease to exist, you know? Nor do their feelings for you. You know, you're a lucky guy to have all those girls in love with you."
"..."
"I told you, you don't actually need to type out the ellipsis."
I was freaking out so much, I couldn't think of anything to say. You have to understand, I've got a delicate heart.
"Wait, why is there a huge war? It was started by a bunch of girls, right? How did it get so big?"
"You're very naïve, aren't you? The records show that you saved several hundred heroines. As I just said, I can't give you the details, but many of them were involved with the typical sorts of stories you'd see in a manga or light novel. So imagine that. Imagine if all the different characters from all the different manga and light novels started fighting. What would happen?"
"I imagine the earth blowing up about ten times over."
"Yes. It's something of a little apocalypse, you might say."
Of course, I didn't know that any of this was true. It was all just a hypothetical. But it was a fact that Bowsette was right here in front of me.
"I want to make sure you're not some kind of hologram. Can I touch you?"
"Certainly. Touch me wherever you like." Bowsette subtly stuck out her chest. Did she want me to touch her there?
"A handshake is fine."
"As you wish."
Shake-shake. I was able to touch her. It was true that only I could touch, see, or hear Bowsette. Did that mean the stuff about the Dredd bloodline and the League of Memes was true, too?
It doesn't help that the other me is running around as a merc and I have memories of Pokémon from Earth. So it makes it very hard not to believe her.
"My mission is to bring you and one of the heroines together, and thus end the League of Memes before it starts. I'll be watching you every minute of the day until you finish your mission, so hurry up and seduce someone, please."
"Seduce?!" Bowsette's voice was so calm when she said it that I couldn't stop myself from shouting.
The boy in glasses next to me, as well as the teachers, were all staring. It hurt.