Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

"Is everyone tucked in and ready to go to sleep?" Summer asked sweetly.

"Yes Mrs. Rose/Mistress/Mom/Mama/Mommy/Summer!" The members of RWBY, JNPR (if you could count the gurgling of the Seer wearing a red wig and lipstick on its featureless bulb as a response), Salem, Oscar, Penny, Tai, Qrow, and Raven replied from their beds, sleeping bags, and/or cages.

"Wonderful! Then it's time for bed," Summer said with a gentle smile.

"Speaking of, when can I come back to bed?" Tai asked from the cage he was locked in next to Qrow and Raven.

"When I decide you've been punished enough for utterly failing to take care of our daughters for the decade plus I've been gone and forcing our poor girls to grow up far too soon, especially in Yang's case," Summer told him with a kind smile.

"Yeah, that's fair," Tai agreed readily enough.

"And I'll let you out once the alcohol is out of your system for good," Summer continued, nodding at Qrow, who was in his bird form and stuck in an appropriately tiny cage. "And you… I'm not actually sure when I'm letting you out," she admitted to Raven, who was in a person-sized cage wearing a slutty bird costume.

"I'm not sure I even want to come out," Raven confessed, blushing.

"Good! Because that's where you belong," Summer said cheerfully. "Now, before I kiss you good night and start thoroughly dominating Weiss and Blake's mothers and aunt and make them call me Mistress – this mama's not accustomed to sleeping alone, and never will again if she has anything to say about it – who wants a bedtime story?"

Everyone started eagerly shouting and clambering for attention to indicate that all of them wanted a bedtime story. Summer chuckled good-naturedly. "All right! Where should we start?" she asked, holding up the family's well-read and much-loved copy of Fairy Tales of Remnant.

To her surprise, everyone started grimacing and fidgeting about. "What's wrong? I thought you loved these stories, Ruby!" A dismayed look crossed his face. "Oh no… You aren't little kids anymore, have you outgrown this stuff? Do I need to get something more age-appropriate? Gah, I've missed out on over a decade of you growing up and modern pop culture! Are teenagers still into vampires? Should I get one of Blake's Ninjas of Love books-"

"Ack! Ew! No! Filth! Filth!" Ruby squawked, flailing her hands about wildly and nearly hitting everyone sharing the bed with her.

"But Girlfriend Ruby, you were particularly eager to reenact a scene from one of the volumes earlier today-" a bewildered Penny started to say, only for Ruby to lunge at her and cover her mouth with a hand, much to the resurrected Grimm gynoid's delight, because she liked the taste of her skin.

"I don't think my mom really needs know about our sex lives!" Ruby yelled shrilly.

Summer chuckled. "Oh, sweetie, trust me when I say I was doing much worse when I was your age. To my entire team. And then some."

"Good times," Tai said fondly as Qrow squawked in agreement. Raven smiled blissfully.

"So honestly, I cannot only empathize but give you advice. And I'm a little surprised you're just with Penny and not your entire team as well, I'd have thought the Rose libido should've kicked in right about now-" Summer remarked.

"Mom! We're sisters!" The horrified Yang cried as Ruby looked like she was about to throw up.

"Well, not the two of you, of course! I figured you'd share Blake and Weiss," Summer commented, causing the former heiress and Faunus to exchange alarmed and aroused looks. "Of course, if the two of you did start finding each other appealing, well, you're only half-sisters-"

"MOM!" they shrieked.

Tai laughed. "I missed this! Raven, why did you ever run away like a coward and abandon us all when you could have had this full time?"

"I ask myself that question every day," Raven said miserably.

"Ruby, in all the stories you told me of your mother, I never imagined her to be so… This," Weiss said faintly, gesturing at the cheerfully smiling Summer. "I mean, my mom was an alcoholic, but this?"

"In my defense, I was very young when she vanished so was kind of clueless about all this, and most of the time whenever I asked Dad or Uncle Qrow about her they'd just get sad and drink a lot," an embarrassed Ruby muttered.

"And besides, we have Uncle Qrow, Raven, and Dad to fill up the drunk, neglectful, and disappointing parental/relative slots," Yang added, the three named figures hanging their heads in shame.

"Fair," Weiss conceded.

"Mrs. Rose, it's not that we've outgrown those stories, so much as… Well, we've kind of lived them?" Blake said awkwardly. "Or learned the truth of them, with the reality being far less appealing?"

Weiss shuddered. "Especially after our horrible adventures in the Ever After."

"I tried to kill myself," Ruby said, a haunted look in her eyes. Penny immediately cheered her up by shoving her face in her breasts.

"And in my case, I have the original author of most of them in my head, so I know just how much he lied about it all," Oscar said wearily.

"I didn't lie! I just used… Alternative truths," Ozpin muttered awkwardly.

"Is Ozpin claiming he didn't lie but used alternative truths? He did that all the time, even back before he died and I became immortal," Salem scoffed, rolling her eyes. "He never learns."

"Hey!" Ozpin protested lamely.

"Well, considering how your brilliant plan to save the world was basically maintaining the status quo forever because you couldn't think of any more creative ways to deal with your ex…" Oscar pointed out.

"I don't need to take this from you!"

"You kind of do."

"Dammit."

Nora waved her hand energetically. "Oh! Oh! Mrs. Ruby's mom, pick me, pick me!"

"Nora, this is not a classroom," Ren reminded her.

"Especially since I'm not wearing my teacher outfit," Summer agreed, causing her daughters to blanche and her former teammates to start developing nosebleeds, even Qrow. "But yes, Nora?"

"You spent the last decade plus in another world having fantasy adventures! Why don't you tell us about some of those?" Nora asked excitedly.

"Hey yeah, you haven't really talked much about your time away," Yang realized.

"Yes, just some occasional references to adventures we don't know anything about, forcing us to use our imaginations to fill in the blanks," Ruby agreed. "Like… Wondering if you settled down over there. Started another family. One you love more than us. With daughters that aren't a complete and utter disappointment to your legacy and aren't total failures who didn't make mistakes that destroyed entire kingdoms and cost thousands if not millions of people their lives and tried to end it all to become someone better but couldn't even do that right-"

Penny shoved her face in her breasts again.

Summer blinked. "Hoo-kay. Lot to unpack there. Has, has therapy just stopped being a thing while I've been away or…?" She gestured at Jaune. "Because there's clearly something wrong with that kid."

They all glanced at Jaune, who was trying to make out with the Seer. Badly.

"It didn't seem a high priority at the time," Ren said after a moment. "What with the war and the end of the world at all."

"And the gradual collapse of civilization, so it wasn't like there was anyplace we could get therapy anyway!" Nora said cheerfully. "I mean, Atlas was obviously out since Atlas blows – sorry, blew – and the Vacuans' response to people suffering PTSD and losing their friends and loved ones when their entire kingdoms were destroyed was to tell them to get over it and stop whining already!"

Although Summer continued smiling, her eye twitched. "Oz, I blame you for all this."

"That's…" Ozpin sighed. "Probably fair."

"You too, Salem," Summer told Salem, who'd been sticking her tongue out at Oscar.

"I'm sorry, mommy," the Grimm Queen said contritely.

"So, stories of the other world," Summer mused, putting the book of fairy tales back on the shelf where it belonged. "I do owe you all some tales, don't I? I've just been so busy moving back in and catching up on what I've missed and bonding with my kids and their friends and punishing my disappointing teammates and fucking the daylights out of all the women who've missed my touch and introducing it to those unlucky souls who never knew it before-"

"MOM!" Ruby and Yang wailed.

"I guess I was waiting for some of the friends I made over there to get here before starting on that sort of stuff?" Summer admitted. "Except they're taking a little longer than I expected, which is weird, because I know the way between worlds is open, I can feel it and my bonds with all of them, and I left very clear instructions on how to follow me and they promised they'd come as soon as they could – is there a time dilation sort of thing going on? It didn't really feel like 12-13 years over there – so I should probably fill you in on a few things, so you won't be totally blindsided when all my friends/family/lovers finally get here."

She reached out and put her hands over Ruby and Yang's. "And girls, I want to assure you, I have never thought either of you are inadequate, and while I did meet, sleep with, and adopt a bunch of great people, at no point did I ever think about replacing you or stopping looking for a way back to you. And to your father, to a somewhat lesser extent. And your uncle. And Raven too, I guess, mainly so I could beat her up for abandoning me in the lair of the final boss then drag her home so I could force her to be a part of our family again."

"And me, mommy?" Salem asked hopefully.

"Right, you too," Summer said, almost as an afterthought.

As Ruby and Yang started tearing up and hugged their mother, Weiss glanced at the caged adults. "So… None of what she just said bothers you? Or how she's casually talking about hooking up with other people in another world, or in this world?… Including my mom?"

Tai shook his head. "Nah, we've always had an open marriage. Her being polyamorous doesn't mean she loves us any less." He smirked. "And besides, remember that Qrow and I are two of the only men she's ever been with, and I'm the one she let knock her up with Ruby. That's definitely worth a few bragging points."

"Daaaaaad," Ruby whined.

"… This is such a weird family," Weiss muttered.

"And, even though the matriarch's some kind of polyamorous nymphomaniac who's been having adventures in another world for over a decade, one of them ran away to become a bandit queen, one of them is an alcoholic, and the newest member is the literal queen of evil, it's still not as dysfunctional as yours," Blake pointed out.

Weiss's eye twitched. "I hate that you're right."

"Well, since mommy is sleeping with your mommy, that means you're part of this family now too, as another sister!" Salem said happily, hugging the mortified Weiss to her ample bosom, the former heiress very much looking as if she would've preferred death. Blake snickered, until Salem realized, "Oh, that includes you too, Blake!" And started hugging her as well.

Yang frowned in confusion. "I'm… Feeling something now. Is it… Jealousy? Why? And of whom?"

"Can't hear you, in Boobytown now," Ruby muttered, face buried in Penny's chest again.

"She's such a cool mom! I wish she was my mom," Nora complained.

"I adopted you and Ren yesterday," Summer pointed out.

"Oh, right," Nora recalled. "I guess it still hasn't sunk in fully yet. I have a mom! And a dad! And an aunt and uncle, and lots of sisters! Wait, since you adopted Ren too, does that mean we've been having incest? OH MY GOSH! Are we going to have horrible hideous freakishly deformed babies?!"

"No, Nora," Ren said patiently.

Jaune said nothing because he was attempting to get to second base with "Pyrrha." Badly.

"… So. That story?" Oscar asked, desperate for any reprieve from whatever the heck it was he was witnessing.

"Yes, of course," Summer said, giving the poor boy an apologetic look as she sat down, Zwei crawling into her lap and getting petted like the good boy he was, to the envy of a surprisingly large number of people in the room. "So, as you've been told by Salem, when I was bringing her home to Patch I got hit by a truck and died instantly, in spite of the fact that I had a full Aura and am so strong that by all rights the truck should have disintegrated without harming a single hair on my head which I'm totally not sore about – by the way, what did you do with my body?" She asked Salem.

"Dunked it in a pool of Grimm to try and see if it would bring you back as something like me," Salem admitted, looking away.

Summer blinked. "… Did it work?"

"No."

"Wait, does that mean that there's a second, dead you at the bottom of a pool in the Grimmlands-" Blake started to ask.

"Not thinking about that!" Summer said loudly. "Anyway, I woke up sometime later…"

…

Summer's everything hurt. Her head was killing her. She hadn't felt this bad since that one time she thought it would be a great idea to attend an orgy after spending 70 hours straight fighting Grimm, White Fang, and criminals, and doing all the paperwork Ozpin refused to do himself only a few days after giving birth to Ruby-

…

"Wait you did what?!" Weiss screeched.

"I'm very strong, dear, keep up," Summer said gently.

"I want to be you when I grow up!" Nora squealed, eyes sparkling.

"Me too!" Ruby agreed. "Wait, I've always wanted that… Which, come to think of it, might be the source of quite a lot of my self-esteem issues and feelings of inadequacy-"

Penny shoved her face in her chest.

"Wait, if this was shortly after Ruby was born, why weren't you with her?" Blake demanded.

"I would have been, but someone canceled my maternity leave," Summer complained, glaring at Oscar.

"Look, it was an emergency!" Ozpin protested.

"She can't hear you," Oscar pointed out.

"Could you tell her-"

"I'm not apologizing for you."

"Drat."

"Ugh… Did anyone get the number of the truck that hit me?" Summer slurred as she slowly came to.

"By the way, did you?" Summer asked Salem.

Salem shook her head. "Sorry, mommy, it had no plates."

"Typical," Summer grumbled.

She could hear several excited whispers and cheers around her as she groggily opened her eyes, wincing as light pierced them and forced them closed again. From the sensation pressing into her back, she could tell that she was unclothed and lying on some incredibly soft and luxuriously comfortable pillows. Given how many people she could sense around her, maybe the comparison to that orgy a few years ago had been more apt than she realized.

Wait, how'd she get here? She didn't remember going to a place that smelled and felt this nice. Shit, was it time for her to admit Qrow wasn't the only one who had a problem?

"Wait, you're finally admitting it?!" a shocked Tai asked.

Summer nodded. "Yes, I have a problem…I'm too awesome!"

Tai shrugged as Yang, Ruby, Penny, Salem, and Nora looked at her in awe while Weiss facepalmed. "Fair enough."

Come on, Summer, think. This headache doesn't feel like a hangover and my mouth doesn't taste like shit so I wasn't drunk, and I hurt too much to have been drugged. Gotta remember what happened to me, because it would be super awkward if I can't remember the names of whoever I slept with last night again, it almost always ruins my chances of seeing them again…

Wait, hang on… I don't think I slept with anyone last night. How could I, I was in the Grimmlands with Salem – who, while really affectionate and fucking gorgeous, unfortunately sees me as a mother figure which is a shame because otherwise, I wouldn't have minded tapping that ass, no matter how many atrocities she's committed and even if she is Oz's ex-

"MOM/MOMMY!" Her daughters cried, aghast, while Oscar made a strangled gasp as Ozpin forced his way to the front. "Excuse me?!"

"I mean, look at her!" Summer exclaimed, gesturing at Salem.

They looked at her.

"Okay, yeah, I see your point," Yang admitted, most of the others nodding or making murmurs of agreement while Salem blushed in an oddly cute way. She wasn't really used to getting much in the way of compliments these days.

And I really doubt she was planning to double-cross or deceive me considering how much she was crying and clinging to me while blabbing about how my past life was the closest thing she had to a mother, which is pretty sad, to be fair… She wouldn't let a Grimm attack me, so what… Hit… Me…

There was a faint stirring of a thought in the back of her head, one she immediately quashed.

No. No way. It couldn't possibly have been a truck, there's no way she could possibly have been killed by one at full strength, and what would a truck even be doing in the Grimmlands anyway?

"That's what I said!" Salem exclaimed.

"Oh, look! I think she's waking up!"

"Not so loud! We shouldn't be this close to her! We don't want to scare her when she gets up!"

"Sorry, I can't help it, she's just really pretty, I mean wow, we knew she would be, but the stories didn't do her justice!"

A sudden feeling of dread suddenly filled her. Oh no. Had she been kidnapped by her fanclub again?

"Wait, again?!" An incredulous Ruby interjected.

Summer and her former teammates nodded. "Oh yeah, happened all the time. Consequences of being the world's strongest top-ranked Huntress and one of the most beautiful women alive. That's never happened to any of you?"

"No!" Everyone except Weiss said, the latter admitting, "Well, okay, maybe half a dozen times, but the last two don't count because that was the White Fang pretending to be fans." She frowned. "Then again, they really did seem excited when I gave them my autograph…"

Everyone stared at her. "What?"

While on guard, Summer didn't sense any malicious intent from the unfamiliar voices, or anyone else nearby. Hesitant, she opened her eyes again, blinking a few times until they got adjusted to the light, and then she sat up.

And stared.

Standing slightly hunched over before her, looks of surprise and excitement on their beautiful pieces, were a pair of gorgeous dark-skinned women with very long hair, pointed ears, and very ornate, elaborate, and rather skimpy clothing. Standing a bit further away, behind the women and on all sides, were more beautiful women – though not as lovely as the first pair – also scantily clad but very well-muscled and carrying ornate but very functional and potentially deadly weapons. Crowding around just behind them were still more very attractive people, this bunch more diverse and having not just the dark skinned pointy-eared people but lighter skinned ones as well, humans, and a variety of other creatures that didn't look like any Faunus Summer had ever seen, most of them wearing nothing at all except collars around their necks.

After taking half a second to drink in the scores of very lovely ladies around her, Summer discovered she was lying on top of a pile of cushions and pillows arranged on a raised dais on a terrace looking down at an enormous city of stone buildings of unfamiliar architecture stretching out to fill the absolutely massive cavern they were inside. Many buildings hung from the ceiling like stalactites or even grew down to meet with other structures below to form elaborate and beautiful support pillars that doubled as palaces bigger than any castle Summer had ever seen before, many of them so tall they could easily have connected Atlas to the slums of Mantle. Millions of people were gathered on terraces, at windows, on rooftops, and filling the streets and plazas at the base of the towering ziggurat she was at the top of, a gargantuan silver Dragon statue looming over her and a shimmering holographic image projecting a very zoomed-in shot of her bewildered and bedraggled face for the entire cavern to see.

"It really is you," the first of the two dark-skinned pointy-eared women in front of her, a great beauty wearing elaborate red and gold veils and a dress of similar coloration and transparency which didn't even try to hide her chest or hips or stomach, her flowing skirts flashing quite a lot of her long, languid legs ending in red and gold heeled sandals with similar anklets around them, a staggering amount of incredibly tasteful and beautiful red and gold jewelry hanging from her neck and wrapped around her mostly bare arms, more red veils and streamers wrapped around them, said reverently, her nearly floor length red-streaked black hair swishing behind her, gold wrapped around many strands with a ruby-encrusted gold coronet atop her head.

"At long last," said the other one, an equally beautiful woman with similar proportions, wearing a blue and silver gown of an equally fine and elaborate style covered in silver script which seemed to squiggle and change as Summer looked at it until she almost thought she could understand it, more of her body covered up then her counterpart but still making her just as tantalizingly beautiful, draped in silver, sapphire, and diamond jewelry, her extremely long blue-streaked white hair in a massive braid laden with pearls and jewels and a matching coronet. Both she and the other woman had tattoos on their exposed skin which shimmered almost as if Dust had been embedded in them, which Summer knew sounded cool but was usually a terrible idea unless you had some pain-dampening Semblance like that one follower of Salem's who blamed Oz for his sister dying – wow, a young Huntress relative got killed by Grimm, that's never happened before, actually that was super depressing now that she thought about it – or were a masochistic freak. "After all these millennia, you are finally here! Welcome, O Silver Dragon Queen of the Summer Rose!"

"WELCOME! WELCOME! WELCOME!"

Summer groaned as the cave echoed with the cheers of the teaming masses. "Oh fuck me, I've been abducted by a cult again, haven't I?"

"Wait, a cult? Again?!" Weiss demanded.

"Yeah. What, none of you have ever dealt with any?" Summer asked in surprise.

"No!" Weiss yelled.

"What about that Tyrian guy? He was kind of a Salem cultist, wasn't he?" Yang pointed out.

"Yes, he was, and one of my most devoted," Salem said fondly. "… Maybe a little too devoted."

"You think?" Blake asked sarcastically.

"Well, I've had to deal with plenty of cults," Summer explained. "Ones which worshiped Grimm, ones which worshiped Salem, ones which worshiped the Brother Gods, or the God of Animals, or several old gods nobody's heard of, and more than a few I think they made up, and this one time where they took the writings of this hack sci-fi author as gospel – hey, is that one still around?"

"Unfortunately," Tai said apologetically.

Summer groaned. "Seriously? After all the effort I put into stamping them out? Typical… Anyway, there's also been a bunch of cults which thought that I was their Messiah or the destined nemesis of their God and tried to worship me or kill me or ritually sacrifice me or marry me or all the above… Such a pain." She scratched her head. "So basically like fanclubs, except they have a semi-legitimate excuse to steal nail clippings or bits of hair or your underwear."

Just about everyone stared at her. Salem gasped. "Wait… Was Tyrian the one who kept taking things from my underwear drawer? I thought it was one of Ozma's spies! Specifically you, Qrow, because something like that would be completely up your alley."

Qrow squawked indignantly.

"No, she's right, it would be," Raven said. "Also, what the fuck?"

"Why… Why would you think Ozpin was stealing your underwear?" The horrified Weiss asked.

"Because he's still in love with me, of course," Salem said as if it were obvious. "And as retribution for the Grimm squirrel I've been sending to torment him for years."

"I KNEW IT WAS YOU!" Ozpin shouted through Oscar's mouth. "Glynda, Peter, and James all said I was crazy, but I told them that squirrel was pure evil, and after all these years, I've finally been proven right! VINDICATION!"

Everyone stared at him.

Summer cleared her throat. "Moving on…"

"A… Cult?" The black haired woman said in puzzlement. "No, my Queen, we are your devoted followers-"

"Right, a cult," Summer interrupted, only to frown. "Wait, no, there's way too many of you for this to count as a cult, past a certain number it becomes organized religion, which is basically the same thing but on a bigger scale. Okay, where on Remnant are we? How can you have a place this big underground without having been destroyed by the absolutely gargantuan antediluvian Grimm that live down here waiting for someone to dig too deep so they can come up and destroy the surface world?"

"I'm sorry, the what now?" Weiss demanded.

"Oh, don't worry, I told them to leave us alone," Salem assured her.

"That doesn't assuage my fears at all!" Weiss shrieked.

"Friend Weiss, would you like to put your face in my breasts as well?" Penny asked. "It always calms Girlfriend Ruby down."

Weiss turned very red and made some incredibly fascinating noises that Ozpin and Salem almost recognized as an ancient form of language there was no way she could've known.

"I ship it," Nora whispered very loudly to Ren.

"And also – and forgive me, I'm not trying to sound offensive – but what kind of Faunus are you? I've never seen ones like you before, and a lot of the other ones here seem to have way more animal traits than the ones I've met," Summer continued, the increasingly confused looks on the faces of the women surrounding her causing something cold and ugly to turn in her gut.

"I… Apologize, my Queen, but we don't know what you're talking about," the silver haired woman said.

"We have either slain or enslaved most of the beasts of the deep, but we've never heard of ones called Grimm, nor are we familiar with a place called Remnant," the black-haired woman said.

"And we are not Faunus – whatever those are – we are dark elves," the silver haired woman said.

Summer stared at her. "Dark elves."

"Yes," the silver haired woman repeated.

"As in, the magical, subterranean, usually matriarchal, typically evil, extremely beautiful and very kinky beings which are renowned for torture, slavery, and being the focus of way too much NSFW art and fiction?" Summer asked.

"Well, that's mostly right, but I wouldn't say we're evil," the black-haired woman said, looking somewhat upset.

Summer stared at them for a very long time. "I was hit by a truck, and now I'm here, in a fantastic setting which should not exist."

"Well, as you can see, we clearly do exist," the silver haired woman pointed out. "And I am uncertain what a 'truck' is, but yes, it was foretold that you would appear in our world after being struck by some manner of conveyance in yours."

Summer's eye twitched. "You have a prophecy about me coming from another world."

"Yes."

"To… To what, save you all from something?"

"Yes."

Summer closed her eyes, counted to 10, breathed through her nose, and then shouted, "I'M IN A GODSDAMNED ISEKAI WHAT IN THE AMBIGUOUSLY EXISTING ANIMAL GOD'S NAME AM I DOING IN A FUCKING ISEKAI FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCK-"

"I continued in that vein for several minutes, using language which none of you are ever to use in any context," Summer said calmly.

"Wooooow," Nora whispered.

"Okay," Summer said several minutes later, the elves and other fantasy creatures staring at her in shock and horror. "Okay. Okay. I'm good now. I apologize for that, but I really, really did not ever want to wind up in a situation like this, because it's horribly fucking cliché and done to death and whose fucking idea was this-"

"It turned out I wasn't quite done yet," Summer admitted.

"All right. I'm good. I'm good," Summer said finally, several more minutes later. "I apologize again. I'm probably not making the best first impression. It's highly unlikely you were expecting your preordained savior to react like that."

"We… Were not, no," the black-haired dark elf said, eyes wide.

"You must have… A great many questions," the white-haired dark elf said.

"Yes, I do," Summer agreed. "First of all… No, wait, actually… No, no, hang on… Sorry, there are so many things I need to know this instant that I can't decide what to start with… All right, let's start by getting your names, because I've been calling the both of you a lot of interesting things in my head right now, things that probably shouldn't be spoken out loud in polite company or to royalty, which I'm guessing you two are? Or members of the priesthood? Or both?"

The black-haired elf blinked and then smiled. "As you wish, my Queen. I am Sha'serifa Shan'zeshimiya, Head of House Sola'riya, Blessed Daughter of the Sun, Mistress of Light, and Lady of the Dawn."

"And I am Se'lelune Arti'misha, Head of House Luna'riya, Blessed Daughter of the Moon, Mistress of Night, and Lady of the Stars," the other one said.

"Together, we are the Empresses who rule the vast underground kingdom of Sub'teranni, encompassing most of the world beneath the surface of our planet," Sha'serifa explained.

"Right. Okay. And are the two of you sisters, wives, or just friends?" Summer inquired.

"Wives," Se'lelune said, smiling at Sha'serifa in such a way that made it clear it was far more than just a political union.

"Great! Love it. You seem like a great couple. Now, most importantly: are you the reason I'm here now, far away from Remnant and everyone I care about?" Summer asked, eyes suddenly cold. "Because if you are, and if you don't have a way to send me back this second, I am going to be very unhappy and trust me when I say you don't want that."

The empresses looked understandably alarmed. "We are not the power that brought you here," Sha'serifa hurriedly explained.

"We only knew that you would arrive, and the exact time and place of your arrival," Se'lelune said, pointing at the ground beneath Summer, and she looked down to see that beneath all the pillows and cushions a big X had been painted on the floor.

"This temple was built millennia ago to make sure that when you appeared, you would not fall to your death," Sha'serifa added.

"And I thought we should add some pillows so you would have something soft to land on!" Se'lelune said brightly.

"Which was a very good idea, thanks," Summer said, causing the dark elf to beam at her praise. "I take it that means you don't know how to send me home?"

"No, we do not," Sha'serifa said apologetically.

"Does your prophecy say whether or not I'll go home when this is over?" Summer asked.

"It… Does not mention that, no," Se'lelune confessed, slowly realizing, perhaps for the first time, that their promised Messiah might have had a life and a home before this that she might very much want to get back to.

Summer gritted her teeth, breathed through her nose, then asked, "Do you know of anyone or anything that could send me home?"

"There are a great many things of immense power in this world," Sha'serifa said. "Mages, legendary beasts, Gods and demons. Artifacts that can see into other worlds, or even open passages between them."

"While we do not have anyone who knows how to do such a thing at the moment, it shouldn't be that hard to find one," Se'lelune offered hopefully.

Some of the tension leaked out of Summer's body. "Good. That's… That's really good. Thanks. Now, I need to know: did you undress me when I appeared, or did I just show up naked?"

"Naked," they both said instantly.

"Really? Huh, okay, guess my clothes weren't sent with me," Summer muttered. "Now, more importantly, did my baby show up with me?"

The empresses looked alarmed and confused. "Your… Baby?" Sha'serifa stammered.

"You were the only one to appear, Your Majesty. Were… Were you with a child? Are you a mother?!" An increasingly horrified Se'lelune asked.

Summer blinked. "What? Oh, no, I'm talking about my weapon, Sundered Rose. Made her myself back in Beacon, and I've taken care of her and maintained her and kept upgrading her in all the years that followed, and we've killed so many monsters and bad guys together, and I poured so much of my soul into her that she's a member of the family!"

Ruby gasped, eyes sparkling. "Oh my gosh! I feel the exact same way about Crescent Rose! Does… Does this mean…?!"

Summer nodded, a warm smile on her face. "Yes, Ruby. Sundered Rose is Crescent Rose's mother!"

Ruby started making high-pitched squeals and gibbering which made Zwei bark as an enthralled Penny hugged her, Weiss staring into the distance in horror. "Oh, Absent Gods, there are two of them."

"Oh, do you mean your axe?" A relieved Sha'serifa said with a smile. "Yes, it appeared when you did. We were uncertain if we should touch it, but it looked a bit scuffed and scratched up, so we sent it off to quickly get some polish and fixed up by one of our best slaves."

"It looks fairly complex, so we didn't do anything to the components inside," Se'lelune assured her as a very attractive feline woman with short but luxurious red hair and yellowish fur with orange stripes and absolutely nothing else except for a metal collar scampered over and knelt before Summer, presenting Sundered Rose to her on a plush velvet pillow.

"Nyour sacred weapon, nyour Meowjesty," the cat girl said, orange eyes twinkling in wonder as she looked up at Summer.

"My baby!" Summer cried, snatching up Sundered Rose and holding it to her ample chest. "Oh, I was so worried… And look at you!" She exclaimed, carefully examining every inch of her weapon. "So clean and sparkly! I don't know what they did to you, but it's amazing! You did this?" She asked the cat girl.

Looking startled, she nodded energetically. "Nyes! I'm very good at cleaning and meowntaining weapons and other pieces of complicated meowchinery, along with all sorts of other things. And yours looks so complex and intricate! I would've loved to take it apart to see how it works, but of course I would nyever do such a thing without permission! From what little I saw, I do have a lot of ideas for how it can be enhanced with our world's meowgic, though."

Summer stared at her, eyes wide. "Oh wow. Yeah, we are absolutely doing that. Also, you're now my favorite person here and my baby loves you, which means I love you and also can I just say gosh you're so pretty and your accent is adorable, wait, is that offensive for me to say? Am I offending you? Because I kind of want to rub my face in your fur and pet you and there's a lot of people back home it's very bad to do that to without permission or to objectify them by their animal traits and I don't want you to think I'm only interested in you because of your appearance and the way you talk, though those are admittedly a factor?"

The cat girl blinked once or twice, trying to process that verbal diarrhea, while the Elven monarchs looked somewhat put out that they weren't Summer's favorite person. "I… Would very much like to do all that with you! And nyes, nyou can absolutely do all those things to me and more!"

"Great!" Summer said, pulling the girl into her lap and stroking her hair, causing her to start purring very happily, much to the envy of most of those present. "Oh, wait, almost forgot, what's your name?"

"Calico," she said happily.

"Well, it's great to meet you, Calico! My name is Summer Rose, and I think we're going to be very good friends! Most likely with benefits, but only if you're okay with that," Summer said.

Calico looked very excited about this. "I'm very okay with it!"

"Oh wow, she sounds great! Do you think she could help me magic up Crescent Rose, mom? Wait, is she one of the people you met there who are coming over?" Ruby asked hopefully.

Summer nodded. "Yes, and I'm sure she'd be happy to help enchant everyone else's weapons if you like. While the Grimm are no longer a threat, that doesn't mean evil is suddenly gone from the world forever, after all."

"Unfortunately," Ozpin lamented.

"Oh yes, we'll certainly need something powerful if we're going to kill the gods," Salem agreed.

"Are you still on that?" Tai complained. "Considering they destroyed the world once; wouldn't it be better if they just never came back again?"

"We can't simply let them get away with wiping out humanity," Salem insisted.

"We seem to be letting you get away with trying to wipe it out," Oscar muttered, but was ignored.

"After leaving Remnant, they probably went on to create more worlds, only to destroy them for inevitably failing to meet their expectations! Would you really allow such cosmic criminals to run free and unchecked?" Salem continued. "Not to mention there's no guarantee that they won't eventually return to check up on us even if the Relics are no longer in play. And while Ozma may have fond illusions about the sort of world that would be if they chose to stay with us once more, I remember all too well the horrible things they did or allowed to happen, and I refuse to let them do so again!"

"Oh, yeah, totally, completely on board with you," Summer agreed. "I mean, a lot of the gods I met over there were fine, but there are plenty of others that needed to be taken down a peg. And I did! And I'd be more than happy to do the same to the Brothers if and when they return."

"That seems… A bit rash, don't you think?" Ozpin said hesitantly through Oscar.

"No, not really," Summer said with a shrug. "Pretty sure I could take them now. I mean, Sundered Rose has already killed a few gods, what's two more?"

Ozpin tried very hard to forget he'd heard this blasphemous boast. "…Even if that's so, there's no telling when or if they will return if the Relics aren't used to summon them-"

"Eh, it's fine, I'm immortal now, I can wait," Summer said dismissively.

Ozpin blinked. "You're…immortal."

"Yep. Like three, maybe five times over now?"

Ozpin stared, Salem, Ruby, Yang, Nora, and Penny were awestruck, Tai and Raven looked unsurprised, Jaune was starting to turn blue from "Pyrrha" slowly asphyxiating him, Weiss looked done with everything, and Ren…

Asked, "Wait, so your clothes didn't come over, but your weapon did, and… Hold on, Salem said she threw your body into a Grimm pool, but you clearly have a body now, so-"

"I said before we're not talking about that," Summer said brightly.

Blake, a somewhat dark look on her face, asked, "Did they say Calico was a slave?"

Summer hesitated. "Ah. Yes. Thought you might catch that part. And yes, I understand what you're thinking – I did too, honestly, but… Just keep an open mind for the next bit, okay?"

Blake bristled. "An open-"

Yang started scratching her ears. Blake clenched her teeth but found herself relaxing despite her best efforts. "I'm going to make you pay for abusing your scritching privileges," she growled.

"Yeah, I know," Yang said cheerfully.

Summer's hand froze in mid-stroke, the words of the Elvish monarchs suddenly catching up to her. "Wait…"

She glanced at Calico's neck and the collar around it.

"Hang on…"

She looked around her, noticing, as if for the first time, all the other collared people atop the ziggurat.

"If she… Is she a slave?" Summer demanded. "Are those slaves? Are you a slave?!" She directed at Calico.

The cat girl blinked. "Nyes, why?"

"Why?! What, what do you mean why?!" Summer spluttered.

"Is something wrong, my Queen?" A concerned Sha'serifa asked.

"Yes, something's wrong!" Summer shouted. "You're keeping slaves!"

"… Yes?" Se'lelune asked, bewildered. "You asked us if we had slaves before, and we confirmed it. And said that Calico was one of our favorite slaves."

"Okay, yes, you did say that," Summer admitted. "But excuse me for letting that slip my mind considering I've been forcibly transported to another world with no known way home and was worried I didn't have my baby with me and still have like a jillion questions and now on top of all that I find out you're slavers!"

"I-I don't understand," Sha'serifa stammered. "Is that, is that a problem?"

"You're damn right it's a problem-"

"B-because if it is, we can stop it."

"What?" Se'lelune exclaimed in disbelief.

"What?" Summer asked, startled.

"What?!" Calico gasped, horrified.

"What?!" Practically everyone in the bedroom cried.

"My love, what are you talking about?!" Se'lelune demanded.

"My stars and moon, if the Silver Dragon Queen of the Summer Rose truly objects to slavery, then we must abolish it," Sha'serifa insisted.

"But so much of our society revolves around the practice!" Se'lelune protested. "Our culture, our economy, our livelihood, and just think of how the slaves will feel about it!"

"I'm aware it will be a massive transition, but if it is truly what she desires-" Sha'serifa started to say.

"Wait, wait, hold on," Summer interrupted, her anger dying down to confusion. "You'd… You'd actually abolish slavery if I asked you to?"

"Yes, of course," Sha'serifa said, though she didn't look happy about it. Se'lelune's mouth was set in a straight line, but she grudgingly nodded her acquiescence.

Summer blinked. "That. That, uh, isn't what I expected. Usually when I tell people to do that they laugh in my face, attempt to justify it with fucked up outdated racial theories or hide behind absolutely unfair laws, or try to kill me. Or all of the above."

"We would never do that!" The shocked Se'lelune protested.

"Yeah, which, as I said, is not at all what I expected," Summer repeated, baffled.

"Please don't!"

Summer glanced down at Calico in surprise, seeing the cat girl giving her a pleading, tearful look. "Huh?"

"Please… Please don't make them let us go!" Calico begged. "We're so happy here, and we love them so much, and so many of us have nyowhere else to go-"

Summer held up a hand. "Hang on. Hang on. Just… Just give me a second."

She took a deep breath, counted down from 10, then carefully looked at Calico.

No scars. No burns or bruises. No branding. Clear signs of excessive usage around her genitals but none of the telltale signs of rape. She looked very well-fed, extremely healthy, her hair and fur were lustrous and well taken care of, and she didn't have the eyes of someone who had been utterly broken by abuse and torture or internalized so much bigotry they believed this was what they deserved, and there were no signs of hypnosis or mind control. Granted, since this was a world of magic, it was possible she was being controlled by more subtle methods she was unfamiliar with, but she didn't know enough to rule one way or the other.

There also wasn't any sign of scarring or ligature marks around her neck, and the collar seemed to fit well instead of being too tight, implying it didn't have some sort of shock or choking feature, but again, magic, so it was possible it could inflict pain in other ways.

If it caused pain at all.

She once again glanced around the top of the ziggurat, noticing that all the other slaves present seemed to be in just as good a condition as Calico. There was fear in their eyes, but it was directed at her instead of any of their masters.

Because she might be about to change their lives, and not necessarily in the way they wanted.

She didn't like it when people looked at her like that. Was she making a mistake?

Remember your training, Summer. Never make snap judgments about a people or culture without knowing all the facts and context first. Wouldn't want a repeat of Trevyton, after all.

"Trevyton?" A confused Ruby echoed.

"Let's just say there's a reason your uncle is forbidden from attending any wedding in any nation on Remnant on pain of death. Or wearing a dress," Summer said very seriously.

"I can still feel the fire," Tai said in a haunted tone.

"In my sleep, I always hear the screams," Raven agreed.

Qrow cawed.

Everyone stared.

"Are… Are you going to elaborate, or-" Blake asked.

"No."

"I believe there might have been a miscommunication of sorts," Summer said after a moment, having managed to calm herself down. "Or cultural disconnect. Where I come from, when a person is wearing a collar like this – especially if they look sort of like her," Summer said, nodding at the confused and concerned Calico. "That means they are viewed as something less than human. Or Faunus. Or…uh, elf, or… Whatever you all count as," she said vaguely. "That they aren't people. They're property, or even less than that. Something that's owned. Something that's worked to the breaking point and discarded and replaced like you would any tool. Beaten, tortured, abused, raped… Even children aren't immune to this."

Unwanted, far too many memories flickered through her head. Memories of SDC mines. Hidden cellars in Atlas. Back rooms in Mistrali brothels. Open marketplaces in Vacuo. Effective concentration camps out in the wilderness.

"I've seen people used as Grimm bait. Playthings for the elite. Forced to fight to the death for the barest scraps of food. Raised from birth to believe that they deserve this, that this is all they can expect from life, that they should be happy with it, that they should be glad to sacrifice everything, that it's selfish to want something for themselves instead of being the soldier they want you to be, a special weapon to destroy their enemies, how the only thing about you that matters is the color of your eyes and the power they bring-"

Summer abruptly clammed up.

The kids stared at her, wide-eyed, while Tai, Qrow, and Raven exchanged worried looks, Penny looked like she was in the middle of a flashback, and Ozpin had a very uncomfortable look on his face.

"… Mom?" Yang asked hesitantly after a moment.

Summer blinked. "Huh?"

"What… What were you saying-"

"Oh, that," Summer said. "Nothing to worry about."

"That… Didn't sound like-" Ruby started to say nervously.

"Anyway," Summer said, completely ignoring her.

Everyone seemed legitimately horrified. That went a long way to convincing Summer that whatever was going on here, it wasn't the sort of thing she'd seen in the worst parts of Remnant, things she never wanted to expose her children to.

"Bit late for that," Yang muttered as Penny once again buried Ruby's face in her chest.

"Wait… I'm confused, Mrs. Ruby's Mom who's also my mom now apparently, if you hated slavery so much then why do you have your teammate/partners locked in cages wearing collars and you make them call you mistress?" Nora asked.

"It's a sex/dominance thing, not, you know, real slavery," Summer explained.

Tai nodded. "Yeah, if we really wanted out of these cages, we would be. They aren't even locked."

"We're here because we choose to be," Raven said softly. "Or because this is what we deserve."

"And that's kind of how it is over there, too," Summer explained.

"Is that… Is that something common in your world?" A shocked Sha'serifa demanded.

"I wouldn't say common, but… It does happen a bit more often than I'd like," Summer said. "Especially in Atlas. Because Atlas blows."

"It really does," Blake said in disgust. "Well. Did."

"That… I can't honestly say that something like that never happens in this world, but… Certainly not in our Empire," Se'lelune promised.

"I believe you," Summer said, meaning it. "But forgive me if I'd like a bit more clarification as to what exactly is going on here."

"Well-" Se'lelune began to say.

"And I'd like to hear it from one of your slaves," Summer interjected, glancing at Calico. "So. Can you please tell me what exactly your situation is?"

Calico blinked nervously. "Are… Are nyou going to try and end it?"

"That remains to be seen," Summer replied vaguely. Calico hesitantly started to look at the empresses, but Summer turned her head back towards her. "No, no, don't look at them, look at me. Tell me, in your own words, what being a slave here means. And be honest, because I can tell if you're lying."

"I would never lie to nyou!" Calico exclaimed in disbelief, and again Summer believed her.

"Then help me understand what's going on here," Summer urged.

"Well… Okay," Calico agreed, nodding uncertainly. "So… Sometimes, a person gets into trouble. They don't have enough meowney to pay off a debt, or are on the run, or nyeed, for whatever reason, to nyot be on the surface any longer. And while there are lots of options, one of the easiest is to go to a dark elf embassy and ask to be enslaved."

"They've got embassies?" Summer asked in surprise.

"Oh nyes, all over the surface world," Calico said.

"And… This is an appealing option for them?" Summer asked dubiously.

Calico nodded. "Oh nyes! Great benefits, free housing and meowls, considerate employers, and…" She blushed briefly. "More sex than nyou could ever want."

Summer considered this. "What if you don't want to have sex?"

"Then nyou don't," Calico said easily enough. "When someone enters service to a dark elf, they hash out terms and sign a magically binding contract determining how long they'll be their slave, the kind of work they'll be comfortable doing, what kind of accommodations they'll need… Stuff like that."

"And what's to stop the dark elves from putting in all sorts of loopholes that will give them free reign to do whatever they want with you, extend your employment indefinitely, just, really screw you over in every way imaginable?" Summer asked skeptically.

"Why would they do that?" Calico asked. "That would be dishonest."

Summer stared at her. A part of her wanted to think Calico was being naïve but considering the equally confused and somewhat offended looks on all the dark elves present, this was clearly something that legitimately hadn't occurred to any of them to do.

"Is that, is that something that happens in your world?" A dismayed Calico asked.

Summer nodded unhappily. "Unfortunately."

Weiss dug her nails into her arms and didn't meet an uncomfortable Blake's eyes.

"That's terrible! Why don't the slaves just leave?" Calico demanded.

"Just… What? Why, why would they be allowed to leave?" Summer asked, feeling once again like she was missing something.

"Any of us slaves can terminate our contract whenever we want," Calico said. "Is… Is that nyot allowed where you come from?"

Summer stared at her. She felt like laughing, but not from happiness. "No," she said faintly. "Not even remotely."

The look of pity she received made her feel even worse somehow. "Why… Why would you want to go back to that?"

"It's not… It's not like that's all my world is," Summer said quickly. "There's lots of great stuff, like-"

The increasingly tightening stranglehold the SDC had on global power, the seemingly ever-present racism, worsening international relations, the increasingly hostile terrorist organization that had a legitimate reason to be angry and it was sometimes hard to fault them on their desire to kill all humans, an unending horde of infinitely replenishable monsters existing solely to kill all intelligent life on the planet barely held in check by a conspiracy whose leader has long since given up on finding a way to stop their completely immortal leader, training kids into becoming child soldiers for this never ending war that could only have one winner, every attempt to break away from any of the four kingdoms inevitably resulted in ruin, her ex running around in the wilderness playing bandit chief and putting entire villages to the torch, EVERYTHING to do with fucking Atlas-

"I have friends who love me," she said finally. "People who are counting on me. An archvillain I was on the verge of redeeming when I got brought over here, whom I'm worried might fall back into villainy without me-"

Everyone looked at Salem, who winced. "Sorry, Mommy…"

"My wonderful idiot family who would fall apart without me-" Summer's voice hitched in her throat. "Oh… Oh Dubiously Existent God of Animals-"

"Can you stop saying that?" Blake interrupted.

"Sweetie, this happened years ago, that's what I said back then," Summer said patiently.

"I'm aware of that, I just… I don't know, everyone is always talking about the Brother Gods, or that big Tree and Blacksmith back in the Ever After, but what about the God of Animals?" Blake asked.

"Did it even exist?" Ren asked.

"Oh, so just because it's not a human God means it's not real?" Blake demanded.

"No, it's just… Uncle Qrow said that all the other gods invented by humans and Faunus didn't exist, just those two," Ruby pointed out.

"Yes, which he heard from Ozpin, whom we know by now is far from a reliable source," Blake argued.

"That's… Not completely inaccurate," Ozpin muttered. "But Ms. Belladonna, as far as I know, the two Brothers are the only deities Remnants ever had. They certainly were back in my day."

"Yes, but Jinn told us that humans and Faunus had somehow repopulated the planet in the time you'd been dead," Yang pointed out.

Blake nodded. "Right, so someone must have created them."

"Yeah, but the God of Animals would only explain your species, where did humans come from?" Tai asked.

"A better question is, Ozpin had thousands of years with the Relic of Knowledge, but at no point did it occur to him to ask where Faunus came from?" Raven spoke up.

"I-I had other questions to ask!" Ozpin protested. When Blake gave him a skeptical look, he insisted, "Look, Ms. Belladonna, I know you're probably trying to accuse me of being racist, but I have been a Faunus more than once over the last few millennia."

"Doesn't mean you can't be racist," she muttered.

Suddenly Salem raised her hand. "Oh! Oh! Oh! Pick me! I know the answer!"

Everyone stared at her in horror. "Please don't tell me that you did it," Weiss said tremulously.

"What? No, of course not," Salem scoffed. "I can only make Grimm. Blake did it."

Everyone immediately turned to look at a dumbfounded Blake. "… What?"

"Well, not you you, but you in the distant past," Salem elaborated. "Back when we were friends!"

"… Right. That's… A thing that happened," Blake said slowly.

"Yes, it did!" Salem agreed. "In those days, you were one of the most powerful archmages in the world, who proudly claimed the title of Lord of Blasphemy and raised the banner of revolution against the gods and the corrupt church that claimed to serve them!"

"Huh, I guess even back then you were a rebel," a pleased Yang told a stunned Blake.

"And you were the Dragon slave she created to serve and love her! Especially love," Salem said, waggling her eyebrows.

Yang stared at her in horror and Ruby looked like she was about throw up. "Please never do that again," Weiss said faintly.

"I… I did what?" Blake asked faintly.

"After losing your parents and a great many of your people to a horrible plague that the God of Darkness caused and the God of Light to did nothing to stop, you chose to cast down the gods and replace them with ones worthier of the name," Salem continued. "Along the way, you also used your incredible magical knowledge and skill to transmute yourself and your people, becoming-"

"The first… Faunus?" Blake whispered in disbelief.

Salem nodded. "Yes, though you called yourselves something else back then, I forget what. You were also one of the cleverest of us, fully aware there was a chance we wouldn't survive the final battle of the gods, so implemented numerous failsafes to bring everyone back or at least restore life to the planet should we fail in our grand revolution." Salem looked very sad. "Unfortunately, something must've gone wrong because only one of them went off, and all it did was spawn a bunch of humans and what I suppose you could call modern Faunus with vastly inferior genes to what we had back in the day and almost no magical ability whatsoever, as well as no memory of the world that came before. So really, it's thanks to the foresight of your past life that life on Remnant exists as it does now!"

Everyone sat in silence as they processed this. Qrow squawked something that sounded an awful lot like, "Holy fuck."

"I… I'm the God of Animals…?!" Blake stammered.

"And humans, if you want to look at it that way," Salem offered.

Blake's eye twitched.

"Well, I already worship you, so nothing's really changed," Yang joked, causing Blake to bury her face in her hands and moan as her entire worldview was shattered. Again.

"Ozpin, why didn't you tell us Blake was a God in a past life?" Ruby complained.

"Not a God," Blake mumbled through her hands.

"Was I a God?" Nora asked excitedly.

"No, you were a Valkyrie," Salem told her, causing her to squeal in excitement.

"He probably didn't mention it because he thought we didn't need to know or something," Weiss snorted.

"This is news to me too!" Ozpin protested. "This all must have happened at some point after I died."

"Even if it hadn't, he probably wouldn't have known about them," Salem said slyly. "The country where we used to live was pretty far out of the way and severely underdeveloped, magically speaking."

"… Wait. WAIT. I thought you were some kind of bigshot wizard from ancient times?!" Tai shrieked.

"I was!" Ozpin insisted. "… By the standards of my kingdom."

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" Tai shouted it's as Qrow banged his head against the bars of his cage and Raven burst into hysterical laughter. "All this time, we were led by a regular sized fish from a tiny pond?!"

"This explains so much," Summer murmured.

"Look, the gods must have believed I could do the job, otherwise they wouldn't have trusted me with it!" Ozpin protested.

"Or because all the other actually powerful mages they could have brought back would have been on my side, while your biggest claim to fame was being the lost love whose death triggered my ascension into one of the biggest thorns in their side, and they figured you would do the job without asking questions because you still had the hots for me," Salem said smugly.

Everyone gasped and applauded the sick burn.

"Can… Can we just continue the story?" Ozpin asked miserably.

"-They'll fall apart without me!" Summer shouted as the empresses and Calico and pretty much everyone watching stared at her in horror.

"You… You have a family?" Sha'serifa gasped.

"A husband and a best friend with benefits and two amazing daughters whom I love more than anything in the world!" Summer wailed, eliciting more horrified guests. "And they're going to be a mess without me! Tai lost one wife because she ran away and abandoned everyone, what would he think if I up and did the same?! I just left in the middle of the night with no explanations! Only Raven knew where we went, and she sure as shit isn't going to tell!"

Raven looked extremely uncomfortable at this.

"He's going to be devastated! And Qrow's going to fall off the wagon again and never get back on!"

Tai's face was like stone. Qrow looked ashamed.

"My girls are going to grow up without a mom… What's little Yang going to think when she's old enough to realize both of her mothers disappeared on her? She might think I just ditched her like Raven did, which will do HORRIBLE things for her self-image! And oh, Ruby, she idolizes me, she'll probably grow up with some awful complex about trying to be exactly like me and constantly hating herself because she feels she can never measure up to me and my legacy!" Summer cried, tearing out her hair.

"… Pretty spot-on prediction," Yang muttered after a moment.

"Yeah…" Ruby agreed faintly.

Blake and Penny both shoved their faces into their chests.

"And since I won't be there to teach her, she'll have no idea how to use her powers, and there'll be a HUGE target on her back, and Oz'll probably try to recruit her way before she's ready, and, and… I have to get back, I have to get back, I have to get back-" Summer cried shrilly, only for Calico to grab her and hug her, purring until Summer found herself calming down.

"It'll be okay," Calico promised. "There's lots of meowgic in this world! I'm sure we'll find a way to get nyou home before too much time has pawssed!"

An awkward silence filled the room.

"So, obviously, that didn't happen," Summer said. "Though not for lack of trying on my part, I promise."

"Th-thanks, I needed to hear that," Summer sniffled, wiping away a tear and hugging the catgirl back.

"She has a family?! The prophecy never said anything about a family!" Sha'serifa whispered to her wife.

"None of us thought she would. Why would we?" Se'lelune said bitterly. "We knew she would be our savior and never thought anything more than that. We never thought about where she came from, or what she might have left behind…"

"We have to get her back," Sha'serifa insisted.

"Agreed," Se'lelune concurred.

"I never blamed you," Tai said suddenly, sounding broken. "I should have. I wanted to, but I… I just… I was sure that whatever reason made you disappear, it had to be a good one."

"I'm not sure it was, in the end," Summer said morosely.

"I'm sorry," Raven said abruptly, surprising everyone, especially herself. "For… For running away. So many times. I won't… I won't do it again." She trembled. "Please… Please don't let me do it again."

Summer, Tai, and Qrow stared at her, astounded.

"Didn't see that coming!" Nora exclaimed.

"So, uh, when the contract expires, what happens?" Summer asked Calico, blatantly changing the subject.

"Well, we can either return to the surface, apply for citizenship, or renyegotiate the contract to remain a slave as long as we like," Calico said, going along with it.

"What? Why would you want to do that?" Summer asked in disbelief.

Calico shrugged. "It meowns we don't have to worry about getting a place of our own, finding a nyew job, having to pay for things ourselves instead of putting it on our owner's account… On the other hand, it meowns we can't have slaves of our own, which is one of the main reasons those who choose to apply for citizenship do so. Basically, if nyou already have a great job with a good home and a good owner, do nyou really nyeed to change it? Take a risk when things are already really good for nyou?"

Summer contemplated this for a moment. While of course she would never bow to any man or woman…a life where she didn't have to go on long, life-threatening hunts to make enough lien to pay the bills. A life where she didn't have to worry that every day she left would be the last day her children ever saw her again. A life where she wasn't one of the key actors in a secret war that had been going on since the dawn of humanity, one which she had only recently learned could not, in fact, be won, and that her own superior had given up on even trying to ages ago. A life where she didn't have the weight of the world on her shoulders and could just be… Summer Rose. Wife. Mother. And nothing more.

And, of course, get more sex than she could ever want, though she already had that in her life as is… But could she have more?

"I guess I can see the appeal," Summer admitted after a moment.

Quite a lot of people shot less than happy looks at Ozpin, who looked extremely uncomfortable.

"For shame, Ozpin!" Salem tutted, wagging a finger at her. "Shame! Shame! Shame!"

"Should you really be talking here?" Yang muttered.

"All right, look, as much as you may complain about my not having a plan beyond holding the line indefinitely, it's not like you had much better ideas!" Ozpin snapped. "And might I point out that if it weren't for me doing absolutely everything I could, Salem would've destroyed the world ages ago and none of you would ever have been born?"

That gave everyone pause for a moment. Guilty looks flashed across their faces.

And then Raven said, "Then by that logic, I was perfectly justified in running away all those years ago because otherwise Ruby might never have been born."

Ruby blinked. "Wait, really?"

"No, you would have happened sooner or later," Summer assured her. "Also, Oz, might I remind you that I actually managed to reform Salem in under an hour, and it would've stuck if I hadn't gotten spontaneously hit by a truck? So… Clearly you weren't doing everything you could have."

"Th-that's-" Ozpin stammered.

"Hey yeah, you asked Jinn how to destroy Salem, but you never asked how to stop her," Yang realized.

Weiss nodded. "And from our experience with Ambrosius, we know exact wording is extremely important with magic spirits. Otherwise, we'd never have been able to save Penny from Watts's virus and make her human…for as little as that lasted."

"It was an interesting experience, but honestly I think I'm better off as I am now," Penny said.

"Yeah," a very smitten Ruby agreed.

"Ozpin, did it really never occur to you to ask about an alternative way of defeating Salem? Thousands of years, and you just… Never thought of that?" An incredulous Blake asked.

Salem smiled very smugly as her ex-husband struggled to come up with a defense before finally muttering, "Let's… Just continue the story please?"

"So, is that what you did?" Summer asked Calico.

She shook her head. "Nyo, I was born down here. My family's been serving the Imperial family for generations. I was eligible for citizenship when I reached the age of meowturity, but I decided to enter a lifetime contract here instead. And why nyot? This place has always been my home. And besides…"

She glanced at her mistresses. "Nyou see those two? The empresses?"

"Yeah?"

"I get to be with them maybe half a dozen times a day. At minimum. Each."

Wordlessly, Summer raised a hand. Calico slapped it, much to her relief, since it meant she wouldn't have to teach these people what a high-five was. "Niiiiice."

Calico purred in self-satisfaction.

"So, does that collar do anything, or…?" Summer asked, glancing at her neck.

"Oh, no, it's mainly for show, it's not even locked," Calico said, demonstrating by taking her collar off and putting it back on. "We like wearing it, though. Gives us a feeling of pride and security. And, when we've been really good, they can make us feel really, really good."

Summer considered this. "And when you've been bad?"

"Then we get punished," Calico said with such reverence and longing it didn't take much for Summer to guess what sort of 'punishment' she was talking about.

"… I think you found your people over there, Sum," Tai said after a moment, eyes wide.

Summer nodded eagerly. "Oh yeah, I learned a lot from them, all sorts of things I can't wait to do to you, and some excruciating punishments that'll make Raven scream."

Raven made some terrified and aroused incomprehensible bird noises.

"Will you be like that when you're a little older?" Penny murmured to Ruby.

"I… Don't know?" Ruby replied, feeling very conflicted.

"I really hope you are," Penny whispered, giving Ruby all sorts of ideas.

Yang glanced at Blake. "So…?"

The Panther Faunus made a face. "… I'm not exactly happy with it, but I guess it's not quite what I thought it would be."

"You know, I wouldn't mind putting on a collar, if it were for you," Yang mentioned offhanded, causing her girlfriend's ears to stand up straight.

"… I want a collar too…" Weiss murmured enviously.

Nora gasped. "Ren-"

"No, Nora."

"Okay, I think I have a better understanding of what you have going on here now," Summer told the anxious empresses. "It's a little weird from where I stand, but not objectionable, and so long as I don't have to buy any slave girls who would be obligated to love me for rescuing them but because they're slaves they don't really have any choice but to be with me – I hate that trope, makes the protagonist seem like a hero when really they're just forcing a bunch of powerless women to be with them – then we're good."

"Oh, nyou wouldn't have to buy any of us," Calico assured her. "We'd volunteer."

Summer paused at this. "… Not entirely sure how I feel about that just yet. Regardless, there's no need to upend your entire society to accommodate me."

There was a collective sigh of relief so great a gust of wind blew throughout the great cavern.

"But seriously, why would you be willing to go to such lengths just because I asked?" Summer demanded.

"Because you are the Silver Dragon Queen of the Summer Rose," Sha'serifa said, as if that answered everything.

It did not. "And?" Summer prompted.

"Isn't that reason enough?" Se'lelune inquired, puzzled.

Summer grimaced. "Right. I'm your Messiah. You know I'm not actually a queen, right? I mean, okay, I won the title in several contests, and I've got plenty of lovers who call me that because yes, I am a queen, but not a queen queen, especially since the kingdom I'd be the heir to hasn't existed for thousands of years."

"Wait, what?" Ruby asked.

"It's a genealogy thing, I'll explain some of the time," Summer promised.

"Does that mean I'm a princess?" Ruby asked hopefully.

"No," Summer told her.

Ruby pouted. "Awww, I wanted to be a princess."

"You'll always be my princess," Penny said, causing Ruby to turn red and sputter gibberish.

"Wait, why didn't you object to the silver dragon part?" Ren asked.

"Oh, because I can turn into one," Summer said.

They stared at her. "What," Weiss said flatly.

Summer blinked in confusion. "Wait, you two don't remember?" She asked her daughters.

"Remember what?" A confused Yang asked.

"I transformed into a Dragon all the time! I took you on rides in the sky and you laughed as I annihilated scores of Grimm with my silver death lazer breath!" Summer exclaimed.

Ruby gasped. "Wait, that was real?! I thought it was just a dream or a story you told us or something, like our imaginary friend Mr. Goldie!"

Summer blinked. "Imaginary – Tai!"

Tai threw up his hands. "Look, after you disappeared, I wasn't exactly in the state of mind or mood to turn into a Dragon for the kids anymore, okay?"

"THAT WAS YOU?!" Ruby and Yang exclaimed in disbelief and joy.

"I'm sorry, what… What is happening right now?" A dazed Weiss asked.

"Well, from the context given, I can only assume that Raven and Qrow are not the only members of Team STRQ Ozpin granted the magical ability to transform into animals to," Penny theorized.

"… Why," Weiss whimpered.

"The minute I found out he gave Raven and Qrow the power to turn to animals I broke down and started blubbering and crying and holding onto his ankles until he agreed to do it for me too," Tai said without an ounce of shame.

"And I just glared at him until he got uncomfortable and did the same," Summer said proudly.

"That's… Not quite how I would put what happened-" Ozpin said awkwardly.

"No, that's exactly how it happened," Oscar interjected, to his frustration.

"Wait a second," Blake spoke up. "Qrow can become a crow. Raven can become a raven. Taiyang Xiaolong can become a Dragon. That all makes thematic sense, even if it does make Ozpin seem lacking in imagination-"

"Hey!"

"But why can Summer Rose also become a Dragon?" Blake asked.

"I thought it would be symbolic, a gold Dragon and a silver Dragon, a pair of mighty metallic wyrms to bring hope and wonder back to Remnant," Ozpin waxed poetically. "Though… I didn't expect only Summer to become a truly epic beast of legend, while Tai became a rather harmless living children's toy."

"Hey, you take that back!" Yang said indignantly.

"Yeah, Mr. Goldie saved us from all sorts of monsters, like the thing under the bed, or the creature in the closet, or the giant skeleton that kept scratching the window, or the giant spider!" Ruby agreed.

"No, wait, he was terrified of the spider too, we had to get mom to deal with it," Yang remembered.

"Oh, right."

"Also, he couldn't think of anything else to turn Summer into. Aside from a rosebush, that is," Oscar spoke up.

"Oscar!" Ozpin hissed as everyone laughed.

"GASP!" Nora exclaimed loudly. "Wait! Mr. Ozpin! Does that mean…"

"Nora, no," an alarmed Ren tried to stop her.

"Nora YES! Can you turn me into a sloth?!" Nora begged.

Ozpin's eyes widened. "W-what?"

"Oh! I want to be a Dragon, like either mom or dad!" Yang said eagerly, waving her hand.

"I want to be a wolf! I feel like in another lifetime, I'd have been a wolf Faunus!" Ruby said, before glancing apologetically at Blake. "Wait, is that offensive?"

"I'm… Not sure?" Blake said in confusion. "Well, if we're playing to type, I guess I'd be a panther-"

"Wait, no, I want to be a Dragon like mom and dad and Yang!" Ruby suddenly changed her mind. "Or… Oh, but wolves are so cool too…gahhh… I can't make up my mind… Is there any way I could be both?"

"Go for it, Petal," Summer said encouragingly.

"Then I want to be a wolf/Dragon hybrid!" Ruby declared.

"In which case I shall be a cricket/firefly hybrid!" Penny added.

"… Could I be a fox, maybe?" Weiss murmured. "Or maybe a snake… Or bird… Or bee… Or mink…Or shark… Or Wolf… Or cat… Or crocodile… For some reason I also feel like in another life I could've been a variety of different Faunus as well." She frowned. "Which… Would actually have made my childhood even worse now that I think about it. Huh."

"Flying squirrel," Ren said with a straight face. "And you, Jaune?"

Jaune gurgled as he flailed around, trying to dislodge "Pyrrha" from strangling his throat.

"A jackalope? Yes, that does seem fitting."

Ozpin laughed nervously. "That's…ah, I'm sorry everyone, but I'm afraid I can't do any of that? My magic diminishes with each lifetime, so I don't think I could turn all of you into animals even if I wanted to."

They all groaned in disappointment.

"Okay, but what about one or two of us-" Yang asked.

"Yang," Summer spoke up.

Yang sulked. "Sorry, mom."

"Well, you know, his magic has dwindled significantly, but mine hasn't," Salem said proudly. "I'm sure I could transform you all if you wanted-"

"We'll talk about that some other time," Summer said quickly, reminding herself to ask one of her many, many magically gifted girlfriends/wives if they could grant the kids the ability to turn animals rather than potentially being mutated into monstrous (but sexy) Grimm hybrids. "Now where was I…"

"Okay, so I'm the Chosen One, let's get this whole prophecy business taken care of so I can find a way home," Summer said. "So, if you could just point me in the direction of the Demon King I'll take care of him."

"Demon… King?" Sha'serifa repeated, looking confused.

"Yeah, you know, the usual final boss for these kinds of stories? Greatest threat to the world, source of all evil, master of monsters, etc., etc.?" Summer prompted.

"There's no such thing as a Demon King," Se'lelune said, perplexed. "Nor could there ever be one."

"Why, are demons not real?" Summer asked in surprise.

"No, of course they are," Se'lelune said. "But they're female, like all mamono."

"Ma-what?" Summer asked.

"Mamono," Se'lelune repeated. "That is what every sentient creature in this world that is neither human nor monster are called."

Summer blinked. "Wait, you don't think of yourselves as – no, of course not, who would willingly think of themselves as monsters? Don't be offensive, Summer," she muttered to herself. "Wait, you're all female-"

She once again glanced around her, realizing that all the fantastic magical creatures atop the ziggurat were, indeed, very female.

"Oh. Oh, it's one of those worlds," Summer said slowly and eagerly. "Wait, does that mean there are no males at all, or-"

"No, of course there are males," Sha'serifa said in amusement. "There is one…ah… Right over there," she said, pointing at a human slave, who waved.

Summer waved back. "Right. So humans are the only ones that have males."

"And animals and monsters," Sha'serifa corrected her.

"Right. So… Wait, hold on, is this one of those worlds where monster girls kidnap and rape human men to reproduce and because they need semen to survive?" Summer asked suspiciously.

Everyone recoiled in horror at this.

"What? No, of course not!" Sha'serifa exclaimed.

"Where would nyou even get an idea like that?!" A horrified Calico demanded.

"There are some very, very sick people in my world," Summer said, a dead look in her eyes.

The kids stared at her. Ruby was holding her hands over her ears and going, "Ew, ew, ew, ew," repeatedly while Penny hugged her, Blake had turned very red, and a disgusted Yang asked, "Mom, why?"

"I had to be sure!" Summer insisted. "I mean, if I was going to be bringing any of them home with me, I had to know that they weren't going to try and steal Tai or Qrow or every other guy on the planet to satisfy their urges."

"For which we thank you," Tai said gratefully.

"I would've killed them all before they laid a hand on Ren!" Nora declared Seriously, grabbing her partner and holding him close to her.

"What about Jaune?" Blake asked.

"Huh? Oh, sure, him too," Nora said apathetically.

"And you wonder why I wanted to wipe out humanity?" Salem murmured to a very disturbed Ozpin and Oscar.

"So, is there a Demon Queen?" Summer asked.

"Yes, of course," Se'lelune said.

"Right. So, can you point me in her direction so I can take care of her?" Summer asked.

"Take care of her… How?" Sha'serifa asked.

Summer pointed to Sundered Rose and made a chopping motion with it.

"… You want to chop firewood for her?" Se'lelune asked.

"That's… No, I was, I was implying I'd kill her," Summer clarified, and was somewhat unsurprised when everyone reacted very negatively to this.

"What? Why would you do something like that?!" Sha'serifa demanded.

"The Demon Queen is the wise and benevolent ruler of all mamono! Why would you even suggest something like that?!" Se'lelune cried.

"Look, that's usually how it goes these stories, right? Hero gets summoned to generic fantasy world, has to defeat Demon King, goes on blatant power fantasy and picks up all the girls…" Summer said defensively. "Okay, so if it's not the Demon Queen, who's the Big Bad I have to defeat to save the world? Is it humans? Is this one of those worlds where humans are the real monsters? Because, you know, I'm a human, and while, okay, I've had to kill a bunch of people who really, really had it coming, I suppose it wouldn't be that big a deal, just want to make sure I have the right person first and killing them is the only way-"

"Humans? No, the humans of this world are no threat to the mamono," a perplexed Sha'serifa said.

"Then what's the threat I've been summoned to face?" An exasperated Summer asked.

The Imperial couple exchanged awkward looks. "We… Don't know," Sha'serifa confessed.

Summer's eye twitched. "What."

"It was foretold that you would appear one day to save our world from a grave threat, but while it clearly stated who you were, and when and where you would appear, none of us know what that threat is," Se'lelune said apologetically.

Summer took a deep breath.

"And then I said some more bad words," Summer said calmly.

"I don't blame you," Tai said.

"Wait… Mom, I thought you said you fought a Demon King," Ruby recalled.

"I did," Summer confirmed.

"But they just said it's impossible for there to be a Demon King."

"It was."

"So…?"

"A story for another night," Summer promised, much to her disappointment.

"Okay. I suppose I've gotten less informative mission briefings from Oz in the past," Summer said finally, shooting and apologetic smile at the startled Calico, who had been at Ground Zero for her latest outburst. "I can work with this. So. Where, in your opinion, would you recommend I begin?"

"Your suggestion of meeting the Demon Queen has merit," Sha'serifa told her. "She is among the wisest and most powerful of all mamono, so not only might she have an idea as to what the catastrophe you are destined to avert is, but she can also help train you in the ways of our world."

"In addition, she has a great many sages, mages, seers, and mystical artifacts, perhaps far more than almost anywhere else in the world," Se'lelune added. "So it is very likely that she will know a way to send you home once your task is complete, or least, have an idea of where you can look."

Summer clapped her hands together. "Great! Go see the Demon Queen! Sounds like a good start, I'm all in favor of this plan. Wait, one question, is she as beautiful as the two of you?"

"Oh, much more than us," Se'lelune informed her.

"Wonderful! Can we go now?" Summer asked hopefully.

"Well, we could, but we did kind of have this whole celebration planned to welcome you here…" Sha'serifa said.

"Right, right, don't want everyone to have wasted their time setting up a party that I skipped out on, that would be rude," Summer agreed. "After that, then. Oh, uh… Also…" She glanced at Calico. "Hey, Calico, do you want to come with me? Is it okay if she comes with me?"

"I'd love to!" Calico said excitedly.

"Of course," Sha'serifa agreed reasonably enough.

"Also… We were kind of hoping we could come too?" Se'lelune asked hesitantly. "We've been looking forward to your arrival for a very long time, and, well, who hasn't fantasized about getting to take part in the adventures of one of their favorite fairytale heroes?"

Summer blinked. "Is… Is that a good idea? I mean, you two are sort of in charge down here…"

"Things can run well enough without us for a while," Sha'serifa said. "That is, of course, if you want us to join?"

The looks on their faces made clear what answer they were hoping to receive.

Summer considered this. "Can you fight? And not just with magic, which I'm guessing you both have."

They nodded. "Yes, we can fight," Sha'serifa said.

"We won't be a hindrance!" Se'lelune insisted with a hint of desperation.

"Well, sure then, you can join my party, the more the merrier," Summer said reasonably enough. "And yes, I do mean that in more than one way, to be clear."

They looked very excited at this.

"Oh, one more thing before we start celebrating… What kind of underlying system do you guys have here? Like, do I just run up to an enemy and hit it with my axe or cast a spell and that's the extent of combat, or is this one of those worlds with a complex system governing everything with an extremely complicated magic system, menus up the wazoo, levels, experience points, classes, special skills, dice rolls, and so on?" Summer asked.

"The latter," Se'lelune said.

"Wait, there are worlds that aren't like that?" Calico asked in surprise.

Summer grinned. "Oh good, I love RPG worlds!"

Tai groaned. "Well, that brings back horrible memories of tabletop night."

Qrow squawked in torment.

"Total party kill… Rocks fall, everyone dies… Killer GM… All my careful worldbuilding and campaign plans wasted… You shouldn't be able to seduce a Dragon!" Raven shrieked, clearly suffering PTSD flashbacks.

"Oh, I seduced multiple, I can't wait to introduce you," Summer said, causing Raven to whimper.

"You love RPGs? Me too!" An excited Ruby exclaimed. "Did all your experience from being a Huntress translate into special stats and classes and abilities over there to make you super OP, or did you have to start from scratch? What level are you now?"

"Yes, Petal, I did indeed wind up with absolutely broken abilities from the get-go like in lots of isekai," Summer said. "And I'm currently at level 100, which is max."

"Woooow," most of the room responded.

"You know, I was half expecting you to be at that level already when you got there," Tai admitted.

"Nah, that would have been boring," Summer said. "And with that, kids, adults, and adults in kid's bodies, I think that's enough for tonight. Time for bed."

"Awwwwwww!" Most of the room protested.

"But I'm not tired!" Ozpin whined.

"And neither Penny nor I actually require sleep!" Salem pleaded.

"Maybe so, but we're at a good stopping point, and I gotta get out of here because I don't want to keep the girls waiting," Summer said apologetically. "We'll be skipping over the festivities, though, because I'm not sure any of you are old enough to know what happened there."

"Your former teammates are fully grown, and Salem and I are thousands of years old," Ozpin protested.

"I know what I said," Summer said bluntly as she gave everyone good night kisses – the ones for Tai and Raven rather a bit more involved, understandably – and petrified and shattered "Pyrrha" with a quick burst of silver death eye beamz just before Jaune could expire.

"PYRRHAAAAAAAAAAAA!" He wailed, sobbing and cradling the fragments of the Seer.

"Don't worry, we'll get you a new one tomorrow," Summer reassured him with a pat on the head.

"I can give him a new one right now," Salem offered, holding up a Nightmare with a tiny red wig.

Summer considered this for a moment. "Yeah, okay, go ahead."

Salem tossed the tiny Grimm at Jaune, who promptly fell asleep, to dream of his lost love, a dream from which he would never wake…

Until Nora manhandled and shouted at him to wake up the next morning, of course.

"Mom?" Ruby asked hesitantly just as Summer was about to turn off the lights.

"Yes, Petal?" Summer asked warmly.

"I know that dad's supposed to be in time out for a bit longer, but… Do you think Mr. Goldie could join us in bed, like in the old days?" Ruby asked hopefully.

"Yeah, mom, can he please?" Yang begged.

The rest of her children and/or their significant others gave her pleading looks. Her heart swelled in joy, seeing how much her family had grown. "Of course you can, kids."

Moments later, this would prove to be a terrible idea, as the bed, already straining to contain so many people, collapsed when the weight of a cuddly man-sized Dragon was added to it.

"I'll get more sleeping bags," Summer promised with a sigh as everyone lay groaning on the floor, already composing a text to her slaves to apologize for keeping them waiting just a little longer.