Blake looked up when the bell clanged and she raised an eyebrow. A woman in what looked like a medieval dress walked in. It was a soft pink color with golden highlights and she had wings on her back. However, something about the way she carried herself did not imply she was a Faunus. Her soul had walls a mile high and there would be absolutely no penetrating them as far as Blake was concerned. She could absolutely tell.

  "Well this is mysterious... I've never seen this place before but you..." She raised an eyebrow. "There aren't any native cat people that live on Filgaia... MOst migrants from other worlds live on Malduke, not the planet proper. Where did you get the paperwork to move to Filgaia, let alone open a cafe?"

  Blake's ears flattened. She thought Anna's spells would make people not question it. Marie and none of the people there had questioned her. What was going on? "Um."

  "Am I going to have to report you to the proper authorities? If you can't produce paperwork, then--"

  "I'm not from Filgaia. Anna made my cafe able to hop to other worlds." She knew she probably sounded absolutely insane, but she didn't want to be reported to any sort of authorities. Even if it was another planet, she didn't want to deal with that. She technically didn't have a permit to operate anywhere but Vale, but most people weren't going to question it. She could tell that much when dealing with hMarie. Weiss had questioned it as was this woman. What was going on?

  The woman sighed. "I suppose that explains a good deal. The magic in here does reek of that woman." Blake blinked. It was really that simple? Well... She certainly wouldn't complain. But she hoped she wouldn't be reported to authorities... Her ears remained flat against her head. The winged woman waved her hand. "If Anna set you up, then nothing's going to happen. Do you know your schedule?"

  Blake looked down at the little control panel by her cash register. "Um. Not really. Anna just installed a little control panel that will let me choose where I go, but I assume I'm on some sort of rotating schedule." She could see the skyline change which was...odd. This world looked incredibly built up and very, very busy. In Vale, her area had somewhat low traffic, but it was within her budget range, so she'd gone for it. Somewhere like the middle of downtown would just be way too expensive for her and the money she'd saved up.

  "I see. Well, I'm Raftina Caiyo, Guardian of Love. Who are you?"

  "Blake Belladonna. I'm from a planet called Remnant. I live in Vale which is where the cafe is from." She was from Menagerie, not Vale. Menagerie would always be her home regardless of how its people acted. She would likely never go back, but it was where her heart lay and she loved its people regardless of anything... She could truly understand how and why the people acted the way they did... There was so much generational trauma from how the are had been founded in the wake of a genocide and her people being in the bondage of slavery.

  "Well, that doesn't sound ominous. Who names a planet Remnant?"

  "Would you have an order? We can talk while you drink and eat." She wasn't against talking to people, but yeah, she would rather they be paying customers if at all possible. She wasn't quite sure what a 'Guardian' was but this woman exuded power, confidence, and intimidation. She also bore a sword at her hip which left Blake on edge a little bit. She could withstand a sword attack with her aura, but she wasn't sure about Weiss... But she hoped it wouldn't come to any sort of attack.

  Raftina nodded and put in her order. Blake set about preparing it, then slid it across the counter to her. "Blake, the register won't open for some reason..." Weiss pointed out. Raftina had used a card, but Weiss was still trying to pop the register tray open. If they had any physical currency customers, then yes, that would be important.

  "Oh, that's because we don't use any sort of physical currency anymore."

  Weiss blinked. "So you're like Selia then. At least in that regard."

  "You're not from Remnant?"

  Weiss shook her head. "I'd...rather not talk about it, but short story is no. I'm from a planet called Selia. Blake is helping me get back on my feet." Yeah, Blake couldn't blame Weiss for not wanting to talk about it... Torture wasn't something that was easy to cope with. She was still surprised just how well spoken and put-together Weiss was considering what she'd been through. At least literal torture, perhaps more. Her soul was deeply scarred by what had happened to her. Not that Blake could blame her... Blake doubted that she herself would ever fully recover from what Adam had done to her.

  "That's entirely fair. We're strangers." Raftina smiled and pulled a chair up to the counter. "So about Remnant..."

  Blake nodded and started talking about the planet, human and Faunus relations, the Grimm, and so on. Raftina kept her expression fairly neutral, but Blake could sense that she wasn't really happy about any of it. THere were only four kingdoms which didn't have a lot of people. There were multiple large cities in every kingdom that wasn't Menagerie, but even so... There just weren't a lot of people on Remnant for the amount of space and arable land that existed on the planet. They were all squished in pretty far due to the Grimm.

  The bell clanged again, Blake jumping a bit since she'd been so engrossed in the conversation with Raftina. A shorter woman with blue hair, tied back in a severe bun and in a female business suit with a pencil skirt walked in, flanked by a darker-skinned woman that also bore a sword but her clothes were far more casual. "Is this where you've been, Raftina? Honestly, we couldn't even find-- Uh. Who the fuck is this?" the blue-haired woman asked. Blake's ears flattened.

  "Equites, Luceid, you don't need to babysit me. If I want to take a coffee break, I should be allowed to take a coffee break. I mean honestly. I'm a grown woman!" Raftina rolled her bright, emerald-green eyes.

  "Well, you're also a grown woman with priorities. The delegates from Serkenia are waiting."

  "That shouldn't be for another several hours. Did they get here early?" Raftina frowned. "Also, if you see this cafe, it's Anna's doing. Don't think about it too hard."

  Luceid sighed. "Because of course Anna would do something so ridiculous... But yes, they got here early. They're waiting for you."

  Raftina looked at Blake and smiled. "Well, I suppose I'll see at a later date. Some business came up." Raftina bowed then left, still holding onto her cup of coffee.

  "Would you like anything?" Blake asked the other two. "I have pastries, tea, and coffee."

  "Sure, I don't see why not." The darker-skinned woman came in and looked at the menu and the pastry display. "What's a macaron? I've never had one of those before."

  "Oh they're delightful little pastries." She smiled and explained what one was, taking out a couple and putting them into a paper bag for the woman. The woman also made a request for lavender Earl grey which Blake happily obliged, then slid it across the counter. "What's your name, by the way?"

  "Equites, Guardian of the Sword."

  "If you don't mind my asking, what's a Guardian?" Obviously they were some sort of powerful entity endemic to Filgaia, but she wasn't exactly sure what it meant. Guardian could mean so many different things. In some respects, Blake was a guardian to the lore and songs of Menagerie... It was an oblique, generic term, one that she really wasn't sure what it meant based on this context.

  "I'll have some basic pourover if you won't mind," Luceid interjected.

  "I can do that." Blake smiled and started on the order. "Cream, sugar, simple syrups?"

  "Nah, I'll just have it black."

  "Black as your soul," Equites obviously joked. She grinned broadly and Luceid rolled her eyes. "But yeah, a Guardian is better known as a god or deity on any other planet. Lady Endolia just chose the term Guardian in place of goddess, deity, or some other term. She prefers to see us as the stewards of the planet and its people instead of as something that's far apart from the inhabitants."

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "Who's Lady Endolia?" There was a lot she would need to learn about these other worlds she visited. For the most part, it wouldn't be a big deal since people wouldn't be questioning if she asked questions. It just seemed like people past a certain threshold of magic weren't affected by Anna's spells. For most people, though, even a low-grade spell would probably be more than enough to make them not really question what was going on around them... Especially if magic wasn't a thing on their world.

  "Ah, the creator of Filgaia and Rafti's mother." Blake raised an eyebrow. Rafti? As if sensing her thoughts, Equites chuckled. "Yes, Rafti. I've known her since she was a little girl. She's really come into her own as the Guardian of Love and as one of the four Guardian Lords, but in some respects, she'll always be that little girl to me."

  She nodded. "I know I'll always be my parents' little girl..." She hadn't seen them in years, nor had she contacted them. But, if she knew them half as well as she thought she did, then they probably just wanted her to be safe. She felt terrible about it. They had raised her with so much love, care, kindness, and respect, then she'd tossed it in their faces. 'Cowards' was the kindest thing she'd said when she'd parted ways from them to follow Adam. She wasn't sure how to get in contact with them... She had their numbers but the signal to Menagerie was just so inconsistent.

  Equites nodded. "When you see someone grow up like that, you just kinda never forget. They're always that little squirt that ran around. Granted, Raftina was a quiet kid that never got into much trouble... Well, not until she was an adult and fell in love with a woman. I know that probably sounds bad, but keep in mind this was early in Filgaia's history, first six hundred or so years. There were people like that around, but they weren't public about it. Raftina was the first one to go public with her relationship and started a revolution to bring rights to people like herself."

  Luceid nodded. "It was quite something to see. Raftina was a complete pacifist in every sense of the word. Pacifist healer. But when it came to Elaeah, her love... Well. She would do anything to protect her. So Justine, Equites, and I all started to train her in the art of the sword. Now she's one of the most fearsome fighters on the planet."

  "Not much can get past Raftina. I mean I'm still better since the sword is my domain. It takes a lot to be better than I am. But she's more than adequate at what she does. She's a strategist almost second to none." Equites perched her cheek on her hand. "The look in your eyes--well, both of you--tells me you've both known pretty difficult hardships."

  Blake nodded and tensed a bit while Weiss looked down. "We'd...both rather not talk about what we've been through," Blake said. She didn't want to talk about her radical past or anything like that. No. she wasn't sure what Weiss would think of her fighting alongside a genocidal maniac and sharing in those genocidal beliefs. She no longer did, but she couldn't imagine that a human would take well to her once believing that all humans should die. Equites and Luceid...were not human. They had souls, certainly, but...it was strange. She couldn't quite put it into words. Their souls weren't really connected to their physical frames. It was almost like a tent strung up with someone inside.

  "Yeah, I can understand that. A lot of fighters don't like talking about their pasts. Nothing unique there. Combat can be very traumatising, and it seems like you two are no exception. Though Blake...you're young, aren't you? I won't push too much but..." She could read the question written all over Equites' face. 'You were a child soldier, weren't you?' She was. A teenager, sure, but still a child. She was an adult of almost two years now, but still. She'd be turning 19 sometime in July. She rarely ever kept track of her own birthdays... It just wasn't worth it after a certain point.

  "Anyway, yeah, hope you two recover from your personal ordeals. Combat in the sense of war can often affect you for the rest of your life. I've seen far too many veterans with PTSD come back and struggle to re-adapt to civilian life. But you seem to be doing well for yourself, Blake. You have a cafe and you're pretty damn good at what you do. Good tea, even if the caffeine does nothing for me."

  "Thank you." She rubbed the back of her neck, flushing a little. She had really practiced her pour over technique for a long time and developed her coffee palate. It'd taken her time, but she could do cuppings now and figure out what coffees she wanted for her shop. She preferred lighter roasts with fruity tastes but she did carry a few dark roasts for people that wanted that instead of a fruity light roast. It had taken her so much time to develop her flavor palate for coffee. It had tasted bitter and acrid to her for so long, but she got to the point she could often tell a mixed roast from a single-origin roast. Plus, she could tell that dark roasts were not her preferred…

  "If you're ever around again, I'll have to try out some teas. Maybe we could do a tea tasting or a coffee cupping at some point. This tastes so different from the stuff we get here on Filgaia and from other planets. Always interesting to taste something from elsewhere." Equites grinned.

  "We could definitely do that... I have a stock of teas that I don't sell and that are for my personal collection upstairs. Maybe we could find a time to run through some of those sometime." Blake smiled. She was always more than willing to talk tea or coffee to somebody that really enjoyed them as well. She was still more of a tea person than a coffee person, but considering the popularity of coffee in Vale, she had little choice but to offer it on her menu for the people that would prefer it over the vast quantity of teas she had. She offered twelve types of coffee and twenty different types of tea.

  "That sounds like it'd be great. Rafti could really use a break every now and again. Woman doesn't know the definition of 'slow down' and hasn't ever since Elaeah died." Equites shook her head and sighed. There was some sort of wound there, but it wouldn't be Blake's place to press on it when she saw Raftina again. They were strangers and what was Blake compared to a literal goddess? She hadn't met any of the gods on Remnant, but she knew at least Melanthios existed; the ghosts she'd talked to had mentioned him multiple times. She wasn't sure if he was the only god remaining or what. Did he have anything to do with magic? She wasn't sure, but considering he was the force of death, she couldn't speak with him directly.

  "I'm a little bit of a tea nerd," she said, rubbing the back of her neck.

  "So how does your rotating schedule work?" Luceid asked.

  "Uh." Blake looked around the register and found a small schedule taped to the register. "It looks like I'll be here Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays 7 to 9 AM...if your calendar works like that." Considering the different worlds, it wouldn't make sense for the calendar to be the same, but...who knew. She was dealing with the multiverse now. Things probably wouldn't make any sense anymore. She had no idea. It was better not to worry about the logistics behind things unless she wanted to run herself up a wall. Though the currency conversions with her taxes and such were going to be a headache.

  "Yeah, that's fine. How long are you open in general?" Equites popped her chin up on her hand

  "Twelve hours, six days a week. I run everything." It definitely wasn't easy. She only got one day a week off. She needed a day to just chill out and unwind from the busy week she'd have. Things were going to get a lot more intense now that she was dealing with the multiverse. People at least seemed to like her pastries and other offerings... It was just a headache to have to have things pre-made and placed in the little display cabinet on the counter. She started working long before the cafe actually opened.

  The two goddesses winced. "Yeesh, that's gonna be a recipe for burnout eventually. You need to get some more staff in here," Equites said.

  Blake sighed. "I know I need some help but who in the world is going to accept the insanity of working in the multiverse when they don't already have copious amounts of experience with weirdness?" She wasn't sure if she could hire anybody from Vale for that reason. She'd at least wanted to get used to the rhythm of the cafe before hiring anybody. She was hiring Weiss at least, but that was just for register. Weiss couldn't do much else right now, not with the state she was in.

  "I'd offer some Filgaians since we deal with some pretty weird stuff, but Elw aren't gonna wanna be separated from the planet and tenno won't want to be stuck on the ground twelve hours a day, six hours a week. Most humans won't wanna work those kinda hours either," Equites said.

  Blake shrugged. "It's fine. I really doubt I could find people from Vale that would be willing to work and I wouldn't want to keep people away from their native homes either..." She was used to it at this point. She had gotten into the rhythm and understood how things functioned. She would expand her services if she could have someone in the back making sandwiches, paninis, and other things in the back but that just wasn't on the table right now... She wanted help, but it'd be a hard sell for most people to be away from home (when dealing with her other worlds) or for the general weirdness that came with the multiverse. And she doubted Weiss would know anybody, considering the shape it sounded like her world was in…

  "Them Time Witch may know somebody," Weiss put in quietly. "Lots of people pass through her domain, looking for new worlds. Maybe somebody that has cafe experience will pass through."

  "Time Witch, huh? We don't know of anybody like that," Equites said. "But if you can figure out how to contact her from Remnant, then she'd know somebody." She shrugged. Blake nodded a bit. Honestly, maybe not a bad idea. But she wouldn't know how to get in contact with this 'Time Witch' figure…

  Yes she did.

  Anna.

  From the look in Equites' eyes, it seemed like she had the same thought. "Yeah, Anna would know how to contact this 'Time Witch' figure even if we don't know how to."

  "Agreed," Blake said. She wouldn't be against having help if at all possible... She would love to have someone whose job was to strictly cook and make the bake goods prior to the cafe opening. She hated being awake so many hours a day…

  Blake frowned a bit. "Would you guys mind leaving? I think I want to deal with this right away..." The sooner she could have staff, the better. Equites and Luceid nodded before exiting the cafe. About an hour had passed, so she had an hour... Not being open for that hour would mean losing money but…

  She locked the door and flipped the sign to closed before calling Anna. "HEllo, Blake~~ What can I do for you~?" came the flirty, light tone from the other end of the scroll.

  "Would you know how to get in touch with the Time Witch?"

  "Oh ho, yes, yes I do. Give me five minutes and I'll be over there." The call clicked off and Blake looked at Weiss. Well, this certainly would be interesting...