Bonus Chapter - More Fluff Than Usual

Taylor was woken up by a shy hand grabbing her shoulder and shaking it gently.

It could have been worse. At least the awakening didn’t come with incoherent screaming or a knee in the kidneys or--more horrifically and yet still common--the crunch of something important breaking two rooms away after falling to the floor.

It was never fun to stumble into a room to find it entirely empty except for whatever had broken on the ground. She would always turn around to find Pop and Cheshire looking innocent and disheveled.

This awakening was better, but no less worrying.

She opened her eyes to find Alice peering down at her, still in her PJs and with flushed cheeks. “I might have missed a take,” Alice said.

“What?” Taylor asked. She began the arduous task of untangling herself from her sisters. The motion, of course, woke a few of them up, spreading around the morning cheer. “What did you miss?”

“A take,” Alice said. She looked down at her own hands where her fingers were tapping against their opposite. She didn’t seem ready to meet Taylor’s eyes, which lit up all sorts of alarms. Unfortunately, it was--Taylor glanced to her bedside--currently six fifty in the morning.

Taylor sat on the edge of the bed, rubbed her face, then counted the number of sisters taking up too much room on her bed.

There was Pop, with her back to the wall, cradling a sword. Tattletail was across the bed lengthwise, her tail in Cheshire’s lap. Cheshire was in her onesie, of course. “Where’s Crochet and Remedy?” Taylor asked.

“They’re with our guests,” Alice said.

Taylor stood up straighter, the words zapping her awake. “Our what?”

She slipped out of the room, just slowing down enough to slip on a pair of rabbit-eared slippers and a bathrobe before following Alice downstairs. “So, I was talking with Crochet and Remedy while we made toast, and one thing led to another and I said it would be neat if you were there. Then we had an excellent idea.”

Taylor suppressed a wince. One of her sisters saying she had an excellent idea was like having Oppenheimer saying he knew how to make fireworks. It was something of a huge understatement about the amount of trouble summoned up.

“What was the idea?” Taylor asked.

Alice had the good graces to blush. “Well, we tried to get someone like you with my power.”

Taylor gave her a look.

“It’s okay! Remedy was going to fix up their memories before we tossed them back.

That is less reassuring than you might think,” Taylor said. “So, you summoned a clone of me from another universe or something?”

“Your sister from another universis...ter?” Alice tried. Taylor quirked an eyebrow and Alice shrugged. “I haven’t had breakfast. I can’t come up with these kinds of things without at least some toast, okay. Anyway, no, she’s not you, but she’s close!”

Taylor walked into the kitchen to find it very occupied.

There were a lot of girls in the room. Three of them looking like identical triplets, and three more rather unique children. In the middle of the pack was a girl, maybe a few years Taylor’s senior, who looked very done with whatever was going on.

She glanced over to Taylor, then jumped to her feet, opened her mouth, closed it, then clasped her hands together nervously over her stomach. “Um, hello. Sorry for... being teleported to your house. It was an accident, I think.”

Taylor took a moment to process this. Then she looked at Alice and noticed how squirmy Alice was being. Squirmy and shifty.

“Okay,” Taylor said. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry, just, give me a moment?”

“Sure,” the young woman said. Then, in a hiss not aimed at Taylor, she added. “Maple, put their remote down. Athena, stop scaring them. And Trinity, I swear this is not the time to go through people’s trash. Teddy... actually, yes, that’s good.”

Taylor... recognized that tone. She recognized it in herself. And wasn’t that both enlightening and terrifying. “Do... do you want a coffee?” she asked.

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The girl met her eyes, suddenly a little more shy now that she wasn’t taking care of the kids around her. “I’d like that. But, uh...”

“But we need to take care of the skids first,” Taylor finished. Because leaving them unsupervised would just make things so much worse. “Can we leave them all alone?”

The young woman’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “No, that wouldn’t... well, they can be left alone for a little bit, but really, it’s not a great idea.”

“Right,” Taylor said. She never expected to meet someone she would sympathize with so much. “Okay, I’m going to get the rest of my brats. And then we’ll figure things out from there.”

“Okay,” the young woman said.

“I’m Taylor, by the way,” Taylor said.

She blinked. “Oh. I’m Emily. Emily Wright.”

Taylor nodded along, then asked Remedy--who had been talking to one of the girls about medicine, strangely enough--to go fetch her other sisters. Soon enough, a grumpy Cheshire, a less less grumpy Pop, and a wide-awake Tattletail were in the living room. Taylor managed to get them all to stand in a line... more or less.

“Okay. Introductions. That’s Pop. She’s not allowed to kill the guests.”

“Onee-sama, I wouldn’t,” Pop said.

“That’s Cheshire, who will behave.” Taylor continued, pointing to Cheshire in her cat onesie. “That’s Remedy, who will not use her powers on our guests without my explicit permission. That’s Alice, who brought you here. Crochet is there, and that’s Tattletail.”

“Hey, that one’s a mind reader,” Tattletail said, pointing to one of the girls on the other side of the room.

Emily’s face gained a bit of redness to it. “Ah, Athena, please don’t read their minds. Um... I guess I’ll do introductions as well? This is Athena.” She patted the head of a fairly tall girl. Actually, now that Taylor looked, most of Emily’s girls were a bit older than her own sisters. Not by much. Maybe a year or so? They were closer to pre-teens than Taylor’s own sisters.

The girls also had... more animal-like traits. Athena had two long lengths of hair sticking out of her head that Taylor might have dismissed if she hadn’t noticed that the others definitely had animal traits.

“This is Teddy,” Emily continued, touching the head of one of the shorter girls, she had a stocky build, and wore a t-shirt with the word bear on it over cargo shorts.

“So, what’s your opinion of capitalism?” the girl asked.

“A-and these three are Trinity,” Emily continued, touching three girls one at a time. “She has three bodies. Um. But it’s all one girl. I know it’s kind of confusing, but you’ll get used to it.”

Taylor nodded, slower this time. That was a little strange. But then... yeah, glass houses.

“And this is our newest sister,” Emily said. She had to step to the side a little to reveal the girl half-hidden behind her. “Maple.”

Maple stared back at Taylor and her sisters, a wide-eyed little bundle of stress, with two little ears poking out from her hair and a large, flat tail behind her. A beaver-girl? Taylor had never seen the like.

“Wait, you said sister,” Taylor said. “So, they’re not your, uh, children, right?”

Emily stared. “I’m twenty,” she said.

Which, right, that was fair. Taylor pushed past the feeling of warmth in her cheeks. “Yeah, sorry, that makes sense, I guess. Um, these are my sisters,” Taylor said with a gesture at the gaggle of girls next to her.

“They’re well behaved,” Emily said.

It was a lie. Cherish was making rude gestures at Teddy, who was reciprocating. Tattletail had clearly found an enemy in Athena, and Pop had disappeared while Taylor wasn’t looking her way.

“Do you want a coffee?” Taylor asked.

“Please,” Emily said.

“Do you think we can, uh, leave them all together?”

Emily looked at the many sisters in the room. “It... probably won’t be that bad,” she said.

Taylor didn’t believe that for a second. She also didn’t have the energy to manage them all at the moment. “Yeah, it’ll be fine.”

***