Chapters The More Things Change...
The endless expanse of the Void was a great big heap of paradoxical nothingness, as has often been stated. Mostly by one man. A man known throughout the Void as…
Aaron Heibai: The Former SysAdmin and Current Owner of the Endless Emporium of Everything (patent pending)
Of course, being a decent-fraction-of-omnipotent being wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. After all, one doesn’t simply pay rent by doing nothing. Ergo, Aaron floated through yon inky blackness in search of customers to whom he could sell his infinite wares.
After an arduous journey during which he was assaulted by the likes of old friends, jilted would-be suitors, weird tentacle beings, and–strangely enough–lemon jello, he found something. A Universe, shining in all the colors of the rainbow, as Universes are wont to do.
“Well, I suppose there could be a sale in there,” Aaron muttered to himself and the screen. “Then again, you lot would watch it even if it was just me making a fool out of myself.”
Shut up, Aaron; and ignore us for now.
“Fine, fine…”
And with that, the shadowy businessman descended into an unwary Universe in hopes of making some money.
Jupiter was frolicing through a field with her pony friends as they often did; prancing across the plains with joy and excitement for the day to come.
Suddenly, a store fell from the sky.
“What?” said Twilight Sparkle in her OOC way.
“Why, I don’t know, my dear; maybe we should check it out,” said Applejack with Rarity’s voice… for some reason.
“It looks lahk a shop!” came Applebloom’s voice from Fluttershy.
“I just don’t know what went wrong!” a rock cried to the sky with Bonbon’s cutie mark painted on the side.
Time Turner sheepishly walked off set, as he had forgotten his lines.
AARON STOP MESSING WITH THE PUPPETS!
“Fiiiine.” He muttered, withdrawing his hand from the corrupted animation files.
Jupiter woke from her nightmare with a start.
“O-oh, my… I had the weirdest dream!” she said as she sat up in bed, reaching over to her nightstand for her lightning-insignia pin. As she fastened it to her shirt she opened her mouth in a large yawn. “All the ponies were either overly-cliche, out of character, or had switched bodies between them.”
“That sounds terrible! Tell me, what was Pinkie like?” Juno--Jupiter’s brother--called from the kitchen. The sounds and smell of freshly-baked pancakes met Jupiter’s nostrils moments later.
“Actually, she wasn’t even there.” Jupiter stood and stretched her arms over her head, nearly touching the ceiling of their little house.
She looked around, seeing the bed and nightstand; the little dresser; and the small “closet” that was no more than a small space they’d set off as storage space. Their house–it was more of a cot, really–was no bigger than most big-city apartments, decorated with nothing more than the natural look of raw wood and necessary supplies. A brief glance out the window proved that it was a nice day in Whitetail Woods to boot! Fluttershy should be stopping by in a few minutes to see how they were doing.
Suddenly, a knocking came at the door.
‘That must be her, now!’ Jupiter thought as she took the three steps to reach the door.
Swinging it open revealed an… unexpected sight.
“Do either of you happen to know any sort of practical medicine?” A completely torn and bloodied man asked, barely able to stand on his 1.5 legs. “I should hope so, I’m bleeding out rather quickly.” A single, mostly mangled, black iris peered through a curtain of absurdly long, blood filled, black hair.
Jupiter was so surprised by this she could do nothing but cover her gaping mouth with a hand and stumble a step or two back. Just as she did this, though, the man collapsed; falling to his knees and then face first into the ground.
“J-Juno!” was all she could utter as she stared at the prone body.
“What is-” he wasn’t able to finish as he, too, spotted the body, freezing for a second.
Have you ever had one of those moments in time where the world just seems to stop, the sound seems to become distant and fuzzy, and the color almost drains from the world? Well, Jupiter knows exactly what that’s like. The term they used during World War II was “Shell Shocked.”
“Help me get him onto the table!” Juno barked, snapping her out of her haze as he used his bare arm to sweep the table-settings--china plates and all--off the surface to make way for the stranger.
The two of them hoisted him up, carefully placing him face up on the table. Juno wasted no time in removing the man’s shirt and making a brief visual inspection, finding the most serious wounds and mentally marking them.
“Jupiter, get the med-kit,” he said sternly, still scanning the body. She wasted no time in retrieving the small, red box.
“Here, Juno,” she handed the box over, the lid flying off and improvised medical instruments spilled out and onto the table. “Can you save him?”
“I don’t know,” he began inspecting certain wounds more closely. “He must’ve gotten into a fight with a craggodile, these cuts are deep.”
“Who would try to fight a craggodile?” Jupiter mumbled to herself as she looked down at the stranger’s face, serene as could be. He almost looked as if he were sleeping.
Yeah…
Sleeping.
Several hours later Juno laid his bloodstained hands flat on the table, a sorrowful sigh escaping his lips.
“Are you done, Onii-sama?” Jupiter asked, rising from her seated position on the bed. She’d been pondering what had happened and how she could have helped sooner.
“Yeah.” His voice resonated with the part of her that knew exactly what had happened, but didn’t want to acknowledge it just yet. Maybe he was just tired from saving his life! Maybe he just didn’t think it’d be so hard! Maybe- maybe- maybe-...
Maybe he had failed .
As she approached the makeshift operating table, she looked down at the man’s chest, which was covered in his own blood and still riddled with holes. She worked her eyes down his leg-and-a-half, finding his only foot to have a couple toes missing as well. Her eyes drifted back up his form, briefly rescanning his torso before stopping at his neckline.
If she went further she was sure she would cry.
But she had to know.
Her eyes glanced further and…
‘Why do the dead have to look so serene?’ was her only thought before she broke down and bawled. Her brother was there moments later, comforting her every way he knew how.
“Don’t worry. We’ll pick a nice spot for him next to the Weeping Tree,” he assured her while rubbing her shoulder. “He’ll be happy there.”
She only nodded as she fell to her knees, putting her at the perfect level to bend over and begin crying on his chest. She didn’t care if she got blood on her clothing, she didn’t care that it was probably disrespecting his body. She just wanted to cry, and cry she did.
Aaron awoke- still in pain- to the sound of sobbing. Figuring that he must have died to cause this reaction, he reached out with his senses, found the source of the crying digging into his still blood covered chest, and placed a comforting hand on the source’s head. He ruffled the object’s hair and muttered, “Well, I think that’s about the most emotional reaction I’ve ever had to my death. But still, I thank you for the care, though I woulda been fine otherwise.”
Her head flew off of his chest, meeting his eyes immediately. Their faces were in a close proximity due to the sudden movement and initial distance, but this only bothered the person not involved.
Juno coughed, snapping the two out of their stupors. “So… are you okay?” he asked the stranger.
Aaron tried to move his arm, noting that it was still lacerated and oozing blood. “Well, more or less, yeah. Still need to get rid of these injuries, but I’ll be fine.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” Jupiter hugged him tightly around his chest, causing a spike of pain to shoot through his torso.
“HNNG!” Aaron cried, biting his tongue, “Ribs are still broken! Heart valves are still shredded! Gahhhhhhhh!”
“O-oh… sorry,” she smiled sheepishly, releasing him and scooting away.
“What do you mean by ‘heart valves are still shredded’?” One of Juno’s eyebrows raised a little.
“Well, there’s this thing in my chest called a heart, and it has valves that help it pump blood. Those valves are shredded and the chunks are sorta clogging my aorta, but other than that, I can survive off of 2 HP. It’s not like I have a negative status effect or anything.” Aaron explained, digging a bottle of red fluid from... somewhere… and chugging it, wounds healing slightly as the vial was drained.
Jupiter tilted her head a little, not understanding a bit of what he said past “2 HP.” Juno facepalmed a little.
“So, just so I know we’re on the same page; your heart is eviscerated, you play life off of table-top rules, and you are very low on health.” He peaked out from behind his hand to deadpan at the being on his table.
“Yup. Well, sorry about all this. Your Universe… I forgot that I’m not exactly compatible with all kinds of Universal Gates anymore. Did you know that your Universe tries to convert any incoming eldritch abominations into something more comprehensible? I think I nearly got turned into a Maniae, a spirit of insanity.”
Jupiter and Juno exchanged glances, this time equally confused.
“What?” they asked in unison.
“Oh, right; you guys don’t know… I’m Aaron Heibai, formerly Umbra Shadow-Walker. I used to be a Systems Administrator for this little pocket of the Void. That meaning, I used to fix things and break them wherever necessary. Thus, since I quit, I no longer have the access that I used to, nor the immunity to change that I used to, and am thus in this wounded state due to trying desperately to not be converted into a comprehensible form.”
The blank stares he received from the two were explanation enough.
He sighed and dropped his head into his slowly regenerating hands. “Hello, my name is Aaron Heibai, and I’m a travelling salesman from outside your Universe.”
A resounding “Ohhhhh!” came from the two as they began nodding.
“So!” Juno began, “I need to finish bre-” his eyes grew wide at that point. “The pancakes!” and he rushed to the stove to find the dough had been burnt to a crisp. The smell hit everyone at once.
The abominations were thrown out the window faster than one could say “Those pancakes are toast!”
“.... My bad.” Aaron muttered, getting off of the table and flickering back into full health as if he’d never been injured at all. “Hey, wait a minute… I wasn’t wearing this before…”
Indeed, where he had once been wearing a ravaged set of t-shirt and jeans, now he was wearing an immaculate white tuxedo, complete with rose in the lapel. And gloves. One mustn’t forget the gloves.
“Well then. I suppose it could be worse.”
A light blush adorned Jupiter’s face. Aaron did look strikingly handsome in that ensemble.
Juno just raised an eyebrow. “When did you change?”
Aaron shrugged and snapped his fingers, the table resetting to the way it was previously. “I have no idea. I think it’s part of my video-game physics.”
“Video-” Juno stopped himself from another headache of an explanation. “And the table….” He stared at the set table for a moment with a blank expression, trying to come up with a response to all of the illogical events that had transpired over the last hour or so.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot, Mr. Hay… hey… hai…?”
Aaron stared at the girl mispronouncing his name. “...”
He reached out with one hand… and placed it firmly on top of her head, ruffling her hair gently. “It’s Heibai, pronounced Hey-Bye. Spelled H-E-I-B-A-I.”
“Thanks, Mr. Heybye,” she mumbled sheepishly from under his hand.
Aaron straightened and snapped his fingers again, creating a brief pulse of white light. When the light cleared, a stack of pancakes sat on top of the table, still steaming. And then the rest of the complete breakfast appeared.
Both Jupiter and Juno looked at the morsels distastefully. “Conjured food never really tastes good,” Juno told him.
“Unless you’re Twilight. She makes the best blueberry sweet bread.”
“And somehow Pinkie can ‘port in sweets no matter where you are in Equestria.” Juno smirked as he said this, finding Pinkie’s ability to destroy general science around her extremely comedic.
Aaron smirked and shoved a forkful of pancake into Juno’s mouth. “Oh, please. I spontaneously rise from the dead and heal myself and you think I can’t conjure good food?”
Jupiter’s blush increased a little as she watched Aaron feed Juno. Even though he was her brother, she still found it fairly… exciting.
Just as Juno was about to spit the food out, he realized exactly how good it was. He took the fork from Aaron and took another chunk out of the pancakes. “This is actually pretty good,” he said, mouth half full.
Jupiter calmed down after that and began eating, herself, agreeing with Juno completely.
Aaron struck a semi-haughty pose, hand held in front of his mouth like a stereotypical noblewoman. “Hmph, but of course. I’m me .”
The two others were too engrossed in the meal to notice Aaron’s sudden theatrics. Shrugging, Aaron sat at a spontaneously appearing third chair and dug in as well.
Moments later, the door swung open, hitting the wall with a loud “bang!”
“Jupiter! Juno! Are you two alright?!” came the soft-yet-frantic voice of Fluttershy.
Aaron looked up at the new entry and raised a hand in greeting, “Yo.” The other two looked up as well, startled by Fluttershy’s sudden entrance.
When the concerned mare’s gaze landed on them, she hurried over to Jupiter and Juno, already inspecting them for injuries. “Are you two alright? I saw blood leading up to the doorway and thought somepony got injured!”
“We’re alright, Flutters. It was Aaron that got hurt, but he’s better now,” Juno explained.
“Aaron?” She finally acknowledged the third human in the room, looking him up and down for a moment.
“Yo,” Aaron repeated, again with the hand motion.
“Did…” Fluttershy hesitated, looking back at Juno and Jupiter. “Did you two… reproduce?” The question was more curiosity than disgust, but there was a hint of it in there somewhere.
Juno and Jupiter spit out the pancake they were chewing.
Aaron leaned back and folded his hands across his lap, somehow appearing to be alone in the room despite being seated at a table. The room darkened, and the table section directly in front of him vanished.
For all intents and purposes, Aaron resembled a highly unamused Alucard, regardless of the lack of red and fangs.
“I’m older than them, Fluttershy,” he spoke, voice chilling the air with each word, “But your mistaken assumption can be forgiven, as I do look rather young. But no, I’m just a visitor from far, far away.”
The room returned to normal fast enough that no indication of the above event was left.
“My name is Aaron, it’s nice to meet you.”
Flutterhsy, surprised and slightly frightened of what just happened, squeaked out a “H-h-hello A-A-A-Aaron,” before tipping over like a goat, bleating sound and all.
“Huh. Too much?” Aaron wondered, prodding the frightened pegasus with a stick.
Jupiter and Juno both stared at Fluttershy; Jupiter with a little bit of worry in her eye and Juno with the most impassive face a human could make. They both nodded to Aaron’s question.
...The More They Stay the Same
Aaron set the comatose Fluttershy on the couch, levering the pegasus’ legs into a more comfortable position and draping a blanket over her. Neither sibling knew where the blanket or couch came from, only that the blanket was black, had a white jack o’ lantern face printed on it, and appeared incredibly soft and comfortable; and that the couch was also black, but velvet as opposed to silk, and also very comfortable.
Aaron provided no explanation, he only raised his eyebrow in a deadpan stare.
“Is Flutters okay?” Jupiter asked worriedly, watching the slow breathing of her friend.
“Eh, she’ll be fine. Ponies are tough- believe me. It’d take a lot more than a bit of a shock to seriously injure any of them, even Flutters.” Aaron shrugged and started preparing some tea.
“Um… alright.” She still looked concerned, but less so.
Juno took a step forward, garnering all’s attention–besides the butter yellow mare on the couch.
“So… why are you here?” he asked simply, curious above all else.
Aaron sat on randomly appearing armchair and leaned back. “I’m a travelling salesman, why do you think I go anywhere?”
“Well, we don’t need anything you’re selling, so you can go.” He briefly thought about what he said and how it sounded. “Not to sound hostile, or anything.”
“Nah, I think I’ll stay for a while. It’s been too long since I’ve taken a real vacation. Over six thousand years, at last count.” The tea kettle whistled, signalling to all that the tea was ready, and startling Fluttershy into full wakefulness.
“Who?! What?! When?! Where?!” she shouted, looking around the room frantically.
“Flutters!” Jupiter rushed over to her. “It’s okay, we’re all fine,” she reassured the startled mare.
“R-really?” The tension in Fluttershy’s shoulders melted away slowly. After a moment she took a deep breath and looked around again, finding Aaron sipping on a cup of tea. “I-I’m sorry, mister. I didn’t mean to freak out like that.” She looked kind of embarrassed.
Aaron sighed and snapped once more, the entire room changing from a minimalist cottage to a well decorated parlor. Everyone else found themselves in high society clothes and holding cups of tea. A table sat in the center, laden with finger foods, hors d'oeuvres, and snacks.
“Well, it’s fine. I was laying on the melodrama rather thick. That aside, go ahead everyone. It’s tea time and thus it is also time to enjoy life and eat food.”
“What did you do to my house?” was the angry response from Juno. Jupiter seemed to be watching her brother with a little more than a little fear and Fluttershy was trying to make herself shrink. Sadly, she wasn’t very successful.
“Nothing, actually. Okay, I confess… I gave the entire thing a spot clean and added a lot more space to it. Now you have a good sized, two person cottage sitting in the middle of the woods; complete with chimney, central heating, garden, and flowerbed. We , however, are in the middle… ish… area of my shoppe. To be precise, the rarely used tea room/parlor that I built and furnished by myself.” The smug eldritch being had the gall to slip on a pair of sunglasses as he spoke, striking the ‘Deal with it’ pose when he finished.
“Turn. It. Back,” he said with anger dripping from each word. “And, while you’re at it, take us back.”
Jupiter was busy examining a chair. “You have great furniture-making skill. I can see myself in this wood!”
“Ara ara, usually people are glad about free home improvement. It’s not like I changed the whole thing, it’s more like I just sorta… added the thing to your original. Like… how Hercules’ parents got a mansion beside their old shack in the Disney movie. And, I’m not taking you back until tea time is over. That is, in about half an hour.”
Juno growled for a moment before Jupiter broke in. “He built that cabin with his own bare hands. It was his first creation in this world. He’s very proud of it,” she explained. “So, what kind of tea is it?”
“I see. Well, it’s a good thing I only cleaned the place. Your extra space is sitting behind his creation. And it’s… Hmm… I don’t have a name for it. It’s my own personal blend, you see. I normally call it #42.” Aaron shrugged and bit into a biscotti, savoring the taste as he waved his hand, shifting the scene back into a now suspiciously clean cottage in the woods.
“Put it back the way you found it,” Juno growled at him, more menacingly this time.
“Controlled chaos, you see,” Jupiter tried to explain.
Aaron pouted, “Honestly, it’s like I never get any respect these days… Okay, I never got any respect in the first place because everyone thought they could beat up the living shadow that controlled all of reality, but still!” He snapped again, shifting the world into disorienting colors and dust and objects flew through the air, reverting the cottage to exactly as it had been five seconds before the group had left, sans additions made by Aaron.
Juno took a sigh of relief. “Thank you.” He then took a seat and a cup, sipping daintily from it.
Jupiter tried not to laugh at her brother’s antics, sitting and finding her own cup.
Fluttershy, being the only one still standing, sat next to the table and lifted the last cup with her wings.
Tea time concluded with little other affair.
Aaron exited the cottage, trailing after the trio of Juno, Jupiter, and Fluttershy. The three had plans, after all, and Aaron decided to just relax and kick back– six thousand plus years of constant work would do that to just about anyone.
“So, what were we going to do today? Aaron’s arrival made me completely forget the schedule.” Jupiter put her arms behind her back as she walked, not at all concerned about what they were off to do.
Juno took a small list from his pocket. “Well, it seems that we promised AJ we’d help harvesting today. Also something to do with the…” he squints at the paper, “Candy Festival?”
Jupiter’s eyes shot open wide. “Did you say-...” she cut herself short, “... what I think you said?”
“Yes, I did.” He then put the paper back in his pocket. “Don’t go too-” the group was enveloped in the dust cloud that trailed behind the overzealous girl, “-far ahead….” Juno finished with a sigh.
Aaron blinked twice. “Should… should we do something about that?”
“Nah, she’ll probably just harass Bonbon about sweets for a few hours.” Juno seemed oddly calm while saying this.
“Hmm… never had a Candy Festival where I was from… then again, I was only there for a few months–I turned into a nearly all powerful god after a few months and left my home reality. Six quadrillion years later and here I am now, considerably less powerful, but also a lot more powerful than I started out.” Aaron exposited to basically no one, though Juno and Fluttershy heart him clearly.
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand what you mumble to yourself, Aaron,” Juno said to him.
“Tis better that way, methinks. Now, what say we get to Applejack’s? I know you guys need to help her with the harvest, but I’d say an extra hand would always be helpful.” Aaron’s clothes abruptly changed from a high society butler tuxedo into a set of t-shirt and jeans.
Juno stared at him a moment longer, then shook his head in exasperation, deciding to simply ignore him.
Aaron took a deep whiff of air, enjoying the scent of apples. “Aaaahhhh,” he sighed, “It’s really been far too long since I’ve been to Sweet Apple Acres.”
“Maybe y’all should visit more often… uh, what’d y’all say yer name was?” AJ asked the man as he stood on a hill victoriously.
“Aaron, Aaron Heibai. Interdimensional shopkeeper and eldritch abomination from beyond the furthest reaches of existence, at your service.” He took a bow, sending his braid into the air in complete defiance of gravity.
“... Right….” AJ said, watching the braid float. “Anyway, Mr. Hay-Bay, if y’all want to work Ah won’t stop you. You know how ta buck apples, right?”
Aaron shrugged, “More or less, yeah. Though, I’m not much of a kicker. I prefer to just-” A snap of the fingers “- do this.” The tree he was standing under suddenly flashed with hundreds of shadows, every apple on the tree dropping into the strategically placed baskets at its base.
AJ watched the magic show with awe. “Y-.. y’all sure ya ain’t done this before?” she asked, still staring at the tree and wondering if this was one of Discord’s creations gone right .
Aaron plucked an apple from the basket, shining it off on his shirt and tossing it up and down. “Well, I’ve done this before… just not the way you guys do it.”
“A-alright, then. Don’t worry about doin’ too much work, Ah’m sure we won’t mind.” She said this as she began walking back towards the barn, intending to take a well-deserved nap for once.
“You’re a showoff, you know that?” Juno said, deadpanning at the magical man.
“Now now, Juno. No need to be all snippy.” Aaron teasingly chided the cat man, lightly tapping trees near their bases, causing each one to rock as if it were in a hurricane, sending all the apples perfectly into each basket. “I’m not a showoff , I’m a showman . There’s a difference. Sorta.”
“Well, a showman shows off , right?” he pointed out calmly, not at all perturbed by the narrator’s use of the politically incorrect name for “catfolk.”
Not that he even knew, but semantics.
“Shut up and get to the point!” Aaron shouted at the narrator, taking care to remain unheard by the peons stuck behind the fourth wall.
Alright, alright.
Ahem.
The three of them bucked the trees all day long. They bucked them from the side. They bucked them from behind. They bucked-.... Whoever wrote this script has the dirtiest mind ever.
“Hehe… sorry.”
AARON YOU SHADOWY SON-OF-A-BITCH.
“Woopwoopwoopwoopwoopwoopwoop.”
A good few hours of applebucking later, Aaron and company left Applejack’s place in search of Jupiter, who still had not returned from her wild quest to find the Candy Festival.
“Hey Juno, where do you think your sister is?” Aaron mused, hands behind his head.
“Hmm….” He put one hand to his chin, thinking fairly hard. “The first place I’d check would be Sugarcube Corner. Pinkie does make the best sweets in town.” They’d already been heading that direction; but let’s be honest, there’s really only one road into town from Sweet Apple Acres.
“Hmm… another place I haven’t been in far too long…” The shadow man grinned, shifting from human form to shadow form in an instant. “Well then, let’s go!” He picked up Fluttershy and Juno with his shadowy arms, glowing grin firmly affixed to his face, and rocketed off into Ponyville proper.
“Eep!” Fluttershy yelped.
Juno was yelling profanities at the shadow the whole way, though he did get a little less perverse when they reached the edge of town.
“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad.” Aaron whined, still looking like a three dimensional shadow with a glowing grin.
“Yes it was !” Juno yelled at him, getting all up in his grill. “Do you know what it’s like to be picked up by a being with less-than-absolute-zero-temperature skin and be carried at the speed of sound to the nearest town, which was nearly a kilometer away?!” the angry god yelled as the temperature rose abruptly. Fluttershy looked about ready to piss herself.
“Oh please, it’s not that cold. And I stopped at mach one– far slower than Rainbow Dash usually goes.”
Juno glared at him, the temperature holding steady… for now.
“N-n-n-now, Ju-Ju-Juno…, let’s not g-g-get mad….” Fluttershy “eep”ed when Juno turned his glare on her.
A half second later, Juno realized what he was doing to the poor mare and the heat dissipated. “Sorry, Flutters. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He gave the cowering mare a soft hug to comfort her.
“I-i-it’s alright, J-Juno. I know.”
“It figures that a hot tempered brat like you would have fire powers….” Aaron sighed, scanning Ponyville for any signs of a catgirl with a sugar obsession.
Juno deadpanned at Aaron for a moment before snapping his own hand, a spark flying and lighting a small flame in his hand. “I do.”
“Nice, nice…. Shadow is better, but still… So, Sugarcube Corner or are you gonna yell at me some more?”
He sighed, putting the flame out. “Sugarcube Corner,” he said simply, walking towards the gingerbread-styled building.
“Alright then~” Aaron ambled behind Juno, utterly unconcerned about anything.
“Your randomness in situ-” he wasn’t able to respond as he was thrown back several hundred meters by a full-body slam. Him and the attacker went tumbling along the ground for a while before sliding to a stop.
“GLOMP!!” Jupiter yelled from on top of her brother, laughing like a child.
“Annnnd there’s the other one.” Aaron grinned, not that his face could make any other expression.
Juno sighed, seemingly unharmed by the distance he’d traveled on the ground. “Jupiter, what have I told you about doing that?”
The girl was already off of him and back to Aaron, talking a mile-a-minute.
“YouknowIreallylikethewayyourshadowsseemtobeinathreedimensionalformandyetarestillblackerthanblackwhichisthenameofasongandIreallylikemusic- Oh! DoyoulikemusicMr.Hay-Bey? IknowIdo. Ialsokindalikeyouwithyourcoolnessandeverythingthatyoukindofarebutthat’sredundantandIshouldn’tsaythingsthatareredundantkissme!!” Her head flew forward at unreal speeds, their lips meeting for a mere instant, before Jupiter ran off towards Sugarcube Corner.
It was about now that Juno was back on his feet and almost to where Aaron was. He only saw them kissing and assumed the worst.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!!” He yelled as fire erupted from his hands and arms, lightning shooting from almost everywhere else, and he glowed like an atomic bomb.
“...... The fuck just happened?” Aaron wondered, dumping sixteen gallons of water on Juno, causing the angry god to short circuit. “And why the hell do I taste sugar?”
Juno yelled in rage, the water evaporating before it got within a foot of him. “AARON, I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!!” He stomped towards the shadow, the ground around his feet blackened.
“Yare yare dazou,” Aaron muttered, flicking Juno in the forehead. “I doubt you could, but you’re more than welcome to try later on, when you aren’t so pissy.”
He growled and hit him with fires more than fifteen billion kelvin. “DIE!!!!” he shouted through the insanely intense flames.
The world went dark.
Juno awoke with a splitting headache and a mild case of hypothermia.
“Gah… what did I drink last night and where did I pass out?” He asked, holding his throbbing head.
“Well, you didn’t drink anything, considering you hit fifteen billion kelvin in your attempt to kill me… and thus flash fried the entirety of Equus in about fifteen seconds. Congratulations Juno, in your overprotective attempt to keep your sister’s honor, you destroyed an entire planet, save for you and your sister. Oh, and the four princesses, but they’re in intensive care. Good fucking job.”
“W-what?!” he asked, his headache all but forgotten.
“You. Blew up. Equus. And killed all but six people. Congratulations, mortal.” Aaron looked distinctly unimpressed. “See, you should be glad that I rewrote the fabric of existence so that never happened, otherwise I’d have tossed you out the airlock and into Void-Space five hours ago.” He pointed out a nearby window, showing off the swirling, paradoxical nothingness outside.
Juno panicked for a little while before realizing all of his friends were not dead, and began relaxing again. “Well, firstly, fuck you. Never kiss Jupiter again.” His glare returned, but immediately softened. “Secondly, thanks for saving everyone. I owe you one.” He then took a look around. “Thirdly, where are we?”
Aaron smirked. It was not a nice smirk. “Well, firstly, fuck you, your sister basically committed sexual harassment by kissing me without consent. Second, you’re fucking welcome, you suck at controlling your powers. Third, we’re in my shop, in the Void between Universes, where, if I were to toss you out the airlock, you would slowly and painfully be pulled apart into your fundamental particles, even down to your very soul .”
The two men stared each other down for a moment, not letting up in the slightest…
And proceed to break out in laughter, right at the same time.
“Fuck you, you jerk-off,” Juno laughed with mirth, patting the ex-SysAdmin on the back.
“Fuck you, too; you uncontrolled pyro.” Aaron chuckled, shifting back into human form. “Saa… should we go see the four princesses? I’m sure they’d appreciate a visit, maybe tell them that the planet is still there and all.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be a load off their shoulders, too.” Juno took a moment to think about it. “Actually, why didn’t you just retcon the princesses, too?”
“Because I make it a policy to never retcon anything that’s still alive… not since… well… the accident …” Aaron shifted uncomfortably, toeing the floor with his polished dress shoes.
Juno watched him for a second, making sure he wasn’t about to break out laughing again as if it were some kind of inside joke. When he did not, Juno simply said “I won’t ask. Anyway, on to happier topics! Where are the princesses, anyway?”
“Ah, right… Follow me.” Aaron opened a door that simply hadn’t been there before, leading the both of them into a hospital full of hovering Chibi-Aarons in shadow form.
“Saa~ How are they doing?” Aaron asked, picking up a clipboard.
“They’re doing great, boss!” Came the chorus of high pitched shouts, all the shadow beings performing a perfectly in unison salute.
“Ne, where’d Jupiter-chan go? I swear I put her in a spare bedroom, but I can’t sense her in there anymore…” A round of shrugs followed. “.... Ahhhhhh shit.”
In an instant, all of the chibi Aarons disappeared from their places in the air, finding themselves gathered in the corner with Jupiter--or what was once Jupiter. Now, she was a raving lunatic, on a holy mission to collect and cuddle every chibi within a fifty lightyear radius.
“Aaaahhhh! RUN YOU FOOLS!”
“Dammit….” Aaron sighed, why did he always have to get the insane ones?
“Jupiter, sit.”
With these two words from Juno, everything returned to normal--sans all of the Aarons being gathered in the corner and Jupiter sitting in front of them, staring at her brother with wide eyes.
“Now lay down.”
Surprisingly enough, she did.
“Roll over.”
This is getting old so I’ll skip past all of the begging, licking, and shaking she did.
“Back to normal,” Jupiter said as she stood up again, smiling as if nothing had happened.
“Ara ara… I hope that doesn’t happen again anytime soon.…” Aaron strode forth, holding up a clipboard, “This is a hospital, after all. Now, would you like to see our only four patients or not?”
“Uh… yeah. I’d like to pay them a visit,” Jupiter said. “Who are they?” Her head tilted cutely to the side with the most clueless look on her face. Needless to say, it was adorable.
“Just the four princesses of Equestria. Juno accidentally did… some really stupid things and ended up hurting all four.” Aaron shot a look at Juno, one that promised long, pain-filled hours of self control training. Juno actually flinched at this look, though it wasn’t nearly as intense as those he’d received mere minutes earlier.
“Huh? Juno, you hurt the princesses?” She asked curiously. “That’s great! You never had enough power to actually break Twilight’s shields! How’d you do it?” She was actually happy… for some reason.
“Uh… I’d rather not talk about it.” His hand reached up and found the back of his head, scratching absentmindedly at an itch that was there, as he avoided eye contact with Jupiter.
“It’s best if we just let it sit for now. Anyway,” Aaron pushed open another door, revealing all four princesses stretched out in a row, each one wrapped completely in bandages. “Oi, miladies, you awake?”
“Just now, Aaron…” came the voice of Celestia, her being on the far left, only recognizable due to her size.
“And us as well, Sir Aaron,” Luna spoke up, muffled by the bandages, from directly right of Celestia.
Both Twilight and Cadence seemed to be asleep still, so they were not bothered and voices were kept low to ensure such.
“I did this?” Juno asked, seemingly in awe at what he’d supposedly done.
Jupiter was fairly quiet, keeping her gaze on her shoes.
“Unfortunately, yes. Yes you did. Quite frankly, I’m surprised that they even survived, what with there being sixth degree burns across a good half of their existential presences.” Aaron mused, flipping through his clipboard and occasionally sending bursts of healing light towards all four princesses, a process augmented by the chibi-Aarons’ own bursts.
“Thou hast done this, Sir Juno!? What hath occurred in order to turn thee against the four of us!?” Luna shouted as best as she could, inadvertently tearing her facial bandages and exposing the festering, crumbling flesh underneath.
“Luna, calm yourself!” Aaron shouted in return, pushing the formerly blue alicorn down and applying more bandages, along with a massive burst of warm, golden light.
“If the blast was enough to reach and nearly kill us… what…. what happened to my little ponies!?” Celestia was near frantic, though she had enough sense to not flail around like her sister.
“Well, Princess… Juno here decided to attempt to restore his sister’s lips’ honor by murdering me on the doorstep of Sugarcube Corner. Thus, he ended up blasting me, and by proxy Ponyville, with flames at an intensity of fifteen billion degrees Kelvin, incinerating Ponyville within half a second before the heat burned through the rest of the planet approximately fifteen seconds later. I spent those fifteen seconds trying to save anyone who hadn’t immediately died. Circumstances, however, reduced that amount to you four, Jupiter, and the murderer himself. And the rest is history,” Aaron spoke, driving a metaphorical chainsword into Juno’s heart with each word. Which, by the way, adds up to ninety three metaphorical chainsaw-bladed swords.
“He WHAT!?” Both princesses flew into a rage, tearing off all of their bandages with their fury, revealing the half charred skeletal masses beneath their bandages. Celestia’s eyes were gone, Luna’s wings as well. Neither had any internal organs to speak of, save for a half charred brain hanging out of the ruins of Celestia’s skull. Both were surrounded by massive coronas of healing light, though it only kept them alive at this point, such was the extent of the damage.
Unfortunately, this woke the other two princesses; who, when they saw what was left of the original alicorns, began to freak out in their own right. Bandages tore all around, exposing all four seemingly undead princesses to the world, each one surrounded by coronas of golden energy. The state of all four princesses was much the same, save for Twilight, who was literally nothing more than a charred skull and spinal column with a pair of front legs and a ribcage. It seemed that the only thing keeping them from exposing their true forms to the horrified Juno and Jupiter was the vast amount of healing bandages. And thus, the room turned from a hospital to the beginning scenes of a zombie survival movie.
Aaron sighed. “See, this is why I hate using my ICU. Everyone in here ends up looking like a fucking zombie. ”
Juno looked as if he were ready to hurl, but had the sense to cover Jupiter’s eyes. Luckily, she hadn’t seen any of the princesses in their… nudity.
“Can we come back when they’re-” he felt something coming up his throat, but forced it down with a gulp, “-better, please?” He was already leading Jupiter away from the horrendous scene before them.
Aaron sighed and grabbed Juno by the collar before he could run. “No, Juno. You need to see this. This is what happens when people with massive amounts of power rage out of control. Y’see, once upon a time, I was sorta like you: impulsive and with a short temper. I’m still like that. However, I have a lot of self control, such that I never ended up destroying any planets or Universes unless I needed to. This is what I’m offering. Self control. You really need this, especially if you’re going to blast every poor sod who makes moves on your sister with flames about a thousand times hotter than the core of earth’s sun.”
“Alright, alright! I get it! But, seriously, that’s disgusting!” Juno complained, still trying to escape Aaron’s grasp.
“What’s disgusting?” Jupiter asked.
“You… don’t want to know, Jupiter.” Aaron quickly covered her eyes, snapping and flinging each princess back into bed, each once more covered in bandages and golden light, this time with streamers of red light as well. “Honestly you four, you’re all still recovering from something that normally would have killed you. Please, take it easy. Twilight, you were hit the hardest, you need to rest. Cadence… actually, the steam from the arctic actually made you worse off than Celly and Lulu here. Take a breather and think happy thoughts. Celly, Lulu, if you must know, it’s been seventeen hours since your planet’s destruction and ten since its restoration. It seriously took me seven hours to find the sun and moon. Did you know they both flew off in opposite directions when the planet went supernova? I had to flitter across millions of miles .”
Aaron grinned sheepishly, “I also tried to restore the planet to just how it was before it exploded… so… I mean, I think I got all of it, but if I missed anything, feel free to tell me.”
Luna and Celestia visibly slumped in relief.
As Aaron was giving his speech, Juno took Jupiter’s hand and put his other to her lips to tell her to stay quiet. As he tried to sneak away Aaron spoke out.
“I sincerely hope you two aren’t trying to sneak out.”
“N-no, sir; just need some fresh air and I thought I’d spare Jupiter of such a sight, sir!” He then bolted for it, Jupiter in hand.
“Yare yare….” Aaron muttered, lashing out with his arm and sending it extending beyond the two. Once it reached a good twenty feet past Juno, it stretched out, becoming a massive spiderweb of shadow. “Honestly, if you’re going to lie about fresh air, at least wait for me to open a door for you two. Bakayarou.”
Juno skidded to a stop, just keeping Jupiter out of the web. “It was an expression, bakayarou!” he yelled back to him.
“Tch. Troublesome kids.” Aaron reeled back his arm at mach speed, catching both catfolk and bringing them back to him in a large net. “Seriously, what did you think was going to happen?”
“I thought you’d let us go. You’re being a real douche right now, you know that?” Juno deadpanned at the man with his net-arm around him and his sister.
“Do forgive me for caring more about the safety of a planet with about three billion sentient inhabitants over your physical comfort.” Aaron spoke condescendingly, waving his free hand as if he were nothing but an arrogant, stereotypical nobleman. Or a very sassy butler.
Juno just pouted, knowing that the shadow-man was right--not that he liked it.
“Besides, it’s not like you could get out without my permission. And even if you could, we’re floating in Void space, you’d start dissolving as soon as you hit the open…. air, for lack of a better term.” Aaron released the net and strode off towards the princesses, infusing them with a whole rainbow of various healing magics. Spell tomes fluttered around him like massive butterflies, glowing with arcane lights and providing spells for him to work.
The two runaways fell in a heap, Jupiter on top of Juno. “Sorry, Jupiter. Here.” Juno helped his sister up. “Now, since you’re trying to make a point for me, can Jupiter go?” He still avoided looking at the princesses, but he was at least owning up to his mistakes.
“I would, but your sister has terrible impulse control. I’m a little concerned that the lightning magic in her will have some sort of side effects over time, it certainly seems to have made her the exuberant girl she is now. I’m keeping the both of you here for now– you need emotional control, she needs impulse control.” Aaron waved a hand over each princess, scanning them and confirming their slow recovery.
Juno thought about this for a while, looking at his sister--who was still blindfolded. “Can we at least go somewhere else? No offense to your healing magics, but I don’t really want to look at… them,” he gestured to the princesses in the room.
Aaron slapped his forehead, the weird spots above the visor looking white splotch on his face narrowing. “D’oh! Right, sorry princesses, I’ll be back soon. Mini-mes, keep up the good work.” A chorus of salutes and affirmations rang out, mini-Aarons floating back into the air and launching healing spells at the four living corpses.
“Shall we?” Aaron held open a spontaneously appearing door, motioning for the two to step through.
There was a slight glare from Juno for Aaron’s forgetfulness, but he lead Jupiter through the opening regardless. The door opened to a well furnished sitting room; in fact, it was the same room that Aaron had commenced tea time in about a day prior.
“Is this better?” Aaron asked, already preparing tea.
“Much,” Juno said, taking off Jupiter’s blindfold.
“Hey! I know this place!” she said happily as she walked around the room, messing with the decorations.
“Yes you do. It is, in fact, that same room that I teleported us two and Flutters to when I cleaned your house and did the whole ‘tea time’ thing.” Aaron smiled indulgently, back to human for the time being.
“Oh,” she said dumbly, setting a clock down before taking a seat and placing her hands in her lap; trying to be calm, but obviously not very.
“Well then, why don’t you two take a seat? It’s about tea time again anyway.” Aaron poured out some tea for the three of them and sat in his favorite arm chair, sipping at the warm liquid.
“You really like that chair, don’t you?” Jupiter pointed out childishly right after the narrator pointed it out. “Can I sit in it?”
“Not while I’m still in it, but you’ll have plenty of time to indulge later. Back to business. Now, our arrangement as it stands right now is as follows. In return for me providing you both control training–yes, Jupiter, you need control training; you have terrible impulse control–I get two new employees to help me manage my shop. Fair wages and everything. And yes, that includes dental.”
“What about insurance?” Juno asked.
“That too.”
“You really like to monologue, too,” Jupiter pointed out, re-reading the paragra- Jupiter! Quit being too meta! “Sorry!” She yelled, back in her normal plane of existence.
“Yes, yes I do. It allows me to cram a very large amount of information into essentially nothing more than about a minute or two of straight talking at best.”
“I see….” Jupiter was wide-eyed at this sage information she was just handed. Taking a notebook out of nowhere, she began scribbling on a seemingly random page.
“I think that would be alright; if the princesses are fit to protect their world without us, that is,” Juno said, diplomatically crossing his arms.
“That they are. Reduced in power and ability though I may be, I still have enough left to tell that there’s nothing to really defend against in the future, save for the occasional interdimensional traveler.”
MEANWHILE
A meteor crashes into Juno and Jupiter’s home planet, having crossed the galaxy for many millennia to find its destination. The soft dirt of Equus was it’s new home after crashing through the atmosphere. Once it was snugly embedded in the dirt, out burst a frothing evil that none had seen before.
“I AM THE LORD OF ALL AND I SHALL ENSLAVE ALL ON THIS PLA- ” The being was cut off as a small chunk of the meteor, which had broken off earlier in the fall, slammed into his head, taking it clean off.
The threat was ended then and there.
Nobody ever noticed the difference.
BACK TO THE SHOPPE
Aaron waved a hand at the window, showing off a glowing orb floating serenely among the chaotic backdrop of the Void. “See? It’s sky blue. That means good things.”
Juno stared at it blankly for a moment as Jupiter seemed completely and totally enthralled.
“I see.” He was not impressed.
“What, were you expecting a laser light show and an angelic chorus? Sorry, only special Universes get that treatment. Like the ones I built myself, to name a few.” Aaron shrugged, “Now then, the princesses should be done healing by tomorrow, so we’ll make a quick stop to drop ‘em off later. You both begin tomorrow.” That being said, he then proceeded to drop a pair of pamphlets in front of Juno and Jupiter, both with Aaron’s signature logo. “Read those to get an idea of what you’ll be doing. Keep them, too. They’re full of useful information for any situation.”
“Woah, woah, woah. We still haven’t agreed to this,” Juno pointed out while Jupiter flipped through the pamphlet, looking at the pictures only.
“Right, you haven’t. You still need to sign contracts to ensure you both get fair deals out of this.” Aaron waved a pair of contracts, sliding them into place in front of their respective recipients.
“No, I mean our world. If you’re out here, that must mean there are others. Couldn’t there be some that would attack our world? If there’s nobody to protect it, it could be in danger.” Juno still took the contract, beginning to read it over.
“Eh, I put some shields in place, also I… uh… I also sorta own your Universe now. So now nobody in the Void can screw with it without me coming down on them.”
Juno deadpanned at him. “Slaver much?”
“What? It’s not like I’m gonna do anything with it. Most of the time I just let them be… unless they massively screw up, but that’s different.”
He sighed, finally giving in. He quickly read through his contract, then traded it for his sister’s, making sure it was also alright while Jupiter folded his into a paper airplane.
“Jupiter, sign here.” He put a pen and her contract in front of her. She did as she was told.
Juno unfolded his contract. “But I worked so hard on it!” Jupiter protested, but ended up quietly pouting.
Aaron received the signed contracts. “Excellent! Now, there’s no real official uniform, but I’ve taken the liberty of filling your rooms with extra clothes, and whatever was in your cottage. My only requirement is that you look decently professional and wear a name tag. You both start tomorrow, read the pamphlets, don’t use the store wifi to look up pornography, yadda yadda yadda.” He set down his tea cup and snapped, spawning two glowing arrows, one blue, the other pink. “Follow the arrows. Your rooms are right across the hall from each other, and mine is just at the end of the hall. Now, the rest of the pamphlet covers the important things, so off with ye. It’s getting late, and the store opens at eight in the morning.” With that, Aaron disappeared, leaving behind the faint smell of dark chocolate and an echoing chuckle. The arrows started blinking, pointing out the door.
Juno was beyond confused.
“Eight in the morning relevant to what ?!”
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Ju&Ju's Bizarre Adventure Part 1: Shadow Blood
Juno and Jupiter awoke at the butt-crack of dawn to a horrifyingly loud sound that may have been music .
“What the hell’s that racket?” Juno asked, trying to cover his ears with a pillow.
“I’m not sure, but it sounds like fun!” Jupiter said in excitement from right next to him.
“GAH!!” Juno fell out of the bed, surprised that his sister was right next to him. “What are you doing in my bed?” he asked from the floor, rubbing his sore head.
“Well, I’d never slept in this place before and I wanted something familiar, so I snuck in and snuggled up next to you,” she said, touching her fingertips together while making a cute puppydog face.
Juno sighed, looking up to his sister, who was still looking like she expected to be reprimanded for her actions. “That’s fine, Jupiter. Just, next time, ask me before I go to bed, alright?” He stood up, fixing his wrinkled clothing and extending a hand to help her up. “Now, let’s go see what that noise is about.”
“Thanks.” She took the hand, standing with her brother, and they made their way to the door.
The door burst open as the racket ended, revealing Aaron standing there in his normal shadow form, though with lines of glowing white and somehow darker shadow crisscrossed over his torso so as to give him the appearance of wearing a tuxedo.
“Mornin’ you two. And how did you sleep last night?” he asked, holding up two steaming plates of waffles.
Jupiter’s response was “WAFFLES!!” as she dove at the shadow-man, grabbing for the plates in his shadow-hands.
Juno’s was more civil. “Well, it was alright–until you decided to blare four-thirty-three in our ears,” he deadpanned at Aaron.
“Actually I think I did the exact opposite, don'tcha think? Waffles?” Aaron dropped the other plate of waffles in Juno’s hands along with a glass of milk.
Jupiter was already digging in, looking adorable as she shredded the pieces of cooked dough to pieces. Juno use a fork and knife.
“Itadakimasu, Aaron,” Juno said through a mouthful.
“Itadakimasu!!” Jupiter yelled, still devouring the poor waffle.
“Mhmm. Well, eat up you two. Since today’s your first day, it’ll be pretty light. You’ll get in a few hours of shop work, and then we can break for lunch and do some control work. How’s that sound?” Aaron dusted his hands and snapped, returning to human form still dressed in a tuxedo. With another snap, he reverted to a simple, black, collared shirt and a pair of khaki pants. A name tag appeared on his chest as he walked out. “See you downstairs, follow the arrows.”
“I wonder why he was in a tux in the first place,” Juno wondered aloud.
“I LIEK WAFFULS!!” Jupiter yelled, still devouring the small stack she was given.
“I know you do.” Juno chuckled as he watched his sister eat.
Down in the shop a little later, Aaron stood in front of the pair of siblings with a pair of nametags.
“Alright you two,” he started, “These are your name tags. Don’t lose them. Wear them on your shirt, preferably on the left side, over the heart.” Just to make a point, Juno put it on his right. Jupiter put hers on upside down… for some reason.
“......” Aaron facepalmed.
“Meh, I’ve dealt with worse. Okay, that aside, follow the arrows. You’ll have a rotating shift of duties for a while, so read your pamphlets. You’ll definitely need them on some of the shifts.” With that, two arrows sprang into being, directing Juno towards a mop and Jupiter towards a clipboard.
“Juno, you’re on mopping, since it’s hard to set water on fire. Jupiter, you’re on inventory because it’ll probably help with your impulse control. Do either job wrong and you’ll get spanked. And by spanked, I mean you’ll get lightly tasered in the butt.” Aaron held up a sparking hand, just to make a point.
“Yessir!” Jupiter yelled, saluting him rather amateurishly.
They went their separate ways, starting their jobs without much argument. Jupiter went to checking the nearly infinite stock that the store carried while Juno mopped, lighting the water on fire as he went to dry it again.
“Juno, that fire better not reach the carpet. Keep it on low burn to steam out the water if you have to, but keep it on the tiles, kay?” Aaron kept vigil behind his desk, working through a mountain of paperwork, seemingly not even looking at the two with his visor-like shadow-face.
The tip of the page he was currently holding began to light, quickly igniting the rest of the page. Juno was revealed deadpanning at Aaron across the room.
“I have more control over my power than you think.” To make a point, he mopped right next to the carpet and lit a fire right next to it. The carpet came away as it was before.
“Congratulations Juno, you just burnt the report that signed you on as a paid employee. You’re not getting a paycheck this month. And if you keep it up, all of us will be homeless within two. Control is key, dumbass. Rule one: You burn my papers, you screw everyone over.” Just to drive the point home, a bright red X burned its way into Juno’s face, right above his left eyebrow. “Two more of those and you’re getting a real asswhooping. Try not to fuck up again, baka.”
“One, I believe I just showed control--if not with the paper, then with the mop. Two, if you’re so powerful to bring the dead to life why can’t you resurrect a simple paper? Three, didn’t you say that our punishment was a tasering to the ass? Four, doesn’t all this make you the baka here?” His deadpan couldn’t have gotten more deadpan-y.
Aaron stood and strode over to Juno, presence filling and darkening the room as he walked. “One, emotional control . Just because you control where your fire goes doesn’t mean you won’t do something stupid in petty revenge, like burn an important document. Two, Void paper . Important documents are written on tamper-proof substances, idiot. How the hell you managed to burn it is beyond me. Three, you’re doing your job correctly, and for that I must commend you. However, idiocy is rewarded by three strikes. Four, if you call me a baka again, I’ll show you just what goes on in this shadowy brain of mine. Trust me, a single glimpse was enough to drive Zeus to a gibbering wreck.” He lifted Juno by the throat and brought him up to his suddenly incredibly high-up face. The visor narrowed and the two mysterious spots expanded, revealing that what was thought to be a face was actually just a mouth.
Aaron’s face was now the stuff of nightmares, a jagged grin set under a pair of malevolent eyes. “So, that clear?”
Choking from the shadow’s grip, he nodded affirmative. Aaron dropped him to the ground gasping for air. The oppressive aura radiating from the shadow disappeared, leaving him back at his normal height and expression. “See, this is why I decided to take you in for control training. What if you’d done that to someone who wasn’t quite so forgiving? Hmm? You might have lost your head or worse. If I wasn’t so able to repair things, I might have just killed you when you blew up your Equus.”
Juno growled, realizing exactly how much power his employer had for the first time. Without saying a word, he went back to his work, making sure not to singe anything.
“Good boy. Now, mop as much as you can before lunch, then we’ll work on control right after, mmkay? I’m gonna get another document going to replace the one you somehow burned. Remember, three strikes.” Aaron sat back behind his desk, drawing a paper out of nowhere and resuming his work on his mountain.
Jupiter was deep in the stacks of objects, making sure everything was supposedly in their correct place and nobody stole anything… even though they were the only one’s who’ve been in the shop since they got there.
“Rocket shoes. These can fly?” She puts the shoes on and examines them, finding no way of activation. “Well, that’s a lost cause.” As she was taking them off, the rockets deployed and she went flying all around the room, crashing into things and causing a general mess. 10,000 Volts of electricity proceeded to zap her in the right buttcheek, dislodging the shoes and sending her crashing onto a convenient mattress.
“I can fly!” Music starts to play inexplicably, singing “she can fly, she can fly, she can fly!”
THE SOUND THEY PUT BETWEEN SCENES IN A BLOOPERS CLIP (BLIP)
“Gurren Lagann… what’s that?” She picked up an action figure that was two-hundredths the size of the actual Gurren Lagann. “Is this it?” Examining the toy for a moment, she sets it back down. “I guess so.” She checks that item off her list.
(BLIP)
“Canned beets? I wonder why this is in the…” she looks up to find she’s suddenly in the food isle. “Well, that explains that.” She checks it off the list, satisfied that she’d done her job.
Suddenly, there was a slight thumping.
“Huh? I wonder what that is.” She follows the sound to find a can that was labeled “canned beets” with the second “e” in “beets” written on a separate paper and taped over an “a.”
She stared at the can for a second, then looks to her list and realizes that she read it wrong.
“Canned beats.” Picking up a can, the vibrations thrumming in her hand, she wonders what beats look like when canned. “I’m sure he won’t mind if I open one.” This was all it took for her to convince herself.
Those beats can still be heard roaming the corridors of Aaron’s shop to this day. Not that anyone really minded.
(BLIP)
“Oh! Wedding dresses!!” Jupiter squeed as she found a pretty, fluffy white one.A few minutes later and she was wearing it.“Do you, Jupiter, take this man to be your husband?” she asked herself in a priest-ish voice.“I do!” she responded.“And do you, Mr. Mannequin take Jupiter to be your wife?”“I do.” Her voice dropped an octave, sounding quite awkward coming from the girl.“You may now kiss the bride.” Jupiter pulled the mannequin into a passionate kiss.After a few moments of making out with the inanimate object, she realized she was kissing something used to display clothing. She let it go, watching with a light blush as it fell to the floor, lifeless as ever.“W-welp! On to the next thing!” she barked nervously.
(BLIP)
“M-m-m-maid outfits?!” Jupiter pulled the black and white costume out of a box, finding the fabric and lace to be of only the best quality. “I-I should try it o-on... just to make sure it’s working pr-properly!” Yet again, her weak will to coercion got the better of her and she soon found herself in a skimpy maid outfit.Just then Aaron walked in.“Jupiter! I was just going to check up on y-” He spotted the girl, frozen in the isle, blushing a deep crimson.Aaron slowly backed away, not saying another word.“That girl, I swear…” he said after he was around the corner.Aaron disappeared from view, leaving a faint hint of ozone and chocolate ice cream behind.“Th-that scent…” Jupiter mumbled to herself, glancing over to Mr. Mannequin who was still lying on the ground where she left him.Her blush grew even more.
(BLIP)
“Evil crystals of semi-ultimate power.”The name was enough.“Oh, there it is.”The sound of pencil on paper, supposedly checking something off, could be heard.
(BLIP)
“Omnitools. Huh….” After a moment Jupiter found a glowing orange gauntlet with a hovering disk over the back of the palm. “Hmm… this looks like it, I guess.” She picked it up and put it on, out of curiosity more than anything. “I wonder how it-” Pressing a button, the wall she’d been pointing at exploded.The gauntlet was replaced on the shelf she found it and she walked away.A light shock ran through her again.
(BLIP)
“Excalibur. Why does that sound familiar?” she asked herself as she walked to the next shelf. “Oh yeah! Wasn’t it that sword that made Arthur a king?” She looked at the shelf, finding at least three dozen exact copies of a holy-looking sword.“So much for the one king.”
(BLIP)
“Baymax? What’s that?” A small trinket fell from the top shelf and bopped Jupiter on the head. “Ow!” she whined, rubbing the sore spot.Three beeps could be heard, followed by the sound of an inflating balloon. Jupiter turned to see a giant marshmallow-esque thing take a quick look around and spot her. It then made its way towards her with a repetitive, robotic walk.When it finally did reach her, standing a comfortable foot and a half away from her, it raised a hand and waved a circular motion in the air. “Hello, I am Baymax; your personal healthcare companion.” The thing’s voice was not monotonous, but it was obviously computerized.“Uh…” Jupiter said, not completely sure how to respond to what she was seeing.“I heard a sound of distress. What seems to be the trouble?” Baymax asked with a caring tilt of the head.“O-oh, I just, uh….” Jupiter picked the trinket up, which happened to be a glass tiger. “This fell on my head, that’s all. I’m fine,” she assured Baymax.“On a scale of one to ten-” a visual aid appeared on Baymax’s chest, showing a basic scale of smiley faces in progressing shades of yellow to red and happiness to pain, “-how would you rate your pain?”“Um… a one?” She seemed more like she was asking than telling, but Baymax seemed to take it as an answer. “I’m fine, really.”“Does it hurt when I touch it?” He reached over to Jupiter and placed his puffy hand on her head and began rubbing.“Uh....” She was surprised by the sudden contact, but found herself melting into the soft, pillowy hand of Baymax. “I-it feels g-g-good…” she moaned out.“I see. I will continue to administer rubbing to sooth your pain.”Several minutes of rubbing followed this encounter.
(BLIP)
“Captain America’s shield. Isn’t that made of vibranium?” She looked around, finding the iconic defense item leaned up against a shelf. A little jingle could be heard from a speaker placed behind it.“When Captain America throws his mighty shield~ All those who oppose his shield must yield~” “Weird,” she said, picking it up. “I wonder….” She put it on her arm, then performed the throwing motion he always did, launching the shield like a discus. It bounced off several walls and shelves before coming right back to her. Sadly, she knew not how to catch it and ended up ducking under it. It rebounded for several more minutes before coming to a rest right back where she found it.“That’s enough of that,” she said, a little shaken up. She hurriedly checked the box and moved on.
(BLIP)
“Ectoplasm. Like the ghost goo?”
[The following transcript is too graphic for the rating of this story. We apologize for the censorship, but ‘tis the rule of our world]
(BLIP)
“Starship Enterprise. Wasn’t that a spaceship?” Jupiter asked, rounding a corner to find a nearly infinitely large hangar, housing everything from tie fighters to the Death Star. “Woah! Oh, there it is.” Off to the left was Enterprise, polished to a shine and ready for exploration.
(BLIP)
“Tamp-” She stopped herself short, taking a quick look around with a light blush adorning her face. Finding it, she crossed it off her list and moves on.
(BLIP)
“Makeup. Oh! I love makeup!”
[FIVE HOURS LATER]
“I’m a pretty princess!” Jupiter had makeup all over her face, the lipstick smeared across her cheeks like the joker and more eyeshadow than a goth teen.
(BLIP)
“Lingerie.” Jupiter, in her innocent mind, took a look around for this item. When she did stumble upon it, she didn’t quite understand the implications and the uses of such an item.“This wouldn’t cover a girl at all! Isn’t the point of underwear to cover the private parts?” she complained.She marked it off, still not completely understanding.
(BLIP)
“Chibi Aaron.” Jupiter froze for a good three seconds. Rereading what she just read, then re-reread it. Then re-re-reread it, just to make sure she wasn’t mistaken.Her eyes shot up after the third reread, finding the plush figurine in seconds. She broke physics with how fast she glomped the doll.Snuggling ensued over the next three days; but, due to Aaron’s store’s void physics, this was all condensed into five minutes of EXTREME CUDDLES!!!
(BLIP)
“Necro-... Necrono-... Neco-...” Jupiter tried to pronounce, but couldn’t quite get it out. “That one book!” she decided to call it, “Where is it....” The book was buried under a pile of papers, all labeled “do not open!”“Here it is!” She reached down, taking the book in her arm and opened it to a random page.“Moving on!”
(BLIP)
“Chalk. Simple enough, I guess. Strangely normal, actually.” Confused, Jupiter walked around a little, finding the chalk on a large concrete slab… drawing… with themselves… and no help from anyone.“I see....” She walked away, marking the chalk as present.
“Well then, you two. Excellent work today. Barring a few hitchups, I’d say you two are on your ways to becoming some pretty damn fine employees.” Aaron praised the two of them, leading them through a door and into a dining room already filled with a buffet of food. “Now dig in, we got a pretty long day ahead of us tomorrow.”“Hai!” Jupiter shouted with glee, purring as she walked over to the food and dug in daintily.Juno, on the other hand, was a little more angry with Aaron; taking his seat and eating the food simply because he needed sustenance lest he die.Aaron sat and began eating as well, reverting back to human form just because he felt like it.And so the family ate.Fin
Something Something Something Something
The Void. A place of pure, unadulterated chaos. Within this infinite expanse of weirdness flew a single ship. Sleek and aerodynamic, this ship had a logo emblazoned proudly on its side:
‘AARON HEIBAI’S INFINITE EMPORIUM OF EVERYTHING’
At the helm of this totally-not-the-SSV Normandy-why-would-you-even-suggest-that ship stood a single being, the aforementioned Aaron Heibai. The shadow was, at the moment, garbed in his normal–albeit slightly androgynous–human form, steering the ship with incredible precision.
That is, until something popped out of a dimensional tunnel and splattered into the windshield, causing the startled shadow to fly backward with an awkward squawk.
“MOTHERFUCK!”
Expletives spewed, he took a closer look at the object clouding the windscreen, making sure to park the ship while at it.
“Wait…” he muttered, flicking his braid back over his shoulder, “Is that…. Kat Shifter? Huh. She’s gotten more… supermodel-ish. Neat.” Kat waved awkwardly from the other side of the windshield.
Aaron blinked and slapped himself on the forehead, reaching through the glass and phasing Kat inside, taking care not to touch anywhere inappropriate.
“Hey Kat. Sorry about splattering you all over the windshield… eh, how’s life?” Aaron leaned up against the steering console, buffing his nails against his button-up shirt.
She rubbed her head, groaning. “Ah satané, that sucked! This is really not turning out to be my week.”
“... You okay?” Aaron leaned in, tilting his head in curiosity.
“No, I just match now. I hurt both physically and emotionally.” She pulled herself to her feet, dusting off her clothes. She stretched and cracked a few bones before turning to meet her host. “Hello there, I don’t believe we’ve met… besides you knowing me, but hey! At least I know I finally have a reputation.”
“We have met. I think. I used to go by the name ‘Umbra Shadow-Walker’. Though, considering my loss of position, I now am forced to go by Aaron Heibai. At your service.” Aaron bowed with a flourish, creating little sparkles and beams of light to further enhance the weirdness present. As he rose, the ship suddenly rocked with a muffled cry of ‘Sorry!’ reaching through the closed door. Aaron stumbled, and in true protagonist style, he managed to fall straight into Kat, causing the both of them to crash into the floor, Aaron accidentally landing straight between her breasts.
Suddenly, Jupiter burst through the door. “Aaron! I heard a loud noise and wa-” She then noticed Aaron and Kat in their compromising position and began to blush. “I-I-I-I’m so-so sorry! I had no clue you had a g-g-girlfriend over!” she said, turning around to face away from them. “I-I’ll leave y-y-you two a-alone.” She then ran down the hall again, Juno arriving as she was leaving.
“Aaron, what did you do to make Jupi-” He, too, turned his head to see the two of them. His hair and body burst into flames. “YOU MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE, I’LL KILL
Kat’s mind had gone blank for a moment there, first the fall then the strange girl and now the even stranger guy. It was a little too much for the poor woman. “SHUT UP, ALL OF YOU!! ” and with that extreme use of the Royal Canterlot Voice came a devastating gravity explosion.
Aaron, still somehow dazed, flew into Juno with the speed of a bullet, slamming the two of them out the door and into the massive open area that comprised the shop. Sixteen miles of conveniently empty shelves later, the two finally rolled to a stop at Jupiter’s feet, covered in splinters and, in Juno’s case, blood and bruises. Aaron, as per usual, had immediately shifted to shadow form upon the first impact, and was thus completely fine.
“Oh, hello Jupiter. Lovely weather we’ve got, ain’t it?” Aaron spoke as if he hadn’t just been flung sixteen miles by an angry blonde with gravity powers.
Jupiter, something glistening in her eyes, simply turned and ran away, soft sobs coming from her direction and small puddles of water-like liquids trailing behind her.
“... Okay then?” Aaron stared, confused, at Jupiter’s retreating back before pushing Juno’s unconscious weight off his legs and rocketing after Jupiter. As he halted in front of the distraught catgirl, he swept her into a loose hug, spinning her around and planting her in front of him with a casual, “You seem sad, is it because of what happened back in the control room? I swear, that was an unfortunate accident. I think it’s because someone hit one of the gyro-stabilizers and made me fall over.” As he spoke, he delivered a half-hearted glare at Juno’s unconscious, slightly bloodied form.
“So… was that it, or was it something else?” Aaron placed a hand on Jupiter’s head, ruffling her hair.
Jupiter’s expression was hidden behind her hair, but it was obvious she’d been crying. Her face was wet with fresh tears. “I-I-I didn’t kn-know you had a g-girlfriend, Aaron. I sh-should’ve known,” she laughed cynically to herself. “How could a perfect guy like you ever want a girl like me?” she mumbled under her breath, breaking out of his hug and walking away; knowing that if Aaron wanted to follow, he easily could.
Aaron, meanwhile, stared befuddled at her retreating back, “Girlfriend? Me? WHAT!? I don’t have a girlfriend! I haven’t even had my… urges... restored to full functionality yet! … Wait, what was that about perfect? … If you were referring to me, you’re dead wrong, Jupiter. I’m about as far from perfect as possible. I ramble, I monologue, I swear like a sailor, I’ve got a kill count longer than the circumferences of several Universes, and I fuck up… a lot. Best to count how many times I haven’t fucked up, really.”
Jupiter stopped walking away. Standing a few feet from Aaron, she begins her own monologue. “You may be all those things, but you’re so much more.” She turned slightly. “You’re powerful beyond all imagination, you’re rich with literally everything, even if you screw up all the time you try your hardest at everything, and–last but not least–” She turned around to look into Aaron’s eyes with tears in her own, a small smile gracing her lips. “You care.”
She turned back around, obviously beginning to cry again. “I hope you make her very happy.”
And she teleported away.
“.... Did she not hear the part where I literally yelled that I still don’t have those kinds of urges?” Aaron wondered idly, scratching his cheek.
“I-I’mma… fuckin’... kill you… Heibei….” Juno was still lying on the floor, covered in wounds and his own blood.
“I care, huh? Well, my boss always did say I cared too much about the little people… Ah fuck him, I was a little person once.” Aaron ignored Juno’s weakened threats, still scratching idly at his cheek. “Oh hey, you’re awake. Need some help?”
“Fuck… you….”
“So this is where you ended up,” Kat mused, startling Aaron. “Huh, didn’t expect so much power to have been put into that blast. Sorry ‘bout that.”
Aaron shrugged, “Eh, I managed to redirect my flight path into the conveniently empty shelves–strange how I put them all in a spiral–so there wasn’t any real harm done… except to Juno, but he’s always threatening to kill me for some reason, so he sorta deserves to be beaten up by a bunch of inanimate, poorly constructed wooden shelves.” As if on cue, all sixteen miles of empty shelving collapsed into splinters and chunks of lowest-bidder plywood. Including one shelf that landed, mostly intact, on Juno.
“Oops.”
“What kind of fresh enfer did I end up in this time?” Kat asks herself, bewildered out of her mind.
Aaron kicked the rubble off of Juno, healing him with another boot to the groin, and shrugged, “Eh, it’s just my crazy, physics defying shop of infinite products. And yes , it does include an adult section… unfortunately.”
Juno stood, holding the aforementioned groin. “Y-you’re an asshole…” he muttered before shaking it off and standing tall again, the full effects of the healing… thing Aaron did taking the pain/damage away. “So, who’s this?”
“Juno, Kat Shifter. Kat Shifter, Juno. Welcome to my little shop of horrors~” Aaron grinned, shifting back into shadow form for the extra effect of having a smiling shadow with a glowing jack o’ lantern face. The scary kind, not the cute ones on pumpkins.
“Uh… huh,” Kat slowly said. “So you’re Umbra, huh? Auric told me about you… not all that nice about it, but people change over the years, know what I mean?”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Kat.” He put his hand out for her to shake. As she shook his hand she received a stern glare from Juno.
“Hey, what’s with the look?” she asked, a little miffed from the cold reception. “What? Is this hate on Kat week or some merde?”
Juno glanced over at Aaron, then back to Kat. “Let’s just say you hurt my sister,” he said ominously.
“You have a sister? Was it that girl from earlier? Why did she run off crying anyway?” She looked at Aaron, completely confused. “Am I the only one on this bloody ship who has no idea what the putain de enfer is going on?”
Aaron facepalmed and sighed, “She’s apparently got a crush on me… and thinks that you’re my girlfriend. Which is totally a non-issue. I lost my ability to reproduce after I became a SysAdmin, and even now, my human form can’t… uh… y’know… since I spend so much time in shadow form. I’d have to spend a feckin’ month without powers to restore them with any sort of speed…. no way in hell.” He shrugged, waving his arm negligently and repairing the shoddy shelves with but a thought. “Anyway, that’s what’s happening, so… yeah.” Juno simply gave Aaron a death glare for his apparent knowledge and inaction of such feelings from Jupiter. Instead of listening to what happened next; he, too, ‘ported away.
Kat sighed, putting her hand to her forehead. “Yeah, no. I’m not anyone’s girlfriend anymore. I think I’ll go talk to her, set this record straight. Directions, please? This place is too satané big.”
“Lesse…. it was…. actually, here.” Aaron thought about giving directions, but in an infinite expanse of shelves, it occurred to him that that would have been a bad idea. Therefore, he pulled open a random door, connecting it to the hallway just outside of Jupiter’s room.
“After you, Kat.” Aaron studiously stood away from Kat, so as to not repeat another incident such as the one just minutes prior.
“Merci,” she nodded, walking down the aisles.
Aaron followed, closing the door behind the two and thus revealing the scene to be not unlike one straight from a five star hotel’s hallway. “And this is the residential quarter. Well, there’s only three bedrooms here and some other stuff, but it’s home. Jupiter’s is on the right, with the little cat doodles all over the door.”
Kat looked at Aaron for a moment before sighing and shaking her head. “Not even gonna ask.” She walked up to the referred door and knocked three times. “Hello? Anybody home?”
“G-go away!” Jupiter shouted from within. “I w-want to be alone right now.” There was audible sniffling from the other side of the door.
“Um… okay? I just wanted to meet you properly,” Kat yelled at the door. “I’m Kat Shifter. And you are?”
The sniffling seemed to lessen, though not by much. “J-Jupiter,” she said, a little calmer than before.
“Well Jupiter, I think we got off on the wrong foot. First off, I would like to point out that I am not dating your friend, Aaron. I’m single, actually.” Kat sighed, mumbling to herself, “Just got through a breakup, actually.”
The sniffling seemed to all but cease.
Aaron blinked and stashed his yoyo away inside his shadowy torso, returning back to human directly after, “You did? Huh… It wasn’t a bad breakup, was it? Those are the worst… or so I’m told.”
“It’s… complicated,” Kat told him. “Could you come out, Jupiter? I’d like if we could be friends.”
A few moments passed before there was some shuffling from beyond the door. The shuffling seemed to be coming towards the door. When it seemed to reach said door, it stopped for another moment before the door slowly swung open. Beyond was a still-crying Jupiter with a plushie Aaron clutched in her arms.
“Y-you mean it?” she asked in--possibly--the most adorable way ever.
Kat stared at Jupiter for a moment before squeeing. “Oh mon dieu! You are so cu~te!” She quickly wrapped the girl in a tight hug, smiling widely as she squeezed her. “You are so adorable I could just hug and squeeze you all day~!”
“Nuuuuuuuu!!” Jupiter screamed as she was bombarded with hugs. She teleported back into her room and slammed the door, keeping the others out. “No huggies!!”
“Aww!” Kat pouted, crossing her arms. “But you’re so cute! Come on~! Just one more hug?”
“No!” Jupiter shouted, stomping her foot from beyond the safety and security her door provided.
Aaron stood, bewildered, on the sidelines. “Was… was that a plushie of me in my shadow form? … Maybe I should stop stocking those…”
“Well, you’re no fun. I thought you cute people liked hugs, so much for that thought.” She huffed, leaning her back against Jupiter’s door. “Oh, but uh, yes, I meant it. I’m not dating Aaron,” Kat eyed the Void Dweller. “Nor am I interested.”
The door opened once more, causing Kat to fall backwards into the arms of Jupiter. “Thank you,” she whispered into her ear, “But Juno already cleared everything up with me!” She began laughing, Kat still in her arms. “You know, you’d be much more Kat-like if you had ears.” Jupiter felt her own ears.
Aaron studiously ignored the what-most-men-would-consider-an-insult from Kat and went back to re-braiding his suddenly luscious and flowing mane of hair. “Stupid hair… stupid tangles… stupid splinters embedded in my hand…”
“I don’t think so. Not a big fan of cats,” Kat informed her. “Kittens are cute, cats Kat no likey.” She teleported out of Jupiter’s embrace to behind her, hugging the girl close again. “Got ya!” she laughed.
“Nuuuuuu!!!” she began screaming again, but quickly gave up now that Kat was in her room. She became oddly still, though, which tipped Kat off to something being wrong.
Kat looked at Jupiter oddly for a moment, but shrugged. “Now, where did I put that brush?” she asked herself, rifling through her jacket, keeping one arm wrapped around the other girl. “Aha!” Kat proclaimed, pulling out a hairbrush. “Brushy brush time~!”
“Y-you don’t like c-c-cats ?” Jupiter sobbed lightly.
“I don’t like grown up cats,” Kat explained. “They’re jerks. Looking down on people like they do. But when they’re cute and huggable like you, then I love ‘em to pieces!”
A sudden crashing noise from outside entered the room along with a heaping pile of swearing and an imperceptibly massive shadowy aura of pure frustration.
“F***ing braid! F***ing hair tie! F***ing f***er f***ing f***edy f***er f***-sake f***ing f**********! F***ing censor bleeps! ”
With a final explosion of shadows, Aaron gave up and slumped into Jupiter’s room with a despondent gaze and an impossibly fantastic curtain of raven hair billowing behind him.
“A-Aaron… is that your hair?” Jupiter asked in wide-eyed awe.
“Unfortunately, yes. Yes it is.” Aaron idly brushed the ceaselessly billowing locks of shimmering hair behind his shoulder, stuffing a ruined hair-tie in his pocket as he did so.
“C-... can I…?” She was still staring at his hair. There was something… off with the way she spoke.
“Dude, you need a haircut… badly,” Kat commented, brushing Jupiter's hair softly with the hairbrush.
“I have. You should have seen how long my braid was six millennia ago. Thing was longer than Rapunzel’s hair.... Just as billowy, too; so I had an eighty foot long cloud of hair following me whenever my hair-tie broke.” He huffed, clearly annoyed at his hair. “I can’t even cut it shorter anymore… it just grows back instantly…”
Jupiter reached a hand out towards Aaron, seemingly wanting to play with his hair. “P-please…” she begged.
“You can play with the hair when Aunty Kat is done brushing yours.”
Jupiter began to cry again, tears already welling up in her eyes.
Kat sighed, putting away the brush. “Alright, you can play with the hair. We’ll have brushy time later.” She released Jupiter, muttering, “‘Bout as bad as Kuna and yet I still fall for the crying bit.”
“Yay!” She jumped at Aaron, landing in the obscene amount of hair with little more than a soft thump.
The next few minutes didn’t make much sense to everyone except Jupiter, so we’ll skip right to the end result.
Aaron’s hair was back in its original braid form, no longer flowing over the bed he’d been sitting on.
“I have no idea what the hell just happened, but I’m so glad my hair isn’t a cloud anymore that I really don’t care. Prehensile braids are better than clouds of hair no matter what Sailor Pluto says.”
Kat just stared for a moment, before sighing with her face in her hand. “I really need to just give up on this stuff.”
Jupiter was looking back and forth between the two, wondering what was so confusing. “I just braided his hair. I used to do it to Juno all the time!”
“Yeah, that’s why I got it all cut off,” Juno said from the doorway. “You kept playing with it every chance you got.”
“Juno!” Jupiter yelled, standing up and rushing over to her brother to tackle-hug him.
“I see you’ve made up with Kat.” He took the maul-of-a-hug in stride, not moving an inch from his spot.
“Mhm!” she hummed, releasing her brother and turning back. “She likes little girls.” Though she said this in the most innocent way possible, it still managed to sound incredibly dirty.
“Jupiter… We really need to work on your phrasing…” Aaron dropped his face into his hands, braid following soon after to create the effect of a “triple facepalm”. The tuft at the end of the braid splayed out into a hand shape and everything.
“Well, I like girls, but I don’t force myself on anyone unless I’m in heat.”
Juno, who was silently fuming in the doorway, looked at Kat with a hidden rage it would take a normal human millennia to master. “You’re not helping your case.” Sadly, he still needed to work on keeping his anger out of his voice.
Kat just shrugged. “I don’t exactly give a putain de satané. I’ve had the worst week of my life, so there’s not exactly much you can do or say that will have an affect.”
Juno sighed, the fury that was there a moment before vanishing. “Just…” he facepalmed, “don’t touch my sister, alright? That’s all I ask.” He knew he couldn’t win a fight with her. He knew all too well.
“Only unless she wants me to,” Kat shrugged again. “So, now that we’re friends all ‘round, where the putain am I?”
“Pu… puta… put….” Jupiter was trying to pronounce “Putain” as Kat had multiple times moments before. “What does that mean, anyway?” She asked, returning to her pronunciations.
“It’s the ‘f’ word. I can’t say it anyway else. See, when I try to say ‘putain’ it comes out ‘putain’. Get it?”
Jupiter stared at her in confusion. “But you just did say ‘pu-’... ‘put-’... ‘puta-’....”
Aaron sighed. “Jupiter, she just can’t curse in English. If she tries, it comes out in French. Anyway, Kat, you’re in my lovely little shop of horrors, as I had previously stated. Well, massive shop of everything and anything is a bit more appropriate… but yeah. Welcome to my house and workplace.” Aaron flourished with a wave of his hands, and suddenly they were all standing in the main foyer of the shop, right in front of the cashier/information desk. A massive neon sign flared into existence, proclaiming:
‘AARON HEIBAI’S INFINITE EMPORIUM OF EVERYTHING’
“Neat, huh?”
Juno walked behind the desk, put a name tag on and assumed the most bored face a person could muster.
“Welcome to Aaron Heibai’s Infinite Emporium of Everything, where the prices are low and the points don’t matter! How may I help you, madams and sir?” he said in the most “I’ve said this a billion times and I don’t want to say it again, but if I don’t I get the whip- I mean fired” tone Kat had ever heard.
“....” Aaron deadpanned at Juno. “Way to kill the vibes, man.”
Juno pulled a seismometer out from behind the desk and showed Aaron the results of the last few seconds. “There have been no major vibrations in the air or in the infrastructure for the past few minutes, sir.” He continued the same tone.
“..... I’d commend you for your attention to detail, but I’ve got a neon sign to take down.” With a snap of the fingers, the sign vanished. “Good job, Juno.”
“Thank you, sir.” He wasn’t thankful, but if he told him what was really on his mind--which was more along the lines of “fuck you, asshole”--he’d get fired for sure.
‘I can read minds too, Juno. I may be slightly diminished in scope, but I’m still very verypowerful. Don’t worry, it takes more than an insult to make me fire people.’
The thoughts that followed in Juno’s mind nearly brought the shadow-man to that point.
Nearly.
As Aaron and Juno continued their little back and forth, Jupiter took up position near Kat, who resumed brushing the cat-girl.
“Brushy brushy the cutie~,” Kat hummed to herself.
Jupiter said nothing, pouting as she got her hair brushed.
“So… Aaron,” Kat said, interrupting the two guys. “What do you sell in this store, anyway? I’ve never heard of such a place as this.”
Aaron shrugged, “It’s all up there in the name, really. Everything and anything. Souls, robots, robots with souls, soulless robots, toys, toys , food, clothes, books, keys, cars, rocks, mountains, planets, universes, galaxies, dark matter, anti-matter, strange matter, red matter, blue matter, grey goo, nanobots, cellphones, computers, adult material, biological material, corpses, zombies, zombie corpses, vampires, vampire corpses, pets, dementors, Shen Gong Wu, Dragonballs, dragon… balls , dragons, kaiju, kaiju parts, fertilizer, fertilizer , furniture, beds, massage tables, gundams, crystals, rings, jewelry, chaos emeralds, rockets, rocketships, rocket launchers, rocketship launchers, guns, rifles, swords, daggers, shields, staves, sticks, legos, lego carpets, booby traps, booby traps, lingerie, tea, coffee, drinks, alcohol, soda, assorted slime, ass orted slime, eldritch abominations, tentacle monsters, the other kind of tentacle monsters, viruses, bacteria, cures, pathogens, vaccines, potions, tinctures, draughts, fridges, freezers, ice cream, cookies, desserts, deserts, oases, oceans, lakes, streams, bedrock, charcoal, paint, pencils, pens, paper clips, chalk, paper, construction paper, nuclear weapons, WMDs, countries, flags, chargers, games, video games, board games, card games, drinking games, armies, armies-in-a-box, suns, moons, stars, nebulae, holidays, etc etc.”
Kat seemed overwhelmed by the amount of items, but something stood out to her. “Did you say you sell cell phones?”
“Yup. I’ve got every model known to every race in every Universe. Even the ones that us eldritch abominations use.” Aaron held up a weird blotch of light. “See?”
“You wouldn’t happen to have any that can connect across different dimensions and universes, would you?”
Aaron pat down his pockets before facepalming and summoning a phone from god knows where. “This is one of my personal Tokens, since I also used to be a Displaced. It’ll connect to the Tokens of any other Displaced you’ve met, it’ll connect to any number that you know, it’ll even connect to the internet no matter where you are. Oh, and it’s got games, movies, music, it even comes with a free pack of earbuds.”
“Um… I hate to sound picky, but do you think you could turn it into a simple phone? I… I actually was one of those few who hated smart phones.”
“Aww…” Aaron pouted, and threw the phone in the air, catching it as it came down. Once down, he proudly brandished a glossy, black Motorola V3 Razr, with the Motorola logo replaced by a white circle with a smiling, black jack o’ lantern face in the center. “Tada~ Same features, just… well, with more buttons.”
“Ooh,” Kat oggled. “I always wanted one of those!”
“Well, glad to see you’re happy. Now, given the current market value… that’ll be forty five bits. Unless you have some other method of payment, that’s fine too.”
“I don’t have any bits,” Kat admitted. “Would you take gravity crystals as payment?”
“Depends on the quality, but yes. Yes I do.” Aaron held out a hand, floating the phone into the air and clutching a magnifying glass with his free hand.
Kat opened up a portal and pulled out several perfect crystals. “Will these do?”
“Let’s see… wow… haven’t seen such nice crystals in eons … That’ll do very well. Would you like a receipt?”
“Sure, might as well. You do returns, right? Or at least replacements?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry about contacting me, though. Just… if at all possible, toss the thing through a portal to the Void and it’ll come out factory fresh, with all the data preserved. If it’s in the Void, it’ll be nigh indestructible, and it’s almost as strong as Taydenite inside a Universe.” Aaron nodded, tossing the crystals around in complicated maneuvers.
“Well, as long as it can connect to a pocket dimension landline (don’t ask how I set that up), that’s fine by me. I need a way to keep in touch with my nanny.”
“Like I said, instant coverage anywhere. Of course, there’s always the premium package, which gets you extra bandwidth for just three bits a month. Or, rather, a couple shards of crystal dropped into a portal or something. Anywhere conventional physics don’t apply, really.”
“Do I need the extra bandwidth?” Kat asked. “I don’t know all that much about phones.”
“It’ll make phone calls faster and less liable to drop. Then again, that really only applies to standard phones.” Shadows flickered across Aaron’s body as he switched back to shadow form.
“I think I’ll be good as is. It’s already connected to my totem?”
“Yup.”
“Sweet.” Kat flipped it opened and dialed in a number. “...yes, it’s ringing!” They heard a click from the phone. “Yeah, it’s me… uh huh, I can keep in contact now…” she deadpans. “You did what?... well, clean it up and get her in a fresh one… no, I will not raise your pay to do this! It was in the putain de job description!... Just get her down for her nap and I’ll be there as soon as I can… Uh huh, buh-bye.” She clicked it off and sighed, shaking her head. “Stupid nevi, can’t do anything right.”
“Something happen?”
“The nanny is incompetent as all enfer,” she groaned. “I really need to get better at making Minions. I need to practice a lot more.”
“If you say so.” With that, Aaron walked back to the cash register and placed the crystals inside, tossing a receipt over to Kat as well. “So, you need any help getting anywhere?”
“Nah, but would you mind if I stayed the night? I’ve been flying straight through the Void for about five days without rest.”
“Huh… well, that’s no problem. I mean, I’ve already got several rooms, but none of them are exactly set up yet. Jupiter, would you mind terribly if she crashed in your room for the night?”
“N-no! Not at all.” For some reason, Jupiter was fairly flustered.
“Ooh! I get to sleep with the cute cat girl? Yay!” Kat hugged Jupiter’s head, bringing it right between her voluptuous breasts.
“Y-y-yay…!” Jupiter said, blushing heavily and with little actual enthusiasm.
“We’re gonna have so much fun! It’ll be just like a sleepover!” Nobody could confirm it, but there seemed to be a whimper coming from Jupiter.
Aaron said nothing, cranking a lever on the side of the cash register, generating a truly horrifying set of grinding noises as he rended down the crystals and converted them to credits.
“You would have been better off with those as crystals,” Kat cringed from the sound. “They make great power cells.”
“Yeah, but power cells don’t pay rent. I may be in the black, but I still have to pay bills, taxes, rent…”
“To what?” Kat asked, bewildered.
Aaron shuddered. “You… really don’t wanna know.”
There was a few minutes of silence; Kat wondering who could make Aaron scared, Aaron hoping said beings weren’t listening, Juno trying to sneak off and Jupiter twiddling her fingers and waiting for the inevitable.
Aaron shuddered in disgust for a few more seconds, before straightening up and holding out his hand. “Well, I apologize for my momentary case of disgusted shuddering, but I had to repress some… unpleasant… memories. Now then, would you like me to show you back to Jupiter’s room?”
“That’d be nice,” Kat nodded.
“I-I-I can t-take her….” Jupiter was blushing a little, her arms behind her back, and she wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes.
“Oh. Okay then. Well, dinner is in…. hmm… it’s six right now… Dinner will be at eight. Well? Go on, then. I need to start cooking.” Aaron reappeared in standard human form, this time wearing an apron reading ‘I Have What You Want’ in bold, pink letters. He disappeared through a door, through which the sounds of cooking could be heard as steam billowed through the opening.
The two girls stood there for a moment, briefly wondering what he’d be making. “W-well, my room is off this way,” Jupiter said quietly, beginning the short trek to the sleeping quarters.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I was a little overbearing,” Kat said as they walked. “I just can’t control myself when I see something extremely cute. Sorry if that made you feel uncomfortable.”
“N-no! I-i-it’s alright.…” Jupiter turned a corner, finding her room only a few doors down. She gulped audibly.
“Are you alright? You seem nervous.”
“Just fine!” She began laughing nervously.
“Are you sure? You’re sweating a little bit. If you don’t want me sleeping in your room, Aaron will probably have another room I could use.”
“Nonononononono!!!” she yelled, nearly rupturing Kat’s eardrums. “I-I mean… uh… it’s fine, really!” More nervous laughter.
Kat still wasn’t convinced, but decided to shrug it off in the end. “Whatever.”
Jupiter opened her bedroom door. What was once an innocent little girl’s bedroom was now a sex dungeon. “M-m-m-make yourself a-at home…” Jupiter said, not at all relaxed in the comfort of her own property.
Kat looked at the room then back to Jupiter. Then the room, then the girl, over and over for nearly a minute. “Aren’t you a little young for this?” she finally asked.
“I’m fifteen! I can do what I damn well please!!” the loli shouted in a sudden rage. She then “harumphed” onto her bed, looking pretty pissed.
She quirked an eyebrow at Jupiter. “So… you wanted to have that kind of fun?”
“W-well…” she lost all of her anger in the blink of an eye. “O-o-only if y-you wanted to….” She touched her index fingers together, shyly hiding behind her bangs as a deep crimson blush covered her cheeks.
Kat sat next to the younger girl on the bed, wrapping one arm around her shoulder. “Jupiter?”
The young girl looked up to Kat with the most adorable expression of curiosity the powerful mistress of Gravity had ever seen. Before Jupiter could react, Kat planted a quick kiss on her lips. She smiled as Jupiter stuttered, getting up. “That’s all you get for now. I don’t have fun on an empty stomach.”
The stuttering came to a halt as Jupiter realized something. “You teasing bitch,” she whispered to herself as Kat had left the room seconds ago. The younger girl was not far behind her. Kat skipped to the kitchen, smiling at thoughts of what might happen later that night.
“Oh Aaron~, is dinner ready?” she called.
“In a moment~” he called back, mini-Aarons floating around carrying ingredients. “Give it a bit, almost got the last thing ready…”
One of the mini-Aarons floated over, twirling its braid. “Come along you two. Juno’s already in the dining room~” For some reason, this Aaron was stuffed into a maid outfit, somehow filling it out in all the right places despite being a chibi and a male.
Then again, considering that Aaron normally placed himself slightly on the male side of androgyny…
“I get the feeling if you don’t fly off now, Jupiter’s gonna keep you,” Kat warned.
The chibi giggled in a disturbingly feminine way, “That’d be fine~” Blush stickers appeared on the chibi’s cheeks, even as its braid unwound and made it seem even more feminine and adorable.
Just then, Jupiter walked in. Her eyes scanned the room and fell on the chibi.
It suddenly regretted not running for it’s adorable little life.
“OHYOU’RESOCUTEANDYOU’VEGOTALITTLEMAIDOUTFITANDYOURHAIRISSOADORABLEANDLOOKATTHOSE-” This babbling went on for minutes before Aaron gave her a… look. From Kat’s point of view, it seemed that he just stared at her blankly; but it was so much more than that. “AlrightI’mdone.” She stuffed the chibi Aaron in her pocket when she thought nobody was looking and made her way to the table.
Aaron chose not to comment on the billowing length of hair sticking out of her pocket. “Well then, it appears as though we are all here. It’s not much, but I actually worked on this instead of just pulling it from the aether. Behold!”
Without further ado, Kat found herself seated at a rather large dining table with Juno and Jupiter. Aaron waved his hands like a conductor, and in floated one of the most glorious five course meals the three of them had collectively seen.
“Oh mon dieu,” Kat awed, drooling slightly. “I haven’t seen a spread like this in years.”
“Why don’t you cook more often?” Jupiter asked as she watched the food float in front of her, drooling a little herself.
“Hey…” Juno commented, a little hurt that Jupiter would say something so insulting to his own cooking.
“Yours is good, too; Juno. It’s just…” she motions to the floating food and Juno conceded.
“Now now, everyone. Hold your spots for just a few more seconds.” Aaron set the table with the first course, setting the rest of the meal off to the side. “Now then. Ahem. This’d normally be the part where we say grace, but considering how two of us are gods, one of us is a Void travelling gravity manipulator, and I’m literally more powerful than the Biblical God, it’s pretty redundant. However…”
Aaron began chanting in an unknown, yet incredibly melodic language, hands clasped in prayer.
[SUBTITLES]: “Dear Multiversal Void and all that lies beyond and within, I thank you for these abilities that you have gifted me with and the food that we are about to eat. I pray that this Void shall continue to exist for an eternity more and that none shall ever bring about its untimely demise. In DEATH’s name I pray, Amen. ”
“Aaron, did the Void actually hear that?” Jupiter asked, seeming to break the fourth--dammit, Jupiter! Quit it! “Fine!”
“What was that?” Juno asked, genuinely confused by the seemingly indecipherable mumblings of the shadowman.
“Just a little prayer to the infinite Void and such. I only really do it when I actually cook, so don’t expect it to be a terribly regular thing. Anyway, dig in!”
“Don’t mind if I do!” Kat said eagerly. The others simply began eating.
Dinner concluded some hours later with several satisfied burps and a whole load of dishes. Aaron sat back, folded his hands in his lap, and surveyed the room. “Well then, Kat. Jupiter’s room isn’t too difficult to bunk in, is it?”
“No,” Kat said with a mischievous glint in her eye. “I think we’re gonna be just fine.” Jupiter began blushing lightly.
“Huh… judging by Jupiter’s reaction… Hmmm…” Aaron blinked out of existence for about half a second, returning with a slightly surprised look on his face. “Jupiter… why did you convert your room into a sex dungeon? Honestly, there’s… regrettably… one downstairs. You could have just used that one if you’re really that into it.”
Her blush steadily grew through Aaron’s tirade. “Shutup!” she shouted before ‘porting out.
Kat looked between the spot Jupiter was and Aaron a few times before finally, “For the record, I had absolutely nothing to do with that.”
“Honestly, I’m just surprised that Jupiter did that. Not being Omniscient makes things quite surprising when my ability to read people isn’t exercised properly. Ah well, c’est la vie.”
“What’s this about a sex dungeon?” Juno asked, seeming to be stuck between non-belief and a rage that would black out a small pocket of the multiverse.
Aaron snapped, erasing his memory of the past few seconds. When he noticed Jupiter was gone, he simply explained it as her feeling tired and leaving without him noticing.
“Well, I guess I’ll follow from example.” He, too, ‘ported back to his room.
“Man, this ship is wild,” Kat sighed. “I think I’ll go talk with Jupiter, it’s nice being around a girl I don’t have to explain things to. That’s usually all I have to do around the Mane Six and friends.”
Aaron sighed at the empty dining room and released hundreds of chibi-Aarons from his now unbound hair. “Of course I don’t get any offers to help with the dishes…”
“Jupiter?” Kat said, knocking on her bedroom door. “Hello? You in there?” She cracked the door open to find Jupiter face down on her bed, the room back to normal, and loud sobs to be emanating from it’s sole inhabitant.
Then, she heard her say something through the tears. “You lied to me. You told me he’d like it. I believed you, and you lied to me.” Jupiter suddenly shouted in a crying rage, throwing something across the room at Kat. The object hit the wall next to the door and fell to the floor.
“Um… what? I’m confused,” Kat admitted.
“W-what?!” the younger girl shouted as she scrambled to sit up on the bed, wiping the wetness from her cheeks. “H-h-how long h-have you been st-st-standing there?”
“About thirty seconds. Long enough to have something nearly chucked at me.” Just then, she looked down to see it was a playboy magazine. Specifically, the sex dungeon edition.
“Wow… didn’t even know they had that edition… maybe that’s why you don’t see them in bookstores anymore,” Kat thought aloud.
“U-uh….” For a brief moment, Jupiter tried to think up an excuse for even owning a magazine as lewd as that, but just broke into tears again. “I-I-I wanted to m-make Aaron l-l-love me!” She began crying into her legs, balled up into the fetal position.
“Oh… well, a sex dungeon ain’t gonna help ya do that, sweetie,” Kat said, sitting on the bed next to her. “Although… I do have an idea that might help you out.”
“R-really?” she asked, looking over to Kat.
“Mm hmm,” Kat nodded. “See, one of the greatest ways to get your man’s attention is by getting off the market.”
“Off… the market?” Jupiter was confused by her wording.
“Yeah! You know, you gotta find another someone to date. You need to make yourself unavailable to Aaron.”
“You mean like… go out with someone else to make him jealous.” Kat nodded. “That seems a bit counterproductive, don’t you think?”
“It’s a tried and true trick, honey. Men want what they can’t have. And if he can’t have you, then he’s gonna want you bad. Get what I’m saying?”
“I see, but I think that’ll just drive him away. And who would I date? The only other people on this ship are you and my brother.” Jupiter pointed out, now depressed more than sad.
“Ah, but you need to make him jealous, my little Jupiter. By making him see you in a relationship. And that’s where the fun part comes in.” Kat was getting more than a little comfortable in Jupiter’s personal space.
“Fun part?” As Jupiter turned her head to look up at Kat, she dove forward, locking her lips with Jupiter’s. It only lasts a few precious seconds, but that was more than enough.
After Kat pulled back, leaving Jupiter breathless, she smirked. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“M-maybe…” she said hesitantly, then looked up into Kat’s eyes. “I-if you could make sure? I-I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“Oh, most definitely, you delectable little thing.” Kat pulled Jupiter in close again, locking their lips together and forcing her tongue into the younger’s mouth.
The rest of the night was full of gasping, screaming, and loving.
Thankfully, the walls are insulated and soundproof.
Aaron strode up to Jupiter’s door at precisely six o’ clock in the morning, blasting open the door with the loud, but somehow not too annoying, roar of an F-1 racecar engine. Or a chainsaw, either or.
“Mornin’ Jupiter! Rise and shi-! …. The fuck!?” Aaron’s eyes widened in shock. There, lying not six feet from him, were the entangled and oh-so naked forms of Kat and Jupiter, the smell of the room and the stains all over Jupiter’s bed telling him exactly what he did not want to know. “... I… have no idea how to respond to this.” With that eloquent bit of speech, he collapsed backwards as if he were a puppet with its strings cut, crashing into Jupiter’s floor with enough of a crash to jolt the two into full wakefulness.
“MERDE ALORS!” Kat shouted. “C’est quoi ce bordel was that?!”
“H-h-huh?!” Jupiter shouted as her head flew from it’s resting place.
Kat looked over at the floor. “Looks like we have a good start, Jupiter. Aaron just passed out on the floor.”
“W-what?! That’s a good thing?!” she yelled, scrambling to untangle herself from the Kat-girl and rush over to Aaron’s prone form.
“Uh huh, it means he’s seen us together. The idea is now set in his mind… all we have to do is drive it home on what he could be having.”
“I-if you say so.” Jupiter knelt down, placing her fingers on the side of Aaron’s neck.
Aaron woke with a start, immediately seeing Jupiter’s face and flushing a red so deep it was as if his face had spontaneously transmuted into a tomato made of red LEDs and blood. “A-h, mornin’ Jupiter… eh… sorry about barging in like that…” Steam poured from his ears, forming a thin fog across the ground.
“N-no… we should’ve locked the door.” Jupiter blushed right along with him, though steam didn’t pour from her body.
…
Well, not physical steam.
“Sorry about the mess, Aaron,” Kat said, draping her arms over Jupiter’s shoulders. “We just got a little carried away last night.” Jupiter’s blush grew exponentially.
“I-I… I see… Hrm…” Aaron shifted uncomfortably, thanking the Void for the fact that his biological urges hadn’t retur- ‘Oh goddammit. They’re back. And at the worst possible moment.’ It was all Aaron could do not to ogle them.
He had more self control than most people, that was all he’d ever say.
The awkward silence hung pregnant in the air for a few moments before Kat, who’d been glancing back and forth between the two other beings in the room, broke it with a simple question. “So, what’s up, Aaron? Why’d you wake us up?”
“We-well… Breakfast is ready. Ahem. Anyway, I’d much appreciate it if the both of you got dressed post-haste and cleaned yourselves up. And wash your hands… and other parts.” With that, Aaron shifted back into shadow form and dropped through the floor like a bitch.
“Well, looks like Aaron wants us to take a shower,” Kat said, gently guiding Jupiter towards the bathroom.
“U-uh… yeah.” Jupiter didn’t mind. Not one bit.
“And we’ll have a little wrap up fun while we’re at it~,” she whispered into the younger girl’s ear.
“Y-yeah…” Jupiter repeated, albeit with a growing blush.
“I wonder what’s taking the girls so long.” Juno had woken up shortly after Aaron’s wake up call, which he’d received before the shadow’s little run-in with Jupiter and Kat.
“Eheh… Trust me, Juno. You really don’t want to know,” Aaron muttered, face still glowing red despite his shadow form. He picked idly at his pancakes as chibi-Aarons floated around, some of them sporting dazed expressions, others sporting incredibly shell-shocked faces.
“Are you alright? You look like you caught a cold.” Juno leaned over to inspect Aaron’s face.
Said shadow calmly folded his arms on the table, pushing his plate away, and unceremoniously dropped his motorcycle-helmet shaped head into said arms and melting into an amorphous mass of shadow and white highlights.
“W-woah! Aaron!” Juno stood up, moving over to the blob that was once the aforementioned Void dweller.
“Mmfine. Just… not used to being surprised, shocked, horrifyingly embarrassed, mortified, semi-proud, a tiny bit hormonal, and very very slightly jealous… all at the same time.” The blob spoke as if normal, the highlights swirling around and forming an approximation of Aaron’s normal shadow-face.
Juno thought for a moment. “Ignoring the fact that half of those are the same thing…, you wanna talk about it?” He was genuinely concerned for his employer and knew that, when things like this happen, the best thing you can do is help them get it off their chest.
Or something like that.
“Not particularly. Considering that it involves the two females in the building, I’d really rather not have you attempt to repeat your stunt on Equus in my shop.”
He thought for a moment. “Just one thing: is Jupiter in trouble? Should I be worried?”
“Nope. As a matter of fact, here they come now.” Aaron’s blob form stilled, then after realizing the accidental innuendo, collapsed into a puddle of pulsing red light, strangely corporeal, though not really.
“Alright, I’ll take your word,” Juno said as he retook his seat. Just then, Jupiter and Kat walked in, the elder’s arm over the younger’s shoulders. “Good morning, Jupiter, Kat. How’d you two sleep?”
“Blissfully,” Kat practically purred while Jupiter blushed.
Aaron-puddle pulsed faster and in a more vibrant shade of red, nearly reaching magenta.
“A-are you okay, Aaron?” Jupiter asked timidly as she and Kat walked to their seats.
Aaron-puddle stilled and turned back into his normal shadowy self, still blushing, and replied with a, “No, not really. What I saw earlier was enough to shake me out of my normal groove for the next few minutes. This is also the first time a blush has ever actually stricken my shadow form. Funny, that.”
“O-oh… s-s-sorry….” She, too, blushed a little harder and looked down at her plate. “S-so, pancakes?” she asked, masterfully avoiding the elephant in the room.
“Pancakes sound amazing,” Kat agreed, shoving one into her mouth.
“You go ahead. I’m gonna… awkwardly attempt to avoid you two while my raging emotions die down.” Aaron left through the kitchen door, trailing chocolate ice cream scented smoke and a faint hint of ozone.
Replace the word “emotions” with a word more befitting of a teenage male, if you would. *coughbonercough*
Jupiter watched him go before turning to Kat. “Maybe we were a little too… I don’t know, blunt?”
“Trust me, sweetie. Just give it some time.”
Jupiter looked after Aaron unsurely.
“So, what’ve you gotten yourself into this time?” Juno asked Jupiter, snapping her out of her daze.
“O-oh, me and Kat are going out, now.” She smiled and took Kat’s hand in her own.
Juno did the classic spit-take.
Aaron, on the other side of the kitchen door, placed his hand over his heart, eyes wide open. “... How odd. I appear to be feeling some sort of… loss? But why?” He mulled over what he’d just heard Jupiter say. “Why would I be feeling this sort of thing just as Jupiter said something about dating?”
“Dunno, boss. But you’re squishing me against the door and my maid outfit is getting really rumpled.”
“Oh, sorry.” Aaron quickly stood straight, freeing his unwittingly trapped clone.
“Ugh. What I saw last night… Well, you already know, now that I tapped back into the central intelligence.”
“..... I didn’t know that Kat was so flexible…” Aaron muttered, spacing out and blood leaking from his nose.
“Eyup.”
“.... How does Jupiter know how to use lightning like that?”
“Dunno.”
“... Oh my…”
“Yup.”
Some time later...
Aaron strode unsteadily through the shelves of his shop, desperately trying to clear his head. “Ach, why do I keep thinking about Jupiter!? Especially her soft, pret- NOPE. She’s fifteen, dummkopf!” He studiously ignored the voice that whispered And you haven’t aged a day past twenty, idiot.
Unfortunately for his state of mind, his random wanderings drew him back to Jupiter, Kat, and Juno. The two females were, unfortunately for Aaron’s new hormones, browsing for swimwear. Juno was studiously trying not to perv on Kat.
“Fuck.” Aaron hissed, unfortunately noticing too late that he’d been spotted, and thus was unable to run away like a bitch... again.
“Aaron! Help!” Juno came running to him, diving to his stomach and begging at the shadow’s feet. “Give me a job! Anything to get away from that succubus!” he shouted as he turned his head to look at Kat, who waved suggestively to him.
Aaron stood his ground, desperately trying to come up with a proper response to the two females even as he picked Juno up by the scruff of his neck and threw the hysterical catboy into a portal to some uninhabited portion of the shop. Namely, the area of the shop dedicated to fire prevention.
“So, Aaron, which looks better on Jupiter? This?” Kat began to undress Jupiter, putting her in a skimpy bikini, “Or this?” she then took the bikini off and replaced it with a Japanese school swimsuit with “木星” written on the front in a white box.
Aaron’s human form couldn’t take the strain, and promptly collapsed to the ground in a violent case of nasal hemorrhage. Said corpse promptly dissolved into more blood, leaving a violently blushing shadow reeling in its previous place. “I… uh… Oh lord.” Said shadow was summarily launched a few feet backwards in a spray of white light issuing from his face.
No, not his crotch. His face . Minds out of the gutters for now, please.
Kat chuckled. “I’m getting more of a kick out of this than I thought I would.”
“W-well, A-A-Aaron?” Jupiter asked, starting to get scared that he didn’t like to see her in a swimsuit for whatever reason.
The dazed eldritch abomination raised his hand in a thumbs up position before collapsing into a puddle of liquid shadow. “Y-y’look great…. I can’t tell which is better...”
Kat nudged Jupiter to go forward. She hesitantly walked over to Aaron and got down on her hands and knees, positioning herself right over him. “A-are you s-s-sure?” she asked, stuttering heavily as she pressed her small breasts against the shadow’s chest-ish area.
“Y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y–” Aaron’s head area promptly exploded into a cloud of confetti with the word ‘Yes’ appearing in glowing green letters.
“Maybe it is a good thing this is a video phone,” Kat giggled, recording the entire time.
Jupiter launched up from above Aaron. “You said you wouldn’t record it!” she shouted, running over to Kat and trying to take the phone from her grip. Kat, being the taller one, simply reached up to keep it out of reach. This, however, created a new obstacle.
Kat’s breasts.
As Jupiter was reaching and jumping to get the phone, she was also rubbing their chests together rather suggestively. Aaron woke up to find this going on and promptly looked away, drawing the last scraps of his dignity together and standing tall, ready to attempt to take it like a man. “Would you two mind not doing that in my presence. My hormones have just recently reorganized themselves in a baseline normal pattern, and my libido is thus raging like a teenage boy suffering through puberty. And I’d really rather not lose control to my raging libido any time soon, thank you very much.” Aaron punctuated this with a quick spin, facing the opposite direction from the girls in a not-entirely-manly way. Nodoka Saotome would have been so disappointed.
“Aaron?” Jupiter asked from behind him, sounding genuinely concerned.
“I’ll be fine!” Aaron yelped, voice changing pitch as he rapidly dropped back into human form, braid waving through the air like an agitated cat’s tail.
“Are you sure?” She reached a hand out and lightly touched his shoulder.
Aaron made no reply, only stiffening up under her touch and wow that sounded dirty. His braid even came to a complete stop as her touch finally made him realize exactly what he was feeling towards her. A feeling he’d never had in any way beyond platonic. A feeling that he was desperately unused to.
Love.
If you’ll excuse the fourth wall break, the narrator shall now take a five minute rest in order to cough the sugar from his lungs.
...
Back to business.
Jupiter tugged on Aaron’s shoulder, trying to get him to turn around. “I… I’m sorry, Aaron. I didn’t know…” she began, trailing off when he refused to move.
Kat smirked, slinking back a little. “He’s breaking~,” she whispered near silently to herself.
Aaron stayed silent, his braid and body stiff as a bo- okay, you know what? He was very still. Let’s leave it at that.
“I-it’s… it’s alright… Jupiter…” Aaron stuttered, swallowing the lump in his throat as he desperately tried to force himself to move, dammit!
“No! It’s not alright!” Jupiter shouted suddenly. “I’ve tried everything, Aaron! I really have! At first I just let it develop over time, but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere; then I tried to be more direct, but that sent the wrong message; and now I tried Kat’s idea of getting off the market! None of it’s worked.” She sounded like she was crying, which snapped him out of his dazed paralysis.
“Jupiter… what… what are you-?” Aaron was nearly frantic.
She, in one quick motion, spun him around and, with tears in her eyes and a smile on her lips, said, “I love you,” and kissed him.
Aaron’s eyes widened for the briefest instant as a blush overtook his face. Then, his eyes closed and he melted into the kiss, gently cupping Jupiter’s face in his hands.
Kat sighed, looking on fondly. “Well… it was fun while it lasted.” She started walking in the opposite direction of the new lovers, running into Juno along the way.
“Whoo! I told him to give me a job, not-” he ran face-first into Kat’s breasts, sparking an idea in the shifter’s mind.
“Hmm… you’ll have to do,” she said with a sultry tone.
“Huh?” he asked from her breasts, wondering just what he’d have to do.
“You’re coming with me,” Kat said before dragging Juno away.
That night, much sex was had.
Fire and Flame, We are One
Aaron awoke early one morning and stretched out the tiny kinks that had built up over night. As he wandered the halls of his shop at three in the morning, he couldn’t help but feel as if he were missing something. But, what was it?
A sudden shaking revealed it to him.
“Oh shit! The autopilot!”
Racing towards the cockpit of his still-SSV Normandy-shaped ship, he realized all too late that his shop was heading straight toward a pair of joined Universes.
Specifically, a Conversion Bureau Universe.
Panicking, he drew his ship back into the subspace pocket it was formed from and shoved it back within his form, unwittingly launching himself into the Universe’s Earth-side due to the shenanigans based inertia.
As the Universe forcibly tried to strip him of his power and reduce him to a mere Lovecraftian being, Aaron blacked out, barely having enough time to leave a note on both Jupiter’s and Juno’s beds detailing exactly what had happened.
And then, darkness.
Aaron awoke in chains.
Sleepy and still recovering from the wounds the Universe had bestowed upon him in its unsuccessful attempt to strip him of his power and reduce him to something more comprehensible, he took stock of his surroundings through bleary eyes.
A cell. Dank, dreary, and with several other huddled humans, also in chains.
“.... Wonderful.” He muttered, incredibly pissed off but not yet awake enough to do anything.
The other humans around him stared, clearly not expecting the almost-dead looking young man to wake up. Defying expectations, Aaron stood up, healing and rejuvenating as he did so, casually snapping the chains which so poorly bound him.
“Alright you lot, mind telling uncle Aaron where the hell he woke up?” Clearly, half asleep Aaron was the best diplomat ever.
Said lot merely shrank away, that is, until one nervous girl spoke, “Y-you’re in A-Arizona, sir.”
“Arizona, huh? Hmmm. Okay, here’s what’s gonna happen: One, I’m getting out of here. Two, you lot are gonna follow me out of the cell and wait until I destroy the camp. Three, you lot are gonna find somewhere to get on with your lives while I take down the bitch in the ocean. We clear?”
Not waiting for a reply, the shadow man burst back into his normal incomprehensible existence with a tiny flare of power before shattering the wall behind him and floating out.
The humans rushed out nervously, waiting for the other shoe to drop even as they made their way to any form of safety they could find.
Smoke. Smoke and fire. Smoke and fire and rubble and the corpses of ponies. This was the scene that greeted the recent escapees of Conversion Camp 332. That, and a bunch of confused, naked humans. Oh, and the shadow man pouring a weird, red liquid down the throats of each “Newfoal”, as the bitch herself had called them.
Said Newfoals immediately burst into massive auroras of rainbow light as the “Harmony” magic was expelled from their bodies and they were once more restored to full humanity.
Then things got weird.
The shadow man had spontaneously formed a stage out of nowhere, stood upon it, and delivered a speech.
“GREETINGS EVERYONE. MY NAME IS AARON HEIBAI, AND I’LL BE YOUR RESCUER FOR TONIGHT. NOW, AS YOU MAY HAVE REALIZED, ALL THE PONIES IN THIS CAMP ARE GONE. HOWEVER, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT ALL THE PONIES ARE DEAD. NO, THAT MEANS WE HAVE A FEW MORE ADDITIONS TO THE HUMAN RACE. NOW NOW, DON’T BE SUSPICIOUS. I SPECIFICALLY CHOSE THE FEW PONIES TO CONVERT BECAUSE THEY WERE TRUSTWORTHY. YES, YES, HOW CAN YOU TRUST THE SHADOW MAN THAT KILLED A BUNCH OF PONIES AND CONVERTED A FEW MORE INTO HUMANS, AND GAVE A FEW OTHERS BACK THEIR HUMANITY. ANYWAY, POINT IS, GO ON, LIVE YOUR LIVES, KILL SOME PONIES IF NEED BE, I’M TAKING DOWN THE BITCH RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS.”
And then he was gone, the stage fading back into rubble, and the camp suddenly converted into a small town.
Far away, right above the centerpoint of the Barrier converting Earth into Equestria, Aaron hovered, weaving a grand spell. An ominous breeze struck the pacific ocean, massive, intricate glyphs forming in concentric circles beneath the shadow man. Shining in every color of the rainbow in a parody of the Elements of Harmony, Aaron’s glyphs swirled, runes and pictographs twirling and spinning in massive spirals around the area like a glowing hurricane of magic. Far below, in Canterlot, Princess Celestia felt a terrifying premonition strike her. Shocked out of her malevolent languor, she looked out the window and saw the miles-long glyphs and runes swirling above Canterlot, and by extension, most of Equestria.
Then she felt the most infuriating smirk form upon the distant caster of said glyphs. And then, faint at first, she heard the music .
And then, with a sound not unlike the shattering of glass, they appeared.
Ships. Hundreds. Big and bulky, massive and intimidating. Some miles long, others barely the size of city buses. All armed in the extreme, all of them carrying, from what she could see, massive, black armored, armed-to-the-teeth soldiers. Massive pauldrons, oddly shaped helmets, massive weapons, skulls and jack o’ lantern faces decorating each facet of their armor.
The Adeptus Astartes, as interpreted by Aaron Heibai.
As the ships finally finished rising from the glyphs, the music ended, and all was still for but a few seconds. Then, a ferocious groan of warping metal rang out and the glyphs shifted, more music coming through the new pattern of glyphs.
Now, even more ships, many of them bearing the sign of what appeared to be a capital ‘I’ with a skull over top. These ships were also coated in deepest black, but with golden decorations all over in what could only be holy symbols.
The Inquisition.
Then, more music and even more ships, some embossed with a capital ‘I’ with a skull in a spiky circle.
Adeptus Ministorum, also known as the Ecclesiarchy.
At this point, the sky was so choked with hundreds upon thousands of space vessels that it seemed as if night had fallen early, the tiny pinpricks of blue sky shining through seemed as if an obscene parody of stars.
As even more ships came from the ever changing patterns of glyphs, the music selection changed ever more to suit the thousands of vessels that came through
Adeptus Mechanicus , with their gear and skull motif. Officio Assassinorum , dagger and skull proudly emblazoned. Adepta Sororitas , fleur de lis embossed with its skull. Adeptus Arbites , scale and fist logo worn as a badge of justice and righteousness.
And then, from the incredibly dramatic and terrifying music that had been playing previously, came something completely unexpected .
Of course, more ships poured through the newest glyph configuration, this time shining and golden, with the picture of a golden armored, raven haired man imprinted on the sides.
The Adeptus Custodes, in all their half naked, oiled, muscular glory.
Truly, they were the most glorious sight to behold, even with their immortal, sculpted bodies still inside their massively overpowered vessels.
For a few tense moments, the fleets hovered there as if waiting some sort of cue.
And then, the glyphs disappeared, the being at their center dropping to a halt, standing on the surface of the barrier as if it were no different from solid ground.
The fleets continued to hover, filling the air with the cacophony of chanting and roaring engines.
Then, the shadowy figure knelt, placed a hand upon the surface of the golden dome, and slipped through, leaving a dark splotch behind, much to Celestia’s surprise.
Later on, Celestia would be able to perfectly recount the events that led to her demise, even as a soul floating helplessly through the Warp.
It all started when the splotch that had been left on her gloriously golden and meticulously crafted barrier grew from human sized to encompass the entirety of the malignant thaumaturgy.
Then, as darkness descended upon Equestria, music began playing once more. While it did not fit the previous ominous tones… and one incredibly fabulous song, it promised pain and swift retribution.
And ass kicking. Lots and lots of ass kicking.
Then, just as the darkness spread over the last inches of barrier, it began receding from the top down, leaving nothing but clear, blue sky to cover all of Equestria.
Then came the rain. Not a rain of water, nor even a rain of hellfire, though Celestia would note that the hellfire also came, just much later.
No, this was a rain of metal and men, hundreds upon thousands of soldiers and mecha alike descending to the ground in waves upon waves of dropships and falling mecha.
Then came the screams and the DAKKA DAKKA! of heavy weapons fire. For as far as Celestia could see, Equestria was being ravaged in the extreme, not a single blade of grass unburnt, not a single tree left standing, and holy Creators above, not a single natural born pony left alive. (Alicorn-hood tended to grant one some measure of Legolas level eyesight, along with vision enhancing spells).
The Newfoals were captured, vials of odd liquid poured down their throats. Then, as they exploded into rainbow light, the newly returned humans were shoved through shadowy gateways, even as more armored beings and mechas poured from the same portals.
As the wave of destruction travelled all across Equestria, more and more troops shuffled down, and soon the air was choked with descending and ascending drop ships and cargo ships, gunfire and missiles. Pegasi fell in droves as they struggled to defend mother Equestria from the terrifying and massive invaders.
For every ship taken down, at least fifty pegasi died, and two more ships quickly descended to make up for lost time, even if the remains of the ship were salvageable and nearly no casualties were taken.
All this while Celestia stood in horrified, numbed silence. Of course, the paralysis wore off after the first half hour of destruction, then she flew out to meet the invaders directly, horn charged and heart full of righteous fury.
Then she slammed into an invisible barrier erected around the entirety of Canterlot. Strangely enough, it formed hexagonal, orange ripple patterns at every contact it made.
And, try as she might, she was unable to break through; not while still taking care to not harm her precious ponies, that is.
After minutes of furious cursing and shouting and blasting and pounding, Celestia noticed that the troops had stopped outside the field around Canterlot, ascending back up to the massive swarm of ships in the sky, leaving a surviving stretch of land open for a mere mile around Canterlot.
Celestia surveyed the destruction from her airborne position, shocked at what she found. As far as her magnified vision could perceive, not a single city was left intact, no towns, not a single sign of civilization went unrazed, even the mountains had scorch marks carved into them where mining villages had been nestled.
Fire rained then, starting at the edges, then working its way inward.
The Exterminatus.
An orbital bombardment capable of turning the entirety of a planet’s surface into nothing more than molten slag… and it was concentrated entirely upon a tiny continent in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
Celestia only had to endure the opening salvos, thankfully, stopping several of the missiles from impacting the surface as she fought to defend her last bastion of ponykind from the orbital bombardment. Of course, she was free, then to travel all over the continent as fast as she could; the shield had fallen after the bombardment began. Not that this was any sort of comfort. Then the thermonuclear missiles hit the ground and she knew no more.
Well, until she woke up drifting in the Warp, dangerously near where Khorne had made his home. But that’s a story for another day.
Aaron let his armada dissipate into the aether as the last of what had once been Equestria sank beneath the ocean waves as a lump of molten slag.
“Sorry, Celly, but I really, really hate it when people like you do things like that. You should at least be glad that some ponies still survive; though how long they survive in the anti-magic and openly hostile terrain of Earth is a bit of a question, now ain’t it?” Aaron’s face expressed great sadness– he’d never really had to be this close and personal to his own destruction before, and as much as he hated Celly, he found that he hated the sound of screams and death even more.
Not that it really bothered him– if worse came to worst, he could always visit the fragments of timeline where he hadn’t Exterminatus’d the continent.
Being a Void dweller killed most peoples’ value of mortal lives, to be honest.
With one final sigh, Aaron snapped his fingers, replaced Equestria and its ponies back on Equus, locked the both of them apart, and stepped through a midair doorway back into his shop.
He looked at the clock and nodded. The whole trip had taken naught but three seconds of relative time.
And thus, the lion slept that night, deep in the jungle of shelves and products, nestled in his bed, untouched by any sort of nightmare or regret.
Mighty Epicness vs. Eldritch Versatility
Aaron flew through the Void, gliding along in the invisible energy currents racing around the paradoxically full emptiness. As he felt the nonexistent wind rip through his hair and cause his floor length braid to whip about, he relaxed and allowed his mind to wander in ways it hadn’t for over six centuries of relative time.
‘Hmm, should I retrieve Jupiter and Juno from that beach planet anytime soon? … Nah, it’s only been a few hours for them. I’ll get them later.’
Meanwhile, on a beach planet…
“Look, Juno! I made a sand castle!!”
Juno looked up at Canterlot Mountain, sand style.
“How did you do that?! We’re on a deserted island the size of a football field!!”
As the shadow-disguised-as-a-human drifted through the turbulent, roiling Void he was unaware of the single being on a straight collision course for him.
“What the- OH SHIT, MOVE! ” the being shouted.
Confused, Aaron turned in place, only to be bodily thrown out of his path, latched onto, and blasted into a nearby Universe. All while somehow stuck to the other person.
The two went careening towards a small town that seemed utterly removed from any signs of civilization...
Aaron separated first, slamming into the cottage on the far side of town in a massive explosion of shadows, blood, annoyance, chickens, and black paint. Oh, and pink fur.
As the blood covered shadow form of Aaron extricated itself from the rubble, he couldn’t help but chuckle, “Thank god I missed everything but that bitch’s house. Wonder what point in the timeline we’re in so far… be bad if I messed up S5 Ep1.”
“Ugh… who did I hit?” a deep masculine voice asked, followed by an armored warrior popping out the rubble next to him.
“....” Aaron slapped the armored man upside the head in a semi-automatic reaction, sending him straight back into town and causing the messy remains of Starlight Glimmer to spray all over the place.
“You hit me, idiot!” With a shout for emphasis, Aaron slapped on a peculiar belt and leapt after the armored man, flashing with light and landing in peculiar armor .
“Huh? Oh, wow! Someone who’s actually familiar with Showa-Era Kamen Riders!” The warrior replied as he got up. Just then he noticed the blood on him. “Oh Faust, please don’t tell me I killed someone.”
“That would actually be my fault, mysterious person whom I’ve never met.” Aaron replied, striking a standard henshin pose. “But don’t worry, she was a villain through and through! Worse than even Sombra… arguably!”
“I hope you’re not lying. Anyway, my fellow Tokusatsu fan, I am the Mighty Gilgamesh, Supreme Commander of the Global Equus Military, blessed by Lady Faust herself, and fight enthusiast extraordinaire! And if you would like to go a round, you’d really make my day!”
“Well then, Gilgamesh, I’d be happy to oblige!” Aaron leapt into the air once more, slamming down at Gilgamesh with a loud “TOH!”
Gilgamesh went tumbling back a few yards before landing on his feet. “Not bad, but not Rider Kick level. Hm… not sure how hard to go on you, so until then,” he began, unclipping his naginata and casting Protect, Shell, and Haste on himself as a strange sound accompanied his movements. “Prepare for a beating!”
“What was the point of that? You didn’t transform.” Aaron pointed out, narrowing his eyes at the eerily familiar tune.
“I know, but you just put me in a mood. And now, we fight! ” he shouted, dashing forwards, covering the distance between them in less than a second before rapidly stabbing at him with his naginata.
Aaron dodged, flipping backwards into the air as his gloves and boots turned red. “Henshin! Nigo!” The flying Kamen Rider impossibly flipped again in midair, coming back down with a cry of “RIDER KICK!”
“Oh shit!” Gilgamesh cried before cutting open a hole in reality and escaping, just before the attack landed and produced a massive crater in the ground.
“Tch, so much for a quick round. But where’s the fun in that? Henshin! V3!” This time, Aaron’s whole costume changed, gaining a silver vest, red marked helmet, and white gloves. He struck a pose, left hand extending three fingers and touching his right elbow, right hand extended upwards in a backwards peace sign. “C’mon, Gilgy, don’t be shy!”
As if on cue eight portals no bigger than a baseball opened up around him and lasers followed, pelting him from several angles, before a larger one opened and Gilgamesh burst out, kicking him in the face and sending him tumbling.
“You just changed from Ichigo to Niigo and then V3 in the course of less than a minute? This is getting fun! What else ya got!?”
“Henshin! X!” With that, V3 disappeared, and in its place stood a white and red armored Kamen Rider with black gloves and a red-eyed helmet.
“Ha! Not a bad choice, but right now I’m the staff-weapon master!” Gilgamesh boasted before jumping miles into the air, coming down seconds later in a stabbing motion.
X defended with his own staff, slapping Gilgamesh’s naginata to the side before swinging it around in an attempt to bash the armored man’s cranium. The warrior levitated himself out of the way before increasing the gravity on Aaron, bringing him to his knees, before he dropped and began rapidly stomping on him. “How! Will! You! Get! Out! Of! This!?” he asked, punctuating each word with a stomp.
Aaron’s reply was a flash around his waist, generating a completely different belt this time. “AAAAAAA! MAAAAAA! ZOOOOOOOOON!” he cried, blasting Gilgamesh off of him with three swipes of his arms, standing tall once more, this time in armor themed like a monitor lizard. “Kamen Rider Amazon!” He clipped two bracelets to his arms as he struck a pose, golden on his right arm, silver on his left. “GII-GII!”
Gilgamesh actually squeed. “AMAZON! MY FAVORITE! Oh, I almost feel bad about having to beat you up!” He then went through the motions of Kamen Rider Black’s transformation. “HENSHIN!” he shouted before a bright flash of light came. When it faded he had grown two feet and was now dressed in a red cloak with horns over his armor, Kabuki face paint, and eight arms. He pounded his chest like a gorilla as a song began to radiate from him. “JUNGLE BATTLE!”
“Not gonna save you! Take this! Monki Attaku!” Aaron leapt once again, coming down with claws extended and knees braced for impact. Gilgamesh responded by slamming all eight of his arms into his chest at once and produced a massive sound wave that sent Aaron flying. He then slammed his foot into the ground, sending an Earthquake spell towards where his opponent would land.
Aaron tumbled and slammed back into the rubble of Starlight’s house, coincidentally creating a bloody smear as he shifted the rubble back over her pink-and-brownish-red corpse. As Amazon disappeared under a cloak of shadow, Aaron stood, slightly scuffed. “Alright, Showa doesn’t work… how about…” Music began to play as Aaron flashed again, this time into a set of red and black armor with golden horns. “Kamen Rider Kuuga!” He rushed at Gilgamesh once more, some tiny part of him desperately hoping he’d pulled on Yuusuke Godai’s belt instead of Yuusuke Onodera’s.
Gilgamesh summoned weapons to his hands in response, striking a pose and rolling his head like a kabuki dancer. “Skipping to Heisei Era now, huh? Very well then! Try this!” He then jumped straight up into the air. “Hissatsu, Part 1!” He then spun his weapons before shooting at the ground. “ULTIMATE ILLUSION!” he shouted as he slammed into the ground, producing a wave of energy that burst from the ground towards his recently transformed opponent.
“Chou Henshin!” Aaron jumped over the energy wave, armor flashing green as he leveled his bowgun at Gilgamesh, “Boom. Headshot.” Three shots came screaming towards Gilgamesh’s head as Aaron landed and retreated to a safer distance.
Rather than explode, the three shots got absorbed into Gilgamesh’s body. “Boom,” he began, holding out his one weaponless hand like a gun. “Nutshot.” He then fired the attack back his opponent’s jewels.
“Shimatta!” Rather than take the nutshot, Aaron backflipped, changing once more. “Ryuki! Dragreder!” A crimson, robotic dragon appeared from nowhere and batted the shot far off into the mountains, where it impacted Starlight’s Cutie Mark Vault with an earth shattering KABOOM!
“Not cool, dude.” Aaron muttered, already floating into the air to complete Ryuki’s final attack. “Final Vent! Dragon Rider Kick!”
Gilgamesh grinned. “Perfect Defense!” His body shone white for a moment before glowing blue. The attack, usually enough to defeat most enemies, bounced off with another explosion, sending Aaron flying backwards to slam, once again, into the much battered rubble of Starlight’s tomb/former house.
“Seriously, this ain’t cool… Okay, new plan…. FAIZ!” Aaron transformed into the phi based hero’s base form with the standard flash of red light.
“HENSHIN!” Gilgamesh shouted after going through the motions of V3’s henshin. After another flash of light he was now another two feet taller, his armor glowing green in some places, and having six arms instead of eight. “Not bad! I didn’t think I’d have to go into my final form to keep up with you!”
“Tch.” Aaron clicked his tongue, typing into Faiz’s phone. The belt rang out a quiet, “Complete,” as Aaron shouted, “Faiz Axel!” And with a quiet, “Start Up,” he disappeared from view in a burst of near-light speed. Gilgamesh was battered from all sides as Aaron sped around him, slamming anything not nailed down and/or sentient into the man’s frame. Including, unfortunately, Starlight’s desecrated house.
Gilgamesh pulled himself out of the rubble, looking no worse for wear. “Yeah, Perfect Defense makes me literally immune to all damage for about two minutes. Good thing I had it on.” He explained.
Aaron stopped in front of him as Axel ran down with a quiet “Time out” . “Oh goddammit. That ain’t cool,” he muttered.
“However, if you want to fight with speed...” he began. "FLASH!"
Aaron stood, slightly more scuffed. “As if!” Suddenly, his hand shot out and slammed a curiously large, red beetle into his waist with a cry of “HENSHIN!”
When the hexagons finally stopped crawling over his form, Aaron stepped forth, now clad in extremely bulky armor. “Cast off,” he incanted, grabbing the horn of the beetle on his belt and working it like a switch. “CAST OFF! CHANGE: BEETLE!”
Suddenly, the armor came flying off at Gilgamesh, revealing slimmer, red armor beneath it. “Kamen Rider Kabuto !” The projectile armor slammed home on the armored warrior, deflecting off of Perfect Defense right before it ended.
“Huh. Well, it’s no fun being invincible, anyway,” Gilgamesh muttered before switching his generic swords out for his six legendary blades.
“Oh… oh shit. Big guns, ne? Then… Clock Up!” Aaron sped out of existence once more, this time much faster. Once again, Gilgamesh was battered from all sides as the battle moved from the town proper and into the mountains on the outskirts.
“...Ow.” Gilgamesh muttered before standing up. “Ok, not bad. But you’re not the only one with clock powers. TOKI WO TOMARE!” he shouted as all time around him seemed to stop. Or so he thought, as he noticed Aaron moving slightly.
Wait, but how-? Ah, who cares, I’ve still got the upper hand, he thought. He rushed forwards, planning on taking Aaron out quickly, only to be stopped by an armored fist crashing multiple times into his face and chest with an echoing,“ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA!”
A light speed battle ensued, filling the air with seemingly stationary rubble. To an outside observer, one would only find rubble and dust clouds being kicked up seemingly at random, along with human shaped imprints being slammed into various places, some with six arms, others with a horned helm.
Gilgamesh finally managed to grab Aaron’s arms and halt his attack. “Ok pal, how’s this?” he said, anger seeping into his tone, as he dispersed his weapons and pulled back his other four free arms. “MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA!” he shouted as he slammed Aaron with the same kind of attack he was dealt. “MUDA!”
As both lightspeed warriors wound down to normal speeds, Aaron picked himself up once again, slamming another belt into place. A metallic “Sword Form!” rang out, shifting Aaron into the red and white, peach themed Kamen Rider/Imagin. “Ore… Sanjou!”
Gilgamesh smirked. “Nice. Do you get another personality, too?” he asked as he summoned his blades back.
“The hell do you think, jerkface!?” Momotaros hopped in place angrily, shaking his sword at the warrior. Aaron facepalmed from where he sat inside his mindscape.
The battle began anew, Imagin against Alpha-Level Displaced, in a dazzling display of swordsmanship and sparking armor. After a few minutes of this Gilgamesh jumped back and took a pose, his body glowing gold as Sakura blossoms fell around him and drums beat in the background. “Hissatsu, part 5.” He then dashed forwards in a near light-speed strike, followed by two more of the same before stopping. “Divide,” he finished, causing an explosion of fiery tornadoes to erupt from just behind him, engulf his opponent in the mile-long after-effect of his attack.
As the flames died out, a blue rider strode through the flames with a staff on one shoulder. “Yo… bokun tsurarete miru?” Just then, the blue rider flashed purple for a moment as he spoke, “Kotae wa kitenai!” pointing at Gilgamesh with a limp and casual finger.
“Mixing catchphrases now?” Gilgamesh asked.
As the blue rider shook his head, he faded out in a burst of pixels and a, “Nope, just a distraction.”
“ATTACK RIDE: BLAST!”
The announcement came from behind, prompting Gilgamesh to turn around, only to receive a hail of lasers to the face from a slightly scuffed up “Kamen Rider DiEnd!”
The gun-wielding blue rider offered a mocking salute, spinning his gun around his finger. “Got ya good, didn’t I?” He held up a familiar katana, “Missing something?”
Gilgamesh looked at his hand, finding Muramasa missing before growling. The blade disappeared from Aaron’s hand in a flash of light and back into his own. “Those weapons are as much a part of me as my own limbs. You won’t take them so easily. But I suppose fighting you head on isn’t the best idea anymore,” he said as he grabbed his scarf. With a flick of his wrist the scarf turned into a pair of dragon-like wings. As he began to fly into the air his whole body lit aflame. “Fire Blast!” he shouted as he fired a kanji-shaped fire attack from his mouth.
“ATTACK RIDE: INVISIBLE!”
Aaron faded out of existence right before the attack struck, leaving nothing but charred ground in its wake. “Hiding and waiting for an opportunity, huh? Smart. But let’s see if you can avoid this! ” he shouted, flying higher and spinning, summoning his wind powers as he did. “Fire Spin!” Around his body formed a tornado of fire reaching from the ground and high into the sky. With a grunt of effort the flaming funnel began to slowly expand, torching anything it touched.
Thankfully that village is far away, he thought.
“SAIKURON! JOKAAA!”
A flying side kick caught Gilgamesh in the back, sending him down into the flames far below. Kamen Rider W landed a moment later with a call of “HEATO! JOKAA!”
“W, huh? Well, let’s see who’s hotter!” Gilgamesh shouted, dispersing his blades and pulling back all six of his arms, his hands alight. “HOLY FIRESTORM! ” he cried as he punched forwards, six flaming tornadoes shooting from his hands before merging into one mountain sized funnel of fire.
“Oh shit!” Aaron leapt back, slamming discs into his new belt.
“TAKA! KUJAKU! CONDOR! TAJADOORU~”
Hundreds of flaming peacock feathers slammed into the flaming mountain, turning the unstoppable wall of fire into a battle of wills, one that covered the entire area with an inferno visible from Ponyville. With one last cry of effort, OOO dispelled both attacks, shifting from red to blue with a call of “SHACHI! UNAGI! TAKO! SH-SH-SHOUTA!” and melting into a flood of water, putting out as much of the fire as possible. “I never got to say this, but, Kamen Rider OOO! Shouta form!” Aaron struck another pose as he reformed. “This’ll be my last Kamen Rider, Gilgamesh. You prepared for an asskicking!?”
Gilgamesh summoned all his blades in response. “Let’s see what you’ve got left!”
“KUWAGATA! KAMAKIRI! BATTA! GATA-GATAKIRIBA!”
Green. A massive field of green, riders. Over two hundred riders, all cloned from a single one in the middle. “See, maybe I told a lie of omission, Gilgy. This maybe my last Kamen Rider, but the boys here…”
Henshin sounds and poses filled the air as every Rider and every form of each Rider spawned into existence, the main Aaron in front shifting into OOO’s traffic light colored Tatoba form. “Y’ready?”
Gilgamesh just stared for a moment, utterly shocked, before shaking his head and chuckling. “Well, I did ask for it,” he muttered.
As all the Riders leapt high into the air, the last one shrugged and lagged behind for a moment, “Hey, it’s not Kamen Rider… but this fits.” As he too leapt into the air, music played , nearly drowned out by the immense roar of over two hundred simultaneous calls of:
“HISSATSU! ALL RIDER KICK!”
And then a fiery rain of men came down, flattening Gilgamesh and blackening the sky. The last thing Gilgamesh saw before he passed out was a massive plume of fire reaching into the heavens.
Gilgamesh groaned as he finally began to awaken, his body racked with pain.
“How ya feeling?” Aaron asked, a smug look on his face.
“I feel like a puppy that’s been raped by a bulldozer.”
“... Well, I’m not Dio Brando, so that isn’t exactly the best analogy, but I gotta admit that you took those Rider Kicks like a total champ.” Aaron flashed a thumbs up, smiling with an audible ping shining off his teeth.
Gilgamesh chuckled, wincing in pain as he did. He then cast a Curaga spell on himself before sitting up. “Ugh, still not fully healed, but at least I won’t be stuck here.” He then looked down at his hands. “I guess even with all the multiverse hopping I did I’m still just a big fish in a small pond.” He clenched his fists. “I need to get stronger. For them,” he muttered.
“Well, to be honest, you fought against an eldritch abomination that’s been around for… about 22 quintillion years and used to be a SysAdmin. Then again… I was holding back… But besides all that, I may have some items of interest! See, I’m a bit of a salesman, and my schtick is that I sell literally everything you can or can’t imagine. Would you like to browse my wares?”
Gilgamesh looked surprised, taking a moment to recollect his thoughts. “Wait, you were a SysAdmin like Lady Faust? And that salesman schtick sounds like a Displaced that I’ve heard about named Umbra.”
“You met Auntie F? Oh yeah… I was there when she first started observing you. Ahem, and, uh, I was Umbra. Aaron Heibai, formerly known as Umbra Shadow-Walker. At your service.” He bowed in a semi-mocking manner, flashing into shadow form as he did so.
“So, wait, you gave up your job as a SysAdmin?” He then smirked. “Well, maybe we have more in common than I thought.”
“What do you mean?” Aaron asked, turning back to his human appearance.
“When I said I was blessed by Lady Faust, I meant it. She apparently took an interest in me and actually offered me a job as a SysAdmin. I turned her down though. As cool as it sounds to be what is essentially what humans think gods are, I prefer to mingle with the mortals. Still, she did give me the power to travel the Rift without need of tokens.”
“... I’m not exactly sure she’s allowed to do that… then again, it’s good that you didn’t accept, because when the purge hit… Well, let’s just say that a lot of SysAdmins got depowered. Me, I managed to escape through a loophole. Can’t purge a being that’s not an Admin, right? Thankfully, I can still access my previous levels, but I’m gonna need to pay out the ass for that. But enough about me. What, my armored friend, would you like?”
“‘Purge?’ What the-? You know what, I don’t think I want to know,” Gilgamesh said as he got up, groaning in pain as he did. “Well, I don’t know if you’d actually have anything I want. See, I might use weapons, but that’s because they’re part of my essence, so they can’t be taken from me to be used by others, so I probably won’t be buying any items.”
Aaron smirked, “What part of everything did you not understand? It’s not just items, Gilgy. Take a guess at what I’ve got. Go on, try.”
A glint of delight appeared in the warrior’s eyes. “Hamon? The art of Sendo?”
Aaron held up two books, one titled “Hamon for Dummies: An In Depth Field Guide to Unlocking Your Favorite Sun Based Power” the other titled “Sendo for Dummies: How to Turn Your Hamon Into Something Even DIO Would Run From.” He smirked, “Must you ask?”
“Ansatsuken Style? Satsui no Hadou included?”
Another book, this one with a silhouette of a man performing the Hadouken on its cover. “Tada~”
“Naruto style Ninjutsu?”
“Seriously? Of course!” This time it was a scroll with kanji scrawled on it. Beneath it was the subtitle “Chakra training for dummies.”
“What about… a Stand?”
Aaron paused for a minute and rifled through his pockets before pulling out a deck of cards, “Star Platinum, Magician’s Red, Silver Chariot, Hierophant Green, Hermit Purple, the Egyptian God Stands from Stardust Crusaders? Maybe you’d like The World?”
“Actually, I was thinking something a bit different. How about Tusk?”
Aaron drew out the appropriate card, “This one?”
“That’s it. And considering what made it effective, I’ll need knowledge on the Rotation as well.”
“Right then, would you like paperback or hardcover?” He held up another pair of books.
“I’ve always been a hardcover guy. I like when knowledge has weight. Oh, and one more thing I can think of. I found out I can cast spells that Gilgamesh wasn’t able to use, but it gives me a splitting headache, even something as weak as Esuna. I don’t suppose you’ve got the ability to enhance existing powers?”
“Of course I do. Would you like that in potion form, pill form, or another book?” Aaron waggled all three, his braid shaking the bottle of pills as if it were a third arm.
Gilgamesh looked at the odd sight for a moment before shaking his head. “Are they all permanent?”
“Of course! Why would I sell you a power-up if it wasn’t permanent? Wait, don’t answer that. I can think of plenty of reasons on my own. Point is, these are permanent. Just take the whole bottle of potion, or take two pills a day for the pills, or just read the book.”
“As much as I prefer earning my power, I don’t think I have that luxury. I’ll take the potion. Just guzzle it all down and powers enhanced, right?” he asked, reaching for the bottle.
“Yup” Aaron flicked away the other two, drawing out a calculator. “Well, for all of these, the total comes up to a nice, round three hundred bits.”
Gilgamesh went quiet, stopping right before he managed to uncork the potion. “Um… that might be a problem. See, I kinda spent my new life doing everything I could to live without any money. So yeah, I don’t have a single bit to my name.”
Aaron shrugged, “Got anything of value on you that you’d be willing to part with?”
Gilgamesh thought for a moment before reaching behind him and pulling out a Plumber’s badge. “I don’t suppose you take Tokens? I guess I don’t really need them considering I can traverse the Rift freely now.”
“I do, I do… That’ll take out a good chunk of the price. Now we’re down to two hundred and a Plumber’s badge Token.”
“Two hundred, huh?” He reached behind himself again and pulled out a Unitrix. “How’s this?”
“Another hundred off.”
Gilgamesh hesitated a moment before handing over the item, looking it longingly, before pulling out a vial. “How about a vial of the T-Virus?”
“And like that, your debt is cleared.” Aaron stuffed the books and potion into a bag and levitated the whole package over, pulling a receipt out of thin air and affixing it to the handles.
“Thanks,” he replied, handing over the last token and taking the bag. “I might come see you again in the future. Or, I’d like to anyway. How would I contact you?”
Aaron held out a generic looking smartphone. “Just use this. It’s automatically connected to my position and it can call every other cell phone you know the number to. Oh, it also calls Token owners. So if you need help and don’t have someone’s token on you, this works in place of one.”
“Great! What’s the battery life?” Gilgamesh asked, taking the device.
“Infinite, as is the storage capacity.”
“And does it have all the other functions a smartphone might have? Can I get youtube? Netflix, maybe?”
“Anywhere and anywhen. If a smartphone can have it, you can get it.”
“Sweet! Thanks a lot, Aaron,” he replied, pocketing the device. “I’m glad I was able to fight with you. As the saying goes, ‘there are a thousand lessons in defeat, but none in victory.’ I needed to fight someone truly stronger than me to grow. Also, I think I might’ve needed my ego knocked down a peg. After you kill an interdimensional universe destroying sorcerer, even the most humble start to think pretty highly of themselves.”
“... Universe destroying sorcerer? Where the hell was I when that happened? Oh yeah… I was quitting my day job. Whoops. Anyway, it’s no problem. I think I need my ego knocked down a few pegs, actually… even if Universes tend to try to kick my ass when I enter them, sometimes.”
“Yeah, it’s a harsh life, but at least it’s interesting. Anyway, I think I’m gonna go check on some old friends of mine. See ya around?”
“Yup. I’ll show you to the door, if you want. People have gotten lost in here… I would know.”
“Nah, I’ll just cut my way back to the Rift… Unless that would cause you problems?”
“I don’t think so… But then again, this thing is just an infinite subspace pocket inside of my shadow form… Eh, shouldn’t cause any problems”
“Alrighty then. So long and thanks for all the superpowers!” Gilgamesh replied, cutting open a hole with his naginata before jumping inside with a wave.
"Don't you just love it when you beat the shit out of someone and they still decide to be your friend?" Aaron smirked. "Oh wait shit I gotta go find Juno and Jupiter! Fuck!"
Exit, pursuing two catpeople.
Aaron floated serenely through the Void as he regulated the various flows of energy that comprised his infinite subspace pocket that he used as a shop. As the shadow drifted across the ever changing chaos-breeze of the Void, a letter slapped itself across his face, shattering his moment of peaceful reverie.
"..... The fuck is this thing?" he asked no one in particular. Then he opened said letter and examined the contents.
You and two other guests of your choice are cordially invited to Lezard Valeth’s Resurrection Party!
Refreshments shall be served at sundown and music shall be provided.
Time and directions to Lezard’s Tower are on the back.
Remember, wipe your hooves on the way in.
"....." Aaron spouted off a few ellipses and contemplated the letter. Then he disappeared back into his subspace pocket with a quick POP! and a cry of:
"JUPITER! JUNO! GET OVER HERE I HAVE IMPORTANT NEWS!"
Several hours and Universes later....
Lezard smiled down at Stella, who was wearing a simple white dress to cover up her lack of Cutie Mark. She had done an excellent job cooking and getting the first two floors ready for the party.
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts and he strode over, opening the door.
“Invitation?” He asked in a stern voice, seeing a human and two cat people.
Said human reached inside his torso, pulled out said invitation, and held it out to Lezard, a shadowy blotch forming and closing as he did so, “Yo. I’m Aaron Heibai, these are my two guests; Jupiter and Juno. Jupiter, Juno, say hello to the nice person.”
“Hello, The Nice Person!” The female shouted as she lunged forward to hug Lezard.
The male caught her by the tail and pulled her back, “Jupiter, that’s not his name.”
“I know, but it’d be so funny if he was actually named ‘The Nice Person,’ wouldn’t it?” A few chuckles broke the sentence up, here and there.
The male thought for a moment, a small smirk forming on his face, “I guess it would.”
Aaron shrugged, as if to say ‘Kids, what can you do?’, “So yeah, nice digs ya got here.”
“Thank you,” Lezard gave a small bow. “I am Lezard Valeth. It is nice to meet all three of you.”
He moved aside to show them the way in, Stella standing a bit away to bow to them as well.
“Same,” Aaron strode forth, clothing melting from semi-formal to casual in a quick sweep of shadows, “So, Resurrection party, eh?”
“More of a, ‘Oh hey, I’m not actually dead’ party. I remade my statue after getting free and cut it’s head off,” With a chuckle, he moved his glasses up, “I just wish I could have seen Celestia’s face when she got this invitation. Speaking of which, have you seen a older girl with long white hair, green eyes, and purple leather armor?”
“Plenty, but not the one you’re looking for. Sorry.” Aaron shrugged again, settling down on a randomly appearing chair.
Lezard gave of a small sigh, “Knew it wouldn’t be that easy.” He grabbed a nearby chair and sat down as well. “So, you’ve got shadow powers?”
“Among others, yes.” Aaron swiveled his chair around, resting his arms on its back, without once getting up to move it, “It’s just best to assume I’m… what’s that word for slightly below Omnipotent? Ah yes, a really, absurdly high level reality warper.”“So, you’re basically a god then? Humorous.”“Yes, yes I am. Though, most of the pantheons hate me. Mostly because they thought they could push the annoying, shadowy eldritch abomination around.” A smirk and cocky pose. “I kicked their asses for it. People always think I’m weaker than I am because I act like a loon. But enough about me, what about you?”“Well, I stole the Philosopher's Stone and ended up outside of the Crystal Empire. Then I got taken into custody by the Queen’s soldiers and accidently blew up a wall while experimenting with my magic,” Lezard’s eyes sparkled with amusement, “I played it cool when Sombra showed up and he took me as his Magical advisor after a few word battles.”“Sombra, huh? Never met the guy, not for much longer than a few seconds, that is.” Aaron dispelled his chair, dropping backwards into an upside down, crosslegged position, sitting in the air as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Most of the time I ignore him. I have bigger problems to worry about, really.”“Well, I’ll take care of him when the Empire shows back up. It’ll be rather easy,” Lezard said with an easy smirk.“If you say so. I remember that one time when I showed up in the Empire when the Princesses were about to take him down… and then I just walked up, ripped out his soul, and ate it.” Aaron chuckled, playing with a yoyo, also upside down, “The Princesses, naturally, were horrified, but I left the Universe before they could do anything about it.”Then there was a knock at the door, “Ah, speak of the devil.” Lezard motioned for Stella to open the door.“Alright master~” Stella hummed as she walked over to the door.Outside, Celestia and Luna stood steadfast with a platoon of soldiers behind them and the Mane six with their respective elements beside them.“Be cautious, Twilight. Lezard can turn a grown stallion into a mess of emotions with only a few words.” Then Celestia knocked on the door, a spell to stun at the ready. Honestly, she had no idea what the former advisor for King Sombra was planning.Stella opened the door and peaked out “Hello?” She squealed when she saw Celestia, “Another pony!”Celestia and Luna were both caught off guard by this strange unicorn, though Luna found her voice first, “Art thou Lezard’s slave?”Stella blinked and tilted her head, stepping out, unintentionally revealing her curved horn, “It depends on your definition of a slave. Would a maid count?”Twilight and Rarity both gasped upon seeing the curved horn. Celestia and Luna kept a passive look but both were feeling sorry for the unicorn. A curved horn only happened with a specific and rare abnormality that would keep that unicorn from ever casting magic.“What? Is something wrong?” Stella asked, looking at Twilight and Rarity.Before Rarity could try to console the deformed unicorn, Lezard’s voice was heard, “Stella, stop staring and ask for their invitations.”Celestia and Luna both stiffened up at the voice, along with Fluttershy. ‘So he really is alive… ” Celestia mused“Oh yeah! Sorry master!” She called out behind her, Stella looked back to group, “Ahem, may I have your invitations?”“Wait, those invitations were serious?!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, having left her invitation in the garbage.“Yes, without an invitation you can’t come in,” Stella puffed up a bit as she said this, standing to her full height which was the same height as Big Mac, not including her horn.Jupiter jumped into Aaron’s lap, sitting in the most cat-like way a human can do while sitting in another human’s lap. “Aaron, it seems Rainbow’s left her invitation at home. Would you mind going to get it?” she said, looking up at him adorably.“.....” Aaron stared and blushed, patting Jupiter’s head before setting her down onto a massive plushie of himself and disappearing from view, “Of course, luv.”“You’ve got him whipped.” Lezard spoke up.Jupiter did nothing but wink knowingly at the man.Outside, Rainbow felt a weight settle across her back as a slip of paper dangled in front of her face, held there by strangely black and incorporeal appendages, “I believe this is yours, Rainbow Dash.”Rainbow and Fluttershy both darted away in surprise.“We have the invitations now.” Celestia looked to Stella, levitating her paper out along with Luna.“Alright~ Head on in,” Stella hummed as she burned a small hole in the top right corner of the invitation, horn glowing a faint red, silently noting that they didn’t mention anything.Celestia nodded to her guards, giving a wary look to the shadowy monster (in her eyes) as she, Luna and the Mane Six entered.Said monster waved jauntily, perched upon the back of an unwary Rainbow Dash once more. Then it was gone, and Aaron was back in the room, drifting through the room and fiddling with an incomprehensible object that seemed to defy all laws of nature and existence.Luna looked at Aaron, then at Jupiter and Juno and said the first thing that came to mind.“Why must there be more of them?” Aaron held up a sign that read, ‘Because it’s funny!’Luna just gave an annoyed look to Aaron.Stella smiled and walked in behind the ponies, rather happy that she could finally meet another. She looked over to Twilight and Rarity, “So, what was it you were gasping at earlier?”Twilight and Rarity both looked at each other before Rarity spoke. “Dear, you might have a certain… horn disease. Hasn’t your horn hurt when you cast spells?”Stella tilted her head in confusion, “No, should it?”In the background, Juno pursued Jupiter as she decided to explore the corridors. Aaron chuckled and threw a tracking spell at the both of them, deciding to get them later. Then he started thumb-wrestling with a be-tentacled creature through judicious use of portals. There were many, many thumbs involved.“It should,” Twilight said as she inched closer to Stella as soft piano music started playing, “You shouldn’t be able to cast any spells at all.”“Master if you’re trying to get me to dance, try some other time,” Stella said, snorting a bit at the music and glancing over at Lezard, before looking back to Twilight, “I have no problems with it, I’m just terrible with normal magic,” she said as she made a sphere of fire and ice appear on opposite sides of her horn.Twilight stepped back in surprise, a blush on her face, “Um, this is actually very unusual. Would you like to come by my library so we can run some tests on you?”“I have no idea, though master mentioned something about why I have a curved horn, so why don’t you ask him?” Stella said before walking over to Lezard.Lezard looked down to Stella from his book, “Yes?” He asked, ignoring Luna’s glare.“Master, what was it you said about why my horn was curved?” Stella asked, trying her best to give Lezard puppy eyes.“Oh, it’s because you are an artificially made pony that I created from various ponies DNA,”Stella blinked before looking at the various other unicorns in the room, from the guards to the alicorns, “They all have straight horns though,”Lezard looked at them briefly. “Hm, must be something that happens with the growing process.”Stella shrugged, “It works for me,”Lezard looked to Aaron, “So, what do you do other than be godly broken?”“I run a shop full of everything and anything that you can or can’t imagine.”“Ah, can I browse the store after this party ends?”“Yeah, it’s cool. I always love having some business in my shop.”“Cool,” Lezard stood up, waving a hand as tables of vegetarian food popped up.Aaron floated over, snagged a sandwich, and sat on the ceiling to munch on his food, crumbs falling down and into a strategically placed trashcan.Pinkie Pie soon joined him, thanks to her suction cups. Aaron barely glanced her way, patting her on the head as he idly fiddled with a floating thing .Stella looked around at the tables until she saw one that wasn’t vegetarian and took some chicken and started eating it, ignoring the looks from various ponies.“Stella, are you sure you should be eating meat in front of ponies?” Aaron asked, settling into her back and tinkering with his strange thing once again.Stella finished chewing her chicken and swallowed, “Why not?” She asked, having not actually noticed the disturbed gazes.Lezard once again palmed his face, “Stella Starbound, what have we been talking about in our spare time?”“Uhm, other than magic, not being too weird?” Stella said, grinning sheepishly.“And what was first thing we went over? About pony biology and customs?”“...What they ate and such,” Stella pouted a bit and went back to the vegetarian tables.“Exactly,” Lezard looked to Luna and Celestia and bowed, “I am sorry for the poor conduct of my maid.”Celestia just fixed him with a glare. “What are you planning, Lezard?”“What are you talking about?”“Don’t lie!” Celestia snapped, stomping hard enough to scare Fluttershy. “You have an evil tower!”“Celestia!” Lezard gasped in shock. “I would never make my tower by evil means! Those just fall apart when their ‘boss’ is defeated. I made sure it was good so it would stand long after I leave this universe!”“What?” Luna and Twilight looked over to Lezard at his last comment.“I do believe our esteemed host is referring to the act of leaving this world after his goal is completed, either through mystical or technological means. Probably because the guy kinda hates this place a little. Maybe. I think he was looking for a little someone….” Aaron piped up, casually dangling his feet off the side of Celestia’s snout, rear planted firmly upon her head, right behind her horn.Lezard halfway expected Celestia’s eye to twitch as she tried to knock Aaron off. “Well, yeah. I’m making a small alternate universe so I can use it as a Lifeboat to go home with my sister and her friends once I find them.”“So, thou could have left if thou was not turned to stone in the conflict a millennium ago?” Luna gasped, putting a hoof to her face.Aaron remained stubbornly on Celestia’s head, despite her efforts.Lezard just nodded. “I do not blame either of you for what happened.”“What happened?” Applejack spoke up, Rainbow Dash flying over while eating a veggie burger.“Not much. Got used as a shield against the Elements of Harmony and got turned to stone. Nothing you girls have to worry about for a while.” Lezard was handily ignoring Celestia’s attempts to get Aaron off her head.“Now what the hay are you talkin’ about?” Applejack asked.“Stuff that I will help you all with when it pops up.” Lezard turned around on his heel. “Oh, and Rarity, I’d like to talk to you about some commissions I’ve been thinking of.”
A few hours later…Lezard waved bye to the leaving ponies, looking to either side of the door to the two guards that Celestia had left behind to watch him. He closed the door and looked to Aaron. “Now then, let’s talk business.”Aaron looked up from where he’d attached more things to the original thing . “Yeah? What do you need?”Stella walked over to where Lezard was at “Oh can I see the store too?”“Well, various DNA from super heroes. Especially ones that can stop time.” Lezard ticked off a finger. “Also, Internet access but I’d like to browse as well, see if there’s anything I haven’t thought of.”“Of course, of course.” Aaron waved a hand and a pair of automatic sliding doors appeared. “Go right on in.”Stella looked over to Aaron with a smile, “Thank you~” She said as she went in.Inside was a seemingly endless collection of shelves, racks, stands, displays, and floors. The shop stretched upwards beyond even where even the most gifted being could see, and stretched laterally in much the same way. Aaron stood behind a counter, waving cheerfully. Jupiter and Juno could be seen working in the far background. “Welcome to the Emporium of Everything and Anything! We’ve got a special 50% off sale on weapons of mass destruction today!”“Where are the spellbooks and enchanted items?” Stella asked, trying to figure out how to navigate the shop.“Not going to need a weapon of mass destruction… unless magical diseases falls under that. I have a certain plan for Tirek when he pops up.”“Magical weapons are on the fourth floor right now, but if you want an in depth look for it you should go to the eighteenth floor. Spellbooks are thirty fifth and enchanted items are forty eighth.” Appropriate arrows appeared to direct the pair to their destinations. “Elevators are on your right, just type in what you want and you’ll be directed to the most appropriate floor.”“Alright thank you,” Stella said, heading for the elevator.Lezard hesitated, looking to Aaron. “Oh yes, are there others like me who want to go home out there?”“Some, yes, but more often than not they prefer Equestria over Earth, considering that they get super powers and stuff out of it.”“Ah. Well, I might finish making my token soon. Would you mind giving it to those that want to go home?” Lezard asked. “I don’t want to leave anyone behind.”“Of course, of course… though, since this is a business…. it’ll cost ya.” Aaron held up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t make the rules, it’s just business is all.”“I understand.” Lezard turned around and headed to the elevator. “See you in an hour or two.”“Alright. Don’t try to steal anything. Bad things happen to those who steal.” Aaron pointed at a large jar of ash labeled with the sign “Used to be Thieves”. He held up a hand pulsing with deadly red light in warning, nodding once, as if to say that he really hoped that Lezard was as smart as he said he was.“I know not to steal from gods unless they’re assholes. You don’t seem to be an asshole given you’re a merchant.”“Then again, there was that one asshole making Displaced and he’s well… an asshole.”“He’s probably the one who sent me and my sister here. Ironically enough, I accidentally stole from him.” Lezard smirked, the elevator doors closing.“Ha! Nice!” Aaron saluted jauntily, turning back to his paperwork.Lezard saluted back as the doors closed.
The sorcerer was soon back at the checkout desk with a few items, like a few DNA tubes, a lightsaber, a smartphone, and a biohazard tube.Stella walked up shortly after Lezard, holding two tomes and two amulets in her admittedly weak telekinesis or a simpler term, levitation magic.“Huh. That was quick. You two got everything you need?”“Yeah. I did at least. And I finished my token as well.” Lezard took an orange orb out of his coat. It was about the size of his head and glowed a warm orange.“Yep~ Took me a bit longer because this tentacle grabbed my hoof and tried pulling me away,” Stella said, shivering slightly.“Did you freeze it or burn it? Also, you should tell Aaron where it happened so he can go fix it.”“Froze it, it was somewhere in the enchanted items area,” Stella said.“Oh yeah, that’s Lemmy. He does that. He’ll be fine, but thanks for the warning.” Aaron took the orb and inspected it for a few moments. “Huh. This is a pretty nice Token, normally it’s just a random object or two.”“I’ve kept that charging with my extra magic power for over a month. Basically, it will allow anyone who uses it as an item instead of a token to get a large power boost.” Lezard shrugged. “Thought it might help some people.”Lezard’s choice of words for his token boomed into Aaron’s head when he took it.‘I am Lezard Valeth, supreme sorcerer. If you ever need aid from me directly, pour some of your essence into the Dragon orb and call my name. However, if you need something more discreet, then take the magic from the orb and add it to your own for an hour long power boost. Together, we shall make it home! ’“Huh. Nice. Well, into the Void it goes!” With that, Aaron casually slung the orb over his shoulder and into a portal, the last view of it being the orb splitting into an infinite amount of itself and rocketing in different directions. “That’ll be six bits.”Lezard reached into his coat and brought out a few Crystal Kingdom crystals. “Will these do?”“With extra, yes. That’ll go toward your other items too. So, let’s see what we have here….” Aaron rung up the items, stuffing them into a curiously small paper bag as he did so. “Well, your total is… one hundred bits even. Ergo, that’s about… Hmm…” He tossed the crystals in his hand a few times, “Yeah, that’ll be eighteen of these.”Lezard started taking a few more out. “Oh yes, where’s the Mountain Dew Throwback?”Aaron pulled a few cans from under the counter, “Right here. You need a six pack, a 24 pack, or just a bottle or two?”Lezard took out a large bag of crystals. “As many as I can buy with this. I haven’t had any in over a thousand years.”As Lezard had done that, Stella slipped the second amulet over his neck, and put the first on her own, “There,”“..... That’s…. a lot of crystals,” Aaron muttered, sweeping them all behind the counter and pulling out several large crates of said drink. “Well, that covers everything. Do you want a receipt?”“I was trying to save them for a rainy day and I do want one. I’m keeping track of what I spend.”Stella smiled, “The amulet is rather fitting on you master,”Lezard just nodded to Stella. “Oh yes, is your number already programmed into the Smartphone? I’ll need to order more sooner or later.”A nod, “Yup. First number in there. If you meet more Displaced, you can just put their tokens against the phone and it’ll be absorbed in, just like adding a phone number. Also, internet, phone service, apps, music, etc etc. It’s basically that you have a connection no matter where you are. And the thing is nearly indestructible too, so there’s that.”“.... So, what do I need to enter your church?” Lezard asked, seemingly blown away by all the things he could do. Plus, he had access to the internet again. Sweet sweet abusability was his again.“Sign this in the appropriate spots and give me your soul for safekeeping.” Aaron deadpanned, holding out a contract and motioning over to a jar full of glowing marbles labeled, “Souls of Followers (DO NOT TOUCH OR SELL)”.Stella took a casual step back from the jar, “Uh?”“You almost had me.” Lezard chuckled. “But I know better than to just give my soul away.”“Eh, it’s not like I do anything with them except toss them into the appropriate afterlives.” Aaron shrugged and tossed the contract over his shoulder, whereupon it turned into a flock of flaming doves and dissipated out into the aether. “Besides, most of my followers are backstabbing greedy-ass shopkeepers. It sucks, even with the strength I get from faith and prayer.”“I’d prefer one loyal follower who follows out of respect rather a thousand who follow out of fear. Fear always leads to backlash while respect leads to honest to god good work.”“Master, how was it that ponies normally said thank you or such? Was it hugging or something? I can’t really remember,” Stella said, scrunching her brow.“Really, I think it’s up to the pony doing it but you can hug him if you want.” Lezard motioned to Aaron.“Alright then~” Stella said, smirking slightly as she tackle hugged Aaron.“Hoomph!” Aaron caught Stella around her waist as she tackled him, spinning around with the force. “Ah… heh… not that I’m angry or something… but uh… Jupiter might take exception if she sees this.”“Well it’s just a hug so I don’t see where the problem would be,” Stella said as she let go, pouting a little bit.“She’s… uh… a bit of a jealous girlfriend.” Aaron muttered, already sensing Jupiter’s deathglare, even though she was seven trillion floors up. Dimly, he heard her mop snap in half from the force exerted upon the poor thing.“Yeah, you better get down before she goes Yandere.” Lezard chuckled.“Fineeee,” Stella said, going back over to Lezard’s side.Lezard just rubbed the homunculus’ head with a chuckle. “Anyways, thanks for coming to the party and for selling me this stuff.”“Thanks for the spellbooks and amulets Aaron!” Stella chirped.“It’s cool.” Aaron nodded, handing over their bag.Lezard grabbed the bag. “Talk to you soon. I hope we can keep in contact long after I’ve gotten home.” He headed for the door.“Same to you, pal.” Aaron waved, and the last thing the two saw of him before the doors closed and the shop disappeared was his jaunty salute and his transformation back to shadow form.
As soon as the two left, Aaron smiled, "Huh... Lezard and Stella, eh? I like them..."
Then he frowned. "JUPITER STOP GLARING AT ME IT WAS JUST A FRIENDLY HUG!"
In Which Aaron Decides to Try Shipping
Once upon a time, in a Universe with a few Alchemists….
Aaron decided to be a massive troll and drop his Token, a super fucking OP smartphone, into the Universe…
Shallie hummed as she leaned on her broom with Yuri covering his face to hide his snickers, staring at Logy hiding in a bush in the Canterlot Garden. “So… How’d you get stuck this time?”
“Learning how to fly, the hell do you think?” Logix replied, snark obvious in his voice.
“But you don’t even have a broom!” Shallie whined, walking over and pulling him out.
Yuri just kept snickering, getting cut off when something landed on his head.
Logix huffed and waved his sword, “Magical swords, but no, I got knocked out of the window by Luna on accident,” He said, pointing up at a rather high window.
“Well, you should just stop trying to seduce her.” Shallie pointed out. “She’s still rather shaken after getting free.”
“I’m not trying to seduce her! I just figured out that she liked me!” Logix snapped, crossing his arms with a huff.
Yuri took the thing, now revealed to be a phone off of his head. he pressed the quick dial button and put it to his ear.
“But isn’t that beastiality?” Shallie tilted her head, knowing full well the anthroness of the ponies.
“Guys, I might-” Yuri said, holding up a finger.
“I don’t even- You know what, no, you’re not pulling this crap on me, I just got out of a rusting statue and I have a headache from falling, don’t start!” Logix said, rubbing his temples.
“Guys, please stop arguing-”
“I have headaches everyday, man. Plus, I got trapped in a ruin for a couple years hunting for one item from a monster.
“GUYS!” Yuri snapped.
“WHAT?!” Logy and Shallie snapped, looking over at Yuri with an exasperated expression.
“I might have accidentally contacted an alien or universe traveller,” Yuri held up the phone.
“...What.” Shallie squeaked.
“Yuri… Who let you near the brownies again?” Logy asked slowly, giving him an odd look before noticing the phone, “...Is that an Iphone?”
Yuri gave a small glare to Logy before nodding.
“Sooooo, we might be getting company soon?” Shallie asked.
A quiet noise filtered into the garden through the phone.
Vwaaaaaaaaaaa...
All three of the displaced looked to the phone, Yuri slowly putting it on the ground and backing away.
The noise repeated, slightly louder, this time coming from seemingly nowhere.
Vwaaaaaaaaaaaa
“...Is that a vuvuzela?” Logix asked with a grimace.
Shallie and Yuri started covering their ears. “Noooo, not the sound! I hate the sound!” Shallie was flipping out a little.
One final burst of sound, this time accompanied by blaring dubstep, laser lights, a fog cloud, confetti, MLG airhorns, and one bishonen human, wearing an ensemble of leather and spikes.
VWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Yuri kept backing up, while Shallie took out her broom, “MUST STOP NOISE!” She swung her broom at the human.
Logix slid a crystal into his odd glove and took aim at the man, “Stop the vuvuzelas! Or I fire!”
The sound continued, the human standing atop the phone doing nothing but grinning an infuriating grin and bowing a mocking bow. Somehow, his mocking reply was heard even above the ruckus.
“Try me.”
“...Screw the crystal,” Logix muttered, sliding out a glowing purple knife with an alchemical symbol on it which he stabbed into the ground and formed… a mud pie with it? He picked it up and threw it at the man.
Shallie just kept hitting the guy,
Yuri rubbed his head before starting to walk back.
Aaron rolled his eyes and deflected everything in a quiet explosion of shadows, reverting back to his natural form in a split second. “Alright, alright, I’ll stop.”
“Well, I was about to ask.” Yuri looked a little dejected.
Shallie gave a deep sigh, uncovering her ears.
Aaron shrugged, “Alright, introductions. I’m Aaron Heibai, extradimensional shopkeeper and probably the most powerful being that you’ll ever meet. You have summoned me via my sweet-ass smartphone. Would you like to browse my wares?”
“Question, are you human?” Logix asked, warily watching Aaron.
A raised…. uh… eyebrow? was the only reply, the shadow-being’s face glowing brighter in response.
“Ok, better question, were you a human?” Logix asked, rolling his eyes.
“Eh… sorta. I was a human… then a shadow… then a Void Dweller… then a being of near omnipotence… now I’m back to being a Void Dweller. So, yes, actually.”
“In that case sure! I’ll take a look at your shop, just the last time someone offered something like this it was a demon who didn’t know what a human was,” Logix grumbled, moving over to Aaron.
“We beat him up though.” Shallie grinned, Yuri putting a hand on her head.
“Wonderful! You probably won’t regret this!” Aaron cheerfully pulled open a door that simply hadn’t been there a second ago, ushering Logix inside.
“If I find anything related to tentacles I’m turning around instantly,” Logix said to Aaron as he entered.
“You just jinxed us, you know that.” Yuri pointed out, walking in with Shallie skipping behind him.
“If I find a book on summoning things I’ll buy it for Luna or something,” Logix snorted, ignoring what Yuri said.
Aaron paused and floated up into the air. “Uh… there’s, well, there might be a small problem concerning tentacles… Well, if you stay out of the Adult Section, you should be fine, but be wary when opening pre-made summoning scrolls… some of them are… volatile.”
Yuri grabbed Shallie before she get away. “No adult stuff for you.”
“But I’m over a thousand years old!”
“I don’t care.” Yuri started dragging her along with him.
Logix merely chuckled and moved off into the shop, picking up an occasional book to skim through.
Shallie was crying as she was dragged. “But I want the stuff!”
Aaron chuckled and took up a watchful spot at the front desk, idly skimming through a magazine.
Shallie ran right up, carrying quite a few bottles of different items and a couple brooms.
Yuri followed Shallie, carrying a bag of gels and an unusual red-purple sword with a hollow center.
Logix moved towards the front with a small cut on his cheekbone, holding 3 spellbooks, a odd black staff, and… A Galatine from Warframe.
Aaron looked up, stacks of magazines and other literature engulfing the front desk in an incredibly intricate and well made castle. “So, I see all of us have been busy.”
Logix groaned, “I opened one of these books to find a summoning rite that’s activated by any magic. I got a cut in response. This is Luna’s.” He said, holding out the book that had a lock on it.
“I got all the rare alchemy items and some new brooms.” She dumped all the items. “Oh, and a new hat.” She pulled out a black velvet newsboy cap.
“I got some gels for healing and this sweet sword,” Yuri hummed, gesturing to his sword. “I would get some clothes but I have this strange ability to change in random costumes whenever I want. It’s weird but I love it.”
“The other two are books on ancient alchemy so I can learn how to do use alchemy without a sword, the staff feels like it had darkness in it, so I like it, and the sword is the Galatine from Warframe, best game in my opinion,” Logix said, laying his items on the table.
“Interesting choices. Will that be all?”
“I think so.” Shallie muttered, scratching her head under her hat.
“I guess,” Yuri replied.
“Indeed,” Logix nodded.
Aaron smiled and dispelled his magazine-castle, motioning them over to the cash register.
“So, what kind of currency do you take, or will you take jobs in exchange because I’m a master alchemist.” Shallie spoke up.
Logix simply dumped a bag of alchemic knives and armor on the table, “Here’s my payment,”
Aaron swept half the pile under the table and held out a receipt. “Thank you for your time, here’s your receipt.”
Shallie took the receipt and handed it to Logix. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Aaron leaned back in his chair and smiled indulgently.
Logix smiled and nodded, “Keep the rest, I have way too many,”
Shallie had one question. “So, what’s with the phone?”
Aaron paused and stuck a finger up in a lecture pose. “Well, the thing is…. are any of you familiar with the Multiverse at this point?”
“I know the multiversal theory from earth but that’s it,” Logix said with a shrug.
“Yeah, I RPed with Yuri all the time about it on Earth.” Shallie rubbed her head.
“What she said,” Yuri pointed a finger to Shallie.
“Never knew these people before I got sent here,” Logix said, shrugging again.
Aaron dropped his head, literally, into his hands and sighed, tossing his head back and forth as he spoke. “Okay, well the Multiverse is this great big thing with a bunch of smaller things, Universes, inside it. That’s about all you need to know about the whole of it. As pertaining to my sweet-ass phone, there are people known as Displaced, humans that bought something or another from some douchebag Merchant and got sent, usually, to Equestria. Usually as something pertaining to the item they bought. They have Tokens, objects that can be used to summon said Displaced whenever necessary. Mine is a special case, since I only really give it out to people on a case by case basis, whereas most Displaced have it just spread to all corners of the Multiverse. Point is, you can call me with the phone and I’ll be there pretty much within the next five seconds. Probably.”
“So there might be other versions of us out there?” Shallie asked.
“Can we make these token things as well?” Logix asked, idly rubbing a small plate of metal shaped like a shield on a belt pouch.
Aaron nodded, “Yeah, sure, whaddaya want to make?” His head was now bobbing around, his body was nowhere to be found.
Shallie looked up. “...Oh my god, you’re the headless merchant!” She cried out before Yuri lightly hit her in the head.
“.... Bodiless. I’m the bodiless merchant at this point.” Aaron deadpanned, smacking Shallie upside the head with his six foot long braid.
“Uhhhh…” Logix said with a confused expression.
Shallie gave a small whine before grabbing one of her new brooms. “Sorry, my mind’s weird when thinking.”
“Isn’t your mind always weird?” Yuri asked.
“Noooooo!” Shallie huffed. “Sometimes I think about normal stuff too!”
“No. No you don’t Shallie,” Logix snorted.
“You’re both mean!” She started hitting them both on the head with her broom. “Why’d I give you two immortality again?”
“Hell if I know! You did it to me in my sleep! Besides the fact that you’re really not a good candidate for knowing how to give someone immortality,” Logix groaned.
“I made my girlfriend immortal in her sleep.” Aaron mumbled, stacking his head atop Logix’s and clamping on with finger-like spiderlegs.
“...Please get off, you remind me of a Half-Life 2 headcrab,” Logix shivered.
“Mwehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe.” Aaron smirked and wrapped his braid around Logix’s neck like a scarf, using it as a leverage point to extend upwards and grow a new body from his neck stump, arms growing out first and then the rest of his body growing out laterally until he was perched in a perfect handstand on Logix’s head.
“NO! NO! NO! NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!” Logix flailed, throwing Aaron off of his head, into the nearby bush.
“Am I the only slightly normal one here?” Yuri groaned, watching this.
“Nope~ You might be insane in the head too.” Shallie hummed.
Aaron’s head popped out of Logix’s shirt collar, wearing a purple top hat with an ace of spades stuck in the hatband. “We’re all mad here,” Aaron giggled, slipping out of Logix’s shirt like a snake and curling down onto the floor and slithering to a stand.
“I’m sane but if this insanity keeps up I’ll lose my sanity!” Logix said, throwing his arms up into the air before walking off for a few minutes before running back out and towards the area the others with an extremely pale and somewhat disturbed visage, “Never again…”
“And this is why I never recommend wandering around without a clear goal in mind~” Aaron sing-songed creepily, his double toned, echoing voice giving him an air of total fucking holy shit .
“Why is the adult section on the first floor?” Logix asked, weakly.
“Because life hates you?” Yuri suggested with a snigger. “That or it’s telling you to ask Luna on a date already.” .
Logix looked to Yuri with a confused expression, “Why would I do that?”
Aaron sniggered and called from the five trillionth floor up, “SHE WANTS THE D~!”
Shallie joined in. “She doooooooo~!”
Yuri just pointed to Aaron and Shallie. “What they said. Plus, whenever I talk to her, it’s always about you.”
“Eh?” Logix said, tilting his head, somehow already having forgotten what Luna had said to him.
“....” Aaron reappeared behind Logix and dumped a vial of pink liquid on him. “There. If that doesn’t make her jump his bone, I dunno what will.”
“OH GOD THE HELL IS THIS?!” Logix shouted quickly trying to get the liquid off of his body. It did not work. At all.
“What did you do?” Yuri lazily asked.
“Weeeeellllll…. I dumped a specialized form of aphrodisiac/pheromone/perfume on him that’ll make Luna go absolutely fucking wild for his D. I also dumped a vial of a similar liquid on Luna, whiiiich has the similar effect of making Logix go absolutely fucking wild for her V.” Aaron smirked, “I am the master of dumping aphrodisiacs on people.”
Shallie had a simple question. “Isn’t that rape?”
“I HAVE TO BURN MY FAVORITE SET OF CLOTHES NOW! AND SIT IN A SCALDING SHOWER FOR HOURS! YOU TERRIBLE TERRIBLE PERSON!” Logix shouted, flailing his arms a bit.
“Mnyeh~!” Aaron stuck out his eldritch tongue, tendrils flailing and squirming as the hit open air.
Logix jumped back, accidentally slamming his back into the wall next to the door with a slightly less disturbed look on his face than before.
Shallie and Yuri backed away from Aaron with a NOPE look on their faces.
“Um, can we get back on topic before this ends in…. all sorts of nope?” Yuri asked.
The tongue that may or may not have literally been from hell flailed around a little more before retracting into Aaron’s mouth as he grinned a mostly normal grin. “Sure.”
Shallie took out a broom. “I want this to be my Token!”
Logix was fumbling with a small bag that was tied shut before he pulled it open and dumped what looked like a few small chunks of gold tumbled, “Would you please get rid of that stuff that you put on me and Luna? Please?” he sounded a bit desperate as he asked this.
“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-” As Aaron had no need to breathe, he droned his single word on for the next five minutes, never once changing expression as he droned on and on. “-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine."
“Do you have a giant pot? I want to go make my Token real quick!” Shallie asked.
“Yeah yeah, it’s to the left.” Aaron stretched his arm around a corner and pointed out a large cauldron, simultaneously snapping his other hand and removing the pink liquid from Logix.
Shallie ran over and started throwing in items, starting to stir it up.
Yuri took off his golden bracelet. “Can my blastia be my Token?”
Logix sighed, “Thank you Aaron,”
“You’re welcome, Logix. And yes, Yuri.”
“How do I do it again?” Yuri asked.
“Think of a phrase, strangely named one.”
“... Can I do it later?” Yuri asked, looking a bit put off.
There was an explosion from the area Shallie was in. “It worked!” She walked away holding something [url=http://atelier.wikia.com/wiki/Homunculi ]fluffy and adorable and holding a dagger.[/url] “I made my Token~”
“....That has got to be the fluffiest Token.” Aaron mused, grabbing it with two hands and ripping it violently into the original and a copy. Another pair of hands threw the original Token into a portal to the Void as another pair tossed the copy into a portal to Jupiter.
Shallie and Yuri looked horrified and slightly traumatized.
Logix shrugged, “Eh.”
“So….. why?” Shallie asked in a tiny voice.
It was that moment when one of them fell out of a ripple in the air onto Logix’s head, “...Too fluffy,” he said, throwing the token at Shallie.
From high, high above, Jupiter squealed in joy, her voice audible even from where she sat on the five quintillionth, eight hundred millionth floor, “IT’S SO FLUFFY I’M GONNA DIE!”
Shallie started hugging the homunculi close. “So fluffy~” She hummed. “Your name’s Pepe~”
“Alright, what about the rest of you two fluff heads?” Aaron asked, tossing around a severed Hitler skull.
“I’ll wait until I can think of something to say…” Yuri muttered.
“Uh, I guess so,” Logix said, pulling the small shield shaped piece of metal off of his bag and held it out, focusing whatever energy he could into it, and stopped for a bit, “Wait, do we say something as well?”
“If’n ya want.” Aaron waved a hand, opening another portal to the Void.
Logix nodded and looked back to his piece of metal and spoke up, “I am Logix Fiscario, Alchemical Blacksmith, call upon me when you need to be armed for things to come,” he finished and tossed the piece of metal into the portal Aaron opened.
“Now what?” Shallie asked, Yuri still looking at his future Token.
“Get dress-boy to hurry the fuck up with his Token. Fucking twat I don’t have all day y’know.”
“Yes you do.” Some female called up from above.
“GET BACK TO WORK, YOU PART TIME BITCH OF A SLAVE,” Aaron shouted, waving his fists and generally just flailing around in an incomprehensible eldritch manner.
“Only if you give cookies or a raise!” the voice called back.
“I ALREADY PAY YOU SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS AN HOUR YOU FUCKING MERCENARY. WHAT MORE DO YOU FUCKING WANT!?”
“Cookies.”
“FUCKING FINE. DROWN IN THEM, THEN.” And lo, the seventeenth floor exploded in a wave of various types of cookies.
“That voice sounds familiar…” Shallie muttered.
Yuri sweatdropped. “That sounded like Shallie.”
“Cookies~!”
Logix sweatdropped as well, “Please don’t let there be another Shallie!”
Aaron added another sweatdrop to the chain, “Uh… well… y’see…. hehe...”
“Oh goddammit it is isn’t it!” Logix said, frantically looking for the exit.
“Should we leave before we cause a time paradox?” Yuri asked, looking around worriedly.
“Meh. Wouldn’t be the first time there was a time paradox in here.” Aaron muttered, buffing his nails on his shirt.
Yuri grabbed Shallie by the arm. “We’re leaving.” He started dragging her away.
Logix warily grabbed the items he bought and followed them away.
“Alright then~ Oh, but before I forget…..” Aaron trailed off, grabbing Yuri’s blastia and throwing it in the portal as they left. “Oh, and one more thing….”
With all the speed of a professionally thrown fastball, Aaron flung a black diamond directly into the back of Logix’s head, one with a note taped on it. The force of impact somehow carried the three of them from his shop and back to where they were before, doors closing and disappearing behind them. “Byyyyyeeee~”