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…

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.

Author's Notes:

Woooooooo

Thanks Golden Script, for introducing consistent characters to Aaron's mess of a life.