It was another normal day in Equestria.

That meant Rarity fainting on her couch, the Cutie Mark Crusaders making a mess/getting injured, and something weird was going to happen.

In this case, the weird thing was a shadow sitting on top of a house with no one paying one bit of attention to it. And oddly enough, it looked bored.

Knowing who that shadow was, many ponies and humans and others would be screaming in fear at this point.

“Oi! Fuck off! I’m not that bad!” Aaron exclaimed, shaking his fist angrily at the camera, “.... Okay, maybe I am but screaming in fear is a little much!”

None of the ponies really noticed the angry shadow since he had been hanging around for a week thus far.

He sighed and looked around, “God it’s boring here.”

“.... I’mma go somewhere else!”

And with a brief burst of shadows, Aaron disappeared from that one Universe.

Thank goodness for them.

“OI! FUCK OFF!” The very angry shadow being yelled at the very nice narrator.

He entered that one universe that some readers seemed to dislike for odd reasons, AKA the Past Sins universe.

“So that’s what this place is,” Aaron muttered, looking at the above text.

The area he showed up at was at Twilight’s library. Of course, at the moment, she was reading a story to little Nyx. It was a rather heartwarming moment.

“Aww, how cute…” Aaron whispered, invisibly hovering through the scene. “Hmmm… this could be the solution to all my current problems… And cause a few new ones…. Jupiter would be happy, though.”

He paused, “.... Raising children is difficult, though… but it’s apparently really rewarding? I mean, there’s also teenage angst… but then again, kids are kinda cute…. but…. diapers…. Hmmm…..”

He went back and forth a few times on this, idly searching through his extensive Knowledge of 99.9% of All Things (™) while he paced across Twilight’s ceiling.

“Ah screw it, let’s go adopt a kid!” And with another subtle flickering of shadow, Aaron disappeared again, launching himself out of the Displaced section of the Void and out into the worlds beyond.

Aaron of course landed in a universe full of humans, though he did appear in the middle of their version of New York.

Because everything happens in New York. It also had what Aaron wanted. An orphanage.

“Hmmm…” Aaron tapped his chin, “If I were to adopt a child from an orphanage… he or she’d have to be sorta cool. Maybe if they had powers? Where the fuck am I going to find… oh right. Functionally omniscient. Duuuhhhhhhhh…”

That’s when he would feel a pull on his mind. It was slight but there. Like a string of floss pulling.

“Well that’s a little blatantly obvious, but I’ll take it!” Aaron grinned and disappeared in a poof of shadows, an ominous chuckling racing through the streets of New York straight towards Aaron’s newest victim target friend.

Izack was five years old with shockingly white hair and eyes that started off pink but would occasionally fade to yellow for a short while before fading back to pink.

Right now though, he was sitting at the window of one of the foster homes, looking out and watching one of the kids getting what he always wanted. A Nintendo DS family.

He already knew the reason why no one adopted him. It was because he was so freaky, from his hair to his eyes to even his power.

Yes, a power that even family looking for those kinds of kids didn’t want or didn’t adopt him because his power was either too unstable or too uncontrollable.

They never told him who kind of power he had, just that he should never try to use it.

He thought that was stupid. Why tell him not to use powers if he didn’t know what they were?

Izack put his forehead against a pane of glass, feeling the chill run into his skin as he thought, “Why can’t I just have a dad or mom?”

And with that, his powers activated, latching onto the best dad for him. It was strange that it latched onto Aaron.

“Yes yes, we all know what happens,” Aaron muttered, blazing into the orphanage with a burst of light and loud music, shadow form deployed in full.

Izack himself turned around in confusion, covering his ears from the loud music

“GREETINGS MORTALS!” He boomed, looking around at the shocked and befuddled orphanage workers. He payed them no heed and continued forward, stopping in front of Izack.

Izack stared up at the shadowy creature AKA Aaron in two parts fear, one part awe, and one part confusion.

“Yo, kid. Wanna get outta this place?” Aaron asked, scooping Izack onto his shoulders with barely a care in the world.

“Um,” Izack was now rather flustered. “Yes?”

Aaron nodded, “Great! Izack, my name is Aaron Heibai. I am your new father.”

A few of the workers looked like they wanted to protest, but a single look from Aaron was enough to quell their arguments.

“So, as a celebration, I’m going to buy you whatever you want.” Aaron wandered out of the doors of the orphanage, strolling through the streets of New York and more or less ignoring every strange look he got.

Izack looked at the ground. “Really? Anything?”

“Anything and everything, kid,” Aaron chuckled, “Go nuts.” He set Izack down and patted his back.

The white haired boy looked around before running into a toy store. He had never been in one but soon he was hooked, hugging a giant stuffed panda.

Aaron blinked, “That is a big stuffed panda…. I have actually never seen a stuffed panda quite that big before. Good choice, kiddo.”

The boy kept hugging it until is was obvious the boy fell asleep on it. It seemed that it was one comfy panda.

“Oh that is just adorable….” Aaron whispered, picking Izack up and whisking him and the panda away in a poof of shadows.

“Juno~ Jupiter~ I’m hoooooome~!” Aaron called quietly, still managing to carry his voice to Juno and Jupiter… and dump them out of thin air and onto their butts in front of him.

“Owie!” Jupiter mumbled, rubbing her bum.

“DAMMIT AARON!” Juno roared, covered in slime and also on fire.

Aaron chuckled, “Ha, couldn’t avoid the tentacles could you?”

“That’s because you purposely let half of them out of their jars as soon as I passed!” Juno growled, sorely wishing he could throttle his boss.

Aaron shook his head, “Well of course I did. The tapes of those incidents sell remarkably well and go towards furthering your pay check.” He patted Jupiter down, brushing her off and giving her a quick hug and a kiss. “Honey, guess what I got~”

Jupiter looked over to the entrance of the shop and gasped, “GIANT PANDA!”

“Well, other than that. Oh hey, he slipped down a little. Whoops.” Aaron quickly retrieved Izack, who mumbled slightly in his sleep about games and chocolate.

“Eh…?” Jupiter mumbled in confusion, tilting her head adorably, “A… little boy…?”

Aaron nodded, “Yup! I was feeling kinda bored, so I decided, hey, why not try to raise a kid with the help of my darling Jupiter? I wasn’t gonna force a pregnancy on you without asking, so… adoption~!”

Jupiter coughed and mumbled something under her breath before turning back to Aaron and engulfing him in a tight hug.

Juno, meanwhile, dropped his face into his hands and mumbled, “Oh gods that child is going to be so messed up…. Jupiter isn’t even twenty one yet…”

Izack started to wake up from his nap, not feeling the panda he was hugging. “Mah?” He drowsily looked at the two cat people, the obvious girl hugging his adoptive dad and the guy one just standing in despair.

Aaron blinked and grabbed Izack into his arms, proclaiming, “Izack! Welcome to your new home! And Jupiter here is your new mother! Don’t mind uncle Juno, though. He’s just being silly.”

Juno whispered an “I hate you so much” under his breath and shook the slime off of him, trudging away and burning the rest of it off.

“He-he can make fire?” Izack asked, staring at his retreating Uncle before looking around at his surroundings.

“Yup, and your dear mother is goddess of the sky~” Aaron ruffled Jupiter’s hair, hugging both her and Izack close, heedless of her embarrassment.

“Aaron! Don’t do that!” She whined, ears twitching furiously and adorably.

Izack smiled before hugging his new parents as tightly as he could.

Two weeks later….

“GAH! Where did you come from!?” Juno cried, barely able to cover himself up and dive back out of the bathroom, completely mortified at the sight of Izack and Jupiter in the bath.

“....” Jupiter blushed bright crimson, dunking her face in the water and burbling miserably.

Izack just looked confused. “What’s wrong, Uncle Juno?” The white haired boy asked, genuinely concerned about him. It looked like he might have been sick plus he had heard a loud thump when he hit the ground.

“Nothing!” Juno called back through the door, words muffled by the fact that his face was still planted in the floor.

“I’m pretty sure it’s nothing serious,” Aaron muttered offhandedly, using his shadows to work shampoo into Izack’s and Jupiter’s hair.

Jupiter’s ears twitched at the sensation, causing her to draw her face out of the water and giggle cutely. “Hey~! No fair!”

“God of Cheating, my love. Nothing is ever fair.” Still, Aaron moved closer and let Jupiter undo his still ludicrously long braid to wash it.

Izack just went back to playing with a pink rubber ducky. “Rubber Ducky~”

Outside, Juno dragged himself down the corridor and into the adjacent bathroom, still blushing brightly and shuddering in horror at the sight of Aaron naked in the same room as his naked sister.

“Never gonna unsee that…”

2 years later…

Izack was sitting on his bed, a modest little thing with sheets covered in random pokemon. What he was doing though was working on some math homework.

He looked up. “Daaaad, when can I come out to play?”

Aaron popped out of the ceiling, “Well, normally I’d say come out anyway, but still, you gotta learn time management, and what better way to learn that than to do homework? Sorry kiddo, just finish your homework first.”

“But it’s all in Norwegian!” Izack complained, though he was fibbing. He just found the work really boring.

“.... Yeah, but aren’t you more fluent in Norwegian than most Norwegians?” Aaron asked. “Besides, it’s only advanced differential equations. You learned this stuff weeks ago!”

Izack slightly cursed himself, realizing he had dug himself into a metaphorical hole. “Yeah…” He looked to the ground, feeling bad for lying to his dad.

“Ah, chin up, kid. Little lies like that are nothing. The only problem with lying is you need to remember what’s true first, otherwise you tangle yourself up in a web of lies.” Aaron popped out of Izack’s bed and leaned over his shoulders, Izack slumping slightly.

The white haired boy then fell off the bed onto his pile of stuffed toys. “Bleh.”

“Now get to work or you’ll never get to play.”

Two months later…

“Who’s that, Uncle Juno?” Izack asked from Juno’s shoulders, pointing to a certain purple pony.

Juno looked at said pony and coughed, turning away with a hint of a scowl, “That’s Twilight Sparkle, kid. She’s a…. well, she’s kinda crazy. Not like your father or mother, but still crazy.”

Izack tilted his head slightly. “Why is she crazy?”

“That’s… something that your father could tell you better than I could,” Juno muttered, quite obviously uncomfortable with explaining such concepts to a child.

“Okay.” Izack hummed, planning on asking his father later. “Can we go get ice cream?”

Juno snorted, “You just had lunch and now you want ice cream?”

“Well yeah, doesn’t dessert always come between Dinner and Lunch and between Lunch and Breakfast? That’s what dad said.” Izack responded with a smile.

“..... Damn you Aaron,” Juno whispered under his breath. “Okay, okay, fine. What flavor do you want?”

“Octopus!” Izack threw his hands in the air. “I want lots of octopus ice cream!”

Juno dropped his face into his hands and muttered, “Dammit Jupiter…”

Six Years later…

Izack Heibai yelped as he tripped out of a portal, falling into four tan hooves. The new pony looked back into the portal to his father. “Dad, why am I pony?”

Aaron stepped out of the portal, walking surely on his own gray hooves, “Because you stand out less like this. As an earth pony in Ponyville, you’re basically nothing more than a background character- nobody will notice you unless you do something really noticeable, like having an incredibly important shop.”

Izack looked worried, glancing back at his cart. “So, I have to keep my store afloat without making it noticeable?”

“Well, unless you want to be a noticeable person.” Aaron shrugged and teleported on top of the cart, “I mean, I always go for the noticeably unnoticeable shop. Y’know, the one where it’s never in the same location but always becomes famous.”

“So, a traveling shop that makes it so everyone-everypony rushes over when I enter town to spend their money without thinking long term?” Izack put a hoof to his chin.

“That’s what Flim and Flam did, son,” Aaron nodded and patted Izack’s head. “So I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Izack nodded before hitching the cart to the barrel of his new pony body. “Yeah. As long as I act like you, everything will work out,” He saluted to Aaron. “See you in a couple years dad. Love you.”

Then Izack started trotting towards Ponyville, the cart rolling behind him.

“Oh they grow up so fast…” Aaron whispered, wiping a tear from his eye. “Seems like just yesterday when I first picked him up from that orphanage…. which, actually it was, when considering how long it took for this chapter to complete itself.”

Aaron got hit with a newspaper.

“Ow! Hey!” Aaron rubbed his head and looked down at the paper, “.... Local Mare Ruins Everything…? Hey…. hmmm…. Well, I guess Izack would enjoy having a little sister…”

Eleven year old Sara sat alone in the ruins of a town, the smell of death and rotting wafting around her. She was looking at a rat, which had many visible tumors on it and patches of purple skin.

“I hate them.” She muttered, thinking back to all the people who avoided her or beat her and occasionally shot at her. The girl already knew what her powers were and why everyone hated her which was why she always wanted to be alone.

She could make people sick and die.

It happened to her parents and anyone who touched her.

She was just a monster, sitting there waiting for her execution.

Sara closed her eyes, hearing the army nearby getting ready to launch missiles to kill her since she always had a fog of death around her.

“Hate who?” A voice asked, a calm and soothing presence filling the air and negating the fog.

Sara’s eyes snapped open as she jumped a little. She looked over to see a shadowy figure on the corner. It was an impossibility to her. Nothing could get rid of the fog or live in it. “How are you still alive?”

“Oh you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Nice fog you got there, kid.” Aaron smiled and dispelled his shadow, dropping into human form and sitting down behind Sara.

Sara scooted away from Aaron some, still nervous about the shadow turned man. “I hate it.”

Aaron blinked and looked at the ruined town, “Mmm, I can see why. But, you seem like a nice enough kid. Though, I guess nice doesn’t really count when you have a death fog, eh?”

“I’m a monster.”

“No you’re not. You didn’t ask for this power, did you? No, you didn’t. I can tell. It’s not that you’re a monster…. it’s that you just don’t have the control.” Aaron patted Sara’s head soothingly, though she still flinched at the contact, “Tell ya what, I already got a son, but hey, I’m immortal and almost omnipotent, so ya wanna come with me and learn how to control your power?”

She looked to the ground, not believing this. “T-this is a dream, isn’t it?”

“Nope!” Aaron denied cheerfully, scooping Sara into his arms and onto his shoulders. “If it were a dream, well, you wouldn’t be able to feel…. this!” He playfully pinched her leg, just enough to make her yelp in surprise.

She started shaking after that. “S-so, why me?”

“Because you needed it,” Aaron nodded solemnly. “Well, that and I was in the area. Besides, you’re adorable and Jupiter loves adorable little kids like you.”

Sara stayed quiet, deciding to just go along with it. The worst that could happen is that she would die.

“Oi oi, none of those thoughts, kiddo. You’re not going to die if I have anything to say about it,” Aaron poked Sara’s leg admonishingly, trying to get her to smile.

“You can read my mind?”

“Of course I can, Sara. I’m pretty much omnipotent.” Aaron smiled at Sara and walked along, casually fixing the town as he went. “I mean, well, there are limits, but not many.”

Sara watched in awe as the town started coming back to life.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” Aaron asked, even going so far as to resurrect those that had died from Sara’s abilities. Piece by piece, the town restored itself, as if nothing had ever happened to it. “Imagine, you could be one of these people, y’know? Walking along the street with not a single care in the world. Because you’d be in control, yeah? What do you say, Sara? Want me to adopt you?”

She couldn’t nod yes fast enough.

“Wonderful!”

Meanwhile, with Izack…

Izack had just entered Ponyville, looked around at the various ponies to pretend like he was in awe. In actuality, Uncle Juno had brought him to an alternate version of the same town some years ago.

However, he was stopped by the usual pony that greets the newcomers.

“Hey there!” Pinkie pronked up to Izack, spraying confetti everywhere as she landed in front of him, “I haven’t seen you around town before! Are you new? Where are you from? Do you like parties? What’s your name? Ooh ooh! Is that a cart you have with you? Are you gonna be selling things here? What do you sell? What are your prices like? Do you like cake? What’s your favorite color?-”

The barrage of questions continued on and on for the better part of five minutes, Pinkie apparently never stopping for breath.

Izack himself was a little caught off guard by the pink pony but he listened carefully and remembered each question.

“I am new, I came from a place far far away, I like parties, my name is Izack Heibai, it is a cart with the nice hats I’m going to sell and yes, the prices are fair, I like tomato cake,-” He went on to answer all her questions.

“Heibai is a funny name,” Pinkie giggled, “I mean, you’re not black or white, so what’s up with that?”

“Well, by adoptive dad is monochrome, but I didn’t inherit his coat color, just the mane color.” Izack lightly chucked.

“Oooohhhhhh,” Pinkie smiled at Izack, “Well I have to go now! Bye~!”

“See you later.” Izack waved, to the retreating pink pony, knowing she was going to go get a party for him together. He shook has head and went back to walking, the ponies turning their head when they saw a large stuffed panda toy sitting on the back of the cart.

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