Sara stared down at the army of griffons before her. Aaron had just dumped her on this Equestria, which was apparently having a civil war with the griffons. All he had given her was a goal and food for a week.

Survive.

The girl turned pony rolled her eyes as she watched ponies swarm from land and sky to attack the griffons. Then she rolled over herself to star at the sky.

“This is so boring. Why did Dad even dump me here?” Sara asked to no one, expecting an answer but getting none.

She gave a small sigh and decided to just listen to the battle. After all, she wasn’t going to get involved in any stupid pony war or griffon politics.

Izack followed his dad into a universe with a tinge of confusion. “Daddy, what are we doing in this universe?” He asked, feeling the universe changing him in small ways to accept him in. It always felt like his organs were being rearranged to him but he never understood why. He faintly remembered one of Aaron’s friends complaining about it.

“Mmm, it’s nothing really all that special, kiddo,” Aaron hummed, skipping across the various timelines in the Universe as he searched for a specific person in a specific place in a specific time. “Just need to find someone almost like you were before I adopted you. It’s very important, you know.” He skipped through a few more timelines and stopped at a particular one, jumping in and letting Izack follow.

Izack followed him in, jittering slightly as he felt time change. “Dad, I am going to lower my potential dealing with time when we get back.” Then he took in where they were. “A-are we in Berlin?”

Aaron looked around, taking in the sights, “Ah yes, Berlin, 1933… the beginning of the Holocaust…” He idly disguised himself as a perfect Aryan specimen and prompted Izack to do the same. “Stay alert kiddo, and if the Nazis come after you to do anything but compliment, deal with them as you see fit.”

“So, kill, maim, and/or embarrass. Got it.” Izack remarked as his hair turned a pale blonde and his eyes turned blue. “I hope we run into an army of them!”

Aaron chuckled, idly walking through the streets and exchanging various pleasantries with the various people that approached him. As he walked, he noticed a group of policemen dragging away a young, African looking boy. “Ah, there he is,” Aaron muttered, shifting into an officer’s uniform and striding up to the men, Izack changing his clothes to fit as well and raising the potential for the officers to believe his father despite the fact that they had never seen him before. “Hold! I shall take it from here.”

“Uh, ja, as you say, sir,” the lead officer agreed, shrugging his shoulders and walking away, tossing the boy at Aaron’s feet, Izack grabbing him by the arm and ‘roughly’ pulling him up. Izack himself waved bye and idly increased their potential for brain cancer.

“Don’t worry, Dad.” Izack whispered, much to the confusion of the boy he was holding. “They’ll be dead in a year or two.”

Aaron chuckled and counted down from five, “Waaaay ahead of you, kiddo.” As soon as he hit zero, the Nazi officers were summarily hit by a runaway supply truck and launched into and through a brick wall, causing the abandoned tenement to collapse on them. “I love doing that.”

Izack remembered the kid he was holding. “Oh yes. I’m Izack Heibai. Want to be my brother?”

The boy stuttered in surprise, murmuring a quiet, “Ich bin Bezalel ... warum willst du mich ...?”

“Oh, sorry.” Izack looked to his dad before poking the boy’s head, increasing his potential to understand English. “Let’s try that again. I’m Izack Heibai.” He gave a big smile to the shocked boy.

“I’m Bezalel, sir… w-what do you want with me…?” Bezalel asked, looking fearfully up at the images of the perfect Aryan ideal that was Aaron and Izack’s current disguises.

Aaron smirked, “How would you like to be my adopted son, Bezalel?”

“I… I’d like that very much, sir…” Bezalel muttered, just before he fainted in shock.

Izack followed his dad out of the universe, Aaron carrying Bezalel when he noticed a Void Dweller soaring around that he had never really seen before. So, he decided to ask. “Hey dad, who’s that weird lady Void Dweller?”

“Which one?” Aaron asked, pointing at the hundreds of Void Dwellers floating around on their own business. “There’s thousands of them.”

“The one with the red hair and big butt.” Izack pointed her out.

Aaron looked over, “Oh, that’s Kat. She’s cool.” He waved and shouted, “Hey Kat! Over here!”

The woman stopped, searching for Aaron’s voice until spying him and smiling. She floated over to them, her green sundress billowing lightly as she did so. “Aaron. It’s been far too long. What brings you to these neck of the woods?”

Izack was slightly confused and voiced it. “We’re in the void, not in woods.”

“It’s a saying, kiddo,” Aaron chided. “Anyway, Kat, meet Izack. First adopted child of probably very many. Say hello, Izack.” He shifted Bezalel behind his back and dropped said unconscious child through a portal and into a nice bed.

“Hello, Izack.” The now white haired boy said cheekily. “Nice to meet you, Miss Kat.” He held up his hand, expecting a handshake. Instead, Kat simply gave him a small bow.

“A pleasure, Izack.” Then she looked at Aaron. “Children? Never thought I’d see the day. You’ve never really been much of a father figure, after all.”

“Daddy gives me all the marshmellons.” Izack cheered, being very literal. They were marshmallows that tasted like watermelons.

Kat smiled with a light laugh, suiting her soft-spoken voice. “How very wonderful. I’m sure your father takes good care of you.” She chuckled again. “There’s a first for everything after all.”

“Oi!” Aaron protested, “I may not seem like much of a parental figure but that’s because I never showed you guys!” He huffed and pouted, turning away and crossing his arms in indignation… and then promptly cracking up as soon as he turned. “Ahahaha! Okay, I can’t say that with a straight face.”

Kat smiled again. “Still the same old nut you used to be. It’s nice seeing that some things don’t change over the years.”

“Mommy and Uncle Juno don’t change either!” Izack pointed out.

“I’m sure they don’t. Glad to see you finally taking a little responsibility, Aaron. But do be careful, parenting is nothing like anything you could ever be prepared for. I’m not sure you’re fully up to the challenge.”

Aaron sighed, “What parent really ever is?” He shrugged his shoulders and patted Izack’s, “All I really do is try to do my part and not mess up. Well, easy for me, but still. I’d like to think I did a decent enough job so far.”

“I’m going to run a shop like Daddy when I get older. Also, going to kick the Merchant’s ass if he keeps displacing people.”

“Now now, if it weren’t for the Merchant, you never would have gotten your father. Be grateful to him, not angered,” Kat lightly scolded.

“But isn’t he still an asshole?”

“Just because someone acts differently than you, doesn’t mean you should hurt them. It’s quite rude.”

“... So, I shouldn’t hate the Nazis even though they ruined countless lives just like the merchant.”

Kat looked at the child oddly. “That’s… not the same thing. Not at all. The Nazis didn’t just ruin lives, they murdered people for the fun of it. The Merchant helps people; he just… has an odd way of doing it.”

Izack went quiet to think about stuff.

Aaron patted Izack’s head, “Now now, Kat, just because the Merchant helps a lot of people, doesn’t mean he doesn’t ruin more lives due to his actions. He does actively set fire to conventions once he’s through with them. Or at least, he did until I beat him up for the six hundredth time. Izack, she’s right. Don’t go beating people up unless you know they’re being assholes just for the fun of it… or if they challenge you to a fight or something like that.”

Izack nodded but kept thinking. “Oh yeah, when are we going to pick up Sara?”

“Couple days,” Aaron murmured, looking at a randomly appearing clock. “She should be just fine right now… Probably a little irritated, though.”

“DIE YOU PITIFUL PIECES OF FLESH!” Sara was running through both armies in a rage, her cloud of disease and death thick and heavy.

Her reason for being angry? One of the griffons attacked her and ruined her hair.

“DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

“Yeah, we should introduce her to Kat when we pick her up.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass on that meeting,” Kat said with a light chuckle and a wave of her hand. “You see, I already have some very special plans for today.”

“What are you planning?” He asked with curiosity.

“I have recently been contacted by my long lost descendant. She wants to meet me!” Kat gave a giddy squeal. “I can’t wait to finally meet her! I mean, I have heard some bad stuff about her, but you can’t trust rumors after all. I think we’re gonna be the best of friends!”

Aaron coughed, hiding his viewscreen behind him, with Izack trying to peek at it. “Yeah… best of friends… well, if we’re thinking about the same people that is. Hmmm… is her name Cerise, by any chance? Cuz I’m sifting through most of the possible timelines that branch out from this point in your history and…. eh, could be worse, actually.” He held up the screen, highlighting a good bunch of the lines across it. “Lots of positive results across the board. A couple negative, but with the right steps, eh, it’ll work out, I suppose.”

Kat put a finger to her lips and winked. “Spoilers, dear. You know I don’t like knowledge of what’s to come~.”

Izack pouted a little, before opening a portal to the shop. “I’m going to go fix something for Bezalel. Have fun with Kat, Dad.”

“Of course, kiddo.” Aaron waved goodbye to Izack and turned back to Kat, “Mmm, that may be true, but I’m projecting decent odds, at least…”

Bezalel groaned as he awoke, muttering faint curses in German. The ten year old boy blinked in surprise when he saw his surroundings, which was a simple room. “Eh? Was ist das alles?”

There was a knock at the door. “Bezalel. Are you awake? I have food and a grumpy uncle here.”

Bezalel reacted quickly, flailing and tangling himself in his sheets and falling out of bed, loudly uttering muffled German curses. He groaned after a few seconds, calling out, “Komm herein!”

Izack opened the door, carrying some chicken noodle soup in one hand and Uncle Juno looking very grumping behind him. “Hi~” He walked on in.

“E-er- Hallo…” Bezalel muttered, tapping his sheets and causing them to suddenly fly back onto the bed as if he had never tangled them.

Izack noted the power and started thinking about what it could be. “Neat power.” He put down the soup at the table before sitting down in one of three chairs in the room. “Anyways, you’re probably confused about what happened and how you got here.”

“Ja, keine Scheiße,” Bezalel snorted, climbing to his feet and taking the soup, leaning against the wall as he ate.

“Well, you were lucky enough to get adopted by my dad, Aaron Heibai. He’s… well… what do you know about alternate universes?” Izack asked.

Bezalel looked at Izack with an incredulous stare, “Was zum Teufel ist ein alternatives Universum?” He finished the soup and set the bowl to the side, wiping his mouth with his sleeve and burping quietly.

“Well, it spawns from the Alternate universe theory where every choice you make basically causes a divergence in time, the choice you didn’t make was made by you in another world.” Izack knew that was confusing. “Um, Uncle Juno, can you help?”

Juno shrugged, “Don’t look at me, brat, I ain’t got nothing.” He rolled his eyes and patted Izack on the shoulder, “Just wait until your father gets home. He’ll explain it better than any of us ever could.” With that, he walked back out of the room, taking the empty bowl with him.

Bezalel took the time to browse the bookshelves in the room, finding that all of them were written in German, save for a German to English dictionary. “....Zweitausend und fünfzehn...?” he murmured, confused beyond all recognition when he saw the copyright date.

“Anyways, just imagine all those different worlds being bubbles. Now, these bubbles can’t rub up against each other or they’ll combine and break, which is why the Void exists. It’s the space between universes.”

“.... Das ist nicht zu helfen…” Bezalel rolled his eyes at Izack and continued browsing, picking out The Chronicles of Narnia and beginning to read.

“Aaron is a creature that lives in the void. He’s not the only one but he’s one of the most…. powerful in a way.” Izack scratched his head. “Not as powerful as DEATH though.”

Bezalel deadpanned at Izack, “Auch, das nicht hilft Pfifferling wert.” He turned back to his reading, sitting down and more or less ignoring Izack for now.

“I know exactly what will help, though~” Aaron sang, poking Bezalel in the shoulder and performing a massive infodump upon Bezalel. That done, he pulled a King Crimson and skipped Bezalel past the pain that usually followed such an infodump.

“One day, you’ll mess that up and explode someone brain.” Izack pointed out with a smile.

“No I won’t!” Aaron protested.

“.... Well… that does help… I guess….” Bezalel muttered, rubbing his head and standing once again. “So… I guess you’re my new dad… sir…?”

“His name’s Aaron Ebay!” A weird girl with green eyes, long white hair, and a scythe spoke up, poking her head in the room.

“Go away Pecila.” Izack muttered.

Aaron sighed and grabbed Pecila by the hair, dragging her away. “Hold on, I gotta take care of this…” he muttered, tossing Pecila away with a shout of, “GET BACK TO WORK, PART-TIMER!”

“ONLY FOR MORE COOKIES!” She yelled back, obviously forgetting what happened last time...

Aaron sighed and leaned on Bezalel, causing the child to jump in surprise, “Sorry about that. The part-timer is very bad about keeping to her work.”

“Wait-bu-wha-” Bezalel sputtered, looking between the door and where Aaron was. “Huh!?”

Izack rubbed Bezalel’s back. “Don’t think about it. It’s Void Bullshit.”

Bezalel sighed, “Immer noch nicht helfen…”

Sara walked into shop in her pony form, dragging behind her a huge cart full of her spoils of war. “I’m home~”

“Welcome home, Sara!” Aaron greeted, dragging behind him a dumbstruck Bezalel. “I see you killed everyone and looted their stuff!”

“Yup. I’m going to take it all to my room.” She passed by them. “See ya later, Dad, New Meat.”

“... I-is she your daughter as well…?” Bezalel whimpered.

Aaron sighed, “Yup. Don’t worry about her. She just takes some getting used to. Usually.”