“Well, if it isn’t Sussy—”
“We’re rich! We’re rich! We—”
“Suck it, Chee—”
“Hello, everybody! My—”
The audio was interrupted as each video was swiftly dismissed from their queue on the screen. It’d been quite boring at one of the slower Northern Lights stores. The front desk had been lonely for the better part of the day, but it was nothing a little personal time couldn’t handle.
However, as I scrolled through the entertainment, the inner front door opened, and a customer came through. One who wasn’t in the system, given the lack of information showing up in my heads-up display. Just the name John Rhal.
“Welcome to Northern Lights.” My device was slipped onto a shelf below. “Anything I can help you find today?”
The tiger’s eyes practically shined as he entered, darting around eagerly at the various sights. At least, until they fell on me. Then they moved up and down my form, as if his mind were trying to process the view before him. Something I’d gotten used to over the years.
“Um...” His voice quivered, and his tail twitched wildly behind his back. “I... I’m looking for the s-s-sheaths that’re supposed to be on sale?”
“Back wall in our clearance section, just past aisle three.”
“Th-thanks!”
The customer swiftly moved away, and I got up to stretch just a bit, feet thumping with each step I took.
However, it wasn’t took long before the feline returned, placing a few items on the counter with a heavy blush on his cheeks. His eyes kept going to my arms and lower body. Moving back and forth to try and keep from looking like he was staring. Not that he was having an easy time about it.
I smiled, logging into my terminal to start ringing up his purchases. “First time running into someone with the Cluster ability?”
“C-Cluster?”
“Yeah.”
The headhand on my upper right arm motioned along its opposite, which had its full-hand poking out through the maw to grip products. A wolf and a tiger, looking just a bit off on my brown bone dragon body. Just below them, a similar pair of arms acted as a second row, one dolphin and one fox. Each one had eyes that moved independently, allowing me to keep attention to my surroundings while I worked, but the customer’s flustered gaze didn’t need much of that attention to recognize.
“Normally, my arms are pets of mine, allowing them to share my host body while they take a backseat and relax. Same with my lower half.”
Mr. Rhal’s head tilted down enough to give him a better view of said lower body. A centaur-like configuration, with a quadrupedal Night Fury giving me four legs locked in massive hoofboots and a rubber suit, and a long tail curled up around me on the floor of the cramped space behind the desk. A second wide-mawed head poked out between my forelegs, facing forward without a neck, but it let me continue watching videos while I worked.
My wolf’s paw-like hand pushed out through its maw as the head slid back to the wrist, allowing me to use the screen on my sales terminal. “We’re effectively one being made of many. Kinda like a hydra, but in our case, the others are just along for the ride. But, they’re taking a much-needed break, so I’m using Cluster Sleeves in their images, aside from Leah down below.”
The tiger stopped for a moment, then looked back toward the aisle he’d come down earlier. Without a word, he walked away from the counter, only to return with a few items. Sure enough, three Cluster Sleeves were in his arms, which he put up on the counter: a pair of golden tigers with black stripes, and... Well then. A Sun Fury. I had a feeling I knew where he was going to be wearing that one.
I smiled as I scanned the barcodes, but as I started to bag the sleeves, he stopped me. “Mind leaving those out? I’d like to change into them before I leave.”
“Sure thing.”
Mr. Rhal tapped his payment card against the terminal to pay for his haul, and I handed him his bag and items.
“If you’re going to put one of those in the same mode as my Leah...” I paused, pointing down to my lower half. “...Just open the mouth part wide and pull it up to your waist. It’ll give you the same type of taur body as mine.”
“Oh! Th-thanks!”
The feline walked back toward the changing rooms, and I pressed a button to unlock one of the doors for him.
It didn’t take long for Mr. Rhal to finish, walking out with a little bit of difficulty. His new thicker legs ended in claws that tapped against the marble floor, while his tail swayed softly behind him with each step he took. And much like me, he had a wide dragon’s head locked between his forelegs, eyes darting around as he clearly tried to acclimate to the new point of view added to the one between his upper shoulders.
That wasn’t helped by the two additional heads he had on his arms. Their mouths were opened, wrapped around the wrists of his paw-like hands as he rubbed along the scales running along his belly and hips. Scales that flowed well from his matching fur, changed by the pieces he’d added to himself.
“This...is so strange. H-how do you deal with seeing from so many eyes?”
I gave a soft chuckle as I walked toward him, rubber hoofboots clopping and squeaking underneath me. “It’s something you get used with time. I know a few others who’ve gone this route, and they were able to fully use their additional heads as easily as their main in pretty much a week. I was born with Cluster from my mom’s side, so I acclimated to it almost instantly.”
He looked up at me with the lower head, the other one already staring into my eyes. “The whole taur body part, too?”
“That’s a bit different,” I said, my rump hitting the ground with a squeaky thud as I crossed both pairs of arms. “I grew up on Graiben, and beings with either Modular or Cluster can have traskari mounts like Leah here, though some call it a rider merge or mount merge. Only took me about three weeks to start racing across the deserts with my gryphon and lion mounts at the time.”
After reaching back behind the counter to fetch a flyer from under the desk, I handed the sheet of paper with the class schedules to Mr. Rhal.
“That said, we do offer a free training course at Shirohoshi Headquarters if you’d like to sign up for it. Heck, Noctinarina’s class starts in about two hours. You could easily make it there with time to spare if you wanna do it today.” 
He looked it over rather eagerly, and the eyes on his main head darted repeatedly across the page.
“Free? Uh… Alright then. It’s pretty close if I take a shuttle there, right?”
I reached back and grabbed a folded page from one of the stands, along with one of the store tablets, before I put them on the desk. “Five minutes by shuttle, or ten minutes at most by train if you take the Rose Line, but trains are a bit easier to get onto in most cases. This pamphlet has all the directions you’d need to get there regardless. Just need you to fill out a few things to get you registered in our systems.”
It took a bit for him to get used to having those headhands around his wrists, but he managed to fill out the application on the touchscreen without too many issues. Once I put it through to headquarters, I left him for a moment, only to return with something from the back. I handed it to him, causing a bit of a confused expression on multiple faces. It was another of the tiger sleeves, and three of the Sun Fury sleeves, identical to the ones he already had on.
“My treat. Having a second mount half to switch things up helped me when I first started getting used to it, as did having matching hardware across the body sometimes. Might help you as well.”
“Thank you!” He looked a little more excited as the confusion began to wane, especially as he placed the new sleeves into his bag. “I’ll give them a shot later. Better get to the train station before I miss mine.”
I shook his hand before he began leaving through the door, tail swaying a bit to help keep him steady as he walked. Both of us had bright smiles on our faces, especially as he gripped his purchases in a headhand’s maw. The other was still gripping the map and welcome document as he looked it over.
“Have a good day, Mr. Rhal, and come back any time.”
The doors closed behind him, and I returned to my perch behind the desk. Things weren’t so boring after all.