The following is a look at three different Orb-centric CULTS (not religions, that was the previous commissioned interlude) that have come into being ever since Touched began to be a thing in this world.
Galileo’s Adherents
The loud sound of splashing water filled the enclosed room as a young woman dove into one end of the pool and struck out to swim as quickly as possible to the other end. Next to the pool, a boy with dark red hair who appeared to be about eleven years old stood with a stopwatch, holding it up in the air while it ticked away. Under his other arm was a bag of tools. Unlike the swimming figure, he wore no bathing suit, and was instead clad in beige shorts, a black and white striped shirt, and a long brown jacket that reached all the way to the floor, with dozens of pockets all over it.
Once the woman reached the far end, she flipped around, kicking off with her feet to return the way she had come. That was repeated once more at the first end before she finally pulled herself out after going the length of the pool three times in total. As soon as she was up on solid ground, the girl shouted, “Time!” Rising to her full height, brought her to nearly six feet, with long limbs and a very thin, almost anorexic build. Her hair matched the boy’s well enough to mark them as siblings, given she appeared to be somewhere in her late teens or incredibly early twenties.
The boy clicked something on the watch, and a voice projected from the thing announced, “Congratulations! You have beaten your old record of one minute, thirty-three seconds with a new personal best of one minute, thirty-two seconds!”
Growling a bit, the woman rose and moved to join the boy. “That's it? One measly second? That can't be the best I can do. I screwed up somewhere. Play it back, Henri.”
The boy, Henri, pushed another button on the stopwatch. A perfect holographic replica of the woman appeared right where she had been at the end of the pool and dove in before starting to swim. The watch even re-created the image of the splashing water, and projected sounds properly. Though those sounds came from the watch rather than from the actual holograms, a problem they were still working on.
The girl was carefully watching her own holographic figure from the side of the pool, making a mental note about every motion she made that wasn't completely perfect. Before she was done with that, however, a chime sounded from the intercom overhead, preceding a pleasant female voice which announced, “All Intellects and their Adjuncts please report to the Planetarium. Repeat, all Intellects and their Adjuncts please report the Planetarium. The Rocket Man will be speaking soon.”
Jumping a bit with excitement, Henri stowed the special stopwatch and gestured. “Come on, Carla, it’s the Rocket Man!” In his eagerness, the boy immediately pivoted and started to dash out of the room.
“Hey!” Carla waved a hand while calling after him. “Did you forget something?” She gestured pointedly to her swimwear and soaked form.
“Oh, right.” Turning back around, the boy dug through one of the pockets on his long jacket before coming out with a pair of metal bracelets. He tossed them to his sister, and she snapped them onto her wrists. As soon as she did so, there was a brief flash of light, and then she was dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, her body completely dry. Looking down at herself, the tall girl gave a small smile of satisfaction. “Hey, you've been working on this. It didn't even put my shirt on inside out this time.”
“That was a bug,” Henri informed her. “I fixed it. Come on! We’re gonna be late!”
Rolling her eyes, Carla trailed after him while shaking her head. “Dude, we're absolutely not going to be late. You know they don’t start these things immediately. They know it takes a while for you eggheads to pull yourselves out of your experiments.”
Still, she walked with her brother out of the pool area. The two of them made their way through the enormous mansion where Henri and sixteen other Tech-Touched, along with their ‘Adjuncts’ (relatives or close friends who cared for them and were brought along as guardians/assistants) lived and worked. This mansion stood in the middle of its own private island, with enough suites to house twice as many as were already here. To say nothing of the five separate buildings surrounding the main one, each of which was home to even more members of the group calling themselves Galileo’s Adherents. They were people who revered Tech-Touched, believing they would bring about the next stage of humanity (or next several stages). The Adherents worked to recruit as many Tech-Touched as they could, bringing them here to this island so they could work in peace without being distracted by the constant Star-Touched versus Fell-Touched fighting, the laws of whatever city or country they happened to live in, lack of resources, or anything else. This was a place for them to stretch their minds, and their gifts. It was a safe haven for Tech-Touched to truly build to their hearts’ desires.
With, of course, a focus on the group’s ultimate goal.
“Hey, Henri!” As the two of them walked through the mansion on their way to the top floor, where the Planetarium was, they were joined by a somewhat rotund-looking man in his early thirties, with long black hair, dark skin, and a cheerful face. He wore an open gray shirt over a white tee and a pair of black slacks. “I’ve been using your seasoning, it’s great!” From the pocket of those slacks, he produced what appeared to be a simple black salt shaker. “Just sprinkle some on absolutely anything and it tastes fantastic. Doesn’t take away any of the nutrition, doesn’t do anything except make gross stuff taste good. Excellent job, my dude. With this stuff, I’ll stick to my diet and take these extra pounds off for sure.”
Smiling a bit at his enthusiasm, Carla replied, “That’s what he’s here for. I mean, and all that other stuff. But helping people improve themselves, that’s the big thing.”
It was true. That was Henri’s ‘focus’ as a Tech-Touched. Everything he designed, from the stopwatch that allowed someone to view everything they had just done so they could improve their time and form, to the bands that made changing clothes and drying off (and cleaning since Carla was as fresh and pristine as though she had taken a shower) instantaneous, to the spice shaker that made anything it was put on taste delicious without taking away any nutrition (in fact, it added a fair bit), and more, was entirely focused on helping people improve themselves in some way.
Their companion, on the other hand, had his own focus. His allowed him to create any item as long as it had something to do with survival. He had created small pill-like tablets that could be swallowed to provide a full day's worth of food or water. They could only be used once per day, and only three consecutive times before someone had to have actual food and water, or there would be dangerous, potentially deadly side effects. He was still working on that. But even with the drawbacks, the pills would allow real food to be stretched out and rationed across a much longer time. He’d also created a jacket that provided its own temperature regulator so that anyone who wore it would be comfortable anywhere from zero degrees fahrenheit, up to a hundred and twenty.
Those inventions and more had been what brought Stanton Hurst to the attention of their benefactor. A benefactor they were all going to see right now.
Soon, as the trio continued through the mansion, they were met by Stanton’s own Adjunct, his wife Rena. She was a cheerful woman of bright yellow hair, as thin as her husband was not. The two of them embraced at the bottom of the stairs, before the group continued on, gradually joining the line of other Intellects and Adjuncts who were all filing into the Planetarium.
Once inside, the group found their way to open seats in front of the raised stage set below the hologram projectors that were showing a view of the solar system. Right there, standing in front of them as he waved back at everyone who was excitedly greeting him, was Gilbert Saunders, the founder of Galileo’s Adherents. He was an older man, in his early to mid-sixties, with long gray hair that fell to his shoulders and a clean shaven face. His eyes were a startlingly deep green, and he wore a dark blue power suit with a white flame design across the torso. Normally, when in public, his face was covered by a matching helmet with a visor that was shaped and colored to look like the tips of those flames. But for now, the helmet had been retracted into the suit.
Gilbert was better known as the Rocket Man. He was an incredibly skilled Tech-Touched in his own right, whose focus lay in creating--well, rockets and missiles. Anything that was projected across a preferably vast distance, usually before accomplishing some effect when it arrived. He had created weapons for multiple governments, and even managed to build the suit he was wearing now, along with over a dozen more for his personal armed guards. The suit allowed them to fly, project more fire power then a modern tank, and could even survive in space. Which was important, given the ultimate goals of the Rocket Man.
“Welcome!” with a broad, beaming smile, he greeted the people he had brought under his roof and given true purpose. “Let us give thanks to the Orbs for all they have given to us.”
With that, he and everyone else gathered put their hands in front of themselves, cupped together as though wrapped around a ball, or shaped like one. It looked quite similar to the way people of many religions would clasp their hands in prayer. But, of course, this was very different. They were giving things to a tangible object, one that had brought about so much good. And one which they, and only they, understood the true purpose of.
Once they had taken a few moments to think on all that the orbs had done, and all that that they would do, the Rocket Man addressed his flock once more. “We have excellent news to share. Our friends in Russia have succeeded in locating several of the materials that have escaped our grasp up until now. When they return, we will be three steps closer to the completion of the Vincenzo."
That brought about the loudest cheer yet, and it was easy to understand why. The group had been working on the Vincenzo for seven years now, ever since Gilbert Saunders had put together enough capital to fund the creation of this organization. Henri and his sister had only been here for a single year, but they were excited too.
Right in front of their eyes, the holographic display of the solar system turned to one of the object in question. It was a rocket. Or rather, a spaceship. Stretching almost a thousand feet long and two hundred feet wide, and shaped like a very long shaft with three smaller sets of wings equidistant apart at the base, the middle, and the top, the vessel was still only half-finished. But when it was done, the Vincenzo (named for the actual Galileo’s illegitimate son) would be capable of carrying every member of the Adherents safely to their new lives. They would be locked into stasis pods while the ship itself would travel for over a thousand years to reach a new habitable planet.
“This was what the Orbs have provided these gifts for!” the Rocket Man called out over the sound of the excited cheers. “To grant us this opportunity! I have seen the lengths to which the people of this world will war with one another. But we will be party to it no longer. None of the breakthroughs we make shall be shared with the fallen world. The people of the old world rejected Galileo’s teachings, and so shall we, as his Adherents, reject them! All of our gifts shall go to making possible our great departure from this planet, or to ensure our ability to thrive once we reach that blessed paradise!
“Six more months, my friends. Then it will be time.”
**********
Garden of Badb
The sound of rowdy, raucous cheers was nearly deafening as they echoed across the dark sand dunes in northern Nevada. Several hundred people had formed up around a circle of flat ground about fifty feet in diameter that was separated off by a series of torches. The flames from those torches flickered wildly in the breeze, casting shadows in every direction. Standing within was a single figure, a woman with long, thick, flowing brown hair that went all the way to her knees. Like everyone else in this place, she wore old, worn clothes. In her case, that amounted to ratty jeans with many holes in them, a red tee-shirt that had been worn down to being almost pinkish-white and whose logo of an auto shop had long-since become illegible, and a leather jacket.
“I stand in the circle!” The woman bellowed, her voice rising to be heard over all the cheers. “I am Cat-O’-Nine! Who comes to break my circle?!”
There was a brief moment of silence as the assembled group looked to another, waiting for one who would challenge. Finally, a shorter, Latino man, barely five feet tall but quite muscular (a fact that was even more clear given his lack of a shirt), pushed his way forward and raised a hand. “I, Bullfrog, will break your circle!” He thumped his fist against his bare chest, showing off the intricate tattoo there of his namesake sitting on a log.
A chorus of mixed jeers and cheers met this announcement, depending on whose side each of those surrounding the circle happened to be on. The noise, however, died completely as a tall, white-haired grisled old woman who had to be pushing seventy, with dark leather clothes stepped into view next to the other woman in the circle. “Bullfrog has challenged! Does Cat-O’-Nine accept?!”
“She does, Badb,” the first woman confirmed while staring intently at the man in question. The name she spoke sounded like ‘Bive’ “Oh she very much does.” Turning to face her, she raised one arm. “I’m ready.”
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Badb, in turn, held up her own hand. Each of her nails was covered in a long metal claw. Without preamble, she drove those claws into the other woman’s arm, just deep enough to draw blood. Those lines of blood covered her nails before floating off into the air, pooling together into a floating egg-shape which subsequently solidified. A second later, the ‘egg’ cracked, breaking apart before transforming into the form of a small bird, made up of dark blood.
Once that was done, Badb walked over to the challenger and put her claws into his chest to create another blood bird. Then she walked out of the way, the two avian figures following her before perching on either shoulder once she was beyond the torches and back with the crowd.
Meanwhile, Bullfrog and Cat-O'-Nine were both pacing around one another in the circle. They snarled threats at each other, promising violence and calling out the other person’s weaknesses or perceived faults. No one else said anything or moved, all waiting for the match to begin.
Finally, Badb raised her hand with a small pistol clutched in it. As the anticipation grew, she waited another few seconds before pulling the trigger. The loud gunshot echoed across the dunes, preceding an even louder roar from the crowd.
Instantly, the two combatants were going at one another. Bullfrog reared back his arm before swinging it in a wide punch. As he did so, the arm inflated to several times its normal size, a massive limb that was bulging with veins and muscles, quite grotesquely. His power allowed him to greatly increase the size of any part or parts of his body, and subsequently the strength of that part, though only for a couple seconds at a time.
Despite his great strength in that moment, however, his swinging fist was caught by what appeared to be a whip. But it was actually part of Cat-O'-Nine’s hair. It had already been long when at rest, but now about a third of it had extended out to several times its normal length and wrapped around his wrist to jerk him off balance in mid-swing. More of her hair extended out and formed itself into a club shape before slamming into the man's face, knocking his head to the side, blood spilling out over the sand from the blow. At the sight of that, the cheers and boos grew even louder and cash was passed back and forth based on who had bet that she would get first blood.
Bullfrog wasn't down for the count however, far from it. As he reeled backwards, his foot lashed out, growing long and large to catch the woman in the stomach, knocking her down. His arm went back to its usual size, slipping free of the hair that had trapped it as he threw himself that way, inflating his entire body up to the size of a large truck so he could crash down on top of her.
Cat-O’-Nine, however, snapped all of her prehensile hair up, forming it into a shield that the enlarged man fell on top of. It held him for a moment, just long enough for her to roll out of the way, allowing him to crash down where she had been a second earlier. Sand was sent flying in every direction, putting out several of the torches before they were quickly relit by a man with small flickering flames in his otherwise empty eye sockets. Candlesight could see through any fire within a mile of his location, and could produce fire on anything he could see.
By the time the torches had been re-lit, the fight was back on in earnest. And it proceeded through several more grueling minutes. Neither of the combatants were holding back at all. By the time it was over, Bullfrog lay on the ground with both of his arms broken in multiple places and his right leg bent the wrong way. Bloody lacerations covered his chest and face from being whipped by his opponent’s incredibly-tough hair. He was breathing hard, barely managing to get out a wheezing, “Fluffy Cakes!” Their signal for a surrender.
Cat-O’-Nine, who didn’t look that much better, bruised, bloodied, and battered in her own right, would have fallen to her knees. But even as her limp body slumped, her hair snapped down to form a pair of extra limbs to hold her up. She spat more blood to join the liberal amounts that were already spread across the circle, and called, “Baker’s Bread!” Their signal for an accepted surrender.
Despite the end of the fight, the cheering had gone completely silent. The air was quiet as Badb walked forward. She passed the combatants to put herself in the middle of the circle. The two blood crows flew in lazy circles over her head. Once in position, she raised her voice. “Our champion remains! Cat-O’-Nine reigns supreme! Bullfrog fought well, but his honor lies second to hers!”
Still, there were no cheers. None were expected. Not yet. Instead, the crowd waited patiently until Badb raised both hands, pointing at the two combatants. As she did so, the birds she had made from their blood flew to each of them, one landing on Cat-O’-Nine’s shoulder while the other came down on Bullfrog’s chest. A second later, both seemed to melt, becoming liquid once more before disappearing as they were absorbed by the person who had given the blood in the first place.
At the very moment that their blood was absorbed back into their bodies, every injury on the two completely vanished. Just like that, they were back to normal. Or rather, back to the exact condition they had been when their blood had been drawn.
Only then, once the perfectly-healed combatants had risen and raised their fists into the air, did the real cheering start. More money was exchanged, while the two turned to face one another. Unlike the taunts and insults that they had hurled before and during the fight, now both were grinning. They came close, embracing tightly before complimenting one another’s styles and moves. There was a bit of light ribbing, but it was very clear that all anger had been part of the match. These two, like the rest of their ‘family,’ loved one another very deeply. And they all loved the matriarch of their group, Badb. That wasn’t her real name, of course. She had taken the moniker after the war goddess who often took the form of a crow. She didn’t literally transform into one, but her power taking blood from living beings and transforming it into crows was close enough. And her ability to give that blood back to the donors in order to shift them into the exact state they had been when she took it allowed her people, calling themselves the Garden of Badb (Or Badb’s Garden), to thoroughly indulge their urge to fight as viciously as they wanted to without fear of doing or taking any lasting damage. At least, not to anyone they didn’t want to.
“Blood to the Orbs!” Badb called, her words loudly echoed by everyone else present. As were her subsequent shouts as fists were punched repeatedly into the air, “Bones to the Orbs! Victory to the Orbs!”
Once their standard call for blood, bones, and victory was echoing across the dunes and off to intimidate any who happened to be within several miles, Badb fell silent. She waited several seconds for her followers to do the same. Then she spoke again. “The Orbs give us strength. They give us power. And they ask one thing in return, that we give them entertainment! They have brought powers to our people so that we might give them a show! That is why we are here! It's why we have been given these powers, this technology, this opportunity! And we will not disappoint them, will we?!”
The question was met with a resounding no, even louder than the cheers and chanting had been. Only a couple dozen of the people here had actual powers, and over half of those were relatively minor. But all embraced the idea that the Orbs had appeared and granted powers to the people of this planet in order to create a sort of fighting pit for the entertainment of either the Orbs themselves, or for some other group of alien beings who had sent them. Either way, the point was the same. The Touched existed to fight.
“Blood has been spilled,” Badb noted while gesturing at the sand around them. “The Orbs are satisfied. It's time to return to the caravan and move out. We’re moving south! Another group in Texas thinks they can challenge us!”
That was met with a chorus of boos and loud remarks about what the Texas group could do with themselves. Badb let that rise a bit, enjoying the way her people reacted to the implied insult to their honor. Then she cut them off with a simple raised fist. Her metal nails pressed into her own palm enough to draw blood which in turn became an egg and then bird of her own. That bird flew into the air, joining a flock of several hundred that had hovered there just out of sight through that whole match. One bird for each member of the Garden. Should anything happen to any of them, Badb could put them back to the state they were in the last time she drew their blood. And should anything happen to her, one of the dozen different birds of her own blood would automatically return to the woman and repair her. They knew that, because others had already tried to assassinate Badb before. A mistake those would-be killers had paid for. And they didn’t have blood crows to bring them back.
The torches were all immediately extinguished at a simple glance from Candlesight, and the Garden people turned to walk to the assembled RVs, trucks, and vans in the distance. They would drive all night, then sleep through the day.
Soon, they would reach Texas to find their new challengers. And the Orbs would be entertained.
**********
The Conjoined - Shades Of Maricoxi
“My arm is yours, Seeing One,” a thin man with a pronounced walrus mustache and balding head announced while standing at the entrance of an old warehouse. “And yours, Tasting One.”
“Our eyes and tongue are yours, Lifting One,” the two short, dark-skinned men standing on either side of the door replied smoothly. Both appeared to be entirely identical twins upon first glance, though a closer inspection would reveal minor differences. Not enough to prevent them from standing in for one another in casual moments, but enough that they weren’t quite as high-ranked as they would have been within the organization inhabiting the warehouse as they might have been had their appearances been even closer. Twins were well-respected by this group, identical ones even more so. And those who were truly indistinguishable by even close observation were essentially considered royalty.
The mustached man who was passing by the almost-identical twins outside was named Kenroy Pavlin. Kenroy was, quite sadly, an only child. Worse, he had not yet met anyone within their organization who looked similar enough to him to become a partner. Those who were not siblings but could pass for being related were often paired together. But Kenroy had no one like that. He was one of those most vulgar of things, a Singular.
Singulars like Kenroy, those who had no near-matching partner, could only be considered grunt labor for the group known formally as Shades of Maricoxi, and informally as the Conjoined. Though they worshiped the Orb which had brought powers to this planet in general, they worshiped the Abyssal Maricoxi more directly. Maricoxi was a massive, forty-foot tall ape-like creature who was capable of creating any number of duplicates of himself that could be any size all the way from a full duplicate all the way down to the size of an ordinary human. There was, however, a major stipulation that every duplicate spawned attached (conjoined) to Maricoxi himself, and would vanish the instant they broke that contact. Hence why the group who worshiped him put such emphasis on revering duplicates of one another.
The Conjoined considered themselves a single body made up of various parts. Kenroy and other Singulars were known as ‘Left Arms’ and were the lowest of the low when it came to actual members. They were also called Lifters or Lifting Ones.
Stepping through the door led the man to a short hallway. To the right was a set of stairs leading up to an office area, with restrooms to the left, and another doorway ahead of him. That was the way he went, though he had to step to one side at the sound of quickly-approaching footsteps. Standing out of the way, the man nodded to a group of nondescript-looking men in casual clothes marching past carrying rifles and boxes of ammunition.
These were members who, like Kenroy, were Singular. But they had done enough, had proven themselves enough, to be promoted out of grunt labor. They were considered ‘Right Arms’ and were known as Strikers or Striking Ones, as opposed to his Left Arm/Lifter designation. The difference was between someone who performed menial labor, and someone who was a soldier. Left Arms/Lifters carried boxes, cleaned up after others, and generally performed any duty required of them. Right Arms/Strikers were the troops who protected the rest of their ‘Body.’
Once the way was clear, the man stepped through that second doorway into the wide open warehouse floor, only to catch a football that was tossed at him from a group working on a raised truck nearby. Laughing as he barely stopped the thing from smacking into his head, Kenroy gave a sharp toss of his own to send a perfect spiral to the handsome blond man who had tossed it at him. Yet just as that guy went to catch it, another man snapped his own hand up to snatch it out of the air. “Ooooh intercepted!”
Both the man Kenroy had thrown the ball toward, and the one who had actually caught it, were clearly related in some way. Probably brothers within a year or two of one another, or close cousins. People like them, close relatives who were not twins, or non-relatives who had found someone who looked enough like them, were known as the Legs of the Body. Left Legs, or Runners, were those who were responsible for transportation. They drove, not only people to and fro, but also supplies anywhere they needed to go. The Conjoined had pockets of membership everywhere in the world, though they were mainly concentrated in North America and Western Europe. Left Legs/Runners were drivers, pilots, bike messengers, and more along those lines.
Right Legs, similar to the Right Arms versus the Left Arms, were higher ranked. And, also similarly to the Right Arms, were combat-focused. Right Legs were people who drove or piloted military-grade vehicles for the cause. The Conjoined were often involved in violent disputes with other groups or local authorities, and where the Right Arms were the ground troops, the Right Legs were responsible for driving their combat vehicles.
The close but not quite identical partners, like the men who had been outside, were always referred to by one of the five senses based on their duty. Seeing Ones, also known as Eyes, were responsible for making plans both big and small (though they did not have final say in those plans). Tasting Ones, or Tongues, were not only in charge of food (essentially chefs who ran the kitchens over the Left Arms who performed the grunt work), but also created the various poisons and beneficial tonics utilized by the Conjoined as they carried out their duties.
Then, of course, there were the Hearing Ones/Ears, who ran the group’s spy network to gather information on both friends and enemies (including all members of their own group just in case someone stepped out of line), Smelling Ones/Noses, who were responsible for tracking down anything or anyone they needed to find, and the Feeling Ones/Nerves, who managed public perception, handled bribes and blackmail of authority figures who could pose a problem, and so forth.
As with an actual human body, all five ‘senses’ often worked in concert. Seeing Ones utilized information provided by the Hearing Ones and Feeling Ones, and made plans involving work such as directing a Tasting One to create a specific poison for an event, or sending a Smelling One to track down a specific shipment of weapons. Tasting Ones required ingredients gathered by Smelling Ones, or even used personal information provided by Hearing Ones and Feeling Ones to create the perfect meal for wealthy sympathizers who deserved wining and dining. And so on and so forth. Those who were members of the Five Senses, often referred to as the Sensorium, were the upper class. Not the rulers, but at least the rich.
Finally, those precious few who were actual identical partners (be that two or more) were known as the Mindful Ones/Brains. These were the true leaders of the Conjoined, who steered the organization in every way and made the final decisions about everything.
It was the brains who had steered the organization to their true understanding of who their ultimate allegiance had to lay with. They had all come together in recognition of the incredible power and divinity of the Abyssal known as Maricoxi. He was clearly the strongest of all his siblings, and understood the strength of being united. And yet, there was one above him, the one who had created him.
The Orb. It had brought power to the world, and more importantly, had brought Maricoxi as its strongest herald. They worshiped Maricoxi as the physical embodiment of an angel, one who would eventually triumph amongst all his siblings and stand the strongest. But if he was an angel, then the Orb was their god. Some erroneously believed there were multiple orbs, just because they could appear at the same time in multiple places. But that, of course, was simply something gods were capable of doing.
Once he reached the far side of the warehouse, Kenroy took another set of stairs leading to a separate office area from the first one. There was a guard there, another Left Arm standing at the top of the metal steps. But he stepped out of the way and allowed the other man to pass. Kenroy gave him a nod before continuing on. Left arms weren't usually put on guard duty like that. Especially not this close to one of the inner sanctums. For one to be in such a lofty position had to mean he was close to being promoted. And with any luck, Kenroy would be as well. Especially with the information he was bringing.
That was a thought that made the man smile to himself, before schooling his expression as he walked quickly across the metal walkway leading to the upper-level office. Two more guards, both well-trained Right Arms, stood in front of the door there. One leaned back to crack it open and announced the new arrival, then listened to the response before nodding to his partner. They, of course, looked quite similar. That was how these things worked. Even when you had no duplicate, when you were partnered with someone it would be a person who matched your appearance as closely as possible.
Both Right Arms stepped aside, gesturing for Kenroy to go ahead. So he did, approaching the door before stepping through as one of the men tugged it open for him. Before going all the way through, he took a deep breath, told himself not to be so nervous, and then stepped into the office.
As expected, there were three men waiting for him. All were completely identical in every way, from how they held themselves, to their physical appearance, and even to the clothes they wore. The men were each precisely six feet tall, with lightly tanned skin, narrow goatees, and perfectly-tailored black suits with red shirts and white ties. Their hair was cut to the precisely same length, and would always appear to be the same length, as it was trimmed for them every three days. Nothing was out of place, and nothing was different.
These were the Brains, or at least one set of them. The Shades Of Maricoxi had fifteen such sets, though only six were triplets. Five others were twins, three were quadruplets, and one, the highest set among the entire organization, were quintuplets. Those were the true leaders of the Conjoined, with final say over everything that happened. Kenroy had never been in the same room as those most-holy of leaders. But he hoped to one day be that fortunate.
And hey, if what he had to say now impressed these Brains enough, maybe that day would come sooner than he thought.
“Kenroy--” one Brain began.
“--Pavlin.” The second finished his name.
“We’ve heard that you--” began the third.
“--have brought some interesting--” continued the first.
“--information that we should be aware of.” They all finished in chorus.
Kenroy found himself nodding quickly. Part of him wanted to stand there and simply bask in the presence of such majesty as the trio here in front of him, but he knew there wasn't time for that. They were incredibly busy men, and he wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of their generosity. “Yes, Mindful Ones. I come bearing a name. The name of a Hidden Abyssal we can take to see our Lord Maricoxi. A meal for him to gain even more strength.” As he said that, the man held out a card with a name written across it.
“A name?” The third brain echoed his words with a raised eyebrow while taking the offered card and holding it so they could all see.
“You know--” the first began.
“--where this person--” the second continued.
“--can be found?” the three chorused together.
“Yes,” Kenroy hurriedly confirmed while trying to keep his voice as even as possible, not wanting to betray his excitement that they were taking his suggestion seriously. “Though we may have to be patient when it comes to extracting them.”
“They’re in Detroit.”