As soon as the gang got back to Luke's house, the fusing madness began. While Max worked to fuse Leo, Donnie, Raph, and Mikey together again, Luke ran upstairs to get the suit from his room. By the time he came back down, Max was exhausted from all the fusing, so Luke set down the suit so that he could fuse the others while Max fused himself with his brothers. When all was fused and done, the groups each had their heads in a row across the wide shoulders of their two-armed, two-legged bodies: Kevin-Allan-Dean, Leo-Donnie-Raph-Mikey, Mark-Max-Zack, and Brian-Luke-Nick--the configurations that they had grown accustomed to.
"Oh, it feels so much better," Mark smiled.
"Now we can be 'close' again," Leo laughed.
"I wonder if Jonathan could be a part of this," Nick said, referring to his twin brother.
"If only we didn't have to split up so much," Max added.
"Tell me about it," Luke said.
"It sucks that the only adults who know about this are our dads," Zack said to Luke.
"There must be a way for each of us to remain joined to someone, and that no one will find it weird," Kevin said.
"I'm sure one of us will think of something," Donnie said optimistically.
"Is that something to make you sound smarter than the rest of us?" Raph said.
"Calm down," Dean said. "I'm sure Donnie didn't mean that."
"What should we do now?" Allan asked.
"How about watching YouTube videos of people pretending to have more than one head?" Mikey suggested.
"Great idea!" Brian said.
Brian-Luke-Nick went upstairs and got Luke's laptop, then brought it back down to the living room for the others. When the screen turned on, the gang saw a Pokemon background--one of Luke's own designs. Nobody was judging, for many of them secretly admired some aspect of the franchise. Sure enough, there were several videos on YouTube--conjoined sibling challenges, visual effects, costumes, commercials, and so on. Each one gave the guys a sense of comfort (and in the cases of some, a more "private" pleasure). After about an hour of the videos, the front door opened. The guys turned--and some hid--in case whoever was there was unaware of their "conditions". Fortunately, it was Ethan and Scott; they were wearing Ethan's gray shirt and Scott's doctor jacket--they had conjoined in the driveway when none of the neighbors were looking, and their clothes were meant to imitate a two-headed doctor they saw on a TV show.
"Glad you guys are having fun 'together'," Ethan chuckled.
"I'm guessing you guys didn't want to remain apart all day?" Scott asked.
"Yeah, and we've tried to figure out a way so that we can stay conjoined with someone without having to split up," Mark said.
"I wish we could wake up in a world like that," Mikey said.
"What?" asked Luke as all heads turned to Mikey.
"If that happened," Mikey explained, "we could each remain conjoined with at least one someone, all 'partners' would be comfortable, and we would never have to split up."
"It might also be great if my brother were part of this," Nick said.
"What about our whole families?" Kevin asked.
"Why stop there?" Max asked. "It would be kinda cool if the whole world was like that!"
"So, if that Santa that Luke told us about," Donnie said, "should we wish that everyone in the world--including us--had been born with at least one conjoined sibling, that only us and our conjoined siblings were aware of that change, and that the suit--along with Luke, Ethan, and Max's powers--still worked, and any changes would go noticed only by us?"
"Well, I could go either way on the powers," Zack said, "but I wish all that change would take place while we're all asleep!"
The guys laughed over the thought of such a wish, and decided to get ready for their evenings. Kevin, Allan, and Dean were separated along with Brian, Luke and Nick. Luke stayed behind while the others went back to their houses. Ethan and Scott split up as well; as the other boys were leaving, they saw a car pull up into Ethan's driveway--perhaps Ethan's wife Alisa had come home with Luke's little sister Suzie. (For those of you who do not know, Alisa had freaked out a little a few days ago when Luke and Ethan first tried on the conjoined twins suit, and left with her daughter Suzie. Perhaps she had remembered Ethan mentioned the zipper and Luke mentioning the word "suit", and in the time she'd been thinking, she came to the conclusion that it was just a regular costume that made the two look like conjoined twins.) When she and Suzie came in, she was glad to see her husband, his friend, her son, and Luke's--three headed friend? ("Their clothes must be another costume," she thought.)
After saying goodnight, Scott and his sons walked back across the street to their house--Mark, Max, and Zack had to pretend to stumble a little while walking, otherwise Alisa would see that they were not just pretending to be conjoined. When they got back home, they ran into Scott's wife Sharon; she also thought her sons were in a costume, and asked them to change [their clothes] for dinner. Using this a way to secretly unfuse in private, the boys [stumbled] upstairs, shut the door to Zack's room, and Max unfused the trio back into three bodies, clothes and all. After dinner and homework for all the boys, all the families went to their bedrooms and fell asleep.
The next chapter begins with Luke: as the first rays of sunlight come through the window and light up the room, Luke slowly opens his eyes. He stretches his arms toward the ceiling and yawned, but then something occurred to him: he was only able to stretch his left arm. Luke turned his head to his left...