Luke quickly changed into a new set of clothes after placing the ring down. And, since Mark's brothers had agreed to let him try the next ring first, he carefully looked over the options, trying to ascertain some meaning behind the gems and their placement in the box. There were a total of 36 rings, and each of them with a unique design, gem, and metal. However, the style did not appear to provide any clues as to what the rings could do. Mark glanced over at the gold ring with the white gem on Luke's bed. Besides the note left beside it, there was no indication of that ring's power to transform the wearer into a Hydra.
Looking back over the 35 remaining rings, Mark was not even sure if all of the rings would transform the wearer. Maybe some had other effects. There was one empty space, left by the ring Luke chose, in the fifth row, second column from the left. "Do you think they are organized by row or column?" Mark asked aloud.
"Huh?" Luke and Max both questioned.
Max followed his brother's train of thought. "That would be helpful if they were. Either the fifth row or second column could be transformations."
"The only way to find out is to chose from a different place. The more we go through, the more we can figure out how they are organized." Mark replied.
"If they are even organized." Max pointed out again.
"There has to be some order to them, right?" Mark asked.
"Would you two stop theorizing and will you just pick one already, Mark!" Luke stated. His twin friends had the annoying habit of over-analyzing. He more than once had to tell them to quite beating a dead horse, to stop talking about something because it was a waste of time.
"Right, sorry." Mark quickly said. He decided to take a ring from the fourth row, first column. The one was gold with the red-colored gem; he recognized the gem to be Garnet. As he held the ring with his fingers, something slipped off. He barely managed to catch it before the piece fell to the ground. Mark was horrified for a moment, thinking that he had broken the ring by accident, but they he took a closer look. What he had thought was one ring, was actually two half rings. The gem in the top was cut evenly in half, and resided on both. "Look at this, two rings!" Mark smiled showing his brothers and friend.
He slipped one half-ring on each of his ring fingers, and waited for a transformation to occur. His face scrunched up in a frustrated knot, "What the heck?" He then placed both half-rings together on his right ring finger, but still, nothing happened. "What gives..." he turned to Luke, "Your ring activated immediately."
Luke simply shrugged his shoulders. He had no words to explain why the ring did not work.
Mark then got an idea. "I guess they are two half-rings. Maybe they are supposed to be worn by two people." As he spoke, he slipped on one of the half-rings and gently tossed it to his brother. Max barely reacted in time to catch the thrown ring. He fumbled with it for a second before firmly grasping it in your hand.
Max looked back and forth from the ring in his hand and to his twin. "Why would the ring need two people to activate?" He asked more rhetorically, but Mark shrugged his shoulders in response. "I guess..." Max continued, "it is worth a shot to see what happens. Maybe we'll really be able to read each other's minds, or maybe we will be able to teleport to each other." Max listed off a couple of other ideas, but finished with, "But, I still get a turn at testing the rings even if I am helping you with this one." No one objected, so Max slipped the half-ring onto his left pointer finger.
After a few moments, the ring's power took effect. The twins were drawn to each other, like magnets, and Luke, who was beside Max, was pushed out of the way by the invisible force. Mark and Max's bodies slid across the carpet until they touched shoulder to shoulder. The twins had matching worried looks. In the next few moments, they noticed that their hands and forearms that touched began to have a burning sensation. It was was not extremely painful, but it did make both teens flinch. Max raised his right arm to better see what was happening, and he had to stifle a scream. His right hand had partly fused together with his brother's left hand. He counted about eight fingers, pointing in weird directions.
Their joint left-right hand then began to shrink. The fingers receded into the wrist, leaving just a stump-like appendage. That stump then began to shrink. Mark and Max were both so transfixed by their weird arm, that they had not noticed that the burning sensation had spread down the lengths of where their bodies touched. And unlike in Luke's transformation, the twins' clothes did not rip or tear apart; instead, their clothes seam to partially, magically unravel at the seams. Even as the clothes pulled apart, they never revealed any nakedness. As the clothes opened, Mark and Max's skin made contact, and their unusual blending continued. Mark's left shoe and Mark's right simply fell away as their joint middle leg began to disappear.
It was uncomfortable for both as their shoulders and hips blended together. They could feel their organs shift and move around in their chest and abdomen. For a brief second, both Mark and Max felt as if their hearts stopped. The pounding continued soon after, but it felt as if their was only one now. Muscles and blood vessels became were slipped apart for a few moments before being laced back together. Bones creaked, bent, and then blended together. For a few terrifying moments, the twins feared that their heads would also blend together, but the process stoped, giving them several inches of space between their necks.
Just as their bodies reshaped and fused, so did their clothes. Their jeans remained the same shade of blue, though they appeared thicker. Their blue and red shirts hand seamlessly blended into a deep, royal purple. The twins were math nerds and had various shapes like spheres, pyramids, and cubes printed on what used to be their separate shirts. Now, the single shirt seemed to have the shapes fit inside one another, in a complex arrangement.
The twins stared down at their joint body, speechless. Luke and Zack also gawked, with their mouths agape. Hesitantly, Mark used his only hand, his right, to lift their purple shirt. Underneath the fabric was a single belly button with no scars or any indication that they used to be two separate people. "Well, I guess that answers why the ring needed two people; it fuses them together. We're like... what are they called?"
"Conjoined twins." Max supplied the answer.
"Yeah, we're conjoined twins." Mark said with a small smirk. Max turned to his brother and mirrored his expression perfectly. "Lets get a better look in the mirror." Mark suggested. Though almost immediately upon trying to turn towards the mirror, the twins nearly fell down. Luke reacted in time to grab Max's shoulder to help steady them.
"Wow, moving like this is insanely difficult. I can only feel my side." Max said matter of factly.
"You guys are freaked to be sharing... everything?" Luke asked.
"More shocked than anything else." Mark said as he and Max shared a glance. "I would be lying if I did not find this intriguing. Max and I used to have late night discussions of what it would be like if we popped out of the womb attached to each other. Mirror image twins, like us, separate the latest when a single egg in the womb." He said as Luke helped them to their mirror.
"If we separated a few days later, Mark and I likely could have ended up exactly like this." Max finished the explanation. He stared at their reflection. "This ring might be fun to test out in depth later." Max said, looking at his twin's reflection. Mark nodded his head in agreement.
"Okay, are you guys going to split now. I want to test a ring too." Zack spoke up.
"Its not like you cannot use a ring while another is being used." Mark rolled his eyes as he spoke. "And Max gets to go next anyways."
"He can go after me since he got to try one out, at least half of one out." Zack replied as he picked up one of the rings.
"Wait for us to separate!" Max stated as he helped Mark take of his half-ring. Nothing happened, which did not surprise either of the twins. When Mark helped take Max's half-ring off, they began to separate. Within moments, they were back to being their normal selves. Mark to the two half-rings and placed them on Luke's bed with a note that read, "Fusion".