"We look like something straight out of the Twilight zone." Jason commented as the changes the program initiated had finished saving. He and his younger brother, Marcus, were seated on one of bar stools in the loft. They both fit because only a single body was seated down, one that they now shared. Jason was astonished as he stared at his and Marcus's two feet, their only two feet, which were perched on the lower foot rest.
"Or... the Dark Mirror." Marcus spoke up, agreeing with his older brother's sentiments. Their back was pressed up against a wall, and his right elbow was resting on a high table. "It feels like I was cut in half and sewn back together with you." He said to his brother. He then turned to look at his twin friends, who were also back to sharing a single body. "Is this how it is supposed to feel?
"Yeah." Both twins answered in unison. Dan then spoke alone, confirming his friend's guess "We each only had sensation of our half of body. It kind of felt like leaning into an invisible barrier. It was tripy at first."
"It still is tripy." Jake emphasized 'is' as he smirked at his brother. "Its not like we're used to it. And it will be even tougher now."
"Tougher?" Marcus's eyebrows rose. "Tougher how?"
The twins spread their arms and shrugged their shoulders, almost in tandem. "We kind of changed the awareness setting, to make it more realistic." Jake replied.
"What does that me-ean!" Jason tried to push himself and Marcus off of the stool so they could stand. They kept moving forward and fell faces first onto the carpet. His cuss words were partially muffled from the fabric.
"What the fuck was that!" Marcus complained; his words were not muffled.
"You said the twins moved in sync last time. Why didn't you move with me?" Jason glared at his younger brother. Their joint shoulders suddenly feeling very cramped.
"Uh... We can explain that..." Dan and his brother were smiling as they watched the pair shuffle on the ground. Kate, and other Kate, were quietly giggling from the sofa.
Jake's smile matched his brother. "Last time, Dan and I could only feel and move our halves of the body, just like now. But... we could sense when the other was going to move... Its hard to explain. We just were aware of what the other was doing, as if we'd lived like conjoined twins our whole lives."
Dan nodded in agreement. "Turns out that you had a feature call 'bodily awareness' turned up to max on all of the transformation. The directions explained that the higher settings give the transformed person insight into how to move and function in their new form, like they had lived in that body for years. If set lower or turned off, the transformed person would have little to no knowledge of how their body worked. They'd have to figure everything out."
"So... you took the training wheels off." One of the Kates had spoken. "We'll have to re-learn all the stuff we could do separately."
"You could have warned us first!" Marcus glared at his friends.
"But what about our parent?" Jason questioned, "Won't they suspect something?"
The twins shook their heads, and ended up smacking their checks together. "Ow!" Dan complained as he rubbed his reddened check with his right hand. It was clear that he and his twin were also no longer experts at maneuvering their joint body in tandem.
Jake gave his twin an annoyed glance before turning his attention back to their friends on the ground, "Well, they won't realize that anything was changed about us. When our mom saw us before, she talked as if we were always like this.” He put his left index finger to his chin, a thought having suddenly occurred to him. “Hmmh…”
“What?” Dan asked.
“Even though mom seemed to think it was normal for us to be conjoined, the house was exactly the same. We still had two beds in the loft.” Jake said as he pictured their room. “Why would there be two beds? Its not like we’d be able to sleep apart form each other.”
Dan shrugged his one shoulder, and the muscles between their necks also tensed slightly. It was an odd sensation, but he paid it no mind. “You know as well as I do that there a multiple reasons why there would be two beds.” He began listing a few, tracking each by raising a finger on his hand. “That could be an extra bed for our cousins when they visit, we might actually be sharing a different room in the cabin, or more simply the Chronivac only effects peoples’ perceptions.”
Jake waved his hand, “Yeah, yeah. It was a rhetorical question.”
“Anyways,” Dan finished answering Jason’s question. “All of our parents should think it is perfectly normal for three sets of conjoined twins... er... I guess two sets of conjoined twins hanging out with whatever you two are supposed to be..."
"Conjoined siblings maybe..." Jake offered, and Dan nodded as if liking that suggestion.
Jason looked back and forth between Dan and Jake. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"I'm a year younger than you.” Marcus rolled his eyes. "It means that we're not twins, so we cannot be conjoined twins. Hence, we're like conjoined siblings... a year apart in age."
The group decided not to go into a long debate about how the Kaisers might view their middle and youngest son sharing a body. Jason was just glad that his parents should be oblivious to his and his brother's sudden closeness. "Whatever, lets just skip the theories for now."
"Gladly." Marcus nodded agreeing with his brother's sentiments.