Going back an hour or so, the newly joined guys were starting to stir. Well specifically, half of them started to stir. Alex groaned as he slowly opened his eyes. The throbbing pain in his head made it hard to concentrate on anything, but he could tell he was lying somewhere in the forest with no idea how he got there. He brought his right hand up to his head and gingerly messaged the large lump on the left side of his cranium. He made a weak attempt to sit up, but the intense pain in his head intensified with just that slight movement. So, he decided to lay there.
Trying to think back on how he got there, he could only remember blurry images of a necklace, a strong urge to run somewhere, colliding into another guy, and... fusing with that guy. "Man, that was the weirdest nightmare ever." he spoke out loud to himself. He still didn't know how he ended out here or how he got such a large lump on his head, but he was certain that the nightmare was just that, a night mare. Or, he thought that until he heard someone else moan.
"Uh... my head" Dan complained as he brought his left hand up to rubb the pain away. Suddenly, he got the odd feeling that someone was staring at him. He turned his head to the right, and sure enough someone was staring at him, Alex. Both gawked at each other for a moment before all hell broke loose.
Alex swung at Dan's face and yelled for help as he tried crawling away. Dan was hit square in the eye and retaliated. The two rolled around in the dirt punching, kicking, biting, doing anything they could think of to get away and fight the other off. They ended more than 15 feet away from where they awoke, and still they kept at it. They only stopped when Alex took a shot at what he thought was Dan's crotch. That move instantly broke up the fight.
They laid curled up in a ball, just waiting for the excruciating pain to end. It took many minutes for the pain to subside, by then both were somewhat aware of their situation. Dan, with some help from Alex, sat up and leaned their back against a tree trunk. In addition to the throbbing pain in both of their heads, they were now covered from heads to toe in bruises and cuts in all shapes and sizes. Their merged clothes were almost unrecognizable and nearly shredded to pieces. Mud and leaves stuck to every part of their body. They were a mess.
Dan and Alex spent the next couple of minutes staring angrily at each other and at their body. Finally, Alex locked eyes with Dan. "What the hell did you do to me? I'm like a freak now!"
"What did I do to you? I didn't do this. YOU DID!" Dan pointed directly at Alex's face. That would have started another fight if they had the energy. Instead, Alex just slapped Dan's hand away. "You see that necklace around your neck? That's what caused this."
Alex stared down at their two chains. He hadn't noticed before, but the two were now liked together perfectly in the form of a two-headed eagle. "How could these do anything? I just found this."
"Do you often pick stuff up that isn't yours?" Dan accused.
"I didn't think it was anyone's else's. Who would leave something like this out for anyone to find if it does something like this?!" Alex argued back.
Dan's face burned red up with rage. But the brat was right he told himself. Josh had somehow lost his stupid half of the chain. "Never mind that now. We need to focus on getting out of here and away from each other."
Begrudgingly, the two made a truce, and started to difficult task of working together. Their coordination was nowhere near perfect or pretty, but they did pull of standing up and walking. Alex was much younger than Dan and had yet to hit his growth spurt so he was at least a foot or more shorter. That made walking all the more difficult. But, through the endless number of falls and many, many more fights, they managed to reach the edge of the forest which connected to the neighborhood street that Alex and Drake both lived on.