Art. 300.13 is very important - especially if you value your paycheck and don't want to pay for the customers expensive television set that you accidentally sent 160 volts to instead of the required 120. Oh, and the the other half of the branch circuit won't have enough voltage to operate whatever load it has. Bottom line, splice your neutrals at the receptacle box where the 3-wire homerun is run to, to avoid damaging equipment. There is no worse a feeling than destroying some guys new plasma television set because you failed to give the other outlets upstream a return path to ground.
