Aru's pov:

Aru was ready.

Sort of. Mostly.

After a long sleep, she had thought about the message and, it didn't have to change the plan much. Aru had always planned to win. Why else would she show up? Just now, more rested on it. A lot more. Too much.

So she would just have to win. Really have to win.

She sighed and climbed out of bed. If she wanted to not get yelled at by Opal today, she probably couldn't wear pjs again. And besides, if she wanted to win, she may as well dress like it.

To Aru's surprise, dressing semi-formal wasn't that difficult. Blue jeans, collared yellow tank top, rice-white cardigan. And, even if she did say so herself, she looked great.

So great, in fact, that even Opal didn't slip her a snide remark when she came to bring Aru to the task. She looked even grumpier than before for some reason, and shot Aru a glare as if she was responsible for the feeling. Aru sent back an equally hateful look, before walking towards Aiden's door. Opal grabbed her by the shoulders and steered her the other way, towards the stairs. "He's taking a different route." She told her, bluntly.

"Oh," Aru said, quietly. That was odd.

They continued to walk in silence, with Opal scowling at her when she didn't walk fast enough, or if she walked too fast. It was a very long 7-minute walk.

~~~

The room itself was dark. Not pitch black, but dark enough to be annoying, dark enough to have to strain your eyes to make out people. Honestly though, what did these guys have against a bright colour scheme. Sure, drama was nice, but did pastels hurt them that badly?

"Hello." The voice made her jump. She whipped around to see Theo standing there.

"Oh, um, hi." She recovered, after jumping out of her skin. He smiled a little, before pulling out some cue cards.

"For this challenge, we're going to see how well you know your partner. Sure, you might recognise them walking down the street, but what about their personality?" Theodore paused, probably for dramatic effect, "this challenge put that to the test."

Like clockwork, a light switched on. But it wasn't in the room. It was through a window to another room; and in that room sat Aiden.

Well, more specifically, 2 Aidens.

She frozen. What?

"Nope. No thank you. 1 is way more than enough." Aru said, adding a, "What the heck?!" for good measure.

"Your task is to find out which Aiden is the real one. 1 is a hologram, made to copy Aidens exact movements, and the other is the real one."

Aru stared at the Aidens. "Clearly. A holographic version of my teammate? How else would you test me?"

Theodore smiled at her thinly. "Good luck. Your 30 minute timer starts... now."

Aru stared at both Aidens. They looked identical. Same outfits, same charmingly disheveled hair, same dark eyes, same annoying face with matching confused expressions. The only difference was the name tags: one Aiden had blue, the other had red.

Aru looked at both of them, with her best I-know-what-you-did-so-you-may-as-well-come-forward-face. "Let's start. Which one of you is Aiden?" Both raised their hands at the same time, to the same height. Aru frowned. That hadn't helped. "Can you see each other?"

"Huh?" Red-name-tag Aiden asked, looking around.

"I can't even see you!" the other Aiden replied.

Aru sighed. This obviously wasn't going to be easy. In elementary school, she'd always mixed up the twins in her class. Even though Michael was a foot taller than Jeremiah. And now she didn't even have a height difference on her side! Life wasn't fair.

"Ok, let's go for some quick-fire questions! 1, favourite colour?"

"Green." The Aidens said simultaneously.

"Favourite tv channel?"

"National Geographic."

"Favourite hobbies?"

"Photography."

"Favourite thing?"

"Shadowfax." Blue Aiden answered quickly, while Red Aiden hesitated slightly. Aru made a note of it.

"Worst thing I've ever made you do?"

"Eat 3 Swedish fish packs in one go." Blue Aiden said instantly.

Red Aiden thought back for a while. "Making me tell that pregnant lady her child was the last Jedi."

"That was hilarious!"

"Mean was what it was. Although she did look weirdly relieved."

Suspicions of Red evened out. Aru racked her brain for other questions. "Most used emojis?"

"Wave hand." Both Aidens replied.

"You're joking."

"No! It's a perfectly valid emoji!" They didn't try to keep the defensiveness out of Aiden's voice.

"If you say so. Favourite ice cream flavour?" Neither Aiden spoke, except "errs" or "arrs". After a while, she gave up waiting.

"Let's just say vanilla?" Both nodded.

After a long round of interrogation, Aru came out irritatingly split. Blue Aiden was quick at answering but Red Aiden's answers seemed more thorough. She really needed to get past this next challenge, for her mom's sake, if not hers or Aiden's. Add that onto the fact that Aru couldn't recognise one of her friends from a hologram copy, and Aru was pretty mad.

So, it was with very little common sense and a bit of desperation that she asked her next question.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but," she paused to grimace before finishing, "remind me how we met."

For once, Blue was silent. He lent back in his chair, looking left and right, and fidgeting with his hands. Instead Red spoke, with a small grin on his face.

"It was 3 weeks after I'd started at school. I'd seen you once or twice, but you would just stare at me and bolt before I could talk to you. "

Aru remembered watching Aiden when he'd first moved in across the road. Not stalker-watching, she wasn't a creep! But kind of watching in the way someone would watch television. He was the first boy Aru had seen who didn't remind her of a pig, so naturally he interested her. Plus, he was cute. Very, very cute.

And watching him from a distance became a sort of hobby for her. He was in the year above so had none of her classes with him, but she would see him in the library from time to time, or wait behind him in the lunch queue. He had a lot of friends, she'd noticed, but none of them really listened to him, or even cared about him much. They just all talked about themselves and expected him to listen. He hardly ever looked truly happy, although his "friends" never noticed that. Aru never said any of this aloud. It's not like she had anyone to tell.

But she saw it.

If Aiden ever noticed her staring, which he did quite a lot - Aru hadn't mastered subtlety yet - she would just run away and hope he forgot about the strange girl watching him all the time. It had worked for 3 weeks. Until...

"I was walking home from school, and I heard some muttering and then you walked into my backpack. I turned around and you were standing, frozen like a statue. I recognised you from school so said hi, and you just stood there. Then you hit your throat and went into a coughing fit, and then you said-"

"I think we get the idea," Aru interrupted, her face bright red.

"And then you said," Red-Aiden continued, smiling at her teasingly, "'I know where you live!' And ran off."

It was not her best moment.

"Oh yeah!" The blue-name-tag Aiden rejoined the conversation. "That was funny!"

Aru raised her eyebrows. "I thought that you couldn't see each other."

"See who?" Red-tag Aiden asked.

"I-err-umm," The blue Aiden stuttered, then giggled nervously.

Aru walked over to the Blue-Aiden's window "Ok, Aiden never giggles."

"I giggled?!" Asked the Red-Aiden - the real Aiden - looking deeply confused.

"Not you, your evil, blue twin," Aru reassured him. Aiden didn't even try and bother figuring out what she meant. "Blue-name tag is the fake one!"

Surprisingly, someone answered. A voice echoed from the speakers, similar to the lady on Google maps. "Congratulations, you have finished the task with... 6 minutes 27 seconds.... To spare. You may now exit the challenge room."

The hologram flickered out and the glass slid away, opening up the space to 1 big room. When, Aiden came out, her looked more than puzzled.

"What on earth just happened?" he asked Aru, "and what did you say about having a twin? And giggling?"

"Don't worry about it," Aru said reassuringly. "Let's go. I'll explain later,"

~~~

Congratulations on the challenge. Keep up the good work. - Shadow

The message from the stranger brought back a wave of nausea. Couldn't they just back off and leave her and her mom alone? What had she done to cause all this? She just wanted her mom back. Whoever this shadow person was, they were doing a very good job at messing with her.

"Idiot," she muttered, closing the tab. Just as she was about to putting the phone away, she noticed an incoming call.

"Hello?" she said in her best answer phone voice.

"Shah, you have some explaining to do. Blue evil twin? Like a smurf or something?"

Aru chuckled. "Yes Aiden. They made a smurf identical to you, and they let you keep it if you make to the end!"

"I'm pretty sure you're joking but really? If you're serious than that's crazy."

"It was sarcasm. God, you sound like Rudy!"

"Hey, I wasn't that bad," Aiden argued.

"Whatever," Aru laughed.

"So, what was it then?"

"A holographic copy of you." Aru said, dead serious.

"You don't really think I'm going to fall for that, do you?" Aru could sense Aiden's raised eyebrows through the phone.

"I'm not joking this time, promise!"

"You swear?"

"I swear."

"I guess that I'll just have to believe you then, Shah."

"I guess  you will," Aru grinned, "I guess you will."

~~~

Hiya! How are you guys doing? How was this chapter?

Hope you have a great week! Byeeeeeeee

-Bea