Brilliance - Aruden AU

11 - task numero dos

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.