Title: The Twins

Author: Alexis Steele

Fandom: Animorphs

Characters: all the majors

Genre: Alternate Universe, after #23 The Pretender

Series: First story in the "Descendents of the Ellimist" Chronicles

Summary: Rewrite of #23 The Pretender. Tobias is about to find more family than he can deal with. Who is telling the truth, and who is spinning a web of lies?

Author's Notes: This fic was my first attempt at fanfiction back in 1999. It has been lying dormant in notebooks and my computer until I pulled it from the Net in 2004. Looking back on the fic about a year ago, I realized that I had a lot of interesting ideas that I wanted to portray in this fic – eventually to become a series – and that I wanted to pick them up again, but I had some major changes that needed to be done to my OC, Shayla. She was a blatant Mary Sue, and now she's become an attempt to see if I can write a competent OC without her becoming a Mary Sue.

And, while I will be following more closely to the events that occurred in the book series, I will always see the characters as their TV counterparts. Let's face it, ladies, the TV series might've deviated a lot away from the books, but it definitely gave us some nice eye candy to glance at. I will also be extending the timeline of the story to five years, instead of three. Therefore, the Animorphs have been fighting the Yeerks for over two years.

Normal speech denoted with "…". Thought-speak denoted in ((italics)). From this chapter onwards, there will also be periods of telepathy written. Telepathy will be shown by ((bold-italics)).

Each chapter heading will tell you who is narrating this part of the story. If you don't see a character's name in the chapter heading, assume that the character from the previous chapter is still narrating.

Disclaimer: With the exception of Shayla and any other minor OCs, all the other characters are the property of K.A. Applegate and Scholastic Books. All feedback is greatly appreciated.


Chapter 13: Jake

Marco had just finished marking Shayla with his seal of approval when she started sobbing. I couldn't understand why everybody was willing to trust Shayla, especially after what happened with David. True, she seems sincere, but so did David, at first, and we all know what happened to him.

"What's wrong?" Tobias asked.

"Remember when I said I was over losing Uncle Reggie? Well, I'm not. I still miss him every day. He was the closest I ever came to having a real father, and a permanent home. Nat too."

"What happened to Nat?" I asked.

"She was finally adopted by a family in Seattle. We lost track of each other about two years ago. We were more devastated by why Uncle Reggie died when he did. He was still fairly young -- only 40 -- at the time and was in perfect health. Consequently, he died the night before he was supposed to explain what this means."

Shayla pulled out the necklace and took it off. It was a beautiful necklace. Probably 14 karat gold, and on it was a dragon's pendant surrounded by dolphins. The creatures' eyes were filled in with different colored gems. Two were multicolored and located where the dragon's eyes would've been, the dolphin on the left had a blue gem and the dolphin on the right had a red gem.

"What's so significant about this?" Marco asked.

"Uncle Reggie said that it was so I would always have a part of my birth family with me," Shayla explained.

"And what's so strange about that?" Marco asked.

"No one knows where my birth records are. I was brought to the children's home from a nearby hospital. The children's home director said that my mother had died in an accident with a semi-truck, but they couldn't locate any identification on her. The only reason they knew my name is because my mother kept asking if I was all right while the doctors and nurses at the hospital tried to save her life."

"So, if the hospital and children's home couldn't locate your birth records, how could this man?" Cassie asked.

"That's what he was going to explain after the adoption papers were finalized," Shayla confirmed, "But, look at this. See how there's two opals in the place where the dragon's eyes are supposed to be. For the longest time, I thought those were for Natalie and myself, since our birthdays are a day apart, but now I wonder if…"

"…he knew about Tobias?" Rachel concluded.

Shayla nodded in acquiescence. "But, how could this man have known about your past if there's no record of it?" I asked.

"He always told us it was too dangerous to reveal anything until the adoption was finalized. Trust me, if I would've had any inkling that I had any relatives alive, especially a twin brother, somewhere on this planet, I would've been hounding the authorities to locate him."

"Why?" Cassie asked.

"Because, throughout my life, I've always had this gut feeling that someone important was missing in my life, and I let people know it too. But, like all authority figures, they dismissed it as a childhood fantasy," Shayla explained.

"Well, what about Tobias' birth records?" Marco asked.

Tobias shook his head. "I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for those anymore. They're probably lost somewhere between my uncle's slovenly paperwork or tossed up in my aunt's attic so she doesn't have to look at them."

"Listen you guys, I think we should start talking about something else. I don't want to make the other people around us suspicious of anything," I said.

"Okay, since we're playing the 'new student' routine, the best way to escape suspicion is to make it sound like you're telling Tobias and myself about what's good to do in town, showing us your schedules, stuff like that," Shayla explained.

"Well, let's start with the schedules thing," Rachel said. The Animorphs proceeded to pull out their schedules.

It took Shayla a matter of seconds to scan through the schedules and come to the following conclusion. "According to our schedules, in addition to all of us being in the same math class and lunch period, Jake and I have two classes together, our gym and history classes, Cassie and I only have one additional class together, Honors English, Marco and I have gym, Driver's Ed, and Honors History together, and Rachel and I only have Honors English together. Conversely, Tobias has no other classes other than geometry and lunch with Jake, only gym with Cassie, only Composition 2 with Marco, and Chemistry and Honors History with Rachel." She lightly punched Tobias in his right forearm. "How in the heck did you end up in a science class higher than me?"

Tobias shrugged, then winked at Rachel. "Good study partner."

Marco snorted. "I doubt much studying went on…" He trailed off upon seeing Rachel and Tobias glare figurative daggers at him. "Anyway, how did you do that so fast?" Marco asked.

"Do what?" Shayla asked.

"Read and interpret our schedules so fast?"

Shayla blushed. "Oh, that? It was nothing. When I first arrived home with Uncle Reggie, I was kinda withdrawn and shy around him. When he saw that I usually had a book in my hands, he signed me up for a speed reading course through the local community center. It's stuck ever since."

"Well, lunch is just about over," I said, "what do we want to do with the time remaining?"