A/N: *coughs due to dust* I'm back... I'm gonna clean this up. A bit. Then everything else after I'm finished (which I absolutely hope I will).

PS: I can now officially say that I'm a PoM fan that had survived a real (toned-down) military camp! Wahooo!

Disclaimer: I don't own PoM. Dreamworks owns them. This story is purely fiction. (Heyyy, why so rigid, man?)

Chapter 4: Shot A Flash, Shot An Arrow

When Phil woke up, his brother was gone.

More importantly, the alarm by the nightstand was blinking 7:20 in bright red.

And his mom was blaring downstairs.

Darn it.

He jumped off his bed, which was the top one, and sprinted almost in lightning speed to the bathroom. One of the things he didn't like about being twins was the color coding cliché, but now he was bursting with appreciation for his mom's idea. If she hadn't color coded their stuffs – blue for him and red for Mason – Phil would've accidentally picked up his brother's toothbrush that morning. He raided his wardrobe to look for something presentable to the teachers and finally settled on a long sleeved white shirt and a blue t-shirt on top, although after he finished, slammed the bedroom door shut, almost tripped on Maru, received an icky kiss from his mom and ran outside the house, he had to go back because he realized that he was wearing pants backwards.

Then, he ran about five blocks to Eastford Middle School, arriving just in time for homeroom.

"Clemson."

"Get lost."

"I know it was you."

"What do you want from me? I already said happy birthday yesterday."

"Oh yes," she said, clasping her hands together in front of her abdomen, like how Vera Leeves always did it on her formal moments. She was rubbing off on her, everyone knew it, and Clemson stopped for a while to think that one day this irritating cousin of his would have to come to terms with this fact that she hated with a passion if she wanted to continue living in peace. And since Clemson wanted to be there to capture that moment, he didn't point out her small gesture. "Firstly I would like to thank you for that." Clemson's green eyes beamed mockingly. "But I would appreciate it if you stop with the weird gifts."

The older boy oohed. "Dead rat it is for next year, pumpkin." He squeezed her nose until it turned slightly red and made a dumb joke about Rudolph the Reindeer before sauntering off to his class with a couple of his friends – in Lulu's head, all of them had target marks behind their head. All she needed was a bow, a sheath of arrows, everything would be perfe-

"Happy belated birthday."

Lulu swiftly spinned on her heels to the other direction where her eyes met, for the second time in the week, the newcomer's blue ones. The girl groaned inwardly – That's why Clemson kept sending glances at something behind me!

"Mason! Uh… thank you."

Mason gripped the strap of his brown sling bag and swallowed away the nervous lump that was forming in his throat. After he knew that the word 'karate' was associated with this girl, he had to make sure he didn't set up her temper. "Sorry, I kind of… came at the wrong time and I overheard some things."

"No, that's alright. Is there something you need?"

"Nothing, just… I haven't thanked you properly. You know, for saving me yesterday."

"What? That's nothing. Though I should probably ask you…" Her eyes then seemed to gaze at something over his shoulder.

"About what?" Mason followed her gaze, and that was when he found Phil speed-walking (thanks to the no running in the corridor rule) towards him.

The younger twin practically cringed at the messy sight of his brother; ruffled hair, raised collar, that silly betrayed look he put on his face…

"Not cool, man!" was Phil's greeting as he pointed an accusing finger at Mason. "You could've woken me up."

"By all means, Phil, I really tried..." He slapped his brother's finger away like it was a fly, sneakily conjuring a small grin, "…to the point that I've stopped doing so." Phil retaliated. If only his attempts of protest weren't so childish, he probably would've at least shoved his brother a bit to wipe away that sly grin of his. Mason was able to keep him at bay with only an annoyed roll of his eyes, and before Phil could say something along the lines of 'brother betrayer', Mason said, "Look at the bright side, Philip. You arrived just in time."

With Mason already anticipating a silly attempt of revenge, Phil glowered childishly, "Oh I'll-"

"Why didn't you tell me you have a doppelganger?!" Lulu squealed in delight at the sight of them fighting.

Both twins reacted at the same time in the same way. "Pardon?" Then, to their shock and amazement, Lulu genuinely laughed in amusement, before attacking them with a blinding flash from her Polaroid. "Of course, I had my suspicions," she started to ramble as the boys tried to recover and the camera spitted out a gray frame of the undeveloped picture. "After all, Hans did say he met a new kid with brown hair and blue eyes, but with a different name. I'm telling you, I could be a detective."

"Well, good for you, then," said Mason as his doubled annoyance finally died down. Phil offered no comment, though he was quite wide eyed at that moment.

"So," Lulu took a good look at the identical boys, as if she was playing a spot-the-difference game. "Mason and Philip, huh?" With a sort of authoritative flare, she flapped the film around unnecessarily just for the fun of it and let them have a short glance at the picture. "Gotta jet, boys!" she said, taking off to her first class of the day. The twins almost didn't hear her excited cry of, "Later!" from the end of the hall as she hurried to her class.

Being twelve years old, no matter how mature he already was, at first Mason couldn't understand the seemingly frozen state of his brother. His eyes were wide open and couldn't leave the spot where Lulu had stood a few minutes ago as if the rest of the world didn't matter…

"Phil? Are you alright?" When Phil didn't answer, Mason took it as a permission to drag him to class because the bell would ring any minute now. He tugged his brother onwards, heading for Mr. Yatsu's math class.

And then, like a huge slap on the back, Mason embarrassingly realized the obvious. "Oh no." It was too late to run and leave his brother like this morning, though. Suddenly Phil returned to reality and grabbed hold of his shoulders and stopped him from sprinting.

"Bro!" With the same excitement Lulu had when she found out that they were twins, he turned his brother around to face him. Mason had seen his brother in his giddy mood before, but none of those were like this. And as the words "Who was that?" came out of Phil's mouth slowly and secretly, Mason knew that whatever was coming could not be good.

Mason raised his eyebrow and replied carefully. "That girl back there?"

"Who else, genius?"

"Miss Leeves," he said nonchalantly just to annoy Phil, and to prove his theory.

Phil looked like he was trapped in another trance before realizing Mason's rather simple answer. "What?" he almost yelled in disbelief, shaking his brother's shoulders. "That's not what I meant!"

Mason merely brushed him off and continued his walk to math class, grinning madly because he got to mess with Phil twice that day, but also silently annoyed that he had to share first and last period with his brother acting weird like this.

"Oh come on, Mace!"

"Don't call me that."

"What's her name?"

"Phil-"

"Come on, bro, tell me!"

They reached math class that was just filing up with other too-lazy-for-math looking seven graders. It was a bit hard to ignore the looks they were getting because of Phil.

"If you could just-"

"Fine, I'll find out myself," Phil said confidently, like a proud knight.

Mason rolled his eyes in amusement as he entered. "Oh sure. Go on and stalk the principal's daughter. I'm sure that won't get us both expelled." With that, he let the door close on its own, leaving Phil who thought that Mason was still right next to him daydreaming of a certain girl with two braids outside.

"I'm not gonna stalk her, Mason. And if I do, it won't be called stalking it would be called 'making friends'!"

The bell rang furiously, so did his consciousness.

"Wait what was that part about the principal?"