Day 1: Masquerade

Summary: The Hinata brothers decide to play a prank on their dates with their respective girlfriends. Little did they know, an unforeseen factor throws their plan out of the window.

A/N: Just to clarify a few things in this AU:

- Izuru's surname is Hinata, because letting him have the exact same name as the school's founder opens a whole can of worms I don't want to deal with.

- (The Nanami twins have the same first name because (I'm too lazy to make up a new name for the other twin) but SDR2 goes by her first name Chiaki while DR3 goes by her surname Nanami.) EDIT: Thanks to a suggestion by BestAtBeingBad, DR3 now goes by Chiaki while SDR2 goes by Chiharu.

Izuru couldn't believe what his brother was planning.

"It's simple, really! All we have to do is dress up and act as each other for today, and neither Chiaki nor Chiharu would really know the difference if we pull it off together."

Apparently, out of all people to suggest something that's not only ridiculous, but also a recipe for disaster, it had to be his brother Hajime. He wondered if maybe the craziness of Class 77-B has finally gotten to his usually rational brother's head; that wouldn't be a surprise if that were the case.

"Wouldn't that technically be a form of cheating?" He asked.

The spiky-haired boy only waved him off. "We'll tell them about the ruse at the end of the day; it's all in good fun, Izuru. I mean come on, we're not in one of those terrible rom-com animes and our girlfriends aren't the kind of people to beat us up for something as simple as this."

It took a few more convincing, but in the end, the younger twin agreed, but only because he knows that his older brother wouldn't budge as soon as he set his mind to something. Also, he could always bail out and tell the twin sisters and say that it was all Hajime's idea.

By the time they're done, the twins took a good look at the mirror, and needless to say, they were a dead ringer for each other; there wasn't anything that a change of clothes, contact lenses, and a wig that couldn't do, after all!

With that said, just looking like each other wouldn't be enough. Sure, they look exactly alike as each other, but they should also consider the factor of acting as the other while in his place, and a wrong move would be enough to tip a red flag to either Chiaki or Chiharu.

Since they've been living together for at least their entire lives now, it wasn't much trouble to know each other's personality and quirks; at least that's what the older twin thinks.

Now that they've prepared themselves, the brothers went outside their room, with Hajime putting on the best mysterious stoic impression he could pull off while Izuru barely put any effort in distinguishing himself in terms of atmosphere. This earned an unamused look from his brother.

"Oh come on, you're not even trying!"

Izuru only shrugged at that.

The easy part was arriving by the meeting place; Hajime already told him where he and Chiharu would meet, and it's at a simple cafe around the street, which made sense, as she's always been the milder of the two. Then, the hard part was maintaining composure throughout the entire masquerade as his more laidback twin, especially if he were to act as Hajime while spending time with his brother's girlfriend.

Upon arriving at his destination, he was greeted with a wave from the girl in a blue-green hoodie waiting for him. In contrast with them, the sisters were far more identical in terms of appearance, and besides a slight difference in hair color, the only sure way to tell them apart were the clothes they're wearing, and even then, people still get confused over them.

"Hey, sorry if I kept you waiting." To a casual observer, Izuru matches his brother's voice and tone well, but if they knew him better, they would notice that he sounded a bit forced, and if it could be described, it would be a 'yep I'm totally normal nothing suspicious at all don't mind me' kind of tone.

"It's fine, I just arrived here too." That was what she replied, and forgive him if it sounds a little irrational and maybe paranoid of him, but he swore that he saw Chiharu tilt her head at him, and that there's something different about her today.

No, it's probably just him. Don't get so worked up over nothing. He berated himself.

It was easy enough to get in the cafe with her, order their respective drinks, and then find a table just for the two of them. It was a small piece of labor to find random topics to discuss with her, should it ever come up. The greatest challenge for him to do, however, is to resist the urge to just tell his brother's girlfriend the truth right then and there because honestly he should have never agreed to do this stupid thing-

"Hi-Hajime?" He heard her call to him, noticing a split-second stutter in her voice, adding more fuel to the 'this really is a stupid thing to do' fire. "You're not sick, aren't you?"

Before she could reach a hand to his face and potentially ruining his disguise, Izuru quickly spoke. "Oh, I'm doing fine, Chiharu." He even added a 'relaxed' chuckle after it, even though ironically, it's anything but that.

Thankfully, she accepted that for now. "Just tell me if you're feeling well, okay?"

"Y-Yeah. I don't want you to get too worried for me, after all."

Honestly, he could easily tell her anytime he wanted, but for now, he might as well keep the ruse up until he gets a good reason to drop it.

After narrowly averting anymore potential slip ups in the end of the cafe date, the two proceeded to just spend the rest of their day together at a park. Currently, they're resting on a bench while trying to move past each other in a racing game.

Izuru knows that Hajime is no good at video games, and so he thought that faking a loss would be easy. It would be so easy; he wouldn't have to lift even a finger for it.

Boy was he wrong.

Even though he wants to lose this game just so that he could keep his cover for now, apparently some higher being in the universe decided that now's a good time to mess with him, and because of that, every single power up he gets in the game is the bane of every Mario Kart player's existence: the blue shell.

Because of that, every single time he gets the cursed item, Izuru was quick to discard it like it was trash, narrowly missing Chiharu's racer in the process. He received odd looks from her because of that, but right now that's the least of his concern.

Just one lap more, and this round will be over. He saw that his avatar picked another item, and surprise surprise, it was another blue shell. Cursing under his breath, he threw it off; allowing himself to sigh after ridding himself of what is finally the last of those things.

However, he ended up jinxing it, and so the blue shell ended up hitting the girl's racer this time around. Because of that, his racer ended up catching up to her and took the first place.

In other words, the universe decided to flip the middle finger on him.

Without even turning to her surprised look, he spoke in his usual collected tone, now dropping the laidback tone his brother always used. "Chiharu, there is something that I wish to tell you."

Now that he has her attention, and before she could say a word, he placed a hand on the wig and pulled it off, letting his black hair drape over his shoulders. He kept the contact lenses for now, because now isn't exactly a proper time for that, but nevertheless that was enough to show her the truth.

"Izuru?"

Izuru fully expected her to be surprised at his reveal, but hearing her stifle a giggle, only to full-on laugh afterwards? Admittedly, not so much.

Blinking, he turned towards her, seeing her clutch her stomach while in the middle of her laughing fit. "Was it really that funny?"

Taking a few seconds to calm herself down, with a few giggles left in between, she replied, "I...I can't believe that you did it too!"

Did what too, exactly? Now that he had a closer look at her, Izuru could now see that the shade on 'Chiharu's' hair was more on the cream-color side rather than pink.

Ah, that explains it.

"Chiaki; it's you, isn't it?"

As it turns out, at the exact same time the Hinata brothers (or as Izuru like to think, only Hajime was the true mastermind behind it) decided to swap places, the Nanami sisters also thought of the exact same thing, though in their case it's more due to curiosity if the others would be able to tell if who is who.

Because of that, they ended up going with their original dates all along...while dressed up as their opposing partners.

While the rest of their date ended up going smoothly, now that they both knew the truth, there is one thing certain in Izuru's mind.

He's going to whoop Hajime's backside real good in their group's round of BlazBlue for this.

A/N: To anyone who's curious, Hajime's ruse actually lasted a bit longer even though he has more difficulty keeping the act up, due to Chiharu being denser compared to her older sister, and so she never really suspected him until they were both chased by a dog a la Doraemon and she heard "Izuru" scream.