Chapter 14: The Copycat App

Victory tastes sweet.

Unless it's followed by betrayal.

The morning after we banished Derek Torkon to the leaderboard dungeon of shame, we were flying high. Our app was patched, stable, and hacker-proof—at least for now. We even got a congratulatory thumbs-up from Mr. Kovac in front of the entire class.

Sarah was glowing. Javier was doing his fake CEO walk. Kwame was… cautiously optimistic, which, for him, was basically euphoric. And me?

I thought maybe—just maybe—we were finally ahead of the game.

That was before the knock on the garage door.

Zoey opened it.

Standing there, holding a phone with a smug expression, was Gina Walker—the student council's vice president and self-proclaimed "Queen of Productivity."

She didn't say hi.

She just flipped her phone toward us and hit play.

On screen? A game that looked… eerily familiar.

A colorful arena. Student avatars. Knowledge-based combat. XP rewards. Leaderboards. It even had the exact same frying pan weapon we'd coded.

Except the app wasn't ours.

It was called BrainBlitz.

"What is this?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"A better version of LearnArena," Gina said, grinning. "Faster. Cleaner. And officially endorsed by the student council."

Silence.

Dead, suffocating silence.

Javier muttered, "Yo, that's our app—just with extra glitter."

Kwame took a step forward. "How did you get our code?"

Gina shrugged. "You really shouldn't have left your dev branch unsecured for two weeks. Your encryption was cute, though."

Zoey nearly exploded. "You STOLE our work?!"

"It's not stealing if it's improved," she replied sweetly. "I call it strategic reimagining."

Sarah stepped in, eyes sharp as daggers. "You're passing off our project like it's yours?"

"No, no," Gina said. "I'm passing off the next generation of your project. Look—same foundation, better polish, more school spirit. Plus, we've already got the principal's blessing for a demo next week."

I wanted to scream. Cry. Or throw a glitter frying pan directly at her phone.

Instead, I said the most Manuel thing I could think of: "You misspelled 'quizzical' in your UI."

She blinked.

I took that as a small victory.

But the damage was done.

The moment she left, the air inside the garage turned heavy. It wasn't just about the app anymore.

It was about everything.

Our hustle. Our late nights. The bugs. The fights. The dumb moments. The genius ones. Everything we'd poured into LearnArena was now being repackaged as someone else's success.

Javier paced like a caged panther. "I say we hack them back."

Kwame shook his head. "We'll look guilty. Or worse—petty."

Zoey slammed her laptop shut. "We have to expose her. Show the school the truth."

Sarah, always the calm one, sat in silence before finally speaking.

"We don't fight this with chaos," she said. "We fight it with proof. We document everything—timestamps, logs, original designs. We prove it's ours."

"And then what?" I asked. "Ask nicely for credit?"

"No," she said, standing. "We go public. And we go big."

That night, we got to work.

We built a page inside LearnArena: a timeline of development.

Screenshots of early prototypes

Video clips of our brainstorming sessions

ChatGPT logs of code assistance and timestamps

Even embarrassing footage of Javier dancing when we fixed our first bug

Then we did something bolder.

We added a new feature called ArenaX—a developer showcase mode.

In it, students could submit their own challenge questions, design avatars, and even modify minigames through simple scripts. It was wild, experimental, and brilliant.

By midnight, we pushed the update live.

The next morning, the entire school woke up to a notification:

> 🛠 LearnArena v3.0: Built by Students, For Students

🎮 Featuring ArenaX. Powered by original code. Inspired by hustle.

The downloads surged.

By the time lunch came around, BrainBlitz had dropped out of the top three trending apps on the school network.

Gina stormed into the cafeteria like a thundercloud, holding her phone. "You're playing dirty."

"Nope," Sarah replied coolly. "We're playing real."

"And everyone's starting to notice," I added. "You don't get to rewrite our story."

That's when the unexpected happened.

Principal Diksakins appeared behind her.

"I've reviewed both apps," he said, hands behind his back. "And I have a few concerns. Mainly... plagiarism."

Gina stammered, "But—but I improved it—"

"Yes. But improvement built on stolen foundation is still theft," he replied. "You're suspended from tech club activities until further notice."

The entire cafeteria went quiet.

Then someone at the back whispered:

"Certified Goofball 2.0."

Laughter erupted.

Gina fled the room.

Sarah turned to me and smirked. "Told you we'd win the real way."

But even as we celebrated, something stirred inside me.

Because BrainBlitz hadn't just copied us—it had improved on our foundation.

And somewhere deep down, I knew:

This wouldn't be the last time we'd be challenged.

In the world of digital dreams?

There's always someone watching. Always someone waiting to beat you at your own game.

And if we were going to survive...

LearnArena would have to evolve again.