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Okay watch me puke out all the thoughts that are like a month and a half old that I never intended to share with anyone else.

Stuck between "Blime Against the World" and "Trust is a Construct" as a title

Essentially, the big differences are that Blue and Green are the impostors, and the parasite works differently than in the show.

This is inspired by the STUPID thing that sometimes happens in actual Among Us lobbies where if one impostor gets voted out, they rat out the other one so NO ONE has a good time.

In this AU, the parasite is not so much looking for control as it is trying to find a balance in the host's body. It's just trying to live in the host as it can not survive on its own. Nevertheless, the "balance" it seeks ruins the host by eating the host's bone and bringing with it the near-irresistable urge to kill. Pair that with the painful process of alien flesh merging with your own, and you can kiss your old life behind. One could hypothetically control the urges and surplus of tentacles, but you'd need a lot of mental fortitude and meditation to do so.

Before getting infected, Blue actually did have somewhat enough mental fortitude and history meditating to fit the bill. It's not perfect, and they do snap sometimes, but they don't fall as deeply far under the influence as Green did. Green was far too young and easily broken under the psychological pressure, so they essentially act the same as in the show, if not a little more erratic.

Blue knows they and Green are certainly changed for the worse thanks to weird alien sensing between them, but they don't understand at all what it is. Is it a parasite? A virus? What happened to my bone? Why are there voices in my head? Why do I only hear them sometimes? Why do I feel more gooey than usual? What happened to my flower?

Then, not long after Blue starts asking about aliens, White dies. Blue wasn't there to watch Green do it, but they knew in their gut it had to be them. Call it silly, but when Blue looked into Green's visor, they could swear they saw the horrified features of White staring back.

Their most prized question then on is: How do I save the rest of the crew from this fate? Blue decides that they need to either rid their bodies of this alien substance, or completely eradicate themself and Green.

Blue holes themself up in Medbay, only opening the door if someone needs assistance. The camera in Medbay magically breaks, much to Purple's (later-on) suspicion. Blue focuses all of their energy on learning more about the affliction while multitasking resisting the urge to impale the nearest crewmate. Every intrusive thought simultaneously breaks their heart and gives them more motivation to learn their own weakness. Blue stops accepting Yellow's gifts of coffee, because they can't keep it down anymore. Black notices all of the equipment being used and excitedly asks what Blue is studying, which Blue shuts down very quickly, and Black notes that it was very out-of-character. Blue was testing how tough the skin on their tentacle was with a scalpel when Lime, with the worst timing ever, peeked up out of the vents.

Getting a perfect view of the disgusting peach flesh wriggling out of Blue's backpack.

Blue threatens Lime's life (in a moment of weakness) in exchange for their silence.

The issue is that this silence can only be enforced when Blue is around Lime; as soon as Lime is alone with another crewmate, they'll be spilling as much information as possible. Whether or not they'll be BELIEVED is another matter, but Blue can't risk this situation falling out of their hands; if they get caught and dealt with here (whatever that looks like, since Blue still doesn't know what the parasite is weak to), Green's power cannot be checked and they'll have full clearance to kill the entire crew one by one. Blue NEEDS Lime's cooperation if they're going to prevent anyone from joining White in the afterlife.

Blue earnestly apologizes for the threat and explains the dire situation to Lime to the best of their ability. They appeal to logos and pathos with everything they have, begging Lime to keep quiet and perhaps even lend some of their alien knowledge to the cause. Blue promises they're still of sound mind, and even states they'll end themself too once they save the crew. Lime faces the choice of falling back on their old fears and black-and-white thinking by trying to expose Blue as a nasty alien who likes to kill, or taking a leap of faith, trusting the desperate words of a pained and determined colleague for the 🤏 chance of ensuring the entire crew's safety.

--Both choices are interesting to explore for me, but for the purpose of this version, I'll go with the latter.

Lime hesitantly, and almost terrified, agrees to help Blue. They offer some tips on what they think aliens are weak to (holy water, garlic, lasers, mayo, etc.) and call it a day, anxious to leave to the relative safety of the vent system. Blue then requests Lime to keep tabs on Green and report back. Pretending Green is totally normal and not a murderer is very hard, but Lime agrees.

--Most of the AU is in this part, where Blue and Lime work together to expose the alien parasite and stop any more killings. Blime slowburn happens, obviously, and they end up trusting each other the most out of the entire crew. I'm split between whether I want more deaths to occur or not during this time period, but I know 3 things CERTAINLY happen:

1: Lime becomes able to look past Blue's infection to value the kind, hard worker underneath. Swoon swoon.

2: Blue becomes better able to handle the infection; the intrusive thoughts are mere white noise, and the pain and parasitic tendrils are increasingly manageable.

3: Blue slowly becomes attached to the idea of staying alive.

Eventually, the Lime and Blue duo are able to convince the crew to eject Green through the trash chute. It was a long, adurous process, but they did it! Blue feels immense relief flow through them as Lime and Red shove Green into the chute. As they do, however, Green sneers,

And outs Blue as the other infected.

The worst part is that it makes sense. How did Blue know to think "aliens" before White even died? Blue's prescence at the pizza party doesn't guarantee their innocence in White's crime, so could they have killed White? When Blue and Lime first started working together, Lime was a little loose-lipped (something they fixed later, but not fast enough) and some crewmates heard them grumbling about multiple infected mates. Blue isolated themself to do a bunch of tests that they kept secret from everyone who asked, which Yellow and Brown and Orange all found odd as crewmates who knew Blue before the infection. Black still thought it was weird that a doctor who valued the natural sciences would freak out when questioned about... exploring the natural sciences. Purple mentions the conveniently broken security camera, and how Blue never told Lime to fix it even after promising to. Cyan notes that Blue's seemed oddly more... limber, than the average crewmate, even more than Lime. They even shakily note that Blue's vibes have been unlike anything Cyan's ever seen, in a bad way.

An emergency meeting takes place immediately after Green's explosion in space, confirming that alien parasites are VERY real and VERY dangerous. The entire crew is on edge and running on not enough sleep.

The meeting turns out to be a mess. No one can agree on anything and the two most important crewmates won't say a single word.

Cyan and Orange refuse to believe Blue's infected.

Black, Red, and Purple want to eject Blue. It hurts, but Black believes the evidence against Blue and argues the infection could be contagious, Purple wants to be safe, and Red wants this alien business put to rest.

Yellow and Brown are leaning towards Blue being infected, but argue that it doesn't matter either way. Blue is a good person and led the charge to kick Green. They say that proves Blue's trustworthy.

Lime keeps their mouth shut for the first time in their life, except maybe to defend Blue's character occasionally. Turns out, when Lime trusts someone, they trust them HARD. Lime desperately wants Blue to stay (Blue was their first friend, after all), but they can't forget Blue's initial promise to take themself out too once Green died. They don't want to ruin that plan if Blue still wants to go through with it. Lime waits for Blue to say anything, and they'll back Blue up once that comes.

Blue can't make themselves speak if they wanted to. They're in shock as everything happens around them, but they're mostly stuck inside their own mind.

Selfishly, they want to live. They want to land at Industria, grab a coffee with Lime, travel the planet together, look at homes, go on carnival rides, settle down, have kids or adopt, treat patients at a nice hospital, continue their community service, give speeches, retire, write a book, enjoy a good sandwich, grow old, and experience life until a peaceful death surrounded by loved ones. Blue wants to live.

But they know they shouldn't. They still don't fully understand what vile thing is nestled inside where their bone used to be. They could still snap one day, hurt someone, or God forbid kill someone. Others could get infected, maybe. Blue's skin could rot off. Perhaps there's a final stage of this infection that Blue hasn't reached yet, and they will completely lose whatever personhood and memories they had. Even if nothing else biologically happened, they could very well be caught tentacles out on Industria and be taken to a research facility as a subject, never to be seen again. There is no such thing as a normal life after this.

And yet, Blue wants one so badly. They're such a bad person.

They're stuck with their mouth shut, as voices around them scream their name with love, desperation, hate, and fear.

--That's where my planning ended!! If you got all the way down here, congrats, and thank you. This is my longest post ever, but I think it's one of my favorites.

--What's undecided:

Do crewmates die as Blue and Lime uncover the parasite's and Green's secrets?

Does BLUE kill someone?

If Purple had the smart parasite, Red is going down first. None of the other crewmates know about their shared past, and it needs to stay that way. If Red started getting suspicious about Purple's change of heart surrounding the reactor explosion, there's not much Purple can do other than try to fit Red's expectations of the real Purple's feelings, and that's just impossible with how complicated everything is between them. Red needs to die. It also helps that the captain dying fast rids the crew of any kind of leader.

But this is the dumb parasite we're talking about, the kind that realllllyyyyy likes role-playing as a crewmate. Meaning, they're gonna get stuck trying to keep up their strained relationship with Red and watching cams all the time. Its hard to keep coming up with excuses why they totally didn't see Green maul someone, but they keep their head down enough to just barely make it by. The fish is pretty cool too, they guess.

In this case, Blue overworked themself so hard trying to find White's cause of death that very shortly upon seeing the boneless scans and coming to some vague realization, they passed out from lack of sleep and food. They awake to screaming (another dead body) and see the scans littered across their desk. One is missing. Blue realizes that they never labeled them before passing out. None of the scans have identifying information, and they forgot what half-baked system they were planning on using to eventually name each. They are mortified.

At the next emergency meeting, Blue largely takes Lime's place in suggesting aliens. Turns out that they believe in such things and cannot for the life of them think of any medical reason why a crewmate is just walking around with no bone. It's simply not possible.

Instead of being able to use their charm and credibility to persuade the crew, Blue's whole-hearted suggestion actually HARMS their credibility, especially when Lime starts agreeing with Blue very. Very loudly. The crew sees Lime start to rant about aliens and lizard governments and associates the two crewmates together, thinking Blue is going a little kooky too under the stress of poor self-care and the murders. Kinda like, "oh, I thought you were better than this."

As a result, and to keep up the act, Lime pledges to aid Blue in uncovering the aliens and finding out more information. The two become essentially outcasts as Lime forces Blue to hyperfixate on the boneless scans, meaning the singular doctor on the ship is constantly busy and often too late to actually save lives. Blue, stuck in the sunk-cost fallacy (and knows it), thinks that if they just crack this case open, they can save who's left.

The two also get closer in this isolation, though! They learn to appreciate each other and be able to lean on the other whenever they burn themselves out (Blue) or get too paranoid about the others (Lime). Cue an awkward slowburn.

This comes to a head near the end, when all the little habits Blue had noticed (and loved) in Lime over the past week start to fit together into one big ugly picture. Blue doesn't want to think about it, or even entertain it, but... they've practiced medicine for many years, and in all types of environments across the galaxy, and yet. They've never heard of anything called "squish-bone syndrome." They peer into the Reactor Room vent for the first time since Lime forced them to promise not to, and they nearly puke at the pink goo found inside.

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