Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Purple?“ Lime's voice was hollow and distraught as she stared up at me from where she had fallen back on the floor. She scooted backwards away from me as I turned to her.

”He's gone, you're not in danger anymore.“ I said, crouching down to her, she knew I was an imposter now, everything I had been dying to keep away from her, now revealed so I could protect her.

”B-But yo-you- you're-“ Lime stammered, chest visibly shaking as she cowered like a cornered animal. 'The cornered animal is the strongest' I remembered being told, and here with Lime's strength and adrenaline she could tear my arm off if she really wanted.

”I know, but I won't hurt you, I love you.“ I said, sitting down in front of her, trying to appear as less threatening as possible.

”You promised me you were Human.“ She said, her voice cracking as she turned her head to look at Black's cooling corpse, then over to me.

”And I lied, I'm sorry.“ I said, and it was in earnest, but Lime's helmet still tilted down disapprovingly when she looked towards me. It hurt more than the bite wounds currently embedded in my flesh.

“Why? Are you doing this? Why are you killing us!?” She asked, more demanded than anything.

“Because you're.. you're killing us, killing our children and stealing our home!” My voice started to rise, Lime's head tilted back as she pressed herself against the wall, and in the overhead light I could see her eyes widening.

“What!?” She shrieked, I flinched.

“It's true, your people refused to stop invading our planet.” I said, Lime shook her head rapidly, chest heaving.

“We.. We need to tell others.. We can't have this happening! We-” I cut her off.

“We tried, but it wasn't working.” I said, Lime nodded slowly as I spoke.

“I just need some time alone to process.” Lime stood up and walked past the corpse of Black as I just watched, I didn't follow her, I knew it'd probably end badly.

A few hours later, after cleaning up and doing what tasks I could, I came across Lime in the comms room. Tapping away as she sat at the computer, her helmet off and the headphones on.

“Lime?” I asked, knocking to announce my presence. She sighed and turned in the chair to me, I had never seen her full face before.

“I sent out a distress call, I didn't tell them you were an imposter, only that we're the last survivors and need help,” She explained, I relaxed slightly, “They're the S-120 crew, and it'll take some time for them to reach us, about a day and a half, I'm confident we can keep the ship running until then.” Lime continued.

“Okay.. Okay..” It was my turn to sigh, neither of us could fly the ship and we can't make a full crew to keep it running so I was thankful for Lime's quick thinking to send out a distress call.

“I want to try and get them on board with going against MIRA."

Chapter Text

“Orangee.” Pink whines, about to ask for something.

“Yes?..” I say after a moment, I look down at her, my helmet looming over her head. She pauses nervously per usual but Forest says I can’t bend down to people's height. since it makes it seem like they are small children and that’s ‘unprofessional’

“The card reader is broken…again,” Pink says feeling bad since this is the fourth time this week. I just give a quick nod and I go over to it there are always problems with it, Forest says he’s contacted Mira about it and they say they’ll send a replacement which is doubtful.

“Guess what!” Forest comes in with a package “They finally sent a new card reader” Forest smiles, it’ll be a miracle if that thing actually works but Forest unpacks it and has Mustard help us put it in. If there’s an imposter on this ship I pray to any and all gods that it’s Mustard or that I’ve just hit my head so much that he’s just a figment of my imagination. 

“it works” I smile as I swipe my card “Wait it works on the first try??” Mustard says astounded, unfortunately we agree with him that it’s a miracle. just then Gray comes over “Hey Forest, we got a distress signal from another ship” Gray takes Forest to comms.

“it’s crew S-166, tell them we'll be on our way,” Forest says and walks off to find Pink who’s in the kitchen with Periwinkle helping her prepare dinner “Potatoes again?” Forest says and sighs “They need to be eaten. but we can stop by Mars in a few weeks and get some other food,” Periwinkle says and sighs as she makes potato wedges. Forest turns his attention to Pink “I need you to take us to a crew that’s in trouble can you handle it-“ “Yes!” pink cuts Forest off then goes to the driver's seat of sorts and charts a course for the abandoned ship

I sigh and sit down on my bed the other side of the room is Burples bed, they don’t have a job but they do something on the ship and they always make weird jokes about the crew dying.. but Crimson enjoys them there both weird and a little suspicious at times but they're like siblings to us, Mustard is more of a cousin but still family.

Periwinkle calls us to dinner. She works hard on dinner every night, the best meal is probably perogies but she only makes those if we are nice to each other all week which is hard at times, but we’re family so fighting is to be expected.

Gold, Lavender, and Gray all sit together “So Grey would you like to come to my room and watch Netflix?” Lavender says, she’s been trying for months to get Grey to take a hint will he ever understand?

“Nah I’ve already seen all the good movies,” Grey says, he will never get the hint. “So if there was an imposter on the ship what would happen?” Burple says trying to get information “Well we would use the buddy system and if we find out who’s the imposter then we put them in the airlock.” Forest says.

Chapter Text

“AURORA SKELD-120 - docking - LENNY SKELD-166”

Our ship’s AI spoke in its usual monotone voice as we walked to the airlock. For this I had to convince Purple to put an actual suit on instead of just shapeshifting, which was quite the process considering she was pretty much boneless. I had promised her she could go back to shapeshifting her suit once we were situated in a room together.

“Hello, Skeld one-twenty crew, we are all that's left of the one-sixty-six crew.” I said, my voice not coming out quite right, but thankfully still polite. From what I could see through the window there was an Orange, Pink, Gray, and a Forest Green.

“Are you the only one on board?” Asks Forest, I assume he's the Captain by his commanding voice and upright, strong posture.

“No, Sir, me and Purple were the only survivors.” I say, almost forgetting to be formal in a situation like this. Forest looks to his right at the Orange crewmate, gives a hand signal, and the door is opened.

“Thank you for letting us aboard, Sir.” Purple, polite as always, says as we step aboard the Aurora. Orange gives us a polite nod, to which I nod back. 

Out of the corner of my eye I witness a Red-Crimson crewmate switch on the personal comms of her suits and lean in towards the Captain.

“We have a small issue, I'll bring you two to be scanned.” The Crimson crewmate says as she steps forward, keeping a respectful distance from me and Purple. The Captain leans to Pink and brings Orange with him as they walk off.

A Yellow-Gold crewmate claps his hands, causing Purple to flinch beside me, “Well, let's get back to our stations, we don't know what they've gone through, so let's give them some space.” He says to the rest of the crewmates, a Lavender, Periwinkle, and a Brown-Purple mixed suit, huh, rare to see.

I notice Periwinkle fiddling with her visor as Purple and I follow Crimson. Purple had explained what the process was to disguise an imposter scan, but it still made me nervous as we came into Medbay.

Structurally, Lenny and Aurora are similar, both being Skeld-class spaceships, but as we had walked I did notice some things different, both old and new, telling me the Aurora-120 is a repurposed ship, meaning an imposter attack or similar event left it in space to be rescued and remade, just like our Lenny-166 now.

Just as I'm about to approach the scanner, an emergency meeting is called, alarms blaring and startling everyone, especially Purple. The only thing in my mind is ‘Oh No’.

Chapter Text

The crew gathers around the table. I sit across from Burple along with Periwinkle, Lavender and Pink.

"I have good news, and bad news.” Forest says, Crimson perks up, probably hoping for a dead body.

“Bad news first.” Burple says, already knowing what happened.

“Well we lost a crew member, good news it was Mustard.” Forest says. Crimson, Gold, and Silver cheer. I laugh at them a little. The new crew members look borderline mortified by our partying as Gold grabs the champagne he smuggled onto the ship. I sigh and look over to them

“Don’t worry, he was a jerk.” I say to them, Forest sighs and presses the skip voting button on his ipad. Mira has a policy where you have to vote no matter what and it really sucks. Everyone else does the same except for one person who voted for Purple. I look at Burple confused.. Why would she vote for someone to be ejected? No one else seems to notice so I drop it and leave to do tasks.

Later I finish fixing comms and as I turn around I see Periwinkle run in, her helmet is cracked and she seems out of breath.

"Peri what happened?” I say and take her helmet off of her as she looks up at me.

“I…I was chased here by someone I- I didn’t get a good look at them” Periwinkle says, outta breath as she fixes her glasses and takes back her helmet.

“I’ll hang out with you while you do your tasks.” I say and Periwinkle nods, putting her helmet back on. We walk around and I watch her do her tasks. Her last one is in medbay for her scan. Mira wants all their crew in tip top shape, they say yet they can’t even be bothered to make proper space suits for us. I walk off and I bump into Lime on accident. Maybe I should watch where I'm going.

“Hey Lime” I smile, looming over her.

“Oh, uh, Hey er.. Orange?” She says.

“Yeah how are you?” I try to smile with my helmet, it’s pretty hard to not seem intimidating in these things.

“I'm good! Just uh, checking my new tasks out, have you seen Purple anywhere?” She asks, stuttering slightly as she looks around.

“Do you need any help?” I ask.

“Not really, but I'd appreciate it if you could help me find Purple, buddy system is what I'm used to considering what.. happened to.. my old crew.” She trails off.

“Ah…. Yeahhh understandable. Ok yeah let’s go look.” I start going towards weapons, it’s the only place I haven’t been today somehow. 

“Oh! There's Purple!” Lime says, rushing ahead and into weapons.

“Cool, hi Purple” I wave. Soon afterwards Forrest comes in. 

“There you guys are, I called a meeting in the cafeteria.” Forest asks and he begins walking to the cafeteria, I wonder what he wants.

Chapter Text

I felt uneasy in yet another meeting, it was similar to our old crew yet thankfully different enough that I didn't feel like running. Lime meanwhile was attached to my side and holding my hand as we sat down on the outer edges of the group.

“So, I'm betting you all have been wondering what happened to our newest crew, well I finally got the records from Purple and Lime’s ship.” Forest announced to the crew. To my surprise, a projector, by the work of the ship’s AI, slid down from the ceiling behind Forest. To my horror I saw a clip of my old Captain, Red, tripping and falling outside the reactor room.

“I’m sending the records in the group chat, but I'll explain anyway..” Me and Lime had yet to be added to this group chat, but it didn't matter much as I saw the projector display

“On their crew there was an imposter,” The projector then displayed Orange and White jokingly punching the air at the other as they walked through the hallway.

“This imposter took out most of their crew,” Next the projector showed Pink and Yellow waving then flipping each other off from across the hallway. The crew was starting to giggle and point at this point.

“But Purple was able to kill it in the ship’s reactor, leaving only her and Lime before it could get them.” Forest saying ‘it’ grinded my nerves, I so badly wanted to tell them all, tell our sapience and how we were being invaded, but I stayed silent.

Finally Forest turned around, when the crew laughed and pointed at footage of me tripping on Black's foot. Thankfully they didn't seem to notice the tentacles that I had held out in an effort to stop my fall, they weren't that visible in the footage, but were still there.

“Aurora! This is a serious matter!” Forest scolded the ship's AI, only making the crew laugh further, even Lime laughed.

“Lime, Purple, I'm sorry about Aurora.” Forest apologized, I nodded. He then cleared his throat, “Meeting dismissed, return to your tasks.” Me and Lime left together. I still had a few tasks, not used to doing them seriously now.

As we walked to my next task, I couldn't help but wonder if there were any other imposters on this ship.

Chapter Text

Once again I've been saddled with burple’s tasks. I know I'm the electrician but…wires…damn wires..

“Uh..excuse me.. Orange is it?” Purple says. Suddenly I feel more..liquidy..? I’m..a puddle???? I take a breath and slurp back up “the hell?? what do you want?” I snap slightly. 

“Oh perfect! We were wondering if you were an imposter.” Lime chimed from behind Purple

“what?” I say as I rub my head slightly “I’m not a-….oh…right..I am..” I say and pick myself up “are you an imposter? lime?” I ask, it makes sense as she seemed relieved.

“I'm the imposter, and we want help.” Purple said.

 “oh! chill” I smile then notice Lime lean into Purple to say something.

“Great, a stupid imposter.” Lime complained.

“Hey! I'm not stupid actually I'm a better shot than the other one and probably you too!” I whined.

“Well, don't go around going ‘yeah, I'm an imposter’ you'll get caught!” She scolded.

I get up, looming over her “I don’t.” I step towards Lime but Purple gets between us.

“Okay, no need to fight, we need to get along if we want to stop the war.” Purple says,

I pause.. war?… right…the humans.. I rub my head. I've hit it too many times. I feel a headache coming “right..sorry..sorry Lime..” I’m not scared to say sorry unlike some people. burple…

“So, are you on board getting this crew on our side?” Purple

“oh yeah i’d rather them join us then have to kill them” I say, the idea was amazing my crew were my family all but mustard but now his body was polluting space instead of our ship. “Let's go get burple along too” I say and put my arm over Limes shoulder to walk her to mine and Burples room.

Chapter Text

It was nerve-wracking as hell, Orange referenced multiple imposter things and I just kept walking. Then there was Burple, she looked terrifying looming in the dark room. Purple was kept out under ‘this is imposter business’.

“So! Uhh, Burple, we plan on getting humanity to stop attacki-” I was cut off as Burple stepped closer.

“Oh really? How will a single human do that?” He sneered, voice with an otherworldly undertone I couldn't quite place but instinctively knew it was alien.

“She's not human, she's an imposter like us!” Orange argued, clapping a hand on my shoulder.

“Give another whiff.” Burple said, I froze as Orange came closer, bending until his helmet touched mine. One uncomfortable second later, “Oh, you're right.” Orange announced.

“I tried to tell him that Purple is the imposter, and we have a plan to stop the attacks on Polus, but we need help.” I begged, behind me I heard Orange open the door and drag Purple in.

“We need a crew to make this happen, we plan to make MIRA get in trouble.” I explained, slightly nervous this wouldn't work and I'd be killed.

“And that'll stop them?” Burple asked, her defensive posture calming down and I gained a little confidence.

“End goal is MIRA dismantled or restricted, but at the least we plan for the war to end.” I said. It was one thing to talk of peace to Purple, but to actually get the ball rolling to other people was exhilarating.

“Okay, fine.” Burple sighed.

“Us, humanity, we didn't know that you lived there, so we plan to-” Suddenly Burple cut me off, again.

“Didn’t know my ass! You killed us with no remorse!” Burple shoves me, but it doesn't do too much. I hear Purple growl slightly.

“I've seen it, most crewmates don't know where we even are coming from.” Purple says, getting between me and Burple.

“They’re murderers! All of them!” Burple hisses.

“I'm pretty confident she's right, have any of our crewmates shown knowledge of Polus outside the mining?” Orange asks, and Burple pauses.

“I-.. Well- ugh!! fine you win.” Burple stammers then pouts.

“So, are we in agreement? Get this crew on board with taking down MIRA?” I ask, Purple nods in agreement, Orange nods, and finally Burple nods reluctantly.