Beneath the Ice: An Among Us Fanfiction

Chapter Sixteen: The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For the Lamb's Cry

"Let's see, what do we have for ingredients?" Odyssey murmured to himself. "We still have shortening, some eggs, sugar... hmm, flour's a bit low... whoever's sneaking in for a midnight snack sure is eating a lot..."

"What's up Odds?" Forte said, poking his head into the kitchen. Odyssey jumped and cursed as the flour erupted in a cloud of powder, as Odyssey had basically dowsed himself with the bag.

"For goodness sake, if I had that knife in my hand instead of flour, I would have stabbed myself!" Odyssey said angrily, gesturing to the knife that was on the counter. He slammed what was left of the bag down and tried to wipe his visor clean. "You're lucky that I have my suit and helmet on. Forte! You do know that we still have an Impostor among us, right?"

"Who hasn't struck for five days! Relax, Odyssey." 

"Me relax? I am stress cooking right now!" Odyssey gave up on using his hands and instead took a damp towel and swiped the flour off.

Odyssey could tell that Forte was trying not to laugh. "I hate to break it to you, but you're the chef on this mission."

"Exactly! I'm stressed and I'm cooking!" Odyssey scoffed and went back to cataloging ingredients and planning the meals. The sad thing was that since people were dead and dying, there was an excess of ingredients that would never be used. Unless whoever was eating so many midnight snacks ate the equivalent of three other people. "Stress cooking!"

"That's like the pineapple pen thing—never mind." Forte's tone of voice became serious. "Odds, we have something bigger to talk about right now. And I mean, this is serious."

Odyssey turned around and took off his helmet. No one in their group said something was serious unless something was really serious. "Alright, what is it? And should I go find Omega?"

"No, I just need you to listen." Forte sighed. "We have to eject the second Impostor. At the very least, we should eject Commander Harrison and maybe even Clasher."

Well that went from zero to ten in a second. Odyssey switched gears. "Agreed. But Commander Harrison has the support of Petri, the captain, and I'm pretty sure Clasher in the matter; they won't just vote her off. Clasher has Petri, Cinnabar, and maybe both the captain and commander. Without a majority, we can't just eject them."

"Cinnabar is already kind of in the loop," Forte said. "The only reason why she's on Clasher's side is because he's Petri's friend. So, if we can find a way to eject Commander Harrison first, that would be a step."

"And... how would we do that?"

Forte chuckled. It wasn't his usual laugh of good-natured enjoyment, this seemed almost... calculated. Odyssey felt a strange sensation run up his spine; this didn't seem like Forte. "Go for the weakest link. Clasher has a connection to her as a half-Impostor himself, Captain Foster has a long history with her, but Petri's only in it because she's the only known sixth-stager that he could study. If we can convince him that she's dangerous, he might change his vote to help us."

Odyssey sighed and crossed his arms. "Again, how would we do that? Waltz into Lab, change the results of scans which we have no idea mean, stage an attack and hope that she's in too much pain to respond, and then eject her?"

"No, no, not like that." Forte said, waving a hand. He walked to the opposite side of the room so that he was facing Odyssey when he leaned back against the counter. He was a bit close to the stove and the knives, but Odyssey brushed off the concern.  "I mean we just do the first part of that plan."

Well, that went onto a different path. "I am getting really tired of saying this, but how would we do that? We don't even know what the scans mean! And this would mean that we would be interfering in his research and everything." Odyssey rubbed his face, exasperated. "Okay, so let's say in a hypothetical situation that your plan worked and the data was altered. So what? What if Petri is this close to finding a cure? How would that work if the data was altered?"