The Tributes of Olympus- A Hunger Games/Among Us Inspired Fanfiction

It's Actually Among Us Now

I woke up to screams.

Not the good kind of screams you hear when you're standing next to a roller coaster, mind you. It was the horrible, shocked screams of terror, and I knew something was very, very wrong.

I sprang out of my bed, grabbing my helmet from the nightstand and pulling up the black zipper that ran down my chest- yesterday we slept in our suits in case of any emergencies, but changed the clothes underneath. I looked to the direction of the distress, and my stomach did a horrible flip when I saw Reyna, Annabeth, and Thalia gathered around a bed, the linen covers that were white only last night stained a crimson red.

"Everyone! Report to room 23 A, now!" Reyna yelled into the intercom, cursing profusely in Latin between sentences. "Yes, even the boys! Do I need to repeat myself?"

I was almost too scared to look, but I crept forward anyway. "Guys- what-" I stopped, my eyes confirming what my mind was dreading to think. My orange helmet fell out of my hands with a loud clatter.

Katie's light green suit was almost unrecognizable from the amount of blood covering it, which was still slowly seeping from a singular, deep knife stab in her chest. From my anatomic knowledge, it had sliced cleanly through the heart. Her face was calm, and if you ignored the red, she looked like she was sleeping. That was it- she had been assaulted in the middle of the night and killed in her sleep, by someone with very precise blade techniques, too. Who- who could have done this?

I numbly registered footsteps coming down the hallway, the sounds of Piper and Hazel waking up, but mostly, I was lost in my own mind. I didn't know Katie too well, but she had treated me kindly over the years. She was a great person, and hated fights, being the mediator in arguments. She and Travis had just got together, too... Now she was gone.

She didn't deserve this. No one did.

"What have the gods done?" Percy's scream voiced my exact thoughts. But even worse was the cry of shock, fury, and pain from Travis when he saw Katie lying motionless in a pool of blood.

It all blurred together- the tears, the searching to no avail, the carrying of the deceased daughter of Demeter to the central meeting station. I just followed everyone else, moving when they moved, stopping when they stopped. It felt so unreal- like someone was about to, at any minute, jump up and yell April Fools! But it was in the middle of March, and how could a death like Katie's be faked?

It didn't stop me from trying to come up with possible explanations, though. I guess for me, denial was the best way to deal with the pain.

"What do you have to say about this?" Travis yelled at the sky, his eyes red from crying. "What is there to say, you-?" He added a few choice comparison words after, in order to adequately describe the lord of the sky. It broke my heart to realize that Travis used to be the silly prankster in the group, not unlike Leo and Percy.

"I would shut your trap, son, unless you want to get smite by lightning." Hermes appeared above the table, his usually mischievous eyes dark and unfeeling. His snakes, George and Martha, hovered around his head menacingly, making him look like a downgraded, male Medusa. "Lord Zeus will explain things to you shortly."

"Like why Katie is dead?" The short Iris message had ended, but Travis continued staring piercing swords at where his father was. "Tell me right now, I-"

"Ah, I'm terribly sorry." The voice was so loud it drowned out everything else, even the surprised cursing in ten different languages. "I forgot to tell you yesterday. To spice things up, we hired three eidolons to possess three crew members on this ship- the imposters are instructed to try and kill as many people as possible and not get caught. They will be permanently in the bodies of those three heroes until they are eliminated through voting. Don't try to locate them by magical means- it won't work. Have fun!" With that, Zeus vanished.

A long silence followed as we contemplated the information, and our life choices.

Still being in a state of shock, Percy didn't say anything, but I knew as sure as Tartarus what he was thinking. It was real now. The threats of dying, the possibility of betrayal... This was now a horrible, cruel, real-life rendering of a video game I had played for fun before.

We could have stood there forever mourning the daughter of Demeter, but with a loud pinging noise, all our helmets lit up. It was enough to make me angry. These smug gods wanted us to fix these stupid machines and defend this stupid ship while one of our friends was dead. I had half a mind to not do the tasks and blow myself up so I didn't have to deal with this anymore.

Annabeth looked up, cheeks wet from crying, but her eyes were even harder than before. "Three of us are being possessed by eidolons, and they won't leave until we vote the imposters out." Wow, even she saw the reference to Among Us. "But we can't blindly eliminate people without solid evidence- every one of us is important in our own way, and losing these assets could be detrimental to us." She looked around the circle at every single one of us. "I trust all of you until you prove me wrong. We can't start making accusations now and turn friend upon friend."

Travis, who had been quiet this whole time, spoke in a voice so soft I needed to dial up my helmet volume to hear. "I'm not sure who's with me, but I'm going to continue doing all these tasks and fighting until we find who the eidolons are. For Katie." His voice cracked on her name, and fresh tears started spilling down his cheeks, but his jaw was set and his face determined.

"Well said," Pollux murmured, wrapping an arm around his friend's hunched shoulders. Raising his voice, he yelled, "I'm with Travis! We do what we need to do, find whoever did this, and show the gods what we're capable of!"

This was followed by a loud chorus of defiant cheers and shouts. For the first time since we were sent to the arena, I felt a glimmer of hope for our survival- we were in this together. Even if three of us were not, the rest of us would be with each other until the end.

That was all fine, until it wasn't. The gods sure had a sense of humor.

***
It was either making this chapter 1100 words or 2700, so I cut it off a little shorter :)
I'm not gonna lie, this character death was actually sad to write 😭
Comment any suggestions or Katie rants, and vote if you enjoyed!
Q: Who do you think the imposters are, based off of no evidence? Who do you think would make a good killer?