A/N: I've had a really stressful day today due to circumstances that may or may not have been all my fault, and decided that I should write some of this story to help make me feel better. Don't get me wrong, I need to update all of my fics, but this one in particular is the least complex one I've got going, which is to say it's fluff with very little plot while the rest of my fics are fluff with a bit more plot.
Speaking of which, I am thinking about eventually turning Red and Yellow's friendship into a QPR later and would like your guys' opinion on that. Seriously, there is not enough queerplatonic relationship representation anywhere, and these guys are pretty much in one already, but if I go that direction they won't realize it for a while. But anyway I've rambled on enough, on with the fic!
Yellow sat next to her vent buddy on the bed, frustrated. This would be a perfect time for the two of them if they could actually think of something to do with it. There were just so many possibilities, so many fun ideas that they couldn't seem to pick one and now they'd spend the whole day in limbo instead of having fun and—aaaaaaaaaaah!
Axie and Lottie seem to gaze sympathetically at the duo from their tank on the other side of the small room. Axolotls are lucky, yellow thought sullenly. They don't have to think hard about what they're going to do every second of every day: they just, like, swim around and stuff.
The girl was interrupted from her mental mini-rant when she heard a quiet buzzing sound that seemed to be coming from… Red? She turned towards them, just in time to watch as they pulled apart a flap of skin on their upper right thigh, reached their hand inside and pulled out something red! We're they seriously pulling themself apart on her bed right now? Do they not realize how hard it is to wash blood out of clothes and sheets? She would know, she's a cisgender female!
Okay, look. Yellow knew her best friend was an alien or something, but did they seriously know that it's terribly rude to gut themself (though it's their leg so it's not really gutting but that doesn't really matter right now) on her bed? Why couldn't they do that on their bed? Why were they—oh,-oh, wait! that wasn't flesh, or an organ, or anything at all like that! It was… a phone? "Hey uh, Red?"
"Mmm?" Red asks distractedly as they tap away at their phone. Yellow's grown so accustomed to people back on Earth doing this that it doesn't feel rude.
"Uh… there's no non-blunt way to put this—Red, why did you just pull a phone out of your leg? How did you just pull a phone out of your leg? Doesn't that, like hurt or something?'
Now it's Red's turn to be baffled. "Huh? No, it was just in my pocket. YOu have pockets too."
"Yeah but in my clothes, not my body! I'm not a kangaroo!"
"What's a kangaroo?"
The next few minutes were spent explaining to an increasingly disturbed Red about kangaroos and their weird and disgusting childbirth process.
"Well I can assure you that I don't, and never will do that," Red says, looking as though they'd just learned all of life's greatest mysteries but every one of them was absolutely horrible.
"Good, good." Yellow thought about asking them where impostor babies came from but ultimately decided that this had been enough trauma for one day. Instead she brought her attention back to the phone which now lay in Red's lap, screen gone black, forgotten in the duo's moment of marsupial madness.
"Where'd you get that anyway, if you don't mind me asking? It looks just like an iMira XR, same as all Mira employees have now. Never thought Apple would ever team up with anyone, but I guess space travel this sophisticated was enough to make 'em cave. Boy, if only Steve Jobs was alive to see this; may he Rest In Peace…"
Thankfully Red decided to not ask any questions about the info Yellow revealed and instead decided to answer hers, for now at least. They really were quite a considerate friend…
"I'm not sure of the specifics, but someone stole it, brought it to our planet, fitted it with the proper impostoring specs then gave it to me before I set off on this mission. We can use them to sabotage the ship, track crewmates as long as they have their phones with them, and a couple other things."
"Ooh, cool!" Yellow squealed before she could stop herself. She knew she probably shouldn't be reacting this way, but it was only with Red, they'd understand. "Can i see?"
"Sure, why not? I've already broken a bunch of rules, what's one more? 'S not like they'll ever find out, anyway."
"What were the rules?" The human asks curiously as there alien friend wakes up 'their' iMira.
"Well the number one rule was 'don't get caught,'" they say distractedly. "Another one was 'don't fraternize with the enemy because they'll plant poisonous ideas in your brain,' or something like that."
Yellow scoffs. "Clearly they were lying to you about something and didn't want you to start questioning. If they were telling you the truth, they wouldn't mind you digging deeper because then you'd just realize, 'oh yeah, this is the truth after all.'"
Red stops for a moment, eyes going wide. "You're right," They say in a tone of surprise and wonder, as though she'd just informed them that you're supposed to flush the toilet after you go instead of before after they'd been doing it for over twenty years. "I wonder what they were so intent on hiding from me?"
It probably had something to do with the reason for the whole 'kill the crewmates sussy sus sus' thing, but that was too serious of a conversation for today. This was supposed to be their fun day off, dang it!
The impostor had finally woken up their phone and was on the Home Screen which had a nice background with some planets on it. Yellow was about to wonder if one of them was their vent buddy's home world (was it the purple one? The orange one? The one that looked less like a planet and more like a pile of poop?) when they tapped on the calculator app, which was in their dock for some reason.
They begin to punch in an overly long, complex equation that would probably only be done in an assigned math assignment. Yellow was tempted to ask why they were doing this, but decided it would be best to allow them to concentrate.
They finally finish and press '=' only to get, surprise surprise, an equally long complex answer. This was apparently not the answer they wanted.
"Crap," They mutter and try again, the second time getting similar results. The third time, they got a downright 'Error'.
"Uh, Red? What're you tryin'a do?"
"Shh," Red hushes her, abruptly but not unkindly. "Lemme think…"
The two sit silently for a couple minutes, Red having to tap their phone several times to keep it from locking. At last, they slap their forehead in victory, Making their human friend jump.
"Yes! I remember now! I was supposed to use fractions, not decimals, and the logarithm was supposed to be natural."
"I barely understood any of that but okay," Yellow muttered as the impostor began furiously tapping away again.
This time, when they pressed '=' instead of an answer appearing, the calculator was replaced with another screen. It was a whole new app, that appeared to be called 'The Hub,' or at least that's what was written in big bold letters at the top of the main page. Red tosses their phone over to her.
"Knock yourself out, but don't mess with the sabotage feature. I think I speak for both of us when I say I do not want to deal with that."
Yellow nods furiously before eagerly exploring this new app. It was honestly kind of an eyesore, seriously come on, did they really have to make all the text red on white? but other than that, it was quite cool.
It was laid out like many other apps Yellow had used, with a tab bar on the bottom. They were labeled from left to right: 'Home, Sab, Mission, Chat, and More.' I was on the home tab right now. It displayed the current date and time, one for Earth and another written in a way Yellow didn't recognize. Must be for Red's planet. Below that was a scrolling view sort of like a social media feed, showing both what she presumed to be news from Red's planet and events happening on The Skeld, such as 'Purp has finished performing a scan,' 'Blu has finished emptying the trash shoot,' and so on. Beneath that was a progress bar labeled CM which Yellow learned from Red was the estimated time it would take for the crew to finish their mission and thus, their time left to do theirs. She shuttered and moved on.
The sab tab had just the features that Red told Yellow not to mess with so she didn't linger on it long. The next was the mission tab which had, if this were a social media app, Red's profile. Yellow couldn't make heads or tails of most of the info, but she could understand where it said that they had just graduated, and laughed for about five minutes straight at their profile/identity photo.
"there's this plant on my home planet, looks kind of like a rose but it's hairy." The impostor explains. "It's quite loved by most of the impostor race though so it's grown pretty much everywhere. Sucks for me, because I am extremely allergic to it. And just my luck, we got to have our pictures taken in the courtyard of the academy which is full of the things. The photographer took my picture exactly while I was sneezing. I swear they did it on purpose," they complained, but still laughed a bit anyway.
"Hairy roses?" Yellow choked out through her laughter. "That sounds kinda gross, like a rose and some mold had a creepy spore baby. It sounds like a cool band name though, so if we ever start a band that's what we should name it; Hairy Roses!"
When they'd both stopped laughing, it was time to explore the last part of the app. The chat tab was the most social media aspect of this app in fact it was pretty much just a social media but just for impostors. Unfortunately for Red, the app locked them out of participating in it since they hadn't completed their first mission yet. Wow, a social media app that requires you to murder a bunch of people just to use it? I hope this doesn't give Facebook or TikTok any ideas,* Yellow thought, disgusted.
One of the most popular people on the chat was an impostor with the username Cy666. They had thousands of followers and likes and their most popular post was: 'Wow, get a load of this weakling! Snapped right in half with hardly any effort at all! Tough break, little Lime. Guess you won't be making your big brother proud after all. Gods, what a loser.' There was a picture attached too, but Red's mission not complete status prevented Yellow from viewing it. Thank god, because she could think of what it probably was and the very thought was making her want to hurl. Or beat whoever this Cy666 up for being so blatantly cruel. Or throw up on them, then beat them up.
Yellow had absolutely no interest in reading the comments on this post, and instead checked out the more tab so she could get this over with. She wasn't sure whether to laugh, or scream in rage at the normalcy of the final tab. It was completely ordinary stuff such as 'about,' 'settings,' (but nothing to change the awful text color) and the dreaded 'support us'. Oh, like crap I'm gunna support you after that.
She gingerly hands the phone back to Red, who had been looking concernedly at her ever since she'd stopped laughing and went silent. "what's wrong," they wonder aloud. "What's you see?"
"Those posts in the chat," she mutters, more to herself than to the impostor. "I can't believe they not only allow that, but encourage it. If you posted that sorta thing on Earth, you'd be arrested. Fast."
Red's face falls. "Oh, right. I knew I was forgetting something."
They put their iMira back into their leg pocket, the coolest and weirdest things cine belly mouths, and tentatively reaches out their hand. Yellow however has no such reservations and takes it immediately, much to Red's relief.
"I'm sorry you saw that," They say sincerely. "I never use the chat, and I forgot how bad it is."
Yellow sighs, pushing their hands forward and scooting closer so their arms, elbows and shoulders touch. It's quite a cozy feeling, not as good as full-on hugging or cuddling but the next best thing. "I just—I wanna see the best in people, y'know? and when I do that… well I guess i like, trick myself into thinking that everyone's actually that good. Then when this sorta thing pops up, well it's kinda—no a lot jarring. It like, bursts the pretty bubble that I put myself and everybody else inside and it takes a while to blow another. And I'm not sure if I actually should blow another since it's just a thin not real bubble but I'm so much happier when I'm just floatin' along inside of it… sorry this doesn't make much sense, does it?"
"It does, actually." Red replies, gently squeezing her hand in theirs. "I could be wrong since I'm just guessing, but I think a lot of impostors are in bubbles of their own. Not like yours though, more like… well a bunch of different things. Like in my bubble, everyone was always looking down on me, and I had to do everything I could to impress them, to prove myself. And that was true in a sense, but not as much as I thought that it was. I could still survive not being an impostor; I could be a cook, or a cleaner, or plant those hairy roses even though my nose would never forgive me…"
"but that wasn't what you wanted." Yellow continued after Red had trailed off. she let go of their hand and wrapped her arm around them in a side-hug, which they happily leaned into. "You wanted to be successful, and everyone to know it."
Red nods. "Yeah, and i thought that the only way I could do that would be… to be like those in the chat. But I know that's not true now, and that's because of you, so thank you for popping my bubble, Yellow. There's no way I'm going to blow another, at least not like that one."
Yellow smiles, giving them a little squeeze.
"As for your bubble, I don't think you need to pop it, just make it a little more transparent. See that people don't always have good intentions, but still have faith that it's not all doom and gloom."
The human smiles. "whoa, that is some really good advice. I'll definitely take it, gosh knows I need to. I can't tell you how many times I've been screwed over because i couldn't see through my bubble. So I'll try to make it a bit more translucent."
Red smiles too. "Good. and I'll figure out what kind of bubble I want to blow now."
Yellow reluctantly lets her friend go, and gestures wildly as she does a over-exaggerated announcer voice. "And so, the story of iPostor comes to a close. Tune in next time for another great show, and be sure to purchase our novelty products, each soled separately, batteries not included."
"What/ iPostor?"
"It's better than just The Hub," Yellow all but wines, and then they both start laughing once again.