[Author's note: This is a rewrite of a different child I added to the last episode. I didn't feel there was enough long-term potential in the other to be worth continuing, but given its reception I thought a longer story was warranted.]
SHHHHHHH!
CREWMATE
There is 1 Impostor among us
Jon snapped awake and bolted upright as if from a nightmare. Had it been a nightmare? Jon thought. All he had now was a vague recollection of a few words... "There is 1 Impostor among us..."
At any rate, he wasn't in his room anymore. He and 9 other very confused-looking people were seated around a large-ish round table in the school cafeteria, which was otherwise totally deserted. Jon wasn't sure whether to take comfort in the fact that he recognized them all. Karyn was there, along with another childhood friend of his and hers, Emily Morris; so was Sarah, and her boyfriend Biff Meadows; over there sat Jon's sister Zoe and her friend Athena DeVries; less familiar to Jon was the nerdy Jay Duncan and the shy Kyla Leeson, two of the school's biggest geeks; and last of all, the prudish bible thumper Nadine Ferguson.
By the look on their faces, not a one of them had the slightest idea what was going on or why they were there. For a quick, silent moment, it was all just looking around at the surroundings, each other, and out into contemplative space to try and piece that puzzle together. All of them were dressed as Jon thought they might've been just before he made the wish, in late afternoon wear, which depending on the person could've meant a dress for a night out on the town, casual wear for lounging about their respective homes, or in Emily's case, just a sweaty athletics bra and some yoga pants. Most of them weren't even wearing shoes, himself included. Geez... it really was granted with the minimum alteration to the world around me, huh? Jon thought. Both the light in the windows and the cafeteria's clock informed him that the time of day hadn't much changed either; neither he nor any of his "crewmates" had been asleep for more than a few minutes. He did note, however, that whatever teleportation this was had left him empty-handed, meaning the wishing stone was gone. It felt like his cell phone had disappeared from his pocket, too.
"Okay, so, let's have it out." Nadine Ferguson was the first to break the silence, and when she did she fixed her gaze straight and accusingly at Athena. "What did you do?"
"Wh- Me!? What makes you think I know anything about this!?" Athena shot back. Athena and Nadine had been archnemeses for quite some time beforehand, and it showed, in her tone.
"Oh, golly gee wilkers, I dunno, why would I think the school's unholiest self-proclaimed witch would be mixed up in some supernatural troubles, hmm?" Nadine asked in a tone dripping condescension. "Silly me, those things couldn't possibly be related at all, could they?"
Sarah's interjection was sudden and forceful. "Wait, hang on, did one of you freaks mess up a ritual to Satan or something!?" She demanded of Zoe and Athena. "Is that why we're here?"
"Not freaks, not Satanists, and not a clue," Zoe rushed to Athena's defense, though she didn't seem all too certain herself that Athena might not know.
"And also, you all know magic is a purely fictional invention, correct?" Jay Duncan had entered the chat.
"Oh, magic's a real thing, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Athena that messed it up." Karyn had spoken up, and threw an indignant look at Jon while doing so.
Jon himself had no immediate reply other than to go a bit red in the face; instead, it was Emily Morris that jumped at control of the conversation. "Hey, hey, woah woah woah, everyone, let's not descend into madness right away, please!?" She projected her voice out with much greater and more authoritative volume than any of the others so far. "We aren't going to solve anything just bickering about it!"
Most everyone else quieted down at that, but not Sarah, who was not to be outdone. "Bullshit, we aren't! If any of you losers actually know anything about this, or worse, are actually part of this little prank, then I wanna know! We oughtta know!"
"You certainly have a way of asking nicely." Athena rolled her eyes.
"She's got a point, though, do any of us have something to share with the group?" Karyn asked, looking pointedly at Jon.
"Yeah..." Jon began slowly, meeting the eyes of nobody but the table space in front of him. "I'll admit, this is kinda my fault."
That was enough to totally silence the chatter around the table, aside from a few comments of "Wait really?" or "What did you do?"
"You aren't going to believe it."
"Try me," came Athena's reply. The rest stayed quiet and expectant.
Jon took a very long, very deep breath. "Okay..." he began, buying himself a bit more time to think. "My grandfather... he passed away, over spring break, right? And when he died, he left me a gift -- Karyn knows this -- a little stone, that he said would grant wishes if you held it in your hand as you uttered them. Believe it or not, it works, actually. So I took it, I made a few wishes to test it, and made a few more just to be careful and safe, and then, I wished my life would be more like a video game protagonists'. I'm pretty sure the game it chose was Among Us, and so it gathered the 10 of us here for a round. Well, at least 9 of us; one of us might not be who they say they are."
It was only a brief silence that followed as the group took it in. Many of those gathered looked like they had plenty they wanted to say and ask, but the first person to break the silence was Biff Meadows. "Welp, nice fairytales. I'm going home," he said, getting up and leaving the table.
A number of them, Jon included, were aghast. "Did you not hear what I just said!? We shouldn't be going off alone right now, it's dangerous!"
Biff just waved them off and kept walking. "I'm not dealing with any more of this bullshit tonight. Follow me if you want, maybe you'd waste less of your time."
"Y'know, that's not actually a bad idea, I just might take you up on that," Nadine concurred, getting up and following behind Biff. Slowly, hesitantly, the shy-to-muteness Kyla Leeson got up and followed the exit party as well, wearing that sort of "anywhere but here" look of fright she habitually wore when in a large group of people.
Jon, appalled, was trying to find the words that would keep them there, when Jay spoke up in their defense. "Look, sir, I understand you're just trying to help out, solve the present predicament and whatnot, but you must understand, your testimony, it's difficult to find it credible, at least as it pertains to the existence and workings of magic. Surely we can find a more realistically grounded explanation for what's happened here?"
"Oh, I can back him up on the stone thing!" Athena interjected. She seemed somehow excited, in spite of everything. "I knew I sensed a corruptive magical influence at school this morning! I knew it! Didn't I tell you this morning, Zoe, something was different in the aether today!?"
"You said something along those lines, yeah," Zoe replied distractedly. "I haven't even looked at what Grandpa left me yet..." she muttered, half to herself.
"Like Jon said, I've seen the stone too," Karyn added. "He showed it to me this morning. It granted a few wishes I made myself, as a matter of fact."
"Really? What'd you wish for?" Sarah asked.
"None of your business!" Karyn snapped harshly at her. Jon could see the little bit of embarrassment flush to her cheeks despite herself. "Besides, shouldn't you be indignantly marching off with Biff, anyway?"
"I told you before, dumbass, if any of you actually know anything, I wanna know it too! Biff can handle himself, and so can I," Sarah spat back. "And now that you say that, I'm really wanting to know exactly what it was you wished for, this morning!"
"We were just testing it!" Jon jumped to Karyn's rescue. "We changed the colors of a few sticks, I turned some computers off and on with it, and so on. It's nothing important, really, at least not the stuff I did with Karyn."
Sarah plainly wasn't buying it. "And the stuff you didn't do with Karyn?" She pressed.
"Uh, let's see..." Jon thought back. "I made a wish that I'd need to verbally confirm wishes before they go into effect, so we couldn't accidentally wish for something stupid, right?"
"Only intentionally stupid wishes, then," Sarah replied snidely.
Jon ignored her. "I also wished the stone couldn't affect my mind or Karyn's memories if I didn't permit it, and uh... I wished that the video game wish I was going to make would have minimal effect on the world around me, right? Oh, and I wished that I'd be able to wish myself back in time to when I was making those wishes, and always have a feasible way to cancel a wish even if I didn't have the stone!"
Everyone who'd stayed had been paying attention with some interest, but all their ears collectively perked up at the last sentence. "So why don't you use that, and get us all out of here?" Emily asked.
Jon opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it. Why don't I seem to have a way back? Jon thought. "Lemme try something," Jon said. "I wish I would return to that moment in that reality and in that body." There was a silent moment wherein nothing happened. "That's a wish," he tried. There was still an awful lot of nothing happening as everyone waited for something to be happening.
"This is foolishness," Jay broke the silence with after a moment, getting up from the cafeteria table. "Best of luck to you and your efforts, but I'll join the others in looking for a more tangible solution to our problems."
"Yeah, and you know what, I've changed my mind. You idiots aren't any help at all here," Sarah commented, standing to follow Jay out of the cafeteria. This time, there was no attempt to stop them as they left.
"I'm sorry guys, but a way should be there somewhere!" Jon stammered to explain himself. "The stone glowed; that wish was granted!"
"You wouldn't happen to have specified exactly what the way to cancel your wish was, did you, Jon?" Emily asked hopefully, trying not to sound condemning.
"No, I didn't. I purposefully left the video game wish thing vague, actually. I was curious to see exactly what it'd do."
"Well, bro, it looks like it plopped the 10 of us in an abandoned school and turned one of us into an impostor. Good going," Zoe said, with none of Emily's restraint to spread the sarcasm. "Also, just wanna confirm, we all had that 1 Impostor among us vision, right?" she added, to general nodding.
"I think I might have an idea of what's going on, here," Athena said at last. She had an odd look on her face; eyes unfocussed and blank, not really looking anywhere or at anyone, and her posture was so relaxed Jon wouldn't have wondered if she slumped out of her seat and collapsed. "I sense magic at play. I have ever since I was brought to this school," she explained from trance. "It's some spell... some curse, that can be broken. And I strongly suspect more latent magics will kick in, when it is."
"Okaaayyy..." Jon replied, cautiously. Part of him was genuinely creeped out, seeing Athena like that, but by the look on Zoe's face, it apparently wasn't an irregular occurrence for her. "What spell? And how do we break it?"
"That would normally be difficult to discern, but I have a guess. You might know it, too: We simply win the game."
"What game?" Jon asked, before swiftly realizing "Among Us?"
Slowly, mechanically, Athena's head bobbed in what was probably supposed to be a nod. "To break the spell and undo your wish, we find the Impostor, and we kill them."
The sentence hang heavily in the air for a long minute afterwards.
