"I'm bored," Sana 162 muttered into her arms. She was sitting on the floor, head resting on forearms crossed over her knees. The pale green of her pyjamas matched the ribbons that still graced the end of her pigtails.
"So sleep," Dren 327 sighed in a long-suffering voice from her position lying on the bed. Her pyjamas were more on the sensible side, being thick cotton, with none of the frills or lace of Sana's.
"I can't sleep. It's like 7 o'clock. Who sleeps at 7 o'clock?"
"Well it's midnight someplace," Elspet 048 pointed out reasonably. She was only half-listening to the conversation, somewhat preoccupied by combing out her impossibly tangled curly red hair. "Maybe you're just in the wrong place."
"Aren't we supposed to, I dunno, play games or something?" Ilat 388 asked. "I'm sure that's right." Ilat was pacing. She was the newest in the group. The others exchanged glances; if anyone in the room was going to make a dumb mistake and get them all in trouble, it would be Ilat.
"Fine," Dren sighed. "What game should we play?"
"Ooh! Ooh! My host knows one!" Cali 226 insisted. "A sleepover game. It's called spin the bottle." She bit her lip and grinned, like she'd just won some kind of competition. The other girls' eyes all unfocused as they consulted their own hosts' memories.
"Ew, no." Dren screwed up her nose. "You have to kiss boys in that game."
"We don't even have any boys," Elspet noted. "We could get Dren's dad."
"Dads aren't boys," Dren protested.
"Yes, they are."
"They're men. Men are different. But still gross."
"Okay, okay," Cali said, "but what if we play the game different? Without boys."
"Uh, then who do we kiss?" Dren said slowly, as if Cali was being stupid.
"We don't kiss noone. Instead... we switch hosts!"
Sana sat up and stared at her, wide-eyed. "That is the best game ever!"
"Is that... is that a good idea?" Ilat asked uncertainly.
"It's the best idea," Sana insisted.
"Okay," Ilat said. "Where do we get a bottle?"
"It's a dumb idea," Dren told the ceiling. "It sounds stupid. I'm not gonna play."
"Aw," Cali said, "you have to."
"No I don't."
"Sounds like someone's chicken," Sana said slyly.
"Don't be such a baby, Sana."
"I'm not being a baby, I'm being human. And when humans are cowards, other humans call 'em chickens." She stuck out her elbows and flapped them up and down in an imitation of wings. "Chicken! Bwaaark! Bwaaaaark!"
"Okay, okay!" Dren sat up and raised both hands in mock surrender. "I'll play if Verane plays."
"Well, of course Verane is gonna play. It's no fun without even numbers." Sana, along with the other girls, all looked enquiringly to the sixth occupant of the room.
Verane was the only one in the group to have had more than one human host, and her tendency to lord her experience over the others hadn't exactly made her popular. She slowly lowered her book enough to peer at the expectant group over it. "Our mission here isn't to play stupid kid games," she said evenly. "It's to maintain cover by having a sleepover. So long as they – " she jerked one thumb towards the door – "occasionally hear giggling, our mission is accomplished." She lifted the book once more and continued to read.
The other five exchanged glances. Then, as one, they flapped their elbows and started making squawking noises.
It took nearly two minutes for Verane to crack.
"Fine!" She slammed the book against the floor. "If it will get you lot off my back for the rest of the night, I'll play your dumb game! Even though it's stupid and unsafe."
Sana stuck her tongue out, but didn't argue as she began searching for something that could be used as a bottle.
A few minutes later, the six girls sat in a circle around an old Barbie doll, slightly bent at the waist and balancing on her butt on the carpet.
"So," Ilat said, "who spins first?"
"Why don't we spin to decide who spins first?" Sana asked.
"Okay," Ilat said, "so who spins that?"
A smile twitched at the corner of Verane's mouth. "We could spin to decide – "
"This has the potential to become recursive," Elspet interrupted. "I propose that Dren spins to decide who spins first, because she is the host."
Nobody had a counter-argument to that, so Dren leaned forward and spun the Barbie. It slipped across the floor a bit, but spun, and eventually stopped, head pointing directly at Sana. Elspet frowned. "We need a way to secure it to the floor. The slide slightly biases the – "
"Nobody cares!" Sana grabbed the Barbie doll and twisted it viciously, sending it into another spin. It stopped with the head pointing at Ilat.
"Woo! Host sisters!" Sana pointed at Ilat, as if the target of her announcement was somehow unclear. "You ready?"
"Um, sure, I guess?"
"Dren, do you have anything to tie the hosts up with?" Verane asked. "And we'll need to gag them, obviously."
"Uhm... clothes?"
Verane rolled her eyes and headed for the wardrobe.
Once they'd acquired enough random clothes, the girls set to work tying up Sana and Ilat's hosts. "Is this tight enough?" Cali asked as she secured a pair of jeans around Sana's wrists.
Sana strained and wriggled against the knot, to no avail. "Yeah, that'll do." She shot Cali a glare. "If you drop me on the dirty carpet I'm gonna be so mad at you."
"I'm not gonna drop you, would you relax?" Cali set to work tying a scarf over her mouth. "Okay, we're done here." She traded a look with Verane and Elspet, who were seeing to Ilat's bonds. Elspet gave her a thumb's up.
They were right to check the bonds. Sana's host began struggling and screaming almost as soon as Sana started crawling out of her ear. Instantly, Verane and Dren jumped on top of her, pinning her down. Dren pressed her hands against the girl's face to block the sound making its way through the gag. Cali picked up Sana and carried her quickly out of harm's way.
Ilat's host, by contrast, merely glared sullenly at Elspet as she carried Ilat away. She made a cursory attempt to pull her head away when Cali crouched next to her with Sana, but Cali grabbed her ear to hold her still.
"You know," Elspet remarked as they untied the girls, "this puts both Ilat and Sana's human host tallies at two." She quirked an eyebrow at Verane. "Guess you don't have the record any more."
Verane rolled her eyes. "I was a banker. Having two different little girls does not count. You guys don't even have the experience to see that you all act like idiots."
"Well?" Cali asked. "How is it?"
Ilat scrambled to her feet and swayed. "Whoah. You feel a lot taller than you look, Sana."
Sana stood also, rubbing her wrists where the buttons on a shirt had scratched them. She glared at Ilat. "You feel a lot meaner than you sound, Ilat."
"What?"
"You said some things. Some mean things about me. To your host."
"I... I never!"
"You said the reason I got a human host first is because my poolmate is the director!" she hissed. "You think you deserve a host more than me! You think I'm bad at being human!"
"I never said you were bad at being human! I was just surprised that you got picked first!"
"Same thing!"
"No, it isn't! Look, they always said that they wanted calm, reasonable people for humans, and you're..."
"I'm what? Not reasonable? Dumb?"
"No. Impulsive."
"Well, you're dumb." Sana strode over to the window, forced it open, and ducked out. The others watched her dash across the lawn, not daring to call out after her in case the adults in the house heard.
"See?" Dren said. "Dumbest. Game. Ever."
"Sana..." Ilat moaned.
"Don't worry," Verane said, "she'll be back."
Ilat looked at her hopefully. "You think?"
"Of course." Verane picked up her book. "You've still got her host."
It was about midnight when Ilat was shaken awake. She stared dumbly at her own face for several seconds before remembering what had happened.
"Sana!" She sat up. "Are you ok?"
"Yeah. I didn't go far." She sighed. "Look, I... I'm sorry, ok?"
"And I'm sorry I said those things. You were right to be mad. Are... are you still mad?"
"No. I was, but, well, everyone says dumb things sometimes." She shrugged. "And then I looked at some more memories, and saw some more things that you thought about me, and..." she blushed. "And they didn't make me mad at all. I guess I'm saying, well, I still wanna be friends."
"Me too! We are still friends, right?"
"After something like this, we can only be best friends!" Sana held up one fist, little finger extended. "Super secret pinky sisters?"
Ilat linked her little finger with Sana's. "Super secret pinky sisters. You wanna wake the others so we can swap back?"
Sana glanced around at the sleeping forms of their friends. "Nah. Let them sleep. I can stand being in this brain for a few more hours." She snuggled against Ilat, who put an arm around her shoulders. "Y'know, if I have to."