"Guys," Julia groaned, her arms beginning to wobble, "Can you hurry up? I've been holding this bridge for nearly ten minutes now!"
"Giving up so easily?" Tala teased, mouth by her ear, one arm looped over her for a red dot beside her right hand. She glared at him.
"Don't you even start, Ivanov, you can barely touch your toes!" she hissed.
"If you're quite finished," Kai drawled. The two guilty parties looked up to see that the whole group was watching them. Julia flushed and Tala smirked.
"Tala; left hand red." The two-toned blunette sighed, looking for all the world as if he were bored out of his mind, but a glint of pure malicious amusement was in his eyes as he watched his companions in their predicament. A distinctly evil air surrounded him as he clutched the small cardboard square to his chest, one finger poised over the spinner, ready to spell out the next victim's doom. "A different red, you idiot."
Tala paused, then his arm snaked around Julia's knee and his hand planted down on the spot next to her foot. He shot Kai a smirk of triumph as his ex-team mate, dubbed rulemaster, checked to make sure he was not touching the mat with anything but hands and feet.
Tala's head was by Mariah's elbow. Mariah had possibly the easiest position; legs spread evenly apart and feet securely on two parallel spots, knees bent slightly and leaning forwards in order to keep her behind out of the face of Ray, to whom she was constantly apologising. Ray was supporting himself in a press-up position and, to be honest, didn't really mind. Beneath Ray's stomach was Hilary's right foot, and between her knees was Tyson's right foot. Max was next to him, holding himself up with right hand and foot in order to keep from squashing Mariam, who was stretched out beneath him, hand resting cautiously on the spot beneath Tyson's bum.
"Hn. Julia, right foot-"
If any of the assembled party believed in fate, this was when they would have said it intervened, in the form of a perfectly innocent greeting and the not-so-innocent deliverer of the greeting.
"Hey guys! Oh, man, Twister!"
Mariah turned her head at the sound of the familiar voice; face lighting up as she saw its owner.
"Lee! Hey!" she grinned, and then her smile faltered; in order not to crane her neck to see her brother, she'd shifted her feet, but had forgotten just how far apart they were so they slipped out from underneath her. She let out a small squeak and landed on Ray's back.
"Ooh, sorry Ray!" she gasped, "Did I hurt you?"
"No, don't worry, Mariah, I'm fine. You're hardly heavy." Ray chuckled, used to carrying much heavier weights than the petite pinkette whilst doing press-ups for his daily training, but the trouble came when he unconsciously moved his hands to help distribute the weight more evenly and didn't account for the slippery plastic of the mat…
"Oof!"
He landed heavily on his stomach, Mariah still sat upon him. Hilary cried out in pain as her ankle twisted uncomfortably beneath the two and struggled to remove it. The force of her foot coming free was a little more than she had been expecting and she fell sideways, practically into Tyson's lap.
"Whoops, sorry Tyson!"
Tyson, understandably, was a little startled by this, and Hilary's extra weight and momentum, plus his surprise, sent them both, by now beet red, toppling into Max, whose arm buckled from the blow, and sent him crashing down onto Mariam, limbs akimbo.
"Yeouch! Watch it, Max!"
Max, more than a little flustered at his current position, tried to push himself up, to no avail, and accidentally kicked out. His foot caught Julia's wrist and took her arm out, de-stabilizing her crab position and sending both her and Tala, who had been leaning on her thighs, tumbling to the ground.
A few moments passed in silence.
Then Tala lifted his head, glancing around at a very embarrassed Mariah, who had somehow, in the chaos, accidentally ended up straddling Ray; at Tyson with Hilary entangled around him, who was making a gallant effort to find a position where his hands would support them both but would not make her slap him; at Mariam, who was swearing like a sailor at poor Max who had done exactly what Tyson was trying to avoid in order to stop himself from totally squashing the girl underneath him; and then down at Julia, who was lying on his legs and scowling (but blushing too, he noted smugly) as she was forced to cling to him, arms round his neck, in order to stop herself smacking her head on a nearby coffee table.
He could hear the hysterical laughing of Lee in the background and Kai's low snickering. A small, wry smile curled his lips.
"Well, this is cosy."