A/N: I've had to bump this story up to T because of some heavy swearing in this chapter. The story just sort of headed that way, and attempts to make the swearing milder just made things awkward. So there. This is now rated T. I wish I could have kept it K+, but there you go. - GR

I was asleep, coiled around the cortical folds of Jennifer Carson's brain when I felt something soft hit my face. (Well, actually, it was Jen's face that got hit since I had no face to speak of and it was physically impossible for any human or other being to hit me while I was inside Jen's head, but you know what I'm talking about.) "What the hell!?" Jen's voice thundered throughout her mind as I was roused from my own slumber by the sudden wave of activity in her brain.

"Wake up, Jennifer," Sonia Torres called out as she caught the pillow that she had thrown at Jen to wake her up. Jen had thrown the pillow back to Sonny in response to being woken up so rudely. "Rise and shine, baby! We've got lots of work to do?"

"What the hell is this about, Torres?" Jen asked groggily as she slowly raised herself up to a sitting position on her bed and rubbed away the grime at the corners of her eyes. "Is it six PM already? Please tell me it's not six PM already. I have to get to Neuro-Anatomy on time so I don't have to play catch-up with the Old Man again, and then I have to pull that all-nighter for Statistics for the long quiz tomorrow."

"Don't worry about the time just yet, Carson," Sonny replied. "You've still enough time left to get to that. Look at me! I'm taking time off from studying for Latin American Literature for this!"

"Well, good for you," Jen muttered as she searched for the nearest pair of either shorts or jeans and a bra. As she took off her pajama shorts and put on a pair of jean shorts that cut off at the thighs, she happened to notice what Sonny was holding. "What's the soccer ball and the paper tape for?" Jen asked.

"You'll find out once you finish getting dressed and follow me out of here," Sonny replied.

"Not everyone gets to wake up dolled up and ready to go like you, Sonia," Jen said under her breath as she finished fastening her bra. Jen followed Sonny out of their dorm room before walking out of the dorm itself. The dorm was a few miles away from both the town of South Bend and Notre Dame itself, but both places were still within walking distance. Except Sonny was headed for neither the town nor the university. Instead, she headed for the line of trees that had been planted on the other side of the road from the dormitory itself. Jen and I watched as Sonny walked between the trees with some sort of measured pace until she finally came across two trees which were, for her, sufficiently separated from each other. And then she unfurled the tape and brought it across the gap between the trees at just above her head.

"Sonia Maria Allison Torres," Jennifer said, "what in the world are you doing?"

"I'm helping you out, sis," Sonny replied. "I'm helping you get your love for soccer back."

"I'm sorry, Sonny, but there must be something wrong here," Jen said, holding up her hand. "Since when have I not loved soccer?"

"Uh, since Coach Karl asked you to leave Yemra behind because he didn't want her causing issues with FIFA or something?" Sonny replied once she had finished fixing the tape between the trees.

"Is that what this is?" Jen asked. "Are you making me train while Yemra's in my head? Is that what this is?"

"Hey, I'm just testing out a theory here," Sonny said quietly, raising her arms to her chest in seeming surrender.

"Is it really your theory or did Yemra talk you into this?" Jen asked. "Have the two of you been talking about me behind my back?"

"Well, I… Wait, what… Okay, what does that even mean?" Sonny stammered before she finally managed to say what she wanted to say. "How am I supposed to talk about you to Yemra behind your back? She's wrapped around your brain like frigging Cling-Wrap! How can you not know that Yemra and I have been talking about you? How is that even possible?"

Um, well, I said as Jen turned her attention to me, I may have talked to Sonny at least once or twice while you were napping.

((You were taking control of my body without my permission?)) Jen asked me. ((You've been taking control of me while I was asleep?))

Hey, you may not want to talk to anyone about what you've been going through, but I do! You need help, Jen. Don't deny it.

((I'm not denying anything! I'm just saying that I don't need any help because there's nothing in me to help with! Okay, you and I seriously need to talk about what you've been doing with my body while I've been asleep!))

"Jen! Jennifer!" Sonny called out. "If you could just stop arguing with your brain slug for a sec, we'll be done with this in no time and you can get back to your power nap for your Neurobiology or whatever it is you study for with all the facial and spinal nerves and shit, and I can get back to reading and reviewing my reaction paper for The House of the Spirits." Sonny then dropped the soccer ball to the ground and rolled it towards Jen's feet.

"What the heck am I supposed to do with this?" Jen asked.

"Okay, just indulge me in this for a moment, Jen," Sonny replied. "Imagine we're at the game. For whatever reason, you're one on one against me. Try and score a goal."

"Okay, Sonia, what is this?" Jen repeated.

"Like I said, I'm testing out a theory. Just imagine that the trees are the goalposts and the tape is the crossbar. You're one on one, and I'm standing still because I know I'm no Manuel Neuer or Patty the Fatty. Now come at me, bro. Give me your best shot."

"Patty the Fatty?" Jen asked even as she rolled the ball under her right foot. "That's awfully politically incorrect of you, Sonia. Since when did you become a fat shamer?"

"Patty says she doesn't mind getting called Fatty," Sonny replied. "And not just because I've got a bit of a FUPA and a thicc booty myself." Sonny then seemed to realize what was happening, and she said, "All right, Jen, enough stalling! If you want to have enough time to take a shower and change into some less revealing clothes then just take a shot at me!"

"All right, fine!" Jen shouted, and she slotted the ball towards the tree to the right. Sonny didn't make any move to block the ball; she just stood rooted at the spot and watched the ball roll past her. "Goal!" Sonny said, raising her hands above her head (which was actually the signal for a touchdown in American football, a completely different sport from soccer). As she ran underneath the tape to retrieve the ball, she asked, "So how did that make you feel, Jen?"

"Why are you asking me that for?" Jen asked.

"Just answer the question! Or else I'll make Yemra answer it for you!"

"You wouldn't!" Jen said hotly. ((And the same to you, Yemra Six-Four-Zero!)) she mind-shouted at me.

It was just one question, Jen, I said. It wouldn't hurt you to answer it, would you?

Jen thought about it, and she sighed, both physically and mentally. ((Yeah, I guess it won't,)) she admitted. "Yeah, I guess I could say I liked it," she told Sonny. "Not that you made it really hard for me back then."

"All right, now that's more like it," Sonny said. "But just how much, how exactly did you like it, Jen? Did you just like it in a meh way or did you like it in an 'Oh, yeah!' way?"

"What's that supposed to mean? What's that supposed to mean, Sonia?"

"Oh, you know exactly what I mean, Jennifer."

"What do you want me to say? That I liked it when I scored against you? Sure, suppose that I say that," Jen said, spreading her arms wide. "That doesn't prove a single thing. All that proves is that you're trying to get me riled up all over nothing."

"Over nothing, huh? All right, let's do this again," Sonny said. "Except this time, Yems, you gotta get out of Jen's head."

"Wait, what!?" Jen exclaimed even as Sonny was already retrieving the soccer ball. "Why does Yemra have to get out of my head? What has that got to do with anything? And where am I supposed to put Yems? I can't hold her in my hand or stuff her into my pocket; she might get crushed!"

Why, that's awfully thoughtful of you, Jen, I said.

Sonny returned with the ball and tossed a small bottle of water to Jen. "All right, Yems, time to go," she said.

Goodbye, girls, I said as I disengaged from my connections to Jen's brain. ((Wait, Yems! What are you—)) The rest of Jen's sentence was cut off by me severing my links to her speech and language centers, and once I started to crawl out of her ear canal I had given Jen no choice but to catch me and put me in the water while she and Sonny continued to do the little test that Sonny and I had indeed talked about while Jen was sleeping. It wasn't easy, taking control of Jen's body as an observer while she was asleep (it was oftentimes better for a Yeerk to be the one in control if they wanted to use their host's body while the host's consciousness was asleep) but I was nevertheless able to do it. It was just a matter of timing my attempt at taking over with certain brainwave patterns.

I could feel the vibrations of Jen and Sonny's further conversations through the plastic of the bottle itself and the water inside, but of course I couldn't distinguish the words from the vibrations as I didn't have the necessary organs to translate and process the vibrations into auditory input that I could understand. I felt the bottle moving around as Sonny made Jen try to score another goal against her between their makeshift goalposts, and then after that came a sort of rhythmic vibrations around me that I took to be Jen walking back to the dorm. Something must have happened between Jen and Sonny to piss Jen off, so much so that she couldn't even be bothered to put me back in her head for the walk back to the dorm.

My bottle of water then went still for what was to me a long and unknown amount of time before it was finally lifted up and the contents emptied into a cup, and I felt fingers plucking me out of the water and lifting me towards a small hole, an earhole according to my sonar. I squeezed into the ear canal, squirted out my painkillers, traveled through the eardrum and inner ear and down the nerve before I finally reached the brain. When I got there and made my connections, I saw that Jen was standing in front of the bathroom sink, looking grimly at the mirror. Once I gave back control of her body, Jen put on her earrings and tied up her hair into a loose bun. She then went out of the bathroom and her dorm room itself, pausing only to say, "Thanks for nothing, Torres," before she continued on her walk back to the university for her Neuro-Anatomy class.

All right, Jen, what is going on in here? I asked, and I delved into her most recent memories. I went past the actual most recent memories, the ones she had formed right before this point in time, and I also passed by memories of Jen studying the twelve cranial nerves like the facial nerve, the glossopharyngeal nerve, the optical and olfactory nerves, and the auditory nerve, down which I had just gone to reach Jen's brain. And then I finally reached the memory I was looking for, the one that Jen made at the moment that I had left her brain.

"All right, so Yems is now gone," Jen said as she dropped me into the bottle. "What now?"

"Try to score against me again," Sonny replied. "Come on, just try to thunder one in if you want."

"Oh, you want me to thunder one in?" Jen muttered as she began dribbling the ball with her feet. This particular memory was charged with frustration and even quite a bit of anger, and even before it happened, I could already see what Jen was about to do. "You asked for this, Sonia!" Jen shouted, and she kicked the ball as hard as she could straight at Sonny, who of course immediately held up her hands in front of her face to protect it from the ball.

"Okay, now why would you do that for!?" Sonny demanded to know once she had finally gotten over the shock. "Why the hell would you kick the ball straight at me!?"

"Oh, don't act so innocent around me now," Jen scoffed. "You know exactly why I just tried to take your head off!"

"You know what? This is almost exactly what happened when I tried to call you out on your cutting classes, Carson," Sonny said, walking up to Jen and pointing an accusing finger at her. "I told you that you were cutting classes not because you were bored at school but because you liked the thrill of breaking the rules, your parents' rules, but did you listen? No! You wouldn't hear of it! You didn't want to hear it from me because you were so busy denying the truth, even to yourself! And now you're doing the same thing right now! You know that not having Yemra in your head during the games is affecting your play, but you're denying that because… reasons, I suppose! No, no, I've got it! You're denying it because you're hoping that some scout from the USSF is gonna notice you and call you up to the national team, even though we both know that the chances of that happening is the same as the Browns winning the Super Bowl!"

"Sonny, will you please just stop?" Jen shouted. "This is so not like the time you called me out on cutting my classes! This is a way different thing! I'm not breaking rules this time around; I'm actually following them!"

"That is exactly the same thing that you told me when I called you out, Jennifer! All right, you know what? Enough of this bullshit! And enough with you! If you don't want me to help you out then turn around, walk away, and don't look back!"

"Yeah, I might just do that!" Jen shouted, and that was exactly what she did, walk away from Sonny and the trees and the tape. "And fuck you too, you bitch! Mrenig laklat!" she added as she clenched her left fist and raised her middle finger at Sonny.

"Okay, I may not understand what you just said, but I know that you just cussed me!" Sonny shouted to Jen's back. "And you do not want to get into a cussing contest with me! Take your pick, bitch: you want me to curse you in Spanish or Polish? Cause I can do both, pendeja! Chinga tu madre, puta! Spierdalaj ty glupia pizda, kurwa!"

"Oh, just shut the fuck up!" Jen yelled, although by this time her anger and frustration were subsiding and making way for regret and second-guessing. Maybe I shouldn't have gone off on Sonny like that, she thought to herself. Maybe Sonny does have a point. But it's too late now. I'm not going to go back there and tell her that she was right and I was wrong. And I am definitely going to have to talk to Yemra about this and her taking control of me while I'm asleep. Man, I trusted that worm! I let her live in my head and this is how she repays me? Argh! This isn't fair! None of this freaking is! Fuck everyone and everything!

Okay, Jen, now you're just being unfair, I said once I was done looking at her memories. If you want to say something, then say something!

((Bitch, please! I am not interested in talking about anything to anyone right now, including you! Especially you! So shut up and let me just get through this day without killing somebody!)) And so I did, and I kept quiet for the rest of Jen's journey to her classroom, and I didn't say anything except a quick goodbye when I had to get out of her head for her Neuro-Anatomy exam.

Two hours later, I was back in Jen's head, and Jen was back in her dorm room, changing into her nightclothes and getting ready to sleep. Jen had originally planned to study for Statistics that night but instead, she decided that she would rather sleep because, in her words, she had had enough of all the drama that had happened that afternoon, and she was not in the mood to stay up late after that. While Jen had been changing, I noticed that Sonny Torres was also asleep, but her head was lying at the foot of her bed, surrounded by her books and papers, and her feet were the ones lying on her pillow. Should we wake her up? I asked Jen as she got ready for bed. I think we should wake her up. She said she needs to study for Latin American Literature, so maybe we should wake her up.

((Nah, let her sleep,)) Jen replied. ((Let her deal with her own shit herself. As for you, Yemra Six-Four-Zero of the Zek Danet Pool, don't think that just because I'm talking to you right now that I've forgiven you. I haven't. We are so gonna have a very long talk about this. It may not be like one of Mom's very long talks, but don't expect that you're going to get away lightly with this!))

And what about you and your Statistics quiz? I thought you were going to study for that tonight as well.

((I'm tired as fuck, Yemra,)) Jen replied. ((I try to study right now and in my current state of mind and I will absorb and learn literally nothing. Besides, Statistics isn't until tomorrow afternoon. I can squeeze in some studying tomorrow morning. Now, if you have nothing more to say to me, good night.)) With that said, Jen closed her eyes, and I was now stuck inside a body that was preparing to shut down and rest in preparation for the next day.

But I wasn't done with the day just yet. I waited until Jen had finally lapsed into her sleep, and then I waited some more for the moment before she entered REM sleep before I tried to take control of her body. All Yeerks could do it, of course, take control of their host's body while said host was sleeping, but it was also easier to do if it was the Yeerk who was in control and not the host. In my case, as I was the observer and not the one in command, I had to wait for the right moment to take control, which was the point just before the brain went from non-REM sleep to REM sleep. It was so easy to go too early or too late and miss that sweet spot; too early and you don't take control at all, and too late and you either end up waking the host or tuning in to their dreams, or sometimes nightmares. It took me many hours of practice to find the sweet spot just before Jen's transition to REM sleep, but find it I did, although by my own admission I had no real use for this skill, at least until now.

I waited for the sweet spot to come, and then once I sensed it, I extended my control all over Jen's body, and just like that I was now in control of Jennifer Carson. Her consciousness was still sound asleep, and I made sure that she would remain that way inside her own mind while I opened her eyes and moved her body and sat it up. I then stood up and walked over to Sonny's bed, and I gently shook her awake. "Sonny, Sonny, wake up," I said quietly, even though we were the only ones in the room at the moment.

"Clara and Ferula are so lowkey gay for each other," Sonny said as she woke up. She rolled around on her bed a little and stretched her body, and then she noticed who exactly had woken her up and she snorted derisively. "Oh, it's you," she muttered. "What do you want now?"

"Sonny, it's Yemra, not Jen," I said.

"Oh. Why didn't you say so?" Sonny asked as she sat up on her bed. "Well, that didn't go well, did it?"

"Yes, indeed," I replied. "Even I was not expecting Jen to go off on you like that. That was not the reaction that I expected that we would get from her."

"Yeah, she really went off on the both of us, didn't she?" Sonny muttered. "Well, I can't say I blame her. If I had a brain slug of my own and she was taking over my body while I was sleeping to talk about things and arrange things behind my back, I'd be pissed too. And it looks like you're about to dig yourself into a bigger hole if she ever wakes up and sees us talking like this again."

"Don't worry, Sonia, I have made sure that Jen will not awake during our conversation," I assured her. "Anyway, have there been any replies to your inquiries?" I asked.

"Yeah, to put it simply, no," Sonny replied. "I've been checking my email daily, hourly if I have the chance. But still nothing. It's like none of them want to finally set the record straight and give everyone a clear definition of whether a Yeerk counts as an extra player or not. You would think that this is exactly the kind of thing that they would want to sink their teeth into, but no, they're all not having any of it. It's just so frustrating!"

"I mean, you humans do have an expression for this, if I remember correctly," I said. "What was it again? 'Rome wasn't built in a day'?"

"I know, I know," Sonny admitted. "It's just that… maybe I just expected too much of something. Or maybe this is something that's never gonna be solved in our lifetimes. I guess I was just disappointed by the response, or lack of it, in fact."

"I had always thought that you humans were used to being disappointed by your own kind," I mused.

"I know," Sonny admitted. "But every time humanity comes together in support of each other for whatever reason, my faith in us gets restored, you know?" Sonny sighed, and then she looked around the room a little bit before she turned back to me. "So, are you going to help Jen with her Statistics quiz now?" she asked.

"I could, but I'm the only one who's going to remember and retain the information," I replied. "And that's not going to be of any use if I'm not inside Jen's head during the quiz anyway. How about you? What have you learned about… what you have been reading so far?"

"Yeah, nothing much, actually," Sonny admitted with a smile. "All I've learned so far is that the CIA helped overthrow Chile's democratically elected president and replaced him with a dictator so that Chile wouldn't become Communist. And it happened on September 11 as well, 1973 to be exact, so when you ask a Chilean about 9/11, this is what they're going to remember and not the Twin Towers attack. Man, it really does suck to be American sometimes, doesn't it?"

"Yes, maybe, but it's not like we can go back in time and change history, can we?" I said with a smile. That smile then turned into a yawn, and I could feel the first fingers of drowsiness creeping into my own mind. "That's a nice thought for me to keep before I go to sleep," I said. "Good night, Sonny. I hope that you and Jen can fix things between the two of you, just because of me."

"Yeah, I hope that too," Sonny muttered, and then I returned to Jen's bed, laid down, closed her eyes, and then I loosened my control over her before I went to sleep myself.