Survival Of The Fittest

((Charlie Girl continued from Public Service Announcement))

"One! Two! Don't make me spit on you!" Charlie Girl sang to herself as she made her way over to the pool. She had her headphones over her ears and her swimsuit on, as she was getting ready to do some practice laps. They were not practice laps born out of any desire for success. They were merely practice laps because the weather was beautiful out, and also because her scales had given her bad news that Monday. It turned out that a double-shot weekend of gigs, drugs and drinking was bad for the figure. Charlie Girl had asked the mirror what she had eaten, which had been a genuine question as past a certain point she could not remember what had been consumed. She had emerged from the underground sweatbox that was The Cell as a sweaty gremlin. A gremlin who had required sustenance, and they had searched out and found...uh...something.

Hence, the pool and the practice laps. Her body couldn't solely be built by Taco Bell, or at least she assumed as much. The swimsuit felt tight as she plodded over to the stands, too tight if she was being honest. All swimsuits were tight, to the degree that putting them on was sometimes a two-person job, especially if it was a new one that hadn't been worn in. But Charlie Girl's felt extra tight as the sweltering Las Vegas sun loomed overhead. As she took a drag on her vape, she gently prodded at her side with the index and middle finger of her free hand, testing how deep her fingers sunk into her flesh.

Not bad, but also not good.

Charlie Girl exhaled a watermelon-flavoured cloud of mist and awkwardly adjusted her swimsuit around her hips, although it was a distinctly pointless endeavour.

Another drag of the vape and more watermelon mist sent drifting off into the upper atmosphere.

With a huff, she kicked her trainers off her feet and onto the bleachers and removed her headphones, dumping them on the bleachers as well. Her towel joined the pile and after one final drag the vape was tucked into one of her shoes.

She began to lightly stretch her arms and legs out, although she was going to do some warmup laps before she got into the heavy stuff. Not fly though, never fly. She wasn't a masochist like that.

Swimming was exercise she enjoyed and a sport she took pleasure in participating in, but Charlie Girl was realistic and a future in swimming didn't line in the cards for her. She wasn't tall, fast or strong enough to be anything special, and she had luckily realised that. She saw how some of the others on the team pushed themselves. The stresses they were under at every meet to perform, the most heartbreaking were the ones on the cusp. The ones who had the potential to earn a scholarship but only if they performed at each and every meet. Each time they put up helping to decide if they were worth inviting to attend a college or being turned away. She had watched them push themselves in the pool and gym until the threw up only to narrowly miss out in their heat and collapse into a wreck.

That wasn't her. She joined them in the rituals, the pasta nights, the shaving, the assisting each other into too small swimsuits for the races, but she didn't live and die with the results. The results were meaningless to her. Sometimes she qualified out of her heat, sometimes she placed well, but if she didn't, well, nothing was lost.

Pulling on her swimcap with a grimace, Charlie Girl took great care to make sure all of her was tucked up and under it, then approached the edge of the pool and splashed water on her arms, legs and torso. Habits from competition died hard. Then she jumped in and began to dolphin-kick her way across the pool, staying underwater for as long as possible. She began by doing some freestyle laps, because, again, she wasn't a masochist.

There comes a time in every man's life where they let the intrusive thoughts win.

"CANNONBAAAAAAAAAALL!!"

((Koa Tagaloa continues from Getting Ready To Rumble))

For a brief moment, the passage of time slowed to a crawl. Koa soaring through the air like a majestic eagle, legs tucked against his belly, launching himself with surprising velocity towards the deep end of the pool. He landed with a splash of apocalyptic proportions, perfectly nailing the explosive dive.

A few seconds later, after the waves and ripples subsided, his head suddenly emerges with a gasp. Followed by a sheepish glance over at Charlie Girl, a guilty look in his eyes.

"S-sorry! Lost a bet..."

Inevitably, there was a very annoyed whistle from the lifeguard on duty, Koa gulping as he paddled over towards the nearest ladder. Welp, time to face the music...

Totally worth it, though.

((Koa Tagaloa continued elsewhere...))

Charlie Girl was in the middle of a turn when the calm waters of the pool turned into a tidal wave of chlorinated swash, smashing her directly in the face as a large body landed beside her. Overtaken by a cough fit as her body attempted to rid itself of an unwanted drink, Charlie Girl didn't realise at first that someone had decided to cannonball the pool like they were at a waterpark. That was until Koa's voice reached her. Charlie Girl coughed once and twice more then spat out the remaining water in her mouth.

"Hey! Fucking asshole!" She called out as Koa clambered out of the still swaying water, the pool having been temporarily granted a tide thanks to the landing of the larger boy. Her fingers turned white as she gripped the lip of the pool to watch him trudge towards the lifeguard. "You could have hit me you dumb—" A glare from the lifeguard cut Charlie Girl off, and she descended back into the water in her best impression of a sea witch, switching to Dutch as she continued to grumble complaints and profanities.

After a moment, she took off swimming again, staying underwater for as long as possible. She felt somewhat bad for her outburst because she didn't dislike Koa. But she had been in the zone, and he had both disturbed her and made her choke on a bunch of water. It didn't help that her mood hadn't been great to begin with. But she did think that doing a cannonball into the pool was stupid. They weren't five, and she had been trying to get a workout done in peace. Not end up in the middle of a tsunami because someone couldn't use their brain.

As she surfaced and turned on the opposite wall, Charlie Girl studiously ignored looking towards where the lifeguard had been. Not that she could have focused if she wanted to, as she was busy swimming and it didn't give much opportunity for taking in your surroundings, or hearing much, at least if you explicitly didn't want to do either of those things. So instead, she just swam, speeding up as she turned again, trying in vain to beat the water up like that would solve her problems and make her less angry.

Luckily, it did make her tired enough that being angry became too much effort.

Eventually, Charlie Girl got out of the pool and back into the warm Las Vegas sun to collect her belongings. As she trudged into the locker room, dripping water behind her, she pulled her swim cap off and tossed it onto a nearby bench, then dumped her stuff, her eyes continually glancing over at the scales that lurked in the corner of the room, as if they would creep closer if she didn't keep them in her vision. Finally, her worse impulses won out, and with a sigh, she dropped her towel from her hair and tentatively stepped over to the scales, stepping up onto them with no small amount of apprehension.

She watched as the numbers took their time calibrating before coming to their final judgment.

Higher than it had been the week before.

"Fucker." She sighed.

((Charlie Girl continued elsewhere...))