A little while later...
"You know, I'm curious, Needle," Microphone mused as she took another sip of her smoothie. Needle glanced away from where she had been watching the pool and turned to Microphone with an upturned eyebrow.
"Yeah?"
"Why do you have different accents for when you talk and when you sing? Like, you talk with a typical Yoyle accent, but then when you sing, you're like Suitcase with that, like, Northern Yoylish-ish touch, you know?"
"Well, so do you."
"Yeah, but I don't sing with the accent all the time. And like I said, I just do it because I like how the accent sounds. Why? Is that why you do it?"
"Eh...probably not," Needle admitted. She shrugged and went back to staring out the large floor-to-ceiling glass wall separating the snowy outside from the slick, tiled inside and the pool that some of her friends were splashing around in. "I probably got it from my parents, but I've been living in the Battle Forest District for so long by now that you'd never be able to tell."
Microphone let out a light scoff and grinned. "What do you mean, probably? You can't just pay attention to your parents speaking for a few seconds?"
"Well, you kinda have to know who they are first."
Needle turned to Microphone and furrowed her brow, giving her a mirthless smirk. Microphone's joking demeanor was instantly wiped off her face, and in its place rose a small frown of apologetic sympathy. "Oh...shoot, I'm sorry. I forgot," she mumbled softly.
Needle waved it off and shrugged, turning back to the pool. "Eh, it's fine. After all, it's no story you probably haven't heard before. The couple I'm with right now are...fine, anyway. Certainly one of the better ones."
Microphone nodded and quietly took another sip of her smoothie. They sat in silence for a few moments before she spoke up again. "So, if you—if you don't mind me asking..." she asked, "what's it like?"
"Hm?"
"Not growing up with a single set of parents?" Microphone set her smoothie on the table and leaned forward in her chair, her quiet shame gradually giving way to curiosity. "I feel like a lot of people like to joke about it and stuff, but...what's it actually like? Uh—only if you don't mind, of course. If it's too personal, I understand."
Needle sighed and shrugged, tilting her head from side to side. "Eh. It depends. I've known people who've gotten lucky and hit the jackpot every single time, and I've known people who unironically would be better off dead. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. Some genuinely want a child, and others just do it for the money. Actually—you know what, yeah, most of mine were just in it for the money. They weren't totally neglectful, though, so I got lucky there. Still, I definitely had to earn my keep."
She scoffed lightly and hung her head. "With how many jobs I've had over my middle and high school career, you'd think from my résumé that I'm just about ready to retire. Thankfully, my current couple don't seem to care too much about that, and B.F.D. High pays me enough to keep them satisfied."
"Seriously?" Mic asked. "That many?"
"Oh, yeah." Needle smirked and shook her head. "Cashier, janitor, paper girl, lifeguard, Kritz driver—you name the dead-end job, I've probably worked it for less than minimum wage. Or...what minimum wage in other cities would be since Yoyle City doesn't have one yet."
"I hear they're trying to get that changed," Microphone noted briefly. "You know, it makes me wonder why they didn't have one years ago. A minimum wage is supposed to be a living wage, right? So then why not make sure every member who contributes to society can live decently?"
"Well, there's this whole trade-off between higher wages and unemployment rates," Needle explained with an uneasy face as she made a sort of balancing motion with her hands. "Basically, the more you force companies to pay people, the fewer people they'll hire. People with jobs will make more money, but there will be fewer people with jobs in the first place. And with student-scientists like Golf Ball entering the workforce—I mean, you've seen Ro-Flo, right? Well, I mean, I guess you haven't since she's in the forest right now, but physically speaking, she's practically human already. Probably even stronger."
Microphone nodded. "I've seen pictures of her. Not gonna lie: for a robot? If I were into girls, I'd probably think she's lowkey pretty cute."
"She's two years old," Needle flatly stated.
At that moment, Basketball and 8-Ball both came walking past their table, and both of them were holding their phones out with 8-Ball's mother on speed dial for some reason. Needle nodded a greeting to both of them, and they nodded back.
Mic's eyes widened and she let out a light scoff before picking up her smoothie again. "Good thing I'm not into girls, then," she chuckled before taking a sip. "Anyway, you said you were a lifeguard? And a...Kritz driver?"
"Yup," Needle beamed. "Though not for that long. I only got my lifeguard certification last summer. And as for being a Kritz driver...well, technically, my mother at the time was the actual driver, but she let me drive while I was practicing for my driver's test. And she gave me a cut for driving clients in her name, so...yeah. It's all pretty under-the-table stuff, but that was, like, four moves ago, so I think it's fine for me to talk about by now."
"Wow," Mic admitted with an impressed nod. "I guess you do have the lifeguard body, huh?"
Needle raised her eyebrows and let out a smug chuckle. She whipped her head around to flip her ponytail behind her and leaned back in her chair, daintily crossing one leg over the other as she rested her hands on her thighs. "What do you think?" she asked with a cheeky grin. "Do I pull it off good enough?"
Microphone rolled her eyes with a laugh and shook her head as she took another sip of her smoothie. "Don't let it get to your head."
——————————
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pool...
"Hey, guys!" Blocky said, waving to the video camera that Pen was holding. "For a prank, force one of your closest friends' heads underwater long enough to fill their lungs with water and drown them while letting them flail around helplessly so they can use up more oxygen and pass out quicker!"
Two silent beats had passed before Pen slowly peeked out from behind the camera. "Uh...are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked.
Blocky nodded with a wide smile. "Yeah! Dude, it's going to be so awesome. I got Eraser and Snowball in on it, too!"
"You what?"
Just then, they heard Coiny scream and yell a few dozen feet away and saw Eraser and Snowball dragging him to the edge of the pool, holding down his body and arms. "Oh! That's our cue; come on!" Blocky urged Pen as he ran toward them. Pen hesitated, but he soon followed.
"HEY!" Coiny yelled while Eraser and Snowball held him down. "What's going on—ACK!"
Blocky knelt next to Coiny, grabbed a fistful of his hair with one hand and his neck in the other, and shoved his head underwater. "And now," he told the others, "all we have to do...is wait."
——————————
On the other side of the pool...
"Anyway, right? So I was on my way to—"
"Hey, look," Microphone smirked, interrupting Needle to point across the pool while the latter followed her gaze. "Someone's drowning, and they're filming it."
Needle squinted and skimmed the scene for a bit before noticing the large video camera on someone's shoulder and scoffed as she leaned back in her chair. "What an idiot."
"Yeah," Mic agreed, taking the last sip out of her smoothie and getting up out of her chair to find a trash can. "I'll be right back."
Needle nodded and watched her leave before turning back to the drowning. She watched it in bitter amusement for a while, wondering how some people could find enough shallowness in themselves to resort to creating harmful and damaging content for the sake of online clout when she noticed something alarming. Under the water, she saw that the drowning person's hair was an oddly specific, somewhat dark shade of burnt orange—the same color as their swim trunks.
"Wait...oh, hell, that's my idiot!" she yelled as she burst out of her chair and dashed to the pool's edge before diving into the water, swimming across to Coiny as fast as she could.
Just as Coiny finally stopped flailing around, the boys looked up and noticed the familiar silver streak shooting right for them through the water. Blocky nodded toward the door, and immediately, all four of them scrambled to their feet and rushed to get out of the natatorium as Coiny's body spilled into the pool.
A few dozen feet away, Pillow, Pie, and an unknown figure were sitting at a table with an unzipped duffel bag full of cash in the center, with Remote, Liy, and another unknown figure standing near the table, arms behind their backs. Pillow and the sitting figure seemed to be deeply engaged in some conversation while the standing figures watched intently.
Liy noticed Coiny doing the dead man's float out of the corner of her eye, and her eyes widened. The sitting figures all noticed her turn her head and looked for what she was looking at. When they saw it, the sitting figure tilted their head in confusion, but Pillow and Pie merely nodded their assent. After giving everyone one more glance, Liy turned and rushed toward the edge of the pool to help Needle.
Needle carried Coiny to the edge of the pool and tried to heave him up onto the tile. Liy managed to reach her in time and helped drag Coiny onto the tile, lying on his back. "What happened?" she asked, panting as she rested her hands on her knees.
"He drowned," Needle grunted as she started to climb out of the pool. When Liy grabbed her arms to help her out, she continued further, "Looked like an accident or something. I think some people tried to help him, but they ran off—probably to get some help or something since the regular lifeguard's getting busy with her boyfriend right now."
While Needle took some deep breaths to recover from her swim-sprint, Liy asked, "Crud. Okay, what do we do?"
Needle glanced at Liy and paused, catching her breath for one more moment before getting down on her knees by Coiny. "I'm CPR-certified," she told her. "I can probably sustain him; he's not breathing, but he's still got a pulse. Go get some help." Liy nodded in understanding and ran off.
Needle first confirmed that Coiny was not breathing but still had a pulse by watching his chest while placing her fingers near the center of his neck, checking for a carotid pulse. After five seconds, she tilted Coiny's head back and lifted his chin to open his airway to a past-neutral position. Then, she pinched his nose shut and took a deep breath. Drowning victims, she remembered, tended to need oxygen more than other typical victims who needed CPR, so she decided to start with rescue breaths.
Now, if this scenario were some poorly written fanfiction or something in that vein, Needle probably would have taken a moment to realize that she was alone with the boy of her dreams and that his life was in her hands. She probably would have realized that the only way to save him was through a one-of-a-kind action that she'd most likely never have the chance to do again. And she would probably be going through some moral and mental struggles concerning whether she should really do something like this or not, especially when Coiny already had a loving girlfriend and when she had a history of being jealous.
But, fortunately for Coiny, this was reality. And Needle, having been lifeguard-trained and CPR-certified, didn't have time for any of that; she knew that when it came to hypoxia, every single second was quite literally a matter of life or death. She wasn't feeling romantic at all, and her knees weren't going weak at the thought of her first kiss being given to the boy of her dreams. She was terrified beyond belief, and her hands were trembling as she wondered for a brief moment whether she'd be enough to save him before her instincts forced the very idea out of her mind.
That's why, without any hesitation, reluctance, or internal struggle at all, she bent down and sealed her mouth over his completely, exhaling the breath into his airway and drawing it out for one second. After that second was up, she pulled away and took another deep breath, letting air exit his airway. Start with five breaths, she remembered; then move to thirty compressions and two breaths per cycle until help arrived.
She went down on him again and gave him a second breath, her head empty and devoid of all thoughts except those standard to performing CPR. After coming up again, she waited for a brief second to let the air exit before taking another deep breath and giving him the third breath.
When she came up for the third time, she was panting heavily, but no less determined. A vague sense and realization of what she was doing started to creep to the forefront of her mind, but she quickly swatted it away. There would be time later, she reasoned, if she acted now. She took her fourth deep breath and sealed her mouth over his for the fourth breath.
Half a second later, his eyes opened.
Needle didn't notice until just as she was pulling away. She stared down at him and only found him staring back up at her. He didn't say anything; he only stared with wide eyes. Needle wasn't sure what to do—but her body did. Honed by instinct, it realized that the one or two seconds of delay between breaths was up, and took a deep breath for her. Before she knew what she was doing, her mouth was once again sealed over his as she administered her fifth breath.
Her mind, which had been on auto-pilot, finally gave manual control back to Needle when she saw the signs of life in his eyes. She realized immediately what they were doing and closed her eyes, wanting to revel in this one point in time for the rest of eternity. The warm feeling in her heart started to flicker before burning in emotion, and she would have smiled through the kiss—that is, of course, if she hadn't remembered that this was a rescue breath and not a kiss.
Once again, her body's trained instincts pried her away from Coiny. Overwhelming relief crashed over her and she nearly fell on her back as she watched Coiny spring up to a sitting position, eyes briefly wider than ever before shutting tightly as he rolled onto his side and started coughing up water. The sound of him retching and wheezing painfully, though normally disgusting and repelling, suddenly became the most beautiful sound in the world to Needle, as it served to be a reminder to her that she had saved Coiny for real, and not that this was just a hallucination. And if that was the most beautiful sound to her, then the second one came right after as she listened with an unstoppable smile to Coiny's very next words.
"WHAT THE FLOOR WAS THAAaAaaAT FOR, YOU FREAKING SONS OF FEMALE DOGS?!"
She let out a breathless laugh at first, not only at Coiny's voice crack and not only at how he immediately turned toward the natatorium door and clumsily held up, as Leafy liked to call it, the "wrong finger," but also out of an initial disbelief. She was still trying to process everything that had just happened.
Liy came rushing back through the door and headed straight for Coiny and Needle. Behind her were a woman in a lifeguard uniform carrying an AED and a man pulling the drawstrings on his swim trunks with toilet paper stuck to one of his feet. "Coiny!" she called out as they got closer. "Are you okay?"
Coiny coughed a few more times, but he held up a thumbs-up. "Yeah, I-I think so," he wheezed. "What happened? The last thing I remember was being held down and drowned."
"It's just a prank, bro!" Blocky laughed as he and the other three came in after the first three.
"OI!" Coiny tried to stand up to exact his revenge, but he slipped and nearly fell on his face. Needle giggled lightly as she headed over to him to help him stand. As soon as Coiny got his balance, he pointed an accusatory finger at Blocky and yelled, "What was that for?!"
"Like I said, just a prank," Blocky explained, though he relented when he saw the anger in Coiny's face. "...Aight, fine, maybe this one went too far. My bad, bro." He walked up to Coiny and raised a fist with a grin. "We'll go get pizza later. On me, yeah?"
Coiny stared down at Blocky's fist for a brief moment before his gaze softened and he grinned, bumping the fist with his own. "Cool. See ya."
Blocky nodded before turning around and motioning for the three other boys to follow him out of the natatorium. While Liy explained what she knew of the situation to the lifeguard, Coiny and Needle turned to face each other. "So, uh...who saved me?" he asked sheepishly.
"Who saved you?" Needle raised an eyebrow with a grin and a knowing chuckle. "Who do you think?"
To her surprise, however, Coiny answered, "I don't know. That's why I'm asking. I mean, the only person around was you, but I can't imagine you being brave enough to give someone CPR."
"You sure?"
"Needle, come on. I've known you, like, forever. You're too shy. If you ever find the courage to save someone with mouth-to-mouth CPR—which I know you have to do for drowning victims—then, heck, I'll eat your hair tie."
Needle gave him a smug expression as she reached behind her to pull her hair tie out of her ponytail and served it up to Coiny on her flat, upturned palm. "Bon appétit."
Coiny stared down at the hair tie, first in disbelief, then in shocked realization, then in "oh-shoot-I-messed-up"-ery. "You?" he asked.
"Yeah. What's so hard to believe about that?"
"Well, you—"
His eyes suddenly widened, however, and he slapped his palm to his forehead as he gasped. "Oh, that's right, you're a lifeguard!" he suddenly exclaimed before groaning. "Ohh...crap."
"Eat up," Needle joked as she pushed the hair tie toward him. When he actually considered reaching for it to eat it, however, she pulled her hand back and laughed. "No! Dude, don't actually eat it! That was a joke!"
Coiny paused for a second, but he soon laughed along with Needle as the latter tied her hair back up. "Okay, okay," he conceded, raising his hands in surrender. "Fine. I won't eat your hair tie. But...I should probably taste something of yours, don't you think?"
Needle's eyes widened and she gasped as Coiny stepped toward her with a sly grin. Her brain was doing its best to keep from short-circuiting, and it was holding on for dear life.
Liy finished her explanation to the lifeguard, who nodded in understanding before walking away with the other person. She turned back to Coiny and Needle and froze in place. Her jaw hung wide open as several questions began to surface. Coiny and Needle didn't even say anything to her, but she could see the clearly evident, deep blush on Needle's face and her closed eyes. After some more silence, she finally managed to ask the most pressing question on her mind.
"Coiny."
"...?"
"Why is Needle's ponytail in your mouth."
"Hrt hrayts hrrd."
"Yeah, Liy, I-I don't know, either. Just...let him do his thing."