Edmund slips in, barely splashing, like some kind of river-spirit, then tosses a handful of water at Pete's crotch. "You came here to swim. Swim."

He jumps like a splashed cat. "Yes, fiiine, but let it be known that I'm doing this against my best judgement." It occurs to him for a moment that he should probably do stretches before jumping in and then it occurs to him that lol. lmao. So instead he lowers his goggles over his eyes then just steps in and immediately submerges himself fully to get the worst part over with. "Rrr," he says once he's back up.

Edmund's floating around lazily. "Is the violent breath of life in you not hot? Exhale the hot breath of the Flame Immortal!"

"We're in a pool," he points out. "Water beats fire."

"Where in the world did you even get that line?" Susan wonders as she surfaces. (She's in a one-piece, with some kind of intriguing chevron design running down it in semitransparent fabric.)

"Anime," Edmund admits.

"Nerd," the girl in Susan's wake diagnoses. "Is this that sparkly boy you're all being ridiculous about? I'm Lucy. You're very pretty but I don't think you're my type, sorry."

Oh they're going to be having conversations, okay. He pulls his goggles off and lowers them so they'll be around his neck. "It's honestly reassuring to know my charm knows bounds," he says, and means it. Also he's an eighteen-year-old in the body of a ?⁠⁠sixteen?-year-old so he's fine with dating Edmund but Lucy is in fact a bit too young for him. "If they've been talking about me then you'll know I'm Pete. Enchanted to meet you."

"Basest flattery."

"Oh, be nice," Edmund and

Susan say in unison.

"It may be flattery, but that does not make it false."

"You have no reason to feel more than slightly pleased to meet me! Enchanted is nothing. Tell me I'm delightful or whatever when we've actually met."

"I think I do, actually—if nothing else the past few seconds have been very character-revealing and you do seem delightful. How about I remain enchanted until I get to know you better and if it turns out I was wrong I will take it back, does that seem fair? But I want to claim Bayes points if later it turns out I was right."

"Bayes points," Lucy snorts. "You're all hopeless. Fine, be enchanted on credit. I'm going to swim, it seems setting-appropriate."

"An excellent idea," he says, putting his goggles back on.

He thinks this interaction was a success! Good to know that when Incomplete makes his Mysterious Allure fail to work he can still be charming on his own merits.

Now, swimming in this new body feels... weird. It feels weird. He pulls his arms too wide and his legs too far from each other to make up for muscles that now are a lot less defined and therefore don't need it, and he weighs less and his frame is more hydrodynamic but Hollow Leg means that he's still as strong/fit as he used to be so he also swims faster than he's used to while spending less effort. He has a ton of muscle memory and a lot of it is just awkward; this masc self may be slightly more buff and less twinky than the full Astolfo persona but it's still nowhere near the proper swimmer's build he used to have, and as noted in narration before he doesn't have immediate translation of body maps.

Still, he's quick enough to learn to compensate for it. His body awareness is pretty decent, and once he hits his stride he can soon get to a proper five-one bilateral breathing pattern and when he really wants to push himself he can get to seven-one. He still needs—or, at least, prefers—to take the occasional break to catch his breath, though, and he's not really trying to break any records, here. It is, in fact, just for fun, and the part of him that had been worried that he was too much of a Mary Sue to get that out of swimming has been thoroughly reassured.

At some point he may notice Edmund staring a bit.

May he. Well, good thing he has an appropriately-timed breathing break just then. He lifts his goggles up to his forehead—the area surrounding his eyes is remarkably uncreased, only enough to indicate that he did have goggles pressing against his skin there but not enough to make it red and puffy—and asks, "Do I have something," pant pant, "on my face?"

"Um! No, you're just - very good. At swimming. Fast."

Edmund shakes his head vigorously, getting water all over the place. "Sorry, brain stopped working for a bit. I've rebooted. D'you want to race?"

He grins. "Sure. Five laps," pant, "winner picks a forfeit?" Breathe. "Also give me," pant, "a minute to catch my," pant, "breath."

"Catch all the breath you need. I'll be here contemplating how much to fear the concept of forfeits, coming from you."

"We have spent," pant, "a total of some five minutes interacting," breathe, "today. Surely you can't have formed such a," breathe, "negative impression of me already?"

"'Negative'? No. So randy you might actually have a rabbit somewhere in your ancestry? Yes."

"You know what," breathe, "that's fair. You can always say no to the idea and we can just have the," breathe, "race for fun and bragging rights."