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"Tou-fucking-che, Withers."
"You know," began Atlas conversationally, leaning on the hilt of his sword and beaming at his adversary as if playing some sort of game, "I'm getting the feeling, just from the tone of your voice, you know, that you... don't like how much you're losing. Is that possible?"
Elizabeth Lennox, known around camp as a whirlwind of biting insults and fiery glares, wasted no time in sparing Atlas one of her signature outraged scowls. She was breathless and far too riled-up by then, having faced half an hour's worth of Atlas's frustratingly degrading smack talk. It was a horribly dangerous combination when it came to friendly sparring—but then again, nothing much was considered 'too dangerous' in the mind of Eli.
She whirled her sword down on Atlas without warning. He countered easily, of course, having hardly broken a sweat whilst Eli's forehead glistened even despite the bitter cold of Long Island's November. Atlas struck downward in an arcing motion, purposefully giving Eli plenty of time to react and tip her blade to her defense, grunting as their weapons collided in a sharp clash.
"Are you going easy on me now, Dicky boy?" she demanded of him between huffs of air, shoving her sword and, by proxy, him back a missed step. "Come on. I'm serious, give me all you got."
"That sounds like a horrible idea," came a voice from over Eli's shoulder. In the split second it took for Eli to glance behind herself and register that it was Luke approaching, Silas in tow, Atlas had both disarmed her and swept her to her knees in one swift move. He had the tip of his sword sinking into her collarbone before she could even blink.
"Point proven," said Luke amiably, tipping his head. He extended a hand to help Eli to her feet while Atlas flipped her sword and offered the hilt for her to take hold of.
"I would've been fine if you hadn't interrupted," she argued to Luke, clasping his hand and pulling herself up. She brushed off her knees. "Maybe I would have—"
"If that sentence ends in anything other than '–lost to Atlas again because he's simply too talented and I just can't take it,'" said Atlas, unstrapping himself from his armor, "then I don't want to hear it, Eli."
Eli bit back a curse, for the sake of Silas, and rolled her eyes. She accepted her sword back from Atlas with too much force. Losing to her brother wasn't anything she couldn't handle - she often faced the tip of his sword point and had long ago grown accustomed to his fastidious gloating—but losing in front of Luke was another story. He was the best swordsman on camp; where all the trainees went to try and become his Jedi apprentice. They were all fair and mighty attempts to prove oneself in the face of the unconquerable Luke Castellan, usually, but nobody was able to capture his attention like the scrawny, curly-headed eleven-year-old boy that had shown up at camp one day and somehow knew how to disarm Luke by the next.
