A lot of the new campers quickly adjusted to camp life, however weird they thought it was. They loved it all: the people, the lessons, the scenery. In particular, the campers were excited for their sword-fighting lesson with Katie and Travis. Despite the fact that they only had the class once and it was cut short due to the instructors almost killing each other, they had highly anticipated the next lesson.
The twenty adolescents sat in the arena quietly talking amongst themselves, waiting for the two bickering instructors to come in through the door.
Travis came in first, only slightly late for the first time in his life. "Good morning, maggots. Today, I'm going to show you how to properly use your weapon." When they looked at him curiously, wondering where the girl was, he told them to "get the fuck up."
Everyone stood up with their respective swords and daggers in hand and looked to Travis for further instruction. He sighed, "If you're standing that close to each other, you're going to get stabbed and I'm going to have to fill out some paperwork."
At the thought of being stabbed by the novice classmates around them, everyone spread out. "Thank you."
Travis had just finished showing the campers how to hold their weapons correctly when Katie burst through the door.
"Stoll!" she shouted, pointing the tip of her sword at him.
He gave her a chastising glare. "You're late, Miss Gardner."
The campers looked at each other with knowing smiles. It was about to get interesting. Katie took a few more steps toward Travis and he could see her now dark-green eyes blazing with fury. He hadn't seen that look in a while, but it sure did feel good to see it again. He had to admit that it looked kind of cool. While her eyes were usually a nice, calm, green, when she was angry (especially at Travis), they would turn into a dark murky green with even darker accents.
"I'm late because you set my clock back two hours!"
"I did no such thing!" Travis gasped, looking insulted, despite the fact that he knew full well what he had done.
Right before he went to sleep at three in the morning, he crept over to the Demeter cabin and made Katie's clock slow so that she wouldn't be able to try and take over his class.
And it was working so well.
Katie put the tip of her sword half a millimetre away from Travis' neck, and he calmly put his free hand up in mock surrender. "I can't believe you would stoop so low!"
"I didn't stoop anywhere, Gardner. You shouldn't blame your faults on other people; it's rather unbecoming."
Travis, the campers thought, was either the bravest or most idiotic person for mocking someone when they had the tip of their sword at his neck. Considering the fact that he was grinning, they were leaning towards the latter.
"What's unbecoming," Katie snarled taking a step forward as Travis took one back, "is you thinking you're better than me."
"Oh, but I am," Travis smiled. In a quick side arc, he knocked Katie's weapon right out of her hand and held his at her throat. "It's not so fun on the other side of the blade, is it, Gardner?" He lowered his blade and turned back to face the campers. "Sorry for that interruption, maggots, now if you'll just pick up your weapons, we may be able to get something done today!"
"Actually, if you'll all sit down and let me teach you, there will be a lot less injury," Katie interjected, stepping on the blade of her sword and catching the handle in her hand.
"Right," Travis agreed, "they won't have injury because they'll just die of boredom."
"Fine!" Katie snapped. "If you want to be a barbarian, go with Travis. If you'd actually like to know what you're going, come with me."
The campers looked at each other, torn. Who did they go with? Few campers were able to immediately choose, some going with Katie and the others going with Travis, but most that chose were their siblings and did it out of loyalty. The others shifted around for another couple of minutes before everyone had chosen a side. Travis ended up with fourteen, while Katie ended up with eighteen. Even with only four extra people, Katie managed a teasing smile at Travis. In return he gave her his middle finger.
Miraculously, the rest of the lesson went relatively smoothly. Katie stayed out of Travis's way and Travis stayed out of Katie's. One kid accidentally slashed himself on the forearm, but it wasn't too deep and Travis was actually able to act like he cared for a minute before sending him to go find a child of Apollo.
Once all the campers were out, Travis and Katie were left in the arena by themselves. Travis smiled to himself, remembering what he found out yesterday. And he had all the time in the world, as he suspected it would take long to plan the next lesson.
Before he was able to snap out of his daydream, Katie rounded on him. "I can't believe you," she hissed, pointing a finger at his chest.
"Right, who would have thought I could be good at teaching and making the maggots love me?"
"That's not what I meant and you know it."
Travis mocked thinking pensively for a moment. "It's not? Oh, you must have already known."
Katie scowled, then smirked lightly. "Are you really so threatened by me that you have to set my alarm back?"
"If threatened means annoyed, then yes, I am threatened by you. I'm always threatened by you."
"You're an asshole," she told him, "And if you ever try something like that again, I'll stab you in the eye." She held her sword up to show that she was serious before pressing the button on the hilt that reverted it back to a necklace.
Seeing that Katie's weapon was safely around her neck, Travis wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close so that it would be nearly impossible to fit a piece of paper in-between them. "Aw, Kates, I'm sorry. I just wanted you to have a good night's sleep."
Katie stared at him wide-eyed, not exactly sure how to react. She wanted to pull her necklace right off her neck and stab him, but a miniscule part of her wanted to stay there, since his arm felt rather comfortable around her. Then she realized that it was Travis Stoll and that miniscule part of her mind disintegrated into dust.
"If you want to keep your hand, you'd best remove it."
He smirked to himself and slid his hand from around her waist, making sure his fingers dragged along her lower back as he did. She tried to hide her shiver, but it clearly didn't go unnoticed by Travis, who raised a suggestive eyebrow.
Too easy.