The blank Mable room was beyond familiar to the two champions inside. The stone's bluish hint gleamed across the poorly decorated area, isolated from the rest of the Institute. Hardly a soul knew of its existence, and the two inside planned to keep it that way. Locked in a battle meant not to kill, but for a fairly playful fun, Garen and Katarina whirled about one another in a trance educing waltz of war.
Garen's sword crashed down to the floor just shy of cutting his crimson haired opponent in half. She jumped out of her roll dodge and threw two daggers his way, which landed in a lowered shoulder pad. She grinned and taunted him.
"Still hiding under that armor Garen?"
"Still hoping to distract your opponents through flaunting your cleavage?" he shot back.
"I'm just not still hiding myself in the armor given by my over protective mother," Katarina replied with a smirk.
They instantly snapped back to their regular fighting and their sword clashes rang through the room. Standing to the side, Talon, a former student in the arts of an assassin to Katarina's father, Marcus Du Couteau, watched the scene in front of him. They would fight and then stop to chit chat, perhaps their form of flirting, and then get back to fighting as if they did not know each other. Garen demonstrated his spinning sword dance technique and Katarina mimicked, but nearly a minute later they were back to attempting to end the other's life.
Shortly afterwards, Garen found himself hurled to the ground and slumped in a mass of armor. Talon rolled his eyes and executed a shunpo technique to teleport himself from his standing spot to just in front of Garen. He caught Katarina's daggers in midair and smirked, feeling a brush of wind blow his cape upwards, caught in the force of Garen's sword. Clearly, he had intended to deflect the daggers, but it was not needed.
"Talon…" Katarina whimpered, embarrassed that she had been caught fighting on the Institute of War's sacred grounds.
"I thought I told you to stop fighting before the League exiles you," he replied, holding onto his smug demeanor.
"I... Well..." she stammered. The cocky tone she had been using with Garen had completely evaporated. She turned to go back to her living quarters inside the Institute of War, not sure how the rest of her evening would pan out.
In the room, Talon turned to the Demacian, still crumpled in the corner. "Get up," he barked. Garen got his feet and saw a small drop of blood fall from the hand of the man opposite him.
"Why? You know that I would have deflected it?" Garen scoffed.
"I had no reason to believe a man laying the corner had the ability to stop a soaring projectile." Talon gently rubbed the blood of his fingertips together in attempt to make it stop. "Be glad you're alive and that I don't plan to turn you in." The Demacian replied with a grumble and marched out of the blue marble room, clearly upset with the night's outcome and the fact that he still had energy to burn.
"Now then..." Talon mumbled to himself. "Off to see that raven, Jericho Swain... I believe you have some useful information for me..."
Talon pulled his hood tight and marched out of the room, glad to know that Katarina was safe, regardless of how the rest of the night turned out. Confronting the man believed to be the cause of the disappearance of a legendary Noxian figure was not necessarily the safest action.