"Lying is, like, ninety five percent of what I do." - LeBlanc, the Deceiver.
"Wait a minute… Secrets? What in the world are you talking about?" Ekko asked, bewildered.
"Goddamnit Ekko! Which part of 'secrets' do you not understand?" Draven groaned in frustration.
Talon drank from the glass of ginger ale that he had poured and smacked his lips at the refreshing aftertaste. "Well to my understanding, secrets mean things that one usually keeps away hidden from other individuals."
"Why, I am surprised that you out of everyone here actually gets it right." Draven taunted with a smirk.
"Shut it, asshole."
"And as I was saying, I gathered all of you here today is for the sole purpose of revealing your deepest, innermost and kinkiest secrets that none of you have never even told a single soul." He finished with a wide grin.
"Hold up. What's the point of us telling you our secrets? It honestly doesn't really make sense to me at all." Jayce pointed out, wiping his mouth with a napkin.
"Yeah dude, what's with all this 'deepest, innermost and kinkie-'… Wait did you just say kinkiest?" Ezreal queried sceptically.
Draven clapped his hands together excitedly. "See, Ezreal right there is catching on! We all need to share all of our sexual conquests with each other!"
"And why in the name of Demacia would I tell you about the women that I have bedded?" Garen asked incredulously.
Draven quickly scuttled over to Garen's side on the sofa and draped a puny arm over Garen's beefy shoulders. "Because you see, my dear Demacian oaf, it is because this is what best friends do!"
"I wouldn't even associate myself with the likes of you, you embarrassment." Belen shook his head in disgust, provoking chuckles around the table.
"O Belen, how hast thou wound me!" Draven dramatically clutched his heart with both arms and fluttered his eyelids continuously, sending the group into a bigger uproar.
"How did all of these even come about in the first place?" Jarvan asked politely.
"Why I am so glad that you asked, Jarvan! Okay boys, you see, I was drinking right here in the lounge the other day with Darius and it so happens that it was their girls' night out. They were giggling, laughing and doing whatever it is that girls do and it got me thinking. All we do is just sit down, drink and laze about, occasionally the psychedelic mushrooms from Zaun. That's no fun! Even though we always hang out all the time right here, the girls have that ─ How would you put it? ─ that togetherness! You know what I'm sayin' ─
glug glug glug..." Draven took a long gulp of cognac before continuing.
"So I decided that us guys can't just let them one-up us like that, we have got to do something that would really help us bond, ya know. So I thought real hard. What could possibly help us achieve something like that?
And then… BAM! It just hit me. Shit, why didn't I see it before?! The answer was right there in the question man! Women! It was right under our noses all along!
"…"
I don't understand…" Pantheon scratched the back of his neck.
"Okay look. What do we all have in common? Shen?"
"We all are of the male gender." Shen replied smoothly.
"Exactly. What do most guys want?"
"Girls?" Ezreal tried.
"Damn right. So it seems that all the other girls ever do other than talking about make-up tips, brushing each other's hair, pillow fights and shopping for shit they don't really need, is talking about us! Guys! We can do the same shit and talk about them!
Two can play that game! You bitches and hoes! Am I a genius or what?"
"…"
"…"
"…"
The guys around the table went eerily silent as they looked around at each other.
"That seem kinda' a stretch, don't cha think?" Graves broke the silence.
"Agreed. It would seem very dishonourable of us to talk about these fair maidens in such a degrading manner." Jarvan nodded.
Yasuo emptied out the last few drops from his wine pot onto his tongue before setting it back down onto the table.
"I don't think so Graves, you see, women are a fluid form of art, ever-changing; dynamic, unpredictable and fickle like the wind. In a sense, we, guys, are fellow critics and appraisers of that very art. It wouldn't be so wrong if we could simply- share our views."
Draven clapped Yasuo on his back with a hard smack. "Oh. Oh! That is some wisdom right there! Is anyone listening to this? This is enlightenment!"
Talon laughed and cracked his knuckles with a devious smile. "Alright then. I'm with them, I'm curious to know who you guys fucked."
"Me too, I'm sold." Ekko clinked glasses with Talon.
"Guys… Are you sure about this? I mean, I have a girlfriend. Doesn't it technically make it ineligible for me to talk about other women in that way?" Belen mumbled.
"Dammit Belen, stop being such a tight-ass and just go along with it man! Its guys' night out! Whatever that happens here, stays here!" Draven raved.
He turned towards Pantheon and Jayce.
"How 'bout you guys. Y'all in?"
"They said that all is fair in love and war. I am the Artisan of War. I don't see why not." Pantheon proclaimed decisively.
"Well, I'm betting that I get the most pussy around here. Let's do this!" Jayce declared with a dazzling smile.
"Since all of you have all risen up to the plate, I shall not disappoint as well. The Eye of Twilight never backs down from a challenge, I accept. " Shen nodded.
"What about you, Princerino?"
"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to divulge a little, less my reputation be stained, I shall do it for my fellow brothers!"
Draven did a little headcount and strode over to Graves who was paying all his attention to his bottle of rum.
"Well well, who have we left here? Malcolm Graves! You in?" Draven grinned.
"I'll sit in for a drink but I'll ain't sayin' shit."
"What? But why?!"
"Becuz, there ain't nuthin' to say."
"What the hell do you mean by there is nothing to say?!"
"MY WIFE IS DEAD, YA' DIMWITTED NUMBSKULL!" Graves shouted in anger.
"Oh right… Sorry about that..." Draven mumbled in embarrassment.
"It's all good but don't lemme spoil the fun, you lot can go on about it." Graves assured.
"Alrighty then. Ezreal?"
"zzz."
"Ezreal!"
"WHOA-wha?" Ezreal jolted up in alarm and looked around in confusion.
"You in?"
"Yeah yeah I'm in..." Ezreal yawned in his sleep-addled haze.
Draven walked around back to the side of the table and cleared his throat again.
"Okay! Now let's get this show on the road! So this is how it works.
This is a simple yet wicked twist of a game of Truth or Dare.
First, we spin a bottle, and the person on the end of the mouth of the bottle when it stops, gets to pick a forfeit. That is the "dare" part of the game.
Second, we spin the bottle again, this time, the person on the end of the mouth of the bottle is the person who is going to spill the beans about his - ahem- encounters with the ladies. And that's the "truth" part of the game. Well of course, if you are gay, I don't really wanna hear about that shit when you get it on with Taric.
No homophobe.
Alright. We clear?"
"Got it."
"Aight."
"Yeah."
"Good! Uh… Graves, can I have that bottle? You done with it?" Draven asked.
"Huh? Ah yeah… Sure, ya can have it."
Draven took the empty glass bottle from Graves, the brown glass reflecting off the purplish lights of the neon lightings above, a label on it indicating it was from a Noxian brewery.
He placed it carefully on the table sideways and masterfully spun it with two fingers, the glass bottle spinning on the spot wildly.
The bottle spun like the hour and minute hands of the control beacon of the Zero Drive which he wore on his wrist, overclocking and working itself out, Ekko silently noted to himself.
He did want to get chosen, so that he could get others into trouble without he himself actually getting into some.
His crafty mind quickly did some calculations.
'Draven, Ezreal, Garen, Jarvan, Graves, Jayce, Pantheon, Yasuo, Belen, Shen, Talon and myself.
12 of us here.
Wait a second, I have to exclude Graves.
12 - 1 = 11.
1/11
9.090909090% rounded off to three significant figures which equates to an approximate 9.09% chance of being chosen by the bottle.'
Probabilities left to chance didn't matter if one could always try again, Ekko laughed silently to himself.
The bottle began to slow to a stop, with the clear objective of selecting someone.
'Graves huh? Well CHOOSE AGAIN!' He inwardly rejoiced in triumph.
His other hand stealthily slipped down to the control beacon that he wore on his right hand, the polished metal finish of the timepiece felt smooth against the pad of his thumb.
Twisting the dial around to select the restoration point of the timestream, he pressed down on the faceplate of the beacon to reverse the flow of time.
He had already modified the control beacon and the Zero Drive to be able to function on its own, in case somehow one of the two were to be separated from him in any possible scenario.
Thank the Gods that he actually did that.
He had no idea how he was going to pull the string of the initiating mechanism on the Zero Drive, which was left back in his room all the way at the Champion Quarters.
He felt the familiar pull and the distortion in the figment of reality, his eyes looked around him in marvel, he did this about a billion times, literally, and it always felt so novel and intriguing to him that he never got tired of that.
Everything that he was seeing right now, the image that was formed by his eyes, began to twist and warp like a broadcast inteference for a second or two, before things returned to normal.
Suddenly, everything began to slow down gradually, until the flow of time itself has reached a standstill.
Then, everything that has happened began to undo itself, temporal polarity was reversed.
The ornamental clock on the wall of the lounge that Zilean gave to Gragas last year for Snowdown began to move anti-clockwise.
The voices in the lounge turned into gibberish as if an audio tape was being played backwards, although it is practically happening right now.
The bottle began to spin in the opposite direction, the patrons of the bar were walking back in reverse back to their tables and sitting back down.
The amber liquids of the alcoholic drinks were being regurgitated back into cups.
Until it reached the point where Graves was about to hand over the empty bottle to Draven.
The flow of the timeline resumed and Ekko assumed that Graves was going to give the bottle back to Draven and to set it down on the table to spin.
Only that did not happen. Jayce grabbed Ekko's wrist and began to undo the buckle of the wrist-strap of his control beacon while Belen and Ezreal held him in place.
"GUYS!? WHAT THE HELL? LEMME GO! STOP!" Ekko screamed as he began to struggle and squirm out of their grasp in futility.
"Tryna' mess with us eh? That will teach ya." Graves laughed as he took a puff from his cigar.
"WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT? I didn't even do anything!" Ekko lied skillfully as he pretended to be angry at them for taking away his portable Z-Drive router.
"Or did you?" Jayce smirked and dangled the wristwatch in front of his face mockingly.
"Little boy gets caught cheating, what a chump!" Draven slammed his palm on the table as he cackled away like a hyena.
"Would someone please tell me what's going on!?"
"Oh drop the act lad, no one is going to blame you, we had already taken precautions." Garen tried to hide his smile behind his glass of malt beer.
Jarvan just chuckled and shook his head.
"What do you mea - Ah damn! Alright ALRIGHT!" Ekko gave up and came clean sheepishly at being caught red-handed.
"But how the hell did you guys know anyway?"
Jayce held up a small remote-control-like device with a screen on it.
"With this. I invented it myself! Draven told me that you might try and tamper with anything at all tonight, so I drew up some schematics and got hold of some parts and put it together, added a hextech energy receptor, handed it over to Professor Heimerdinger over there to configure it and voila! The Anti-Ekko-tron 2000 was born!"
"Did you actually name it Anti-Ekko-tron 2000?" Shen asked Jayce, amused.
"Of course not. It was Draven's idea!" He gestured at Draven who had a smug expression on his face.
"Figures." Talon facepalmed in exasperation.
Jayce began to slip out of the suave facade and into the geeky inventor. "Ekko, you see. This device allows me to observe and detect any disturbances or anomaly within the temporal wave-line.
So when that you had set your Z-Drive to activate the second the bottle was going to stop at Graves, it was recorded by my invention.
I had briefed everyone beforehand that I was going to stop you after you had altered reality as I had no way of actually interfering with your device. Even though after you had successfully reversed the timeline, a special temporal crystal that I had gotten from Zilean allows the negation of the effects of chronological tampering on the device, so it should still be able to function as per normal.
The least we could do is to stop you from doing it again" He finished with a victorious smile.
Ekko was flabbergasted. He didn't think that anyone could actually counter his Zero Drive like that and that he was truly impressed with Jayce. Piltie or not.
"Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant." Ekko applauded as Ezreal and Belen let go of him.
Draven decided they had sidetracked too far and the night wasn't getting any younger. "Okay, so who was the one that was chosen at first?"
"Graves." Ekko looked at Draven's comically sceptical glare at him before he continued.
"Honest."
"Alright Graves! You get to pick the forfeit for the person who is going to be chosen next." Draven announced.
Graves' lips began to curl on the ends into a devilish smile as he had concluded on the final decision of the forfeit.
"One of ya' punks will have ta'… SPIT ON SEJUANI'S FACE."
"Please tell Caravere how much you had enjoyed this particular chapter. Well... If you don't, I completely understand. These stories are absolute trash." LeBlanc shook her head in repulsion.
"Don't listen her, boys. Do you know the real reason why she lies? Because she can't swallow the truth." He gave a suggestive wink.
"BUT I SWALLOWED YOUR C-"
"THE END!"
