Greetings everyone, Neo here. I'll be taking over the intros for a while.
Gigi: Qii qiqi qi?
Well..., the Unrepentant and Morally Superior Magical Neo- *Whackwhackwhack!* Um, the thing is...I kinda made an oopsie...
Gigi: *slowly* Qi qii qi qiqi?
Um-
*banging on closet door, followed unholy sounds best immediately forgotten*
I...may have accidentally summoned an unspeakable horror that could be The End OF All Things that decided to use the Author as its host and will carry out its terrible purpose if it gets out of the closet. Slightly...
Gigi: Qiiqiqi qiqiqi qi qiqiqiiqi qiqii. Qiqiqi qiiqi?
I think I have the Necronomicon and the Eldritch Grimoire in Ebook format, there must be something in them that tells us how deal with this.
Gigi: Qi qii; qi qiqi qii!
OK, OK! Just give me a minute! gripes the Overwhelmed and Clearly In Over Her Head Magical Neo, before turning to address the readers, Enjoy the chapter, everyone!
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"You sure you're ready for this, Aly?"
"Of course. I did place second in the National R:TG tournament last year, remember?"
"Yeah Mal, remember? We were all there, that one blond proctor kept talking about his daughter and how none of us would have a chance against her? Did you take stupid pills this morning?"
"Let him be, Patricia. It's only natural to feel apprehensive when the prize is as grand as this one."
"Then get your things, the tournament starts in thirty minutes; we don't want to be late."
"Yes, Valdemar, of course."
"Give 'em a good show, right Aly?"
"I have faith everyone will be entertained when this is over. Well...except for the losers."
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"So you all know your parts?" Weiss asked as the four girls waited for the tournament to officially start. There was actually a big turnout for the event, both with entrants and spectators, many of whom looked either nervous or excited for what lay ahead. There were two hologram projectors set up, presumably to show two different games going on simultaneously, and a scoring bracket to show who was still in play.
"Yup!" Yang said, popping the P, "I'm Ruby and I learned everything from my big sister Yang, who isn't competing because she wanted to give everyone else a fighting chance."
"No need to be full of yourself," the heiress chastised, "but yes." She turned to Ruby, "Blake?"
"I'm Blake and I felt like giving the game a try," Ruby recited, "but only after Yang pestered me in to doing so."
Yang stuck out Ruby's tongue at her sister.
"Correct. Weiss?"
"I'm Weiss and I'm here for moral support and because Ruby insisted that the whole team should be here," the Faunus recited.
"Perfect!" She fluffed Yang's hair, "And I'm Yang and I'm sitting this out because I feel the competition is beneath me. Also, I make terrible puns even though it's abundantly clear that no one else finds them funny or clever."
"You take that back!" Yang shouted, launching at her Weiss possessed body.
Weiss simply held her at bay with Yang's arm.
While they were busy laughing at Yang's emasculation, they heard a bit of speaker feedback. They all turned to the source, only to find Sun Wukong standing there, holding a microphone.
"What's he doing here?" Weiss asked, recoiling a little at the sight of the vagabond.
"Emceeing the event would be my guess," Blake said, pointing out the obvious.
"Hello, is this thing on?" the monkey Faunus said, tapping the mic twice. Then he addressed the audience, "Hey, how ya doing everyone, good to see you! So I just flew in from Vacuo the other day, and boy are my arms tired!"
He paused to allow everyone a moment to laugh at his joke, receiving only silence in response.
"His jokes are as bad as your puns," Weiss whispered to Yang.
"Shut up, you!"
"Wow, tough crowd. Seriously, you people really need to get a sense of humor. Anyway, glad all of you promising young adults all came out to watch other young adults play a children's card game; it truly is an honor to watch a bunch of 17 year olds beat each other using little bits of paper. Marvel as four people each put card playing cards and move little plastic figurines over a cardboard playing area! Thrill as the-"
"Just get on with it!" someone shouted from the crowd.
"Fine," Sun groused, "Tournament started. Happy now, jerkwad?" He took a Scroll out of his back pocket and began reading off names. "...and let's see...Blake from RWBY, Jaune from JNPR, Aludra from VAMP, and Sky from CRDL, you guys get to Table #2!"
"Go get 'em, Blake!" Yang cheered as Ruby made her way to the designated table, "Show 'em who's boss!"
"I'll do my best!" Ruby called back, pumping her fist.
"Does she actually have a chance?" Weiss asked in a low voice, lest Ruby's borrowed Faunus body hear her.
"Oh she'll clean house!" Yang replied confidently.
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"Noooooo!" Ruby wailed in defeat, rivers of tears falling from her eyes. She actually did better than both Sky and Jaune, managing to crush Sky's Atlesian forces and hold her own against an attack from Jaune's Vale allied Grimm hordes. However, she was utterly destroyed when the last remaining player, the East Vacuan Aludra, overwhelmed her with a barrage of cards that stripped her of all her Vacuo bonuses and systematically crushing her outposts until there was nothing left.
"Ooooh, and Blake is down for the count!" Sun commentated, "She put up a good fight, but in the end the Lady of Team VAMP steamrolled her way to victory!"
"You played quite well for a beginner," Aludra complimented, her voice having a slight accent to it, "If it were anyone other than I you would have made it quite far today."
"Thanks...," Ruby sobbed. She hung Blake's head as she trudged back to her team.
"How you holding up, Sis?" Yang asked, gently rubbing Blake's shoulder.
"I lost," she said simply, sulking.
"Don't feel bad," Blake comforted, "you almost won, that's still pretty good."
"But not as good as real winning..."
"She has a point," Weiss said, to which she was smacked upside Yang's head by Blake. "Ow!"
Blake in turn was smacked by ("Hey!") Yang, "Stop hitting my body!"
"Alrighty then! Let's move on to the next set of games! If we're lucky, we might get to watch one player play a card against another player! Oh, I can just smell the ratings on this!"
"Boo! You suck!" the same heckler from before shouted, this earning more of Sun's ire in return.
"OK punk, that tears it! I'ma acquaint my foot with your backside, son!" He then leaped off his post (which happened to be one of the lampposts littered around the courtyard) and went searching for the critic.
A moment later there was speaker feedback again.
"Um hi there!" a timid voice said, "This is Velvet Scarlatina speaking, and, um...I suppose I'm the new Emcee for the tournament. Um...here are the players for the next set of matches..."
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Eventually all the Round 1 matches were finished, effectively leaving only a quarter of the original participants still in the game; Yang had taken an early lead in her game, not even giving her opponents a chance to try mounting a counter attack, while Nora had employed a similar tactic, only with more on the spot planing. (Namely, she just threw cards down at random and by some miracle she happened to win.) Dove Bronzewing also did well in his game, making good use of Atlas's short repair times.
"'Sup losers!" Sun greeted, plopping himself down next to Team YBRW.
"How'd your heckler hunt go?" Yang asked.
"Guy ran away when he saw me coming," he explained, shrugging, "Didn't really get a good look at him, all I remember is he had a really scruffy looking mustache. I'm surprised Yang isn't competing, I thought she loved that game."
"How do you know that?" Weiss asked, both her and Yang-as-Ruby looking apprehensive.
"I hear things." He didn't elaborate. "But seriously, why aren't you competing?"
"I wanted to make it fair for everyone else competed," she said, much to Sun's mild shock. "What? I can be altruistic"
"I'm not judging you," the monkey clarified, "but I woulda thunk you'd be trying to challenge that Aludra chick to the match of the century!"
"That's Ruby's job," she explained, gesturing to Yang. "I'm just here to watch."
"Whatever, you guys have fun with that!" He then jumped to his feet, shooting off a cool salute, "I'm gonna go find more hecklers; I saw this limey looking guy before that was giving me weird looks." And with that he leaped off, disappearing into the crowd.
A moment later a high pitched, girly scream rang out.
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"And, well, that's the end of round 2. Um...sorry to everyone who lost, you did your best!" Needless to say, things pretty much turned out the same as before; Yang, Aludra, and Nora, plus a few others, won their matches and advanced while the rest were disqualified. "The matches for the semifinals are as follows: Aludra of Team VAMP to table #1, Ruby of Team RWBY to table #2, Nora of Team JNPR to table #1..."
"Alright," Nora cheered, "I get to play against Miss National Runner-Up! O-oh-oh-oh-oh, this is gonna be sweet!"
"How do you know who she is?" Jaune asked (he'd been knocked out in one of the earlier games), "I just thought she was a student here."
"She does look familiar," Pyrrha mused, "I can't put my finger on the place, though..."
"Well," the bubbly berserker explained, using her "Epic!" voice, "I saw it in my dreams-"
"We watched the National R:TG Tournament broadcast," Ren corrected before his childhood friend/battle partner before she could really get going, "I remember she favored using Mistral because of the high rewards bonus."
"Meanie!" she pouted, "You didn't let me finish my story!"
Pyrrha snapped her fingers, "That's where I saw her! I was at that tournament because of my PR people; I shook her hand after the awards ceremony!"
"Any pointers Nora could use?" the blond knight asked.
"I'm afraid not, I've never been able to grasp the game outside of the premise. Sorry."
"That doesn't matter! I've won both my matches so far, and those kneecaps looks miiiiighty tempting-OW!" She flinched as Ren flicked her ear.
"Don't be creepy. Your match is about to start."
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Eventually, it was down to Nora and Aludra (not counting Yang's match), both girls staring intently at each other; Aludra with a calm determination, and Nora with manic glee.
"I hope you're ready to lose, Girly," the ginger girl taunted, readying a card for play, "because all your kneecaps are belong to me now!" She threw her card down theatrically, declaring "GIANT NEVERMORE!" as she did. "All I have to do is roll a 7 or higher and your Militia forces will be cut in half by the deadly Fatal Feathers, allowing my Grimm hordes to smash through your walls and make me the Sloth Queen of Remnant, mwahahahahaha!"
"That's quite a bold move," Aludra complimented, "However, it will not be enough to win."
"We'll just see about that!" Nora brazenly declared, snatching up the dice and rolling them across the board. They bounced off the partitions on either side of the table (so the dice would remain on the table), coming to rest slightly off center.
They showed 8.
"Hah! See?"
"I see you've rolled quite well, but in doing so, you've activated my trap card." She held said card up for Nora to see, "Now whatever you roll will come with a -4 restriction, turning your '8' into a '4'." She reached over and gently toppled Nora's Ursai, "Now your own forces are decimated."
Nora joined her game piece and toppled out of her chair.
To her credit, Aludra politely waited for Nora to pick herself up before continuing.
"And next I play 'Smugglers of Wind Path', which allows me to take two card from your hand..." Nora reluctantly held out her hand for Aludra to draw from. "...thank you. Now I'll play 'Atlesian Aerial Bombardment', disabling your Vacuo Warriors and allowing my Atlesian outpost to occupy the northern Vacuo territories." She grinned demurely, "It is your move, Miss Valkyrie."
"Um...?" Nora was at a loss. Most of her forces had effectively been rendered useless, and none of the cards left in her hand would give her any meaningful recovery options. With a heavy heart and an even heavier forehead, she laid her hand face up on the table, "I surrender..."
to be concluded...
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Gigi: Qiiqiqi qiqi qiqi, qi qii?
I believe I've found the solution! announces the Successful and Triumphant Magical Neo, holding her Ebook reader with the reverence of receiving an Oscar, Let's see here...Klaatu, Barada, Nikto!
*demonic noises continue*
Gigi: Qi qiiqi qi.
Then YOU try it! the Mistress snaps, thrusting her Ebook reader at the Stuffed One with Spunk.
Gigi: Qi qi! *reads screen, adorably clearing her throat* Qi qi qi, qii qiqi, qi-*mumbles into her stubbly fist*
*unholy noises and incessant banging stop*
Gigi: ...Qiqi qii?
Only one way to find out..., the Hesitant and Cautious Magical Neo shrugs, reaching for the door.
To Be Even More Continued...!