In the frozen tundra far to the north of the kingdom of Atlas, on a mighty snow-covered range of glaciers bigger than any city, the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny was ultimately about to take place.
The scenery was quite breathtaking; it was hard to believe that so much ice could exist in one place. Neon Katt, the awesome, cool, and did I mention awesome hero of this story, was taking it all in. She really should be shivering considering how much skin her usual tank top and short shorts showed off, but the cold never bothered her anyway. She was cooler than any glacier could ever hope to be. Have I mentioned how awesome she is yet?
"That faker has to still be around here somewhere!" Neon shouted with crossed arms, placing emphasis on random words for no apparent reason.
No sooner had she said that than she was being lifted a few inches into the air. She looked down and saw exactly what she was looking for. What she was looking for was insane and made no sense, but if you weren't expecting that, then you clearly haven't checked your calendar today.
A second Neon, identical to herself, had burrowed her way above the snow and had her hands around the first Neon's ankles.
"Hey good-lookin'!" the fake said with a smile. "Like my new hat?"
The real Neon responded by leaping several feet into the air, doing a super cool flip and landing on her feet like the cat she was. The fake Neon leapt out of the ice, also landing on her feet with an equally awesome trick.
Neon stared down her ultimate opponent, the only person who could ever give her a real challenge when it came to sheer fighting prowess: herself! She rubbed her nose with a cocky grin. "So now we can get down to the real fight!" Neon exclaimed. "The last Katt standing will be the winner!"
"Just face it, me!" the fake said, mirroring the nose-rubbing movement. "I'm better than you in every way: strength, speed, looks, I've got it all! This world isn't big enough for the sheer awesomeness we both contain. One of us will have to go!"
"Well, I agree!" the real Neon said. She began running in place, building up speed and defying every law of physics in the process. The wheels on her skates began to spin wildly and throw up a cloud of snow behind her.
"Let me show you just what I'm made of!" the fake said, copying the preparation and hammering in the reference even further by quoting her Expy's de facto theme song.
There was a burst of rainbow light from both sides of the battlefield, and the fight was on. Nunchaku collided with nunchaku, fist collided with fist, setences were spliced with commas, and it was all quite epic, really. From a distance, the two appeared as darting beams of rainbow light, with every collision sending a cloud of frost into the air. With the sheer amount of speed and power they both possessed being exactly equal, it was like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.
The two collided again, running against each other as they were literally head to head. They stared into each other's eyes with a terrifying amount of intensity. Like if you've ever jumped in front of a bus and the bus was being driven by Satan and there was a dead frog on the front and fire instead of a windscreen. That's how scary it was (shoutout to Dark Yagami, that magnificent bastrad!).
"Give it up!" the fake shouted. "I know how my mind works! I can predict every move you make before you make it!"
"You might know everything I'm going to do," the real Neon retorted, doubling her efforts and pushing back the fake, "but that's not going to help you since I know everything you're going to do! STRANGE, ISN'T IT?!"
Before the other Neon could come up with a comeback that would no doubt leave the readers in stitches, the real Neon did a sudden backflip. The fake, no longer burdened by any resistance, tripped and flew forward. While they were both still in the air, the real Neon kicked the copy IN THE FACE, sending her flying straight up. Neon finished her backflip and kicked off the ground, dashing after her copy. She wasn't exactly flying, it was just that she could jump good.
Miles above the exciting action, a steel platform appeared in midair completely out of nowhere. On the platform stood Weiss Schnee and Arthur Watts. Watts was not wearing his usual outfit, but instead had on a red jacket with yellow highlights along with sleek black pants and boots. He had opaque blue sunglasses and a massive cartoony fake mustache pasted on top of his real one.
Weiss and Watts stared at each other. Neither of them had any idea how they had suddenly appeared miles above a glacier range, nor did they know how exactly Watts had acquired such a ridiculous costume. However, they had only just registered each other's presence when they were nearly thrown off the platform by the fake Neon colliding with its bottom. Thankfully, some kind of invisible barrier prevented them from outright falling off. The copy's head tore right through the inches-thick steel like it was wax paper, yet somehow not one strand of her hair awas visibly harmed. Something something Aura is not magic, it's not important right now.
The real Neon grabbed the side of the platform and flipped onto it. Have I mentioned lately how cool she is?
"The speedster?" Watts asked. "Explain at once how we got here!"
"Quiet there, Doc, I'm trying to enjoy the show!" Watts was confused at Neon's reply, as well as the fact that she had suddenly transitioned to laying casually on her side. That is, until he followed her gaze. See, Weiss had fallen to the ground and was wearing her usual outfit (either before or after the time skip, or maybe the one she has in Volume 7, pick whichever one you like best) complete with combat skirt. The fake Neon was staring up at her from where she was stuck in the platform and had a perfect view of… well, this is based on an anime, you can probably see where I'm going with this.
"GAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" screamed Weiss with pure rage as she repeatedly kicked the fake Neon IN THE FACE!
"GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!" the copy screamed between kicks to the face. It was painful, yet somehow didn't seem to do much damage.
"Just a sec," Neon said, turning to you. Yes, you, the person reading this from beyond their computer/phone screen. You better be paying attention. "Kids, this is why you always wear shorts underneath your combat skirt. Because if someone accidentally looks up there and you don't have anything to protect your dignity, that's no good!"
Once Neon was finished with her incredibly profound yet out-of-place PSA on combat skirt safety, she leapt into the air and kicked the fake through the platform, tearing an even bigger hole in the floor. Unfortunately, this also meant that said platform was jostled again, and Weiss fell through the hole with them.
"What… WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" Watts screamed at the top of his lungs in a rather out of character moment of panic and frustration. He must have had a headache.
Weiss squeezed her eyes shut, unable to bring herself to look at the hard, icy death that awaited her below. She probably could have summoned a Lancer to catch her, but we're trying to pretend we have tension here, just roll with it.
Weiss felt strong hands catch her and she opened her eyes. She was now face to face with her very blonde teammate Yang! She was wearing her usual outfit, only she had a cowboy hat on for some reason. They were riding her motorcycle, Bumblebee, which seemed to have no trouble going through the rough icy terrain despite not being built for it.
"Yang?!" Weiss demanded incredulously. "How did you get here?!"
Yang shrugged, a cocky grin on her face. "I dunno."
Weiss realized something. "Wait, don't you need hands to steer a motorcycle?"
Yang's smile vanished. "Oh yeah."
Bumblebee, which had before now been riding just fine on its own, suddenly swerved, falling on its side and dumping its passengers at the foot of a cliff, burying them in snow, much like how this sentence has been buried in commas.
"Nice going, Yang!" Weiss shouted, her head poking out of a pile of cold white fluff.
"Would you rather have broken your neck on the Wice?" Yang asked with a goofy grin, which only grew when she heard Weiss groan at such an awful joke.
"I'M ALSO HERE!" screamed Penny from above them, because there haven't been any robots yet and the author needs to fulfill his robot quota. She was rolling down the cliff, quickly disappearing into a growing snowball.
"Well, f –" Yang's curse word was cut off because we don't want this fic to be M, now do we? Uh, I mean, because she was run over by a giant snowball.
Well anyway, how's the hero of this exiting tale?
The two Neons were fighting each other with even more gusto than before. Things got more awesome! (just take my word for it) The fake Neon drop kicked the real one IN THE FACE! (okay, that joke has officially run its course) The real one slid quite a distance before coming to a stop in front of a cliff. The duplicate raised the real Neon in the air in a choke hold.
"Any last words, me?" the fake asked, spinning her nunchaku in her free hand.
"H… h…"
The fake's grip loosened slightly. "Yes?"
The real Neon looked at her copy with a mischievous smile. "Harder, Daddy."
"GAH!" the fake dropped the real one to the ground in disgust. But this was a mistake! As soon as the real Neon hit the ground, she did a break dance that both tripped the copy and caused the real one to stand upright. She used the force of the movement to punch the fake in the gut (because people have been hit in the face a bit too much lately). Then she used her FINAL ATTACK and KO'd the fake RIGHT IN THE BRAIN! The force of it was so strong that the copy flew into a glacier and made it crumble all around her.
Neon dashed up to the crumbling ice. Because the laws of physics are more like suggestions in this universe than hardcore facts, there was a lake of boiling lava in the core of the iceberg. And the fake was sliding down the slope!
"No!" the real one said, sliding down the slope and stopping herself (somehow) as close as she could get to the copy without being burnt to a crisp. "Take my hand!" She held out her hand to the copy. She couldn't let the fake Neon die! Where else would she get her challenge in life? And besides, running around with a copy of herself sounded like a ton of fun. They could get up to all sorts of mischief together.
The fake Neon dug her nails into the ice, climbing up to the real one with difficulty. Once there, she reached her hand out…
… and slapped the real Neon's hand away!
Neon gasped in shock.
"There is only… one… Neon!"
With that, the fake began sliding down the slope again.
"No!" The real Neon could do nothing but watch as the fake's toe nearly touched the molten liquid. "NO!"
"NO!"
Neon shot straight up, heart pounding out of her chest. There was a moment of confusion when she felt warm air instead of freezing cold. Then she looked around, realizing she was back in her dorm room at Atlas. She sighed, partially with relief and partially with disappointment.
"Another weird dream?"
She looked to her right, seeing her partner Flynt sitting at the edge of his own bed. The other two beds were unoccupied.
"Yeah, crazy as heck," she replied.
"Let me guess." Flynt gave her a wry smile. "The one that ends with your copy falling to her death in a lava lake?"
"That's the one," Neon said.
"You really need to get your head examined," he said. "Fighting yourself and loving every minute of it until you win… well, I'm not sure what that says about you psychologically, but it can't be normal."
Neon shrugged. She didn't see these nonsensical dreams as anything meaningful. Dreams were just weird visions made of waking experiences put together by a sleeping mind.
She just counted herself lucky that she hadn't dreamt about the Gangster's Paradise. Now that was a nightmare!
A/N: APRIL FOOL'S, BABY!
Sorry for dropping off the map for so long. To be frank, I had lost all motivation to write and got sidetracked with some other projects. Then, of course, there's the small fact that a global pandemic broke out. What I'm trying to say is that I have some more time on my hands now and I plan on finishing Combat Ready (the real one) by the end of April. A huge thanks to all my dear readers for being so patient with me, and I hope you all enjoyed this celebration of my favorite holiday! Stay healthy!
P.S.: Come back to this story every once in a while, as I plan on updating it sporadically with some comedic short stories based on the Combat Ready AU!