In the years following what came to be known as the Vytal Crisis, everything and nothing changed. The Atlesian military fell with its general, and the White Fang splintered and fell quiet, but through it all Beacon remained steadfast. When the smoke and fire cleared, the question of what now? hung heavy over all who had endured. The races of Remnant still had need of their protectors; the Grimm would offer no reprieve in their time of weakness. With Headmaster Ozpin gone, slain by Cinder Fall in the final hours of the crisis, Glynda Goodwitch took up his post and endeavored to unite the remaining hunters and huntresses under Beacon's banner.
Surviving students from Atlas found their way to the battered academy, and Shade and Haven pledged their support. Trainees began to undertake more frequent away missions, functioning as true huntresses even as they grew to fill the role. Even silent Menagerie, isolated and independent for so long, began to contribute more and more to the defense - with, of course, certain stipulations regarding the treatment of faunus throughout the kingdoms.
For his contributions to the havoc, Brandt Schnee, CEO of the Schnee Dust Company, was given the same sentence as his co-conspirators. His daughters, even as they recovered from the crisis, joined together to take his place. Much to her chagrin, shouldering task of rooting out her father's corruption monopolized Weiss's attention, and she was forced to drop out of her studies at Beacon.
Ruby Rose, who stared down hellfire at the cost of her eyes, went with her. Blinded by Cinder's final, desperate strike, she was faced with little choice but to retire from hunting along with her partner. In time she found a new partner in Penny Polendina, and with her aid began to craft the arsenal of a new generation of huntresses.
The ranks of team RWBY were filled by a pair of huntresses who no longer had teams to call their own, for two very different reasons: Emerald Sustrai, unsung hero of the Vytal Crisis, whose timely double-cross had saved countless lives, and Neon Katt, sole survivor of team FNKI. Despite a frictive beginning, the team soon settled into routine. Before long team RWBY was a memory, cherished but past. The new team was dubbed ENBY, with Sustrai at its head.
"I still don't get why Goodwitch made Em the leader," Yang grumbled as she trudged through the knee-deep marshwater. "I mean I know I'm not really leader material, but Blake could totally pull it off! Why not them? Why Emerald fucking Sustrai, of all people?"
A pair of toned thighs coasted lazily past her vision, buoyed up by dust-enhanced rollerblades. "Sure you aren't just jealous, babe? She did save Blake's life."
"Yeah, after she tried to kill us like, what, five times?"
"Oh come on, it was only three. And you could tell her heart wasn't really in it the last time."
"Yeah, whatever. Let's just kill these stupid Grimm and go someplace dry. My hair is gonna be a wreck by the time we're done."
Neon chuckled, and despite her foul mood Yang grinned at the melodious sound. Time and trauma had stripped away some of Neon's exuberant attitude, toned down her fashion sense somewhat, but nothing could steal away her music. It was a part of her soul, a tune made sweeter by each passing day.
"And just what is so fun-"
Slick oiled leather against her leg dark silent shape on the edge of her vision
"Neon, I think we've got comp-"
Murky water rising like the earth beneath was breathing deep cascading off the hide of death given flesh
A looming abomination rose from the bog like a dark and ancient god, torn from the pages of whispered legend to enact cruel vengeance on those who had consigned it there. Teeth like daggers, cracked and yellowed, flashed in a maw black as midnight, yawning wide with a shuddering roar that sent ripples through the water.
It lifted itself from the mire, revealing wiry limbs plated in bone as it rose…
and rose…
and continued to rise until it loomed above the treetops, perched like an oily black spider over the landscape.
Gleaming red eyes regarded the pair with a curious air, impassive even as it surged forward to attack.
"Nothing's hurting it, Yang! It just shrugged off your semblance; we need to get out of here!" And that wasn't even the worst of it. The monstrosity struck with such force as to render even Yang's aura worthless; by now they both bore scrapes and gashes from where it had managed to graze them.
Yang grunted as a darting talon carved a hunk of steel from her gauntlets. "Tricky part is getting away! I think we need to try- shit!" Razor teeth snapped shut only inches from her face, cleaving the trunk of an unfortunate tree in half.
"Try what? We can't do Nightcore Remix with all these trees around," Neon began counting on her fingers as she continued, "Rocket Propelled Girlfriend doesn't work on water, and we don't have the time or the aura to set up The Ballistic Blonde! If anything we should just-"
"NEON!"
It was almost ponderous, in the way that things are when their size outstrips their speed. A massive, carapaced limb swung low, just low enough to clip Neon's forehead, crushing her aura like so much tinfoil.
Her feet slipped out from beneath her and the world spun dizzyingly, then went black.
Consciousness, when it returned, did so in fragments.
A glowing mane of sunlight gold, crimson eyes flashing with unrestrained fury.
The feeling of brief weightlessness before a sudden landing in thick, cold water.
The staccato blast of a weapon firing, splintered bone flying through the air, a deafening roar of pain.
A sound like stone hitting wet concrete, followed by a soft grunt.
All these, yet it was the stillness that brought her surging back to wakefulness. She shot upright, gasping at the white-hot haze of agony roiling in her head. Murky water covered her legs until she struggled upright, leaning against a damp tree trunk for support. She panted heavily, spitting in a vain attempt to purge the taste of mud and moss from her palate.
"Yang? You there, babe?"
A fleck of gold in the corner of her vision caught Neon's eye. Yang was slumped against a fallen tree, her face shrouded by soaked hair.
"Yang?" Neon began to struggle through the muck to reach her partner's side, pausing to growl in frustration and tear off her ruined roller blades. "Yang are you alri-" she cut herself off with a sharp gasp.
A long talon, shattered and scorched at the end but still thicker around than Neon's forearm, was embedded below Yang's right shoulder. Around her, the already murky water pooled dark crimson.
"Ya… YANG!" Neon rushed to her side. Her scroll was in hand in an instant, and she punched the button to call for emergency evacuation with shaking fingers. "Nonono no, come on, talk to me, babe, talk to me!"
She brushed the hair from Yang's face, cupping her cheek - cold, too cold - and staring pleadingly into dull and half-lidded eyes. "Come on, Yang, don't- shit, Yang, don't die on me!" Neon pressed an ear to her partner's chest, listening intently, desperately.
Faint, unsteady, but alive. To her ears the quiet rhythm became perfection, and she clung to the sound fiercely. The hell was in the helplessness; she had never had medical training, and the blow to the head had sapped her aura thoroughly. Nothing to do but wait, and listen, and pray.
Just like when Atlas fell.
Watching the school, her home, crumble to ruin as they evacuated. Knowing her sister was in there, somewhere, alone.
Pinned by the wreckage of their crashed Bullhead, unable to do anything but scream herself hoarse as an endless tide of Grimm tore her team apart.
The look in Flynt's eyes, the sorrowful smile when he expended the last scraps of his aura to hide her behind a warped slab of metal.
The memories brought with them a mantra she'd nearly forgotten, that had been buried with her friends.
Never miss a beat, never miss a beat.
She could hear Yang's pulse weakening, feel the warmth fading from her limbs. She bit back a sob, pleading in strained whispers.
Never miss a beat, never miss a beat.
"Please please please, not you too, not you, Yang, please."
Never miss a beat, never miss a beat.
So faint, so slow, and yet the sound of Yang's heart drowned out the landing airship and murmuring medics. She could still hear it, she felt, even when Yang lay across from her, bandaged and still as they ascended.
Yang had many friends, and thus many visitors during her long stay in the predictably well-equipped Beacon infirmary. Blake and Emerald, side-by-side as ever, checked in daily. The crease never quite left Blake's brow during the days their former partner remained unconscious, and their already quiet demeanor became all but silent. Emerald's veneer of aloofness fell, replaced by the earnest worry that so often lurked beneath it.
Weiss and her sister visited, somber and serious, and ensured that everything that could be done for Yang was being done.
Ruby's visit was agony for Neon. She had perhaps expected wailing and sobbing, maybe fury that she would allow Yang to be injured so grievously, but instead… instead Ruby was simply quiet. She slipped into the room so softly that Neon might not have noticed her were it not for the metallic tak tak of Penny's feet against the tile. She sat at Yang's bedside with Penny over her shoulder, and listened to the slow rise and fall of her sister's chest for long, silent minutes.
When she spoke, her words cut through the silence like a lighthouse through ocean fog.
"See you soon, sis. One way or another."
Apparently satisfied, Ruby turned to Neon. Her expression was unreadable, doubtless intentionally so, but she seemed aged somehow, as though the strain of seeing her beloved sister wounded so had torn the youth from her body.
"She kept you safe, right?"
"Yeah, Ruby. She did. I- I'm so sorr-"
"Good. I'm… I'm glad."
And then she was gone, leaving that sterile hospital stillness behind her.
Neon was discharged before long - her aura had made short work of the moderate concussion - but she rarely left Yang's side even then. She would sit, fiddling with something, anything, to keep her hands busy, and watch. She would watch the way the sunlight played across Yang's face, dappled by her irrepressible mane, watch the subtle shift of the blankets with her breathing, slow but blessedly steady.
She watched, and watched, and so she was watching when Yang's breathing hitched, just a little, and her eyes fluttered open. She watched, speechless around the tightness in her throat, as those beautiful lilac eyes turned to her, and Yang spoke in a dry whisper.
"Hey, you. How's your head?"
She couldn't help but laugh at that, at her lover's stubborn compassion, even as the tears came. Even as she wrapped Yang in as tight an embrace as she dared, even as the line between joyous laughter and sobs of sheer relief turned grey and thin, she laughed at the sheer audacity of the girl she called home.
Yang was discharged the next day, and they returned together to the team's dorm. They slept soundly that night, wrapped in each other's arms. Neon kept her head close to Yang's heart, and let that wonderful muted rhythm sing her to sleep.