Summary: Neon assists Team RWBY during the Fall of Beacon. One year passes . . .
Never miss a beat, never miss a beat.
Where is Yang? She wasn't supposed to go this far, and yet Neon couldn't find a sign of her or Blake anywhere. Except for the thankfully few dead, she'd seen little but rubble and Atlesian Knights since she left the courtyard - the Grimm had already been drawn towards the fleeing and fighting. Most of the corpses belonged to the White Fang - that's what you get for air-dropping Grimm into the city alongside your ground troops.
Never miss a beat, never miss a beat.
The Knights were thankfully slow, but there were a lot of them, and freezing them or destroying them was running her low on resources just as fast as trying to speed past them was. Realistically, she needed to turn around if she was going to make it back to the courtyard in one piece. But Yang and Blake were still out here, somewhere . . .
Never miss a beat.
At least, their corpses must be. Any second now, she would -
BANG!
BANG!
That wasn't the automatic fire from the Knights, and it wasn't Yang's dust shells, either. Someone else must be out here, fighting.
Shit. Neon pivoted towards the sound as soon as she reached an intersection, riding along the walls to get over the broken hulls of a dozen or more Atlesian Knights. Someone was definitely fighting near here, and recently. Just-
"YANG!"
From a nearby alleyway, Blake Belladonna came limping, clutching her guts with one hand, the other dragging Yang by the waist. Yang wasn't walking on her own at all - either her legs had given out, or she'd fallen unconscious. And-
"Fuck, Blake!" Neon shouted as she dropped down into the street. "What happened to her? Her arm; is she-"
Blake barely seemed to process Neon was in front of her; she paused for an instant, glanced back down the alley, then rushed forward against as a loud BANG followed them, tearing through a wall on the other side of the street. Ballistic rounds, not dust. Whoever was shooting was shooting to kill.
"Shit, okay," she said, "I'll cut them off. Just get Yang to-"
"Don't," Blake cut her off, reaching back and grasping her shirt. Her hand was covered in blood, fresh enough to begin soaking into Neon's clothes. "He'll kill you. Run."
Neon traced the line of Blake's arm back down to her stomach, and saw what she had been covering - a stab in her stomach was actively bleeding, and even the brief second she'd released pressure made it worse. Blake immediately doubled over, dropping her hand back to her belly.
The facts clicked in reverse. Yang was missing an arm and Blake had been stabbed. Both of their auras were gone. Someone beat them both. Making the wrong call meant they were all dead.
"Okay," Neon nodded. "Keep going. I'll cover you."
As she said this, she cracked her nunchucks until they glowed bright, then made a wide swipe across the ground. A low wall of ice split the street - not enough to stop whoever was following them, but maybe something to give them pause.
Neon and Blake's panic had more than one man following them, though - they'd barely made it back to the intersection before Neon spotted Grimm on the rooftops, watching them like carrion birds.
The wall had maybe been a bad use of dust, but there was no time left to think about that. "I'll keep them back. Just keep moving."
And with that, the street became a blur again.
Never miss a beat, never miss a beat.
A scream unlike anything Neon had ever heard ripped through the sky, and she didn't even get to stop and watch as a literal mountain was ripped apart.
They made it back in pieces, but they made it back to the courtyard. By the time they arrived, everyone else had made it back as well, except a couple of students from Beacon: Jaune Arc and Pyrrha Nikos. Pyrrha at least was a name Neon recognized - the Invincible Girl. The one who had ripped that mechanical girl apart. The last Neon had seen of her, she'd been all by paralyzed, but apparently she never evacuated, and Jaune had gone after her.
Ruby, Yang's sister, arrived just a second ago, frozen as Neon had been at the sight of Yang lying unconscious with a heavily bandaged Blake beside her. Just two injured among dozens, while a massive Grimm circled the school. Neon needed to focus on other things.
"Neon? You still with us?"
"What?" She asked, her attention snapping back to her teammates.
"It's evac time. We can't afford to stay here any longer," Flynt said flatly. "The school's lost."
Neon shook her head. "That's not the point - they're . . . they've got friends inside still."
"Who?"
"Team RWBY, can't you . . . ugh," Neon groaned. Now was not the time for confusion about her having better hearing than her teammates. "They're still waiting for two people. Pyrrha and Jaune."
"Not to be the guy with bad news, but they're dead. That thing just keeps dropping more and more Grimm - if they're not out by now, they're gone."
Ruby and Weiss waved goodbye to their friends, then turned and started running towards the school.
"Neon, just stay, the ship will be here any - NEON!"
It only took her a few seconds to catch up to Ruby and Weiss, but as she did, the dragon screamed. Like a summons, dozens of grim climbed from the pools of black ooze it dropped over the school, encircling the courtyard. Not too many, but everyone was running low.
"Team RWBY!" Neon called as she came parallel to them. "What can I do?"
They didn't break stride, but Ruby was surprised. "Neon . . .?"
Without any further clarification, though, Ruby continued, "Just keep the Grimm back - I'm going to climb the tower."
"You're going to - to . . . ARE YOU GOING TO GO FIGHT THAT THING?" Neon pointed at the dragon, which took off and began circling once again a second later.
"Pyrrha's at the top; I don't have a choice. Just - fight!"
And with that, there was no more time to explain. Weiss and Neon split up, clearing at the Grim as quickly as they could while Ruby provided supporting fire. As soon as there was a lull, Ruby called, "We've got to hurry!"
Weiss nodded as Neon regrouped with them, then started forming glyphs along the side of the tower. "You can do this," she said quietly, and Ruby was gone without a moment of hesitation. Her semblance was enough to get her a few stories up, and from there, she just sprinted to the top.
"The dragon's looping back . . . is she going to make it?" Neon asked, more to herself than Weiss.
"She has to."
And she did - somehow, Ruby made it to the top in seconds, while the dragon simply landed on the side of the tower and called forth a new wave of enemies.
"Don't die," Neon said, testing her aura for a second. She had maybe one hit left, and then her speed would be gone as well. No more chances for mistakes.
Never miss a beat.
"You either," Weiss replied.
Before either of them had a chance to split up again, though, a flash of white light spread from the top of the tower, out through the courtyard, blinding them both temporarily. When her vision came back, Neon found the Grimm around and above them frozen in place, as if they'd become stone.
"What the hell was that . . ."
Neon didn't get to find out what that flash of light was. As soon as the Grimm were frozen, her team came and extracted her, as did Weiss's companions from another team. Hunters arrived, and everyone agreed to wait for Ruby and Pyrrha's retrieval inside the safe zone while the most critically injured were taken further to receive medical attention. That of course included Yang and Blake, and yet . . .
"I'm not going," Blake said, stepping back from everyone.
"What - what do you mean? Blake, you're hurt, you have to-"
Weiss reached out to touch her, but Blake swatted her hand away. "Don't. I'm staying. You need to leave, okay? Get Ruby and get out. But I'm not going."
Blake turned and started to walk away, but Weiss followed her. Neon only watched from a distance.
"You can't be serious. You'll be killed - you get that, don't you? You already nearly were. Just come with us and-"
"And WHAT, Weiss?" Blake shouted, spinning around. "Get you killed? Get Yang and Ruby killed? I'm not coming with you, end of story."
"Blake, I don't know what you're talking about, but I-"
"Shut up. Shut up shut up SHUT UP! Leave me ALONE!"
And this was finally enough. Without another word, Weiss turned and walked away, and Blake did the same.
Not that it was hard for Neon to catch up with her.
"Running away?" Neon asked, coasting to a halt in front of her.
Blake stopped in her tracks, then crossed her arms over her chest. "The opposite. Why do you care?"
Neon shrugged. "I haven't had much time to have a reason, okay? But your teammate is right. Going off on your own to keep fighting is suicide. You're not stupid - why are you doing this?"
Neon had not been entirely sure that Blake even made facial expressions. Right now, she wasn't having any trouble expressing rage.
"Because - because he's OUT there, okay? I wasn't joking when I said he'd kill you; he's coming, and he's going to keep coming until everyone I . . ." she reached up and touched her face as if to wipe away tears, but she wasn't crying - probably too in-shock to cry. "I don't have a choice, okay? Thank you for helping me get Yang back to everyone, but please, get out of my way. I have to do this."
"You don't," Neon shook her head. Blake wasn't making any sense - if there really was someone out to get her, then the safest place for her and everyone else must be together, right? "Whoever you're talking about, together we can-"
Neon stopped talking as Blake's gun unfolded into a short sword.
"No," Blake said. "Stop talking."
And like Weiss before her, Neon got out of the way.
Unlike Weiss, she couldn't pass up a parting shot: "WHAT ABOUT YANG, HUH?"
Blake finished scrambling onto a rooftop, immediately gripping her stomach in pain once she was at the top. She turned back towards Neon on the ground and shouted back: "I'M DOING THIS FOR HER!"
And then she was gone.
Neon didn't get another opportunity to see any members of team RWBY before leaving Vale, and once she was gone, there was no CCT to communicate through anymore. That didn't stop her from sending texts to Yang - about one a day at first, then every so often, just in case the messages one day sent when the Tower was restored. Weeks, then months ticked by, and Neon stopped sending messages. The CCT was overrun for the forseeable future, and it was best for her to forget the people she met in Vale. Chances are, after all, that she would never see them again.
She did try, once, sending a hand-written letter through the mail. Her chances were slim, given that the only place she knew to send it was "Patch." She knew it wouldn't reach her. And by the year's end, she stopped hoping for a response.
That is, until a day one year later, where she was pulled from sleep by her scroll vibrating under her pillow. She pulled it out and stared at it cross-eyed for a second, too sleepy to really put in the effort.
Then, the picture came into view, and she gasped.
"I have to take this," she whispered in case she'd woken up any of her teammates, then hurried out into the dorm hallway, aiming straight for the bathroom.
Yang, it read simply.
She clicked Accept and held the phone to her ear.
Author's Note: Hey there folks. I started Neon Flames as a fun one-off after rewatching V3 E5 "Never Miss a Beat" and being really struck by how much of an asshole Neon is, and how much I felt like she'd click with Yang. It's been almost three years since then, as I've tacked on pieces, trying to avoid having my knowledge of the show past V3 impact what I write here. And I did it - this is the story I set out to tell back then, with the small addition that Yang and Neon may see each other again earlier than I expected.
I hope you enjoyed Neon Fire. If you'd be interested in more potential canon-compliant Neon x Yang (x Blake) once Volume 7 comes out, just let me know! I still love these kids years down the line, even if my interest in the RWBY canon has waned.
And if you've read the story, and you feel so inclined, please tell me what you thought of it! About Yang and Neon, about Yang/Neon, or anything else that might have caught your fancy about this story. I really love and appreciate feedback, especially on completed works, so even if you find this much later and the RWBY canon is complete, you're still free to come talk to me about this little ship I've tried to nurture.