The light twisted once again, and the world began to change.

Neo was swimming in the lead, guiding the others down through the moving parts of the power plant. Through her earlier scouting, she had found a small pocket of air inside the building. It was, in fact, inside one of the large generators that transformed Dust from fuel to electricity that ran through the entire city, or at least would have if any of the power being produced left the facility. This looked to be a maintenance room or control room for the flow of energy, which held promise in both being useful as well as giving them something to breathe further into the tower. Neo had estimated that the entrance to this small enclosure was about twenty feet below the roof of the tower. As she climbed out of the water and into the air pocket, Neo stepped over to the control panel at the far end of the room.

Ruby, then Raven, climbed into the room after her. They were all soaked through, but on the other hand none of them were wearing anything, and the water was warm, so it wasn't actually a bad experience, especially after their previous experiences. Ruby sat down, while Raven went over to the panel Neo was inspecting. Neither of them was an expert at this, but from what they could tell there were no problems with the power plant. It was producing energy at a normal rate. It was just that the energy was being diverted before it left the building. They both silently determined they would need Penny for this.

Penny popped her head up above the surface of the water, putting her hand on the floor and pulling herself out. She looked over to Ruby and commented, "Twenty-two feet, not twenty. Still, it's a miracle everything still works in here. None of the conduits have broken, none of the cables are exposed to the water. It's almost like the whole thing was sealed and then filled with water very carefully."

Ruby sat up straight, then scrambled to her feet quickly. "Intentionally? Not just flooded by the rain?"

"I don't think so. There would be signs of other kinds of damage near that hole in the roof, at the very least. Not to mention, no rust at all." Penny knocked on the wall beside her. "It's in perfect condition, except for being full of water, which doesn't seem to be hindering its functionality at all."

Neo stepped away from the console. "Penny, would you mind taking a look at this? I'm not sure what's going on here, but I think it says the power is being diverted to a location below the tower."

Curiously, Penny went around Neo and took her place at the console. She tapped on the keyboard, taking in the information on the small holographic screen. An electronic hum started to come from her head, changing its pitch awkwardly like she was humming. "Ahh, not below the tower. The bottom of the tower, which is below ground. There's about forty feet of subterranean space in the bottom, mostly the engine that keeps the plant going. Where the Dust is processed. Why the energy would be going back in there I don't know, unless... capacitors. It's all flowing into the capacitors."

Ruby cautiously looked down into the water again. "Below ground, huh? I get the feeling it's more than just capacitors down there. In fact, I think we've just found another one of those monsters."

Neo let out a tired groan. "I'd really rather not deal with that. Well, who do you think this one is?"

"Nora? Maybe Hazel. Just sitting down there soaking up electric power. It's probably one of them." Ruby shook her head sadly. "I don't suppose we can know at all unless we go take a look. I hate just assuming that someone we know has turned into a monster."

"A monster we still don't know exists." Raven walked past the two of them and started getting back into the water. "I don't suppose it'd be as simple as just killing this hypothetical monster, and the power will return to the city. So tell me what I need to do, Penny."

The robot shook her head. "I don't know what to tell you. From here, it looks just like all this power is going into a capacitor... but so much power has gone into it, the capacitor can't possibly just be holding it all. I can't give you a solid objective without knowing what the state of the capacitor is."

"Got it. I'll head down and take a look around. Be back in a minute." Raven slid into the water and disappeared from sight.

Penny turned to see where the woman had just been. Ruby couldn't tell, because the robot girl's worn and rusted face was too stiff and mechanical to show any proper displays of emotion, but the stiff body language looked like serious concern. Part of her wanted to hurry and follow Raven, to make sure she would be okay, but another part of her worried that she needed more information. Raven probably should have waited to hear the rest of what Penny had to say.

Ruby gave Penny a nod. "Go ahead. What else?"

"Oh, right..." Penny turned back to the console in front of her. "There is something here that doesn't make sense. The power plant creates electricity, using Dust as fuel for the process. I know there's a reserve of Dust here, so that it keeps running even in the event of a shortage. It's meant to be able to continue unmanned like this for a year before more Dust needs to be added. It should have run out... a very long time ago."

"Odd..." Neo puzzled at that revelation. "Do you think it's been active this whole time? Or could someone have only recently restarted the facility?"

"That might be the case, or it has been used intermittently and sparingly. But I can't be sure without accessing the logs. I'll see if I can find a record of when it has been turned on and off."

Satisfied with that, Neo smiled to Ruby. "Maybe it's just a glitch and it only started up recently. Or someone turned it on, which means there's someone else still alive here too. Maybe that Summer Maiden?"

Ruby felt a pang of hope, which was quickly replaced by doubt. The only person besides the four of them that they knew was still alive was Summer, Ruby's mother, which they only knew because Raven opened a portal to her. Or at least, she claimed that she did. They were also just taking Raven's word that her portals only connected to living people. Assuming Raven was being truthful, that meant Summer was alive, which left Ruby with more questions. Given everything else, she wouldn't be surprised to find that her mother, Summer Rose, was in fact the Summer Maiden. It seemed fitting, now that she thought about it, but it didn't quite add up. Raven had four connections, not three. Qrow, Taiyang, Yang, and Summer were the four people those portals opened up to. The portal leading to Summer had only started opening again more recently. However recently, Raven hadn't quite been clear about, but that did mean Summer was not dead now, but either had been dead before or the connection was blocked somehow.

"If the three of you are from this world, and I'm not..." Ruby was cautious about making this leap, but a lot of things were starting to point to it as a possibility. She had to state the idea out loud to see if it held up. "What if... Summer... isn't, either?"

Neo was silent, crossing her arms and frowning at this sudden epiphany.

Penny, seeing the tense atmosphere starting to brew, though she didn't get why, decided to answer Ruby's question as though it were nothing more than an innocent question. "Summer Rose... and Ruby Rose... transported from some parallel Remnant and into this one. Where, if Summer Rose really did die all those years ago, her reappearance in this world from another world... Would that trigger a reconnection with Raven's Semblance?"

Ruby nodded thoughtfully. "A different person, but an identical soul. Our history is exactly the same, though, right up until just before the parasites fell from the sky. That's where the change is between my world and this one, so that means my mother died in my world too. But if we're dealing with two different versions of Remnant, why not three?"

"Well, why not five then?" Neo interrupted. "Hell, why not a different one for every monster out there? What's the point of asking this kind of question unless we can actually get a solid answer?"

"What?" Ruby blinked in surprise. "Why are you angry all of the sudden?"

"I'm not angry. I just don't think we should be going on about this. It shouldn't be our focus. We need to get out of Mantle and reach Atlas."

"Yes, okay, but wouldn't having another person with us better our chances? Especially if she's the Summer Maiden?"

"Not if she's from another dimension. If she's from another version of Remnant, another world, then she isn't our Summer Maiden."

"Okay, but she's still a capable fighter. She'd still be helpful to have with us. We should ask Raven to open a portal to Summer when she gets back."

"No, we shouldn't."

"Wha- Why?"

Neo let out an exasperated sigh. "Because, Ruby, I don't trust Raven. She's not trustworthy. There's a dozen different lies she could be telling us. For all we know, she made a connection to Salem and we'd be stepping right to our death. She could be crazy or just wrong. Like you said, if there's two different versions of Remnant, then why not three? There's nothing saying that the Summer Rose on the other side of that portal is even remotely the same as the one you knew or I knew."

Ruby stopped short, just a moment away from saying that Neo, Penny, and Raven weren't any different from the ones she knew before. There were glaring differences, but nothing that actually changed the person, in her mind. None of that mattered, anyhow, as Neo had said something that caught Ruby seriously off guard. "You knew her?"

"That... no... not really." Neo shrunk back. "I only met her once."

Ruby moved closer, putting her hands on Neo's shoulders and getting her face right up close to Neo's. "Tell me. Please. I want to know. Tell me what happened when you met her."

Taken aback, Neo didn't have the presence of mind to argue the matter. "O-okay... I think I was... maybe ten? Ten or eleven. It was just before she died, I think. I hadn't even met Roman yet."

"Incorrect information." Penny cut in matter-of-factly. "You are only three years older than Ruby. You would have been eight at the time of Summer Rose's death."

Neo gave it a moment's thought, then shot back over her shoulder at the robot. "No, that would mean I still had parents, which I didn't. I was at least ten."

Gently shaking Neo to get her attention back, Ruby drew her into a close hug. "Thank you for that. Now I know."

"Er, okay. Know what? I didn't really tell you what happened yet."

Releasing Neo again and stepping back, Ruby smiled. "Penny says you would have been eight, you say you were ten, meaning I was either five or seven. I was three. So now we know. Neo, this isn't your world either. There are differences. If we can find them, we can tell what does and doesn't belong here."

"Uh... okay, but I still don't know how that helps... at all."

"Well, for one thing..." Ruby leaned in close to Neo's face. "It means when I leave this world behind, I don't need to worry about leaving you here."

"Oh... I'm touched."

"That actually answers a few questions I still had." Ruby stood back, triumphantly putting her hands on her hips. "You suggested that maybe each of these monsters is from a different version of Remnant. Well, I think that might be true, because consider this. Hundreds of years have passed for Raven and Penny, according to them, but this world doesn't quite match that. There was food that was still good, running water and pipes that hadn't rusted, even this facility. There's no way it's been a hundred years for this building. What if, now think about this, what if this world isn't any of ours? The parasites haven't even been on Remnant for a year here, otherwise everything would be much more damaged."

"Okay, but the weather is out of control. That's because of Penny, here, using Maiden magic for years. How did it come here with her?"

"Easy. We're not in an alternate world at all." The three of them looked over to where Raven was pulling herself out of the water. She slumped over onto the floor and lay on her back. It occurred to Ruby that she would have had to have been under water holding her breath for several minutes at this point. Raven wasn't breathing hard, regardless. Instead, she just looked ready to go to sleep. Her red eyes flicked over to Ruby. "We're not in another dimension. We're just in a nightmare."

"How do you figure?" Ruby wasn't quite ready to just accept a hypothesis like that without evidence.

Raven closed her eyes, scrunching up her face in a sign of pain as she recalled what she'd just been through. "Ah... because there's a giant white eel down there soaking up all the electricity this place is making."

That was not solid evidence, as far as Ruby was concerned, but it warranted keeping the notion around as a possibility at least for the time being. Ruby looked back to Neo and Penny. "We uh... we need to fight another monster."