The unmistakable face of Weiss Schnee, silently screaming at her in the dark of the eel's mouth, drowned in the water but still gripping her leg with purpose. It was a sight that seared into Neo's mind. She wasn't sure if the girl was still alive or, considering how her body melded into the flesh of the eel, was simply a puppet part of its body like the others had been before. If this remnant of Weiss served the sole purpose of shocking the eel's prey to prevent them from escaping, and possibly pulling them down into the depths of the monster's throat, then Neo could not let it take her.

But, on the off chance that it was still Weiss Schnee, in any capacity beyond just physical appearance, she couldn't just leave her here. At the very least, even if Weiss was already dead, they needed something. They all needed, if nothing else, someone to bury. The chance to say goodbye, properly. To anyone.

At first, Neo couldn't think of any way to accomplish what she wanted to do, but a moment after she made her decision to cut Weiss free, a sharp knife of ice punctured the eel's neck, sticking into the dark interior. Pulling herself free from Weiss' icy grip, Neo swam back to the shining shard of ice and grabbed it, breaking it off. Returning, she gripped it in her hand and stabbed it into the base of the eel's tongue, just short of where Weiss' legs would be if there were any legs attached to her. She stabbed it again and again, clouds of Dust filling the water, pouring out of the wounds she was creating. She went at it, savagely tearing apart the red flesh until it began to rip apart and she could cut large chunks off, throwing them away from her, until Weiss' body was freed from the eel's tongue.

She floated freely for a second, slowly drifting downwards to the bottom of the monster's cavernous mouth. Neo swam over and grabbed onto the fleshy mass wrapped around Weiss' legs, trying to pull it free. She hoped it wasn't attached to her. That would make removing it much worse for both of them, assuming Weiss was even conscious of what was happening. To Neo's surprise, the meat just fell away once she started pulling at it, as if removing her from the tongue had destroyed whatever was holding her in place. Now that Weiss was free from her meaty prison, Neo just had to get the both of them out of the giant eel's mouth.

The mouth was sealed shut, locked in death, but as the ice that had speared the side of its head fell away, a new exit appeared. Neo kicked her feet, propelling herself towards the gaping wound and dragging Weiss' body with her. This would be the third monster she had found herself inside, but she consoled herself with the knowledge that they had all met their end shortly after swallowing her. With that victorious thought in mind, she shoved her wrench into the hole in the eel's side, using it to pull herself and Weiss out to freedom. Once she had extricated them both from the dead monster's corpse, they tumbled down its side and landed on the bottom of the tower. The dead head slid off the side, disappearing into the darkness below them.

Neo dropped the wrench, wrapping both arms around Weiss and kicking off of the floor, swimming for their air pocket up above. If Weiss was going to drown, she would have done that already. The battle continued around them, and the eel was clearly losing. Three of the heads were already dead, leaving the last two outnumbered. They were the biggest of the five, and the strongest, but Raven and Penny looked to be more than a match for them. Raven was creating large spears of ice and launching them at the eels, while Penny stabbed at them with her blades. Even Ruby was dealing damage, having stabbed Hush into one of the eels' back and riding the monster around the tower as it desperately tried to shake her off. This gave Neo more than enough of a distraction to make her way up around the generators to the air pocket room near the top.

She pushed her way up through the entrance and threw Weiss half onto the floor, climbing out of the water and pulling Weiss the rest of the way out. Quickly moving to take off her air tank, Neo knelt down next to Weiss and started trying to figure out if she was even still alive. First was checking her pulse. Neo stuck her finger against the girl's neck, looking for any sign of a heart beat. It was to no avail, since the moment she tried, Weiss started coughing up water. There was no way she could find a pulse while Weiss was sputtering and rolling over to try and force the water out of her lungs.

Thinking quick, Neo remembered that Weiss would likely have no idea that the two of them were not enemies here. She used her Semblance to turn into a mirror image of Ruby, and then did her best to fake a squeaky high-pitched voice. "Weiss! Weiss, are you okay?"

Weiss looked up over her shoulder. "Ruby?" She was quiet for a second as she took in the person before her. "You're not Ruby."

Caught. Neo sighed and dropped the illusion. "Okay, I'm not, but Ruby is outside fighting a giant monster."

It took a moment for all of that to sink in, but Weiss was an intelligent woman and her recent terrible experience clearly hadn't taken that from her. She recognized who was kneeling next to her. "You're... A giant monster?"

"No I'm not."

"No, I mean..." She gave a huff of annoyance. "What kind of giant monster? Why am I naked?"

"Hoo boy, is that an answer." Neo clasped her hands together in front of her and took a moment to think over how to explain the situation. "There is a giant eel monster with multiple heads out there. It ate me, and I found you inside its mouth. I freed you and brought you here, and holy shit am I surprised you're even awake, let alone not braindead. I would have thought you'd have drowned."

Weiss blinked in surprise. "I was eaten by a giant eel?"

"Uh, no, not quite. When I found you, you were... attached to it. Like, you were part of it."

"You have got to be joking, right?" She started looking around for anything to wear, not at all comfortable with just being naked in front of Neo like this. "Where are we?"

Neo stood up and moved over to the entrance, looking down into the water. "I don't think there's anymore clothes around here. I'd be surprised, anyway. We're in Mantle's power plant. We came here to turn it on so we could get to Atlas, but this eel monster was here sucking up all the power. Once we kill it, power should be returned to the city. But then when I was inside one of the eel's heads, I found you, which gives me an idea of who is inside the others."

Weiss turned to look at her. She could hear the concern in Neo's voice. "Who?"

"There's two more heads out there still fighting the others. I bet they're your father and your sister."

Getting up, Weiss joined Neo and looked down into the water. "My father... and Winter... Well then we have to rescue them, like you rescued me!"

"Do we?"

"Of course we do! They're trapped inside a giant monster, of course we have to rescue them! That's what a Huntress does." After a couple seconds of waiting for Neo to agree, Weiss gave up and jumped back into the water on her own.

Splashing down into the clear blue water that filled the tower, Weiss quickly looked around to take stock of the situation. There were indeed two giant eel heads still fighting. She could see Yang's mother and some absolutely desolate robot battling the giant beasts, and sure enough there was someone who fit with Ruby's size, shape, and propensity for hanging on to giant monsters. That was all well and good, but Weiss didn't have a weapon with her. She couldn't join the fight, and what's more, she couldn't think of any way to convey to those three that she needed to rescue her family.

She looked below, seeing the dead bodies of three other eel heads. That seemed strange, so she swam down to investigate, leaving the battle behind her. Down in the depths, she found a strange scene. While there were dead eels, there was something else happening. Swirls of multi-colored Dust floated up through the water, and she had to swat it away from her to keep it from getting in her eyes too much. Swimming down past the source of the Dust, which was the gaping wounds in the eels, she was able to find something else. The five long bodies of the eels melded into one huge body that was coiled around the capacitors. It was feeding off the power held inside. That wasn't the most striking thing about it. There, where the five eels joined, was some kind of cancerous growth in the body. It almost looked like a human body and face, but was warped beyond all hope of salvation. Whoever was trapped inside this eel down here had to be in agony. If she'd had Myrtenaster, Weiss would have ended their pain in an instant, but her sword was gone.

That didn't mean she couldn't put them out of their misery. Forming a glowing glyph in the water in front of her, Weiss created a spear of ice and aimed it for the unlucky soul trapped within the eel's flesh. She closed her eyes and silently apologized to whoever that person was. There was no way she could save this one, but she would try to save the ones that were, according to Neo, probably still trapped inside their mouths. She launched the crystalline spear and impaled the mutated body.

A shrill screech filled the water, and the eel monster's whole body convulsed. Even the dead heads laying on the floor of the tower shuddered and released earsplitting whines. Weiss, aware that she might have just inadvertently killed the beast, started swimming back up so as to get out of the way when the two eels up above began to collapse down into the tower's lower level. She didn't want to be crushed under its massive corpse, and sure enough, just as she was out, one of the heads slammed into the floor right next to her and then slid into the hole below. The last eel head crashed down on her other side in much the same manner, but then opened its eyes as it lay dying.

The eel opened its mouth, and Weiss could hear its voice in her head. "You... may think you are free... but you will never escape me... daughter..." And then its mouth fell shut, dead. The monster was defeated, and it sunk into the abyss, its flesh dissolving.

Weiss let out her breath in relief, then watched in horror as that breath escaped in the form of bubbles. She remembered that she was still underwater, and immediately kicked off of the tower's floor to start swimming back up to the air pocket she had left Neo in. Ruby was up there with the others, and together they would be able to save... someone. Weiss couldn't remember who it was that needed saving.