Neo rubbed her hand on her throat. It felt sore, and she was starting to wonder if whatever had happened that was making her talk was going away. As annoying as it was not to be able to keep her thoughts from coming out her mouth, she had been getting used to it. No, that wasn't quite right. It hadn't been long enough to get used to a change as drastic as this. She wasn't used to it. She just didn't want to lose it so soon. As a utility, it was invaluable to her, as the ability to communicate verbally with Ruby could mean the difference between survival and death. Definitely not because she found she actually enjoyed speaking with Ruby instead of having to write or use sign language.

She took in the landscape around her idly. It was beautiful and horrific at the same time. Houses buried up to the second floor in water and ice, with snow now piling a foot and a half. The entire sky had become overcast, with the snow falling down, and no end in sight. It was cold, very cold in fact, but not so cold they couldn't keep going. The snow wasn't beating down on them very hard either, making it all a much more pleasant experience than Neo thought it should be. Just knowing that the street they were walking down was actually ten feet below them was the most surreal part at the moment. She suspected it wouldn't be too long before another monster showed its face and stole all the surrealism for itself. She was so distracted by the terrain that she bumped into Ruby's back.

Ruby half-turned to Neo. "Sorry about that. You okay?"

Neo rubbed her nose. "Yeah, I'm fine. Why'd we stop?"

"Well, cause we don't have to go any further right now." She turned back to the building directly ahead of them. "We're here."

Neo looked ahead at the wide building. The front was half under the ice, so they weren't going to be getting in through the door, and from what she could see of the windows, they were covered with metal plating. Alarmed, she looked past the entrance to the tower at the back of the complex. It rose up at least seven stories past the top of the rest of the power plant. This was going to be a serious challenge, if they couldn't find a way into the facility. She returned her gaze to the ground, where she saw Penny reaching up to the roof of the main building.

"What's the plan? What are you doing?"

"I'm going to climb the tower." Penny answered matter-of-factly. Pulling a heap of snow off the roof as she clamored up, the robot stood and looked down at them. "I've already looked for any entrance at this level. The only place I haven't looked is the top of the tower."

Ruby nodded, acknowledging the logic, but held up a mitten. "Is that wise in this weather? Last time it got this cold, it wasn't long before everything froze over. If we're caught exposed up there, we'll die." Waving her arms around emphatically, she added. "There's no cover, no way to get shelter up there, and on top of that it's already going to be icy. We're bound to slip and fall and die."

Neo narrowed her eyes at the tower. There were enough places to grab onto that climbing should have been possible, but with Ruby's warning in mind, she noticed something very strange. She tapped Ruby on the shoulder. "Hey, take a look at that house over there." She pointed to a house just down the street. There was snow piled up on its roof, puffing up into a big overhang with icicles that reached down to the ground.

Ruby was confused. She shrugged. "Okay, what about it?"

"Now look at that lamppost." Sticking up out of the ice was a streetlight, piled high with snow, and coated with ice.

"I don't get it- Neo, we need to figure out a way to get inside the power plant." Ruby turned away, but Neo put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back.

"Look, look, that building over there." Another building, buried under snow and adorned with ice. She saw that Ruby was starting to get annoyed, so she grabbed her and turned her back to the tower. She pointed up, her arm right next to Ruby's face, her finger directing Ruby's eyes to focus on the top of the tower. "There's no snow. There are no icicles."

"Oh. Oh..." Ruby cupped her hands around her mouth and called up to their robot guide. "Hey, Penny! Does that tower have some kind of shielding from the weather?"

Penny took a moment to comprehend the question, then turned and analyzed the tower in front of her. She looked it up and down, noting the signs of the cold, or rather the lack of them. She walked back over to the edge of the roof and knelt down to talk to her friend. "I do not believe this building has any active shielding, but it does seem to be giving off a certain amount of heat. It's very strange... I think the power generators are active, and that is what's producing the heat. The water filling the facility may also have a higher temperature than I anticipated."

Ruby laughed out loud. "Oh, shit. Really? Then I'm going up that tower with you." She started climbing onto the roof next to Penny, who reached down and gave her a hand. "Hell with this blizzard. I'm going to get some hot tub time."

"Oh, it's finally time for the beach episode?" Neo scrambled up after her, standing up on the roof and brushing the snow off her clothes. She gave Ruby a quick nod. "Let's go live our best life. Warm water, here we come."

Penny watched as the other two shared a high five. She shrugged and turned back to the tower, breaking into a run towards it. Reaching the point where the main building connected to the tower, she latched onto the side and began to scale it. Taking their time, Ruby and Neo arrived at the base and started to climb as well. They noticed right away that the metal walls of the tower were not cold. They weren't quite warm, but they could feel there was warmth hidden on the other side. It took no more than three minutes for Penny to make her way all the way to the top, where she stopped, hanging off the edge by her fingers, with one foot on an external piece of the framework.

Ruby grumbled something incoherent as she had to move over to the side so she could climb around Penny. She realized why Penny had stopped when she reached the top next to her friend. She clamped her metal hand over the top of the tower and pulled her body up, slapping her still-human arm onto the roof with a loud splash. She felt heat washing over her arm and, at first, thought she was being burned. Penny reached over and caught her, holding her to the tower to stop her from falling. After a few seconds of flailing and panicking, Ruby stopped. Calming down, she looked to Penny, who let go of her. Ruby held onto the top of the tower with her mechanical arm and reached her other arm out over the water. Steam rose off the surface, warming her. She felt a smile creep its way onto her face, and quickly plunged her whole arm in. It wasn't scalding. It wasn't freezing. It was warm water.

Looking back down to where Neo was still struggling to climb, Ruby called down to her. "Hurry up! It's warm water! It's not dangerous at all!"

Neo stopped climbing, resting her forehead against the wall. She needed to catch her breath. It was harder for her to climb than it was for Penny, a literal machine, and Ruby, who was simply taller and had more reach than Neo. Once she was ready to move again, she reached up and jammed her fingertips into the space between two wall panels, then pushed off the light she'd been standing on, leaping up and grabbing onto a cable that wrapped around the outside of the tower. It was pretty loose and sagged under her weight, but it was held firmly in place enough that she could trust it. Moving her other hand over to the cable, she hauled herself up and stuck her foot through the gap between the cable and the tower. One hand up, fingertips crammed into another crack between two panels, she put her foot on the cable and stood up, balancing on it. If she lost her balance here, it was a good sixty foot drop to the ground. She doubted she would survive that.

Suddenly, a cable dangled in front of Neo's face. She looked up to see Ruby standing on the roof, letting the cable down to her. "Come on, grab it!"

Neo took it in her hands and let Ruby pull her up to the roof, where they sat together, taking in their accomplishment. Watching the snow fall, looking out over the white landscape of Mantle, a city sleeping in a thick blanket of winter. Ruby put her arm around Neo, tugging at her to get up. After some obligatory protest, Neo followed Ruby over to the spot the other two had found. A small area of the roof had collapsed, or been broken through. Crystal clear, warm, steaming water bubbled gently just inside. The tower was filled up to the very top with water, and here they were with nothing to do but enjoy it.

The heat radiating off of the water was enough that they could feel it on their faces if they leaned in close, but not much more than that. Still, ignoring the chilly wind and the snow falling onto the roof around them, where the flakes quickly disappeared, Ruby and Neo began to strip off their winter clothes, and then everything under them. First, Ruby jumped in, causing a large splash that spilled water over the edge of the tower and across the roof. She sank down several feet, then kicked her legs to head back up to the surface, only to find that she was still sinking. Within seconds, Penny dove into the water and swam down to Ruby, wrapping her arm around Ruby's waist and guiding her back up to the air above.

Ruby broke the surface and coughed and sputtered for a bit. She hadn't been under for too long, but she wasn't looking forward to sinking and drowning anytime soon. She rested her upper body on the roof, her arms sprawled out in front of her, and her breasts pressed onto the roof's metal plating. While the warm water enveloping her lower half made her want to relax and go to sleep, the cold wind kept her awake and... perky. Neo sat next to her, dangling her legs in the water and kicking them back and forth as she watched Penny climb out and shake the water out of her joints.

Ruby eyed Neo's chest. Grinning mischievously, she rolled onto her back, spreading her arms out wide to keep from sliding into the water again. "You're gonna get cold if you stay out of the water, Neo. Come in and join me."

"I'm fine, thank you."

Ruby wasn't about to accept that answer. She pulled herself up and flopped on top of Neo, landing her face in the woman's lap. Wrapping her arms around the startled Neo, Ruby snuggled in. "Come play with meeeeee." She looked up to see Neo assaulting her with a pouting face. She gave a lame late attempt at being polite. "Please?"

Neo relented. "Okay, okay, I'll play with you."