Chapter Twenty-Three: Pseudo-Celestials.

Escaping the Atlesian military was child's play. They were so blinded by hatred and their so-called superiority to ever consider looking at the bigger picture. As soon as she'd let them slap some handcuffs on her, they thought they'd already won. A pair of soldiers flanked her and grasped her firmly by the shoulders as they escorted her onto the elevator alongside the various other members of the military. Assuming the role of a defeated and mentally ill villainess was easy when you were at least half of those describing words. As such, she maintained that look of disbelief and shock for the entire downwards trip, whilst still managing to flash Ironwood a glare on occasion. In fact, she almost made him flinch.

She was escorted towards the various landing pads where a large Atlesian airship was docked, likely awaiting their arrival. The Atlesian airships always were an impressive sight to behold. Neo had to admit that, if anything, Atlas at least had style in their technology and weapons of war. Not her style, mind you, but they managed to make their military sleek and hi-tech. Not always an easy task since most people see the logic in making a weapon of war more effective at the cost of their appearance. Once again, Atlas proves that they are keen to overlook logic in the name of the bottom line.

As for the matter at hand, Neo had been training for moments like this. More specifically, she'd been exploring the extent of her semblance and its various limitations. The results were…mixed. She could hold an intangible illusion pretty much indefinitely, and it barely taxed her concentration. If anything, it took more effort to drop it, than it did to maintain it. But even so, she couldn't willingly sustain it when she was asleep. Physical illusions took more concentration to maintain and could only be held for a few hours at most. Fortunately, switching between the two was almost seamless. Furthermore, she knew her animated illusions could easily be manipulated but she now had proof – in the form of Roman Torchwick's shadowy devil persona – that they could also have a mind of their own.

She'd been afraid to toy with the idea of attempting to create some kind of false semblance of life until recently, but having an ally in combat which could take care of itself would certainly be incredibly helpful. She started with someone she knew well. Herself. Every day, in secret, she would summon an illusionary copy of herself and then…slowly drop her control over it. It usually just stood there, mindlessly blinking, and pretending to breathe. And then, she tried asking it to do something.

'Pick up that cup and pass it to me, please.'

And it did, before returning to standing there, mindlessly. Looks like they could follow basic commands and could fulfil them autonomously. And then she began increasing the difficulty of the tasks. For the most part, if Neo could imagine herself doing it, her illusionary clones could do it, and they could communicate telepathically, since Neo controlled them with her semblance. What did this amount to? Well, a lot, actually. Especially since Neo and her illusionary copies could share her aura, actually giving the illusions some semblance of endurance. Of course, any damage they took would also impact Neo's aura, so it's not like she was creating something from nothing.

But then…there were the limiting factors. Distance was a big one. Turns out, their connection with each other had a range of about three hundred metres. However, to Neo's surprise, her illusions didn't just disappear when crossing that threshold. Instead, they continued doing what they had been previously instructed. She just couldn't communicate with them or share her aura with them. It also continued to drain her concentration and very slowly sap her aura.

Another limiting factor was information. Just because an illusion's eyes saw something didn't mean that Neo, herself, did. Though the illusions could somehow see for themselves, they couldn't share what they saw whilst outside of that three hundred metre range. That meant Neo would have no idea what an illusion saw, if it went around a corner out of range.

The final problem was how long Neo could hold an illusion. Naturally, maintaining concentration on a single duplicate of herself was child's play in comparison to holding up several. But how long could she hold up a walking, tal- ahem… animate physical illusion which was following a predetermined directive? About three hours. That may seem like a long time, but it was actually a much shorter time than Neo had hoped for. If she had wanted two animated physical illusions, she could only maintain them for an hour before running out of aura. With three, only twenty minutes. Four for five, and five for two. However, these were much more advanced than simply manipulating an army of herself which she directly controlled. She could easily make a hundred of herself, but individually controlling an army was like playing three games of chess at the same time. As such, she preferred making a small team of herself which she could control with greater potency. I guess that would make her a one girl army… if said army had only the aura power of a single leaky faucet but the striking force and teamwork of an elite squadron of assassins.

Back to the matter at hand. Whilst she could just create an illusion of herself to take the punishment instead of herself, she couldn't just get away with doing so in plain view of all these soldiers, their general and the cold, piercing gaze of that Schnee girl. Plus, they had her hat, scroll and parasol. Parting with those would be simply unacceptable. She'd naturally been reluctant to hand them over, but had little choice, other than trying to fight her way out of the situation. Needless to say, she had no intention of just giving up on reclaiming them.

Right now, she was glaring at Winter, who was looking over the parasol as if she were disgusted by the colour pink. The woman pulled out the blade and looked it over, seemingly surprised by how lovingly well-maintained it was, or by the lack of blood on the blade, according to her apparent track record. One of the other soldiers was looking over the hat. He even tried putting it on, over the top of his helmet, but Ironwood smacked the back of his head, knocking it down into his hands again. He looked somewhat glum after that, but the scene made Neo's lips curl upwards a little.

Alright, it was time to finally put her plan into motion. Taking a deep breath, she turned back to face Beacon for one final time and, incidentally, began to slow her pace. Of course, this annoyed the soldiers who were still firmly grasping her shoulders. All that matters to Atlas is the bottom line, after all.

"Keep it moving!" One demanded, before shoving her forwards. And so, the game was afoot, as Neo promptly faceplanted painfully into the ground since she couldn't use her arms to break her fall. Or so everyone thought. When Neo hit the ground, she had rolled forwards, nimbly, whilst creating an illusionary duplicate of herself where she had supposedly fallen. As the soldiers were distracted with forcing the criminal back onto her feet. Why didn't they see the rolling, nimble Neo? Transparent illusion, baby! It was a rather old trick, but it only got better with age. It basically made her nearly invisible. Of course, it was hard to practice with Thea around. They always pointed out her hiding spots because she didn't realise that she was trying to hide.

Still, whilst she had now technically escaped, she couldn't make a run for it just yet. They had her stuff, and she wasn't planning on leaving aforementioned stuff behind. So, it was time for some espionage. This was strictly a covert operation, now. Retrieve the goods, don't be seen, and get out of there before anyone knows you were ever there.

First things first, whilst they're still picking up the puppet's strings, time to disappear into the surroundings. Unfortunately, active camo takes some doing to pull off, since you need to be completely adaptive to lines of sight, what's behind you, and what you, yourself, look like. It's why just turning invisible and beating someone up isn't a very valid strategy.

So, she simply darted to one side and blended in with an illusionary crowd which she had made up. She watched as her illusionary duplicate was picked up by two soldiers and basically dragged along for the first few steps before she found her footing. Honestly, what were they thinking? This was a schoolgirl with her arms cuffed behind her and walking in high-heeled boots. What did they expect to happen? And would it kill them to show any kind of sympathy? Apparently so. Then again, she was supposed to be some kind of deranged serial killer who burned down their base of operations. She turned her attention to those cuffs of hers. Slipping out of them was rather easy for someone of her talents. With a little know-how and sleight of hand, anything's possible. Plus, her hands were small and dainty, which made slipping out of cuffs all the easier. She was so glad that escape artistry was amongst her manifold talents. She then turned back to observe the military.

Without breaking their stride, they continued to march onto the airship so it was time to move again. She waited for that door to open and for them to start heading inside, before she donned her camouflage again and followed them in, just before the doors were closed behind her. She now stood in a large metallic corridor which just screamed 'Atlas Superiority.' White and blue colour scheme, metallic walls, guards standing at attention, and various windows which were as sleek as they were fundamentally useless. Thinking quickly, Neo donned the guise of a fellow Atlesian soldier. Since all of them looked basically the same, she wasn't worried about being found out. She followed behind the convoy of soldiers and their illusionary captive at a safe distance. A small group of soldiers diverted to go into some kind of cargo hold. Unfortunately, they had her stuff, and she was unable to follow them without losing track of the pseudo-captive. She just kept following the original convoy and did her best to remember which direction the cargo bay was. It was next on her list of objectives.

Neo watched as they were led to a simple series of holding cells at the bottom layer of the ship, en route to the bridge. The soldiers formed a pair of parallel lines on both sides of the room, so Neo decided to just follow suit on one side and, fortunately, she didn't look out of place since there was an odd number of soldiers for some peculiar reason. The illusionary Neo was flung towards Ironwood and Winter, who stood in front of the cell, before being forcibly dragged onto her knees and held there by both escorting soldiers. The two commanders shared a disgusted glance at each other, before staring down at her.

"You'll have plenty of time to atone for your sins in our cells, so you can play the tough girl act all you want but it's not going to help you. We'll interrogate you until we find out why you did what you did, no matter how long it takes. I don't care if you're mute; you're going to be screaming in silence if you have to. Don't expect us to go easy on you just because you're young, either. You killed a lot of people. Children like you only deserve the sympathy that they showed others." Winter hissed.

"And once we've learned what we need to, you're going to be punished in accordance with the law. I couldn't care less if you're given a life sentence or drawn and quartered by court martials." Ironwood growled. "If it were up to me, I'd burn you alive just as you did to my men."

Neo's heart churned at the brutality of it all. Or maybe it was the fact that she was seeing the consequences of her own actions in third person. At least these illusions of hers didn't actually have emotions or free thoughts. They were basically walking tricks of the light with the brains of a basic program and a body made of glass. She figured she should alter that face on the illusion to reflect the harshness which she was exposed to. An illusional tear rolled down the phantom's face as Neo twisted that visage into a depressed glare. As much as she wanted to kick the General in his metallic ballsack, that wouldn't solve anything. Well, maybe it'd make her feel better, but that's about it.

"You're going to rot in here for a long time. Get her out of my sight." James snapped.

Those two tin soldiers grabbed the illusion by the arms, as Winter opened up the cell. A tiny, dark, and cramped cell was revealed, consisting of only a metal seat. She was practically tossed inside, and the door was slammed shut behind her, but not before Neo gave the glass puppet her final commands: 'If given the opportunity, do nothing but face the wall. Follow their instructions as best as you can, without giving them any information.'

Neo drew a deep breath and was thankful that her illusionary clones didn't actually have any of the knowledge which her brain did. Else, she'd have to worry about giving the military any illusion of hers to lock up. The only reason she added that extra bit at the end was just in case something did linger. Plus, they'd think she was just being difficult, which was better than being obedient but stupid.

Turning her attention back to reality, she watched as Ironwood and Winter turned to each other with pained expressions. Winter placed a hand on James' shoulder, whilst he just cradled his own head in his palm.

"Killing her won't bring them back." He murmured. "A lot of good people were lost because of her. It just makes me so…" His face tensed and his teeth grit, but he could not finish his sentence.

"I know how you feel, sir. It's unthinkable that in a world where humanity stands united against a common foe, there are still those who have a higher kill count against their own kind than any of the Grimm. Even those mindless savages don't butcher their own numbers for personal gain. And yet…" Winter glanced to one side and lowered her hand. A complicated expression washed over her. A peculiar mix of sympathy, sadness, and hatred. "She seems…incredibly troubled. Dare I say that her reaction to all of this seemed to be…disbelief?"

"She's just shocked that she was caught. We'll get as many details from her as possible as soon as she realises that she's not getting out of here without communicating. Then, we'll interview her peers and see how truthful her statements were. If she's lying or even not telling the whole truth, we'll treat her like the criminal she is."

"And if this has all been the work of someone else?" Winter enquired.

Ironwood looked at her with a look of confusion and raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

Winter's troubled expression doubled in magnitude as she tapped her chin in thought. "Well, who's to say that this isn't the work of some kind of manipulation, or semblance? We don't know anything about the child – not even Ozpin knows anything about her – so it's possible that someone forced her into doing it. Blackmail, threats, drugs… She could be no more of a victim than we were in this situation."

"If that is the case, she has nothing to hide."

"But sir! She's just a child! If sick adults were the ones truly to blame for this, she'd have no reason to trust us, either" Might I suggest being a little gentler with her for the first week or so? Refrain from methods outside of the usual questioning routines and transfer her into a proper cell back at base."

Ironwood took a long, pained sigh. "Fine. I'll trust the details to you. I'd rather not spend any more time than I must with her."

"Affirmative, sir." Winter saluted, before Ironwood departed. The remaining soldiers stood to attention, so Neo was quick to copy them. "You're dismissed. And…please keep this conversation private." She spoke.

Neo was surprised at Winter's two-faced attitude towards her. Seemed like she was playing both prosecutor and defence at the same time. Was it possible that she was merely putting on an act in front of the prisoner and keeping her actual opinions to herself? Why? She had no reason to be sympathetic to her. To Winter, she should've been some criminal who was scared to face the consequences of her own actions. And yet, Winter thought that she was incapable of doing such twisted things without some kind of outside influence. It was a noble… but naïve way of thinking.

It didn't matter, though. Or at least it didn't dissuade Neo from doing what she had in mind. As the soldiers dispersed throughout the ship, an announcement came on over the loudspeaker:

'Attention, all units. We are preparing to depart. Please brace for expected turbulence from liftoff.'

Wait, they were leaving? That puts a spanner in the works. She had hoped she'd have been able to swipe her stuff back and then just leave like nothing had happened. But, if the ground was no longer there, that would mean that she'd have to be a little more inventive. Still, she couldn't let such things get in her way anymore.

Neo began to make her way towards the place which the soldiers had taken her stuff. Still maintaining her guise, she didn't even get a lick of suspicion from the other members of Atlas staff, who were too on-edge or preoccupied to notice the lone soldier wandering around. In fact, there were all kinds of conversations going on about her. Some people talking about how crazy it was that 'Roman's Reaper' was supposedly just a little girl. Some claimed that they didn't think that she actually did it. Truth be told, Neo didn't care what they thought of her; when they eventually find out that she's escaped, they'll all probably be fearful for their lives despite their prior beliefs.

Eventually, though, she patrolled around long enough to find the contraband storage and, consequently, discovered good news and bad news. Good news: she found her stuff. Bad news: It was currently being looked at by a pair of forensic scientists. More specifically, her hat and Hush were being closely examined, whilst her scroll was left unattended to one side. There were two guards in the room, and Neo didn't want to just take things by force, since that would imply that she'd already escaped. Raising the alarm too early would only make her life difficult. She'd have to be creative about this problem. And maybe just a bit lucky.

The room itself was rather small, with the scientists in the corner and two guards standing by the doorway. A small table and two chairs were placed to one side, so Neo went ahead and sat down and began to disassemble the illusionary rifle which she had made as part of her disguise. And then, she made an illusionary wall between the two groups of people, making sure that each side displayed an image of what had previously been in view. As such, the partition was basically invisible.

Now, here is where things got a little tricky. She immediately ditched her illusionary soldier disguise at the table and nimbly rolled underneath the bench which the two scientists were working at. Calmly, she reached a hand into the pocket of one such scientist and slowly moved her hand around with such grace and finesse that it was almost unnoticeable. When her fingers brushed against a scroll, she nimbly fished it from its hiding spot and opened it up. Didn't even need a passcode. What a dimwit. She quickly deleted all the saved data on this scroll, removed the transmission chip and swapped it for her scroll whilst they were too focused on her hat and parasol to notice.

And then, Neo felt the ground shudder as the aircraft took off. She held her breath and stayed very still, before the two scientists began to exchange words. Naturally, Neo listened.

"Man, I'm just not lifting anything from her parasol. You'd think her weapon would have… at least some fingerprints on it? Or traces of blood? It's completely clean, though. Think she expected to be arrested and pre-emptively removed as much evidence as possible?"

"Didn't you see her coming in? She was wearing gloves. Probably wears them all the time, which is why you didn't find any fingerprints. Same with Winter. Even if you did find fingerprints, getting a match for them would be almost impossible."

"She's supposed to have killed four of our comrades with this weapon, though. There'd surely be some traces of blood on the blade, or this frilly material, right?"

"Not if she's cleaned it off thoroughly. Then again, we're only using the most basic of equipment. When we get back to base, we can examine it in more detail."

"In that case, why are we bothering to check this sorta thing now? The only thing we've found, without ripping apart the seams, are remnants of her hair in the hat. Three different coloured strands. One for each colour she's associated with. White, brown, and pink, right?"

The scientist studying the hat took a long sigh. "No, you idiot. She only has pink and brown hair, according to the reports, and, like I told you, I found four different colours. White, brown, pink, and orange. Maybe a teammate of hers has white hair. As for the orange…"

"Torchwick. It's gotta be. But we don't have the technology to do a thorough DNA test onboard. We'll just have to do it when we land." He said, tucking the hairs into a small plastic bag.

"At least we have her scroll. Maybe we'll find some useful information on that. And we can check from the comfort of the living quarters."

"Ha, you said it. I need a lie down and a stiff drink for this."

They shared a brief chuckle, before taking the scroll and walking towards the door. Neo panicked for a moment, before altering the illusionary wall to reflect them walking towards it and then making a large hole for them to step through. Once they'd made their way beyond, Neo closed the illusionary door again and stood up from behind the counter. First, she disposed of the hair they'd collected. She didn't need them finding out that she has the same DNA of someone who went missing years ago. Nor did she want them finding out the truth about the orange hair. She then took a moment to don her beloved hat and pick up her cherished parasol, before wondering how in the world she was going to escape the aircraft with these things. The door? Too conspicuous to just casually open mid-flight. People would notice. Some kind of vent, maybe? As if an Atlas aircraft would have vents which lead to the outside of a plane. Not to mention getting into one would be a task in and of itself.

Oh, wait. The answer was obviously the windows. Some models of Atlas aircrafts come with openable windows because of course they would. Whenever something could have a cool quality-of-life feature which has no place belonging there, leave it to Atlas to make a dumb idea a reality and then wonder why they're the laughingstock of Remnant. Still, she couldn't just open the window without anyone noticing the sudden breeze. Except…that illusionary wall should do the trick for a while. But then there's the problem of her equipment suddenly disappearing.

Actually…maybe doing nothing about that wasn't such a bad idea. If anyone was going to be blamed, it would be those two slacking scientists for losing the important evidence and not having an explanation for it. Since Neo's still locked up in their hyper-secure prison and doesn't have her stuff, there's no way that she did it, so it was obviously their fault in the eyes of Atlas. An 'investigation' would be held, they'd be found liable, and they'd probably be fired.

Sure, that wasn't exactly a good outcome, but it was far better than the alternatives. She could've always just assassinated the pilot and set the airship on a collision course with their new military base, thus destroying all the evidence and making it seem likely that their prisoner died in transit. It was an option she had, but also the option which Neo vehemently denied exploring the possibilities of. Instead, she just walked to that window and opened it as widely as she could.

It opened juuuuuust wide enough for her to squeeze through, but closing the window behind her would take a little bit of trickery. Before she slid herself through the narrow gap, she made an illusionary Neo behind herself and gave her the instructions: 'When you can no longer see me, close this window, and then disappear.'

And so, she looked down to see the city streets of Vale beneath her, rushing past as the ship continued to gain speed. The breeze throughout the room caused papers to rustle against their paperweights and her hair to fly around. She sat herself down upon the windowsill and moved her legs through the gap. Then…straightened herself up and slid through the gap, beginning to freefall downwards. One hand clutched onto her hat, whilst the other clutched onto Hush. She looked upwards for a moment to see a gloved hand closing the window… and then, she let go of her illusions, with the exception of the Neo who was currently locked up in the brig. Those two dolts at the door of the room were probably too wrapped up in their conversation about dinner to notice the sudden disappearance of the soldier sat at the table. Even then, it would be easy to think that you just missed them walking out with the scientists.

And then, the thrill of freefalling was reduced to a pleasant tailwind as she opened up her parasol and began to float into the streets of Vale. She wasn't too concerned with being seen, since she just made an illusionary box around herself which mirrored the sky. If anyone was paying attention, they'd probably notice a section of azure which didn't quite match the backdrop of the sapphire skyline, but it was so obscure and small that she doubted anything would come of it.

As she descended further downwards, feeling the rushing air beginning to slow around her, she began to angle herself towards a tall building. It was a museum of Huntsmen and Huntresses throughout the ages, so it'd be a great place to easily blend in and escape onto the ground floors. Neo landed with incredible grace, and closed her parasol, before approaching the white door which led into the building. It was locked, but that was no problem for her. She easily picked the lock on the external door and stepped inside, free from the clutches of the Atlesian Military… at least until they stopped being so smug and superior to realise that they were playing checkers in a world of chess.

That being said, it wasn't all rainbows and merry-go-rounds. No, no. The war had only just begun.

Neo had her reasons for escaping that cell. No amount of evidence in the world could prove her innocence, and she wasn't planning on sitting there and awaiting execution at the hands of idiotic superiors who only got their positions because their mummies and daddies thought they were special. She thought she could do far better deeds outside that cage than she could inside. Maybe she could even prove her own innocence whilst she was at it. Sure, they'd still be angry at her for breaking herself out of jail, but it would clear the need for her to have been there to begin with.

So, the next point of interest? Wherever Roman should be. If her memory and knowledge of past events was true, he should be holding a meetup with the White Fang in a couple of days. Unfortunately, the reason behind said meetup was hazy to her. Probably because the past incantation of her wasn't too caring about the details. If that running theory proved to be true.

But it was bad news, if her hunch was correct.