It was a very tense few hours, made worse for Team RWBY knowing that there wasn't much of anything they could really do about it beyond helping Ozpin and Glynda get all the materials together in Ozpin's office, which they had already done, and informing team JNPR too, which they had also done already. They had been sent off with a recommendation to train to get their minds off of it by Ozpin after helping out there, and they had convinced team JNPR to join them. It was helping, particularly for Yang, Blake, and Pyrrha who were throwing themselves into the training like crazy. The adamantine wasn't making all that much of a difference against aura, and given that it was still magnetic, Pyrrha was still dominating, even more so than just a couple weeks ago, even accounting for her sheer focus.

----------------------------------------

Meanwhile, Ozpin, Glynda, and the no longer a little black bird Qrow were also busy, adding to and re-evaluating everything they could confirm Memnol was capable of. Part of which was calling in Team CFVY about their experiences with him that the rumor mill had just been circulating, Qrow returning to being a crow, and after ensuring them that neither he nor they were in trouble, had lead to a very interesting discovery about what they did yesterday, backed up by a photo that Velvet wasn't even sure she should've been capable of taking with her, and she was fine with Ozpin having a few copies of.

Near the end of that meeting, Velvet said, "Um, Headmaster? I'm not sure if it means anything, but I think I heard Memnol say, something, there. Is that important?"

Glynda said, "Every little amount will help. What do you believe he said?"

Velvet said, "Well, it sounded very, poetic-y, I guess? There were a lot of 'X' sounds. I'll try to get as close as I can to it."

Then Velvet cleared her throat, and as she attempted to remake the sounds Memnol had, Ozpin hid the fact that he choked on his drink for a second, Glynda hoped they didn't notice her grip tighten on her scroll, and bird-Qrow made a seemingly reflexive motion that would've been reaching for a hip-flask if he was human at the time. These reactions are mainly because they all, to their own degrees, recognized the language.

Glynda and Qrow recognized it as the operatic and ancient language that, until now, they had only ever heard from Ozpin. They couldn't recognize any words yet, but the style and sound of it was absolutely the same.

Ozpin also recognized it, but while he didn't know it quite exactly as Draconic, he did know it by another name, The First Language. It was called that for a very obvious reason, and he remembered that while when the gods spoke one would always understand it regardless of language, if one listened closely to the words themselves apart from the meaning, the Brother Gods themselves spoke The First Language. And now he just discovered that the new student who arrived from an entirely different world was fluent in it. Ozpin could tell he was fluent quite easily, extremely novel situations like speculating on gravity isn't exactly a beginner's part of any language.

Soon enough they sent off Team CFVY, and once he turned human and stopped drinking Qrow went right out the gate with, "So, Oz. He speaks what you speak. What was he saying? Because I honestly lack the booze to bother with how he picked it up."

Ozpin nodded and said, "While it was choppy, Memnol was speculating on the gravity in that location initially, then later reminded himself that neither Scarlatina nor Adel had experience with 'non-standard' gravity before."

Glynda said, "Implying that he has had significant experience with non-standard gravity. Somehow."

Ultimately, this eventually led them to considering the versatility Memnol seemed to have based on what he had said early on to Team RWBY in the dining hall in the first few days, and they couldn't quite get any sense of how often he could manage any particular ability, although Ozpin was fairly confident that he probably had an upper limit.

After another few moments, mainly to check if he had enough alcohol left for this, which he deemed he probably did, Qrow asked, "By the way Oz, how were you so sure that he could just do that kind of change on a dime?"

Ozpin said, "I had some suspicion from the start, given how well mentally he took to the change, that he had some way to turn back if he wanted to."

Qrow gave a "Hm," then suddenly let out a laugh, then in response to the looks from Glynda and Ozpin said, "You think every 'Practitioner' back where he's from can just change their race- or entire species- in just a few hours too? Cause I've got this image stuck in my head of some rich snob looking in a mirror, saying human is last season, and quickly changing into a faunus before some big social whatever like that thing Schnee does every year."

As the two didn't lighten up, though Glynda was suppressing any signs of a potential smile, Qrow shrugged and said, "Eh, it's funnier if you've had some drink."

At that moment, Ozpin got an elevator notification, and sent it down. When it opened back at the top, Doctor Oobleck came through with a rat in a small cage.

Ozpin nodded a greeting and said, "Thank you Doctor Oobleck."

Oobleck waved it off and said, "The least I can do to aid one of the only students that actually calls me Doctor, particularly for one who said he'd only trust me during his recovery. Although I still don't have a clue just how a rat is going to help him with- well whatever the problem even is," He paused for a drink from his thermos, "Well, I do hope I'll see him in class tomorrow. Good day."

Ozpin said, "Good day."

Once Oobleck had left, Glynda walked over to the cage and looked in on the rat. It wasn't exactly the prime of it's kind, not particularly fast, more than a touch on the old side, and it very much avoided using one of its front legs. In fact, if what she had been sent on the scroll earlier was true, he was due to be put down for his own sake in not too long.

Glynda wondered out loud at the rat laying on it's side as she moved some pieces of its uneaten food over to it, prompting it to slowly trundle over, "What could he possibly need you for?"

After a moment, Qrow said, "Well, Oz, I'm gonna get back into the field. Still have one more maiden to find. You're going to need some luck to handle him too, and you're not getting it with me around."

As Qrow left as a bird through the window, Ozpin said, "Glynda, given the state of my office," He gestured at the sheer number of mirrors, the old combat hammer, and the rat cage, "It would probably be best for you to head to your own office if you want to get any actual work done. I'll handle it from here."

Glynda nodded and headed on out.

Once she was well gone, Ozpin slumped down some, took a long few breaths, and recomposed himself, since he knew Memnol would likely arrive rather soon.

----------------------------------------

Meanwhile, speaking of the Wizard at the moment, he had recently teleported off to a quiet spot near one of the coasts, and had just finished going through the process of taking roughly ten minutes to guide and solidify his growth, towards being an Ardent. Now that he was an Ardent, with Magic and Knowledge Mantles, he felt like everything about his magic and psionics just clicked together, like two halves of clockwork that had once been separate. The Knowledge Mantle was also rather nice, as so long as he remained psionically focused, a process taking a brief time of dedicated meditation, he could access knowledge he'd normally need to be specifically trained in just through his own sheer intelligence, and the psionics involved of course. One thing this newfound knowledge had helped lead him to was a nice little power called Psychic Reformation, which would allow him to theoretically remake himself from the ground up, or at least un-learn and replace some no-longer useful tricks and such, and could now be duplicated by a Limited Wish thanks to the earlier Magic Mantle.

Memnol typically quite enjoyed it when everything slotted into place like this. Though, back on the topics of solidified growth and knowledge, he had also in becoming an Ardent dedicated much of himself to the knowledge of nature he'd need to even begin developing the main epic spell of the two he foresaw, the one which would need the other Epic Spell just to feasibly get the materials which would be then Fabricated into the materials for that spell.

Memnol also, to some level, typically enjoyed when things got layered on each other like this, and now that he was paying more attention to his own reactions, he found that he just couldn't get that same feeling up.

Roughly half of an hour later, Memnol had gained enough growth to, should his mental calculations be correct; Account for both the new self he was going to get himself, create the three Wish scrolls he was going to scribe for his IA's in case they all needed to undo any misfortune, create the custom Ioun Stone to aid his crossbreeding efforts, and create the sixty-eight Focusing Mirrors and Hammer of Hybridisation needed for the focusing mirrors crossbreeding ritual in the first place. Upon consciously thinking of everything he needed to make to do this safely, he realized something.

Lifting Loom, he teleported himself and his entourage to Ozpin's office for the item materials, steadily stowed them away into the bags of holding between them, and said to Ozpin, "I appear to have made an error in regards to my timeframe. I believe it will take me roughly two to three hours in actuality, and that's from this point onwards. I give you, Ms. Goodwitch, and Team RWBY my apologies for that. I will be off now."

Memnol lifted up Loom again and teleported off to the Crunch Zones in the sewer to start the whole complicated process, just feeling extremely sedated and barely-there relief that he had only promised to meet them during dinner and not lunch.

Ozpin, meanwhile, leaned back into his office chair and finally let himself digest the guilt and such that had built up over the day.

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After a long while, sending over the finished items in batches with much of the salvaged equipment from the sewer lair being re-purposed as a crossbreeding laboratory area in one of the spots of the still very much under construction desert lair, Memnol was ready to start the last steps of the process, and was looking at the Rat that he had just set down on a table out of its cage.

After a refresh from his vest, regaining two regular Wishes and a Silent one, he started by casting Wish on the Rat, to turn it from a rat into a Waterveiled Assassin, as one of the many, many uses of, well, Wish, allowed him to do, with a little aid with his absolute best talent of spellcraft of course.

The newly made Elemental just stood there, given that it still had the memories, life experience, and intellect of an old rat, which gave Memnol more than enough time to pull of yet another Wish, this time to duplicate Temporal Stasis, which put it into a perfectly still state of suspended animation.

He and the IA's moved the mirrors into their rough positions on the ground for the ritual, set loose his self-named Crossbreeder's Ioun Stone to aid him into making this not a 40% gamble, and then finally Memnol propped himself up, and with a Limited Wish, duplicated and hit himself with a Touch of Vecna spell, which allowed him to briefly duplicate the effect of a Lich's touch. He namely did this so he could make use of the paralyzing effect of it to paralyze himself for a while with ease. As to why he would do that? This crossbreeding ritual called for absolute stillness on the part of both subjects, and he was, in fact, a subject.

He thanked his luck that one of the Ulitharid's natural psionic powers was Telekinetic Force, which as a psionic power didn't need verbal or somatic components, just pure mental effort,

and started using that to make the important minute adjustments on all of the mirrors, the IA's just standing out of the way with the Wish Scrolls in the event they were needed, only moving in when Memnol needed to scry through their link to check a mirror behind him.

After some time, all the mirrors reflected both forms overlapping in just the right way onto a lone central piece of glass at the heart of the ritual, which was then shattered by the Hammer of Hybridisation being thrown through it with the Telekinetic Force, and the ritual took effect in a moment. Both Memnol and the Watervieled Assassin vanished from where they were, and only one being stood where the central glass once was.

It stood up, and looked over to the IA's, who all showed their Wish scrolls intact. Then it walked over to a random mirror, and checked all over its reflection. Once it reached its face, it said out loud, "Hm. I hadn't quite expected that to be an option on how my appearance would change, but it's easy enough to explain. More importantly," Memnol stopped and let out a breath, "That actually worked out mostly with the mentality part. I must say, now that I'm not one anymore, I can actually empathize more with the illithids I knew. As for the brain diet now, I should no longer need that anymore, and since I'm now technically an Outsider, I don't even technically need to eat or sleep at all if I don't want to. Still need the break to get my spells back, but I suppose I could spend it reading something light for fun the long way instead or so. Or just sleep anyway, nothing should actually stop me from doing so."

He looked away from the mirror and continued, "Most of all, I am certainly glad that I am, how to put it? Right, a complete and utter genius of the highest possible order, the likes of which rivals the gods. Otherwise I might've had to give up more of the benefits of being a Ulitharid or Waterveiled Assassin. As it is…"

He closed his eyes, now relying solely on the Blindsight he got from the elemental's side, which allowed him to precisely know what was around him in a 60-foot radius, to nearly walk right into a mirror, only to use the main ability he wanted to have from the Waterveiled Assassin in particular, and his body turned into water to just flow through the area regardless. With that, and also taking on the ability to breathe water granted from fusing with a Water-based elemental, he could easily travel around by plumbing pipes if he wanted. It painted quite the image to him, being able to arrive through the sink and leave through the dishwasher. Although as the blindsight reminded him, he would probably want to find a way to take his equipment with him, since it most definitely did not become water as he did. All he had given up from either side, more for practical reasons than to make the ritual easier, was the Spell Resistance from the Ulitharid side which he didn't want to have to bother constantly lowering when needed, and the 'Automatically turns invisible in at least a 15 ft. cube of water' trait from the Waterveiled Assassin side since that couldn't be controlled, he had other methods of easier controlled invisibility anyways, and it would simply risk too many questions if he just couldn't be seen in swimming pools or such.

As Memnol flowed back into his clothes and equipment, he said out loud, "Another Epic Spell for that too, I'd say. Anyhow, the last step, the Psychic Reformation, which should also throw off the last bits from the Illithid mindset and let the previous memories set into place properly."

With that, Memnol got a Psychic Reformation from a Limited Wish, and trimmed off the, to him, useless extras from the crossbreeding into something far more useful. He expanded his item crafting efficiency from just Constructs and Wondrous to, well all of the rest, Rings, Arms & Armor, Staffs, and Rods. He made it so concentrating on his spells or powers took less effort from him, so that he might be able to cast other spells while concentrating on one already up. He swapped around a few of his Assassin spells, and fairly boosted the power of his casting, but that was mainly for the extra strength needed to make certain constructs or items. Finally, he had also mastered his Gemcutting and gained and mastered making Poisons and Alchemical Items as well. All of these since, as he reasoned to himself, he could only rely on himself as the only source of those now, rather than just being able to pop around and either steal something from another caster or hit them with an occasionally refreshed Dominate Person and force them to make it for him.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

But what would've been the single most important change to Memnol, above every single other gained ability, just for the sheer feeling of potential and hopefulness it would've given him was a smaller one: His frailty was now approximately on par with a baseline human. It had, relatively speaking, improved.

However, that didn't precisely happen. Rather, a mental dam had been entirely removed with the reformation so to say, and he was utterly flooded with emotions that had been held back or internalized near immediately by his previous mindset. He let out a long and varied shout that wildly changed in tone throughout for a long minute, and if anything could pick up his telepathy it would've picked up on images, moments, and emotions wildly shifting, being paired, unpaired, mixed again, and over and over so many times in each second.

Memnol started to understand personally from then on just why Illithids naturally internalized their emotions, as during a moment like this where they felt these emotions full-on, they felt the emotions with their entire bodies. Yes, you see, a little known fact of the illithid was that their nervous systems were far more extensive than any human's and every single part of their body has a near direct connection to the brain. Which on one hand, can help as due to this illithids have a very acute sense of their own body and its condition, and is part of how they're so intelligent. On the other hand, as mentioned, the emotions that do manage to get through to the illithid, which for a typical illithid are always negative let's remember, are felt through their entire bodies. An illithid in a great enough rage that they couldn't suppress it wouldn't just get a feeling in the head and maybe chest like a human might when they're extremely angry, an illithid would feel it down to every single individual muscle, tendon, organ, and other part of their body.

Memnol was currently churning through 9 solid days of these full body emotions, without the self-suppression instinct and internalization of naturally ceremorphosed illithids, starting suddenly in a single instant.

This would be why our normally decently composed wizard here is instead shouting like a madman as he clutches his head and chest while his tentacles flail wildly, even knocking over and breaking eight of the mirrors he had taken the time to make. After a few minutes of stumbling and grasping, he had gotten Loom and teleported a good couple thousand feet into the desert.

After a solid half an hour, he had finally recomposed himself.

After he was calm for a few minutes, he looked himself over again, eventually looking at his arm, where the band of Instant Summon sapphires was, and particularly two of them he had dedicated to something a touch more on the eccentric side a while ago, smiled, and thought, "I should try the chess match setup again some time, and leave out the IA's, that should help actually get me a match. No proper wizard should completely lose touch with their eccentric side, after all."

With that in mind Memnol grabbed the Ioun Stone out of the air that had helped him so much, feeling vindicated at having always liked Ioun Stones, and put it away into his Bag of Holding. He took a moment and after ordering an IA to observe him, tried to flare his aura, which the IA reported had worked fine. His aura flared as a lighter purple than before, as though it had been mixed in equal part with the now absent silver, with the black spots throughout that showed up and faded wherever they pleased, and only the most astute eyes could spot any of the blue below that very rarely flickered to the surface.

After this he checked the time, turned invisible with his ring and teleported back to Anima, to Beacon.

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Teams RWBY and JNPR had just sat down for dinner, a renewed tension among them. One which was shattered a few moments after they sat down as Memnol, who looked identical to how he had before except for one detail, came into the room.

Rather than hide the detail, Memnol said a touch loudly, but no so loudly as to seem louder than normal to anyone but Weiss, who had been taught to pick this sort of thing up, and Blake, who had two entire sets of ears to hear with, as he approached them after a very brief detour to the counter and sat down, "Team RWBY, Team JNPR, I hope you've been well." He pointed to his eyes, which rather than their previous white pupil-less state, now looked like normal eyes with a vivid ocean blue color, and continued, "Turns out I just had cataracts the whole time. Thankfully with The Art I was able to find a rather easy solution, and now I can see in the dark like I was supposed to be able to from the start. I just hadn't noticed I couldn't see in the dark until around last night since, well, I wasn't used to it before."

As the whispers started to break out through the room, Memnol leaned in a little and said in a more normal volume, though with a definite note of something that had been subtly missing before, his cheeks betraying a smile as he split a cookie, managed to somehow pointedly eat one half, and very obviously slid the other half on a napkin over to Ruby, "So, Ruby, you promised to tell me about how the new blade is working out so far, right?"

The teams both visibly relaxed with sheer relief, and Ruby beamed as she swiped the cookie half and said, "Yeah. Okay, so earlier today I was doing some dummy practice, and…"

Memnol quite enjoyed that dinner, and got an extra jolt of satisfaction whenever he faintly heard the word 'cataract' pass around. It was also nice to have confirmation that Adamantine didn't seem to have any particular interaction against Aura that was different than normal steel.

Memnol said, "Yes, I have a feeling you'll most notice the effects of Adamantine against the Grimm, since they lack Aura and only have the physical armor in the way. That and I suppose it would be more useful as well if the people in the academy weren't so attached to their weapons."

One could pinpoint the singular precise moment that Ruby had figured out Memnol was referring to breaking weapons by the way she gained a completely appalled look, as though the idea of deliberately breaking a weapon that anyone had made was downright sacrilegious.

Weiss was the one with the decorum to keep the conversation flowing and asked, "Was weapon breaking a common tactic where you're from?"

Memnol smiled, held up his left hand, and tapped at a ring on his middle finger with the right hand and said, "That's the very namesake of this little ring, and why I take it off during combat class if I go into the arena."

Ruby said, dramatic horror in her eyes, "You mean, that's a ring- a ring that-" She couldn't bring herself to even say the idea out loud.

Memnol, however, could and did so without hesitation, "A Ring of Weaponbreaking would be the proper name. One of the more useful rings the Art can make. Reduces the damage from any weapon that isn't adamantine, possibly right down to nothing, and has a decent chance at breaking any weapon that hits me any time one does. For obvious reasons, as stated, I take off the ring for class, since I doubt anyone who tries melee would like to have to go through the effort of rebuilding their weapon from the dozens or so of pieces it can end up in after every class."

After a pause, Ruby suddenly shot out her hand after the ring, with the full aid of her semblance, and was going to make a run for it out of the dining hall. This is not an advisable course of action to take against any regular wizard, as they tend to be rather protective of their magic items against being stolen, particularly if they themselves made said item. This is even less advisable against notably powerful wizards, as they tend to become at least somewhat paranoid, or at a bare minimum overly prepared, and powerful bastards who have an answer to most things.

Take Memnol for instance, who, expecting a quiet day with little to no serious threats, prepared among his spell slots a Silent Wail of the Banshee, 2 Silent Still Black Blade of Disasters, 2 Silent Still Meteor Swarms, 5 Silent Time Stops, and 6 Wishes, 4 of which were Silent. For a low-combat expected day, not considering even one of the items he wore.

Of course, just because he had all these spells didn't mean he had to use any of them in this case, since there was a far more mundane and likely practical solution that he saw.

The moment he felt Ruby was about to take the ring, Memnol just curled his fingers, and like that she had failed to pull it off. He yanked his hand away, and after going through his haversack for a second, put on the gloves that he had yet to give a proper name to-

Memnol thought then, "Gloves of Eminent Utility? Yes, that'll do."

He put on his newly named Gloves of Eminent Utility, which for rather obvious reasons kept the ring secure on his hand, as well as the other rings too.

Memnol said, "Ruby, while I understand your feelings towards that, I would ask that you not try to steal my ring, or anything else of mine in fact."

Ruby shifted in place and after coming back to some senses said, "Yeah. Everything you have is really valuable, isn't it?"

Memnol chuckled and said, "I would tell you just how valuable it is all together, but if I did I worry at least a few of you would discover how to choke on air."

Weiss was the first one to laugh, with the rest soon following, until a rather unwelcomely familiar voice to some of them said behind Memnol, "Hey, Memnol."

Memnol turned and said, "Yes Cardin?"

Cardin said, "Well, uh, ugh, damn words ain't comin to me, damn it, and I thought it'd be easier to just-" He stopped and breathed in and out, and said quickly but clearly, "I'm sorry about Dove the last couple days ago. Me and the other guys got it pretty quick to cut bugging the faunus, but man, apparently Dove kinda grew up on that stuff, you know?"

Memnol said, "I can understand. A lot of who I am is from how I grew up. If you or anyone else was wondering, being fully self aware and conscious only makes the memories more formative, as it turns out."

It took Cardin a second to remember the Awakened thing that had gone around and he asked, "That Awakened thing is actually true?"

Memnol nodded and said, "Very. Also, I haven't actually heard if it's a rumor or not, but I'm honestly quite fine with that having happened. Anyhow, out of courtesy if nothing else, how has it been since you've decided to lay off the faunus. Find anyone else to mess with?"

Cardin was thrown through a very slight loop, as were the rest of the two teams, since Memnol's ending question didn't even have a hint of the accusatory tone one would expect, as if he were asking about the weather or if pepper was a spice.

Cardin said, "Just each other, and it's actually working out pretty well. You know, we actually studied yesterday."

Memnol said, "You four, studying? Cardin, what source did Ms. Goodwitch get that Wish from?"

Cardin laughed and gave Memnol a punch to the shoulder, which didn't so much as prompt Memnol to move thanks to both the Ring and the damage reducing qualities he got from the elemental.

Cardin said, "I don't know, but apparently the trick is just taking a brawl break every so often."

Memnol said, "Elaborate."

Cardin said, "Long story short, after we got back from class a couple days ago and our auras are back up, Dove gets pissed at me, the other two avoid taking sides, and eventually the shouting match gets to a proper fight. We're going at each other, the other two try to pull us apart, we both punch them, and next thing we know we're all dead tired and barely have any aura left. So we all give up, talk on it a bit later, and we decide that it was actually pretty damn fun. So now, least today, we tried getting that reading done for Mr. Oo-"

Memnol pointedly coughed and said, "Doctor Oobleck."

Cardin sighed, said, "Oh Gods, two of them. Right, yeah, Doctor Oobleck, and we're a page in and bored as shit. Well, give it like five minutes later and Sky's just clotheslined me while I'm focused on Russel, and Dove hits me with a damn Elbow drop. Little bit later after we finished though, we were all too damn tired to focus on pretty much anything other than that boring as hell book."

Memnol laughed and said, "Well, I guess that works for pretty much everybody. Although, as far as I'm aware, I don't believe Hell would exactly be boring."

Cardin chuckled and said as he walked off, "Go down and check then if you feel so strongly. See ya 'round, Memnol."

Cardin suddenly turned in place and said, "Oh yeah, right, Sorry 'bout that stuff earlier in the year too, Jaune. See y'all 'round, I've got to go catch up with my team now, 'cause Dove's earned himself a damn well suplex after that elbow drop."

As Cardin walked off one could hear him faintly mutter to himself, "Damn lucky we're on the ground floor."

Memnol turned back to the teams, only to find them looking at him like he had just managed something ridiculous again.

Blake was the one to say what the rest were thinking, "Did you just get a civil conversation with Cardin? As a faunus?"

Memnol made a dismissive gesture and said, "His and his team's type is simple, as long as you can hold your ground they'll respect you or at least leave you be. Don't flinch, so to say. As far as the faunus detail, well it's probably because One, I wasn't always a faunus, and Two, they all know I can beat them in a fight while- I don't even think I can count that second one as trying."

Yang said with sarcasm, "Very humble, aren't you."

Memnol grinned and said, "At the moment, more so than other times before."

Memnol's grin left as he said, "Although I must admit at the moment, that by odd chance most of my own projects have hit a lull simultaneously, where my own input isn't quite necessary. Now I need to fill my time in other ways. I think I'll probably start with- yes, if I'm needed, I'll be over with Team CFVY."

Memnol then got up, said his goodbyes to the teams, and sat down with Team CFVY, next to Velvet.

Memnol said, "Hello Team CFVY, I hope you don't mind if I sit here for a moment?"

Coco said, "No problem, but what is it you want this time? Every single time you've come over, you've wanted something."

Memnol said, "This time, I wanted to go over a few questions with Ms. Scarlatina about the design of her dress, since I have yet to begin on hers."

Coco said, "And ours?"

Memnol said, "Already finished."

Coco said, raising an eyebrow, "Then why isn't Vel's finished?"

Memnol said, "Simply because I am not quite as certain as to what style Ms. Scarlatina herself would prefer. Dress length, cut depth, emblem incorporation, basic color scheme, preferred material composition, material thickness or thinness, any planned accessories, all of these details matter, and with Ms. Scarlatina I'm not certain. As such, I am here, with paper and pencil for preliminary sketches ready."

As he went on, Coco seemed to gain a glint to her eyes, and once he took out the sketch materials she straight out planted her hands on the table and front flipped over it with a half-turn, from a sitting position and into another sitting position mind you, to take the seat on the other side of Velvet that Yatsuhashi had wisely moved from once Coco started flipping over. The next solid hour was spent talking about dress designs, sketching them, revising, and repeating.

Eventually, both Coco and Velvet seemed satisfied with the final sketch, so Memnol soon left and sent off IA Silver with a decent amount of his lien to purchase and bring him back all of the materials and tools Memnol would need.

----------------------------------------

Later in the night, as Memnol was steadily taking his time to make sure not a single thread of the dress would be out of place, his thoughts drifted to how a weird pattern of most major things happened ended up coinciding with Fridays and weekends, oddly enough.

Memnol thought, "I mean, going over it by the three weeks I've been here; The first week had the dinner fiasco and the reinforcement mission. Then the second week, I die, come back as a Ulitharid of all things, and from one slip my secret is discovered by Team RWBY and that other Faunus- And the next day I'm told it was Teams RWBY and JNPR, and I'm tricked into telling them and giving them favors for it. I should be aggravated, but I'm nearly impressed. Moving onwards, I had also initially 'hired' Mr. Torchwick and Bite-Sized. I should figure out her actual name some time. The past few days; Crunch Zone was developed, the 'shopping list' was given to the hired thieves- which I need to append by removing the order for toads and changing the snakes to as many as possible of as dark a coloration as possible regardless of venomousness- in fact right now."

He quickly sent off a message to Blue and Bronze, who relayed it to their charges.

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Meanwhile, with Roman and Neo, who had just received the message a few minutes after sneaking into the pet shop with a couple frogs stolen already.

Neo typed into her scroll and held it up, "1. Neopolitan. 2. Couldn't have told us slightly earlier?"

IA Bronze said, after a pause, "The plans changed only recently. One other addition, twenty to twenty-eight creatures with an internal skeletal system of the same kind."

Roman didn't even want to bother himself by asking what in the world Squidface might be doing if those were the details that mattered, so he just shook the thought from his head and started getting the cages with mice out into the car.

He wasn't minding whatever the voices were quite as much as before, since they had been helping him and Neo out from time to time. The occasional security measure that could normally only be deactivated from the inside being mysteriously turned off or damaged all of a sudden, a lot more night shifts knocked out before they even got there, the sudden rise in nearby cops discovering a punctured tire just before they try to pursue, automatically locking doors conveniently barely not closing, that sort of thing.

Far too many repeating lucky coincidences to be called those anymore, particularly with them sometimes being accompanied by a brief disembodied chuckle. That and with Neo's nightmares having started to lessen, and their reported presence by her not being quite as constant anymore, Roman was starting to slowly at least acknowledge the help. Internally, mostly, with the sole exception of the occasional tip of his hat.

Regardless, that didn't quite matter so much to Roman and Neo at the moment, they had dark-colored snakes and rats with internal skeletal structures to steal.

Roman didn't think his thefts would get much weirder after stealing Dust, Dust, and a lot more Dust without even touching the money, but somehow it had.

----------------------------------------

Memnol continued thinking as he continued making the dress, "Some Glamered Nightscale Armor with some other additions should help me rather nicely. I suppose between classes tomorrow I'll find the loose end in that simian faunus and alter the memory. That reminds me,"

Memnol paused with making the dress for a moment to check through his spellbook, "Ah, yes. There it is. Just where I left it, and ready to be memorized for tomorrow's meeting with the youngest Schnee."

He returned to the dress with a smile, "Ah, always a favorite of mine, the good old, proper, and ever-so versatile Programmed Amnesia."