I'm the Supreme (Sergei)

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

Early November 2025

Holed up in the Hog's Head, Emmanuelle was reading through the journal that she had come across at Zombie Island a few days prior as though it were a mass-market paperback novel. It was, in equal parts, both boring and intriguing, and there was something about it that made it difficult to put down for very long. The girl who had written it wasn't any sort of a writer, exactly; it wasn't meant to be entertaining or a story, though she discussed at length something that was entirely unfamiliar to Emmanuelle.

From what this girl was suggesting in her journal entries, which she had written at least daily for months, there was something about her that was peculiar. She had some ability, though she seemed to be trying to piece it together half of the time. There was a cast of characters, or at least names that came up frequently. She would write about encounters with other people and feeling that same sense, which even she couldn't put into words, and she seemed to have the idea that there were patterns, possibly.

Being that her skills weren't in analyzing the brain, Emmanuelle couldn't say for sure what had ended up in her hands. Either this girl—Penelope Bainbridge, the journal said—was completely out of her mind, or she was picking up on something that was beyond all comprehension. And Emmanuelle was inclined to believe that it was the latter.

Somehow, what she had found was precisely what she had been looking for: her next project. Her skill set alone wasn't sufficient, but she was combing through the journal for every possible piece of information that she could extract. If she could pinpoint just how unusual this girl was, then maybe it would be of use to her. There was some sort of connection among all of these people, but neither she nor this Penelope was confident in what it was.

And the name alone—at least the "Bainbridge" part—stuck out. Emmanuelle knew that she had heard it before somewhere… but where? It wasn't like she was back at the Purifiers' base, where she could bounce it off of somebody else who hadn't been staring at a teenage girl's cutesy handwriting for hours straight, either.

@sergei

[Deleted]

It wasn't as easy to get around if you were an excaped convict but luckily for Sergei (and any other convicts) the Hogs Head didn't make an issues of not showing ones face. It was actually uncommon for people to do so. It made sense for him to show up mostly unrecognisable. He didn't really have business but sometimes he simply wanted to get out of the lab. The house wasn't all that interesting, even less so when Peter was... well whatever mortal teens did in their free times these days. No wars to fight, made everything a lot easier. Sergei sighed for a moment before he noticed somebody he wasn't highly familiar with sitting at one of the tables reading. Reading in a place like this? Had to be good material.

He walked up to the bar and it didn't take too long for him to get himself a big pint of blood. He didn't ask about suppliers as he had other things on his mind. He had a good enough nose to avoid obvious tampering and he knew the man would likely want to remain in business. He sat down on the same table as the woman he knew was aligned to him, although perhaps not too obviously. "I trust the book is good?" He said disinterested. His German accent came through rather thick. He'd been travelling a lot and well, Germany always had a place in his heart. He'd had such wonderful times there. Not that most regular people would agree. He was all about futhering knowledge and well, they hadn't always cared a lot about things like ethics in the past. Those had been great times, at least according to Sergei.

"I've made little progress of late. If you know anything about projects I could help out on that would be nice. Or at the very least get me some more interesting samples. Kill a unicorn or something, I'm bored." He said in a soft tone that wouldn't be easy to overhear. He got in bad moods when he got bored and well, he wasn't the most pleasant person to begin with. Being bored usually didn't really improve that. He took a large swig of the pint of blood, which would actually help clear his mood. He could think better and had more fun when he didn't have trouble with his hunger. On that point, she didn't smell too bad either. Too bad it was considered rude to eat people you were supposed to be working alongside with. Perhaps she would have struggled a little bit. Maybe he could go to try and find a student later on. Those at least made fairly easy prey with how little they knew to defend themselves. At least Peter could do better than that.

emmanuelle antoinette picquery

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

Early November 2025

The good thing about the Hog's Head was that the clientele didn't question much of anything. It didn't matter who someone was or what they were doing; no one really cared to interfere. Plenty of people showed up there with their appearances obscured in some way or another, and it was probably more common to see someone in a hooded cloak than not. Emmanuelle, however, wasn't concerned with that, mostly because she wasn't doing anything that would have raised anyone's suspicions. She was reading a journal that clearly hadn't cursed her hand off, so that alone was probably fairly atypical. Then again, her appearance as it was stood out. If she had wanted to hide, she could have gone somewhere else.

Because most people at the Hog's Head kept to themselves unless they had made some sort of an arrangement or had had a few drinks too many, Emmanuelle wasn't expecting to be approached by anyone. She heard the sound of the other chair at her table and figured that it was only so that someone could take it and move it for their own use; she hadn't expected a stranger to sit down and share the table with her.

"I trust the book is good?" It was a masculine voice, speaking in an accent that must have been… German, possibly? Something like that.

Emmanuelle looked over the top of the journal at first to see who had asked her the question. Slowly, she lowered her reading material. The man was awfully pale—either at death's door or, more likely, a vampire. "I've made little progress of late. If you know anything about projects I could help out on," he added, "that would be nice. Or at the very least get me some more interesting samples."

Samples? Emmanuelle raised a brow. Was he a customer from work who had tracked her down? What did he want samples of?

"Kill a unicorn or something," he mentioned. "I'm bored."

He was rather blasé about it, but Emmanuelle supposed that it didn't really matter too much if he drank unicorn blood; he was already technically dead-ish. He couldn't live very much of a cursed life at that point.

She paused and smiled slightly—a small smirk—and then set the book down upon the table. "…So you're the one they mentioned?" Emmanuelle realized, speaking softly but practically throwing her head back in laughter. Someone had said something about a scientist, and who else would have needed samples? It was all very "No-Maj chic" to her, and he was hardly subtle.

@sergei

[Deleted]

Sergei smiled an utterly arrogant smile as she asked if he was the one they'd mentioned. Well, of course he was! He was beyond a doubt the best in his field, partially because he didn't allow morals and ethics to hold him back in his research. So many people that cared more about keeping people content than making sure there was something worth keeping content in the future. The purifiers had, as a group, promised to work with him. They'd provide him with an interesting job without complaining about people getting hurt or dying and he'd help them see if it was possible to carry over any traits from one individual to the next. With a bit of luck he'd be able to see if a magically mutated virus could affect the whole body in a similar way to lycantrophy and vampirism to gift people supernatural abilities.

Naturally that query posed many different problem. For starters, he needed samples from which he could isolated specialised traits so he could build them into a virus which he'd have to test on a culture (or preferably, living creature) in order to see it worked. With some luck he could give squibs back the magic they'd been denied or activate the genes that actually caused magic to be used. It was a common enough mutation that meant that everybody had the gene but it wasn't active in everybody (he was pretty close to figuring that part out) or it just was a very common mutation that led to it not being too impossible for muggleborns to be created by a basic genetic mutation. Much in a similar fashion as the wrong mutation at a later age could increase the odds of certain illnesses by quite a lot. Combining muggle knowledge with the magical world could make a huge difference, if people were willing to truly explore rather than uncertainly dip their toes in the water. The purifiers at least seemed to understand that part.

"Yes. I am the one." He said, casually spreading his arms as if to motion that he was some gift sent from hell itself to further humanity on their course to disaster. To compared him to anything great and good wouldn't be really ethical, since he used none applied to his work. There was almost nobody he wouldn't use to conduct experiments on. Perhaps a few of his old partners or relatives but since too many had rejected him for what he was more than who he was he still felt quite sour about that part. He'd cut them up without a doubt. "Now, progress?" He simply asked, raising one eyebrow as invitation for her to speak more.

emmanuelle antoinette picquery

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

Early November 2025

The smile that the man gave her was enough of an indication that he was the "scientist" she had been hearing about. He wasn't exactly modest, for one, though Emmanuelle supposed that that was fair enough. From what she had heard through the grapevine, he knew what he was doing. She didn't really know how much of a No-Maj scientist he was or how much that was just a moniker of sorts, but she imagined that she would be finding out about that in due course. "Yes. I am the one," he confirmed verbally, opening his arms wide as though he were a true showman. His ostentatiousness was mildly amusing, but Emmanuelle did hope that he wasn't just putting on airs. If he was interested in what she had been led to believe, it would be a game-changer for her, for Ambrosia, and probably for the Purifiers' cause as a whole.

There was also the fact that he must have heard a little something about her, too, or he wouldn't have been seeking her out enough to find her in the Hog's Head, rather than at the Gaelic Knot or something. Of course, advertising what she did when she wasn't at work while she was at her workplace wouldn't have been very bright, so Emmanuelle guessed that she appreciated that he'd caught her in a seedy pub instead.

"Now, progress?"

From her side of things, there hadn't been too much—at least not until the journal she was reading had come along. "If you're asking about my reading material," she began with a snort of laughter, "it's actually pretty good." It had sparked some ideas, without a doubt. "It's not mine, per se, so…" She nudged it in the stranger's direction. "Feel free to take a look at it."

@sergei

[Deleted]

She wasn't giving him a lot to work with, but purifiers were like that form his experience. A little too caught up in their own business to see the advantages of progress from time to time. It was bothersome. Yet he now got an avenue to explore at the very least as she mentioned her reading material. He wasn't overly interested, not even after she said it wasn't hers. What interest could a diary of another person possibly be to him? Yet he figured it better to humour her. If he was likely to get to do some unethical experiments he knew he needed to keep these people allied to him.

He took the book as it was nudged to him and leaned back with his glass of blood to start reading. It was tiresome to read as the pages were barely scientific in writing. They spoke of a discovery that was certainly worth exploring but the tiresome language of teen girls made his mood deteriorate and get gradually worse as he combed through some pages. Somebody needed to teach this girl something about documentation from a scientific point of view. He eventually closed the book in some irritation and shoved it back. "The subject interests me greatly and I'd love to meet this specific individual but her writing is tiresome and her discoveries not nearly detailed enough to work with. If you can get me the girl or any of the people mentioned in her little diary...." He spat the word out almost disdainfully. "I'll see if I can do some research to attest her claims and possibly see if we can use them for future development of our plans." He wondered if there were any further developments but for now he figured this was the best he was going to get. Yet he'd wait around for a short amount of time to see if there was anything more that she required or could give him. It wasn't for the sake of being polite, or at least not by half as much as trying to make sure he didn't risk losing information by impatience. Besides, he had his glass of blood to finish.

emmanuelle antoinette picquery

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

Early November 2025

The "mad scientist" took the diary from her and looked none too thrilled while flipping through it. Emmanuelle watched him and thought that he looked awfully frustrated by it, which was sort of funny. It obviously wasn't the next great novel, but hopefully he could see well enough to read between the lines of what the girl had written and why it would have been of interest for the sake of Emmanuelle's own work with the Purifiers.

With the book shoved back in her direction, Emmanuelle wasn't certain that her unlikely company at the pub had understood, though his comments on the matter made it clear that they were both of a similar mind. The subject, he said, was interesting, but the writing left something to be desired. Still, he mentioned wanting to meet the author, as though the girl who had written it would just be sitting and signing copies of it at Flourish and Blotts in Diagon Alley. "If you can get me the girl or any of the people mentioned in her little diary…" he considered, however, "I'll see if I can do some research to attest her claims and possibly see if we can use them for future development of our plans."

Emmanuelle wanted to ask him if she looked like someone who spent much time around teenage girls. She was young, granted, but not that young, nor did she have any idea of how to kidnap a teenage girl for the sake of his experimentation beyond a few theoretical possibilities. She didn't know what the owner of the diary looked like to pick her out of a crowd, so she hoped that some of the younger Purifiers would be of use to her there.

"Yeah, I'll go see who her publisher is," Emmanuelle quipped flatly, picking up the book from off of the table. More seriously, she looked at him. "You know a Chinese lady? Maybe… mid-thirties?" She was referring to Ambrosia Hong and hoped that the vampire was already aware of the other woman and the fact that she held authority over a certain section of Purifiers.

It was true that they needed more than what the diary could provide them. Ideally, thought Emmanuelle, they could get through to this Penelope under the guise of helping the girl to solve her problems. There was nothing wrong with being charitable, she supposed, but she knew that she couldn't step out of line and do anything without Ambrosia's signing off on it. Just because the vampire himself could have been centuries older than all of the other Purifiers' ages combined, that didn't give him the license to run wild, either.

@sergei

[Deleted]

Ugh, the youth these days, no respect for their elders. He missed the good old days he was allowed and able to murder somebody for looking at him the wrong way. Not that it would have helped much in this case as the woman was of some importance to the work he currently served. He missed the Germany of his younger years, although most people would find that statement alone highly incriminating. He had never really cared who died for gaining more knowledge and that was one of the few things that he and Ambrosia seemed to have somewhat in common. She wasn't overly concerned with who departed the world to further her own goals either. He settled for scoffing. "You clearly don't have a mind for research." He said disdainfully. He was arrogant but he had plenty of reason to be. He was beyond the shadow of a doubt the best in the field, he was older, more experienced and one of the few able to mix magic and genetic science. "I don't need the publisher but I'll take the girl. Perhaps your Chinese Lady can effectively extract the information I need rather than make useless clever remarks. Your information is only as good as the source and it would be worth a lot more if your source was more effective at writing down her observations."

He was clearly telling her off. He didn't need her to be clever, just to supply him with the tools he needed in order to further the research that supposedly also furthered her own personal goals. Otherwise she had no real reason to be part of the movement led by Ambrosia. "I have a deal with the highly esteemed Lady of your mentioning. She helps me further my research and I try to ensure it can be applied to her goals. She and I have similar minds on plenty of things and I'm old enough to not be quite as foolish as you might deem me to be." He drained his glass slowly, almost bored to tears. People didn't really improve over the centuries. "Now unless you have something worthwhile to mention I'm afraid I have research to return to." He said in a rather bored tone of voice.

emmanuelle antoinette picquery

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

Early November 2025

The vampire didn't seem to be overly thrilled with her, but the diary was easily the greatest source of information that she had come across in some time. It didn't matter much that its author was a teenage girl who seemed to think that she was losing her mind. That wouldn't really matter in the end. The goal wasn't to do a literary analysis of the merits of the girl's writings, not that Emmanuelle had had that sort of training from her grandmother. He could take it or leave it, she thought. If he wasn't happy with what the Purifiers had to offer him, it wasn't as though they were the only people who were so inclined in the world. She was aware that burning bridges also didn't do much good, yet this vampire seemed not to care about that. Emmanuelle wouldn't have been surprised if Ambrosia had chewed into him before, too, by the way that he referred to her at first.

"I have a deal with the highly esteemed Lady of your mentioning," he went on, obviously meaning Ambrosia. While Emmanuelle didn't know the history between the two of them, it was clear that he was making himself out to be quite important. Seniority as a vampire only did so much, though. Emmanuelle couldn't imagine having been alive for so many years without much to show for it besides an unbearable ego. If he was really more talk than action, she was going to be sorely disappointed, and it was sort of a pity that he apparently didn't know what all she was capable of doing.

He mentioned that he had research to return to, and Emmanuelle motioned towards him dismissively. "Enjoy," she replied, not giving him the opportunity to go on another rant. It was better to keep some things under wraps, even in the Hog's Head. If his work was actually worth its salt, she'd see it for herself at the Purifiers' base.

@sergei
OOC: We can end it here, or you can do one more?