Minerva nervously sat down next to Larséne, leaving ample space between them. She clutched her bag tightly with both hands in her lap. Larséne seemed amused by her discomfort, but was behaving much better than Demetri had hoped.
"I'm surprised you're as uncomfortable around Larséne as you are, inventors seem to always meddle in alchemy themselves." Demetri said, both trying to make Minerva a little more comfortable, while also seeking information about her and her partner. She continued to fiddle with with the handle on her luggage.
"I've never really had a knack for alchemy, I can only do minor spells and parlor tricks. Adella did most of the needed alchemy. She could summon as well, but she only summoned tiny things." Demetri nodded. He had been wondering why the kidnapper (if there was one) would take only Adella, and not Minerva too, if his/her goal was simply collecting inventors. Perhaps the tie-in was alchemical skill. While minor inventors weren't worth too much, very few outside of inventors and the S.I. had any useful alchemical abilities at all. Yet, back to the dangers of capturing the mediocre. Raw Alchemical ability, while powerful, could cause more disasters than it was worth as well. Alchemical Academies trained control for two years before they trained anything else. Where was the motive? More than likely she had been mugged or the like while walking out by herself, and was now lying in a ditch somewhere. The police department had reported 15 known cases of missing inventors and 5 cases of small-time alchemists in the last week, after he pulled a couple strings with a few old friends still working in London. 15, certainly a large enough number to valid a serial killer or kidnapper. But they all lived rather scattered among the commoner class communities, and were of all different ages, both males and females. Connections? None so far, but he couldn't be sure until he looked at every person's profile.
"I see. What type of inventions do you usually work on?" He inquired.
"Mostly experimental stuff. Lately we'd been working on transforming matter. First we started simple; Subliming water to steam, sand to glass, but we work working on a new way to manufacture bloodstone from charcoal. It was working, but only partially." Hmm, transfiguration of that sort required a Level 13 Philosopher's stone or better, and even one of that low quality wouldn't come cheap.
"That usually requires a philosopher's stone to aid, did you have one of those?" They couldn't afford one...perhaps they stole one from the wrong people, and Adella was kidnapped because of that? Minerva looked down at her fingernails, bits of grease and grime showed underneath her nails that were needing trimming. Signs of someone who worked for a living.
"Adella said that's why it hadn't been working, we had only a couple of minor Neodymium pieces to use. She had been looking for an alternate to the stones.." tears welled up in her eyes