Ernie Median

Clone man! As in he makes clones and he IS a clone! Don't tell him, though, he doesn't know it yet. Not that he would care much.

An alcoholic and a smoker with a tendency to be a bit unpleasant. Not to say he's any kind of difficult or cruel; he's actually quite passive and neutral, easy to be around if you don't mind him smelling like cigarettes and alcohol. Ernie has always been incredibly book-smart; he spent his childhood proving himself to be a prodigy. As an adult, Ernie went to school and got a job in a small lab where he was in charge of a few different projects surrounding the subject of biology. During this time, Ernie taught himself a lot about engineering, mostly based on the machines he worked with on a daily basis, but with his ability to learn quickly, it rapidly developed into an impressive skill. Ernie began developing various machines and processes to things that were otherwise way complicated or straight-up believed impossible. Often, this failed, but he kept working. Ernie didn't yet have any addictions to combat, he was a hardworking and smart man with nothing but some parental trauma to hold him back from his potential. Until he got dumped one day, and a coworker invited him to go get drinks in response. It's not as if Ernie never had a drink prior to this, but it was just the right time to start something.

His coworkers started to notice Ernie's work ethic dwindle; he came in looking extremely tired and sometimes smelling like alcohol. As time went on and nobody really addressed this, Ernie became confident in his vice, starting to carry around alcohol with him while at work. His attitude soured, but he still got his work done for the most part. His Ex tried to get back in touch with him, he told them to jump off a cliff (which was not very nice of him) and smashed his phone afterward. This led to Ernie taking a massive downward spiral, losing his interest in his work entirely and doing nothing but laying on his couch drinking himself into oblivion.

This episode lasted roughly 3 weeks before someone came knocking on his door. He hadn't gone to work the entire time, but he had one of the nicest bosses he could possibly get, and they thought he was worth waiting on. Then they showed up at his door and had a chat with him, trying to give him a pep talk and explain that he deserved better than how he was treating himself. This absolute darling told him something along the lines of "You've got a lot to show the world, it would be a massive shame if you just let it to waste."

Despite Ernie bitching at them the entire time, he did listen and took in what they said. He went to work the next day, alcohol in tow, and started to become a little more functional. Ernie dove into his work to an unhealthy extent; he had no life outside of his job and efforts therein. At home, he would continue working on various tasks he was able to take with him, all while staying slightly drunk and eventually passing out after a while.

Ernie developed a reputation for being fantastic no matter what he was working on in a lab, but also a reputation for being rather heartless. "He's like a robot, but one that smells like booze. He's not programmed to care about you, only to work and work well." He managed to land himself a pretty damn good job in the end, effectively being allowed to do whatever he wanted and have it funded by someone else. During this time he would quietly steal bits of machinery and take them home, building up a collection of parts and devices in his basement which would come in handy shortly.

See, Ernie wanted to make clones of himself as a way to achieve immortality. But seeing as I prefer the "you can't transfer yourself to another body, only duplicate and then die" thing, it didn't actually work like that. It's not him, but a completely separate Ernie. This entire process took several years and all within Ernie's basement! It was janky and there were a few failed clones, but in the end, we got the Ernie we know and (sorta) love today!
Original Ernie died way sooner than he expected via ✨being a major and spiraling alcoholic✨ so he didn't get to finish what he was working on. The Ernie we know now didn't have an updated "snapshot" of OG Ernie's mind, so all he knew is he had the idea but didn't know he carried it out!

Clone Ernie is somewhat more stable!
Probably because, while he has the same memories that caused him to be the way he is, he technically didn't experience it. He wasn't there for his past, even if he doesn't know that, so it's a slightly different effect on the clone than his original! It's like being the witness vs being the victim. Both are potentially traumatic, no doubt, but gonna leave different effects!

^{Note: Making Ernie want to clone the demon for himself doesn't really make any sense, I can't picture him with magic. I can't picture him wanting magic. So instead, he will be doing it on someone else's behalf.}

One day, Ernie bumped into a strange girl named Flick. He literally bumped into her, or she bumped into him but insisted it was his fault. At first glance, he thought she was a demon, she even had horns! But after a brief discussion (Ernie being really inquisitive, always curious about the supernatural), he learned a little more about this peculiar individual who was a human merely sharing their physical form with a demon. Enough for it to have a solid grasp on his attention. Always happy to show off, Flick displayed a handful of the demonic abilities she had been bestowed by the demon that possessed her and then reverted back into her usual human form. Ernie invited Flick to sit and chat with him, which she wasn't super keen on, but she enjoyed the opportunity to talk about Fi, which he clearly wanted. However, once they sat down to talk, Flick suddenly lost interest and gave him the most vague and unhelpful information she could, shrugging at most of his questions and asking "are you done now?" over and over again. It was incredibly frustrating to Ernie, he really didn't like this person, but he needed to know more about the demon. Finally, Ernie managed to pull the basics and inferred one more bit of data from her;

• Flick's soul was being possessed by a demon that's been there for years.
• The demon is conscious and can communicate with Flick in her head. Nobody else can hear this.
• Flick is granted special demonic abilities that make her incredibly powerful for being human.
• Ernie could not easily remove the demon.
• and finally, Flick talks about this demon as if it were a religious belief. Holding it in such high regard, as if she were "blessed" by it. This is important to her.

[Tabs of descriptions of the successful clones, his notes on them]

But who wanted the demon/Flick cloned?

Today:

He's a smidge washed up currently!
Spending most days drinking, scribbling bad and complicated science-y ideas, and occasionally attempting to carry out those ideas only to find that being drunk doesnt exactly breed his best, most functional ideas
Little bit of a hermit, too, he just stays home a lot
Lost access to the place he actually used to clone the Flicks, some other folk own it
But he does have oodles of machines in his basement (which his original used to clone himself!) so he gets up to no good down there