Though many would deny its existence due to shame, and many more because it is part of their job contract to do so, there is an underground market in the Clock Tower for mundane things that have achieved sentience. For whatever reason, people have an unmistakable urge to buy something that should by all rights just sit there and do what it was made for, but instead tends towards waxing poetical about how lonesome its existence is in-between campaigning for greater rights for inanimate objects and spreading filthy rumours about the candlestick in the other room. Talking pencils, squeeze balls that squeeze you back, and body pillows that whisper sweet nothings into your ear are among the most popular products in this free market, though there are always more esoteric, magical items being passed around like money at a strip club.
Waver Annabelle Velvet's housemaid is not one such object. She is proud to have a very impeccable pedigree free of any black marks such as being returned or declared unfit to serve, and if ever asked of her origins, would freely extol the wonderful skills of a certain professor who had created her to be his Mystic Code and then given her away years later to a man he could barely stand. Though she does not show it, as she lacks basic emotional cues and indeed is considered by Waver to be a girl version of the T-1000, Waver Veltet's housemaid is also grateful to her owner for allowing her to roam about, identify as female, wear and subsequently ruin expensive maid uniforms, and generally be as big a drain on Waver's prana as she could possibly be without spending all day in combat-mode. The fact that she is also a large, sentient blob of mercury is something she feels is only a small facet of her otherwise fully fledged character, and she gets very cross when people stereotype her as unthinking and unfeeling because of it.
"Wake up, Mistress," the maid said, shaking Tohsaka Rin's shoulder gently. Rin snored and turned over, flopping onto her stomach with the grace of a killer whale doing ballet. While she was normally an accommodating, if occasionally bullish person while awake, a sleeping Rin more closely resembles a dieting Snorlax than any sort of human being. "Mistress," the maid spoke again with a soft, chiming voice that sounded as if it had been produced by a thousand crystal wine glasses vibrating at different frequencies, "If you don't wake up, I will be forced to probe you vigorously until you do so." The maid's right hand melted and a trio of thin, undulating silvery tentacles appeared in its place. Mercury is by nature poisonous to humans, but sentient mercury merely chooses to be poisonous when it wants to be, which is rarely. After all, no one wants to spread negative stereotypes around. It would be bad for the movement.
Perhaps sensing some danger on the edge of her dulled senses, Rin blinked her eyes open as if they'd been covered in sand and then left to bake in a dry oven. Upon seeing the expectant maid holding aloft something commonly referred to by Japanese female magi as Bad News, she groaned and shut them again. "Not again," Rin moaned. "Wasn't last night enough for you?"
"You must have been dreaming, Mistress. Last night I was attempting to stop Master from writing angry letters and then burning them while laughing maniacally."
Moments passed as Rin's mind booted up with all the celerity of a discount laptop. Eventually she opened her eyes again, took a good look at the monochrome maid standing by her bed, and sighed. "Do I at least get breakfast?"
"It's an hour past noon, Mistress."
"…what!?"
"The bus leaves in a minute. The Mistress wants you to know that she's grateful for your wanton vandalism of her beloved wall."
"But… doesn't she hate it when people punch holes in her things?"
The maid affected a plastic, knowing smile. "She does, but she knows her husband hates it even more."
Waver Velvet's lecture begins at 2:20 PM on Thursdays, and, due to technicalities beyond his control, ends an hour before that. The common sense needed to decipher such deliberately obtuse times is something Tohsaka Rin possesses in abundance, a rare trait in most magi. Then again, most magi would take the times at face value and prepare a familiar to attend the lecture in their place. Many of the less prestigious lectures that occur in secret rooms hidden behind illusionary walls in the middle of the night are attended solely by a collection of rodents and household pests, since no one wishes to admit their interest in the Kama Sutra as a guide to foreign tantric rituals. Waver's lecture wasn't that well hidden. It took place in a small room on the seventeenth floor of the Clock Tower, which, while proving a bitch to get into, was relatively quick and straightforward about approving Rin's request to study there. If only mundane bureaucracies could be that efficient.
Tohsaka Rin barreled through an ancient wooden door, knocked over a vase worth more than the net worth of several millionaires, barely caught and replaced it with the tips of her fingers, and sank into a bench, breathing with some difficulty due to having sprinted most of the way to her destination.
It was 1:19, and Caren Hortensia was in the middle of consummating her marriage behind a podium when a rather out of breath Tohsaka Rin all but collapsed onto one of the chapel pews. Caren Hortensia was married to God, and as she had been taught, she made sure to show her love every single day. Her love was so great that it would absolutely spoil any mortal rotten without fail, so it was fortunate that she reserved it solely for someone who didn't really give a damn, and hadn't given a damn since He damned some poor sod to eternal torment for badmouthing Him. Caren didn't really care about that, though. She knew He was just being shy as usual, and that one day He would descend and ravish her most thoroughly. Until then, she amused herself with various implements.
Most would have been annoyed at their intimacy being interrupted, but the pale haired young nun at the fore of the chapel (or embassy, as many called it) looked up from a book thick enough to cause a concussion, and allowed a predatory smile to flit across her lips. It was luck that Rin couldn't see any of Caren's body below the waist, which had been thankfully hidden by that ever useful podium. "Welcome. If you're here to attend my lecture on 50 Shades of Punishment, you're an hour early. Mister Velvet's lecture is one floor down." There was a pregnant pause. "Would you like to confess your sins? I have leather, and it's very soft today."
Tohsaka Rin barreled through an ancient iron door, tripped over a slightly raised section of floor tile, and fell into a glass cabinet of fine china, shattering enough cups to make the Queen of England weep. A minute later, when the only traces of her accident were the frown on her face and Waver Velvet's unabashed grin, she sank into one of a half dozen chairs that were evenly spaced out in the glorified broom closet she'd found herself in and sneezed away the dust that her motions had stirred up.
"Sorry," Waver said, leaning on a podium with a base that looked to have been chewed on by rats. "The janitor hasn't gotten around to cleaning it yet. I suspect he'll continue to not get around to it for another month at least." The entire room was empty of life, save the unperturbed professor and his new student, who was beginning to think she should've just taken Reinforcement 101 like the rest of the freshmen.
"Are you actually a lecturer," Rin growled, completely fed up with everything. "Or is this going to end with a group of burly men in gimp outfits trying to tie me down?"
"Yes," Waver said. "Turn to page three."
Taken aback, the girl bit back a witty retort. "I don't have the textbook."
"You do in an alternate universe. Turn to page three."
About halfway through the most confusing series of words Rin had ever had the fortune of experiencing (yet somehow understood perfectly), the iron door was pushed ajar a short distance, before closing once more, eliciting a loud yowl from the black cat that had just gotten the tip of its tail squashed. The mangy thing plodded towards Waver with the care one gives an annoying child, and deposited a damp letter on his podium along with a hairball and a few mouse bones, before prancing away and curling up into a ball on the chair next to Rin's.
"Drat," Waver said without a hint of emotion after spending a good five minutes on the paper in his hands. "Gregory's gone."
"Gregory?"
"My last student. Looks like that rat bastard got another one."
"Got?"
"Yes." Waver nodded. "Without any students, I lose my job. This guy's been picking off all of mine one by one. No one's brave enough to sign up for my course anymore."
"Wait!" Rin stood, making sure to slam her fists on the nearest chair, which happened to be the one the mangy cat was resting on. As it hissed its frustration, her own grew. "I never asked for this! Are you saying I'm in danger?"
"Danger is a relative term, Miss Tohsaka," Waver said, doing his best impression of a James Bond villain. He tapped the wet paper on his podium. "You've always been in danger. Now you're just slightly more susceptible to random accidents. Only they aren't random; they're deliberately engineered, and they're not accidents; they're assassinations."
"Metal Gear?"
"No, assassinations."
Despite her best efforts to convince herself to abandon this insane teacher, who was less insane and more completely desensitized to any sort of threat to his life thanks to years of having to put up with a rat bastard at work (who kept trying to make him miserable) and a righteous cunt at home (who kept trying to have sex with him), Rin sat through the rest of the lecture. He may have been completely insane, but Velvet was the closest thing to an ally she had in the world she'd willingly immersed herself into just to get away from her demonic sister.
Taking a page from said sister's book, Rin made sure by the end of the lecture that Waver had promised her a room in the most expensive dorm, all fees waived, and the highest possible passing mark. While she mentally patted herself on the back for such an accomplishment, Waver mentally patted himself on the back for managing to trick his student into getting even less than the minimum most others demanded as blackmail. She hadn't even asked for dental!
Afterwards, despite herself, Rin spent yet another strange hour upstairs in the chapel, watching with barely restrained fascination as Caren Hortensia demonstrated exactly how one extracts information from a prisoner using only a potato, a straw, and two barrels of Assyrian Ale.
And leather. Lots and lots of leather.