SWITCHBOARD

[transmittable]

If you'd like to ask the Transmitter something over the phone, go right ahead! The Transmitter will answer the phone as soon as she's available. Leaving messages is impossible, given how old these phones are, but you should be able to reach her at almost all hours.

Comments are screened for privacy; all Patients are offered confidentiality, didn't you know?

Comments

After the incentive

[heritrix]

[Rin thinks about waiting an hour. Let the Transmitter recover, maybe nurse that migraine and have a clearer conversation. But she's not the one threatening the Patients, is she? Better to cut out the middleman. And what's more, Rin hasn't talked to the Risen yet.

She's not sure if they'll hang around today like they did last week, but Rin will be on the phone in as short a time as it takes it to get to her room, voice colder than the storm that's been surrounding the hospital for weeks.]

I request an audience.

[transmittable]

[ When Rin calls, it sounds different than her previous talks with the Transmitter. Like her near-miss last Tuesday, there's an increased amount of static, there's more feedback, but there's also this horrible electronic screeching. It sounds almost like a radio in need of tuning. The voice that speaks to her is the Transmitter's...sort of. It's extremely distorted, like in that announcement. ]

Ohh, you're always in our audience, Courageous. But then, you're also on stage. How funny, a witness and a performer. Did you like our little show today?

[heritrix]

[She feels a great wave of empathy for the Transmitter. She was so happy yesterday.]

I give it 2 stars out of 10. No amount of flash effects can make up for a shoddy script and slimy acting.

[transmittable]

[ Can't last for long, in this place. ]

Well, you know what they say. Everyone's a critic. Whether you like it or not, it's bathed in infinite truth. We thought all of you could use more of that around here.

[heritrix]

You say that, and yet you're withholding details. Qualify "everyone" for me, Director.

[That seems like a good title for them (the "the" in "the Risen" is so awkward), not that she overly cares. She needs to know how far-reaching they intend this to be.]

[transmittable]

[ They laugh. It...sounds like there's more than one voice in there. ]

Wow, Director, you sure are a feisty one! It means what it sounds, doll. Everyone. Your friends, your family, your acquaintances, your little schoolmates. Your enemies. Every single person.

[heritrix]

[The others described it perfectly, and yet it's a sound you can't be prepared for unless you hear it. Very legion of the damned. But at the answer it's Rin's turn to laugh, and she sounds bitter. Angry.]

And by what means will you find them? You're bluffing. It's obvious from that very sentence you don't my story half as well as you think you do. [Rin has neither friends nor family to tell.] I doubt you'd even know where to begin.

[transmittable]

We were speaking broadly. For you... Shirou Emiya. His Servant...and yours, what was his name? Archer? Kirei Kotomine... Obviously the other Masters and Servants. How about we just announce it to all of Fuyuki, actually. That'd be a "good place to start," don't you think, Courageous?

[heritrix]

["Rin Tohsaka is a mage."

If the Risen had left it to Kirei, to the other Masters and Servants, it would be fine. Most of those people know she's a mage already, and the ones who don't would find out through deduction. There is always a Tohsaka Master in the Grail Wars, as long as there as one alive. Just as there's a champion for the Matou and the Einzbern.

Truthfully, Rin had hoped the Risen would tell her they'd broadcast the secret to the world. It would definitely be a bluff then, and who would believe such a ludicrous thing? And if enough did... If it did, it would be the death of her soul but she could carry on. Because Rin Tohsaka could never be a mage again, and neither could anyone else. Magecraft is only possible so long as its existence remains a "mystery". In the Age of Gods, magic users were capable of feats no modern mage could hope to replicate today. As the knowledge of its existence was passed down through the centuries, thousands more with each generation drawing from the same power source, the potency of magic became diluted.

It's for that reason, among the others, that the Mage's Association was formed. Keeping the existence of magecraft and the supernatural has been a core tenant of theirs since those days. Revealing Rin as a mage to so many people would be a crisis not even they could afford to ignore. They wouldn't stop with her classmates; the people told directly could tell anyone else. Teeth grinding audibly, Rin can't not visualize it now. With a city as large and modern as Fuyuki is, they couldn't kill everybody, but the city is on an island They could come very close. And the scale of horror they'd have to unleash to cover it up to make it look like an accident—]

Do you have any idea how many people would die?!

[The scream is out of her throat before she can stop it; before she can finish imagining exactly how the Mage's Association would react. Even Kirei would take this seriously. Having worked alongside Enforcers and as former Executor of the Holy Church, he would know the drill—]

[transmittable]

[ The static crackles as the voice that is the Transmitter's and more than the Transmitter's laughs. ]

Do you think that we care?

[heritrix]

You would be next. What they would do to wipe out a town is incomparable to how far they'd hunt you!

[And with Rin did, the Mage's Association would inherit every secret art of the Tohsaka family's magecraft. Zelretch's trunk, the blueprints for the gem sword her family's ancestor was entrusted with, because how dangerous it would be in the hands of anyone else was too much of a risk. God, it gets worse and worse the more Rin thinks about it—]

[transmittable]

That all depends, doll...on if they could find us.

Of course, you could stop this. We gave you a way to, remember? We gave all of you a way to.

[heritrix]

[She's so goddamn furious she wants to put the phone through a wall.

Instead she's quiet for several seconds. Nearly a minute, as she forces herself to calm down and breathe in and out, like a person who has lungs instead of a bomb set to explode. If they haven't hung up in that time, she'll speak again.]

Is this fun for you?

[transmittable]

[ They're still there. They don't seem inclined to hang up. ]

It is. It's more fun than we've had in a very long time.

[heritrix]

So last time was boring, huh. And I don't mean with us, the past two weeks.

[She's thinking of the state of the shooting range; the feeling she confessed to Wesker, that she thinks they've done this with other groups of people before.]

[transmittable]

Hmmm. ...You know? We could say we're not telling. But you've entertained us, so much.

Yes. It was very boring last time. This is much better.

[heritrix]

Did any of them "pass"?

[transmittable]

Ahhh, there we are- not telling.

[heritrix]

Unless proven otherwise, I'll take that as a yes. For some reason, I suspect if any of us pass it would bore you.

[transmittable]

Your words, not ours.

[heritrix]

Whatever. I hope all of you show up to curtain call in your underwear, then trip on a prop off the stage and impale yourself and die where every last one of us can see it. That's a show that would bring down the house.

[Rin hangs up.]