SOIKOS: Take This Cup

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

A desperate race to attempt to stop the ritual is underway. The question is, who arrives first?



“This is the temple?” Garrison Kane said, looking around at the small chapel several blocks from the Latin Rite Church, which towered over Baghdad. They were still in the approximate grounds of the church, although far to the edge. It looked more like an overly ornate garden shed. Stick did not respond, stepping past the X-Man and running his fingers along the frescos under the single small stained glass window.

“These carvings are new.” He muttered, his fingers working slowly over the stone. The rest of his men had been left behind, and during their approach, they were grimly aware of other movement in the shadows. They might not have been noticed yet, but they certainly were not alone.

“The basements of the church date back to the 17th century, and before that, it was one of the few Christian monasteries allowed to exist in Persia. It has a very long connection with the Templars, although no one in the church seems to be aware.” Jane said, kneeling down to peer at the stonework.

“The site has a connection. The clergy and laypersons here do not, which is why they are there.” Stick said, almost a growl. His role was unique in the church, as the application of the Pope’s will. Stalin had famously asked ‘how many tank divisions does the Vatican have?’, but he had missed the point. The Church had plenty of allies with heavy artillery. When it needed to dirty its hands, it needed a knife point, and Stick was that thin, sharp focus of their will.

Not for him and his Chosen the dirty compromises of the Jesuits and the Franciscans. he would not stoop to endanger his soul for the petty squabbles of the earthly powers. He stood where the rock of Christ had been meant to stand - on the border between Humanity and Old Night.

Behind the edifice of the Church there were always all sorts of secrets, some forgotten by many within the Vatican itself. It was so easy to forget, sometimes, that Peter's creation was among the oldest of human institutions, outlasting entire civilizations - adapting to surviving with the finesse belied by their reputation for inveterate conservatism.

Farouk considered the grim gray visage of the blind man who moved with catlike grace through the cluttered courtyard and thought that it made perfect sense of course. The Church was among the first to deal with mutancy, after all, tackling the problem on practical as well as philosophical ground. Many a genetic outcast found refuge behind the monastery walls in their time.

It made perfect sense that the history of the Vatican and magic would be older still. Who better to police the darkness after all?

How Mary escaped the burning wreck of the Alamut headquarters or got in touch with Connelly was still a mystery to him. There was little time to press her for details and she did not seem to be in the mood for talking in any case. Still, there was a definite hint of luck about the whole thing, he thought. Not least being that Stick actually made time for the Irish Jesuit.

Although given the problem at hand, he had little choice but to step over his dearly cherished biases and deal with Loyola's brood, or the Hellfire Club for that matter.

Amahl glanced at the red Rook out of the corner of his eyes. She claimed to be here as the recompense and exculpation of what she referred to as "very embarrassing faux pas." Yet the disinformation that allowed the Templars to pose as Opus Dei did come from London's chapter. Farouk was deeply uninterested in extending the young scion of the Hampshires much of a benefit of the doubt.

Privately he resolved that at the first sign of betrayal he would see how quickly he could still induce an aneurysm.

Hampshire noticed his glance and merely winked at him. She had taken up a somewhat possessive stance behind Kane, obviously deducing that the Canadian would not be as quick to end her life or renege on their deal as the rest of their cohort. For his part, Garrison looked oblivious to it, scrutinizing the carvings but seeing nothing.

"Aah." Stick muttered, and his sensitive fingers pressed into the stone. There was a soft click, and a section of the wall shifted slightly. "A simple deadlock, but well hidden. If you would?" He stepped back from the stone, as Garrison tested the section with his hands before pushing. It was heavy, but not so much that a strong man, or two weak ones couldn't shift it, and it lead into a small antechamber. Once through, the hidden door was simply a deadlock on a pressure trigger, and Kane pushed it back until it clicked back into place, once against looking like a sheer wall, but with them on the other side.

They descended a dozen steps and came into a corridor on whose sides were some horizontal niches. Kane took a brief step back at the sight of them. Bones had been piled into them, over the centuries it seemed, with no attempt to recompose them into full skeletons. Instead, some held femurs racked like firewood. Others rough pyramids of skulls, to prevent them from tumbling out. Even a space of nothing but tiny bones of the hands, splayed out like a grotesque arrangement of beads.

"Obviously it was originally the ossarium for the monastery, and later the church." Hampshire supplied, leaning in to peer at the skulls. "What lovely places you've all brought me." She said absently, but her words were that of honest interest, and not a sarcastic rebuke.

Farouk contemplated the wealth of unwanted and slightly horrifying information inherent in the remark, but decided to keep his peace. The Hellfire Club representative seemed to be quite taken with the younger X-Man and he was rather morbidly curious how far the events would progress. Kane was dating Frost after all, if he remembered correctly.

Personally he was firmly planning on chewing his own arm off rather than waking either of the ladies in question if he ever found himself in the same bed. But the boy *was* Christian's blood....

The hall ended suddenly at what appeared to be an entrance to a crypt.

"So." Hampshire inquired brightly, "Who wants to go into the creepified death palace first?"

"Just wait here." Garrison said, and crept forward. He wasn't necessarily the quietest in the party, but his physical advantages made going first a good plan. The crypt itself was wide and deep, more like an auditorium carved out of the rock. Based on the irregular shape, Kane guessed it had to be originally a natural cavern that had been exploited for a new purpose. In the middle of the space, there was a circle of men chanting. He couldn't make out the language, but he could recognize the woman in the middle of the circle; Calysee Neramani.

She was vacant of expression and blank eyed, oblivious to the world around her. Kane would have moved closer, but there were guards spread throughout the area, serious looking men armed with a mix of automatic weapons and swords. A small cluster of them stood guard around an ancient looking man in an Arabic robe, who sat far off to the right. In the center of the ritual was Tremont, orchestrating the chart from a stack of thinly hammered sheets of bronze. Garrison crept back to the others and related what he saw.

Farouk started at the description provided by Kane and carefully shuffled forward himself to take a look. Upon his return to the group his face had frozen into a carefully controlled mask with only a hint of all-consuming rage flickering in his eyes. "It's the Imam. They managed to take him alive somehow."

Hampshire raised a slim, delicate hand palm up. "So what is our plan, gentlemen?"

"Mass homicide." Stick informed her blandly.

"Ah." The Red Rook nodded sagely, "Refreshing in its complete lack of details. But on the bright side the suicidal quotient is quite high..."

The voices suddenly rose, the shouts echoing angrily and loudly against the walls of the underground chamber.

In the middle of the circle, Calysee was surrounded by writhing lights, which arced outwards and twisted back in with a haphazard motion. Red and yellow flashes spread flickering shapes on the walls, like images of fantastical creatures existing only in a brief moment. Tremont raised his arms up, exalting as the woman twisted and shook in the vortex of the swirling energy, her mouth open in a wordless scream.

Even before any of them could move, there was the sound of gunfire. The figures in the circle didn't move, the rounds dissipating like mist in the morning sun once it reached the edges. However, for those not in the circle, the effects were more deadly, as two of the Templars fell. Men poured through the gap, most kissing the crucifix around their neck before slamming into the guards.

"I think that is our cue." Kane muttered. Stick put a hand on his shoulder.

"Take the Hellfire woman. See what you can do to end the fight. Amahl and I will free the Imam." He smiled slightly at Farouk's look. "I dare say I have known the Old Man longer than you, Farouk. They have started the Grail Cantos. They are invulnerable unless it can be disrupted. He will hopefully be the key."

"The chant is the Grail?" Jane said incredulously.

"Of course. Luke 22-20; 'In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.' The apostles spoke in allegory. The 'cup' was the vessel in which Christ passed along his divine knowledge. The 'vessel' itself is a cantos; a mematic neuroprogram in the structure of a ritual poem. It uses specific disyllablic tones to write memory into the consciousness the same way a computer does. Christ used it to pass along the word of God split between his disciplines. But that is not it's only possible use." Stick said darkly.

"This just gets weirder and weirder."

Kane pulled Hampshire away, the two fading into the shadows and beginning to work their way closer to the circle. Farouk turned to give Stick a long, appraising look. "Now what?"

Stick smiled at him, smoothly working the safety on the pistols he produced seemingly of the thin air. "What is it the Americans say? You run, I block?"

The chaos in the catacombs was deafening. While the middle of the room was still dominated by the impenetrable circle, in which Calysee Neramani writhed and twitched in mid-air, the rest of it had turned into a desperate close quarter battle between the Templar guards and the attackers. Jane touched Kane's arm.

"Those guys? They are the Opus Dei." She said in his ear. "I guess someone let them know the Templars were playing them for decoys and they found out where they were going."

"So which one do I punch first?"

"Both groups. We'll draw them away from the Imam." Jane said, and her skin began to take on a slightly glossy sheen. She smiled at Kane's scrutiny. "Most of the London club is based around magic, Mister Kane, but there are a few exceptions. Like me."

With that, Hampshire was moving, and a tightly delivered chop with her stiffened fingers tore the throat out of an armed man before he could bring up his weapon. Kane followed her, shattering the forearm of a sword wielding Templar before tossing him across the room to bowl down several Opus Dei looking to rush the prisoners. He kept Hampshire between himself and the gunmen, hearing the odd round ricochet off her skin and into the darkness. While she moved with lethal efficiency, Kane was more methodical, leaving men crippled but alive as he broke bones and snapped limbs to take them out of the action.

In the semi-darkness of the crypt with the enemies mixed into the violent maelstrom of anarchic murder, Hampshire moved through the room like dancing death. Gliding through the chaos around them, seemingly untouchable by the rounds that filled the air. Kane grunted a subvocal curse, his focus taxed to the utmost as he kept close to the Red Rook, yet moderated his own violence - which always took more concentration than giving into the primal urge and going past the self-imposed limits.

The lack of firearms did not truly bother him, in this sort of unpredictable, close-quarters melee he may have preferred relying on the hand-to-hand even without his powers. He grinned tightly as he head-butter an incautious Templar out of the way. Not that he was about to forego them, of course.

Across the room Stick suddenly stepped into the light, calm and collected, the two guns blazing death and destruction. Kane grimaced. He was rather growing fond of the old priest and the guy did seem competent, but if he was going to pull a Hollywood stunt of two-gun mojo... Must be an amateur after all, maybe a desk jockey out for adventure. Not a prof--

Kane's train of conscience broke of as his brain suddenly registered the terrible efficiency with which Stick was clearing a corridor for himself and Farouk. His own body almost on automatic, he blinked at the metronomic regularity with which the warrior-priest was executing, there was simply no other term applicable, the people in his way.

Farouk's telepathy was clearly apparent as well, as people throughout the room would suddenly start, lose their concentration, scream or fire at their allies. But compared to the pure, directly vicious and utterly effective mayhem inflicted by Stick, everyone else in the crypt may have been as well playing with paintball guns.

The guards to either side of the Imam fell, and screams fought shouts and orders for dominance in the closed space. The old man sagged, only to be pulled to his feet by Stick. A trace of a smile touched the Imam's lips as he took in Stick's face.

"I never thought I'd be grateful to see you, you Infidel dog."

"Likewise, you Muslim savage. They took the Grail, I see."

"We protected it for nearly a thousand years. Perhaps it is time for that burden to be passed on."

"If we survive. Did they take you before you could-"

"No. I have it." The Imam patted Stick roughly on the side of the cheek. "You will buy me the time I need to stop this abomination?"

Stick raised both pistols and nodded. "Go with God."

"As-salam Alaikum." The old man spared a brief nod to Farouk and moved into the space that the Christian's guns created, moving until he was at the northern point of the circle. He reached into his robes and brought forth a small codex, old and bound in scuffed dark leather. It was the size of a tiny notebook, and seemed in significant as he peered at the tiny lines and began to speak.
His voice rose, amazingly clear and strong, the words of the ancient song reverberating through the gloomy ensconcement of the crypt. The Grail clashed with Tremont's chant and the very air seemed to tense and crackle with the force behind the two clashing weaves.

Imam smiled across the room and, incongruously winked at him, the years falling away in a moment to reveal the small, mischievous boy he has once been. Tremont voice changed, the sudden rage transforming his chant into a frustrated, enraged shriek for a second.

The tension in the air, the oppressive heaviness of it was impossible to ignore, but for Farouk there was simply not time, no strength left to pay attention. All his focus was taken up by the four becowled figures that moved smoothly toward him and Stick, spacing themselves with the ease of constant practice.

Amahl licked his lips. Four well-trained battle-psis. There was no chance...

Beside him Stick was moving forward, the last magazines exhausted, the old priest sprung forward his movements seemingly unhurried yet utterly economical in dealing death that seemed liquid in its grace.

*No chance.* Tarouk thought and smiled. "Well. Let's be about it, gentlemen."

Time had lost all meaning. The psionic thrusts and ripostes, illusions rising up and dying still born, the play of the empathetic triggers countermanded by the pulls on the psychosomatic impulses.

A stray bullet grazed Farouk's forehead and he barely even noticed it. He was not a match for the combined power of the four telepaths before him and so his only refuge was skill, technique, little nasty tricks he had picked up along the long and arduous way toward the top of his profession.

But in the end power counted and he could feel himself weakening, losing momentum, giving way...

*You can't do it on the cheap, asshole!*

*Fuck. Off.*

Shadow King's voice was shrill with what Farouk recognized as utter and absolute terror, *Use the power from my fucking wards, you idiot!*

Amahl didn't even bother replying, grimly concentrating on the psionic battle that was slowly, but surely turning against him.

*Listen to me! Listen, you piece of retarded camel offal! If they raise that boitch, she will eat our souls! Our very essence will be consumed as her first instinct! I don't want to be a fucking dinner! USE MY WARDS!*

The fear permeating the entreaty ripped through Farouk and he swallowed, daring a lightening-fast look around the chamber. The slender wall of bodies around Imam was holding, but only by inches. The Opus Dei were almost all dead and the Templars were concentrating their force against the four people preventing them from reaching the holder of the Grail.

If he was to fail here and now, it would not matter whether another psychic parasite was lose upon the Astral Plane. Nothing would matter...

The shields he swore to himself would never buckle,, fell easily somewhere deep inside his psyche and in one brief moment Amahl Farouk's mind blossomed, radiating the full extent of the power that once had been the match for Xavier himself.

It poured through him like a flood of liquid fire, painful in the intensity his was no longer used to, burning his own synapses, threatening to scour his gift out of him completely. Inside of him the shadow King was a whimpering ball of pain, just as helpless in the face of the force it helped unleash.

But for a brief second Farouk blazed with pure, awesome power and he turned it on the suddenly pitiful battle-psis before him.

Farouk's blaze of power echoed in the chamber, as the Templar psionics reeled under the sudden fury of his attack. The Templar line began to fall back, unable to pierce the protection the Imam had, especially with their mutants out of the equation. Throughout it all, the voice of the Imam grew and grew, in counterpoint to the chanting inside the circle. It was as if each word was being met with the Imam's, obliterating both sounds at once. What had been a bright golden glow was now a sickly, urine yellow and Calysee was not longer aloft, sinking back to the floor.

Hampshire and Kane paused, daring a look over as the four telepaths crumpled to the floor, screaming, tears of blood trailing macabre furrows down their faces.

"I think we might be winning, Mister Kane." Hampshire said, but whatever response he planned was lost as he was neatly shot through the chest. Kane staggered, hitting the wall with a moist noise as three more shots erupted across his chest. The Canadian sank to the ground, stunned. Hampshire pivoted and neatly decapitated the man closest to her, but new troops where flooding into the chamber. They were Arabic mostly, dark skinned and dark eyed, wielding their weapons like trained professionals as they gunned down anyone with a firearm out. Their arrival broke the back of the Opus Dei, who attempted to turn on the ambush but were systematically and ruthlessly cut down.

The Templars however did not appear overly heartened by the new arrivals.

"Kharijites!"

"it's the fucking ragheads!"

Ignoring the screams, Jane bent over Kane who shook his head. "Skin got warmed up with the first one." He said, grimacing. The final three bullets had flattened themselves against his now bulletproof skin, but the first round had gone through his upper chest, and passed through the shoulder, exiting above his trapezes muscle. It hurt, but it was an immediate danger. Hampshire started to say something, but stopped as the dome encompassing the ritual suddenly shattered in a flare of energy. Calysee and the Templars inside the dome collapsed, and the Imam swayed as the Book of Vishanti slipped from his fingers. The ritual had been broken, but the cost was great.

Any attempt to react was suddenly stilled, as a presence invaded the room, and all but smashed them flat with its immensity. The soldiers near the entrance stepped aside, as He entered the room.

A small team of X-Men make their way to Islamabad to collect a loose end.



It had been one of the odder briefings in the X-Men. A quiet discussion between Kurt and the Professor, followed immediately by a quick scrambling of the Blackbird, and the upload of several files into the plane's computer system to review once in the air. It was clear the prime consideration had been speed, as opposed to secrecy, but it didn't take away the 'Mission: Impossible' feel, especially when Garrison Kane's recorded voice came over the speakers. He had obviously had a bad connection, and his voice was fuzzed with pops and breaks in the flow. Fortunately, the onboard software smoothed it out to a comprehensible flow.

"Jacob Reisz needs to be taken before he can reach India. He has in his possession a packet of information regarding the kidnapping of Calysee Neramani, and he's planning to use that to make a deal with... I can't believe I'm saying this, between the Knights Templar and the Indian government. The Professor will provide the rest of the pieces, and yes, I know it sounds crazy. But if Reisz isn't taken, there's a very good chance that the entire UN force in Pakistan will get ejected from the country by Indian forces, and according to Farouk, if that happens, the Middle East turns into the setting for World War Three."

There was a crackle, and then a muffled argument between Kane and an indentified woman before he came back on the line. '-cking text can wait until I'm done! Guys, we were able to reach out to William Bastion. He's in Islamabad right now on a fact finding visit. Kurt has met him. The funny thing is that Reisz is a US citizen. He actually held security clearance with the CIA before going native over here. If you can get him to the base, under US law, it doesn't matter how he got there or what was involved between reaching American jurisdiction so long as it wasn't US troops sent to drag him in. If those documents contain what we believe they do, there's enough evidence to arrest Reisz for treason, and hopefully enough to use diplomatic means to force the Indians to back off. We think we identified the hotel that--" There was a burst of background noise and a pause. "Our extremely annoying British ally identified the hotel that Reisz is holing up in until an Indian diplomatic flight can reach the airport. That plane is untouchable; once he's on it, any interference with it is an automatic act of war. You need to get to him before it arrives and get him to Bastion at the US Command centre outside of the Chaklala Airbase. I wish I had more information for you guys, but-- what? What's that beeping? You forgot to charge it? What kind of an idiot goes into a desert and doesn't think to char--"

That briefing had been hours ago, and now the Blackbird was stealthed and hidden neatly in the rocky outskirts of their destination, hopefully far enough away to keep anyone from stumbling on it. The X-Men focused on the job at hand.

Kurt, perched half-standing on a flat rock, looked around at his companions. "I think our task is very clear", he said calmly. "Since the two of you can fly and I cannot... Angel, do you think you can carry me?"

"That shouldn't be a problem." Warren couldn't carry people for too long without tiring himself out, but he was strong enough to carry Kurt the distance needed here.

Crystal floated near her two teammates. She was capable of transporting the blue-furred X-Man as well, but she knew that her methods of moving someone in the air could be much more disorienting than being physically carried. She adjusted her large sunglasses, specially designed for her to help conceal her identity when she was out on missions, and spoke. "I am ready when you are."

"Then if you are also ready, Angel, let us go." He stepped closer to the winged man, holding out a hand.

Warren just nodded, taking Kurt's hand and making sure he had a firm hold - Warren's arm firmly around his waist, Kurt's arm around Warren's neck. He flashed a smile to Crystal as he launched, pushing himself off the ground with a few strong beats of his wings. He soon turned in the direction they needed to be going, arching around and flying quickly to their destination.

Crystal smiled back, then lifted up higher in the air, soaring after Angel and Nightcrawler. She and Warren had met a few months earlier, back when he still lived in California at the West Coast Annex and she had traveled there to visit Forge. Matching the winged man's speed, Crystal flew close by, just far enough so that their different methods of flight did not interfere with each other.

They were heading for the roof of Reisz' hotel, as previously agreed, and with the wind fortuitously in their favour, it didn't take long for them to reach it. Kurt shot a quick exhilarated grin at Warren as they landed.

"Now I know why all you fliers enjoy it so much."

"Exhilarating, isn't it?" Warren said with a grin, his eyes shaded the same as Crystal's. There really was nothing like that.

"I'll go make sure our target's still here," He continued, getting back to business. He launched himself off the roof, quickly swooping back down around the building. It didn't take long for his sharp gaze to locate the man, pacing impatiently near the window. Warren quickly rejoined the pair on the roof and filled them in.

"He's still here. The room is six floors down from here, on the south-west corner. He seems to be alone, but I couldn't get a close enough look into the room to confirm." He looked over to Kurt. "I can carry you down to port in, and there's a balcony Buttercup and I can enter from."

Crystal listened and nodded once. While she could probably get closer without being noticed than Warren could, she didn't have the extra-sharp eyesight he did. She wondered if her sunglasses would be able to be altered to function as binoculars as well; if she had to wear them, they may as well serve a function other than helping disguise her identity.

"All right." Kurt rubbed his hands together absently, looking from one to the other. "Time is of the essence, as we do not know when he will leave to board that Indian plane... so we should move right now."

Warren nodded, catching a hold of Kurt once more so he could fly the other man down, launching off the roof once more and diving straight for the room. He pulled himself up quickly, hovering in place as he waited for Kurt to teleport in.

Kurt wasted no time teleporting free of Warren and into the room he could see clearly through the window. He smiled with no warmth at the man inside. "Hello, Mr. Reisz."

The end table barely missed Kurt as it whipped past his head. Reisz was already moving, pulling a pistol from his jacket and calling for his guards. Reisz was CIA trained; quick as a snake and utterly ruthless. He didn't bother trying to rationalize what the threat was, instead taking action against it. The telekinetic went down to one knee, hands in the classic Weaver hold on his 9mm pistol and the barrel swinging to take aim at Kurt's chest.

The door to the balcony opened quickly and a moment later a strong wind rushed in. That might not have seemed too odd except for the fact that the wind was an unusually powerful one and appeared to have a mind of its own. Rather than acting as a cooling breeze or spreading throughout the room, it headed straight for Jacob Reisz and pushed at him forcefully, not enough to send him flying against the wall, but enough to knock him off balance and perhaps lose his grip on the gun.

The gust had thrown Reisz off balance, and his guards now slammed open the hotel room door, both men coming in armed and ready to fight.
Warren was the last into the room, and he immediately sprung into action, moving to cut off the guards before they got to Reisz, wings sweeping out to crowd the space as he did.

Kurt had taken advantage of the distraction to kick the gun out of Reisz's loosened grip, and to get a grip of his own on the man's arms. "Meet me upstairs", he said quickly to his teammates, and vanished.

Kurt's teleport to the roof concluded with being smashed in the face by the back of Reisz head, but the man was unable to break the German's grip. His own telekinesis had little to work with, especially without the amplifier that he had used to subdue Farouk. "You have just marked yourself for death. Do you know who I am? Who I'm with?" He snarled.

Below, the guards were scrambling to avoid the thrashing wings and find a shot against the intruders.

With large, feathered wings blocking her view of the two guards, Crystal had to take extra precautions if she wanted to be able to use her powers to assist her teammate without risking affecting him as well. Something of a delicate nature that would take precision control, such as preventing the guards' guns from being able to fire, was definitely out. She rose higher in the air, closer to the ceiling, to try to get a better visualization of the scene before her. A fine mist appeared, quickly turning into a thick fog around the non-winged men.

One sweep of his wing knocked the guard who had moved the closest to him, Warren using the opportunity Crystal had provided to move back towards the balcony, letting Crystal exit before him and keeping an eye on the men as he did. It wasn't long before he was back on the roof, joining Kurt and their captive.

Kurt had managed to subdue Reisz without doing any real damage, one muscular arm clamped firmly across the man's throat and the other holding his wrists. He looked to the other two as they arrived, giving them both a brief glance over for injuries before nodding.

"To the airbase, then, I think."