[center][h1]Zero Hour - Day 1[/h1][/center]

The acolyte dragged behind his mentor by four paces, fascinated with every treasure – real or imagined – that the Church held near to its chest.

While it would be rational to assume that this amazement was a madness that possessed many younger clergymen, Giuseppe Pelagatti knew that whatever madness gripped the boy behind him could never be tempered by experience. The acolyte, who was born with the name of Francesco Atra, had been a thorn in Pelagatti’s side since the day he had been sworn into the Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament. He had a talent and a reverence for the artifacts that fell under the Assembly’s purview, but such qualifications went without saying for every clergyman that swore to uphold their sub-agency’s sacred trust; such qualifications were also where the patience of Cardinal Pelagatti, who stood 42nd in rank among the Church and thus stood ironically fitting to head the Assembly, wore thin with the flighty young man. Though he looked local, with a shock of swoopy blonde hair and bright eyes that stuck out among the lifelessness of the veteran clergy, Francesco had done nothing but gawk around the Church like a tourist. He would dress the part too, often sporting the bizarre regalia of wherever he had just arrived from. Recently he had traveled across the Atlantic on Church business and had returned sporting a long beach, cerulean-and-gold towel with emblems of an American basketball team festooned across its surface. He preferred to wear it as a shroud, wielding that comparison to such a holy garment like an excuse.

The young man’s oddities made explaining the gravity of the upcoming situation even more difficult.

“Francesco.” The Italian name did not flow elegantly from the cardinal’s lips.  His voice was thin and reedy, and didn’t carry well in the bowels of the Church’s vaults, so even Atra began to quicken his pace to keep up. “You were not present when we first retrieved the artifact five years ago.”

“Not quite, Your Eminence,” Francesco replied, now dragging behind Pelagatti’s hurried steps by only a single pace. “I was probably traveling somewhere at the time, knowing me. I’ve read up on it since, though. The Holy Grail—”

“—the artifact—” 

His Eminence, Giuseppe Cardinal Pelagatti, delivered the correction swiftly and brutally. 

“—The Holy Grail,” Francesco insisted cheerfully, “was discovered five years ago in the trophies of a certain tycoon.  Most of it was junk, tourist trash, like all of my favorite stuff is. Maybe there was something that could have served as a catalyst or two out in the Far East, but mostly junk. Until something happened out in the Far East, right? The old Grail was destroyed by magi, and then the one here kicked in?”

[i]Kicked in,[/i] thought Cardinal Pelagatti. [i]Sweet Father, have mercy on us all.[/i]

“Isn’t that the gist of it, Your Eminence?” Francesco insisted. His superior gave a begrudging nod.

“We learned thus not long after the events you describe. The artifact here was dormant for years, a trinket among many, until this year. This is around when you joined us, so no reading should have been required for you to understand our present…situation. You helped to secure the Grail, yes?”

Francesco Atra looked absurdly proud to have been recognized by a cardinal of such eminence, and he nodded with puppy-like eagerness. The motion only emphasized the flapping and billowing of his towel when Pelagatti opened a very particular door on the right-hand side of a very particular hallway; the vaults were stuffy and rarely explored, so a draft of wind was a rare treat for those clergy who kept their custody. Francesco couldn’t help but peek around the door to check if she was still there. 

The 727th Holy Grail. The true Holy Grail. He just knew it. 

“She is still right where we left her,” Francesco said proudly. “You didn’t have to come all this way to ascertain that, Your Eminence. I could have told you that myself, or one of the others who helped me set stuff up. Nobody is laying hands on her without us knowing.”

The use of gendered pronouns for an artifact of any kind was clearly grating on Giuseppe Cardinal Pelagatti, but he swallowed his tongue this time as he admitted that the Grail did seem to be secure. Normally, he would have taken a more veteran member of the Church to help, but Francesco [i]had[/i] done the lion’s share of the work on securing the Grail for the Assembly after its activation, and such were the Church’s defenses that it seemed even the Mage’s Association of London was choosing not to get involved. Such an action was wise on their parts, for it would not do to have the Grail molested, but even so, their inaction was well-understood among clergy gossip due to fear of the risks involved in obtaining the Grail from the heart of the Church. Such a fear was well-founded mainly due to the diligence of Francesco and other young acolytes like him. In that spirit, the cardinal had thought to bring the young Father Atra along to get his measure, acquire a sense of perspective on the young man’s talents.

Unfortunately, the boy was a savant. Pelagatti was thoroughly unimpressed. He was one step above what the younger clergy called a…

Fanboy.

Yes, that was exactly what he was. Francesco Atra was a fanboy.

As Pelagatti watched the young man grin lovingly into the storage room like an idiot, another realization struck him. There were seven magi out there, somewhere in the world, who the Church knew to have acquired markings akin to those of the magi in the Far East, who had fought to the death as champions of their own wishes. There was a very real possibility that a Holy Grail War would spark here, right in the heart of the Vatican. For their line of defense to be staffed by callow boys such as this…

“Your Eminence? Everything seems alright with her. Why are you staring? Do you smell something funny? Is there a rat in the room somewhere? I can ask. Hellooooo? Is there a rat in here? It’s okay if there is!”

[i]We will just need more lines of defense, then.[/i]