The XXX-Gene (Marvel)(Mutant OC)

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Emma and She-Hulk continue their conversation.

-x-X-x-

After a long moment, Emma sighs and offers the beautiful giantess of a woman sat across from her a smile.

“I appreciate the offer. Really, I do. You’re not wrong about Thaddeus. He’s loyal to his friends, a trait that I admire greatly in him.”

She-Hulk narrows her eyes, even as she tilts her head to the side.

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

Emma’s smile grows a little and becomes a bit more genuine as she chuckles.

“But… if you really think you can pull us out of this ‘pit of quicksand’ as you put it that easily, you’re in for a nasty surprise.”

Frowning, She-Hulk crosses her arms over her chest.

“I don’t see why now isn’t the perfect time. I know enough about your little club to know how it works. Your positions are based on Chess Pieces, right?”

Emma hums noncommittally at that, which She-Hulk seems to take as agreement even though it’s not.

“Well, the positions of both the White and Black Kings are currently empty. I’m sure they won’t stay that way forever. Maybe you even think that you can take advantage of the power vacuum before they get filled again. But instead of trying that, why not use this as your opportunity to get out and go legit? Help me take down the Hellfire Club for good while you still can.”

Shaking her head, Emma sighs.

“You’re working off of incomplete information, I’m afraid.”

Leaning forward, She-Hulk narrows her eyes.

“How so?”

How much to tell her without risking more than Emma wanted to risk? On the one hand, it would behoove Thaddeus and Emma to have an Avenger in their corner. On the other hand… well, the other woman wasn’t exactly subtle now was she? Emma could brush off this meeting to her peers as She-Hulk just snooping around but not finding anything. If the Avenger kept lingering though…

“Sebastian Shaw and Donald Pierce were both brutish, thuggish men at their core. If they were really all that was in charge of the Hellfire Club… it would never have grown to what it is now. You need to reorient your perspective Ms. Walters. Consider that the Hellfire Club’s inner circle is based on Chess Pieces… and what that might ultimately mean.”

It’s a test, truth be told. If the other woman can’t get it from here on her own, then Emma knows she’s not cut out for joining in on her and Thaddeus’ little conspiracy. If she can, well that’s something else entirely.

Silence reigns for a long moment as She-Hulk ponders Emma’s words, actually giving them the consideration they deserve. Until finally, to Emma’s mild surprise, the other woman’s eyes widen in realization.

“You’re all just pieces on the board. Your ‘inner circle’ is just pieces to be moved around by the actual players.”

Emma smiles thinly.

“Player. Singular. But yes.”

Getting more and more intrigued by the moment, She-Hulk leans forward even further.

“Who? If you know the lynchpin, then we could just take him down and end all of this! Why are you shaking your damn head?!”

Emma sighs, fixing the other woman with a steely glare.

“It’s not that simple. I know very little, truth be told. There’s just a title… and a reputation to be feared beyond all else.”

Frowning, She-Hulk nevertheless leans back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest again.

“Tch… and what is this title?”

“Lord Imperial.”

It was frustratingly true too. Emma knew very little about the Lord Imperial, outside of the fact that she’d once been a prize to be won between one of his pawns and the now dead Black King. Her continued freedom had been the subject of a poker game between Shaw and a man named Oliver Ryland, and that had been all she’d been able to find out.

Of course, Emma wasn’t going to tell She-Hulk about THAT. Instead, she lets the words hang in the air between them for a moment before continuing on.

“The Lord Imperial is the true ruler of the Hellfire Club. Some even say he founded the club… hundreds of years ago.”

She-Hulk’s eyes narrow at that.

“That would imply…”

“Immortality, yes. Or at least a very long-lived mutant. Regardless, the Lord Imperial is NOT to be trifled with. Trying to take him down wouldn’t go well for any involved and that is why I cannot simply turn on the Hellfire Club… and nor can Thaddeus. Not at this point. He’s in too deep, the same as me.”

Scowling, the Avenger’s fingers dig into her own biceps for a moment.

“And who’s fault is that Frost? You dragged him into the Hellfire Club. You made him complicit in all of this bullshit. Damn it all…”

Emma might not be willing to probe She-Hulk’s mind directly, but she would have to be psychically blind not to be able to taste the Avenger’s desperation in the air. Thaddeus really does have a knack for pulling women of all types into his orbit doesn’t he? And the more time they spend around him, the more they realize they won’t get anything better anywhere else.

She-Hulk has it bad for Thaddeus. Perhaps not full-blown love, and perhaps she doesn’t even realize how attached she’s gotten to the young man, but if she couldn’t bring herself to do her duty and take him into custody when he all but admitted that he’d killed a man on Friday, then she was clearly compromised in a most delicious way. And that meant all Emma had to do was invoke Thaddeus to hook her in further.

“The Lord Imperial is the least of our worries at this point anyways. If you really want to help Thaddeus, you’ll put aside thoughts of dismantling the Hellfire Club at the moment and focus on the more immediate threat that he faces from the Black Queen.”

She-Hulk stiffens up at that, just as Emma knew she would. Her lips thin out and she furrows her brow.

“The Black Queen? What do you mean by immediate threat?”

She has her. All that’s left is to reel her in.

“Let me tell you Ms. Walters. Let me tell you all about Selene Gallio, the Hellfire Club’s very own Black Queen.

-x-X-x-

No one could accuse Ororo Munroe of being a woman who lacked in confidence. Her powerful mutation allowed her to control the weather, and after being rendered an orphan at an early age, she’d done everything from thieving on the streets of Cairo to being venerated as a goddess for some years on the Serengeti.

When Charles Xavier had eventually come for her and recruited her to his X-Men, Ororo had adopted the name of ‘Storm’ and wielded her powers in pursuit of creating lasting peace between mutants and mankind. It wasn’t always easy, of course. In fact, it would have been easier to just stay in Africa and continue to play the role of Weather Goddess to the tribes there.

But even then she’d known the difference between what was ‘easy’ and what was ‘right’. The Professor had a vision that went beyond Africa, even beyond America. He envisioned a world where every nation accepted mutants for what they were, rather than discriminating against them for something they could not control.

She respected the Professor very much, and she bought into his vision wholeheartedly even now. As Storm, she’d fought for mutant’s rights and struggled to show the world that they weren’t all the danger that they seemed. Indeed, as a black woman with powers, there was an additional weight on her shoulders. She not only had to prove that her mutation by itself didn’t make her a threat, but also that her skin color didn’t make her any less intelligent or capable of non-violent problem solving than anyone else.

Unfortunately, the road had not only been long but hard, and they’d had multiple setbacks along the way. Many of those setbacks could be linked to Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants. Storm knew that Charles had history with Magneto, and that at times that history got in the way of the Professor making the best decisions. But nowhere was that more obvious than with the Phoenix Incident.

The one silver lining to that whole thing was that by the end of it, Magneto was securely locked behind bars. However, things got very, very messy and by the time all was said and done, they’d lost Jean. Scottie had been inconsolable ever since, a mere shadow of the brunette’s former self, and truth be told a lot of the X-Men had found themselves questioning the mission.

Storm wasn’t one of them, but only because she understood that the mission was bigger than any one of them. Hell, it was bigger than all of them. Charles’ vision for the world… it might not even be possible to see it through in their lifetimes. But they owed it to themselves as well as those who came after them to build as bright of a future as possible with the time they had.

They didn’t always succeed on that front though. Thaddeus Cummings was one such example of failure. Storm had liked the young man when she and Charles had first met him. Thaddeus had a mutation that was ripe for abuse and egomania. The kind of power that could have gone straight to the athletic young man’s head and given him an extremely inflated sense of self-worth.

He was an Omega Level Mutant or at least had the potential to become one. As an Omega Level Mutant herself, Storm knew full well the pitfalls of that much power. And yet, despite everything, Thaddeus had seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders when they first met. It was like his mutation had helped him grow in emotional maturity at the same time that it was helping him grow in power.

Unfortunately, Emma Frost and Hellfire Club had gotten to him before they could seal the deal. All they’d gotten was that one meeting before Charles was accepting defeat and they were retreating. That still rankled Storm to this day, and was part of the reason she’d volunteered for this current mission when Charles had told her about what happened Friday. She’d understood why he sent in Laura and Kitty initially and she appreciated what they’d managed to do in the time they’d had, but personally she’d been itching for a do-over since all the way back in the young man’s hometown.

Storm didn’t believe Thaddeus to be a lost cause. She didn’t think that he was irredeemable or anything like that because of Hellfire. Though, it was obvious they were a bad influence on him. Even with Laura and Kitty there to try and balance the scales, it was very clear that Thaddeus had become more and more dependent on sex in order to form connections with women. He’d been so shocked by her turning him down that it had surprised Storm a little bit in turn.

Of course, one of the ideas she’d wound up discarding after he dropped this latest bombshell on her HAD been to proposition him right then and there. Finding out that Jean might be back had left Storm wondering what ELSE might be back with her… and if a little bit more sex-granted power might be the difference this time around.

… But no. Her rational mind had prevailed on that front and she hadn’t done anything too foolish... yet. Leaving Thaddeus behind to investigate on her own WAS the right move in Storm’s opinion. However, now she was considering doing something… inadvisable.

A trip to Empire State University’s records office and she’d confirmed what Thaddeus had told her. There had indeed been several shakeups in Professors over the weekend. Now, on a campus as massive as ESU was, having three Professors be replaced over one weekend was a little weird but not very strange. What definitely was strange and probably no coincidence was the fact that all three of those Professors shared a powerful mutant student between them, and had him all on the same exact days of the week.

Storm couldn’t even begin to know who Shu Wong was besides Thaddeus’ new Professor of Mathematics, but in the case of Madelyne Pryor who was indeed a very real person and now his new Professor of Biology… she recognized her. Even the official headshot for the ESU’s records was unmistakable. That was Jean Grey… or someone so close to Jean Grey has to be indistinguishable from the deceased red head.

Once Storm confirmed that, she had a choice to make, and that was where she was considering doing something… inadvisable and dumb. But the question she really had to ask herself was, what was the dumb option here and what was the smart option?

She could immediately go to Charles with this information, but he was emotionally compromised. Perhaps not as bad as Scottie, but Professor X and Jean had had a mentor-mentee relationship that even Storm was envious of sometimes. Jean’s death had hit Scottie the hardest but it had hit Charles the second hardest, mostly because he blamed himself for how it had happened.

Storm could trust Charles to make the right call nine out of ten times, but Jean was a blind spot that all but invoked the tenth. Going to him might be the right move… or it might prove catastrophic without more information.

And that led to the other choice that might turn out to be a ‘dumb move’. Storm was considering investigating further of her own accord… by confronting this Madelyne Pryor herself, on her lonesome. Yes, it could go badly for her, but it could also give her more information than she currently had. Information that would help Charles make the right choice when she finally DID go to him.

Besides, whoever she was, Madelyne Pryor had been a Professor at Empire State University for days now and had yet to do anything nearly overt enough to make Storm think the Phoenix was back. It stood to reason that she probably wasn’t too dangerous… and while the possibility of her having nothing to do with Jean was slim, it would be better for Storm to find out on her own before she dragged the rest of the X-Men into it.

Still, there was a distinct possibility that even seeing Storm might trigger something in this Jean Grey lookalike. The question was, did she want to risk it? And more than that, what would she even be risking depending on the choice she went with…

[X] Go confront this Madelyne Pryor herself first - 76%