The makeup of Hellfire

An interface popped out from the side of Brad's prosthetic limb and printed out several paper documents.

The members on his side were mainly Logan and Scott, along with Danielle, who was of Native American descent, and Rahne, who was British.

Danielle Moonstar's primary mutant abilities were telepathy and energy manipulation. When Brad saw her, he couldn't help wondering whether Charles found it easier to locate and recruit other telepathic mutants because he was a telepath himself.

As for Rahne, this fair-skinned, beautiful girl could transform into various kinds of... wolves?

After transforming, she gained extraordinary senses, strength, stamina, speed, and excellent healing abilities. Her wolf forms were also superior to ordinary wolves found in nature. Not only did her hearing and sense of smell surpass theirs, but she could even detect infrared and ultraviolet light, as well as the desire or fear people gave off.

Brad found this very interesting. He guessed that her sense of smell was so highly developed that she could detect the hormones humans secreted when experiencing desire and fear.

In this respect, Rahne's sense of smell was clearly better than Wolverine Logan's.

That made the team composition obvious: two melee fighters and two ranged fighters, with Moonstar and Wolfsbane-Rahne-each possessing support-oriented abilities as well.

The information Charles had given Brad specifically noted that Danielle Moonstar had once been targeted for capture by the Hellfire Club. Hellfire had taken an interest in Moonstar's abilities and wanted to "recruit" her into the organization.

But in the process, the Hellfire Club had killed the girl's grandfather.

This had created an irreconcilable hatred between Danielle and the Hellfire Club. Without turning around, Brad checked the girl's expression through the ship's built-in surveillance system.

Clearly, the Native American girl was deeply agitated. Her slightly dusky face was filled with hatred, and her whole body trembled faintly with emotion.

But this mission wasn't about fighting the Hellfire organization. It was about stopping them from hijacking a prison transport.

The Hellfire Club was an interesting organization. It had originally emerged from a private institution in Britain, first established in the eighteenth century.

It had begun as an exclusive British gentlemen's club, but secretly gathered a small group of powerful men and women-with money and influence-whose morals were utterly rotten.

Over nearly a century of development, Hellfire had established branches almost everywhere in the world.

It had initially catered to the elite, just like legitimate clubs, with extremely strict membership requirements. Members either inherited their parents' positions or were enticed into the club once they held enough power.

Everything took a turn for the worse when a mad scientist was admitted into Hellfire.

Nathaniel Essex-Mr. Sinister-a geneticist from London, England, gathered a group of mutants within the Hellfire Club and established a Hellfire mutant organization concealed inside it.

Later, factors such as war dealt the original Hellfire a devastating blow. Mr. Sinister instead stepped forward and expanded his small circle of mutants.

The present Hellfire consisted entirely of mutants, and it had preserved the organization's traditions: its members were all powerful-physically-and morally corrupt.

Its members used chess pieces as their titles. They stopped at nothing, operated in morally gray areas, and exploited their abilities to amass power, influence, and cold, hard cash.

For this prison transport hijacking, Hellfire had sent out its Black Bishop-Harry Leland.

The man had originally been nothing more than an unscrupulous lawyer. After awakening his mutant ability, he began committing all manner of crimes. His considerable power had earned him admission into Hellfire.

Aside from the Black Bishop and a contingent of private armed personnel, Hellfire had deployed no other mutants.

It was arrogant, but it also showed confidence.

The X-Men's files did contain a record of the current Black Bishop's ability.

Gravity manipulation.

But after browsing for a while, Brad closed the file on the Black Bishop.

He was more concerned about two things.

First, who was inside the prison transport that both mutant factions were focusing their operations on?

Second, could this be a trap?

After two seconds of thought, however, Brad crossed out the second point.

Professor Charles must have considered that possibility as well, or he wouldn't have appointed Brad to lead the team. Charles had some idea of Brad's true strength, because Brad had revealed a little of it to him while pretending it was unintentional.

Though it wasn't the full extent of his power, it still dwarfed that of every combatant at the school.

Having him lead the team was most likely a precaution against the possibility that the other side had deliberately leaked news of the planned hijacking, intending to encircle and ambush the X-Men.

In that case, Brad, whose immense strength was absent from the Hellfire Club's records, was their insurance against the trap.

Even so, the cautious Brad never went into battle unprepared. He contacted Skynet mentally and had several T1000-model terminators released from an underground factory near their destination.

Now that was a predator waiting behind another predator.

Brad handed out all the documents for everyone to read. The other three dutifully looked through them, while Logan folded his papers to catch the ash he flicked off his cigar.

Brad leaned back, closed his one eye, and rested.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a distraught young man with dark, yellow-toned skin was being escorted into a prison transport, his wrists and ankles shackled.

The police around him watched him as though facing a formidable enemy, seemingly afraid of something.

The young man's name was Ahmed. He was of Egyptian descent and had married just last month.

But while he and his wife were on their honeymoon, a car accident had taken her life.

Ahmed had held the woman he loved and watched her breathe her last in his arms.

Overwhelmed with grief, he saw the driver responsible slam on the accelerator and try to flee the scene.

Grief, pain, rage.

Ahmed felt his entire body begin to burn. Intense, tangible agony engulfed him. By then, the driver responsible had only driven a few meters away.

Ahmed collapsed unconscious in the road.

By the time the police arrived, the asphalt had melted, and the nearby bushes had been charred.

Two cars, ten meters apart, had melted into pools of molten metal, as though that stretch of road had been bombarded by a solar flare.

Ahmed, the only person involved who was still alive at the scene, was arrested and then imprisoned on charges of possessing dangerous explosive materials.

There was nothing else they could do. They couldn't find any other evidence at the scene, so Ahmed, who had inexplicably survived, had to take the blame.

Rumors spread through the prison that Ahmed was a demon from hell. When some inmates tried to teach the newcomer a lesson late one night, the first person to touch him suffered severe burns.

Yet a medical examination performed on Ahmed during the day found nothing.

Ultimately, the decision was made to transfer Ahmed to a higher-security prison.

At the time, most police officers were very superstitious. Ahmed's being Egyptian didn't help; quite a few American officers thought he might have something to do with mummies.

After learning about the incident through black-market sources, Mr. Sinister of the Hellfire Club suspected that Ahmed might be an exceptionally powerful mutant.

He therefore sent the Black Bishop to hijack the transport.

But because the information had passed through the black market, Charles, who could read minds and had been keeping a close watch on Hellfire's activities, learned of their planned hijacking from a contact.

The X-Men and Hellfire, with six mutants between them, were about to launch their operations around this suffering man named Ahmed.