Hellfire and Brimstone

Posted on Sat May 3rd, 2025 @ 5:18pm by Nathaniel Essex & Shinobi Shaw & Selene Gallio

3,436 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Episode 6: X-Fernus Agenda
Location: Kamar-Taj
Timeline: December 11th, 1990

The echo of fire still danced in his ears, a fading memory of rapturous destruction. The Phoenix had stripped Genosha bare—atomized the structures, vaporized the screams. But Sinister had slipped through the cracks, as he always did. No phoenix could burn the shadow.

He stood alone at the edge of an obsidian chamber, dark reflective glass humming with power beneath his boots. The silence was immaculate. Sterile. Until the whump of a portal ruptured the stillness behind him.

Aurora stumbled through first, still dazed from the collapse of her infernal court. Her gossamer robes were singed and her crown of embers long since guttered out. Her red eyes gleamed dimly, fury and humiliation in equal measure.

Moreau—no, what remained of him—oozed through next. The grotesque shape he had become after fusing with his own machine crawled behind her. Four arms. Oversized head with a mouth like a shark. Tongue like a bioelectric whip. He twitched and clicked and muttered, more monster than man.

Aurora regained her posture quickly and raised her chin. "This is outrageous! They will kneel, everyone shall kneel! Let the world burn—"

CRACK!

With a wave of his hand, Sinister snapped her head cleanly backward. Her body dropped like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

He crouched, admiring his handiwork with a flick of his long fingers. “You always did enjoy the sound of your own voice, my spawn. No doubt you will recover, but perhaps you will use this time to reflect on your more... tedious habits."

Then, to Moreau—who twitched violently in response—Sinister said, "Drag her away to the holding cells. Something quiet, damp, and with character.”

"I—I am a doctor! A ruler!" Moreau sputtered through jagged fangs. "A genius! Not your musclebound henchcreep!"

But something shifted behind his bulbous eyes. That twitching grin. That manic shimmer. His protests shifted into a slobbering compulsive shake of his head that slung spittle across the room. The battle inside his enormously oversized cranium came to a head.

"Hoo-boy," came the deeper, dirtier chuckle. "Doc's not home right now, Mr. Fancy-Pants." The voice cracked and morphed as he threw Aurora's limp body over one shoulder like a ragdoll. "Call me Sugar Man, baby. I make with the Sugar! Four hands, no waiting."

Sinister smiled wickedly at the unraveling henchman before him. Yes, even in his demise, this one would have his uses.

"Yes, I rather thought that would stick." Sinister turned his back on the duo as Sugar Man loped down the corridor, giggling like a lunatic. "It suits you. Your Sugar is all that remains of that failed experiment you called a country."

Alone once more, Sinister ascended a curved flight of stairs into a glassy command dais. He pressed his fingers together, and the console flared to life in a sequence of crimson runes. A moment passed. Then a face shimmered on the screen, ancient and imperious. Eyes like burning coals regarded him with both annoyance and amusement.

"Selene," Sinister purred, his smile blooming wide. "Go rouse your little ward and bring him to Kamar-Taj." His smirk was nothing short of smug. "It's high time we were properly introduced."

“Your wish is our command, Lord Essex.” Selene said with an exaggerated bow that was a signature part of her theatrics. “We will arrive expeditiously.”

---

Selene had informed Shinobi to tread carefully with Nathaniel Essex because he was not only a man with immeasurable abilities but also with extraordinary means. The former Black King had lost his life because he got reckless and egotistical, tonight they would see if Shinobi would follow in his father’s footsteps or learn from his mistakes.

“My Lord,” Selene cooed as she announced their arrival. “May I please present Shinobi Shaw, Lord Imperial of the Hellfire Club.”

Sinister didn’t rise from his velvet-backed throne at the center of the chamber. He lounged in it instead, fingers steepled beneath his chin, his pale face catching the eerie glow of the arcane lights that lit the ancient Kamar-Taj hall from below.

His crimson eyes slid to Shinobi Shaw—studying him with a surgical chill.

"Lord Imperial," Sinister drawled, the title dripping with condescension. "How... quaint."

He rose at last, slowly and methodically, each movement as crisp as a blade sliding from its sheath. He took measured steps forward, the heavy coattails of his black and crimson ensemble trailing like a funeral shroud behind him.

With no ceremony whatsoever, he circled Shinobi, eyeing him as though inspecting a specimen under glass. "You walk like your father. Tell me..." Sinister's voice dipped into a mocking purr, "... do you ever think for yourself, or are you just a polished ghost of Sebastian's failed ambition?"

He came full circle and stood before the young man, meeting his eyes with a predatory calm.

"Do you know what I remember about Sebastian Shaw?" he asked, tilting his head ever so slightly. "I remember the days when the Hellfire Club wouldn't even consider the likes of Shaw as one of their inner circle. It was for men of refinement, of culture, of vision. Sebastian, however... clawed his way in. And now look what's left." He gestured vaguely toward Shinobi’s expensive suit with a flick of his clawed fingers. "A pale imitation in designer silk."

To say Shinobi was afraid would be a laughable understatement. The chill that settled in his spine when he saw Nathaniel Essex was almost palpable. Selene’s warning echoed like a whisper in his ear, tread carefully. Her counsel about breaking free of his father’s legacy was now more relevant than ever.

Sinister’s presence was commanding, his words razor-sharp and unnervingly elegant. Shinobi met his gaze, steady but guarded.

“Do you know what I remember of my father? Nothing," Shinobi began, his voice low but clear. “Everything I know comes secondhand. Emma Frost’s information, Selene’s accounts, articles in outdated archives...those were my sources. I know he had vision. Ambition. He left an imprint too bold to ignore. But he was arrogant. Isolated. Selfish. He rejected help when it mattered most. That was his downfall. That was his weakness.”

He took a step forward, tone firm with resolve. “I’m not his shadow. I don’t intend to repeat his mistakes. I’m not here to follow his path—I’m here to carve out the one he was too blind to see.”

“He’s enthusiastic, My Lord.” Selene purred the words like the double entendres it was. “A go-getter who’s eager to make a name for himself… no matter the cost.” She ran a hand across the front of Shinobi’s chest, a hungry caress that spoke of the potential Selene saw in him. “Young blood that’s driven and inspired and best of all, nothing like his father.”

Sinister turned his gaze once more to Selene, the pale light dancing off the razor-sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbones, casting his expression into something almost statuesque in its detachment. But his eyes—those crimson pits—gleamed with amusement. Or calculation. Or both.

"Aren't you possessive, Selene," he mused with a voice like velvet draped over a scalpel. "You dress him up, wind him like a watch, and parade him into my court like a pet."

He paused, long enough for silence to sink its claws into the room, then turned back to Shinobi.

"You say you do not seek to follow in your father's footsteps. Good," he said simply. "Sebastian's footprints led only to ruin. But the soil is fertile now, and I am... curious what seeds you intend to sow."

He drew closer again, and this time his words were slower, coiled.

"Tell me, Shinobi Shaw. You come here... for help?" His lips parted in a cruel imitation of a smile. "A prince asking favors from devils, how very Faustian. What would you have of me? And... what would you give?"

He turned his back on Shinobi and sauntered away toward his obsidian control panel, his cape whispering behind him like a living shadow.

"I want to hear it from your lips. Tell me the game as you see it. Describe the board. Show me your hand." His voice echoed unnaturally as though the chamber amplified his very intent. He turned slightly, just enough for the glint of his red eyes to catch Shinobi in their reflection. "Let me judge whether you are a true player... or just another pawn hoping to wear a crown."

"The game," Shinobi began carefully, his voice smooth and deliberate, measured for Lord Essex’s ear. "It’s the same one that’s played out since the first breath of life, survival of the fittest. The board hasn’t changed, only the pieces: humans and mutants, both of which have strong and weak...specimens...intermingled. Yet even the strongest of the humans can be taken down by the weakest of mutants. To accelerate the survival of the strong, one must eliminate or repurpose the weak as tools for service. Turn liabilities into assets, if you will, of both humans and mutants. That was part of the idea behind my Prime Sentinel initiative, repurposing the weak into something...useful. It worked, to a small degree. Until the X-Men proved otherwise." His tone didn't falter, but a faint trace of resentment curled beneath the words.

He paused at that point, offering a brief glance around the chamber. His eyes flickering across its arcane, unsettling details. It was an unspoken show of respect for Essex’s domain.

"Humans are easy enough to capture. Weak mutants pose a more ready challenge, but are still easily detained. In order to find the weakness in my own nanotech programming, the captured specimens must be tested. It’s the data they yield that’s invaluable. Advancing knowledge and understanding necessitates engaging in risky and often unethical experimentation," he added as an afterthought. "As Selene said, no matter the cost." He let that settle a moment before concluding, "The strong must rise. The weak must either serve... or be discarded. And I intend to be among the strong at the pinnacle, shaping that inevitable future."

Sinister stared at Shinobi in unblinking silence, his expression unreadable, stone-carved with faint amusement, or was it disdain? The light caught only the edges of his pale face, casting angular shadows that deepened the sense of otherworldly scrutiny. He neither interrupted nor encouraged. He simply listened... and waited.

When the younger man finally finished speaking, the silence that followed was dense and deliberate. Then, at last, Sinister moved.

He turned fully from the control panel, gliding toward Shinobi with the elegance of an apex predator. "Yes," he murmured, "the strong must rise... how quaint. How... inevitable." A smile curled his lip—not warm, not pleased, but cutting. Almost surgical. "You talk like you invented something, as if you were the first to exercise pragmatism in suffering. But you're a whelp, Shinobi Shaw, still gnawing on the bones your father left behind."

Sinister circled him again, slower this time.

"I am familiar with Prime Sentinel technology,” he continued, voice smooth as lacquered steel. "Familiar... because I sponsored it." Sinister's words dropped like stones into still water. "I am the one who delivered Trask into your hand. Your entire initiative is merely a splinter off a larger design." His smile sharpened, eyes glinting. "When I deposed of Victor von Doom shortly after he did the same to King Vladimir and restored Latveria to 'The People,' I required a tool. Lucia von Bardas was eager to serve—no crown, no ego, just strings held by my loyal lieutenant, Mikhail Rasputin, leader of the Winter Guard." He let that hang, his eyes bright as burning coals. "The Soviet Union's elite strike team, answering to me and ensuring that the industrial might of Latveria advanced the next generation of Trask's legacy. My fingerprints are in every node of that network you think you command. The nanotech, the sequencing, the encryption, all with limitations I designed and roadblocks I commissioned. Your breakthrough, you now see, was a toy that I lent to you in order to see what you would do with it."

Stopping directly in front of Shinobi again, close enough to steal breath, Sinister leered into his face.

"So I ask you again, whelp, what can you offer me?” His voice dropped to a purr, but it echoed nonetheless, deep and hollow through the chamber. "What will you do with the granted power under my banner? What do you give in return for the keys to the kingdom?"

The wind had effectively been taken out of Shinobi's sails. It was a gut punch to think that everything he had accomplished had been set up like some sort of fate. And now the master of that fate stood nearly nose to nose with him. He was wrecked, but he'd been that way before and rebuilt. This would be no different. He would rebuild again, but this time it would take longer.

He faltered a little but he didn't back down. "What can I do?" He asked quietly, since they were so close to one another. "I suppose the simple answer is just that, how can I serve with you under your banner?"

Sinister's mouth curved at last—an expression that might have been approval or might have been the precise moment a spider welcomed a fly into its web.

"You rebuild yourself well, young Shaw," he murmured, almost fondly. "Already shrewder than the man whose legacy you so clumsily inherited. Perhaps... there is hope for you yet."

He turned smoothly on his heel, the folds of his long coat trailing after him like smoke, and gestured toward the dark keep's distant shadows where unsettling sounds of slavering and incoherent muttering echoed faintly against stone.

"Listen," Sinister said, voice dropping into velvet. "That wretched chorus you hear—that is all that remains of Moreau. Once a physician, once a visionary, now reduced to the Sugar Man, a gibbering hulk by his own arrogance... and his own Machine." Sinister's red eyes flicked back toward Shinobi, gleaming. "The relic that powered his creation—the anchor that pierced the veil between worlds—was lost amid the ashes of Genosha. But I believe it was not destroyed."

He let that hang in the air, watching Shinobi's sharp mind race.

"It survives," Sinister continued, "and worse yet, it has been taken. By none other than Alex Summers." He said the name like a curse. "Yes... Havok. A former X-Man, once brother to Xavier's golden boy, once Moreau’s willing disciple. Whether he acts from vengeance, from madness, or from some festering ideological rot no longer matters. What matters is this: the relic must be retrieved."

Sinister began pacing again, every movement focused, every word measured.

"The gates of Limbo strain against the chains that bind them. If not for the Phoenix Force obliterating Genosha and bleeding that destruction into Limbo itself, we would be at war with its armies even now. That portal must never be left untethered again."

He halted, staring down at Shinobi as if weighing him anew.

"You will wield every tool at your disposal. Every asset, every leverage, every knife in the dark. You will find Alex Summers. You will retrieve the relic. And you will deliver it back to me, intact."

His smile returned, sharper this time. "If Xavier shelters him, you must decide whether diplomacy, deception, or devastation best serves your purpose. A zealot like Havok is unpredictable. An ideologue at odds with every player on the field even more so."

Sinister folded his hands behind his back. "And do not bother asking why I do not retrieve it myself," he added, almost lightly, though the dangerous undertone beneath his voice sharpened. "Some things... must be set into motion by others." He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing to burning slits. "This is your proving ground, Shinobi Shaw. Succeed—and the keys to an empire may yet be yours."

Shinobi drank in everything he heard. So Scott has a brother; that could prove very useful. And checking to see if he'd taken up residence with Xavier would provide other information gathering opportunities.

He nodded his head respectfully. "I understand. Though, this relic I am to retrieve for you," he said. "What does it look like? Just so I'll know what I'm looking for when I find Alex Summers. Oh, and how important is it that he survive our encounter, should it come to that?"

Sinister's expression barely flickered—only the faintest arch of a brow betrayed his reaction to Shinobi’s questions. He let the silence stretch for a beat too long, just enough to remind Shinobi of who truly commanded the room.

"Trifles," Sinister said at last, the word laced with disdain. "But I will indulge you."

He moved to a control console embedded in the wall, its surface lighting with a pulse of unnatural red as he swept one pale hand across it. A holographic projection shimmered into view—rotating slowly in the air like a sacred relic on display.

The object was jagged, crystalline, almost alive in the way its edges flickered with prismatic color. Its surface was dark, veined with veins of gold and violet light that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat. No symmetrical shape defined it. It was too perfect in its imperfection—alien, in the truest sense of the word.

"A mineral shard," Sinister said, his tone clinical now. "Its composition defies categorization. No isotope, no lattice, no molecular behavior native to this world, for it is of Limbo."

The projection vanished with a wave of Sinister's hand.

"It is unlikely Havok will part with it willingly. I doubt he lets it out of his possession. As for his survival..." Sinister looked down his nose, a faint curl of amusement tugging at his lips. "Completely irrelevant." His eyes gleamed crimson, cruel and knowing. "I can have him cloned at will. It is all just data to me. What matters is the relic, not the carrier."

Sinister turned once again, walking toward the shadows at the edge of the chamber, then paused, casting a glance over his shoulder. "Do you foresee any difficulty in completing this most simple task?" he asked, voice silken but unmistakably heavy with menace.

With all of the confidence he could muster, Shinobi answered, "I do not."

Essex seemed like an individual who was accustomed to getting his way no matter what. This was not the Inner Circle or the Hellfire Club. Or the X-Men or Brotherhood for that matter. This had to be levels beyond any of that. And it had taken Shinobi too long to realize that today.

"I told you, Lord Essex, he is perfectly brutal." Selene cooed once more, she had remained silent during their conversation because somethings needed to happen on their own, elegant design was delicate like that. "An excellent first mission, something to prove your commitment to the cause, and who knows maybe you'll reap some additional benefits along the way."

The Black Queen bowed once more to Sinister, "I also have news from my covens in the Caribbean. There appears to be a bit more activity on that front." A cryptic message due to mixed company but one that alluded to something bigger that was manifesting.

Sinister paused, his crimson eyes lifted to meet Selene’s gaze, and unlike the cool dismissal he’d offered Shinobi, here there was a flicker of something approaching respect. There was acknowledgment between the two evil creatures.

"Ah, yes, the ever-ready and crafty Black Queen," he said, inclining his head by a fraction. "You always did have a knack for sensing the subtle tremors before the quake. I trust your covens know the difference between ripples and rupture. I am managing affairs accordingly."

He turned, the long sweep of his cape catching the ambient light like the blade of a scythe.

"But the Caribbean will have to wait," he added with dry finality, fixing his gaze once again on Shinobi. "The relic remains the priority. Its absence... complicates my plans in ways I do not care to tolerate." Sinister moved closer now, letting the oppressive weight of his presence settle over Shinobi like a velvet noose. He smiled, thin and terrible. "This is your proving ground, Shinobi Shaw. Rise as a king... or die as a pawn."

With that, Sinister turned his back on them both, disappearing once more into the deeper shadows of his sanctum, where machines hummed, tanks flickered, and secrets far older than mutantkind stirred in the dark.

 

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