PRELUDE

Zane's Wall Penitentiary is one of many prisons that are populated with superhumans. Unlike other more recognizable establishments, Zane's Wall caters to all types of prisoners from every country. Tax evasion, welcome to Zane's Wall; run over a cat, welcome to Zane's Wall; kill a state flower, welcome to Zane's Wall; question your country's role in Operation: Zero Tolerance, get beaten, burned, your tongue cut out, probed, prodded, drugged, castrated, and thrown in a dark cell, guess what? Welcome to Zane's Wall.

Mason Freeland questioned his government and found himself in a cell, dark and human, naked, scarred and alone. He spends most of his day sleeping, not to long ago he would talk to himself during the day, but the guards didn't like that so they cut out his tongue, they cut other things too. All this for questioning his government... and being a mutant!

In prison, in a cell, which you survive in alone, when someone talks to you from inside the cell, you tend to get a little nervous. Mason Freeland gets visitors every evening, after the beatings he sleeps, when he hears those voices in the cell he stands and takes what they have to give. Defiant until he collapses because they rupture his kneecaps. Today was any other day, or so he thought.

"Mason Freeland," said the voice out of the darkness, "I know you cannot speak, I have heard of what they have done to you here. My name is Sebastian Shaw, I am the Black King of the Hellfire Club, and I have a proposition for you."

Out of the darkness of the cell Shaw appeared, wearing an amalgam of the traditional Hellfire Club period suit and a well cut Hugo Boss. Behind him stood a taller man wearing an all-white suit. Mason wondered why these things stood out in his mind, his nakedness most likely.

"This is Smith, he and I, like yourself, are mutants. I have heard of you through sources that say you control ionized plasma. My understanding is that your control over this power is absolute. I have need of your services, for the work you do for me you will be paid handsomely. As a down payment I offer you this prison." Shaw motions towards Smith. Coming forward Mason sees that the left eye of Smith is covered with a black patch. His thoughts go back to tortures; was this man also beaten. Smith puts a bundle of black on the floor near Mason. Shaw speaks.

"Put these on. Consider them a gift... you have a role in things and you must look the part. Smith has turned off the power inhibitor to your cell. I give you one hour to do with what you please, then I will be back."

Mason gave a look of acknowledgement to Shaw and began to close. Shaw looks to Smith and the transportation process begins. Smith begins speaking, "Right, here's how its gonna work. You, me, and a couple of others are gonna work for Shaw and we are going to get everything we every wanted. The first thing you get is this prison. I hear you've got some serious fire power in your body time to let it out."

Now fully clothed Mason Freeland stands. Smith notices that the facial hair that has grown on Mason's face slowly begins to burn away. The cleanly shaven man smiles, the smile of someone who doesn't ever have to speak. That's when Zane's Wall Penitentiary, one of many prisons that are populated with superhumans, burned in a flame consisting of ionized plasma. A white man in a white suit named Smith, and a black man in a black suit named Mason Freeland were the only two survivors.

END PRELUDE

THE INTERVIEW

Have you ever wanted something so bad you could taste it? Right there on the tip of your tongue playing with you begging you to swallow it whole. That's what a good story is like, that's what makes Sebastian Shaw so enticing. Trish Tilby tastes a story and she is ravenous.

"Here he comes now John, start rolling!" Deftly the reporter makes her way to the most notorious businessman in America.

"Mister Shaw, may I have a few words?"

"No," says Shaw without batting an eye.

"Mr. Shaw I have a few questions about your business activities. Is it true that your company once backed the defunct Project: Wideawake producing, among other items, Sentinels?"

"No comment."

"Then sir perhaps you can tell me why Shaw Industries has its corporate offices in the highly exclusive Hellfire Club?"

"No comment."

"Why does the club maintain a security staff rivaling in number the police force for the greater New York area?"

"No comment."

"Mister Shaw what would you comment on?"

Shaw pauses for a moment, his jaw tightens, eyes squinting in the mid-afternoon sun, "Ms. Tilby, I have never done, nor will I ever do, an interview with you or any other reporter. I suggest that you never again make contact with me, and as you yourself said the Hellfire club is highly exclusive and you are on its property. You are breaking the law Miss, because you are not a member. Good Day!"

Trish Tilby watches as Shaw enters a parked car at the bottom of the stairs to the Hellfire Club. The driver closes the door and looks up to her. Inside his jacket is a gun. For the first time in more than ten years of investigative reporting Trish Tilby begins to wonder if maybe she has bitten off more than she can chew.

The car moves through the rush hour New York traffic slowly. In the back seat Shaw sits and thinks. Next to him a woman begins to speak.

"Sebastian, this does not bode well. This could be the Merryweather incident all over again. The reporter cannot get so close as to compromise the Club and more importantly the Inner Circle, regardless of its incarnation."

"Tessa," Shaw explains, "I have been planning events of great magnitude for some time now. Mistakes of the past not withstanding, the Inner Circle will be whole once more. Pierce, Selene, and the Pryor woman are no longer associated with the Hellfire Club, and the Inner Circle will be reformed. Of this I am certain."

"I understand this plan of yours but I hesitate. Bringing Shinobi into your fold is a mistake. He tried to kill you once, he may well try again, it has always been on the surface of his thoughts for as long as I can remember."

"The plan will continue. Already two of the associates recommended to me by Mister Sledge are in pursuit of Shinobi. And I leave for Arizona to personally ask the Indian for his services. With Shinobi, and Sledge's three, my new Upstarts will be a beginning to my new power base. Once completed, I will begin reforming the Inner Circle and reestablish its power."

"Also I find it disconcerting that you associate yourself with Sledge and the other one. The drugs are useful, even I cannot read your thoughts, but will they be effective against him?"

"The Gamesmaster," says Shaw with confidence, "is of little concern. That he cannot enter my mind makes me as close to an equal as he is likely to have. My scientists discovered the drugs necessary to blanket my thoughts in noise and as long as I take them I have little to worry about. Only you, who have been with me so long, could possibly pierce through, I am not worried."

Tessa sits in silence.

"Understand, my dear, that the Gamesmaster is a tool, not unlike Shinobi. He is more powerful than we really have any right to imagine; an omnipath. We amuse him, when he is tired of us this association will cease."

Shaw takes a vial from his coat pocket and ingests a small pill, "Driver, to the airport."

The black man in the black suit with the scars over his face moved towards the back of the lounge. The white man in the white suit with the eye patch moved towards the back of the lounge.

Shinobi Shaw looks at this bizarre sight and laughed. With wealth, women, and power he laughed about a lot of things, when the two men approached him and the white-suited man began to speak Shinobi stops laughing.

"Shinobi Shaw," said the white-suited man, "My name is Smith, I work for your father he would like to speak to you. Please don't get up, there is more that you need to hear."

Shinobi started to rise the black-suited man moved to block his way from behind the table. He looked at the much taller man, and in a tone of voice that indicated no fear he asked, "Do you know what I could do to you?"

The white-suited man spoke, "Yes, in fact, we do. You can alter your density from ghost-like to diamond hard. If you wished to you could plunge your hands into our chests and disrupt the flow of blood or you could hit us with the force of a rampaging elephant. That is what you can do."

Shinobi stood in pause.

"Let me explain what we can do. Freeland controls ionized plasma. In fact, an atom's width of plasma coats his body as we speak. Freeland is very good with his powers. Here's a quick lesson in ionized plasma...it will vaporize things, including you. I am a teleporter; you have no hope in ever touching me. We were hand picked for the job of bringing you in, your father really wants to see you, it is my understanding he has a business proposition for you."

Shinobi looked at his would-be kidnappers and began to move. Phasing through the table in front of him he parted Freeland and Smith. The crowd in the club is hardly aware of what is happening. He gets about five yards from the two men when Shinobi was completely surrounded by a dancing blue flame. He tried to move through the flame only to experience the most excruciating pain.

"Shinobi," said Smith, "I would no more lie to you than I would my own mother. I think that it is time we leave."

Before Shinobi even realized he was someplace else, he saw that he was in the great hall of the Hellfire Club in downtown New York. He also understood that he was there to see his father, and he was not pleased.

Arizona, desert, the vast expanse... these are the things people see when they are in Diablo. The town is dead, one hundred miles from the closest thing that would resemble civilization. The center of town is where someone would be found, if there were someone to be found. Sebastian Shaw stands in the center of Diablo, and thinks that someone had a very sick sense of humor when they named this town, because it IS hell.

Shaw shouts out to the nothingness, "I am here Indian and I am waiting!"

Nothing.

"I have no patience for this," he says under his breath, where you would have to be inches away to even hear. Then movement comes from below.

It rises from the ground as if nothing were there. Like Shinobi or the female X-Man Shadowcat. To describe what came up from the ground as a man would assault the very meaning of the word. Areas of flesh were clear, but they were disjoined and few. Not quite an armor or and exoskeleton, the shining metal parts were the man, the man called Scalphunter.

"I am assuming you are Scalphunter."

"Yes," said the voice not coming from any visible mouth. The assassin moved out from the ground and Shaw saw the illusion fade. No doubt access to below the town was being camouflaged by holograms. The movement of Scalphunter was coupled with an eerie silence, unusual given the amount of metal coupled to the form of a man.

"Sledge send you?"

"Yes," Shaw observed carefully his soon-to-be ally and realized what Sledge told him was very true...

'Scalphunter is an interesting one. He's a warped caricature of the one called Forge. He can create anything, and understand anything given time. It's my understanding that he was approached to join a group called the Marauders, accepted, killed some mutants, so on and so on. He even gave the organizer of that little party a genetic sample. So there are some carbon copies of him that can be found. But you don't want a copy, do you? You want the original. He's more machine now, than man, like Darth Vader! He's a meat Popsicle on a very large metal stick. He'll join your Upstarts, because he owes me a favor.'

Shaw begins to speak, "I have need of your services, what is it you want?"

Scalphunter says only one word, "Everything!"

In Hellfire Club #2: We have all seen what the Gamesmaster is capable of - manipulation, control... pure evil. But the Gamesmaster is a man like any other, with a wife, children, a dog. Learn the origin of the Gamesmaster, meet the man himself, and find out what his role is in the new Hellfire Club!