Emma Frost took a delicate sip from her wine glass before responding deliberately:
"Shaw is currently in Miami."
"Beyond myself, Azazel, and Shaw, the Hellfire Club's core membership includes 'Riptide' Janos Quested, 'Black Bishop' Isabel Nava, 'Black Rook' Bud Blom, and 'White Rook' Syrio McCartney."
Upon hearing her answer, Richard frowned slightly.
Riptide's position as a Hellfire Club core member came as no surprise. However, the names Black Bishop, Black Rook, and White Rook were unfamiliar to him, as were their respective abilities.
"What powers do the Black Bishop, Black Rook, and White Rook possess?" Richard inquired.
Emma Frost replied without hesitation:
"The Black Bishop manipulates shadows. The Black Rook can fly and generate energy shock waves. The White Rook controls gravity."
"All three are Alpha-class mutants. The Black Rook and White Rook are brothers."
Following this brief introduction, Richard continued his questioning:
"Are they also in Miami currently?"
"No, Shaw assigned them separate tasks. I'm not privy to the specifics," Emma Frost answered promptly.
Though Emma Frost remained ignorant of the Black Bishop's current mission, Richard considered this detail relatively unimportant.
Knowing Sebastian Shaw's location sufficed for his purposes.
If Shaw represented the main course, the three additional mutants merely constituted dessert.
"Tell me everything you know about Sebastian Shaw," Richard instructed. "While you're at it, provide a detailed account of your own background and experiences."
He drained the whiskey from his glass as he addressed Emma Frost.
"Of course."
Emma Frost offered no resistance, immediately launching into a comprehensive narrative about Sebastian Shaw and herself.
Time passed gradually.
Before either realized, more than thirty minutes had elapsed.
Though Richard had known early on that this universe's iterations of Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost differed from their cinematic counterparts, he hadn't anticipated just how substantially they diverged from their comic book "personalities" as well.
In the comics, Shaw had amassed his billions by age forty before joining the Hellfire Club, where he encountered Emma Frost.
Subsequently, he had forged an alliance with her, instructing her to eliminate competing candidates, securing his position as "Black King" of the Hellfire Club, and partnering with her to govern the organization.
In this reality, however, Shaw had known Emma Frost before joining the Hellfire Club.
More precisely, he had personally invited her to join.
At the time of this invitation, he had already established himself as the Club's "Black King."
Emma Frost remained ignorant regarding when Shaw had initially joined the Hellfire Club.
She could, however, confirm one certainty: Sebastian Shaw possessed immense wealth.
Simply put, he personally financed all Hellfire Club operations.
Beyond Shaw's circumstances diverging from the comics, Emma Frost's situation similarly deviated from established canon.
The comic book Emma Frost had been born to a wealthy Boston family—her father a ruthless businessman, her mother a housewife dependent on psychotropic drugs.
That iteration not only had a brother but also an older and younger sister.
Furthermore, her elder sister Adrienne and younger sister Cordelia had both manifested mutant abilities.
Her relationship with her sisters had been strained to the point of nonexistence.
Only with her brother Christian had she maintained any meaningful connection.
In this universe, Emma stood as her family's only daughter, originating from an ordinary middle-class New York household.
Her decision to join the Hellfire Club hadn't stemmed from ideological alignment with Shaw, but rather because he had helped her overcome profound grief following her parents' death in a car accident.
Out of gratitude for Shaw's support, she had joined the Hellfire Club, eventually assuming the mantle of White Queen.
After absorbing Emma Frost's account, Richard's first reaction acknowledged his diminishing advantage as a transmigrator.
Based on the disparities between these versions of Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw, his foreknowledge merely enabled him to vaguely anticipate names and abilities.
Inwardly sighing at this realization, Richard addressed Emma Frost:
"Let's proceed. We'll confront Shaw and Riptide immediately." He stood, extending his right hand toward her.
"All right."
Emma Frost nodded, rising to accept Richard's offered hand.
Teleportation!
Richard executed the technique without hesitation.
Though his teleportation ability remained technically unchanged, absorbing the Red Devil's power had substantially enhanced its effectiveness.
Before this acquisition, his maximum teleportation range had been limited to 200 kilometers.
Now, that threshold had expanded to 800 kilometers.
Las Vegas, situated in Nevada adjacent to California, stood over 3,500 kilometers from Miami on Florida's eastern seaboard.
One city hugged America's western edge while the other occupied its eastern shore, spanning nearly the entire continental United States.
Even commercial aircraft required four and a half hours to traverse this distance.
It took Richard and Emma Frost less than a minute to transition from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to the Bay Park Yacht Marina adjacent to Jungle Island in Miami, where the Hellfire Club's yacht Caspartina awaited.
Though the vessel's name remained unchanged, according to Emma Frost's intelligence, this Caspartina lacked the nuclear submarine connection featured in the film—it was merely a conventional luxury yacht.
Standing dockside, Richard briefly surveyed the Caspartina before releasing Emma Frost's hand. Instead, he encircled her slender, alluring waist and initiated another teleportation.
In an instant, they materialized on the yacht's sun deck.
"Remain passive during the coming confrontation," Richard instructed her. "Simply observe from a distance."
"Understood."
Emma Frost offered no objection, immediately signaling her compliance.
Following her acknowledgment, Richard deployed his telepathy to locate Sebastian Shaw.
His expression soon shifted to discomfort.
He detected no presence aboard the yacht save for Emma Frost.
Neither Sebastian Shaw nor Riptide currently occupied the vessel.
Well...
Richard had intended to capitalize on the element of surprise, ambushing Shaw to claim his powers and extract Wanda and Pietro's location.
But evidently, circumstances had changed.
"They're absent. Call and inquire about their whereabouts," he directed Emma Frost.
Lacking telepathic abilities herself, Emma Frost remained unaware of the yacht's emptiness.
Upon receiving Richard's instruction, she immediately retrieved a white mobile phone from her handbag, dialed Shaw's number, and activated the speakerphone function.
The connection established quickly, with Shaw's voice emerging from the device:
"Has the invitation been delivered?"
"Yes, it has. Azazel and I have returned to the yacht. Where are you and Janos currently?" Emma Frost inquired, her expression betraying nothing.
Following Richard's subconscious modifications, she now regarded him as her master, while Shaw, Riptide, and their associates had become adversaries.
"Janos and I are meeting an exceptionally important contact. We won't return until evening."
"Let's postpone further discussion until our return tonight."
With that statement, Shaw terminated the call.
An exceptionally important contact?
Though unaware of Shaw's current meeting partner, the phrase "exceptionally important" immediately conjured one name in Richard's mind: Magneto.
Could he be meeting with Magneto?
Has he discovered Wanda and Pietro's connection to Magneto?
Multiple theories rapidly crystallized in Richard's thoughts.
...
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