Hellions

Context

This is the original version of the Hellions, from the Massachusetts Academy. These are Marvel Comics characters who primarily appeared during the 1980s. The name was reused by other mutant teams in later decades.

The Hellions were a group of teenage superhuman mutants, studying under the White Queen of the Hellfire Club (Emma Frost). As such as they were the opposite number of the original New Mutants. Most Hellions would better be described as “rivals” than as “enemies”, though.

The bulk of the original Hellions is currently deceased.

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Organisation

Full Name:
Hellions.

Purpose:
Superhuman-operatives-in-training for the Hellfire Club.

Modus Operandi:
The Hellions were primarily students and trainees at a private academy.

Extent of operations:
The Hellions’ operations have primarily taken place on the East Coast of the USA.

Bases of Operations:
Massachusetts Academy, MA.

Major Funding:
Hellfire Club ; Frost Enterprises.

Known allies:
Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club.

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Membership

Number of active members:
The Hellions are defunct.

Organizational structure:
The Hellions were a class under the responsibility of Headmistress Emma Frost. One member was designated as field leader – Thunderbird and Jetstream have been the two main ones.

Original roster:

• Catseye (Sharon Smith) (deceased).
• Empath (Manuel de la Rocha).
• Jetstream (Haroun ibn Salla al-Rashid) (deceased).
• Roulette (Jennifer Stavros) (deceased).
• Tarot (Marie-Ange Colbert).
• Thunderbird (James Proudstar).

King Bedlam (Christopher Aaronson) was approached but did not join. Firestar (Angelica Jones) joined the roster a bit later.

New Mutants addition:
The following New Mutants served for a time with the Hellions as a result of psychic influence –

• Cannonball (Samuel Guthrie).
• Cypher (Doug Ramsey).
• Karma (Xi’an Coy Manh).
• Magik (Illyana Rasputin).
• Magma (Amara Aquila).
• Wolfsbane (Rahne Sinclair).
• Ariel (Kitty Pryde).

Original roster (left: Emma Frost).

Later recruits:

• Beef (Buford Wilson) (deceased).
• Bevatron (Fabian Maréchal-Julbin) (deceased).

Transmode revenant roster:
An undead version of the team, animated using a necromantic techno-organic virus, includes Jetstream, Tarot, Beef, Roulette, Bevatron and Catseye. Bevatron and Jetstream may have been permanently destroyed since.

Known special agents:
The White Queen (Emma Frost) occasionally accompanied the Hellions in the field.

Membership requirements:
All members are fit, young superhumanly powerful mutants capable of undertaking high school or undergraduate studies.

Equipment:
The Hellions frequently benefit from Hellfire Club-provided vehicles. The Massachusetts Academy also provided them with a firmly Northeastern upper class lifestyle, and an equivalent of the X-Men’s danger room.

Note:
One remark by James Proudstar implies that the Hellions were zeroed – that is, records of their existence were suppressed to prevent gaining intelligence about them. It is likely that it was supplemented by telepathic memory implants in witnesses to further make them disappear.

Furthermore, Firestar destroyed the White Queen’s records about the Hellions in 1992 as a burial of sorts for the team.

Merged Hellions/New Mutants roster.

History

This article cover the original Hellions team – other teams of young superhuman mutants have since claimed the name.

The Hellions were created during the 1980s by Emma Frost. Back then, she was the White Queen of the Inner Circle of the United States chapter of the Hellfire Club. It was essentially her version of Charles Xavier’s New Mutants, and was to serve three roles :

1. Provide Frost, in time, with a loyal and well-trained retinue of superhuman operatives. Frost did not hesitate to use telepathic conditioning to ensure the “loyal” part. In this role, the Hellions proved roughly as competent and powerful as the mid-1980s New Mutants or the early 1990s New Warriors.
2. Provide the Hellfire Club with a cadre of young but powerful operatives, especially after clashes with the X-Men revealed that even well-equipped conventional security forces were outmatched by superhuman foes.
3. Fulfil Frost’s yearning to be a teacher and take care of exceptional youths.

Mutant youths as an arms race

During the mid-1980s there existed a sort of low-key race between Xavier and Frost to recruit the most promising teenaged superpowerful mutants. Kitty Pryde became such a prize, and after she was recruited by the X-Men was kidnapped by Frost. The New Mutants came to the rescue but were also captured, and Frost telepathically dominated them into joining her Hellions.

This made the original Hellions uneasy. Frost’s actions cast doubt as to whether they had themselves been psychically conditioned. The Hellions thus organised an unsanctioned competition against the newcomers, offering the New Mutants their freedom if they won. This never quite reached a conclusion and Magik teleported herself and her teammates away to freedom.

The Hellions then lost Firestar, whom Frost had been grooming to become an assassin. Firestar left when she discovered the extent of the psychic influence she had been subjected to. She would eventually become a New Warrior then an Avenger.

The Hellions also nearly lost Thunderbird after he attempted to kill Charles Xavier as revenge for the death of his brother John, who had been killed in action after joining the X-Men.

Thunderbird discovered that he couldn’t commit murder in cold blood and reached an understanding with Xavier. However, he chose to remain with Frost.

Thunderbird’s murder attempt was the occasion for Hellions bad seeds Empath and Roulette to mess with the X-Men. They turned Strategic Air Command  troops against them. This irresponsible behaviour damaged the relationship between the X-Men and the authorities, and was one of the steps in the degradation of relations between homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens superior.

Coexistence

During the second Secret Wars the New Mutants were killed and resurrected by the Beyonder, which traumatised them. Frost manipulated Magneto, by then the headmaster at Xavier’s, to let the listless New Mutants be transferred to her Massachusetts Academy.

Frost telepathically healed the damage, and various friendships and relationships developed between the two teams. When Magneto discovered the manipulation the deal was off, but the two teams were now closer to a not-so-friendly rivalry than being enemies.

Merged Hellions/New Mutants roster.

Hellions and New Mutants occasionally met at social events. They also competed in field missions – once to capture terrorists Viper (Ophelia Sarkissian) and the Silver Samurai (Yashida Keniuchio), which the Hellions achieved, and once to capture an Ani-Mate nicknamed Bird-Boy (the New Mutants won).

A more serious clash led to some New Mutants terrorising Empath as revenge for his casual cruelty toward some of their friends. Thunderbird promised to keep the sadistic Empath in check.

During the early 1990s the Hellions lost Empath (who disappeared in the Amazon in a plane crash, along with New Mutant Magma) then Thunderbird (who left after his tribe was massacred, seemingly by the Hellfire Club). Frost recruited Beef to replace Thunderbird as a strongman, and Bevatron to replace Empath.

Termination shock

In 1991 the Hellions clashed with the New Warriors, the team Firestar was then with. This was retaliation after the New Warriors’ leader Night Thrasher breached some Hellfire Club computer security.

Mere months later, the team was attacked by Trevor Fitzroy, leading a battle group of Sentinel robots from the future. Frost and her charges were completely overwhelmed by the brutal attack, and everyone but the White Queen was killed. Empath was still stranded in the Amazon when the attack took place, and Tarot was later mystically recreated.

The team in 1991.

Other teams have since claimed the name “Hellions” – including a squad formed in 2004 at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning and mentored by Emma Frost. Frost never truly recovered from the death of the original Hellions. Even as late as in 2009 thinking about them would trigger vivid guilt, trauma and survivor’s syndrome in the usually rock-solid headmistress.

Transmode

In 2009, the Techno-Organic Virus  was mystically altered by the Black Queen (Selene). She used it for necromancy and brought back dozens of dead mutants as her techno-zombie army. All dead Hellions were among the number and served as her personal team.

Though they did not look dead, the TO-infused Hellions were very difficult to kill and had an altered mentality making them hateful, and loyal toward Selene.

The dead Hellions were sent to terrorise Emma Frost, then to kill Magma. The New Mutants repelled them, and the transmode  zombies were blown up by a pair of cruise missiles grown by Warlock. The bodies remained underwater near the Utopia island.

In 2012, the Hellions techno-zombies were reactivated by a future, evil version of Cypher (Doug Ramsey). His goal was to prevent his 2012 self from committing suicide to prevent his future version from existing.

As it turned out this was actually a ploy by the 2012 version of Doug Ramsey. He knew that the presence of transmode zombies would activate the valkyrie powers of his teammate Danielle Moonstar.

Moonstar reaped Bevatron and Jetstream, freeing their souls. What happened to the other techno-organic zombies, and the impact of closing the paradox opened by the future version of Cypher, are both unclear.

As of this writing we haven’t researched the abilities of Selene’s techno-organic zombies as deployed during the X-Necrosha storyline. They generally looked alive, but spoke like techno-organic entities and sufficient damage would make TO circuitry glow through their skin.

Transmode revenants roster in 2009.

The revenant Hellions had the same abilities as they did in life. Here’s a rough account of the changes spotted so far :

• BODY seems higher by about 3 APs, they have some APs of Damage Capacity (maybe 6) and about 9 APs of Regeneration. They cannot regrow body part, but they can reattach severed body parts (though that takes several minutes).
• The enjoy Life Support (Full) – for instance they don’t need to breathe, being dead.
• They often seemed to have dulled reflexes and cognition. This is not readily apparent, but a person familiar with whom they were will eventually note that they are a bit more sluggish and confused than they were in life. Lowering INT by two APs and giving them Age (Old) could approximate this.
• Karma found them impossible to control for long as they were completely insane and their mentalities were too chaotic. About 4 APs of Iron Will might work, and they can attempt to break mental control every Phase even if that shouldn’t be possible.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Marvel Comics (primarily X-Men and New Mutants comics).

Writeup completed on the 18^th of November, 2012.