"It's not time to give up yet, Emma." Professor X spoke, his tone still as gentle as ever. But in the White Queen's eyes, he already looked like a Dead Man.
The White Queen was immersed in her own fear and, for a moment, couldn't utter a word. Professor X continued, "We're in the middle of carrying out a top-secret plan we never had time to finish before—the Totem Revival Plan."
The White Queen still wasn't listening to him, so Professor X had no choice but to say, "We asked Mister Sinister to preserve the genes of all Mutants who joined, and the Clarkia totem can use those genes to incubate entirely new bodies. All I need to do is inject the backup copies of those Mutants, stored in my brainwaves, into the new bodies, and they can undergo Revival."
These words finally jolted the White Queen awake. She swallowed hard, forcing her chaotic thoughts down with all her Strength, then said, "Revival?"
"That's right. Now Mutants can achieve Infinite Revival." Professor X said, "So even when facing the unimaginably powerful Mother Module, we are not entirely without a fighting chance."
"How come I didn't know about this plan?" the White Queen pressed.
Professor X sighed and said, "I'm sorry, Emma, that's on me. I freed up my hands to get involved in the Multiverse war earlier, which delayed many of our plans. We only completed the totem test two days ago. Before that, we weren't sure it would work, so naturally we didn't tell you."
Shiller knew this plan played a crucial role in the comics. Because in the comics, the strike team was also wiped out, and it was thanks to the Clarkia totem and Professor X's psychic backups that they were brought back in Revival.
At the same time, this act of Revival gave the Mutants an enormous morale boost, so they no longer feared battle, and that was what led to Clarkia's bright future.
Only, the butterfly effect's influence was too strong. Professor X had put part of his focus on the Multiverse, causing this plan—which should've been completed long ago—to be shelved until now. If Shiller hadn't brought it up, Professor X hadn't even planned to start on it.
This wasn't because they didn't want to revive the squad members, but in the comics, though people died, the raid succeeded. As long as they revived the people, they'd suffer zero losses on their side. But now, people are dead and the raid also failed, so the first thing they have to face are the powerful enemies mass-produced by the Red Orchid Factory. They no longer have enough resources to spare for researching Revival.
In reality, it still hasn't been figured out. Professor X was deceiving the White Queen. Right now, they still have no way to perfectly incubate new bodies.
"Then… then have they been incubated?" the White Queen asked.
"The totem itself is fine. The problem lies in my mind." Professor X said helplessly. "My psyche took heavy damage, and the Mutants' psychic backups stored in my mind were scattered. If I can't recover, then even if we incubate new bodies, they'll still be inert."
The White Queen scrubbed her face hard. She forced herself to pull it together, then said, "What exactly happened to your mind? How can it be healed? Will the Clarkia Flower help?"
Professor X shook his head and said, "The Clarkia Flower isn't some panacea that cures everything. Emma, I need your help. You have to help me comb through the chaotic Psychic_Battlefield and find the Mutants' psychic backups, only then can we save our people."
"Of course I'm willing to do that." The White Queen took a step forward. "But the United Nations General Assembly is tomorrow, I…"
"You can't go." Shiller suddenly spoke.
The White Queen immediately turned to look at him. She hadn't noticed Shiller at all before and had assumed he was one of Professor X's students or something—after all, Professor X had countless students. It seemed like every Mutant had studied under him at some point, so having one unfamiliar face show up seemed perfectly normal.
However, the brats Professor X raised would never speak in this tone. Even though they could be rude at times, they were always hesitant, lacking decisiveness. The White Queen had no fondness for that kind of personality and thus wasn't very willing to deal with the X-Men. In contrast, Shiller's firm, cut-and-dried tone caught her attention.
"Who are you?" the White Queen narrowed her eyes and asked.
"I'm a friend of Professor Xavier's, and also a psychiatrist. I'm here to help him."
"You're Human race?"
"Not exactly." Shiller said, "We can talk about me later. Right now we need to talk about you. What do you think will happen at tomorrow's United Nations General Assembly?"
The White Queen's expression darkened. She felt that Shiller was deliberately poking at her sore spots, but she was unwilling to admit that every spot was sore, so she just kept a stony face and didn't speak.
"Nothing good will come of it." Shiller said. "The strike team failed to complete its mission and was instead annihilated, which is a shot in the arm for the Human race. They were never willing to acknowledge Clarkia's nationhood, and this victory will certainly make the opposition rejoice. At the United Nations General Assembly, they'll use this Mutant failure to heap scorn and suppression on you to the greatest extent possible, in order to force you to abandon the idea of founding a nation."
"We will not give up!" the White Queen said. "Never!"
"Yes, I absolutely believe that. You can go to the United Nations General Assembly and defend your case with perfect logic, debating them all into the ground, ma'am. But as a successful diplomat, you also know you can't win, don't you?"
The White Queen pressed her lips tightly together and stared at Shiller with eyes full of killing intent. Shiller continued, "Magneto and Professor X can't bear to see you humiliated, that's why they brought the Black Emperor in."
The White Queen was slightly taken aback. Only then did Magneto realize what Shiller and Professor X were trying to do, and he immediately chimed in, "That's right, Emma. The United Nations General Assembly is destined to be a purgatory of humiliation for Mutants. Every vicious term you can imagine will be used to refer to us. And your rebuttals won't bring victory. Defeat in war inevitably brings defeat in diplomacy. Since losing the war is our fault, the consequences of diplomatic failure can't be borne by you. That wouldn't be fair to you."
"But I at least have to try." the White Queen said. "I can't just let them humiliate us. I have to make them pay, at the very least!"
"That is precisely the problem, ma'am," Shiller said. "If you lose control at the United Nations General Assembly, that would be total diplomatic collapse. Those who lean toward you and your allies will no longer dare to approach you. We're keeping you from going because we hope your absence can preserve your last remaining political capital for the future."
The White Queen frowned and sank into thought. She finally pulled herself out of her emotions and began to think seriously. She had to admit that what Shiller said made sense.
This United Nations General Assembly would definitely be a diplomatic encirclement aimed at Mutants; it was likely that all countries would unite to oppose the founding of a Mutant nation. To achieve that goal, they would surely hurl every kind of verbal attack, enumerating Mutants' crimes and cursing them so fiercely it would be beyond all measure.
The White Queen knew her own temper very well. If anyone dared to humiliate her like that, she would never let them go. But she also knew that the United Nations General Assembly was not a place where she could simply throw her weight around. Killing or mind-controlling all the ambassadors would not solve the fundamental problem.
The White Queen even suspected that, to prevent her from making a move, they might pre-deploy Sentinel Robots. The moment she dared show any sign of acting, those people could kill her with perfect justification, without having to bear any responsibility.
Every move she made at the United Nations General Assembly would be put on trial. If anything really happened, the support they had already won—especially the support for her and for the Hellfire Group—would instantly fall apart.
So the best approach now was to do nothing. If she didn't show up, her supporters would still have room to wait and watch, instead of having to take on the stigma of supporting a terrorist who carried out a massacre at the United Nations. She could not give the Human race an opportunity to smear and judge her.
"But why Sebastian?"
When the White Queen asked this, everyone secretly breathed a sigh of relief. It meant she had agreed, though she was still unhappy about Sebastian attending the assembly.
"We're not sending the Black Emperor there just to be humiliated," Professor X explained. "I've already instructed Sebastian to stress the grudge between the two of you. That's no secret within the Hellfire Group, and the various ambassadors must have heard about it as well."
"What good does that do?" The White Queen frowned.
"It makes the Human race think Mutants are still fighting among themselves," Shiller said. "It used to be Magneto and Professor X. But ordinary people already know the two of them have joined forces. If they pretend to Split again now, it would hardly be believable. You and the Black Emperor are different. You've always been mortal enemies; you even actually kicked him out of the Hellfire Group. That's hard proof of the rift between you two."
The White Queen still didn't fully understand, so Shiller continued to explain: "In the past, when Magneto and Professor X were at odds, the Human race felt Mutants were not strong enough, because whatever one side tried to do, the other would sabotage it. That's the so‑called 'using Mutants against Mutants,' and they've been implementing this strategy all along."
"But at the early stage of the Clarkia nation‑building plan, you showed your unity too soon. That made the Human race believe their plan to stir up Mutant infighting had failed, so they created the Red Orchid Factory and the Mother Module to deal with a united Mutant population."
The White Queen furrowed her brows deeply. She realized that this really seemed to be the case. Mutants hadn't appeared just yesterday, and this wasn't even their first attempt at founding a nation; they had tried twice before, yet the Human race hadn't produced any factory or Mother Module then.
This time, what was different from before was that the longtime rivals Magneto and Professor X were working closely together. Even the previously relatively independent Hellfire Group had united with them. The entire Mutant population looked like an ironclad whole. The Human race had been forced into a corner; after all, how strong would a force have to be to defeat fully united Mutants? Without creating a sufficiently powerful Super Weapon, the Human race might be wiped out. Faced with the threat of extinction, the Human race has always been capable of explosive potential.
The White Queen finally understood and said, "So it was us being too high‑profile earlier. We shouldn't have announced the nation‑building plan so soon, and we definitely shouldn't have let them know we'd already united."
"Exactly. But it's too late to say that now. The remedy is to create the appearance of a Split Mutant population again," Shiller said. "We have to make them believe Mutants still aren't of one mind, that their Strength has been significantly weakened, and that they're currently busy with infighting and have no time to exterminate the Human race. Only then will they let down their guard."
"I see." The White Queen lifted her chin slightly. "You want to turn me and the Black Emperor into the new Magneto and Professor X to confuse the Human race."
"Further than that," Shiller smiled. "After all, no matter how much Professor X and Magneto fought, they never damaged each other's fundamental interests. But you completely kicked the Black Emperor out of the center of power. That proves the hatred between you two is far deeper than theirs. No shrewd politician would pass up the chance to exploit that."