Pierce develops a romantic attraction towards Lady Deathstrike but the woman is disgusted by Pierce's arrogance and spurns him, and Wolverine is rescued by Jubilee and the two mutants go into hiding. Pierce tracks the two down, but is incapacitated by Jubilee. Assuming the mutants fled to Muir Island, Pierce and the Reavers attack Muir Island, and battle Moira MacTaggart's "Muir Island X-Men" and Freedom Force. With the Reavers, he also attacks Frost Technologies' plant in California. Pierce creates two super intelligent sentient androids (Elsie-Dee and Albert), programming the two to find Wolverine and self-destruct. However, the androids' intelligence allows the two to put the bomb in Elsie-Dee on hold, and abandon the Reavers. The Upstarts' members Trevor Fitzroy sends reprogrammed Sentinels to destroy the Reavers, as they are a threat to mutants and the former White King is worth a lot of "points" in the deadly game the Upstarts play. Only Lady Deathstrike and Cylla escape. Pierce has Gateway teleport him to the one responsible for the attack on the Reavers, but the Sentinels accompanying Fitzroy to electrocute him. Despite his seeming demise, he later resurfaces, starts an anti-mutant hate group, and enlists several members; revealing a plot to take militant terrorist actions against mutants and thwarted by the X-Men, he is beaten by Wolverine in hand-to-hand combat. Very little of Pierce's human tissue remains, which explains how he was able to survive the massacre in Australia with only portions of his upper torso intact. Pierce would remain with the Hellfire Club for some time, eventually showing a more adversarial relationship with Shaw as the current Black King. He heads out to an outpost in Switzerland believed to be the immortal tyrant Apocalypse's old stronghold, to obtain the first mutant's power and technological marvels, also to secure his position within the Hellfire Club's inner circle. In one such botched expedition involving the mutant time traveler Cable, he was believed to be flash incinerated when he, Shaw and a guide leading them through another of the first mutant's lairs unleashed a techno-organic entity created by the mutant overlord in the past. All managed to survive unscathed, save for Pierce himself whose injuries further cost him much of his remaining flesh, revealing his head to be his only remaining fully organic component. Due to his constant failures and Shaw's general contempt of him, Pierce is eventually cut loose from the Inner