Ma-Ma was hardly the only killer that collected trophies; compared to some of the more vicious goons in her syndicate she had very few mementos to mark to mark her homicides. Still what few trophies she possessed spoke volumes about the clan and their namesake, chief among these was the helmet of a judge. Hung upon a wall with her other trophies and favorite weapons the symbol of justice served as a reminder of the clans early days. During the four way gang war for control of Peach Trees, the common narrative amongst the blocks residents became that the majority of the violence was instigated by a woman calling herself Ma-Ma and her ever expanding army of henchmen. With so many citizens reporting a common cause for all the violence in Peach Trees, the hall of justice dispatched a judge to end all the conflict.
The judge's presence in Peach Trees wasn't noticed till the sound of gunfire became pervasive on the top floors. Ma-Ma remembered that the judge had no difficulty fighting past her soldiers till Caleb stopped the judge by wiring a door with a sizable explosive charge. When the Judge came to the door that would have lead to a stairwell; Caleb set off the charge which propelled the door towards the judge at bone crushing speed. The judge was thrown back onto the floor, desperately trying to crawl their way back to their lawgiver but Ma-Ma and a large number of her soldiers arrived before the judge could reach it. Ma-Ma stepped onto the judge's reaching hand and then removed her helmet. This caused a stir amongst her troops who had evidently assumed the judge would be male. Holding the helmet in one hand, Ma-Ma extended her empty hand towards Caleb who placed a pistol in her hand without missing a beat.
To Ma-Ma's surprise the judge made no effort to plead for her life but simply stared up at Ma-Ma who had a pistol leveled at her head. With a good number of her boys looking on, Ma-Ma realized that she now possessed the opportunity that very few citizens of mega city one received. She was about to execute a judge.
Ma-Ma fired a single shot into the judge's forehead without saying a word, which left an unsightly mess on the floor underneath the Judge. Something approaching a stunned silence took over the present Ma-Ma clan soldiers. While they had heard of and even seen Ma-Ma's violent ways before, the sight of their leader killing a judge and a woman in cold blood had left an impression. With the judge no longer a problem, Ma-Ma left her body where it lay and took the helmet in her hands as a trophy. Ma-Ma wanted the judge's weapon, but had hear rumors of Judge's using booby trapped weapons that would harm anyone other than its intended user, so Ma-Ma left it behind it as well. Looking at the helmet today Ma-Ma saw the trophy as source of validation, very few gangs had ever brought down judges.
I am the law!
Three hours after being assigned a bodyguard, Kevin had found the situation more awkward than terrifying. Noah had asked what it was that he did in this room. It took all but three minutes for Kevin to explain what all his equipment was and what his job was. After that it was nothing but awkward silence while Kevin went about his duties and Noah sat around and sucked down slow-mo. While Kevin had seen his bodyguard kill two people in cold blood and feared him because of it. After being around him for a few hours Kevin saw what appeared to be a normal person, he was friendly in a way and downright warm compared to the only other person he saw on a day to day basis. Unlike Ma-Ma Noah had a fire in his eyes that showed he hadn't given up on life. Ma-Ma was different, while she didn't have the dead eyes that so many hopeless drug addicts possessed; there was a cold indifference in her eyes that made her gaze particularly unsettling to Kevin.
So while Kevin might have still been unsure about his bodyguard he was beginning to think of the benefits that could come from an armed killer's protection. With Noah around the Techie could venture to the lower levels for food and clothes without the fear of being mugged or worse.
"So all you do all day is sit here and watch security feeds?"
Kevin turned away from the monitor to face Noah, who had sat on the floor and was now leaning against the wall of the Techie's room next to the door. Noah was staring back at the Techie with a slow-mo inhaler in his hand; perhaps the drug had fueled a new interest in the person he was supposed to protect. Kevin couldn't think of a better answer than a simple and truthful "Yeah."
"Don't you ever get bored?"
Kevin knew the answer to that question was yes, the twisted bundles of copper wire and the many other aesthetic touches he had added to his room where evidence of the tedious nature of his job but at the same time his job was an issue of life and death for him so he had never thought about in those terms before. "Yeah I guess I do, but it's not like I have a choice about it.
"Want some slow-mo" Noah offered with an outstretched hand.
"No" said the Techie before he turned round to face the monitors. He all ready had such little control over his life, the thought of losing even more control while under the influence of a narcotic scared him.
"You sure man? Starring at those feeds all day is going to burn you out eventually. It's better to take a break and just tune out for a while, otherwise you…"
Kevin turned back round to see why Noah had stopped midsentence only to find Ma-Ma standing in the doorway. With the simple gesture of her hand Ma-Ma pointed out of the room while looking at Noah. Noah understood the message and wisely left the room without protest. With Noah gone Kevin found himself alone with Ma-Ma yet again, and he turned back towards his work since as per usual he found it impossible to look directly at her.
"He's right you know" Kevin heard her speak right next to his ear, which surprised him since he had thought she was still by the door. Placing her hands on his shoulders Ma-Ma leaned in closer to his right ear to speak again. "If you work all the time you make mistakes, you get tired and miss important things. You wouldn't want that, would you?"
The thinly veiled threat did not pass by Kevin's attention and he answered by saying "No" in the passive tone of voice he always used when speaking to Ma-Ma.
"Good then why don't you take a break" said Ma-Ma as she took her right hand off of his shoulder and brought a slow-mo inhaler in front of his face. Kevin had trouble understanding why Ma-Ma would want the person in charge of surveillance and the clan's security to use slow-mo. Perhaps she wanted him hooked on the drug just to add another level of control over him or maybe she just liked toying with him. He knew it was risky but the Techie turned his head away from the inhaler and resisted Ma-ma. The Techie expected retribution for not taking her inhaler but it never came, Ma-Ma released her hold on his shoulders and moved out from behind him to lean against his desk. While she was no longer touching him, Ma-Ma was still very close by and even worse she was now able to stare right at him. Kevin knew it made no sense but he would have rather had his back turned to the violent and unpredictable woman than suffer through her gaze. As he always did when she glared at him Kevin faltered and looked towards the monitor in an attempt to tune out his fear and discomfort. For a short time the Techie's plan worked as the two sat in an awkward silence that was only interrupted by the sound of Ma-Ma's slow-mo inhaler. While he had never used the drug he had been around it and Ma-Ma enough to know what it sounded like.
The plan fell apart when Ma-Ma moved herself along the desk so that she was now sitting directly in front of him and blocked his view of the monitor. In this current situation ignoring Ma-Ma seemed foolish as she had clearly moved to get his attention. This meant that he now had to be in the unsettling position of looking back at Ma-Ma as she stared at him with cold indifference. Suddenly Ma-Ma launched herself forward at Kevin and latched onto his nose with her left hand before she pinched it closed and closed off that airway. Her right rand ended up cupping his chin and directing his face to look squarely at his before she pressed her lips against his. This was the last thing that Kevin had expected to happen and he gasped in shock. As it turned out, his sharp intake of breath was the worst thing that he could have done. Mere moments after forcing her lips against his Ma-Ma began to exhale a cloud of slow-mo vapor into the techie's mouth. Before he was even fully aware of what had happened to him Kevin began to feel the effects of slow-mo intoxication. True to its name, the drug made him feel as if the world around him had slowed to a crawl. The chief example of which was the sight of Ma-Ma backing away from him. In his current state it appeared as if it was taking hours for Ma-Ma to move her head away from his and he found his attention drawn to her since she was all he could see at the moment. Strangely he felt himself drawn to look into the older woman's eyes, ordinarily her gaze terrified him but the slow-mo had gone a long way towards calming him. As her green eyes slowly drifted away, Kevin saw that the cold indifference that always radiated from her eyes was gone; instead he saw a strange warmth and intensity in her eyes that he couldn't remember ever seeing before. Moving down from her eyes to the current shape of her lips Kevin saw something a little more familiar.
While a smile wasn't a common sight on Ma-Ma's face, Kevin had seen something best described as a vicious smirk on her face before. As he watched her drift away from him he remembered the smirk as something that came over Ma-Ma at her most violent moments. Rather disturbingly he realized that this particular smirk had been the last sight his natural eyes had even given him. Since Ma-Ma had the same expression on her face just before she had forced her thumbs into his eye sockets.
Finally, Ma-Ma sat back onto the Techie's desk and continued to grin at him, while he suffered through a world of distorted sound and drawn out sights. The constant whine of all the cooling fans was slowed down to a strange roar and the strange sight of another human being while under the influence of slow-mo, especially Ma-Ma was unsettling.
I am the law!
Noah stood guard outside the Techie's room doing his best to look intimidating which was easier said than done since he had left his rifle in the Kevin's room and Noah wasn't a particularly large or physically imposing man. Still he had to try and do his job and keep the corridor with the Techie's and Ma-Ma's rooms a controlled area. Luckily for Noah there were few people willing to go anywhere near Ma-Ma's apartment, so he found himself standing around and thinking. Noah couldn't help but wonder what it was that Ma-Ma and the Techie were discussing and why it had been necessary to kick him out of the room. Even with his new position as the Techie's bodyguard, Noah had no delusions about himself, he was nothing but a grunt but he had to question if Kevin had anything to tell Ma-Ma that he couldn't hear as well. Maybe he didn't want to know, Noah tried to reassure himself, it was probably better that he didn't know the full extent of the clans misdeeds
. This thought contented Noah for sometime but after standing outside for what felt like half an hour his curiosity returned. There was no way that they been discussing what the Techie had seen for this long, something else had to be going on. Noah's thoughts wondered till Ma-Ma stepped out into the hallway and glared at him, which put an end to his speculation. Ma-Ma turned away from him and headed towards the reinforced door with a heat painted on it. Noah watched her as went, despite the facial scars and a mouth of rotting teeth from constant slow-mo use; he had to admit that the older woman was still appealing. Thinking better of his actions Noah looked away from his boss and headed back inside Kevin's home; getting caught ogling Ma-Ma was probably a good way to end up being killed.
I cant say that I'm happy with the quality of this chapter. In the last chapter I tried to make it seem like Noah becoming the Techie's bodyguard was going to become some big ordeal for him but I think both Noah and Kevin are too reasonable for there to be any conflict between them. As for the mama/techie scene in this chapter I have my doubts if you could shotgun a hit of slow-mo. I realize that its a fictitious drug with unknown properties but I don't think there would be much to exhale once you breathed in a vapor cloud, but what do I know, I'm the weirdo that likes to put Mama and the Techie in weirdly intimate situations.
I want to take a second here and thank everyone that has reviewed or followed this story so far, especially Lewis. If you were a member of fan fiction I would have sent you a thank you message but since your not I have to do it in my rambling author notes. I knew this story would have a niche appeal to say the least since Dredd is a pretty small section and its more or less dominated by Dredd/Cassandra shippers but its been a pleasant surprise to receive what support I have.