“Mader Jella!” shouted a tall man, somewhere in his mid-20s. Jella looked up from the book she was reading in her reclining chair. She smacked her lips, slightly annoyed at the disturbance.
“What, Don?” she responded, her enunciation in stark contrast with the younger mans. The young man could tell her annoyance and bit his lip nervously; he didn’t have news she would exactly want to hear.
“Um…. Well… The Legion has been spotted a sector over. Three gangs have dropped off the face of Mega City One.” Don blinked nervously as Jella silently took in the news. Her tongue licked her teeth and Don couldn’t help but concentrate on the moving bulge it created. It didn’t seem like it would be a good thing. He gulped.
“Brother Don,” she stated, taking careful precaution with each syllable. “I do not think it is time yet to worry about a gang that has popped up overnight. There will be time enough when they move closer, but they would not dare pick on someone of our size yet. The sizes of the gangs they have annihilated are small, puny in comparison to our numbers. We are still too much of a…big fish for this shark.” She smiled tautly at Don and went back to her book, a silent dismissal of the man. While she read, she thought of the problem in more detail. In fact, she was more worried about this rising gang, the Legion, than she had portrayed but whatever she said to Don would get out to the entire Family, and whatever they said would eventually get back to the Legion.
The Family was a slight misdemeanor in the way of names, because none of the gang was actually blood related, but it is what they were. They started long ago as a trio of orphans, just her, Mastus, and Ordio, forced to stick together for survive or die at the hands of another gang. As the years passed, the three collected more and more numbers, seeing as a city as crime-filled as Mega City One was ripe with orphans for the picking. They claimed to be the most peaceful of the gangs, but in reality they were just as bloodthirsty and power hungry as the rest, if not more. Each member of the Family knew which gang had killed their parents, or Judge, and therefore the Family was literally enemies with everybody, which led to a good amount of bloodshed.
The original trio of course sat at the head of the gang. They were known to their youngers as Father Mastus, Mother Jella, and Father Ordio. Mastus was the oldest of the three, or at least the greyest, and held the most authority over the new recruits of the Family. Accordingly, he arranged the screening and bringing in of any new members. Mother Jella was the youngest, but also the smartest of the three and usually dealt with any interactions between other gangs or, in worse case scenarios, Judges. She had a way with words that could convince pretty much anyone to believe her. It was speculated that this was some kind of mutation, but no one was sure. Father Ordio was in charge of the actual fighting, seeing as he was the most adept at a gun (or he was once upon a time, a young recruit name Brutus was getting to his level pretty fast).
Jella smiled, this time in true amusement. Brutus was actually what she needed.