"Does he have a gun? Is he at my front door waiting to kick it down? Does he have my wife and kids held knifepoint?"

"Nada." The voice garbles over the phone. "They just said your name, and I know you have sssome kind of complex about that." The man paused for dramatic effect. "Yes, I do. I've gone to great trouble to ensure my remains secret. Pushing out my family, murdering my mentor, killing my brother, killing myself, even taking up the mantle of the kingpin to ensure I have an army to protect my interests."

"What are your interests? You often evade me on that." The kingpin paused again for the even grander effect this time. "Seclusion." "You picked the wrong life for that one love." The garbled voice on the line began to sound more feminine as the static cleared. "The life of a kingpin isn't lived in seclusion unless you've dunged yourself up."

"You misunderstand. I don't wish for seclusion from life but rather an isolation from my actions. A drop of rain plummeted into the sea creates a ripple, but once it's, done, you'll never know where the droplet went and what it became."

"You want to become rain? You get better by the ssssecond. " The man bellowed over the line. The laugh was jolly and filled with emotion as if he had been balling it up for eternity. There was truth to that line of thinking for, the life he led didn't allow for such base expression.

"Amusing, that's what you are, amusing my, dear. There will never come a day where I say something, and it doesn't go over your head, will there?" "I'm sorry." "Don't apologize. All that means is I'm doing my job as a Kingpin. But yes. I do want to become the rain. To cast an echo without a voice is a powerful thing indeed." The man rose out of his chair, his sunken eyes peering out of the thin rays of sunlight cutting through the bedroom window.

"Now tell me. Who opposes the weather?" "Um...a meteorologist?" The figure sighed at her ineptitude. "Me! Who opposes me!" "Please be forward with me from now, on okay? Let me take a look." Silence filled the call until the voice reached the phone once again. "A guy in a beige raincoat with a-a badge! Holy son of a crisbit, he's a-" "A detective." The man spits the word with palpable vitriol.

"Can you track him?" "I can track anything, sir." "Get on it." The call disconnected, his subordinate seemingly gone off to track his quarry. The shadowy figure found himself pacing around the lightless room, his fingers viciously scratching at his scalp. "One man can't oppose me in my city. He has something more, something that's kept him outside my reach and something that will prevent me from simply disposing of him."

The figure pulled his fingers from his scalp his, fingertips now bloody and caked with flaking skin. "What a racket he's trying to make. It doesn't matter, though. I will conquer him like all the rest..."

Maven's skin began to shimmer in a golden haze the, world around him fading away as its color drained from the walls and began to pool at his feet with a dingy brown hue. "It doesn't matter what he plans to do if his plans never even existed."