The full moon’s light casts a significant glare when reflecting off of the Mark One’s black finish. 

The jacket worn under its plating shudders wherever it is exposed to the air, being tugged to and fro by the motorcycle’s slipstream.

The suit’s helmet, however, is entirely still, and reflects little in the way of light. Behind its visor, Scott’s face is still, his eyes focused on the apartment building ahead of him.

Ahead of him, a separation in the grassy land! He knows a ravine exists here, and at its bottom is hard concrete!

However, his eyes are still vibrant with steely resolution, and his motorcycle’s pace is not at all hampered by the grassy crumbly terrain.

Illuminated like a dream, and with the starry cosmos watching him, he jumps this gorge. Mid-flight, he shuts off his bike’s lights.

Feeling time slow around him as he sees his reflection in each of the apartment building’s windows, Scott comes to a profound realization.

He’d forged his own freedom, and now he was feeling it. 

He felt sure, now, as he lands his motorcycle on the separation’s other side, disheveling the earth, that he’d made himself into something that kids– adults, even– have only dreamt of.

He knew that, no matter whether he died here or punked this gang into next year, he’d end up providing the evidence and raising the awareness needed to put this organization in the ground.

The note he’d left on his bed would assure that.

“Time to save Oakville.”, Scott thinks to himself as he steadies his ride to a stop, making haste to pull it into the crop of bushes he’d singled out earlier. The time of year ensured that their leaves were the thickest they could be, and even the plants’ wooden skeletons were well-suited to the bike’s form, providing little resistance as he slunk it in.

As Scott did this, he watched the building’s many windows. Perhaps it was just the moon’s light making their panes opaque, but he could see no movement behind them.

He looked around, even skirting to the building’s other side. There was no-one outside of it, with the nearest bystanders being a family strolling by the Oakville place plaza, whereas usually there would be one to three people outside, even at this time of night. This just confirmed what Scott already knew: this building’s residents knew to stay either inside or away when the Oakmans met.

As Scott nears the building’s shadowed front entrance, pushing on a door and finding it unlocked, we see his armored form reflected in the lens of a wall-mounted camera.

Ranov awakens with a jolt, shoving himself to a sitting position with an arm. In doing this, he presses the pistol in his hand hard into his mattress. His other hand continues cupping his nuts, hidden between his legs and under the sheets.

Ranov’s breathing is somewhat too fast as he awakes, as if he was panicked; something the sudden gust of chilling wind from his open window does little to help. His attention suddenly brought to it, he hazards a gander outside from the foot of his bed.

The landscape outside, far down from his room near the apartment building’s top, holds nothing novel or remarkable. The same high-school buildings, surrounded by the same Oakvillian neighborhood, dotted with the same bits of greenery-flanked paths.

Holstering the pistol in his P-J’s, he grunts and lifts himself off the bed, removing his hand from his pants once he’s done so. 

Groggily, Ranov makes his way over to his bathroom. He walks as if he were nursing a limp, or both his legs were restrained in casts.

Opening his bathroom door, he is met with the sight of many wall-mounted screens built into the wall just above his bathtub, and a raggedy-looking person in a shawl sitting in it watching them. Winding between the screens like vines are rows of beads, feathers and bones, strung together. 

Ranov hardens his face, all of a sudden looking much sterner.

The room’s every counter and wall are rife with tribal and occult paraphernalia, and it smells like the sea.

“Yaga.” Ranov says as he shuts the door behind him. 

The vagrant-looking entity does not respond, continuing to zip their focus between the screens.

Ranov continues: “I had a bad dream, Yaga. A young man in an onyx suit came into the building.”

At this, the person in the bath-tub rears their head. Their greasy, chest-length dreadlocks hide their face for the most part, and what can be seen of their wrinkled face and bloodshot eyes does nothing to suggest their gender. 

Yaga smiles wide at Ranov, revealing many golden teeth.

“Yes,” they say in a weak, shrill groan of a voice. “I’ve been following a fly on the screens for some time now, and rolled the bone-dice in the bowls its patterns instructed. I’d been wondering what it meant when one of the dice shattered upon rolling six.”

Following Yaga’s spiel, Ranov looks tired again.

“What does it mean, then?”, he says, restraining a sigh. “What did it tell you?”

“First of all, the pattern told me that you haven’t been using the salve I made for your bruises.” Yaga says, pointing an overgrown fingernail at Ranov’s crotch.

“The salve just makes the bruising worse–”, Ranov says, frustrated, before Yaga interrupts him.

“The second thing it told me was that this dream man does indeed mean this building’s empire harm…”

Tapping down on a keyboard on their lap, Yaga brings up a view of the building’s first-floor lobby upon one of the screens. Scott is there, digging through what seems to be an electrical box built into a wall behind the reception desk.

With a tug, Scott tears free a series of plugs and fuses, even tearing a wire or two.

In a moment, the every one of the surveillance screens goes dark. The bathroom, too, is drained of lighting. From this pitch darkness, Yaga finishes:
“…And, all you’ll have to do to defeat him is force him out of it”.