Faded Flame

"**Faded Flame**" is the sixteenth episode of Reflection.

*The full might of the demonic courts bears down on Fuse City and all of FLOW is called in for the fight! In order to avert the apocalypse each member of the organization bets everything they have. Meanwhile, a force of nature with the strength of a hurricane worms its way through the veins of Fuse.*

## Summary

Deep in the Derelict, Stephano serves several high-ranking members of the Demonic Courts drinks, including Vinter and the Archdemon of Logic. They discuss the upcoming strategy for their planned full assault on Fuse City, with Logic criticizing Vinter for not positioning more of his troops closer to the surface. Soon after, Nectar arrives, and she updates those present on the Coda's latest intel about the individual members of FLOW and OPIA. Fio then heads to the bottom of the Derelict with Sonnet, where she produces an inflatable Mic-themed raft and sets out into the ocean of ash to search for a "fang".

Up on the surface, Arg0s, Willow, and Ridill discuss their plan for the incoming attack as all of Fuse City undergoes evacuation. Essentially, Ridill plans to utilize a much more powerful version of GEIST's Element-manipulating probes to eviscerate a large number of Demons once FLOW manages to round them up in a specific area. They are soon after joined by Basil, Cam, Solace, and Genesis. Together, this group plans to act as a core team that will move across the battlefield to ensure the plan's success. After a brief argument, Ridill dubs the team "Team Water", which annoys everyone else in the room. Team Water then arrives at a large intersection in upper Fuse City, where a FLOW-themed parade was being held before the evacuation. Gene, Cam, and Basil help lead civilians away to varying amounts of success. At the same time, Ridill, Arg0s, and Willow deploy the three probes in preparation for the attack, each of them delivering a motivating speech to the members of their Gate situated at the probe.

Soon after, the attack begins. From the south, Logic pilots a massive armed vehicle equipped with Burn-inducing speakers into the city streets, trailed by a crowd of possessed civilians primed to explode if approached to closely. At the same time, an army of Demons aligned to the Court of Compulsion begin attacking the city from the west. As Mic's group waits, still unengaged, she notices a mysterious shadowed figure slip into an alleyway, and chases after it. Back in the south, Ridill comandeers an abandoned parade float and slams it into Logic's vehicle, giving Willow and the other members of the Gate of Dreams a chance to destroy it as Cam uses the First Water to relieve the civilians of their possession. Back west, Basil detaches from Team Water to assist the Gate of Humanity in fighting back the forces of Compulsion, who are additionally joined by Demons aligned with the Court of Death. With the help of Twice and Aura, she is able to down a good amount of them, even dealing some damage to their large commander, when an even larger Demon suddenly manifests in the air.

In a nearby alleyway, Ace wanders in a fugue state, rabidly consuming Flame and destroying minor Demons as he slips in and out of consciousness. In between moments of lucidity, he hallucinates his family dojo while a mysterious entity pilots his body. Mic approaches him, but is unable to reach him. After kneeing her in the face, Ace absent-mindedly walks over to a nearby light and consumes its Flame, briefly regaining enough consciousness to talk to Mic. She asks him if he needs help, and he says not now, but later. Mic then leaves while Ace continues dragging himself towards an unknown directive. After running out of Flame once again, he destroys a kerosene tank, causing an explosion.

Back in the main area, Mic arrives just as a massive demon wrapped in scrolls appears above her team. At the same time, a Demonic train, also piloted by Logic, barrels down the nearby train tracks and reactivates the ambient Burn-creating signals in the area. Beneath this floor of the city, Saru fishes in the sewers, having slipped away from his duties as a FLOW agent. He is subsequently attacked by a large Demon and reveals his Reflection as he begins combat. On the surface, Willow and Solace attempt to repeat their strategy with the smaller vehicle, but Logic reveals that he has outfitted the entire train with wings and takes off into the air. Basil attacks the massive Demon that appeared in front of her, but is stopped by its space-manipulating abilities. Robin attempts to intercept a few of the Compulsion foot soldiers, but fails, requiring Aura's intervention. Cast along with some members of the ESPer Corp manage to entrap Death's armies in a makeshift labryinth. On the other side of the battlefield, Ruth Galatine has Liam throw her into the air above their enemy and summons her Reflection, crashing down and dealing a large amount of damage. Nearby, Helena and Pixie attempt to cleanse a horde of civilians from possession and teleport them to safety using Helena's Reflection.

Elsewhere in the city, Willow and Solace find themselves still atop Logic's train, which is heading rapidly towards a population center. Thinking quickly, Willow makes a risky decision to jump in front of the train and use her Reflection's power to halt its movement. With Solace's help, she is actually able to accomplish this, throwing the train off the tracks. After regaining their bearings, the two notice a GEIST helicopter heading towards the battlefield, where Logic has quickly rebounded by deploying one of their colossal ESPer Demons. Number Five leaps out of the helicopter and attempts to attack the Demon, but fails. Further north, the GEIST AI appears to assist Basil's group as another mysterious AI hijacks a truck and rams it into the Demon attacking Mic's group. Back west, Basil uses the mutation abilities of her ESP to create herself a new arm made up entirely of the Demonic Element that is anthithetical to the large Compulsion Demon she is fighting. She deals a massive amount of damage to it, but it conjures reams of a mysterious substance and injects it into her, causing her Elemental composition to become heavily disturbed. Cam forces Arg0s to use Fateweaver to connect him and Basil's bodies, allowing him to suppress the invasive Elements using the First Water. Basil attempts to pilot Cam's body, but he forbids her.

Back east, the massive smiling Demon attempts to initiate a Coda dive. Willow and Ruth manage to hold it off temporarily as the rest of the team escapes with the civilians, but they are quickly losing ground. Pushed to the brink, Arg0s attempts to activate the probes, but they refuse to activate. His group is then ambushed by Isaac, who uses his ESP to suspend Gene and Ridill in the air. Basil begs Cam to let her back into her body, and he eventually relents, cutting Fateweaver's string. Returning to her body, Basil uses her ESP once again to reconfigure her body to temporarily accept the foreign elements. She then asks for Isaac's name, sending her over fifty Burn and allowing the Priestess of Humanity to take over. With Isaac now distracted, Arg0s and Ridill rush to restore the probes with their ESP. In the chaos, Arg0s is nearly drowned in Ridill's curse of oblivion, but is rescued by Mic. With her help, they are able to release a massive wave of Flame that banishes Isaac and turns the tide against the invasion.

Slightly before this, Ace arrives at his mysterious destination in a manic state, where he is nearly immediately engaged in combat with a massive suit of flaming armor guarding a strange machine. In brief sparks of consciousness, Ace recognizes what the figure is - an ancient Reflection wielder forcibly fused with their Reflection by the Court of Compulsion. He attempts to attack the machine, but fails. As the figure approaches him, he consumes the Flame of a nearby missile left over from a war between Fuse City and Gravnir, eviscerating everything nearby. He wakes up in a pile of rubble some time later, where he is approached by Mic, Arg0s, Ridill, and Willow, who discover that his body is utterly devoid of Flame. Ace's mind returns to the hallucination of the dojo, where he is engaged in a sparring match with Mic. Ace becomes lucid and tells this Mic about the last time he hallucinated the dojo, and how he was told not to open the front door. This time, however, he does, where he is greeted by a floating eye symbol chastising him for not approaching it sooner.

Ace suddenly remembers how he got to this state. At the onset of the invasion, he was ambushed by the Golden Knight, who ripped his Flame out of his body. However, this activated the true ability of the Formless Style, which imbues the wielder's body with its own will that can act even while the Flame is suppressed. Startled, the Golden Knight flees to the third layer of the Coda, where he is contacted by Nectar, who informs him that Ace's half-dead body is still animate up on the surface. The Knight responds to this with surprise, and looks down at Ace's Flame, which has assumed the shape of a lattice of eye-like sigils.

## Characters

### Party

* Ace Galatine
* Arg0s
* Basilisk Id
* Willow Wisp
* Ridill Arondite

### FLOW

* Ascalon
* Lugh
* Twice
* Aura Pridwyn
* Lyst Solais
* Melli Luxity
* Colt
* Charybdis
* Satyr
* Ruth Galatine
* Genesis Aeon
* Liam
* Helena
* Saru
* Robin Rumeli

### OPIA

* Mic
* Cam
* Cursor
* Cast
* Serve
* Solace

### GEIST

* Number Five
* GEIST AI
* GEIST AI 2

### Demonic Courts

* Fio
* Vinter
* Isaac
* Logic
* Sonnet
* Stephano
* Rio Fenrir
* Nectar
* Golden Knight