No Options

**No Options** is the nineteenth episode of Reflection.

*OPIA responds to a distress call from the red zone as a creature of unknown origin rampages through the streets! As the sun falls on Fuse city, the agents left behind spend their time in the dying light, sharing words.*

## Summary

Ace and Fio return to the Derelict. After arriving on the floor of Instrumentality, they are greeted by the Golden Knight, who tells Ace that his faith in OPIA is ultimately misplaced and simplistic. Ace simply responds that the Coda hasn't really thrown anything challenging at them yet. Disarmed, the Golden Knight delivers Ace and Fio to the Queen of Flames, who had asked to speak with them.

Up on the surface, Cam and Gene recieve two simultaneous alarm calls, from both Ace and Basil's patrol teams. Deciding that Basil can probably handle herself in a fight for a little while, Cam heads towards Ace and Solace's location while asking Treble to handle Basil. Back at Treble's apartment, Ridill attempts to head out, but Treble stops her as she's too disoriented to fight at the moment. Treble instead asks Willow to assist Basil. Willow, who was about to go to a rave with Twice, Charybdis, and Logan, immediaely heads out. Twice and Charybdis both follow her to the battlefield, with Logan providing long distance support. While she heads towards the Abandoned District, Willow notices The Nurse for a brief moment before he disappears.

A few minutes before the chaos broke out, Ace and Lace wander through a section of the Abandoned District overgrown with otherworldly foliage. Suddenly, Ace is suddenly thrust into a fugue state as he sees a vision of his berserker state standing next to him. He feels the impulse to crush Lace's head, and in that moment decides to simply flee the area. While he jumps from building to building, he finds himself hallucinating a vision of a Ciallan village on fire. Rain starts to fall as he sees his berserker state yet again, and decides to simply flee through the now-dampened fire. He arrives at a long stairwell drenched in water, where he sees a vision of his Flame in its Pyromancer suit stabbing Ridill through the chest. He manages to evade the image of himself and get to Ridill, where he pulls the copy of Seagazer out of her chest and strikes at his Flame. Ridill's corpse then reanimates, demands her sword back, and pulls Ace into the water below.

Ace reawakens on the shore of a large lake in the Abandoned District, where he reencounters Lace on top of a train car. She tells Ace that she has decided she can trust him after seeing how he acted when nearly possessed. She then tells him what she knows of Seagazer, which is a Reflection of a theoretical Demonic Arm that acts as a sort of helper for the Second Tormented, who is apparently the originator of all Reflections. However, she is unsure why is has bonded so closely with Ace. The pair then meet up with Cam and Gene, and set off to regroup with Basil. Elsewhere in the Abandoned District, Basil is engaged in combat with a gigantic effigy of herself. As she recounts the various life lessons she has internalized with her ESP, she deals blow after blow against the creature with the help of her allies, who show up one after the other to assist. After killing the creature, it dissolves into a pile of featureless bodies. Basil approaches Cam in tears, unsure as to why she feels so upset. She tells Cam that she thinks she hates herself. Cam tells her that he doesn't think that's what's going on with her, and asks her if she wants to hear his opinion. When she says yes, he tells Basil that he thinks that, despite what she says, she is in fact able to feel fear, and a lot of it, and that she's afraid of losing control, so she acts out and constructs grand narratives around herself in order to regain a bit of that control over her own life and self-image. Basil is receptive to what Cam is saying, and decides that she's going to stop living in denial of these parts of herself from then on. She then joins Ridill and Willow as they look for Ruth.

The trio find Ruth at an abandoned trainyard, where she invites them to throw rocks at trains. When they ask why she hasn't talked to Ace yet, she attempts to redirect the conversation by talking about the others' experiences with Fuse City, but they eventually reel her back in. She relents, explaining that she feels like he would just get angry at her for remaining at OPIA and risking death after being given a second chance at life. The conversation evolves to discussing various other personal problems, with Ridill talking about her condition as well as talking to Willow about how she feels about her own death and revival. Basil internalizes Ridill's understanding of her condition in order to retrofit her own coping mechanisms. Meanwhile, Ruth heads off to talk to Ace. She finds him back at the lake's shore, where he asks her why she's still with FLOW she feels like she owes it to her Reflection and herself to make the Formless Style training worth something. Ace tells her she doesn't have to do that, but Ruth says that she wants to. Irritated, Ace simply walks away.

Back in the Derelict, Ace meets with the Queen of Flames. She offers him a posistion as their seventh Pyromancer, with the added benefit of her indulging in his desire to live in a world that is completely cut off from people meddling in his life, Demonic or otherwise. He says that what he really wants is a world without the Queen and the rest of the Coda in it. Even still, she says that this is something she can give him. Deciding that he doesn't really have a choice in the matter, Ace accepts, but tells her that she shouldn't expect his loyalty or help, but the Queen simply laughs and says that she's probably the only person in the universe he can't help. They shake hands, and the Queen imbues Ace's Flame with his new role as the Pyromancer of Laughter.

On the surface, Mic returns to OPIA. She heads to her dorm and simply lies in her bed, exhausted by the long, emotional day. She is suddenly greeted by a knock at her door. Fio in Arg0s's body enters her room and tells her that she has some important news to share. However, she sees that Mic looks tired and upset, and so she decides to simply spend some time with her before getting to the news, which surprises Mic. Back at the lake, Ace encounters Ridill, and the two talk about their condions and how they're pushing forward regardless. Ridill tells Ace that she's found what kind of world she wants to create; one where people are given the chance to move past their pain and heal from it.

## Characters

### Player Characters

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

### FLOW

* Twice
* Lyst Solais
* Ruth Galatine
* Charybdis
* Genesis Aeon

### OPIA

* Dr. Verona
* Director
* Treble
* Solace
* Logan
* Mic
* Cam

### Demonic Courts

* Fio
* Golden Knight
* Queen of Flames
* Nectar
* The Pristine One