Dear Sweetest Me

"Dear Sweetest Me" is the seventh episode of Reflection.

*The day after the major operation, OPIA is left burned and bruised. At the urgings of Ridill, they study different methods to lower their burn. Their objective is simple: find a way that works for them to decrease their mental and physical fatigue before the operations begin once again.*

## Summary

The episode opens in the very early morning after the events of Colt Classic. Ridill and Ascalon have returned to the GEIST warehouse and are looking around for information they could use for research or against GEIST in the future. After Ridill steps across a magnetic door, the facility suddenly returns to power and the doors slam shut, leaving her separate from Ascalon. She continues forward into a room containing many birthing tubes when a massive mechanical figure appears out of nowhere. Revealing itself to be a physical body containing the GEIST AI and wielding the Reflection of the Demonic Arm Signal, he inquires as to why the "God of Humanity's greatest mistake" is still looking around in this area. He continues to circle her, reciting the history of how, in the early years of this world, only three gods were cast into it - two of the Elements and one of Flame. The God of Humanity, once human, reached out to the Flame of Creation and added a third element, restoring balance to the world and ascending to godhood. Ridill responds, telling the AI that unfortunately, she does not have much more information on the God of Humanity's origins than he does, and that he'd be better off asking one of the Ciallan Seers that GEIST has kidnapped. She then says that the AI also made the fatal mistake of allowing Ridill to talk for more than five seconds as Twice bursts through the door and escapes with Ridill. As they escape from the center of the facility, Ridill sees a white haired girl float towards the AI, and begs Twice to be let back in to assist her, fearful of Signal's power.

The scene ends there, fast forwarding to many hours later in the day, where Ridill, seemingly having escaped from the warehouse fully unscathed, is giving a lecture to most of FLOW Wave Two and some assorted hangers-on about Burn, including the effects of Burn at different amounts and how to heal it. Lyst films the lecture on her phone, livestreaming it to Ace, who had broken a window and escaped from the hospital the second he got a chance. After Ridill concludes her lecture, the FLOW agents break up, having been given an off day to heal their Burn. Basilisk Id asks Dr. Verona if she can become Cam's AI partner, and she eventually agrees, only on the condition that Basil still goes through the requisite training programs. Basil and Cam go to fill out the necessary paperwork, and Basil, noticing with her ESP that Satyr "tastes bad", forces him to come along as well.

In upper Fuse City, Lyst meets up with Ace. To lower their Burn, Lysts decides to work a shift at the bar she has a part-time job at. Immediately upon entering, Ace hallucinates a vision of The Muse, which dramatically *raises* his Burn. Lyst tends bar for Lugh, and her Burn does in fact lower. Back at OPIA HQ, Willow and Twice have been summoned to Verona's office, where she reveals that she has found Willow's old lance, thought to be buried in the Coda, and is going to have it retrofitted into an Echo Weapon, a Demon-harming armament that wounds Demons by injecting them with toxic Elements. Overjoyed, Willow wants to test out the lance in a duel against Twice. Meanwhile, Arg0s and Ridill head to Colt's hospital room, where Circuit has been watching over him. Ridill explains that Colt has been infused with a unique kind of Reflection designed specifically to slowly wound him, and that he'll need surgery to remove it, alongside his afflicted eye and legs. They then move to Charybdis's room, where Charybdis excitedly talks about how clean the air of this world is, alongside the fact that the OPIA garden has more than one kind of plant in it. Ridill explains that, alongside Monster, Charybdis has a second Reflection in him that, similar to Colt's is only hurting him, and that OPIA is going to try its best to remove it. They then leave the hospital, with Arg0s going on his planned date with Sophie.

In disguise, Ace and Lyst arrive in the Undercity, where they sneak in to an apartment Ridill is staying at while she's still technically unemployed. They discuss the meaning of "humanity" given that, unlike every other human, Ace only has two Elements in his composition. Ace decides that he's human because that's all anyone has treated him as so far. Nearby, Verona has taken Willow and Twice to the Rangers' garage to refurbish the damaged Beetle, as well as to convert the lance into an Echo Weapon. The Rangers ask Twice how the lava resistance feature on her tank is holding up, but the tank has not had the opportunity to be submerged in lava yet. Up in the GEIST District of Fuse City, Aura and Mic arrive in a mall, Mic having comandeered Arg0s's channel to stream her picking out an outfit for Cam's body coronation ceremony later in the day.

Also in the GEIST district, Arg0s arrives with Sophie. They decide to try out how they/them pronouns feel, and find them agreeable. They also try out several names, eventually settling on the name "Simulcast" (often shortened to "Cast") to fit the technology-themed naming scheme shared by most of their siblings. They also adopt a more mage-like appearance due to their fondness for wizards and magicians as a result of Ridill being their development partner. Back at OPIA, having finished most of their paperwork, Satyr heads out, leaving Cam and Basil alone. They decide to head to the pool to indulge Cam's habit of staring into large bodies of water, when Basil suddenly hallucinates herself being in a forest in front of a pitch-black lake. After a moment, the version of her from her vision from Collapse of the Living crawls out of the lake and approaches her. Holding on to the vision through sheer force of will, Basil initiates a conversation with the past version of her, who expresses her pity at Basil for, despite GEIST using the lake and it's "thin film of oblivion" to cut Basil off from her reincarnation-influenced destiny, she still fell in love with Ridill anyways. Basil asks how many times she has reincarnated, to which the Priestess of Humanity responds that Basilisk Id has existed twelve separate times. Basil tells her former self that, even if she and Ridill end up fighting to the death, it'll be okay, because she'll still be by Ridill's side at the end. Embracing her in a hug, the Priestess warns Basil that her fate is far, far crueler than that.

Returning to the real world, Basilisk has begun crying tears with the color and consistency of ink. Cam, extremely worried, explains to Basil that she's suffering a similar condition to one that Ridill has, where when she encounters a specific trigger, she will begin rapidly losing her Burn and, when she falls asleep, she will lose all memory of the past day. Not wanting to miss Cam's coronation, she goes to take a nap so that she'll be able to remember the coronation when it occurs. Back in the Undercity, Ace and Lyst head to the red light district of Fuse City, where Ace has a brief hallucination of Ruth. They then enter Ace's old dojo, where Ace talks about how his frayed elemental cage causes him to constantly fight off Demonic possession and grants him strange knowledge he shouldn't have access to, like Echo Weaponry. Lyst, in turn, explains how she has a unique kind of ESP. If someone believes something about her, she truly becomes it. She discovered it while fighting against an attempted GEIST colonial outpost in Skypoint. She was hit with a bullet but, because nobody saw it, the wound vanished from existence. Lyst tells Ace that he needs to stop being so confident that he has to bear his burdens alone, but that that confidence is ultimately extremely valuable against the Demonic threat. They then leave to go to Cam's coronation.

Back at the mall, Aura and Mic have gotten into their outfits - Aura with a maid outfit and Mic with a suit. They are greeted by Circuit, who has been completely censored on stream as having public images of her would complicate her role as an OPIA spy. Out in the desert, Melli and the Rangers watch Twice and Willow duel before also heading to the coronation. A few hours later, the coronation finally begins, with Cam inhabiting a physical body for the first time and binding to his Reflection - the First Water, of which he immediately takes a sip. Various attendees give him presents.

## Characters

### Party

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

### FLOW

* Aura Pridwyn
* Lyst Solais
* Lugh
* Twice
* Ruth Galatine

### OPIA

* Dr. Verona
* Treble
* Cam
* Circuit
* Mic
* Cast
* Danger

### GEIST

* Satyr
* GEIST AI

### Other

* Colt
* Charybdis
* Melli Luxity
* Cal