For Today

"For Today", also called "Rostrum of Destiny: Grasp the Earth", is the thirteenth episode of Reflection and part two of the three-part finale of the series' first Act.

*The expedition reaches its destination as a multi-pronged operation that covers the CODA top to bottom begins. With both the Court of Death AND GEIST after OPIA will this be their final day?*

## Summary

Satyr and the Hunter of Mortals overlook the third layer of the Coda as the legions of the Court of Death erupt from the ground. The Hunter asks Satyr for advice in the upcoming battle, and he tells him that Ace will be holding back, so he should try to cut him off before he has a chance to go all out. He also warns against Ridill, who definitely has some nasty tricks up her sleeve. After being asked if he will be pursuing Basilisk Id, Satyr says no, as the chaos she's about to cause will suit his aims well, even if the GEIST CEOs are unhappy with it.

Elsewhere on the third layer, the party has established a forward base at the entrance to the layer. Alongside various Rangers and ESPer Corp members, Aura Pridwyn, Twice, Uno, and Mic are accompanying the party. They split up into groups to achieve their various objectives. Ace, Ridill, Willow, and Uno will head west to where Ruth is being kept, while Arg0s, Mic, Aura, and Twice will head east to where Basil was last located. Mic and Aura will eventually split off from the main group to place a comandeered GEIST probe that will, if successful, complete a "triangle of triangles" with the network of probes set up in Superhero and allow the group to escape the third layer without having to return through the second. With their plans all set, they head out. Ace's group encounters the Director, who joins them as they make their way to a settlement of what he calls "Coda Gnomes".

Basil and Cam continue to progress through the third layer. They come out to a clearing where Basilisk carves a Roman numeral twelve to signify that she's been in the area. They then make their way to a heavily forested area, where Basilisk explores an abandoned wooden cabin, where she uses her ESP to sense a brief memory of an office worker from an ancient world, who wasted his life working for a company that sold novelty air freshners who now lived in a dying world where those trivial products no longer mattered. They continue on, making their way to a green clearing where they encounter Stein, the Archdemon of Beasts, who Cam has somehow already conversed with at some point. Stein is not interested in fighting the two, but he is very loose-lipped and says things that cause Basil intense Burn without regard for the consequences. They ask for the location of Gnashing Maw, and Stein points to a nearby rock, saying he found the weapon to be too cumbersome for his small frame and had abandoned it in the rock ages ago. Basil walks up to Gnashing Maw and touches it. She is suddenly overwhelmed by its power and finds herself transported to an island in a sea of murky black water. She sees a figure beneath the sea, a massive serpent which she immediately recognizes to be an incarnation of Ridill, and the original "beast" slain by the Queen of Flames to forge Gnashing Maw. Basil is immediately struck with the full comprehension of her "mother"'s true nature - a weapon that devours gods and adds their strength to its own. A monster that consumed someone she loves whole. Basil collapses to the ground, unconscious.

Ace's group makes their way to a settlement on the third layer, inhabited not by Demons, but by autonomous constructs. The constructs invite the group to their home, although they drag away the Director for unknown crimes. One of the constructs leads the group to a "graveyard" of sorts, where they have stored the Flames of people who have died in the Coda within a series of electrical cables and television screens so that their Flames don't end up melding with the nearby ground, which is an intensely painful experience. The party sees an image of Ruth right as Satyr and the Hunter of Mortals suddenly ambush them, beginning combat. Vaultwatcher grants Ace Gnashing Maw for an unknown price Ace will pay when he "returns for him". With the weapon in hand, Ace begins brutally attacking Satyr, who deals a large amount of damage to him in turn. This distresses Circuit, who nearly considers attack Ace for hurting Satyr, but she decides against it. In a nearby lake, Willow engages the Hunter of Mortals in her own brawl, using both her Echo Weapon and her own fists. Ridill manages to locate Ruth and, at great cost to herself, slams her arm into a TV to draw out Ruth's Flame. Their goal achieved, the party flees. Ace Reality Breaks a field of ESP Ridill set down at the start of the fight to send the Hunter of Mortals far away. Satyr does not pursue the party.

On the other side of the layer, Arg0s, Twice, and Circuit, having split off from Mic and Aura, arrive at the campsite where Gnashing Maw is. Basil and Cam are nowhere to be found. However, a new figure is there. Introducing himself as Vinter, the Archdemon of the Court of Death. Fearing for their lives, the group sprints away, but Vinter blocks their escape with a wall of blue Flame. He declares that he is here to gauge Arg0s's worthiness as an unexpected new variable in the Cycle, as well as what his intentions are with Fio, who Vinter reveals to be his own daughter. Vinter corners the group within the abandoned wooden cabin, easily destroying the Circuit that went with Arg0s's group. Using his own version of Formless Style, Vinter attempts to deal with Arg0s and Twice swiftly, but against all odds, Arg0s manages to briefly overpower the Archdemon. Fio, at the bottom of the Coda, begins empowering Arg0s with her own song, and their battle continues on surprisingly even footing.

At the forward base, hordes of Death Demons attempt to tear down the installation as the Rangers and ESPers defend against it. They put up a decent resistance, but the Demons seem innumerable, and are slowly closing in. Up on the first layer, Melli has been able to efficiently deal with a horde of constantly appearing GEIST husks. On the other side of the elevator, Lugh unleashes his ESP, a time-stopping field, on a group of Death Demons, which the Circuit body there peppers with bullets while they're frozen in time. At OPIA HQ, Lyst and Ascalon have joined Cast in defending the hospital against GEIST, but the GEIST AI uses Signal to immediately knock Ascalon out, revealing her to actually be a robot. The OPIA agents are pushed back towards the Reflection hall by the GEIST AI and his legion of husks and artificial Reflection users. Even with the help of Serve, who has bonded to the Reflection Trumvirate, they are pushed further back to the room where the new fifty Reflections are stored. The GEIST troops break into the restricted Reflection vault and steal various Reflections, including Monochrome Mourning and Edge of Eternity: Where Color Burns to Dark. Faced with no other option, Cast communes deeply with Season of Silenus. With this communion, they unlock an incredibly powerful ability and encase the entirety of OPIA HQ and everyone inside in a massive field of crystals.

At Station One, Cam and Basil mysteriously reappear. Basil appears to be in a fugue state, and does not speak. As they approach Dr. Verona,Colt, and the main Circuit body, Verona attacks Basil with a net of blood cast from her own Reflection as Basil is revealed to have assumed an enraged, monstrous form. Cam, Verona, and Circuit manage to push this Basil outside and attempt to restrain her. They are joined by Treble, who attempts to use her powerful ESP to quell Basil's frayed emotional state, but is unable to reach her. Within a hallucination, the real Basil finds herself at the Lake of Oblivion, where she is greeted by another Ridill sitting atop a coffin. This Ridill explains that she was the person that the God of Humanity wanted to summon into this world. By binding her to the lake, the God of Humanity expected this Ridill to give in, becoming completely erased and assuming a new personality as the God's champion, but Ridill, unwilling to give in, has become an entirely different person. After a lengthy conversation, Basil completely discards her humanity, utterly rejecting the role GEIST had set out for her. Destroying the coffin, she rejects her ability to feel fear, and begins to break out of her monstrous form in the real world. Far above, the GEIST CEOs watch the proceedings. Many of them are horrified at Basil's current state, in which they theorize that if she wanted to, she could destroy the world by touching the Flame of Creation. Some of them call for her to be killed or otherwise incapacitated, but Number Five is strangely confident that nothing serious will go wrong.

On the third layer, Mic and Aura ascend a small hill to an area rich in Elements where they can plant the probe. To Mic's horror, it doesn't work. Refusing to allow them to fail here, she attempts to locate the signal of the probes on the first layer herself, but finds them drowned in an utterly unbreakable cacophony of noises coming off of the second layer. In a moment of desperation, she communes with a fragment of her original memory donor, who is revealed to be Dr Sylph. She chastises Mic for not following in her footsteps and creating some kind of scientific or political marvel in an attempt to escape the cycle. Mic, however, has become resolute in her convictions, and tells Sylph that she doesn't want to create an ark and escape to space; she wants to fight for this present, to stream with Arg0s, get into fights with Ace, and whatever else OPIA does in their day to day life. She departs from the vision, leaving Sylph alone. She talks to herself about the world being in good hands, naming off people she knew in previous worlds who reincarnated into this one, including Ace, Aura, Treble, Verona, and Col. Back in reality, Mic binds to Survivor of the Primeval Dark, granting her the exact power she needs to connect to the probes above and complete the triangle. The network complete, a massive World Tree erupts from the third layer of the Coda, piercing the second layer and connecting all the way up to the surface. Now adorned with dragon wings, Mic flies over to assist Arg0s, although Vinter is suspicious of her actual fighting strength, calling her a "half dead simulacrum". Truthful or not, the battle is interrupted by a new person, revealing himself to be Stephano, the Steward of the Stars in a human-esque form. At the behest of Fio and the Queen of Flames, Stephano engages Vinter, allowing Arg0s, Mic, and Twice to escape. At the forward base, the ESPer corp heads Birdman and Pixie bind to F-Feedback Reflections that Ridill armed them with - Rainy Day Harmony and Alchemist's Tower respectively. On the first layer, an ESPer named Shriek binds to Pirate Radio, and is able to turn the tide against GEIST and the Court of Death. The forces of OPIA on the third layer group up and begin to ascend the World Tree to return to the surface. Up on the surface, Basil has mostly calmed down. She uses her ESP to locate Ridill, who is still in the Coda, and runs off to find her. However, Cam, angered that Basil didn't learn her lesson in the Coda the first time, uses another unknown ability to freeze Basil in time.

At the very bottom of the Coda, Vinter nurses his wounds from the battle, lambasting that Fio has run off with a "gamer, of all things". He reveals to the Hunter of Mortals and Rio Fenrir his plan - to disable OPIA entirely by severing Upwind's arm from Fuse City and sending it crashing into the world below. Rio walks off to prepare, brandishing her own Reflection - the Reflection version of Gnashing Maw. After she leaves, Treble appears in Vinter's office, where she helps heal his wounds and fixes his broken suit, which he needs to stay alive due to some kind of Flame-based disease. She is accompanied by a coworker who is angry to be in the Coda and talking to Demons at all. Vinter, in exchange for a favor he did for Treble, tasks her and her companion with assisting against OPIA in the final battle. He apologizes for having her attack her place of work, but reminds her that a deal is a deal. Treble accepts, and heads off to OPIA HQ, while her associate is tasked by Vinter with retrieving Fio's simulacrum from Jasconius's basement.

## Characters

### Party

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

### FLOW

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

### OPIA

* Dr. Verona
* Director
* Treble
* Cam
* Mic
* Circuit
* Cast
* Serve

### GEIST

* Satyr
* Number Five
* GEIST AI

### Demonic Courts

* Fio
* Vinter
* Stein
* Hunter of Mortals
* Stephano
* Rio Fenrir

### Other

* Decca
* Colt
* Dr Sylph
* Uno
* Birdman
* Pixie
* Shriek