"The Requiem of Arcadia Bay"
Author's note: I apologize for the formatting. I did not see this coming when I publish this on doc manager. My mistake for not checking it twice. Also if you have not seen my cover photo for the Requiem of Arcadia Bay, I use Gimp, and not Photoshop. Life Anew Part Two will come late November and two Life is Strange parodies will be updated in this upcoming week and the week after. Thank you very much.
The camera pans to Max and Chloe on the cliff next to the lighthouse while the E6 tornado was heading straight to the town. The only thing that could keep the tornado at bay was for Max to make a decision; but knowing Max, she was very indecisive. Before she had the power to rewind time, people would always make the decision for her even if it was her parents - Ryan and Vanessa Caulfield - or those who would hold authority over her; and whenever they come up with the decisions, they always believe it was for her best interest. On the other hand, Max did stand up for herself, even without powers, she remembered that one time when she asserted her will for her own vested interest: to spend her Senior year at Blackwell Academy in her hometown of Arcadia Bay, and her parents, seeing for the first time that Max stood up against their wish for her to go school close to her home, had reluctantly agreed on her decision for her to return home, where the forest stretch farther to the ocean and the whole town was like a close-knitted family as everyone know each other.
However for Max, her first interest to return to Arcadia Bay was to be taught and lectured by one of Arcadia Bay's notable figures and Blackwell alumni, Mark Jefferson, one of the best photographers her mind could ever account for. But as she arrived back to her hometown, another interest arise and the thought of Chloe Elizabeth Price kept recurring in her head, pounding to get out of her thick skull and forcing her to finally get in touch with her best friend whom she had never talked to for five years. Over the course of a week, she was bestowed an amazing gift from whatever super-paranormal entity and had used it for the sake of saving a girl with bright, blue hair from the Wrath of Nathan Prescott, but she had abused her power to the maximum limitation from which constrains her potentiality to develop. Now she was stuck on a crossroad: she had to choose to sacrifice Chloe and save Arcadia Bay, or save Chloe and sacrifice her hometown to the tornado.
Max
(showing the tornado to Chloe as a depiction of her errors and consequences by all the actions that she had never considered to be pestilential)
"All I did was create a trail of death and destruction; I created this."
Chloe
"And now, you're ending this."
Chloe delved into her pocket and produce the photo of the blue butterfly Max had took at the bathroom in which she discovered her rewind powers.
Max
"I feel like I took this a million years ago. Chloe… I don't think I can do this."
Chloe
"Yes, you can Max. Maybe this is me facing my true destiny. Ever since you came back to my life, you've been trying to delay it so we be together one last time."
Max
"Chloe-"
Chloe reached up to Max as she laid her hands firmly on her shoulders and use her soft pleading voice over the cacophonic tornado from which Max can't hear but the soothing voice of her best friend.
Chloe
(voice cracking)
"What we had over this last week was very special. You came here and showed me nothing but love and friendship, and you kept proving on how much you love me by saving me over and over again."
(using her pleading voice)
"Max, my mom deserved better than to die in the fucking diner, and I thought I would never say this but even my stepfather deserved to live. I know…I'm the not perfect little daughter I used to be when my father was alive but my mother and David deserved to be together forever."
Max took a glimpse of the past when the sun had set to dusk and Chloe and her were standing on the very cliff and Chloe had wished for a bomb to be drop on Arcadia Bay and have the entire town be turned into glass. And maybe that wish had came true: it wasn't a bomb but a tornado. Everything was going too fast. Max couldn't administer everything into her head; she was not a fucking computer.
Chloe
"Max, it's time.
Max took the photo from Chloe's hand, the handling of this purchase felt like an anvil had impressed upon her hand, weighing down her body, despite the fact that it also rendered to everything from saving Arcadia Bay to Chloe Price, both of which have all marked down to her decision. Everything will be decided upon Max. How fascinating it is to finally be in the position of controlling everyone's destinies? This is what it must feel to be like God? But Max wasn't heralded with the feelings of divinity surging up her head: her ego was deflated by the thought of all the trails of deaths and destruction she have created. She didn't want to be God; she didn't ask for the power to rewind time and make things worst for everyone. If she went back to the day when Chloe was supposed to meet her fate, that would mean she would create another alternative world; and why did she got her powers when she saw her best friend being shot to death. Was saving Chloe the purpose of her powers? And if so, was Arcadia Bay meant to be doomed because of it?
Max finally came up with the decision.
Max
"Not this time."
She tore the photo in half and let the tornado swallowed it, for it was the last photo she had ever took in Arcadia Bay ever. She stood up for her decision firmly: death will not be marked upon her best friend again, regardless of how many times she had to save her over the course of the week. She came to the belief that her powers came to her after seeing her best friend died in the hands of Nathan Prescott, so it must have been destiny to keep Chloe alive for good. She feels sorry for Arcadia Bay but what can she do: she was desperate, and she could not think and plan things out like Bruce Wayne; she was not at all functionally cognitive when there was a tornado. Just imagine yourself in a position where there is a man pointing a gun at you. How can you think properly when there is a gun in front of you. That's how Max feels, although it was an impetuous act that will leave her scar for life to see that she killed everything in Arcadia Bay.
Chloe
"Max…"
Cut to the scene where it's morning and Max and Chloe were blundering outside the perimeter of what was perhaps supposed to be the Two Whale Diner but clearly the tornado had turned the place upside down and made every semblance of Arcadia Bay into an apocalyptic world scarcely recognizable by Max's line of sight.
Chloe
"Max, are you going to help me, or what?"
Max
(sluggishly)
"Wait up, Chloe. Slow down."
Chloe was removing every debris she can from the barely noticeable remnants of what her perceptive acumen could account for: the Two Whale Diners. She knows the style, decoration and colors of her mother's vocation more than anything in the world, because there was not a moment that went by in her mind that she could ever forget all the time she had figuratively tear this place apart as she would visit there only to bother her mom for food or money, or even make a scene. Her mind could not register any atonement that she felt she does not deserve. But the thought of her mother delivered an astounding amount of vigor that had awakened her enervated body, her strength then redoubled when she unearth what seems to be the kitchen and the booth out of the pillage.
Max, too, was helping Chloe but her mind was elsewhere. She saw deer and does out of the pillage of the earthly debris and the gelatinous ooze and blood from the blubbers of the poor whales. The birds were flying inland and all signs of life were still here, even though the whole entire town looked so bleak and nebulous for civilization, but the animals here looked so serene and tranquil from all the destruction, that, perhaps a revivification of a new civilization was not entirely impossible in the future.
Chloe did not very well purchase the idea of her best friend's mind wondering elsewhere than the main purpose for which they came here in the first place.
Chloe
(angrily)
"Max, get a grip on reality and hurry up."
Max
(shaking her head out of confusion)
"I'm on it."
Chloe
"She has to be here, Max."
All this digging send shivers down to Max's spine: she did not know what she will discover at the bottom of the wreckage. This moment simultaneously gave her déjà vu back at the time when they had unearth Rachel's corpse in the junkyard, or purportedly Chloe and Rachel's "fortress of solitude." Max could not bear death in the face despite the obvious explanation of all the tragedies and destruction surrounding her. But Joyce was very special to Max: she was Chloe's mother.
Max wanted to say: "She might not be alive." but she had to retreat those words down into her throat and prevent it from coming out of her mouth because it will eventually made the situation more severe and her relationship with Chloe on the verge of utmost animosity. Each time she tried keeping those lips sealed when those words escaped from her throat, they would resonate in her mouth, causing her to cough intermittently. After burrowing out all the debris their strength can registered, they suddenly came upon Frank's dog, Pompidou.
Max
(instinctively placing her hand on her lips)
"Oh my god…"
Chloe
(frustratingly angry)
"Keep digging."
Max
"But-"
Chloe
"I'm not going to stop for a fucking dog…are you going to help me or what?"
Max
"Yes…but not like this, Chloe."
Chloe
"You could wait in the car while I get my mother out. She may be alive…you just see."
Max wanted to expatiate her rebuttal but the best she can do, currently, was to shut up and keep digging because knowing Chloe, she would never want to listen lest the predicament was less harrowing. Chloe dug like a blind honey badger, full of wrath and sadness. Max noticed tears rolling out of her cheeks once she saw Pompidou, and it has never occurred to Max until now on what would happened if her best friend saw the corpse of her mother, and how would she react? Chloe do get more emotional if she learned about the truth and try to hide herself from it. There is no sanctuary for hiding from the truth.
Thinking of poor Pompidou made Max extremely sad and uncomfortable after having to smell the malodorous stench releasing from its rotting flesh. Max could not escape the sight of the dog, and they did not want to remove it from the rumbles, or their sight. Pompidou was a rescued dog Frank adopted after saving it from a dog fight in which he was involved. Ironically, he had a change of heart and decided to rescue them instead of creating a fight club for them; however he was still a criminal and did what he can to stay outside the law, and eventually employed his talents and skills into selling drugs, which coincidentally induced his lover Rachel Adams to death. Max could not help blaming Frank for selling drugs to people because it would have not ignite a series of chain reactions that would have led to an event where Chloe had to die in the girls' restroom. This was the lowest Max could go: she knew she was a hypocrite for thinking such incriminatory accusations on Frank, when she, herself, was public enemy number one.
Chloe
(sharply)
"…AGH…"
A tear ripped open the skin of her left arm once the sharp, scabrous edge of a wooden, decrepit splinter seized its weight upon Chloe. She removed the hefty, defunct object from her and began pounding at the debris and started weeping all the malignancies, the angers, and everything that continuously made her so out of control, out of her system; and throwing a fit of tantrums out of everything for which Max took the blame, because if Chloe knew anything, it was that Max would always be there for her till the very end. Max, on the other hand, rushed to the rusty, old truck and found a first aid kit and returned to Chloe, treating her infected skin with some antiseptic sanitizers and a cloth towel to wrap things up.
Max
"Maybe… we should slow down…it's been a long morning-"
She placed her hand on Chloe's shoulder and consoled her with comforting words and a warm embrace for greater beyond anything they have ever felt. Chloe reciprocated by placing a hand on her best friend's hand and moved it closely to her heart.
Chloe
(apologetic)
"I shouldn't have yelled at you. You have done nothing wrong."
Max
"It's okay…you need the stress release."
Max was always so laid-back: maybe Chloe was the sedative that Max essentially when she wished to be removed from everyone else or the world; or, it could just be that she was never afraid to be herself around Chloe.
Max
"Do you still want to continue?"
Chloe
(morosely)
"My mother could be alive…"
Max
(determined)
"Let's have faith that she is then."
Chloe
(gaining some excitement)
"I don't know how long my mother could survive beneath all these rumbles, Max… but I can feel like she is alive…she is with us, wanting to be found."
Max cringed at the idea that her best friend could sense her mother around, all she could see were herd of deer and does and fauns coming out of the rumbles. Chloe kept digging although the tear on her left arm look extremely infectious, she was very persistent to find her mother no matter if it was the cost of her limb like Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist, which Max had binged on watching after Warren lend her a USB disk of great movies for which Max did not display any fondness because some of them were caustically great yet terrible. Max felt like she was going to exhume Joyce from the premature burial for which she did not deserve, but what can Max say to Chloe to stop her from finding out the truth that her mother couldn't have survive from the E6 tornado.
As they unfurled the broken lighting fixture out of the rumbles, they found a damp tunnel through which they were capable of walking, as long they mind the sparks and the stank from another lighting fixture. Chloe and Max used the flashlight from their smartphone's camera and together they slowly climbed down small, steep rusted slide of broken, jagged objects. Part of the diner would look like a cool scene in Inception because the storm had hazardously rotated the building one hundred eighty degrees sideway, making the wall useable as floors upon which they were currently walking whilst the entire structure were close to crumbling down.
Max
(hesitantly)
"Chloe, I don't think we should be inside…it's not safe."
Chloe
"We have to find my mom, Max."
Max
(resigned)
"All right, but I'm not going to let you go inside alone."
Chloe
"I know you'll always be there for me."
The whole place looked like a maze with the corridors convoluted to the side and this caused them to become dizzy and nauseated for a moment until their acuities were coordinately aligned to adjust their momentum and sight. There were things that fell almost right in front of them and they were very auspicious that their agility was as quick as their instinct. It no longer felt like that movie Inception anymore, it now felt like that one horror movie Poltergeist where objects can hit you. Were these endeavors instigated by the vengeful spirits exacting their revenge on Max Caulfield? No one knew. Max never thought of such supposition that alight her to the mental hospital. Chloe kept going whilst Max felt cold shivers creeping on her skin like some smoky, eldritch apparitions were touching her skin.
Passing the counters and the kitchen, they make a slow climb to the storage room where they found a large quantities of canned delicacies buried in boxes, perfect to gauge their stomachs when money is tight, and when they have plan to get out of Arcadia Bay before the coast guards arrived, and the president were going to constitute FEMA on this apocalyptic hellhole, and Max might have a chance to have her face on America's Most Wanted, or be profiled by Interpol.
Chloe's mother was nowhere to be found until they spoke too soon about the walk-in refrigerator which they had almost forgotten. The pipes in the kitchen were leaking unfiltered water making the whole floor so slippery, and very problematic to walk on. The constructions of the garbage disposal and the dishwashing machine were loosening its grip from the walls as the bolts and rivets began to loosen; immediately Chloe's instinct kicks in as she opened the emergency door wide and threw Max behind the door, squeezing her between the wall and the door as Chloe gripped the knob. The sanitation instruments then collide forcibly straight to the ground, directly going right up the alley behind which the homeless woman used to settle before Max warned her about the storm. This entire fiasco had created a hole on the foundation, but the place was already in disarray.
Max
(relieved)
"Oh my god, Chloe, you saved my life."
Chloe
(sternly)
"Well, you saved my ass many countless times. I believe it is time for me to reciprocate at least once."
Max
"Thank you."
Chloe
"No problem, Max…are you all right?
Max
"A bit traumatic…I'm just scared this whole place might fall apart and kill us instantly."
Chloe
"We'll be fine… come on, let's break this stainless steel padlock."
Max
(timidly)
"That's hard to say."
Max was beginning to feel like she was going to have claustrophobia as her surrounding were getting smaller, compressing their space of maneuverability and speed as they proceed further back the storage room. They found the walk-in refrigerator tilting in an angle which was unnoticeably complicated to maneuver especially when the refrigerator was bolted to the building. On the anterior side was a large horizontal latch sealed shut by a padlock, despite their attempt to find an axe or a freaking defiler, a fire extinguisher had conveniently attracted their attention as it slid down toward Max. Chloe hindered its impact by grasping onto it before it could lay its hefty flank upon Max then lifting the fire extinguisher above her head, she applied her accuracy onto the large padlock and banged it repeatedly as it eventually came loose from the latch.
Chloe did not know her mother was inside, seeing that there was a huge padlock locking the refrigerator; and if her mother happened to be inside, why would anyone padlocked the latch, it did not make it easier for Chloe to think of all the theories circling her head, especially when the heterogeneous mixtures of gnarly, fetid stank of decomposing whales and strong mildews were piercing sharply into her nostrils, making her more nauseated and discombobulated. Once Chloe opened the door, the light of their smartphones cast light upon the dark revelation which became so vivid to her that it immobilized her minds and bodies altogether and reduced her to tears as she saw her mother posed peacefully with her hands clamping onto the hands of David Madsen, whose deaths were as tranquil as the death of her mother.
Max
"Chloe…don't look."
Max pulled Chloe instantly to her chest and concealed her from the vivid imageries that would scar her dear best friend for life. They both started crying: tears running from their sealed eyes. Chloe had never felt so vulnerable in her life that she was fortunate to have Max consoling her from the harsh truth: that her mother and her stepfather have came to their demise; and Max had no longer the powers vested in her to rewind back to when it was all started, or before she tore the photo of the butterfly. Chloe wanted to pull away from Max, but Max kept gripping her because she did not want her to do anything rash. Max didn't want to let go of Chloe: that was the purpose of her temptation.
The heart-wrenching emotions were getting to Chloe that she didn't mean to kick Max in the shins but she did anyway. She used this excuse to leave the ruins and walk onto the warm surface once again, getting everything out of her system. Max, feeling hurt, physically and emotionally, followed Chloe to the surface of the ruins, limping along the barely promenading trail and finding Chloe screaming and yelling at the world for how much this is her fault.
We panned out from them as the sounds driving out of Chloe's throat became so inaudible and so indistinctive that their intense expressions were more visualized in the entire scene than the word itself. It remarkably came as a sad reminder to Max for how much she felt all this was her fault. Her doings, her actualities. Max embraced Chloe silently in this very scene and they both cried together without the perilous threat of the ruins collapsing upon them, or her parents in the presence. Max buried Chloe's head into her chest like she did before and Chloe opened up to Max, accepting Max as the one upon whom she ought to express all her vulnerabilities: this did not exploit her as a weak individual, just a normal human being who wants to be loved.
Max has always been there for Chloe, and clearly, in exchange, Chloe had opened a new world for Max, or an entire universe in which she can explore and flourish without being persecuted for the things she love to do. This is the one love that cannot be sifted or separated from each other because the two were meant for each other, and they will always find a way to connect together like a polarized charge: one negative and one positive. Whatever power the universe bestow to Max, it was the power to be with her love once again, a second chance only she was fortunate to get as Chloe, over the course of five days, had to learn to forgive Max of her betrayal. Realizing it was not a betrayal to their friendship, Chloe figure that those last five years of excommunication was just the answer they needed in an effort to find their inner depths, and both had used those time wisely to understand whom they were. For Chloe it was to find her inner punk, or individuality; and for Max, it was her augmented pursuit to enhance her photography skills in which she excelled. Those five years were immensely long but it was worth the trip.
Max
"I'm never leaving you, Chloe."
Max squeezed Chloe so hard that her impulse to kiss Chloe again ignited, and so they kissed: the tears and the beating of the heart made it so unbelievably intense and emotional that they didn't want to let go of one another.
Max
"I'll always love you."
Chloe
"Me too."
They watched the embrasure to the ruins collapsing in, making their return back to Joyce and David Madsen very much difficult and impossible.
Chloe
(inquisitively)
"Who would padlocked the door to the refrigerator?"
Max
"Someone who wanted them to be safe more than anything so they can be alive after all this."
Chloe
(indecisively)
"Frank?"
Max shrugged in vacillation, seeing that Frank knew Joyce and knew her daughter by her could be a probability that Frank wanted Joyce and David Madsen to be alive despite his own self-interest for his survival. The door to the refrigerator never shut to the bolt so Frank could have padlocked them inside from the tornado and hope for the best that Chloe would find them soon. That was one possibility and there was another possibility that Max did not want to meditate because it would result to Chloe despising Frank forever.
Chloe lifted herself up, and put her hand on Max's shoulder, gazing at Max's quintessential, baby-face with a clear filter of life.
Chloe
"We're done here."
Max
"Are we going to leave this town?"
Chloe
"Yes…but first we go to our house and get something before we hit the road."
Max
(tentatively)
"Like what exactly?"
Chloe
"Some food, some clothes and a time capsule of money my stepfather had highly invested because he was paranoid …yet he did more to try to be the best father he can be for me."
Her voice trailed, seeing that her stepfather has no longer assume the position as the step-fuehrer, or the step-douche or the tiny tool she had once elucidated to Max.
Max
(worrisome)
"It might not be much."
Chloe
"But it is enough to get by at least…I'm going to get a job so I can support the two of us."
Max
"I see."
They entered the rustic, old, nondescript truck and Chloe rammed the engine to her house in the quiet suburb. While traveling to their destination, Max witnessed the all buildings which she had once undergo during the horrid storm: she remembered rescuing Alyssa from that one tall building with the billboard of Pan Estates atop the roof; then recalling an event where she had to electrocute the man just so she can enter to the other side before she saved him with her rewind power, afterwards was the avant-garde photographer, Evan, who was capturing the moments of his demise if Max didn't rescue him. All these good Samaritan ordeals meant nothing because they would have died sooner by the tornado. Max could have hinder it from arriving to the town but Max will always choose Chloe more than anything in the world; she made the choice and now have to live her mistake, conscientiously.
Once they immediately entered the threshold of Chloe's residence, the whole entire neighborhood they have warranted in their sight, have all transmogrified from memory lane to a boulevard of broken dreams. Chloe carried on her spirits to get everything she needed for her new life with Max Caulfield in one place; needless to say, Max could not congregate all her vulnerabilities and fortified them because seeing the place where she spent her childhood with Chloe, in ruins, was beyond the unfathomable feeling of superseded guilt and remorse from which she could not hide. She thought of turning herself in for the police to incarcerate her in prison without parole, but she feared that the police won't find a single logical evidence to uphold her for causing a tornado, simply because it was not rational and a logical supposition that an eighteen year old can cause a E6 tornado. It was a horrendously stupid idea.
Chloe found some food from her place and went to her neighbors to burglarize their subsidiaries, to which Max felt like it was asphyxiating the entire situation; but Chloe nevertheless had a pretty good explanation in doing so since they were dead and the wildlife wouldn't be interested in ingesting human food. She also unearth her father's time capsule and found a few hundred dollars, which was enough for a week or two until she could find a decent job in Seattle to where she had prescribed her car in going since the thought of Max's parents had strike a chord on her brainwaves.
After immediately combing the vicinity for anything they needed, they went to the car and drove around Arcadia Bay one last time before they left. But before they left, Chloe drove to the gas station and ante up the tank and replenish all the gas canisters to make sure their trip to Seattle does not cost her one cent from her stepfather's time capsule and immediately drove off from Arcadia Bay in the sunset.
Once they were out of the town, they saw a greyhound bus appearing conspicuously from the midst of the auburn trees, traveling on the other side of the road without noticing the rustic car Chloe was driving. Max didn't want to transcribe any word from the tip of her tongue because she was very inexhaustible from the entire day and wanted to doze off until they reached Seattle. Chloe was saddened and another course of melancholy hit her as she imagined a man coming out from the greyhound bus with huge smile carved in his face after receiving a great vacation from somewhere exotic, only to come home to see an apocalyptic hellhole.
Chloe kept things quiet as the flourishing wind and the darkness lulled her to sleep. instead She drove out of Arcadia Bay, out of places that resembled too much like her hometown, and out of the minds of those who had encounter in a lifetime, so she can spread her wings and leave this importune place which she had once called home.