Originally, this was going to be Life is Strange and the Completely Unnecessary Ending, and that's actually still the title in my Google Doc. However, some problems with plot came up in my writing, and as such, this is now going to be the very first ever Life is Strange Infinite Loops story! Updates will follow my usual schedule of "when I have the damn time to write, I'll write, and I'll post when the work is ready", so don't expect much.

Infinite Loops: Life is Strange

1: Maxine

"Max? Max, can you hear me? Please, say something."

"Chloe?" I murmur. "I… I must have passed out… Sorry."

"Oh, thank God," she cried in relief, wrapping me in a tight embrace. "Don't you ever do that again, okay?"

"I swear… But that nightmare was so real… was so horrible." I look across the destruction all around us, a melancholy expression on my face. "This is my storm. I caused this… I caused all of this. I changed fate and destiny so much that… I actually did alter the course of everything. And all I really created was death and destruction!" My voice rises and I clutch my head in desperation as I continue.

Chloe roughly grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to turn and look her in the eyes. "Fuck all of that, okay? You were given a power. You didn't ask for it… and you saved me. Which had to happen, all of this did… except for what happened to Rachel. But without your power, we wouldn't have found her! Okay, so you're not the goddamn Time Master, but you're Maxine Caulfield… and you're amazing."

She reaches into her pocket and pulled out a photo. My photo, the butterfly, from the day in the bathroom. My eyes widen as I understand what she's going for.

"Max, this is the only way," she said gently, handing me the photo.

"I feel like I took this shot a thousand years ago."

"You…" She gulped. "You could use that photo to change everything right back to when you took that picture… All that would take is for me to… to…" She trailed off, leaving unsaid what we both know she means.

I feel an anger, hot and ugly, start to bubble up in my gut, before it lashes out at Chloe with my words. "Fuck that! No… no way! I'm not going to just stand by and watch you die again!"

"Wha-"

"No! Shut up! I've watched you die too many times, and I busted my ass trying to save your life! There's no way I'm going to make it so I can't save everybody! Now shut up, and let's hope this works."

I pull Chloe in for a rough, quick kiss, before focusing on the photo. The strange falling sensation begins again, and I find myself in the bathroom again, waving the freshly-taken picture of a butterfly in the air. I stuff it in my bag quickly but carefully, then walk out to the sink and calmly begin to wash my hands. Yeah, this'll be great, Max. Nobody will think twice about somebody-

The door slammed open, and Nathan Prescott stormed into the bathroom. I turn towards him, using my not inconsiderable acting skills that picked up over the past few months of reliving the same four days in an attempt to figure out what happened to Rachel and trying to save everyone during the storm.

"Wha- What are you doing here? This is the girls' bathroom!" I ask in faux surprise.

He looked just as surprised as I am acting to see me in there. "Why the fuck are you in here?"

"I just used the bathroom you sick freak," I deadpan back.

I pulled out his gun, and my eyes widen. This can't be how it ends! I have to save everyone!

"Nobody insults me and gets away with it! Nobody!"

I rewind.

Alright, can't use the sinks, or I die. And if I die, then how can I save everybody? So what else can I do?

Nathan Prescott barged into the room, having the same old meltdown as every time I've been here.

Alright, Chloe walked in… now.

Good. I still remember the timing of everything. That means… Nathan's back turned away from where I am now, and he pulled the gun… now!

I dash towards the pompous ass, and tackle him to the floor. The gun went off. Chloe fell to the ground.

I rewind.

I knock Nathan out as he steps into the bathroom. I'm arrested on charges of assault, and the storm destroys Arcadia Bay anyway.

I rewind.

I tackle Nathan before he pulled the gun out. The gun went off. Nathan died.

I rewind.

Nathan died.

I rewind.

Chloe died.

I rewind.

I die.

I rewind.

Chloe got the gun away from Nathan and shot him instead.

I rewind.

A ricochet killed them both.

I rewind.

Both of them survived the encounter and Nathan was jailed. Chloe choked to death on a blue butterfly.

I rewind.

I die.

I rewind.

Chloe entered the room first, dressed like Victoria. Nathan walked in, dressed like… That cannot be unseen.

I rewind.

Nathan wasn't there. Chloe wasn't there. I wait for two hours. The school was evacuated after a shooter was subdued and nineteen other students were killed. Nathan and Chloe were both among the dead.

I rewind.

Maxine Caulfield walked in through the bathroom door and washed her face. She pulled out a photo, tore it in half, and dropped it to the ground. A blue butterfly flew in through the open window and landed on the bucket next to me. Max walked around the corner and came to a sudden stop, staring at me in shock. The door opened again, and Maxine Caulfield walked in through the bathroom door and washed her face. She pulled out a-

I rewind.

The windows were broken. A cold, winter breeze blew in through them, funneling wisps of snow out through the rotting, cracked door on the other side of the room. There was no sound in the air but my breathing and the wind.

I rewind.

Death.

Rewind.

Death.

Rewind.

Death.

Rewind.

Death.

Death.

Rewind.

Rewind.

Rewind.

"Alfred Hitchcock famously called film, 'little pieces of time'..."

No! I don't have time for this!

A drop of blood falls from my nose onto the notebook in front of me. Then another. And another. My God, there's blood everywhere!

"Max, are you okay?"

I look up to see Jefferson standing above me, concern in his eyes. Hah, as if he feels anything other than his sick, twisted-

He pulled me up by my armpit. "Alright, Max, you're having some serious issues, here. We need to get you to the nurse's office."

Nurse's office? We have one of those at our school?

I black out.

When I wake up, I'm lying on a bed in a white room. I slowly sit up, and see a tall, beautiful woman with blue hair seated in the corner of the room, seemingly asleep.

Blue hair?

"Chloe?" I croak out. My voice feels… unnatural. Like it's not my own, and it hasn't been used in years.

The woman slowly stirred from her sleep and looked up. Her head lifted, and she locked eyes with me. Brilliant blue eyes stared back at me, and all trace of grogginess instantly left them.

"Ms. Caulfield!" She practically teleported across the room, she moved so fast to get to my side. She carefully placed her hand behind my back and helped me sit up. "I don't believe it!"

"Where… Where am I?" I slowly form the words, my brain not exactly running at full capacity. "Chloe?"

The woman pulled back and smiled at me sadly, then shook her head. "Lethe. Chloe was my grandmother. Well, eighteen-times-great grandmother, but that's aside from the point. You're finally awake again."

"Eighteen… times…? When…? What… what year is it?"

"597 P.I. Again, aside from the point. Try and move slowly; you've been asleep for a long time."

I slowly sit up, trying to wrap my mind around what's going on. Screw it, I'm not going to figure out anything without asking questions.

"What happened?" I tentatively ask.

Lethe chuckled. "A lot happened, Ms. Caulfield. It has been almost six hundred years since you were last awake."

"Six hundred…" My eyes widen. "The storm! Did anyone-"

"P.I. does stand for something, Ms. Caulfield," she interrupted me. "It stands for Post Interitum, after the destruction." She smiled ruefully. "Ms. Caulfield, a superstorm swept across the entire planet and destroyed much of life as we know it four days after you fell unconscious."

"Chloe-"

"Was shot in the abdomen by Nathan Prescott. Thankfully, it's not like getting shot there will instantly kill you or anything stupid like that - trust me, I'm a doctor - and she got the medical attention she needed to survive. Had a bit of a realisation about her mortality and started to turn things around. Of course, it was a bit difficult to do much from a hospital bed, but she did what she could. Took a bit of an interest in medicine, since it had saved her life. Prescott and Jefferson ended up in prison, Kate turned it around, et cetera, et cetera."

A silence descended for a moment.

She chuckled a bit. "You know, she was in the room next to yours at the Arcadia Bay Hospital. It's probably the only reason I'm alive, actually. The storm came on Friday, and flattened everything in its path. Everything except the area about ten feet from you in any direction. Her bed was against the same wall as yours, so she survived.

"She was pretty much recovered by then, so she went out looking for survivors and found you. You were just… there, on the bed. Doctors hadn't hooked you up to anything, because whenever one got too close, they just ended up forgetting why they were there. At least, that's the best we could piece together from what records we could find. She reached out to you, and she just… remembered."

"Remembered?" I ask. "Remembered what?"

"The five hundred and seventeen times she died, including the one time where you killed her in the universe where she was a quadriplegic. The one time you got together with Warren. Seven hundred and eighty-three 'hella hot and steamy kisses'-" I could hear the air quotes as if she were reciting from a script. "-you getting tortured, sacrificing herself to save Arcadia Bay… everything from your adventures in five-dimensional travel."

I have the decency to blush.

"Much of the world had prior warning, so they were able to take shelter and save some of the technology and art - France and Italy seemed rather attached to their art, and Germany saved the majority of the technology that survived - but a vast majority was still wiped out."

"So then… where am I?"

"The Church of Arcadia. The finest medical and research facility on the planet, but the center of no little controversy. By this point, everyone basically agrees that… whatever it was that you did caused the storm, so there have been a few… assassination attempts. Nothing's ever worked."

"The Church of Arcadia?"

"Chloe created a church based around you. Leadership has been passed down her direct line to my mother, Medea Price. The image of an eternally-youthful High Priestess does wonders for making your religion powerful. Of course, there are always a few defective clones that never reach full maturity…" She trailed off. "Nevermind. You're finally awake, though, so we can get you up to speed on advances."

I frown. "No. I don't care about advances, I want to go home. I need to stop this."

She glared at me. "You will do no such thing. If you return, you will wipe out six hundred years of advances and the lives of millions upon millions of people. I will not have everything my family has worked for destroyed on the whim of… of… of a child!"

I sit up and stand from the bed on shaky legs. "You will not stop me. I'm-" I stumble on my steady march to the door "-I'm going to go back, and I'm going to save everyone. And you can't stop me." I hear her begin to call for guards, and I start to run.

Ever since I had started rewinding time, I had become hyper-aware of how long it took me to do anything. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight - I reach eighty, and the world twists around me. One, two, three, four. I hear her begin to call for guards again, and I start counting once more.

Eighty. Rewind.

Even at my shambling pace from apparently centuries of disuse, I manage to make it a good hundred yards or so before I reach eighty again.

Rewind.

One, two, three, four. One, two, three - I turn a corner, and there was a guard walking the other direction. Eight. He saw me, and his eyes widened in shock before he reached for a radio on his belt. Ten, rewind.

He wasn't in the corridor anymore. One, two, three, four. One, two, three… I turn down a corridor, hopefully towards the exit. Beyond all odds, I eventually find the door several wrong turns and rewinds later, but the outside is heavily guarded. I walk into the entryway, planning an escape, when I see it on the wall. A large version of the fateful picture I took of the butterfly. Beneath it, a small plaque read "In loving memory of the one who would not just let me die. -High Priestess Price" ...Seventy-nine, eighty. Rewind.

The world was unmoving. A fly hovered in the air in front of me, wings frozen mid-flap. I can see individual dust motes hung in the air in a beam of sunlight from the windows facing the ocean. I try to rewind, or make time start again, but nothing happened.

Suddenly, a voice spoke. "It's been a while, Max."

I whirl around to see - "Chloe?"

She nodded. She looked the same as I remember - punk clothing, beanie, blue hair, all the same. Maybe a little older, but not much. "The one and only." She frowned a little. "Sorry about my daughter, by the way. She… Well, you know what they say about absolute power."

"Daughter?"

"Third-generation clone, technically. A lot has happened in the past couple hundred years. I created a religion, which I honestly didn't expect to become this widespread, the world got destroyed, cloning was perfected, and I learned a bit of the time powers that you had. Well, have. Apparently being so close to you across hundreds of different timelines got me involved in enough time-travel-magic that I can unstick myself and others from the flow of time. Not quite as powerful as your rewinding time, though." She sighed and pulled me into a hug. "You don't know how hard it's been without you, Max. You've been right there, perfectly the same, for almost six hundred years. Right in front of me, but always out of reach. If I could rewind, I'd have figured out a way to fix this a long time ago. This is not how the world should be, Max. That storm just keeps happening, but it shouldn't have happened. We need to fix it. Somehow."

"But how, Chloe? I don't know how to go back that far."

She gestured at the photo. "There's one way. Not like you haven't done it before, hundreds of times." I frown at that. Hundreds of times? But… I'd only ever been by the lighthouse with her once, right? "But there's… there's also another. Maybe."

"Another?"

"Maybe," she repeated. "Follow me."

I marveled at the room around us. "What is this place?" I ask.

"A project that I've been working on for a while. I'm not exactly sure how long because this entire room is outside Time." I could hear the capital letter in the way she said it. "It's a communications device."

I cocked my head. "But… Wouldn't a communication device outside of Time only be able to communicate with others outside of Time?"

She smiled at me. "Exactly."

She spent a few… minutes? Instants? Is any time actually passing? …regardless, she busied herself about the strange contraption, turning knobs, flipping switches, and pulling levers. As she worked, I ponder what she possibly could have meant.

Finally finishing her preparations, she stepped up to an antique-looking microphone that almost appeared to have come from an old radio broadcast station.

"Hello? Is anybody there?"

Static issued from the speakers nearby before a surprised voice replied, "How did you get this frequency?"

Chloe's eyes lit up. "Ah! Awesome! This is actually the first time I've used this, so I had no idea if it would work."

"Who are you? How did you get this frequency?"

"Well, I'm Chloe Price, and I've been having some issues lately. I keep waking up in my bedroom on Monday, October 7th, 2013. I live my life for the next five days to three weeks, and then I suddenly wake up on Monday again. This time, the world got destroyed, and I've been stuck outside of time, not aging, for about six hundred years. Now, my friend Max here just woke up from being in some sort of suspended animation, and we'd like to know how to get back to Monday again, because I don't appreciate the end of the world, and Max wants to go home."

A pause.

"Hold on for a moment."

We could hear muffled yelling from the… radio, I guess? It seemed like only half of a conversation with someone we couldn't hear.

"Sir, it's direct communication from inside the Loop."

Loop? Is that what's going on with time? Are we trapped in a loop in time, unable to escape? Is Chloe trapped in a loop in time, forced to relive less than a month?

"Yes I know it shouldn't be possible!"

Another pause.

"Sir, the Anchor constructed a device to contact us! The- Yes, the Anchor! And she has the catalyst with her!"

What is an Anchor? Are they talking about Chloe? What is Chloe anchoring? And if she's this anchor, then what am I the catalyst of?

"Yes, the one who keeps crashing the Loop! It's the only reason we haven't activated her! I gave you a briefing on this last week!"

A longer pause. 'Crashing the loop?' Am I the reason that Chloe is stuck reliving the same few days?

"Well what do you want me to do about it?"

Another pause, and then the voice sighed.

"Fine. But we need to finish the patch before we can activate the Fused Loops."

A short pause, then the voice suddenly spoke again as if it were interrupting someone.

"Yes, yes, I know, H-" The rest of the word disappeared in static. "-is working on it still, he hasn't quite figured out the mechanics, blah, blah, blah. Just let me tell them what's going to happen.

"Alright," the voice had clearly begun speaking directly to whatever microphone was on the other end again. "Miss Price, am I correct in understanding that your friend Maxine Caulfield is with you?"

"Yes she is."

"Good. Can she hear the conversation?"

Chloe glanced at me, and I roll my eyes at her. "Yes she can."

"Good. Miss Caulfield, I will be activating you as a Looper. This means that you will also be waking up on October 7th when Miss Price here does. However, repeated use of your time-travel abilities will cause your time before waking up again to shorten exponentially. Understood?"

I move up to the microphone at Chloe's gesture. "Alright. I guess that makes sense?"

"Good. We will contact you again once we've fixed the problem with your powers. Have fun figuring this out."

The world outside the room suddenly disappeared, replaced by an endless black void. The machine was still running, and the muffled conversation with the mysterious other person continued again.

"What do you mean the loop didn't reset? I clearly pressed the reset button. ...Oh gee, thanks, that makes me feel better. Let's see…" The sound of typing on a keyboard could be heard. "What in the-" Static cut through the feed again. "-are they doing inside a Pocket? Neither of them should know how to make one yet! They haven't met any other Loopers yet! ...No, I can't get them out of it, you know the rules; the Pocket is sacrosanct. Nothing can touch it if the owner doesn't allow it."

"What is going on?" I mouth to Chloe. She just shrugged.

"Alright, hello? Are the two of you still there?"

"Yeah, still here," Chloe replied.

"Good, good. Now, Miss Price, could you please step outside?"

"Into the endless black void?"

"Ah… Yes, yes. That would be right. You appear to have placed yourself into a pocket dimension removed from the world and, since you are inside it, we are unable to send you back to the beginning of the Loop. Some of the Rules, you know, and bending them here would set a dangerous precedent."

"Fine. If it can get us both home."

"Good, good. Don't worry, you shouldn't notice much of a gap where you are exposed to The Howling Void That Exists Between The Universes. As long as you keep your eyes closed, you probably won't go insane. Oh, and Miss Caulfield, you'll need to step out as well, or else there will be two of you running around when the loop resets."

"Probably won't go insane?" I ask the voice.

"Don't worry about it. Just step outside, please."

Chloe and I share a look and she shrugged, holding out her hand to me. "Shall we, Miss Caulfield?"

I smile. "Indeed, Miss Price."

With that, we close our eyes, and step out into the next adventure.

(Posted 3 February 2017)