Disclaimer: I have not obtained the rights to Life is Strange
AN: So heres one of the other fic ideas I mentioned in Reflektor. PhotoVerse is my term for the timeline Max ends up in at the end of Episode 3. Please forgive any mistakes and I hope you enjoy it.
Victoria Chase sat in her metallic blue BMW a few blocks away from Blackwell Academy as she waited for her target. She sighed as she adjusted her sunglasses and rubbed her left temple, it probably would've been smart to cut back at the party last night, given her plan for today, but the blonde didn't want anyone, especially her, getting suspicious. Victoria reached forward to turn down the volume of her music to near zero, she couldn't afford any distractions.
There you are "Mad Max"! The teen thought with a small victorious smirk as she caught sight of the other girl heading down the stairs. For the past month the girl had been acting strange, well stranger than normal. The hipster would often duck out early of Vortex Club gatherings on Saturday nights, if she would even bother showing up at all. Then on Sunday Max would completely disappear, making up various excuses for her lack of communication. It didn't seem to bother most of the others in the Vortex Club, except perhaps for Courtney, but Victoria had always been curious, and persistent.
It was especially the latter quality which had lead Victoria to decide to leave behind everything she had known in Seattle, her wealth and influence, and move to a small town on the Oregon coastline to attend Blackwell's prep school. While Blackwell recruited students from all over the west coast, she figured her chances were greater if the program took notice of her earlier. Victoria had nestled in with the Prescott family, the insufferable Rachel Amber, and on the eve of her rightful ascension to her place on the throne of Blackwell, Arcadia Bay's prodigal daughter had come home, and with naught but a few small, sweet smiles, and well placed words swept it from under her feet. The Seattleite had played the good little handmaiden for long enough, it was time for her Brutus moment. This lead to her currently acting as a hung-over stalker on a chilly November morning. Perhaps a small part of her felt bad about crushing one of the few seemingly genuinely kind people she had ever known, but Victoria stamped down those feelings unflinchingly fast.
The teen girl grunted and shook her head, "Pull it together Chase." She hissed out. Shaking her head she refocused, noticing that the bus and Max had pulled away and was a few blocks ahead. Victoria slowly started to follow the yellow transport, not minding the extra distance as it made it less likely that Max would recognize her car and wonder why she was driving with so much more caution and respect than usual. If she had to come to that bridge, Victoria hoped it would be with extra ammunition.
Tapping her manicured fingers on the steering after a while, what seemed like an unreasonable amount of time to the blonde, she noticed the brunette figure getting off of the bus. The Chase heiress smiled to herself, though now was the part where it got tricky, television made surveillance work look so simple.
Victoria parked her car just a short ways away from the bus stop, fortunately her target didn't seem to look back. Pulling out her binoculars she focused in on Max, Victoria murmured to herself "Ok Maxine, lets see what you've been hiding." After a couple blocks, the other girl walked up to a nice looking blue house, where she started fidgeting anxiously after ringing the door bell. The door opened revealing a middle aged man who greeted Max, causing their watcher to curse her inability to read lips. After the brief discussion the smiling man ushered Max into the house, his hand on her back.
Victoria's mouth hung open as she thought of the possibilities, her mind easily jumping to the worst, and to her most likely conclusion. A dark chuckle escaped the soon-to-be Queen of Blackwell, while her heart clenched in triumph, or so she told herself. "Oho, someone's been a naughty girl." Victoria hadn't figured the other girl as the type, but it seemed like she was seeing an admittedly attractive older man. He's no Mark Jefferson though. Her mind threw out snidely, perhaps it was a bit hypocritical of her, but at least her actions would lead to a furthering of her photographic career. Max? What would this give her save shame, and ruined reputation? Love? Victoria scoffed at the idea, and the indigestion it gave her. This had not really been what Victoria was expecting, but it was so much the better for her.
Her first thought when she had started to think about Max's disappearances was that she had been going to church with Kate Marsh. The two had been close recently as well, disturbingly so Victoria believed. She tried to warn Max away from the Christ Crusader, but the smaller girl had just given her a look filled with so many emotions, that Victoria could barely decipher other than disappointment, and walked away. What gave that girl the right? As her indignation flared up Victoria shook her head, none of that mattered now. Recently the heiress had cornered Kate and politely asked her where Max had been. She felt the echo of a warmth in her belly at the feeling of power as she recalled wide frightened brown eyes and whispers of ignorance, that Max had turned down her invitations on case of previous engagements. An interesting euphemism for fucking some guy. That poor nerd is going to be so devastated.
Victoria knew that she would need proof of her claims, otherwise she'd just appear like the jealous psycho bitch. Perhaps she could offer to keep the secret, in exchange for a quiet succession of power, but first things first. As the teen reached back for her camera bag movement at the door stilled her. That was fucking pa...thet...ic. As Victoria began to think disparagingly about the apparent bedroom prowess, or lack there of, she was stunned as a girl in a wheelchair who appeared slightly older than her and Max rolled out of the House. The target of Victoria's activities followed right after chatting animatedly with the crippled girl, as the man Victoria had assumed to be Max's lover waved good-bye before reentering the home.
Rebooting her mental processes took Victoria a couple minutes. If she was honest with herself, and the teen so rarely was, the girl would admit to being glad her assumption was wrong. But now she had more questions, so her mission was far from finished. Getting out of her bimmer with her camera, Victoria slammed the door with a bit more force than she had intended. Fortunately the two girls were far enough ahead of her and didn't seem to have turned around. Victoria noticed that Max seemed more enthusiastic with this girl, whoever she was, than she had for a while at Blackwell.
Walking frustratingly slowly, camera bag swinging by her side Victoria was glad she had chosen one of her more comfortable pairs of shoes as the duo in front of her seemed to be in no hurry to get to their destination, lost in their own little world. Their unknown follower bit her lip, before deciding to take the risk, pulling out her baby to take a few candid shots. As she thought back Victoria remembered hearing something about a car accident that had happened about a year before she arrived in Arcadia Bay, as was typical with small toons, people still were talking about it and the injured girl. What was her name? Kyla? Zoe? Regardless, Victoria wasn't interested in her as her connection to Max, they seemed too close for her to be some sort of charity case.
Eventually they stopped towards the end of the beach, on the lookout facing towards the lighthouse. Victoria cursed, this could make it harder to get close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation without being discovered, getting good camera angles would likely be difficult too. Sighing she was committed to this and Victoria Maribeth Chase never backed down once she set her mind to something. She would get atleast something out of this day.
Victoria began to kneel down focusing her lens on the couple, as fate conspired to give her a great shot. Max's eyes were shining with emotion, most guilt that Victoria recognized, as she placed a kiss on the forehead of the mystery wheelchair girl, who closed her eyes in an expression of bliss unaware of the click of a camera. For the brief moment the scene appeared in sight, Victoria felt choked up with emotion before pushing down the button. More uncomfortable at this display of intimacy than she had been at the idea of catching Max in a raunchy act with some old dude, Victoria decided that she had gotten what she could today, leaving the two in their own little world.