Chapter 7 Dark Secret

Max and Chloe left the food court and went straight into the arcade. They spent some of their cash on tokens in order to play a game or two. Their first game that they played was a rail-shooting game "Time Crisis 4". Max was player one. Chloe was player two. The two of them pointed their gun controllers at screen shooting every enemy on screen. Eventually, it was game over for them and they decided not to waste any more tokens on the game and move on to another.

"Wowsers, I've never played such a video game with a shit load of shooting," said Max.

"Oh, give me a break Max," said Chloe. "We got to shoot some bottles with some fancy tricks and now your complaining about how violent video games are?"

"You ended up shooting yourself that time and I had to rewind a few times to get those tricks right."

"Right. We still got a few tokens to spend. What else should we play?"

"We can play air hockey or something."

"Max, look," Chloe gasped pointing out to something. "Guitar Hero!"

"Guitar Hero, Chloe? Do you even know how to play that?"

"Come on, Max. Rachel and I played it before and I kicked ass. Want to bet?"

"Why would I be betting on it?"

"Just to prove that your punk-rock cheerleader can actually rock."

"Okay, but that's gonna cost ya four tokens though."

Chloe inserted four tokens into the slot, picked up her guitar controller, and hit the start button. She scrolled down to pick a song to play and saw that her favorite punk rock group was on the list.

"Hey, look! 'All the Small Things' by Blink-182 is on the list. That's my jam!"

"I'm sure it is."

Chloe selected her song. Then had to select a difficulty setting from either easy, medium, hard, or expert.

"I bet I can complete this song on expert," Chloe claimed. "What do ya say?"

"You're move, Chloe," replied Max.

Chloe selected her difficulty. She was ready to rock. When the song started, Chloe hit her first note, then the next note after that, and then the next note after that, and so on. She didn't even miss one note on her first attempt. Was she really that good? Then the lyrics came on.

All the small things
True care truth brings
I'll take one lift
Your ride best trip
Always I know
You'll be at my show
Watching, waiting, commiserating

Say it ain't so, I will not go
Turn the lights off, carry me home
Na, na, na, na
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na

"Come, Max! Rock on!"

"Wowsers, Chloe! You kick ass!"

Late night, come home
Work sucks, I know
She left me roses by the stairs
Surprises let me know she cares

Say it ain't so, I will not go
Turn the lights off, carry me home
Na, na, na, na
Na, na, na, na, na, na, , na na, na, na, na

Max did a little air-guitar dance while her girlfriend played her song like there was no tomorrow. Chloe kicked even more ass at Guitar Hero than Max ever knew she could. Especially, at a very high difficulty setting as expert.

Say it ain't so, I will not go
Turn the lights off, carry me home
Keep your head still, I'll be your thrill
The night will go on, my little windmill

Say it ain't so, I will not go
Turn the lights off, carry me home
Keep your head still, I'll be your thrill
The night will go on,
The night will go on,
My little windmill

"Whoa!" Chloe had just beat her favorite song on a super high difficulty and the two of them laughed out loud. She had not missed one note on her song and was really hardcore at Guitar Hero.

"Oh, wowsers, Chloe! That did not just happen!"

"Never underestimate the irony of punk-rock nature! I'm hella fuckin' awesome!"

The two of them took a deep breath as Chloe put her guitar controller down. Then Chloe thought it was time to do something else.

"I think it's about time we do some shopping."

"Shopping? Already?"

"Hell yeah, already. I think it's time we get you a new style, Max. Just like mine."

"Haven't I already tried your style, before?"

"Well, you did try Rachel's which was the same as mine. But we can get you your own. Know any clothing stores where we can find you some?"

"The only place I know for sure that would have that style would probably be Hot Topic. We're gonna have to get to the other side of the mall, though."

"Then let's go there. Do we have enough cash?"

Max took out the money they borrowed from her parents from her purse to see how much they had left.

"We just might have enough for clothes."

"Good. Let's roll."

Upon walking through the crowd, there were hundreds of stores aisled throughout the mall. Max had nearly forgotten how it was like walking through a super-crowded area to get from store to store since she came back to Arcadia Bay. Max tried to remember where Hot Topic was located in the mall and they both had to take an escalator a couple times to get to the store.

Suddenly, Max could hear voices in her head. Of course, she would hear whispers whenever she used her rewind power, but this was different. She was hearing the voices of people crowding the mall.

"What the fuck is going on now? Why am I hearing things? Why do I hear everyone in the mall?"

Then Max's vision went monochrome and her eyes were glowing blue. Every person that she saw was colored orange and everything else went pure dark. It was like having heat vision from 'Predator' with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"What is this? I'm hearing things and now everything is going monochrome? What the fuck is this? Just when I thought my life couldn't get any stranger or weirder!"

"Max!"

Chloe had startled Max as she snapped out of it. Chloe's hand shook Max's shoulder before Max's vision returned to normal and looked Chloe in the eye.

"What the fuck, Max? You trying to bail on me or something? This place is hella crowded. What's wrong with you?"

Chloe had seen a nose bleed run through Max's nose.

"Oh my god, Max. Is that a nose bleed? Jesus, what's wrong Max? What is it?"

"Chloe, I can't really say," Max said whipping the blood with her finger.

"Max, you need to tell me. What's wrong. What's the matter?"

X/SQUARE - CONFESS

B/CIRCLE - PARTLY CONFESS

"I just have a headache and nosebleed. It's some kind of side effect from my powers."

"Well...just hang in there Max. I don't want to lose you in a crowd as I would lose you by dying. Come on. The store's straight ahead."

Max and Chloe made it to the store. Inside, they tried to find the right clothes for Max to wear in a punk-rock fashion so she could match Chloe's persona. Max looked through an aisle of t-shirts in the right fashion.

"So, if I were to dress like a punk-rock junkie, what would I where?"

Max scanned through every shirt in the aisle until she saw a shirt she liked. She grabbed a NIN shirt from the aisle.

"Nine Inch Nails. Great group. Not as good as Nirvana, but not as bad either."

Then, Max saw another shirt colored yellow with a logo on it that reminded her of a time traveling movie from the 80's and grabbed it, as well.

"Flux Capacitor. Where have I seen this before?"

Max went over to an aisle with sweatshirts carrying the t-shirts with her incase if she were to buy them.

"If I were to get a new sweatshirt, which one would make me look more punk-rock-ish."

Max scanned the aisle until she saw one that looked like the right style. It was dark blue with evil eye symbols inside a triangle detailed on the sleeves and backside on it. It had words under the evil eye symbol labeled on the backside.

"Don't look," Max read. "I just looked."

Max walked up to where Chloe was picking out her clothes. She stood in front of a mirror where she held two tank-tops and placed each of them in front of her body to see which one she liked more. There was a tank-top that was Nirvana themed with a smiley face, x's marked for eyes, and tongue sticking out. The other one had red camo with a big number 4 on it.

"What do you think, Max? Tough decision isn't it?"

"I think you'd look awesome in that Nirvana shirt."

"Yeah, I suppose. I'm gonna try both of these on in the dressing room. What did you pick out, Max?"

"An NIN shirt and a Flux Capacitor shirt."

"An NIN shirt and a Flux Capacitor shirt, huh? As much as NIN is hella amazeballs, you've got a flux capacitor for a heart and a time circuit for a brain. You'd be best suited with the shirt that makes all time travel possible."

"You sound like Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future."

"Doc Brown?"

"Doc Brown."

"Great Scott!"

They both laughed when Chloe said that in her Doc Brown impression.

"Well, Chloe, I guess I better try on my clothes, too. I'll be ready when you are."

Max entered the dressing room and into a stall. She looked at herself in the mirror and took her gray sweatshirt off to get changed.

"Okay, time to get punk-rocky."

A/X - PUT ON FLUX CAPACITOR SHIRT

"If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, your gonna see some serious shit."

A/X - PUT ON NIN SHIRT

"What that song by NIN? Hurt? Didn't Johnny Cash do cover for that song? I always thought it was him that originally performed that when it was really NIN.

A/X - PUT ON EVIL EYE SWEATSHIRT

When Max put on her new sweatshirt, she felt ringing in her ears and saw her nose bleeding in the mirror. Then something startled her. A shadow figure with glowing blue eyes and a glowing red hot sparkle in it's chest translucently flashed through Max's reflection. Suddenly, the lights blew out and the room went dark. Max gasped in horror. Then she was no longer in the room. No longer in her stall. No longer anywhere. She was now in a pitch dark area where her new shirt glowed purple and where she saw a tree sparking bolts of electricity. It almost reminded her of the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter.

"What the fuck is this? What's going on? Why am I here? What kind of place is this?"

The confounded photographer walked up slowly to where the tree was. In attempt to approaching the tree, she saw the spirit doe she had thought to be her spirit animal standing next to the tree. Then the blue butterfly, the same butterfly that took place of Chloe's pre-set death warrant, flew past Max flying up to the tree and landing on a branch. Out of nowhere, the shadow figure teleported behind Max with a very deep and vibrant voice.

"Max."

The voice startled Max as she swiftly turned to where it came from noticing she was back in the stall. The lights were on and she had snapped back to reality.

"Max," Chloe called from the stall next to Max's. "You okay? Something startle you?"

"I'm fine," lied Max. "It was just a spider I saw crawling on the ground."

"A spider, Max? The amazing Spider-Max is afraid of spiders?"

"Very funny, Chloe. Have you decided what your gonna get yet?"

"I think I'm just gonna take both these shirts if we can afford them. How 'bout you?"

"Um...I think I'll take everything, as well. Should have enough to pay for all our clothes. But, that may be all that we can spend for today."

"Whatever you say, Max. I'm ready when you are."

Max stared back into her reflection and thought about what she had been through thus far since before they left the house.

"Oh, Max. What else does it take for your life to be even more fucked up? I've gotta feeling it's about to get even worse. Much worse."

Note:

Fucked up shit, wasn't it? This season won't only have some action in it, it'll take on a much darker root. And all of it will be explained in future episodes. In case this chapter took too long, I got to play the new Doom and as Chloe would say, it was hella fucking gory!

The clothes that Max and Chloe picked out were based on Nexus mods designed for Life is Strange. Specifically, clothing mods made for the two of them while playing through the first season.

Until next time, stay tuned!