Alright, so this one I've been debating on where I should put it in my collection of stories. I'll tell you why and the whole concept behind it; well, after a short tale that is.
So, I've had this idea for a while and wanted to write it down. But after seeing a more recent fic of a similar nature I was forced to rethink it. To make it more original. More… mine. To those who have played Life is Strange knows that there is a whole plot of time travel, but would it surprise you to say that destiny is also explored? Think about it. Why else would the world be out to kill Chloe every chance it gets after Max rewinds time to save her? She is destined to die and the timeline keeps trying to correct itself by killing her, even if it means wiping out the entire town to do so. As you know, the canonical ending for Life is Strange is to let Chloe die by going back in time as the devs didn't seriously think people would choose the "save Chloe" ending (which is beyond selfish, by the way).
So, the prompt for this story:
What if Max was about to choose the "save Chloe" ending and Fate/Death decided to send their emissary to change her mind?
Sounds interesting, right? Well, let's get right down into it, shall we?
Disclaimer: I own nothing other than my copy of MS Word and my laptop. Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and Life is Strange belongs to Square Enix. See the foreword for the full disclaimer.
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Maxine Caulfield stood on the edge of the cliff that overlooked the small, coastal town of Arcadia Bay standing near the remains of the lighthouse that once proudly stood over the town bathing the sea with its guiding light. But now, it was a crumpled mess of stone and masonry. The town below was less than an hour away from being entirely annihilated by a superstorm that had never been seen before. It wasn't a hurricane as those weather patterns were very specific and had an eye miles wide. This was more like a massive F5 (if not larger) tornado that spewed seawater into the air which bathed the town in a briny downpour not unlike rain.
But this wasn't the first odd event to happen in Arcadia Bay the last week. Going in reverse order to this climax of destruction, there was a double moon seen in the sky during the Vortex Club's End of the World party, there was an unscheduled total eclipse that happened over the town and nowhere else, and a snowstorm in the middle of October. And that didn't include any of the odd behaviors that animals, both wild and domesticated, were having. And of course, that didn't include Max herself.
Max had seen her best friend Chloe Price die in a bathroom by Nathan Prescott, son of the wealthiest family in town. She had then traveled back in time to save Chloe by pulling a fire alarm. She had prevented the suicide of Kate Marsh by repeatedly traveling back in time to the point where it physically hurt her. She had saved Chloe's life multiple times by time traveling like preventing her from being shot by herself via ricochet, getting her foot out of a set of railroad tracks that they thought was a smart idea to walk on, and finally from her own teacher Mark Jefferson from shooting her in the head. But the oddities didn't end there. She traveled in between parallel timelines where things were vastly different from a quadriplegic Chloe begging for death from her best friend to reexperiencing the Dark Room over, and over, and over again. She had walked through MC Escher's wet dream of a nightmare to see some really weird stuff.
But now, she stood next to Chloe watching the entire town slowly getting swallowed up by the storm to end all storms. In her hands, she held the photo of the butterfly that she took the day that she 'awakened' her powers which brought on all of this. She could go back in time, like what she did with the old photo of her and Chloe when they were still in junior high to make sure that her biological father was late to the bus, therefore preventing his death but at the same time dooming Chloe to a life of paralysis where she begged for death. But at the same time, she could tear that photo up and let the town burn (metaphorically of course) and she could have Chloe all to herself. They were best friends, but after kissing her a few days ago, perhaps they could be more than that?
But Chloe snapped her out of her thoughts. "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…," Chloe tried to say the next word but started to cry, the briny rain obscuring the actual tears she shed.
"Fuck that!" Max shouted. "No… no way! You are my number one priority now. You are all that matters to me."
"I know. You proved that over and over again… even though I don't deserve it. I'm so selfish… not like my mom… Look what she had to give up and live through and she did. She deserves so much more than to be killed by a storm in a fucking diner. Even my step… father deserves her alive. There are so many more people in Arcadia Bay who should live… way more than me."
"Don't say that… I won't trade you."
"You're not trading me. Maybe you've just been delaying my real destiny… Look at how many times I've almost died or actually died around you. Look at what's happened to Arcadia Bay ever since you first saved me. I know I've been selfish, but for once I think I should accept my fate… our fate…"
"Chloe," Max begged her friend to think 'differently'.
"Max, you finally came back to me this week, and you did nothing but show your love and friendship. You made me smile and laugh like I haven't done in years. Wherever I end up after this… in whatever reality… all those moments between us were real, and they will always be ours. No matter what you choose, I know you will make the right decision."
Max exasperatedly gestured and replied, "Chloe… I can't make this choice…"
"No, Max," Chloe said as she grabbed her friend by the shoulders. "You're the only one who can."
Max looked down at the photo in Chloe's hand and stared at it. Her eyes continually shifted from the photo, to her, and to the town. She wanted her friend (and maybe lover) to live. She wanted Joyce and David to live. Sure, David was an ass, but in that alternate timeline where Chloe did die and she told him the truth (where he subsequently killed Jefferson) she could see the hurt and pain that Chloe's death had on him; he loved her as if she was his own daughter, even if he was a bit harsh. Joyce was like another mom to her and was the most loving and kindhearted woman she had ever met outside of her own mom. Warren was the epitome of what some would call a beta male, but he was still her friend and didn't deserve to die this way. Kate was still in the local hospital under observation as her parents lined up a more long-term residence closer to home; she didn't deserve to die this way after dodging death. The only people that deserved death were Jefferson and Nathan. Everyone else didn't deserve to die in this storm, even Victoria. In another life she was apparently a good person.
She looked down once more at the photo and took it, she started to tear at the thicker end of the Polaroid when a crash of lightning exploded next to them. The flash blinded them and Max stopped the tear, still leaving the image intact.
But, instead of exploding like they expected to, they heard a posh British voice complaining of all things as the rain stopped in place, the swirling mass of the tornado froze, and everything else just stopped. "Well, it took them long enough. So long that I was almost too late!" he complained as the flash disappeared to show a shaggy, black-haired man with green eyes walking towards them who looked to be in his early twenties. He was dressed like that fictional character John Constantine: trench coat, button-up shirt and loosened tie, slacks, and what looked like steel-toed leather dress shoes. He looked up towards the heavens and shouted, "Next time you want me to do your bidding on this short of a timeline, give me the TL;DR version!" He then mumbled, "Bloody immortals."
"Who are you?" Max asked carefully as she stood up from her once prone position on the ground from the lightning.
"The name's Harry Potter, today I'm Fate's bitch and lackey," he replied. "Although, normally I'm Death's lackey," he muttered as he pulled a pack of cigarettes out and lit one with not a lighter, but his middle finger after snapping with it. He took a deep puff and walked over to the now standing Chloe. "So, you're Chloe Price?" he asked rhetorically as he flicked off some of the ash. He eyed her up and down and added, "You don't look like much."
"The fuck you talking about you posh, British fuck?!" Chloe exclaimed. She went to throw a fist but not only did he dodge it without pause, but froze her in place. "What the-?"
"There's no call for that," he said as he walked around her. Almost appraising her. "What I meant was, you don't seem like it would be worth wiping out an entire town to kill you."
"The town….?" Max said trying to mull over that statement. "You! You're the one that caused this storm!"
"Do you have ears, kid? I said I'm Fate and Death's lackey."
"And bitch," Chloe quipped trying to get some kind of upper hand.
"That's enough out of you," he said. "Don't make me zip your mouth up like a zipper because trust me, I can and will do it if you keep this up."
"What do you want?" Max asked finally.
"Finally, we get the right question," he said as he took another puff. "You see, I'm a bit of a freelance agent who works with certain people to do certain tasks that they can't directly intervene with. A third-party outsource job, if you will."
"What do you mean?" Max asks.
"You see, there are these… beings that live outside our reality, that look down here like it's a bloody sitcom. Let's just call them… gods for the sake of time and ease of understanding."
"Gods?" Chloe asked. "As in the Lord God Almighty?"
"Little 'g' gods, although he is one of them. He created you and me, but he has managers as he has other things to worry about without having to micromanage you guys. He pays quite well, and the benefits are wonderful." He then muttered as he tapped his chin, "I should see about getting a part-time gig with him."
"What do gods have to do with this?" Chloe interrupted that line of thinking.
"Remember what I said? These beings see your lives like an unscripted sitcom in which they add the laugh tracks in post. Sometimes, these beings get bored and decide to bestow… gifts upon certain people to both mess with them and to be entertained. Why do you think there are such things as psychics and magicians? Their antics amuse these beings. But sometimes these beings to a little too far and we end up with something like this."
"What are you talking about?"
Harry could only sigh. This girl just didn't listen. "In this case, Chronos, otherwise known as the Greek god of time, decided he was bored and bestowed the ability to travel through time to your young friend Maxine. They did expect you to get into hijinks and allowed it. But you see, she trod into another two entities' territory without realizing it. Fate and Death."
"Fate and Death?" Max asked, wanting a clearer explanation.
"Do they not teach you to critically think in school anymore?" Harry sighed. "Fate and Death work hand-in-hand with one another. All living things must die as Death declares, keeping the natural order in line. Fate decides WHEN they die. You see, several days ago your friend Chloe was destined to die on that day." He then directly looked at Max. "Then you decided to go back in time and save your friend. An admirable action, but as you can see it has had consequences. Your friend is overdue with meeting with Saint Peter, Charon, or whatever you believe in. Death has been plotting how to do that; why else would you keep dying, Chloe?"
"Death has been actively trying to kill me?" Chloe squeaked out as she now realized that she was no longer frozen.
"It doesn't take much for these beings to bend reality to suit their purposes, like changing lines of code to get a different result in a video game. There are some who can bend it to a startling scary degree, like Nyarko-chan. But Death and Fate have the last word on living beings."
"Nyarko-chan?" Max repeated. Then after a moment of thought, it came to her. "Nyarlathotep!"
"What?" Chloe asked, still reeling from the realization that she was marked for death BY Death.
"The Crawling Chaos! One of H. P. Lovecraft's creations. It's real?!"
"She doesn't like being called an 'it', and Lovecraft was only given a small snippet of what she really is and misrepresented her in his tales," Harry replied.
"Misrepresented?" Max asked.
"Yeah. She's a trickster and a bit of a pervert, but fun to be around. Throws wild house parties. Half of the party is the house itself. MC Escher's wet dream became a reality. I can still remember the time we killed a bunch of Eldritch horrors with only a crowbar. Good times, good times," Harry remembered with mirth. "But back to the topic of discussion. You ever see those Final Destination movies?" Both of them shook their heads 'no'. "Shame. Well, I'll explain it anyway as it works the same way essentially. Death was manipulating reality to ensure that you died. When you got stuck in that railroad track it was because she enlarged the gap just long enough for you to slip in it. She carefully manipulated the bullet ricochet so that it would hit a vital organ or blood vessel once it penetrated your chest. You as a quadriplegic pleading for an assisted suicide from your bestie when she visited that reality."
"What?" Chloe asked.
"Oh, you didn't tell her?" Harry asked Max. She ashamedly looked away. "Well, young Max here decided to do you a solid and went back in time to the day that good old Billy died, you know, your biological father. Said action created a parallel reality. But her intervention in keeping him from leaving another hour caused him to survive."
"That's great!" Chloe said with excitement. "But, why isn't he alive then if she saved him?" She was obviously confused.
"That's because she changed it back," Harry admitted.
"WHAT?!" she screeched at Max. "You allowed Will- Dad to die!?"
"I had to!" Max shouted back, tears in her eyes. This time there wasn't a storm of brine to hide them. "Because… Because…"
"Because of what?"
Max finally collapsed to her knees and more tears were shed. "You were in an accident on your sixteenth birthday."
"Ok, and?"
"You were left little more than a moving head on a paralyzed body." Chloe's eyes slowly widened. "When I visited you and learned about the accident I was shocked, but you were still alive. William and Joyce were still together and David was still a security guard but nowhere near Joyce. As I was about to leave you asked me- No, begged me- to kill you with an overdose."
"What?" Chloe asked as tears ran down her cheeks. "I asked you… to… kill me?"
Max nodded, unable to say the actual words. Harry leaned down to her so that he was a mere inch from her ear. "Do you want to know what she did?" he asked, egging her on. She looked at Max. "Well, go ahead and ask her."
Chloe swallowed what felt like bile and asked, "What did you do?"
"I walked over to the knob that controlled the flow of drugs," she recounted as if confessing to a murder. "You looked at me with approval and nodded. I started to turn the knob but stopped. I couldn't. I just couldn't do it! I couldn't just kill you!" she cried. She stood up, the photo still in her hands, the bottom still slightly torn. "I ran out and you were cursing me. Cursing that I wouldn't end your life of misery. So, I went back and let everything happen as it did before. William died and you weren't paralyzed anymore. I couldn't bear to lose you again."
Chloe walked over and hugged Max. "It's alright," she tried to comfort her friend. "If I were in the same situation I would have had just as a difficult time making a decision as tough as that."
Max looked down at the photo once more and gripped it as if she was going to tear it right then and now. "Up, up, up," Harry said, getting her to stop. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Well, you're not me," Max retorted.
"Indeed, I'm not. You think that you are unassailable in your convictions, but consider the consequences and cost of your decision," Harry ominously said.
"Consequences?" Chloe asked.
"To have fallen so far and learned nothing," he mused towards Max, "that is your greatest failure. Everything that you have done has had consequences. What's to say that this decision won't have any either?" During the entirety of Max's confession, Harry had been laying salt down on the ground. He lit a lighter that he didn't have before and dropped it into the salt pile. Fire immediately leaped forth around them creating a ring of fire, Harry too was inside it. The flames went higher until it went over both of their heads. "I have been gifted foresight into the events that will come to pass if you continue with that decision." Images began to appear in the flames.
Max recognized this image, it was of her house on her street. Only, it was a smoking crater. "You recognize this place? Good. Tomorrow, you will go towards your parents' house and will stay there for a day. You leave just as an explosion from a gas main wipes out the entire street killing not only your parents, Maxine, but all the neighbors in a three-block radius; not just that but many firefighters will die to save as many people as possible. Hundreds will die because of Chloe." The images shifted to a completely devastated Seattle. It was a frozen wasteland. "You will then head to Seattle where you will stay for a few days to mourn your losses. A record freak snowstorm will move in which will leave the entire city under seven feet of snow. No one will be able to get out for food. No one will be able to get water because of frozen pipes. Power will die after power lines weighed down by snow collapse and countless thousands will die of hypothermia, starvation, and dehydration; men, women, and children alike. Those that survive will do so because of… unsavory methods and means."
This left a sick feeling in Chloe's stomach. Yet once more the images shift to Los Angeles, they could tell because of the Hollywood sign, but this Los Angeles looked like the largest steamroller had just paved the city over. Harry continued on, "After your icy encounter which you barely escape, you head to Los Angeles. You aren't there for more than two days before the largest, world record earthquake flattens the entire city. Thank to Max, you barely miss it and are on the outskirts of town when it happens. Good for you and all, but millions are left injured, dead, and homeless." The image died away and it was replaced with a planet covered in what looked like snow, but it wasn't. It was ash. In the middle of Yellowstone was the infamous supervolcano caldera foaming at the 'mouth' with magma that scientists have been warning for years was overdue to blow its load, no pun intended. "Eventually, Death gets sick and tired of your shit and detonates the Yellowstone supervolcano killing tens of millions instantly or within hours. The ash is close enough to you that both of you die. The ash then covers the entire planet and causes another Ice Age causing even more to die leaving the human race with only a fraction of its population mostly located on the Equator." The flames die down and all that is left is a smoldering pile of salt. "Congratulations, you're the biggest mass killer since Hitler and a planet devastated all because you couldn't let your friend die like she was destined to." He leaned closer to Max, "How will you be able to live with death on this scale on your conscience?" He took a few steps away, looking at the devastation down below. "Genocide of the human race all because you have a lady boner for your friend."
"The human race-," Chloe trailed in shock.
"-extinct?" Max finished just as shocked.
"Yep," Harry confirmed. He turned around to face the girls. "And all you have to do is go back in time and allow her to die the day she was destined to," he specifically addressed Max.
"How will I know that Jefferson will face justice for what he's done to both Kate and Amber and all the other girls?" Max asked.
"Yeah, what about that sleazeball?" Chloe asked.
Harry sighed. "After you die Nathan will be taken into custody where his father can't really make a dead body disappear, especially with so many witnesses, so he makes his son take a plea deal and rats Jefferson out. He still gets five years in a minimum-security prison where he becomes Bubba's new prison bitch. The police raid what you've called the 'Dark Room' and arrest Jefferson on murder, abduction, and photographing explicit images of minors. He gets a life sentence for the murder and images alone but doesn't last long. After all, prisons, especially federal ones, aren't too kind to kiddie diddlers."
Chloe turned to Max and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Max, you have to go back and let me die," Chloe said with determination she hadn't had in a long time.
"B-but, I can't stand to lose you, not again," Max feebly replied.
Chloe slapped Max on the cheek hard enough to leave a red mark. "Max, pull your head out of your ass!" she yelled, shocking her friend. "Listen to me. I want you to let me die. I will not have the blood of the innocent on my hands because I was selfish. Do you seriously want to be known as the girl who doomed the human race?"
Max looked down, ashamed at what she was seriously thinking. "No."
"Take that picture, go back, and let me die," she ordered Max like David used to do to her. She then cupped her friend's cheek. "Max, I want you to know that this last week was wonderful. I got to have one last Scooby-Doo adventure with you. Thank you, for everything," she said right before kissing Max in what some of the more perverted mindset would consider 'hot'. When they parted Chloe said, "Now, go on Super Max, use those superpowers to save the world."
Max took the photo in both hands and focused on it. One moment she was there, the next, she was gone. Harry blinked and instead of a chaotic landscape, he saw that it was a bright, sunny day. He dropped the cigarette into the ground and snuffed it out. "So, she did choose right after all," he commented to the air next to him. He himself vanished from the cliffside and appeared in the realm of Equinox, Death's domain which Harry couldn't pronounce, hence Equinox.
He walked down the gray path that separated two sides of a massive, never-ending grove of fruit trees. On one side it was dark and the trees there glowed like ghosts in a graveyard, all transparent like ghosts were. On the other side was bright like a midsummer's day where there were fruit trees that looked healthy. As he walked down the path he saw fruits disappearing from the healthy trees and reappearing on the ghostly trees as ghosts themselves. This was the physical representation of life and death happening on one specific plane of existence, in this case, it was the one in which our certain time traveler lived in.
As he walked, he felt a presence next to him. He didn't look but said, "Was it really necessary to show them a false future?"
"No," an etheric female's voice replied. "But it worked, didn't it?"
"Yes, it did. I should have known it was a fake, you wouldn't stand for that much death all at once. It would cause you too much bothersome work," Harry jabbed.
"Watch it," the ethereal female prodded back.
"So, it's all over then?" Harry asked.
"Yes. Chronos has revoked her ability to time travel, therefore, preventing her from affecting both Fate and Death." They walked a bit further before a manila folder was shoved into his hands. "I have another assignment for you."
"When don't you?" he replied as he opened it.
The end.
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There we go, now wasn't that an interesting one-shot? I certainly thought so. It was fun writing this one as I got it done in a day. Part of the reason was that I had this floating around for a while in my mind. Now if only I could channel that towards other projects, am I right?
In this one-shot, I had a few references. I'm not going to number them as I'll leave them as a little Easter Egg hunt for you guys. One was from "Hayore! Nyarko-san", an anime that I recommend; at the same time, it was a reference towards Quatermass's "It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)" (id: 12748842), a read that I do recommend for the lulz, it's quite good. The second was a portion of Valkorian's speech to the Outlander about why he needs to take the Eternal Throne. The third was Kreia's talking down speech to the Jedi Council from KOTOR 2, by the way, great game, go play it. The fourth and final reference was to what Mutahar at SomeOrdinayGamers used to put in his warning at the beginning of his Deep Web exploration series about not wanting to be Bubba's roommate. Why he never kept that, I will never know; it was funny.
But that's all I have for you this time. Let me know what you thought about it in the reviews. I'll see you guys next time in whatever I do next.
