Save Bae and Bay

You decide to take matters into your own hands so you can romance Chloe and have a fun life. After all, you’ve had a crush on the blue-haired punk for several years, and you’re fairly sure she’s the reason you’ve always had a thing for girls with blue hair.

After thinking for a few minutes while pretending to pay attention to class, you try to come up with a plan that will let you keep the rewind power, stop the storm or at least most of it, put Jefferson away, and if all goes well, keep people from realizing that you're not really Max.

According to some Life is Strange fanfics you've read, the storm is caused by the timeline changing, and the intensity depends on how much is changed. An unimportant pencil moved half an inch to the left might cause a breeze if anything, while stopping a world war that would wipe out humanity would probably cause a storm powerful enough rip apart the planet. So, if you let things go normally, with small adjustments, you can save both Chloe and the town. That all depends on the theory being right, but it's good to have backup plans. After all, you'll be able to keep doing it until it all works out.

One course of action is to just let Nathan pull the trigger without killing Chloe. With less change to the timeline, the town should survive. After all, Chloe's **** isn't as much as an impact of Nathan shooting a gun, thus getting him arrested, thus leading to Jefferson getting arrested, thus leading to Kate not trying to jump off the roof, etc. As for the rewind power, you just have to follow the game's events up to the second bathroom scene where Max pulled the sprinkler.

That solves the Storm, Jefferson, and Chloe, and the rewind. As for your cover story, you have an idea, but it's not going to be easy. Between pretending to be Max for the rest of your life and creating a reason you're different, you know you can't impersonate Max forever, even with the rewind. But how do you excuse having a different personality and memories than Max? After a moment of thought, you wonder if faking amnesia could do the trick. Either a head injury or the trauma of Chloe getting shot could explain it. As for how you would go about this, you'll have to do some googling and rewinding after the bathroom to figure something out.

Now armed with an idea, you remember that Max took a selfie around this time. Considering that things might go south, it wouldn't hurt to have a photo as a failsafe, just in case. You grab Max's polaroid camera and hold it under the desk, pointing it at yourself. After a bit of trouble trying to figure out how it works, you press the button, filling your vision with a sudden flash of light and temporarily blinding you.

"Shh, I believe Max has taken what you kids call a 'selfie'… A dumb word for a wonderful photographic tradition. And Max... has a gift."

Just hearing his voice is enough to make you angry. The fact that this monster did such horrible things and isn't rotting in jail fills you with fury. But as much as you want to expose the monster with your foreknowledge and dramatic irony, it would raise the question of how you knew, and it wasn’t worth the risk with letting Nathan expose him being the far safer option.

If you want Jefferson to face justice, you're just going to have to wait a little bit longer.

Jefferson ended his short selfie lecture and looked back at you.

"Now, Max, since you've captured our interest and clearly want to join the conversation, can you please tell us the name of the process that gave birth to the first self-portraits?"

Here comes the hard part. 'Max' doesn't have amnesia yet, and while this ultimately won't matter after you first save Chloe and wake back up here, you still have to pretend long enough to get to the bathroom but not having played the game in several years isn't doing you any favors.

"U-um, they were... um..."

"You either know this or not, Max. Is there anybody here who knows their stuff?" Jefferson asked, impatiently. Oh, that smug bastard. The thought that he would end up rotting in jail was the only thing keeping you on track at this point.

Without skipping a beat, Victoria raised her hand and answered Jefferson.

"Louis Daguerre was a French painter who created 'daguerreotypes' a process that gave portraits a sharp reflective style, like a mirror." She then turned to you and said, "Now you're totally stuck in the Retro Zone. Sad face."

You bit your tongue to keep from giving ol' Viccy what for, thinking about how to improve your plan in silence. After a bit more posturing, the bell rang, and Jefferson said some nonsense about something that wasn't important enough for you to pay attention. Tired of waiting, you stuff your things in your bag and rush out of the classroom to the fated bathroom. You knew that originally Max took her time getting there, so you should have enough time to find the bathroom. Before you could leave, Jefferson reared his ugly head.

"I see you, Max Caulfield. Don't even think about leaving here until we talk about your entry."

Damn that snake. You couldn't rush out of here; Jefferson might keep you from missing Nathan and Chloe. You begrudgingly turn around and walk towards him. You pictured him in an orange jumpsuit sitting in a cell, and let the mental image soothe you.

"I'd never let one of photography's future stars avoid handing in her picture."

Oh yeah? you thought. Well, I'd never let crime's sickest slimeball avoid rotting in a cell.

"Uh, I don't think I have one," you replied.

"Given your selfie output, I'm sure you must have about a thousand pics by now?"

"Well... I still haven't found one that works."

"Max, don't wait too long. John Lennon once said that 'Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.' Go on now, don't let me stop you."

Believe me, Jeff the killer. I have no intentions whatsoever of letting you get in my way.

Not waiting to let him stop you again, you speed walk out the classroom to the hallway. As you look around, you can't help but regret not playing the game recently as you don't know where the bathroom is. You walk down the corridor and see a sign pointing towards it, then break out into a run and burst open the door, praying that you're not too late. Fortunately, the bathroom is empty of all life, with one exception. The exception that proved things were going great.

A small, blue butterfly flit through the open window, precisely on schedule. You follow it as it lands on a bucket next to a janitor's cleaning thing. You stare in awe of the creature's beauty, and wonder what it is, exactly. Some think that it's just a coincidence or motif and doesn't do anything. Others think it's a spirit animal that granted Max her powers. Either way, you're gonna follow the plot as best you can, and luckily the bathroom scene is far more memorable than where the bathroom is located. You reach into your bag and pull out the camera and take a picture. Being able to photo-jump back to this point in case things go south is going to be crucial.

Suddenly, the door to the bathroom opens. You quietly put the camera back in your bag and try to hide against the wall. This could be Nathan, and it was vital that he didn't see you, especially now. After a beat, you poke your head around the corner and confirm your suspicions. Nathan Prescott is pacing around the girl's bathroom muttering to himself. You pull your head back and try to keep quiet. This is it. Nathan is here and Chloe is on her way. This needs to go well the first time, or it'll end up being the last time. And you weren't going to test if you could rewind by catching a bullet and triggering a **** auto-rewind. You hear the door open again with Nathan asking the newcomer what they want, and then you hear Chloe's voice.

Chloe. She's here. It finally hits you what's about to happen. Chloe's gonna get shot. You already knew that, but it really hits you now. You hear your heart beating wildly in your ears, an intense feeling in your chest, momentarily bringing your attention back to your newly acquired bosom before you shake your head and try to focus, but it's in vain. Chloe is about to get shot. A bullet is about to rip through Chloe's flesh and kill her. You even know what she says just before Nathan shoots her. You recall she says...

"Get that gun away from me, psycho!" Chloe shouted, an obvious panic in her voice.

There's a deafening bang and you suddenly turn the corner without a thought, with a foreign need to save her clear in your mind. You reach out your hand, as if that could possibly stop a bullet from several feet away, but then it does. As Chloe falls to the ground and Nathan drops his gun, everything seemed to slow to a crawl before stopping and quickly reversing, reversing so fast that everything becomes undone in a fraction of a second before-

You awoke with a start, breathing quickly as you took in new surroundings yet again. You were back in the classroom. You were back! It worked! You let out a cheer for your success, but you accidentally knock your camera onto the floor in your excitement, destroying it. You felt a profound sense of sadness, though it feels unfamiliar, looking at the broken camera before an idea struck you. This would be a perfect chance to see if you can control your rewind powers. You reach your hand out and imagined time rewinding like how it did in the game. Before, you were motivated by the circumstances, so you're not really sure how to rewind. After a moment of time marching on normally, you decided to change tactics and focus on what it felt like when time rewound back in the bathroom.

As you call up the strange feeling, you couldn't help but think how difficult it was to describe how it worked. It's sort of like flexing a muscle, albeit a hypothetical and non-corporeal one, to move in a direction you never could've imagined before all this. It's somewhat similar to moving around, but only in that there's a sense of movement, or something like it. It reminds you about your favorite headcanon about Max's powers, that she's her own 'polydimensional universe'. Specifically, Max didn't move time itself but instead moves herself through time.

As you flexed that muscle that didn't exist, you were met with success. Everything slowed down, relatively speaking, and started to reverse. It didn't feel like you were moving the cosmos, more like you were retracing your steps. Moving through time, but not space. As you rewound back, the camera slowly brought itself back together opposite of how it broke before floating back onto the desk.

Satisfied, you break out into a grin. With your powers secure, it was time save both bae and bay. But now that you have all the time in the world, it's time to come up with a plan.

Quick author's note:

The Max headcanon I'm referring to in the second-to-last paragraph is from a story on ao3 called One Way Trip by novalounge. I highly recommend it. Other post-bae fics focus on Max and Chloe being happy together normally. This is that, but with the addition of badass time-travel shenanigans and superpowers. It's really fun.

Also, we won't get to the steamy stuff until Jefferson's taken care of, which will happen soon. Also, if anyone has any pointers for writing erotica (specifically from a woman's point of view), feel free to let me know. Any little bit would help.

EDIT: Some fixes and changes to set up future chapters.

EDIT: More fixes