The Matrix Rewinds is a Life Is Strange/The Matrix Crossover fanfic by Shisumo (the author of Storm on the Horizon) that can be read here
on Archive of Our Own.
Rachel Amber was drugged and captured by Nathan Prescott, only for a group of fashionable teens with strange abilities to come in and save her.
Six months later, Chloe Price has been searching for Rachel with no hope of finding her. One day, she receives unusual texts that promise to give her answers. They bring her and new companion Kate Marsh to her childhood friend Max Caulfield, now sporting fashionable black attire and superhuman abilities, and things just get weirder from there.
Warning: spoilers from the source material will be unmarked.
The Matrix Rewinds provides examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: While Max Caulfield in the game was a fragile waif who happened to develop the Time Rewind Mechanic without explanation, here she's the current iteration of the One, with all the martial arts mastery and unique abilities within the Matrix that her predecessor Neo possessed in addition to her time powers.
- Adaptational Explanation: Numerous details of the original Life Is Strange that were never actually explained (be they due to deliberate ambiguity or just poor planning on the developers' part) are given proper grounding in the world of the Matrix. Arcadia Bay's various inexplicable details are revealed to be features of its design meant to keep its inhabitants from seeing through the lies and becoming red-pilled, while Max's Time Rewind Mechanic is stated to be an extension of her powers as the One. It applies both ways when Alex Chen, now known as Aura, makes her debut; not only are her empathy powers tied to her having been one of the Oracle's wards, but the latter group are stated to be almost Ones, their abilities no more or less than side effects of whatever the Matrix does to recreate the One.
- Adaptational Heroism: In canon, Courtney Wagner was little more than Victoria Chase's Beta Bitch with hints of Hidden Depths that Max could bring out. Here, she's nothing but kind and friendly to Chloe and Kate when they're freed from the Matrix, even explaining that her cruel personality in Arcadia Bay was just an act as part of her cover, and she uses her downloaded knowledge and skills to serve as the Chrysalis crew's medic.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- While Mark Jefferson and Nathan (and Sean) Prescott were already horrible people in canon, here they are programs that help run Arcadia Bay, New Zion knowing Jefferson as "The Artist" who actually designed the prison in the first place.
- While David Madsen was an abusive jerkass and a paranoid Control Freak, he still wanted to be a good stepfather to Chloe and meant well as far as everyone's safety was concerned, even if he was terrible at expressing or achieving either goal. Here, it's revealed that he's a program, the Arcadia Bay equivalent of an Agent, that would kill the red-pills on sight given the chance.
- Alternate Continuity: In this version of The Matrix, after the events of Revolutions, there was an uneasy peace between Zion and the machines for five years, but it was ruined by the mass defection of programs who sympathized with humanity, leaving only the evil programs in charge. The story begins five years after the war broke out again, with the humans having moved to New Zion and several characters who were killed off between Revolutions and Resurrections, particularly Morpheus, being still alive. Arcadia Bay is a smaller version of the Matrix created as a prison for all those deemed most likely to rebel against the system and become red-pills, filled with deliberate inconsistencies to keep any of its inhabitants from realizing the false nature of their reality.
- Ascended Extra: Alyssa Anderson, Stella Hill, and Courtney Wagner were all minor characters from the first game. Here they're red-pills — Manic, Astra, and Elle respectively — posing as Blackwell students to help Max/Noir undermine the Arcadia Bay program.
- Big Damn Heroes: Max/Noir makes her debut in this story by appearing out of nowhere in the Dark Room to engage Nathan in a short but ferocious duel, knocking him out before he can harm Rachel, with the rest of her crew following her inside to help with the cleanup job.
- Brutal Honesty: When the Oracle finally appears, she gives the usual mixture of cryptic advice and serious warnings, but she pulls no punches in telling Victoria that she is no one special, has no grand destiny to change the world, and needs to get over herself before she causes terrible harm to anyone else.
- Composite Character: The homeless woman found behind the Two Whales in the original Life Is Strange appears in Chapter Thirteen and is revealed to be the latest incarnation of the Oracle, with Samuel the groundskeeper acting as her guardian.
- Continuity Nod:
- Max/Noir's texts to get Chloe's attention refer to Kate's pet bunny, Alice, in a nod to Morpheus's "follow the white rabbit" message to Neo from the first movie.
- Rachel's red-pill name, Prospera, is a nod to the role she played in The Tempest during the events of Before the Storm, which are indicated in Chapter Four to have still happened to some extent.
- When an Agent arrives to fight the Chrysalis crew as they're trying to extract Victoria, he refers to Alyssa/Manic as "Miss Anderson" much like how Smith always called Neo "Mr. Anderson". Noir even wryly lampshades this, likely having heard the story from Morpheus.
- False Friend: In a rare heroic version, Victoria's Beta Bitch friend Courtney (who took the name Elle after unplugging) has only taken on the role as part of her cover.
- Gaslighting: While the machines controlling Arcadia Bay regularly engage in this to keep their prisoners compliant, poor Kate gets hit with it hard. It turns out the infamous video of her at the Vortex Club party was faked to not only cover up Nathan and Jefferson drugging and kidnapping her, but also drive away any allies she may have had and leave her despondent enough to commit suicide. When Noir and Elle later infiltrate Blackwell in an attempt to extract Victoria, they learn that the machines have faked Kate's and Chloe's deaths to cover for their escape.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: After coming clean about her feelings for Chloe, Max/Noir offers to step back and let her be with Rachel/Prospera if she doesn't want to share; by contrast, Prospera refuses to just resume where she and Chloe left off, making it clear that she wants them all to be together, but she won't break up with Noir for Chloe's sake, claiming that Noir getting the support she needs to be the One is more important. Ultimately defied by Chloe, who admits to loving both women and agrees to work things out.
- Mythology Gag:
- Though this story takes place in an Alternate Continuity from The Matrix Resurrections, it does feature Bots and the defection of machines sympathetic to humans in the wake of Neo's sacrifice to stop Smith and end the war; a few of the latter serve aboard the Chrysalis alongside their human crewmates.
- Four of the True Colors cast — Eleanor (Lotus) and Riley Lethe (Gantry), Ryan Lucan (Birdcall), and of course Alex Chen (Aura) — appear in Chapter Eleven when the rescued Victoria is transferred to their ship, the Typhon (itself a nod to the corrupt mining company from that game). Alex/Aura is also revealed to be one of the Oracle's former wards, here explained as children who developed special Matrix abilities due to the machines' efforts to keep recreating the One, hence her empathy powers, which have allowed her to help Max/Noir cope with the pressures of her duty.
- Polyamory: Evidently, romantic/sexual relationships between three people are more commonplace in New Zion, hence Rachel/Prospera inviting Chloe to join her and Max/Noir's relationship as a compromise. Chloe struggles to process her feelings of anger and betrayal for a while, but agrees to work it out after clearing the air with Noir.
- "Rashomon"-Style: People who live in Arcadia Bay routinely have their memories altered as part of the illusion it casts over its residents, often making them think they've always lived there or erasing memories of the red-pill's presence and replacing them with mundane explanations. This is also one reason why Rachel/Prospera refuses to pick up where she and Chloe left off since they last saw each other; their memories of themselves and each other might not match, so they may as well not know each other at all.
- Refuge in Audacity: While the Matrix was meant to be a perfect prison, which made its flaws and inconsistencies more noticeable to potential red-pills, one of the more insidious aspects of Arcadia Bay is that it has nothing but flaws by design. Humans unfortunate enough to be there are surrounded by logical inconsistencies (a limited age demographic, gaps in their memories, timetables that make no sense) so that when something genuinely unusual happens, they're less likely to notice.
- Serial Killer: The Prescotts are described as such by Raven's crew, being deviant programs with psychotic dispositions making them too warped for their fellow machines; they were removed from the Matrix and used to help operate Arcadia Bay.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- In canon, Rachel was killed by Mark Jefferson and most of the first game's plot is Chloe and Max trying to find her. Here, in the first chapter, she's rescued by Max/Noir and an inactive Bot with her likeness is used to fake her death.
- While Chloe's father William died in a car accident in canon, here he was freed from the Matrix and joined New Zion as Raven, captain of the Chrysalis, his death faked by the machines to keep up the illusion.
- Morpheus died in the destruction of Zion between the events of The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Resurrections. Here, he's alive and well alongside Niobe as a member of the high council in New Zion.
- Superpower Lottery: Being the One, Max Caulfield, now going by Noir (short for "NoirAngel", though she dislikes that as much as she does "Maxine"), has all of the Physical God abilities unique to her along with her canon counterpart's Time Rewind Mechanic, which no other iterations of the One ever had. It's explained here as a form of Neo's ability to read and alter the Matrix's code, specifically tied to its universal clock; notably, Noir has yet to develop the full version of that ability, nor can she fly or stop bullets yet. In Chapter Eleven, she starts being able to sense the machines in the real world just as Neo could at the end of Reloaded, using it to retrieve Victoria before they're caught.
- Tailor-Made Prison: While the Matrix was created by the Architect as a method of keeping the majority of blue-pilled humans in a dream state, Arcadia Bay is a specialized version created by the Artist (implied to be Mark Jefferson) to contain people whose psychological profile makes them most likely to become red-pills, separating them from the rest of the population.
- That Man Is Dead: In keeping with the tradition of choosing a new name after being unplugged from the Matrix to represent your new lease on life, Prospera refuses to answer to Rachel Amber anymore, considering that girl to be dead. By contrast, Noir doesn't mind still being called Max Caulfield despite thinking of herself by her new name.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: Chloe is less than amused that the Cyberpunk hellhole she wakes up in all centers around a narrative of The Chosen One everyone believes in, let alone that her childhood friend is the One. Rachel/Prospera points out how it was created by the machines in the first place as a Xanatos Gambit to eliminate the problem residents, only for Neo's Heroic Sacrifice to change the game and leave the machines more divided than ever.
