Saving Chloe

Saving Chloe (SC) is the fourth adult game set in the Elsaverse, and represents the end of the first story arc. It was publicly released on January 4, 2018 in HTML format and officially ported to Ren'Py in 2021, to be included in the Elsaverse Omnibus Vol.1 bundle that was released on August 5, 2021.

The story takes place a couple of weeks after the events depicted in Redemption for Jessika (2016) and Finding Miranda (2016), and runs in parallel with other titles like Darkness Falls (2018-2019) and the AAA (2018) novella. Saving Chloe answers many questions raised in previous titles, such as powers's origin, while showing that Chloe Reyes was actually the main protagonist of the saga since its inception. From a gaming perspective, SC represents a radical change from Tora Productions classical approach, getting rid of scores and creating a complex branching structure with several alternative endings, in order to allow players to end the saga the way they'd prefer.

Premise
The player takes on the role of Paul, a young lawyer whose love life has been a mess ever since Chloe's father, Morland, forbade him to keep seeing her, back in high school. More than ten years later, when a long-lost friend from those good old times shows up on his porch and suggests to get in touch again with Chloe, in order to use her to stop her evil father, Paul must decide whether he's ready to face his ghosts from the past and fight for his love. Does he trust this colorful group of women with supernatural powers... or maybe it's better to use his own power to try to save Chloe on his own? That said, and considering Chloe may no longer be the sweet girl he still pines for, what if the solution to his relationship issues has been around for a while, and he hasn't realized it just yet?

Canon Path Summary
The game starts with a scene in which Elsa and Xara are secretly observing Paul's dreams, trying to confirm he's the man they are looking for: Chloe's boyfriend on high school. When Paul wakes up that Friday morning, he finds his long-lost friend Miranda on his porch. Back in high school, they were Chloe's closest friends, before Morland threatened Paul with killing him if he didn't stop seeing his daughter. Miranda informs that Chloe is now working for Morland, and that the group Miranda is working with is trying to stop him, as he's responsible for the recent bombing at the Mayoral rally. To get to Morland, Miranda's plan is for Paul to contact Chloe again, as both girls are no longer friends either, and get some information out of her. Paul, who is still in love with Chloe and hasn't gotten over the shock of being forced to leave her because of Morland's threats, eventually accepts.

To find her, he uses his "Chloe-vision", a supernatural ability he discovered after high school, that allows him to focus his sight and see a purplish point of light in the direction where Chloe is. Obviously, he didn't tell Miranda any of this. Paul arrives at a coffee shop next to the building Chloe is in; when his former girlfriend comes down for a coffee, he strikes up a casual conversation with her, pretending that the meeting has been totally accidental. After briefly catching up on their lives, Paul offers to help her to get free from her abusive father, and Chloe tells him that, if he is really willing to do that, he should have lunch with her later that day; she then leaves in a hurry, as she is hiding from Morland.

Paul phones Miranda to tell her the news and they agree to meet at a gym in town, coincidentally the same one he attends for his self-defense lessons with Xara. That's how he meets Xara's Angels, the name given by the gym's owner to a group formed by Xara, Miranda, Elsa, Jessica Springfield and also Theresa, the waitress at the Delfinos restaurant. After the introductions, they ask him how has he managed to find Chloe so quickly. At first, Paul tries to hide his power, but Theresa tells him about her own, and Paul confesses. Xara defines him as a "Finder", and Paul is surprised when, for the first time, he sees his power working on other people besides Chloe, as he can see a color around Xara and Elsa. Much for the girls' annoyance, Xara doesn't explain why is that, despite apparently knowing the reason. Then Miranda tells Paul that, until recently, they had a mole called "YellowFever" within Morland's organization, but now that this mole is no longer an useful source, they decided to use Chloe instead to obtain information. Paul is surprised that they don't know the mole's real identity, as it seems obvious to him that it was Chloe herself. When he mentions why, Miranda is floored that she didn't made the connection. Paul agrees to try to bring Chloe to the gym without telling her anything about what is going on, so that she can confirm whether she was indeed YellowFever.

Next, Paul goes to his lunch appointment with Chloe, who tries to seduce him to help her deal with her father. But Paul assures Chloe that he wants to help her because he loves her, not in exchange for the sex she denied him when they were younger; embarrassed, Chloe decides to trust him and agrees to meet this mysterious group that, according to Paul, also wants to help her. When they arrive at the gym, though, Chloe feels betrayed by Paul, since the group is formed by several people she hurt, or tried to, while working for her father. However, she ends up confirming that she was the mole "YellowFever", and this confession makes Miranda leave the room, crying. Paul goes after her to confort his friend, and Miranda tells him that she feels horrible for holding such a grudge against Chloe, now that she realizes her old friend is actually a hero who was already trying to stop her father. While the two women talk things out, Paul returns to the others and learns that Morland has the power to foresee the consequences of his actions, but that his power does not work if Chloe intervenes in those actions: when she acts, the consequences are unpredictable for Morland, which makes her enormously valuable to fight him.

Paul then takes Chloe home. There, the girl gets a haircut to recover the look she had in high school, and they end up making love as if this was the first time for both of them. The next morning, Miranda shows up at their door with a plan to learn what exactly is Morland plotting, since Chloe only had the partial information regarding her own missions and does not know his overall plans. After placing a tracking beacon under Morland's limo, Paul manages to see Chloe's father and his bodyguard Crow, and this allows him to "tune in" his power to them. That afternoon, when he confirms they have left their mansion, Paul and Chloe go there to look for clues, as Paul will be able to detect when Morland is coming back. The couple manage to gather several evidences that indicate that Morland is trying to influence the mayoral elections so that a candidate, Anne Kruin, whom he controls because Crow is poisoning her with a substance of her creation, is elected Mayor. But in the basements of the building, used as dungeons, Paul also discovers the existence of a portal to another dimension.

Surprised by the fact that Xara has not told her group about it, Chloe explains that Morland, Crow and Xara all come from a parallel universe in which Morland was a king; bored on his throne, he devised a plan with his enemies to betray his people and open a portal that would allow him to travel to this world to enjoy another rise to the top, but keeping it always open in case things went wrong and he had to return. Xara, on the other hand, is an agent sent to bring him to their world's justice. As time moves faster on Earth, it seems that Morland and Crow do not age at all despite having been in Sangrive for more than thirty years; Chloe, being the daughter of a human woman, ages but more slowly than a normal human being; and since Elsa, who is also a descendant of someone from the other universe, ages at a human pace, they assume that her ancestor travelled to this world long ago (that ancestor is presumably Troi, the protagonist of the story Dream Master). The powers that are common in the other world are leaking into this one through the open portal, which is why Paul and more people from Sangrive have theirs, despite not being related to the other universe. Paul also learns that his power only works with people from that universe, and their descendants.

On Sunday morning, when Paul and Chloe get to the gym to meet the rest of the group, they find that the owner has been sedated and Xara is gone, kidnapped by Crow and Morland's son (and Chloe's brother), Charles. After verifying with Paul's power that Xara is still alive and probably kept in the dungeons of Morland's mansion, the group comes up with a plan to rescue her immediately. Paul and Chloe sneak back into the mansion and, using Miranda's boyfriend, Lucas, and other motocross riders as a distraction, they manage to get down to the dungeons, where they find Xara sedated. Paul phones Elsa and asks her to enter Xara's dreams; Elsa, who is fighting Morland's muscleman with the rest of the group outside the building, looks for a safe place to fall asleep and manages to wake Xara up. Xara then decides to take action, and runs with Paul and Chloe to catch Morland and Crow.

When they find them, and given that Chloe's presence prevents him from knowing for sure the consequences of his actions, Morland runs through a secret passageway to the portal room in the dungeons, while Crow, whose power is to create visual illusions, stays behind to fight against the same Xara she blinded some time ago. Paul and Chloe run after Morland and corner him in front of the portal; however, Chloe is unable to shoot him. When it seems that Morland is going to achieve his goal of fleeing back to his home world, Paul tackles him down and knocks him out, his punches born from the rage he feels for all the bad things Morland has done to his daughter. Chloe manages to stop her boyfriend before he beats Morland to death, and then Xara shows up carrying Crow's unconscious body. The blind woman says goodbye to Paul and Chloe, and leaves with her prisoners back to their world.

Meanwhile, the fight outside the mansion doesn't look good for the protagonists of the previous games. But, with Miranda apparently unable to find a solution despite her power, Jessica comes up with the idea of singing a lullaby to put everyone involved to sleep. Only Miranda, who is unable to sleep, and herself are left standing; although Charles manages to escape in a car.

Non-Canon Paths
Saving Chloe is structured in a branched way, with choices driving the player away from the canon path to explore different, non-canon paths; some of those alternatie paths are also branched. As authors state at the end of each path, players are encouraged to pick their favourite route, although further titles will be built from canon path for obvious continuity reasons.

Serena
After talking to Miranda in the first scene, players can choose to go to work instead of immediately starting to look for Chloe. In his office, Paul meets his co-worker Serena and tells her about the whole situation. Serena, a great friend of him since their college days, knows perfectly what Chloe still means for Paul, as she has seen him destroying all his relationships due to that unsolved issue from his past. But, while talking to her, Paul says that he's no longer in love with Chloe, but just angry with himself for the way he managed that situation with Morland. Then Serena confesses that she's not a lesbian, as Paul always believed: she actually loves him so much that never tried to tell him, as she thought Paul would have never chosen her over Chloe, and that's why she has only had physical relationships with women, as this lets her think she was being emotionally loyal to Paul. Shocked, Paul admits that he feels attracted to Serena too, but never took the step as he was sure she was gay. Finally knowing their true feelings for each other, Paul calls Miranda to tell her he's not going to look for Chloe, and starts a relationship with Serena on the spot; the game ends with them getting married.

Three
This path starts at Paul's office, when players get the option to tell Serena whether Paul is still in love with Chloe or just angry at himself. In this case, Paul says Chloe was much more than just a frustrated teenage crush, and Serena encourages him to go and look for her, without confessing her true feelings for him. Using his power, Paul arrives at Chloe's hideout, where a distrustful Chloe welcomes him pointing him with a gun. Paul manages to calm her, assuring Chloe he's not working for her father, and then they go out for a walk. While catching up, Paul mentions Serena's existence, and Chloe tells him about her miserable life; he then offers to run away with her, which Chloe accepts to do the next day, but not before meeting Serena for dinner. During that dinner, Chloe clearly sees that Serena loves Paul, so she feels it wouldn't be fair to run away with Paul, breaking Serena's heart. As a solution, she suggests a polyamorous relationship, which they decide to test right there by having a threesome. The results are more than satisfying, so the three of them end up running away together.