Chapter Text
It takes place in a vintage alternate world known as the Nowhere. Children are suddenly transported there in the dead of night. They will eventually either die or become a monster. Some will be collected by The Ferryman and taken to The Maw, others manage to evade him. All of this is the Flesh Walls doing, using The Transmission to carry out its goals. Even the landscape has been warped by The Transmission, becoming large like most of the monsters who roam it. (So the kids are regular sized.) It used to be like our world, until The Transmission corrupted it and its residents. Eventually it ran out of victims, thus the kidnappings.
Enter Six. Six has amnesia, and has no memory of her life before. But she knows this isn't home, and is determined to find a way back.
The first chapter is the DLC. Six replaces RK. But at the end, instead of being turned into a nome, The Lady tries to separate her soul from her body. However she only succeeds in separating a fragment of her soul. This fragment of her soul becomes Dark Six. (The Glitching Remains and Shadow Kids aka Masked Remains were also created from fragments of children's souls, although those children are usually long dead.) Because she is missing a piece of her soul, she experiences extreme bouts of hunger that worsen over time. (The reason she ate the Nome is because her hunger had worsened to the point that only something living could satiate it. Not that she didn't feel guilty.) In the ending scene, instead of finding a sausage, she finds a lighter.
The second chapter is Little Nightmares 1. It is the exact same, no changes. (She was brought to the starting point by the Nomes after she passed out.)
The third chapter is Little Nightmares 2. (Six ended up in The Wilderness after accidentally teleporting through the tv on the shore where the boat dropped her off.) Six takes Mono's place, and Mono takes Six's place. (The reason she decides to help him is because unlike in The Maw, where she had to focus on escaping, this was an ideal moment to team up.) Instead of the Six finding her raincoat scene, it's Mono finding his paper bag. (He wasn't wearing it in the beginning. Without the bag he looks like Runaway Kid in Mono's clothes.) Mono's Glitching Remains lead her to the tower, so she can free him. Instead of taking off the hat during The Thin Man death scene, Six pulls down her hood. Monster Mono looks like Monster Six but with Mono's clothes. The reason the room contains stuff from The Maw is because The Transmission was taunting Six. Six defeats Monster Mono, but instead of him returning to normal, he dies. (She had to kill him as it was the only way to save them both.) Six escapes the tower. Cue secret ending scene. When Six is thrown out of the tv during this scene, her hood falls back over her head. Dark Six turns toward the picture of The Maw, indicating where she came from. Her hunger, which had been satisfied the entire time because she had eaten The Lady, returns.
Also, the girl in the portrait is not The Lady's daughter. Rather she is a random child who became The Lady's temporary favorite; a pet. It's similar to Mono and The Hunter, being viewed as merely a pet. (He escaped because he knew he would be killed the moment The Hunter got tired of him.)
The Shadow Kids are the soul fragments of past favorites of The Lady (who she would kill after they were "disobedient"), which is why they act and look different than the other Glitched Remains.
The picture of a girl in a raincoat is a picture of a different kid, a sheet covering it signifying their loss of favor. (The headless statues are also of past favorites, destroyed in a fit of rage.)
Oh, and the piece of a dress that looks like Flashlight Girl's, the kid in the cage that looks like her, and the Nome shadow that looks like her were from different kids, she was killed by the Leeches.
The Nomes were runaway children who weren't strong enough to resist The Transmission.
The Transmission tried turning Six but she was able to not only resist it but traverse it, due to The Lady's powers. Mono was also able to resist it for the most part, only turning once trapped inside The Signal Tower, which made it harder to do so.
Six had killed The Lady to free herself and all of the other children trapped on The Maw (including the Nomes). But most of the kids on The Maw had already given up. Six was in a trance when she first gained and used The Lady's powers, and while by the time she snapped out of it it was too late and she was already on The Ferry, she still wouldn't have managed to save all of them had she actually snapped out of it in time. They had already accepted their fate. Opening their cages wasn't going to change that.
The Thin Man works for The Flesh Walls. (He is also not Mono.)
Six knows all of this, and pieces it together throughout the story.
Six named the monsters. The only one she didn't name was Mono, as they told each other their name and age (9 for Six and 10 for Mono) in between the beach scene and the building scene. (Watch the gameplay, you'll understand what I mean.)
Six has a very similar personality to Ellie. She's a chaotic, violent, feral gay who cusses a lot.
Also she's autistic because I like neurodivergent characters and no one can stop me.
Oh and she's ambidextrous.
The fourth chapter is Little Nightmares 3. Six replaces Alone, save for the entering the mirror scenes. She meets Low after she wakes up next to the broken mirror, with him approaching her similar to how she approached Mono. (After the ending cutscene, she satisfied her hunger with an apple. She was then lured to the mirror and transported to the starting point.) She pulls out a map of The Nowhere, marking the locations of the mirrors within The Spiral leading to the center and that they might be the key. The map is one of the pieces of paper Six found in the bottles on The Maw. She finds the wrench sticking up right outside the crumbling brick wall she has to break down. (The wrench just kinda disappears when she stores it because video game logic.)
She feeds her hunger during time skips, to which you can hear her eating off-screen. The first time happened on screen, in the secret room in the elevator. Six satisfies her hunger with a fish, as you can eat a fish in the original Little Nightmares. Meanwhile Low reconciles with the crow he scared. (He has befriended the crows and ravens to the point they will defend him.)
Low and Six have a shared dream of Low in the padded room. While Low is passed out, Six feeds her hunger with a beetle.
(Low gets pissed at the broken mirror because he wanted to get out of there as soon as possible and now they have to find another way out. He has seen enough bro is TIRED.)
They introduce themselves on the hot air balloon, with Low telling her that he had been in The Nowhere for about a year, making him 11, after which Six has another bout of hunger. She quickly whispers into Low's ear what this hunger was and what had caused it, right before they crash. Once again she wakes up before Low after their shared dream and eats a mutated moth.
During the blackout that leads into the bed next to the therapist chair, Six has her final bout of hunger in the sequence. She eats a trapped nurse. (Insert that one scene where Six jumps a bully.)
The mirror crushed by The Hypnotist wasn't the real one but an illusion, which Low caught onto.
In the final dream, Six suddenly appearing in place of the doll (which still looks like Alone), represents how Six is the companion Low had been hoping for during the long year he wandered alone. A message to them both to stick together. (Honestly his dreams are more like actual dreams, a combination of what lies ahead and memories and feelings, meanwhile Six just gets a random fucking omen.) Low doesn't lose his mask after waking up.
Six and Low go through the real mirror together (despite his original hesitation due to the large amount of stange energy emanating from it). It is not, however, an escape from The Nowhere. Rather the start of a new chapter...
The Mirrors were originally created by the Flesh Walls, but turned against them. They were weak at first, only able to taunt The Lady and tarnish her vanity. Eventually they gained enough power to weaken The Lady. In this game, they are able to be used to teleport by Six. She is the only one able to do so as they believe she could rid this world of the evil plaguing it. (It lets her bring along Low because he is the perfect ally to help her.) The mirrors shatter each time she travels through them to mark them off, leading her to the original one.
After passing through the mirror in the end, she is given this knowledge.
"I am the one thing it could not control. I was meant to spread it's influence, reach the places it could not reach, but instead I spread rebellion. I am the puppet who cut its strings. You are the person I have been looking for. The girl with the power to bring an end to it all. With my help, you could be the one to finally free this world from the horror that plagues it. Make haste, little one, and keep your allies close, so that we may wake from this nightmare."
She then tells Low everything she has learned.
Some other things about the world:
The Necropolis is not actually a desert but a beach. The sand just looks orange because it is the golden hour: the hour before the sun sets. That's why there are fishing nets and other things, as it used to specialize in that before The Monster Baby came along. The ferry Six and Low start in was in a shipyard, although the repairs were never finished.
The Necropolis was once a town of cannibals, the strange rotting meat belonging to the corpses strung up everywhere. Some of the original necropolis residents that were a bit more lucid started to be recruited by the mirrors. They stayed low, only for the Flesh Walls to find out. It then warped a doll left on the beach and wiped them out.
The Maw used to be some sort of floating restaurant or cruise ship, but was warped by The Transmission into the strange shape it is today. Instead of emerging once every year, it emerges almost every day. The ferry comes and picks up The Guests who are left, and those who are not become part of the next feast.
The photo of The Lady surrounded by figures are just her mannequins engulfed in her shadow powers. She was showing off.
The Flesh Walls absorbed the office workers to build up strength when it first arrived.
The stuffed doll is a projector, which captured The Institute before it fell into disrepair. It shows what once was, similar to how the fireplace shows that The Nomes were once children.
The ghosts seen in The Institution are very old Gliched Remains, grown dusty over time.
Six being the one to take down The Lady was fortold, in a way. The Shadow Kids whispering "until Six," the Nomes drawing her before she even woke up. There is something about The Nowhere that gives way to premonition dreams.
Low's bow and Six's wrench are folding, allowing them to be stored out of sight. (Six falls too many times I am NOT letting her break her back on that thing.) Additionally, Low keeps his arrows in a pocket quiver, and retrieves them off-screen or simply makes more.
This au is partially continued with ReAnimal, specifically the first chapter, starting with both of them in the boat up until the kids crawl out of the ice cream truck.
Six replaces the boy and Low replaces the girl. In between the time of Little Nightmares 3 and ReAnimal, Six found lighter fluid for her lighter, and Low found a lantern.
The girl replaces the hooded girl. Her name is Clover, as in four-leaf clover, and she is 13 years old. (Rabbits are lucky and four-leaf clovers are lucky, but four is also an unlucky number in certain Asian countries, and 13 is an unlucky number as well.)
While refilling the gas, Six left behind the crowbar. She beats The Tailor with her wrench. (I'm not calling him The Sniffer.)
She has seen glimpses of Low before, hence why she says "you came back."