Forgive the indulgence of an aside here, but as we end the "Awareness" arc and move into the "Escalation" arc, there's a rather important topic coming up that I wanted to warn you about in advance. Consider this a "trigger warning", of sorts? Doing it this way makes it more clear than a "pre-chapter" note would. And hey, I thought I'd throw in some history while I was at it.

"Time & Tied" is actually a story that I started writing in University. The writing got progressively slower as I looked for work, found a job, and got involved in other things... in fact, while the first 48 episodes were completed within a year or so, it took nine years for the whole 4-Arc-96-Part tale to come together. The story then spent another three years sitting on a shelf before being revamped and re-edited, partly because I'm now contemplating a sequel, and it doesn't make much sense to have one of those if the original never appeared anywhere, or was seen as terrible by everyone. (I am possibly a bit older than you realized...?)

The end of Part 24, where we are now, is as far as the story ever got when I put it on Wattpad. Some parts literally had zero views, and this was a decent break point, heading into a time skip, so I stopped. (If anyone's thinking of trying their luck on that site, romance fares better, from everything I've read.) Obviously, I'm getting better response to T&T here on RRL, so we're continuing on. Good news: The pace WILL pick up. If I were starting to write this story today, that's something I'd fix, introducing the whole cast and the temporal conflict sooner. Here's some things you can look forward to in Arc 2:

-Actual information about the "future war spilling into the present day" that my synopsis promised you. It's still going to spool out slowly, but that conflict - and Carrie's part in it - will finally become clear. (Yes, the shady guy in the car is connected to it. No, we're not going to get huge battles with guns blazing, sorry.)

-We get a resolution to the goals and intentions of Julie LaMille. The pieces are all there, but you're probably having as much trouble as Clarke at piecing them together, because there's also some misdirection tossed in as well. Still, feel free to theorize.

-The romantic issues between Luci/Frank and Julie/Clarke are dealt with, lest you fear that relationships in this story linger in limbo forever.

-The issue of how the time machine locates geographically, a pervasive dangling thread going back to near the start of the story, does get dealt with.

-There's more about the history of Carrie's mother, and Carrie's relationship with her father.

And here's the big thing incoming, and the main reason behind this whole aside: Suicide. I worry that's a trigger for some people. I'm not flagging the whole story with "traumatizing content", because the whole story isn't about it, I'm not about to portray it as a good thing, and plus there's a temporal twist to it, but I wanted to give you the heads up. As I did in the earlier aside when Chartreuse saw the gun. Because here's the thing.

The strict definition of suicide is "The act of intentionally causing one's own death." Time travel adds a whole new layer of "WTF" to that. Allowing us to approach the topic from 90 degrees (180 degrees?) to what you might expect. But those scenes won't be played for laughs either, and I urge you now as I will then, if you (or a friend) is ever considering suicide, talk to someone. I used to self-harm when I was young, it's no laughing matter.

Related, if older people screwing with the psyches of teenagers is something you find personally troubling (and we've seen hints of it already), I'll understand if you want to bail. I think my cast of characters have pretty robust personalities though, and trust me, they will be pushing back. Hard. They're the protagonists, after all. Also, Luci owns a cat! In case you thought there wouldn't be any happiness or humour incoming.

Thanks for taking the time to read through this aside. I hope you'll stick with me going forwards, but I'll understand if you decide to skip out. (You're welcome to rejoin in Part 48, when things settle down. There's a whole same sex relationship thing that begins then... which might also lose me some people... writing, it's such a balancing act.) Oh, and it's equally possible to start reading at Part 25, if anyone wants to tell their friends about the story, because I plan to continue the "previously"s.

Coming up next: A time skip! Backwards! Because time travel!