As before (at the end of "Awareness"), forgive the indulgence of an aside, just a few things to take note of here. First, know that the whole "suicide trigger" issue with Julie has been dealt with. So, if there's anyone who was worried, or if you know of anyone who stopped reading on account of that, they can come back with Part 48! (I mean, Julie will be in counselling, and she still has a role to play, but we won't see that angle with her parents front and centre.)

In fact, my hope is that all character arcs have been tied up reasonably well. Going back to the original writing of this story, I'd envisioned it as a Television show - and this would be the break at the end of Season One. Everything is dealt with, at least as far as the present is concerned. Sure, we have some future war and people with mental powers to address, not to mention the fact that "Season One" was kind of the Origin Story for a girl with temporal powers, but we can handle that now that we've been "renewed".

Speaking of characters, the "Favourite Female Character" poll (from Part 23b) now has 3 votes, for Chartreuse, Carrie and Luci. The "Favourite Male Character" poll (from Part 24a) has 2 votes (someone didn't vote yet...), both for Frank. So I decided with the previous part to see if anyone had an overall favourite. The results so far? 3 votes: For Carrie, Luci and Lee. That's interesting!

It implies to me that either the 3rd missing vote was for Lee (though we really hadn't seen too much of him in Arc 1), or someone's changed their opinion. Also, the females seem to be beating out the males. This is all based on a very small sample size, of course. (If you're reading this in the far future, where maybe 10 people have voted, maybe it's of interest what the early voters were thinking?) Anyone's welcome to elaborate on their choice or where their opinion changed.

Now, the warning! The big thing incoming in the NEXT Arc (which I mentioned briefly in the last aside) is references to same sex relationships. Sorry if that's an issue for you. Nothing gets graphic. Also, older people screwing with the psyches of teenagers will still be a thing. On the other hand, away from such character centred things, we also get some actual temporal theory for how the timelines work. (That's not a warning so much as a teaser.)

I've decided my pacing is probably on par with the anime "Steins;Gate" (also about time travel). In that, for both, a lot of the tricky stuff only starts coming into play about halfway through, which is where this story is now. (I saw that for the first time this month. If you like this story, you may like it as well.) In fact, I was away at an anime convention all weekend, and didn't think to cue posts up beforehand, so I very nearly skipped a day of posting. But then I saw people had actually voted on that poll, and figured I'd better get this out. So thanks for the motivation. ^_^

Onward we go now, with ARC 3: DESTRUCTION. Coming up next, Carrie tries to deal with her powers and her destiny.