Hey, everyone. Announcement time.
It's been six years since I came up with the original idea for this story and decided to make my debut on the site with it, and I'm very happy for the people who paid attention to this back when it was new, especially the ones who stuck around with me after all this time, even to this very day. The thing is, after giving this whole thing a very thorough, very careful and critical look from beginning to end, and after a lot of deep thought and consideration, I have decided that it's time for a major overhaul.
As of a few days ago, I've been working on new versions of the original chapters, drawing every single bit of experience I've gathered during these last few years, in an attempt to (hopefully) improve the quality of this tale. All of the text included in previous chapters will be replaced with updated versions unless otherwise noted. Speaking objectively, there are more than a few glaring contrivances, pacing problems, clunky dialogue, lackluster execution, disappointing payoffs, outright skipping of scenes due to me not knowing how to handle them, and just a general feeling of everything being completely improvised in a not-entirely-positive manner. However, I am still very fond of the core concept, and would like to continue and finish it one day.
I wanted everyone who still cares about this, even after the long-standing lack of anything even resembling an update, to know about it before everything is done. You're the ones whose praise and attention got me to write all the way to Chapter 20, and to those who lent me your characters, I couldn't have done some of these ideas if you hadn't suggested and approved them. I'd never have gotten this far without you. If you liked the original version, that's great to know and I appreciate it immensely, but this is something that I feel I have to do. Hopefully, it'll be for the best.
If you took the time to read this entire message, I sincerely thank you for your time and attention, and if you still care and your story and/or author alerts are still working, be on the lookout for any messages. The next chapter update will be posted once this is completely done.
This is Umbra the Hedgehog signing off.