Hello everyone...

It's been a while since I last uploaded, hasn't it? I hope you guys have been doing well during this time.

Before going into this, I want to say that I'm not trying to set a pessimistic tone. The fic is not being abandoned, I'm very much still on board with this story, especially after coming so far.

But I do have some 2 sets of bad news coming with this status update… and 2 sets of good news, depending on our outlook.

So, first order of business, Chapter 12: True Colors Part 2. Where is it? Why isn't it out yet?

Well, I'm sorry to say it, but it's not finished yet…

Writer's block hit me hard with this one, but to be honest, it would not be fair for me to just blame it on that and move on.

For the past 3 weeks (or rather even a bit before chapter 11 was published) I had sort of started to lose interest towards this fic.

I wasn't hating my time on it, or anything like that. I still enjoyed working on it from time to time, reading the comments that you guys have dropped down and everything in between. But, I would be lying if I said my interest in both Ben 10 and MHA in general wasn't decreasing and I wasn't having any less trouble with this chapter.

To give you guys a bit of context in that and some info on my writing process, one of my golden rules is to never delete anything inside a folder.

So, for an example, if I had just written out a scene but didn't like it on my second read through, I would cut the whole thing and paste it on a separate page at the end of the document instead of deleting it. The point of this is keeping a scene written out, so that I can easily go back to it if I changed my mind later. (Editor's note here: He barely ever changed his mind.)

This would mostly happen because I wasn't trusting the plan I had set out or it wasn't detailed enough for a given scene. So, in turn, this regularly adds 4-5 pages to every chapter doc that would never be seen. (As an example of an extreme case of this, Chapter 5, which I mentioned to have a lot of difficulty with, had 10 pages of cut content.)

The document of Chapter 12 on the other hand, it might seem like I'm lying my ass off but stick with me here, is 40 pages long right now (a little over 10000 words) and 25 pages of it are cut content.

Only 15 pages, around 3600 words, are usable and even that is in the process of getting polished right now.

All of those cut scenes consisted of different openings, different middle sections, even different fights that were thought of by me or by working together with my editor. But my feelings soured towards them one after the other because of them either not following the cliffhanger well or not being able to cover the story of the USJ well.

And seeing as though this was barely going anywhere, and my lectures and project were pressing at me harder, I took sort of a break...

I kept it open on the side but I poured most of what I had left to better wrap my head around my academics since I wasn't exactly stellar in that area, I watched some other stuff in my downtime(Like Final Space and Wolverine and the X-Men), I got sick for a cool 4 days or so.

In short, I took some time for myself, tried to balance out my life once again, reignite my passion and in the end, return stronger than ever. Did it work?

Well, if the 15 pages that I completed are of any indication… Yes, yes it did and, even though the first two weeks of November will have several exams in store for me, it's my honor to announce that, Part 2 will hopefully drop this Halloween and Part 3 should have a quicker turnaround time than this.

So, Chapter 12 not being ready but now having a release date of Halloween was one set of the bad news and good news, right? What's the other set?

This has been in the discussion for a long while now, and with this recent delay, I've finally come to a decision on it.

After parts 2 and 3 of True Colors have been uploaded, there will be a hiatus.

To make sure, let me repeat what I said in the beginning, the fic is NOT being abandoned. Quite the opposite actually. During this time, the fic will receive more attention than ever before.

How come you may ask? Well, we will take this time to majorly rework and polish the plan set out for this fic.

If you want the context and a bit of a history lesson on this fic, then have fun reading the following part. And if you don't and just want to move on to the good news, move to the bold line.

To bring you guys back to the time when I first posted on this story, when I first posted the first chapter onto this site, this story was very much intended to be between me and my editor…

It was meant to be something I kept to myself and had fun with in my spare time, with no expectation of having an audience. (Aside from the editor.)

Hell, as we're talking about the editor, let me expose him a bit to prove my point. Before he was promoted from being my sole audience to overseeing all chapters like The Watcher from Marvel, he had not watched even an episode of MHA and had only seen a couple of episodes of Ben 10 classic.

This was very much just us messing around and as a result, the plan was very much bare bones. However, we couldn't realize that in the midst of all the fun we were having. And after all, if there was anything wrong with the story, it would stay between us so I could just improvise and it would be no big deal. So, to finish up the story time, how come did we decide to upload this in the first place?

It was literally the result… of a reddit post.

It announced the anniversary of Ben 10 Alien Force's debut and in the heat of the moment, I asked the editor (or the audience in this case) if I should publish the first chapter I had. He told me to go for it and I posted it, thinking that it will just be lost in the midst of all the other fics that inhabited this crossover tag.

Cut to several months after and we're the 9th in reviews, favourites and follows…

Once again, thank you so much for the support. Never in a million years did I imagine so much engagement, and without you guys, I don't know if this would have lasted as long as it did.

Alright, that was a good story chief but after all the delays on Parts 2 and 3, you now also announced a hiatus. What could be the good news?

Believe me when I say this will be the fun part, since this is where you guys can come in and voice your suggestions!

That's right, since we are going to be majorly reworking the plan (In some cases, even building it once again from the ground up), we're fully open to new ideas and suggestions from all of you.

Either drop them down as PM's or as reviews at the bottom of this chapter, but if you're like me and want to put a bit more flare on to it, drop your suggestion down with a review, under your favourite chapter.

If it's chapter 1, drop the suggestion as a review under chapter 1. If it's chapter 5, drop it under chapter 5. I would love to see how you guys are divided in terms of your enjoyment of the story thus far. I won't edit them or anything, just trying to turn this into a bit of an experiment.

Now, to end this once and for all, I'll pass the word document over to the editor…

Editor's note:

So hello, It's a me, Editor. My friend here told you guys all the important news so I'll just take this chance to thank you all for reading and giving me a job (even though I'm not paid, I should bring that up sometime).

I'll quickly tell you all about what I do here. I usually catch grammar and spelling mistakes, fix timing errors and comment on the flow of the story. I sometimes come in to help with personalities. Some mistakes might have passed through but I think we have come a long way since the start (You should have seen the first drafts of chapter 1, still having nightmares…) I'm excited about what's to come after the hiatus and I hope you guys will feel the same way.

Hit me up in the pms if you have any questions or anything (My name's Xebath).

Anyway, don't forget to have a great day and we will see you guys in the next chapter. Ciao!