Sorry guys! I'm afraid that this isn't a new chapter. HOWEVER! You might be receiving new chapters soon, so PLEASE read through this short note and hear me out!

First off, I really am sorry for leaving you guys hanging for over two years with this story. The reasons have been many, but I'm not here justify my unofficial hiatus of this story, I am here to ask for a favour. Recently a reader of this story sent me a PM asking when this story would receive an update, and after a discussion about the story itself, I feel like I want to make at least one more attempt at getting this story going again. That's not to say that I haven't tried before over these 2 years, but as you may have noticed other stories have taken priority whenever I have had the time and motivation to write anything.

So here's what I want to ask of you. I have put up a poll in my profile, asking what I should do about the story. It will be receiving a rewrite regardless, because I cringe at my own poor grammar and spelling when I read through it, but also because I want to make a few light tweaks to the story itself. Not anything major, I assure you, but small tweaks nonetheless. If you want to see this story return, please head over to my profile and vote for how to bring it back. It is literally 4 to 5 clicks away from where you're reading this and will take somewhere between 30 seconds and 2 days, depending on how much you want to think about where to place your vote.

If you want to go the extra mile, then I encourage you to send me a PM with your thoughts about one or both of the following topics. PLEASE note that I want this in PMs, NOT in reviews, just in case the poll result decides that I should just update the old story and then go from there. If this ends up being the case and you answer this note through a review, you won't be able to review the actual Chapter 8 when I post it. Consider yourself warned.

Topics to consider:

OCs: In the original Serene Phoenix Reborn, I used OCs as rivals for Ash because the anime hadn't aired at the time of the story's release. Xion was only mentioned in passing, but Axel was a central part of the Lumiose debacle, so he isn't as easy to dismiss. I would really like to know your thoughts on this, because this question have my balls in a vice grip. On one hand, there is no need for OC rivals because we now have anime characters that can be used instead, but on the other hand taking Axel out of the story would be a very drastic change from the original version of the story. What do you think? Should he stay or should he go?

Canon/Anime: I haven't caught up with the anime yet, but I will eventually so I would like to know what you think about this. Since the original story was planned and published when all we had was the Lumiose Episodes, the plot and story I had planned was mainly based on the games. The same goes for the characters' personalities and particularly Serena is different in this story compared to her canon counterpart. Should I stick to the original plan or should I sketch out a new plot that bases itself more off of the anime?

These are the two main things that I am having trouble deciding on, and I would really appreciate you guys' input on them. I really hope that there are still some people out there that want to help me get this story back on track. So go vote in the in the poll and/or send me a PM with your thoughts on this! Thanks in advance! :)