Well, this sucks.

Between work and preparing for the next semester of school, progress on all my stories will be considerably slower. This means that the prologue chapter for "Sonic Rainboom: Aftereffects" will be delayed, possibly till late April, and the third chapter for "Lessons in Kindness and Empathy" till God knows when.

To make matters worse, I can only seem to make real progress when I'm planning out later chapters of my stories, which takes away attention the ones I need to complete right now in consequential order.

For example, I should be finishing off the prologue for "Sonic Rainboom: Aftereffects.", but I can only really write when I'm concentrating on Chapter Five.

I apologise to all my readers for making a promise I could not keep, as well as constantly delaying the publishing of my stories' chapters. To make it up, here's a rough outline of the fifth chapter of "Sonic Rainboom: Aftereffects.":

Rainbow's story: Part 1.

It was the most awesome day ever.

Everywhere Rainbow looked, she could see Pegasi colts and fillies whooping and cheering for her, the filly who'd pulled off the legendary Sonic Rainboom and earned her Cutie Mark at the same time. The two bullies hung their heads down in shame as the magnitude of their sore defeat started to sink in.

"Alright, colts and fillies, gimme a cheer! Who's the best flyer in this camp, huh?"

"Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash!" The crowd chanted.

"Aw, hay yeah! Now Fluttershy won't have to worry about those bullies anymore! Ain't that right, Fluttershy?" Rainbow cast a glance around in the crowd for the shy Pegasus.

"Fluttershy?" Rainbow repeated. "Did you even heard a word I just said?"

No response.

"Fluttershy." Annoyance crept into her speech as her brows furrowed into a V and her eyelids narrowed. "You can come out already. Nopony's gonna make fun of you on my watch."

A colt trotted out from the crowd to stand before Rainbow Dash.

"Huh, yeah?" Rainbow acknowledged him. "Whaddya want? I'm looking for Fluttershy."

"Er, about that..."

The colt shifted nervously in his position as pea-sized drops of sweat ran down his forehead, his eyes darting around and looking everywhere but the filly in front of him. "Um, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to tell you or the camp guides this, but..."

"But what?" Rainbow cut in. "C'mon, spit it out!"

The colt flinched at Rainbow's forwardness, but went on. "When the three of you took off from the starting line, one of you knocked into Fluttershy. She spun around like a top a few times before she fell off from the cloud."

Rainbow's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.