Processing day, and a big thank you to everyone who has participated so far!
Again, still surprised I was able to modify more based on the lesson. Then again, a writer’s work is never done, right?
There are a few spots that I believe are filters, but I don’t think I could change them if I wanted to. Any thoughts or comments are welcome.
I think you’ve really shone it up, though it was strong to begin with. 
A fun genre, a good solid hook, and I’m interested in what happens next.
One thing I might do in a few places that wasn’t really part of the class is to take out a few speech tags if there’s also an action right with them that tells us who just spoke. So when it says: The armadillo said. He waved a scaly hand… You could just have: The armadillo waved a scaly hand. At that point you don’t need the ‘he said’ at all because the action can replace the tag. He said is pretty invisible usually and better than a lot of fancy speech tags, but it’s even tighter when there’s an action right there, to just skip the tag entirely.
But it reads really well as it is.
Just read this for the first time, TJ, and wow, I really liked it. Looking forward to the finished product!