It wasn't until Abel almost fell into the chasm that he noticed it. As he struggled to keep from losing his balance and toppling down into the fissure, he let out a surprised sort of yell best described as “[i]Huuuuuuurgh![/i]” After a second or two of panic he steadied himself, and buried his face in the palm of his off hand in mortification of the ridiculous noise he had made. When that was done, he busied himself with studying the chasm.

While not particularly wide -only about four yards across, Abel guessed- the crevice appeared to be seriously deep. By squinting he could make out running water at the ravine's bottom, possibly indicating that the landform had been eroded over eons. Still, the giant crack seemed too jagged and unnatural for slow weathering by water; the idea of an earthquake opening a fault better explained its existence. For a moment Abel considered trying to leap the little gorge, but he thought better of it when he realized that the other side rose a foot or two higher than his own. Just as he looked to his right to see how far the chasm extended to either direction, a noisy grunt sounded from his left.

Abel whirled around to find a Boarbatusk roughly forty feet away, half-hidden by a clump of shrubs on the cliff''s edge. The beast looked at him curiously, apparently debating whether or not Abel was worth the effort of skewering on its tusks. With a second grunt and a toss of its head, some sort of [i]stay-away[/i] gesture if Abel's knowledge of the Grimm served him correctly, and it resigned itself to munching grass. The boy watched it for a moment, silently acknowledging the creature's unusual passivity, then charged.

The Boarbatusk flinched, spitting out green blades as it attempted to face him. Abel reached it before it could gain any momentum, and whipped the Ampere about in a single horizontal slash with no regard for its natural armor. The weapon only got halfway through the beast's bony plates before sticking, where its cutting energy became pushing energy. The force of Abel's attack launched the pig off the edge, where it dropped, squealing horribly, to the water and granite below.

Any satisfaction gained from the brief encounter vanished when Abel became aware of more grunting—louder and angrier, too. From the underbrush all around him emerged more Boarbatusks, advancing slowly but steadily, and clearly pissed at the boy who had doomed one of their kin to fall. Abel quickly took count of the Grimm, amassing six total, and quickly ran over his strategies. The obvious ploy was to use and abuse his semblance while defending himself, hopefully getting a few of the beasts to join the one in the chasm while not falling in himself. So thinking, Abel shifted the Ampere to staff mode and let loose.

A bolt of lightning arced from the dust crystal focus in the weapon's shaft into the nearest Boarbatusk, pumping the ill-tempered pig with thousands of volts and about an eightieth of an amp. In an instant, the creature was fried, and it collapsed to the ground in spasms. While not dead, its paralysis would keep it from interfering, and with any luck it would suffocate in the process. After a brief moment of shock, the others charged. The fight was on.

Abel jumped into the air, swapping the Ampere to blade mode as he did and pivoting it down. The closest Boarbatusk was helpless to change course or otherwise react as he fell with his full weight upon it, driving the Ampere between its bone plates and nailing it to the ground. Abel heaved, pulling the dead weight up, and flung the corpse into the face of his next opponent. Upon impact, the husk dissolved into smoke permeated with electricity, distracting the Boarbatusk hit. Frowning, Abel sidestepped to let the blinded creature careen past him and into the gorge. As he did so, he was already preparing for the next one, which change direction slightly to impale him. Instead, Abel impaled it, holding the Ampere away from him and letting the Boarbatusk's momentum drive its head into the blade. Abel wasted no time marveling at the Grimm's stupidity and pulled the blade out. The next Boarbatusk had already curled up into a ball and was spinning in place, storing momentum for a devastated rolling smash. Abel quickly moved to position himself behind the smoking cadaver and crouched. No sooner had he done so than the Grimm sped forward, covering twenty feet in a split second. It unknowingly ramped off its dead comrade, flying into the air. As it did so, Abel reached a hand up and grabbed it by its nearest exposed part—a tusk. Abruptly, he joined the Boarbatusk in its flight, carried by its momentum. Mostly by luck he managed to release at a good moment, and sailed over the top of the chasm's opposite side while the monster smacked into it before plummeting to the bottom.

Abel tumbled for a moment until he collided with a tree trunk. Slightly dazed, very dizzy, but mostly okay, he regarded the lone surviving Boarbatusk across the chasm, bellowing wrathfully. Nonchalantly, Abel changed Ampere modes again and zapped it with a lightning bolt. As the twitching pig smoked, he turned away to continue his trek into the Emerald Forest.

The thundering crackle of lightning reverberated through the trees, sure to catch the attention of anyone nearby.