[color=007fff][center][b]Abel Fulgurate[/b][/center][/color]

Practically the instant the airship's hatch door opened, folding down to become a short stairway for passengers, Abel was ready to board.  A very rare sort of energy had overtaken him, awoken somehow despite the morning's grueling mission and the afternoon's strenuous exercise.  All the same, he did not want to seem unduly enthused, so he stood by while the others made their way over, rather like a somebody taking credit for opening an automatic door.  While waiting he heard the familiar buzz of a new text alert from his scroll, and dutifully the guardian removed the device from his pocket to check what he'd received.  

Surprisingly, the message originated from the school itself, as opposed to a teammate as he initially expected.  He scanned the lines, furrowing his brow slightly as he read about the various happenings of the upcoming Monday.  Funnily enough, he hadn't even known that Monday was supposed to be a day off.  The alternative didn't exactly thrill him, however.  Abel felt like competing in a school-organized race about as much as he felt like a garden gnome with gonorrhea—which was to say, not at all.  His first thoughts pertaining to the 'Stone Cold Showdown' were dismissive, but before he even got to second-guessing himself, Abel found his opinions changing.  The more he ruminated on it, the more he imagined that a wrestling event would be just his thing.  In the ring, size mattered, and that at least Abel had in spades.  [i]You know what?[/i] Abel asked himself, [i]I'm gonna do it.  About time I did something in my free time other than work out and browse the web.[/i]  The only problem he could think of was large, green, and walking right toward him along with Shiro.  [i]No doubt Gren's gonna be all over this.  I hope we don't get matched against one another.  Hey, shouldn't it be illegal for him to compete anyway, with all those cybernetic enhancements?[/i]  The question occupied Abel so much that he nearly missed the crushing sadness wafting from his tigeresque teammate like ripeness from roadkill.  All thoughts of grappling, costumes, and pay-per-view vanished from the guardian's mind the instant his eyes landed on Shiro's face.  Somehow, in less than thirty seconds, the most chipper and upbeat individual Abel could think of had turned miserable.  He blanched, at a total loss for what to do.  Luckily, Gren seemed to be on the case.  Thanking his lucky stars that he had someone who could shoulder that responsibility around, Abel waiting for his companions to pass by and board the airship.  Once the ladies of team KESS followed suit, Abel brought up the rear, his tentative smile more tentative than ever before.

Mere minutes later, the airship touched down about two hundred feet away and six hundred feet lower than the place from which it departed.  The warm orange horizon, behind which the sun had just begun to dip, framed the city of Vale beautifully.  As luck would have it, the walk to the pizzeria was not long, but the seven students of Beacon walked it in near-silence.  

Abel didn't mind the general quiet.  Everyone needed some time alone with their thoughts.  Inside the pizza joint, Abel expected that the more intimate atmosphere would stir up real conversation among them.  In the course of the walk there, he'd finished reading the school's notification message, and in doing so drummed up memories of his parents.  Had it really been only two weeks since he'd seen them?  It felt so much longer.  The notion of his folks visiting the school brought a nigh imperceptible but remarkably genuine grin to his face.  Of all the topics that might emerge over a platter of oven-fresh 'za, though, Abel didn't think that anyone's parents would be one of them.  In fact, something in his gut told him that very subject might be what stole Shiro's fire only minutes prior.  The thought worried Abel—why hadn't Shiro let his friends know?  Then again, parental issues were definitely the kind of thing that an average person might keep bottled up.  And...as much as he hated to think about it, he and Shiro weren't really friends, not in the sense that he would have liked to be.  The truth stung him.  [i]But what can I do?  'How to reach someone's soul' isn't something you find in a book...[/i]

These thoughts and more swirled around in the guardian's noggin as he, along with Krysanthe, Yue, Sepia, Skyra, Shiro, and Gren, stepped into the pizza place.