[Abel snorts faintly.] It's a little like being a glorified engineer with a fancy degree in astrophysics, but I like 'fantastical in a romanticized way' better. [He was guilty of romanticizing it in certain ways, honestly. His grades had been phenomenal, his scores in simulators were the best in his class, that indicated to him that he belonged in the Alliance. Numbers. But he'd be lying if he said that there weren't times where he imagined leaning back in his Starfighter and just drifting through an endless map that spoke to him.]

Nothing's different, which should be a comfort, but it sure is frustrating right now. [He's fairly certain that he isn't out of practice, he's just rushing through the identifications and missing things because he's annoyed and emotional. But he'd rather look like an idiot than admit that he was jealous Hideki both beat him to the punch with this ridiculous party and threw around money to do it that Abel absolutely didn't have. He couldn't buy anything for Cain, he was a dependent for the time being.]

Maybe this just isn't the best place to be working on something like this. If we were at home and not in the middle of all this noise and distraction, I could actually think.