Now this week has been especially harsh for your friendly neighborhood blogger, I have been working my butt off on a major presentation. Which is only a few short hours away and here I am writing! I seriously need my head examined. So I haven't had much playing time lately. Yesterday was probably the worst. At best I might get out of station for a few short moments.
I was determined that the 900th kill be a solo kill. It isn't that 900 means anything special or monumental in the grand scheme of things, because it doesn't. But it does represent something. It may only represent that to me personally, but since I'm the only one living in my skin, that is usually the person I'm most concerned about.
With little time to play I decided on a small, fast ship with incredible killing potential - mostly so the range of targets would be bigger. So I undocked in my trusty Dramiel and headed out, flying North and scanning my ass off.
Nothing. Nothing and more nothing. Oh sure, plenty of big ships or gangs of ships, or nasty FW fleets, but not a single chance for me and my ship. System after system. The hunter was becoming frustrated. I started to think that maybe I'd have to wait. Time after time I came close, but people kept warping away from me. I can't blame them honestly, but seriously some of those ships probably would've killed me. I've always had more balls than sense, just look at my losses.
I decided to head home and dock up. As is often the case, that's when luck finally turns. Sadly it wasn't the epic opportunity I was hoping for, but we take what we can get. A Catalyst appeared on scan and lo and behold the poor unsuspecting pilot was actually ratting in a belt!! A belt I just happened to already be aligned to. Gift meet horses mouth. The rest is easy and, in some ways, kind of sad. The poor guy had no chance at all. I felt a tinge of guilt, so I was a nice pirate and let his pod escape. I even typed "gf" in local.
Let me get this straight. My first loss was like that, and it wasn't that long ago that the shoe was on the other foot. I'm not going to stop killing poor unsuspecting pilots along the way. Sure, I'd prefer epic battles and titanic struggles (honestly I would) but those are hard to come by. But even a pirate can have a heart, so sometimes I may let a easy pod or two escape. I personally hate being podded, so I've never been very blood thirsty when it comes to podding. Even back in my Null days I rarely podded unless it was strategically important to do so.
As always Karma keeps the balance. Later in the day when I had another brief moment to play, I lost my Sac on the station to a Drake. Complicated story there, but suffice to say we had a plan and that plan didn't unfold properly. It happens. But that loss balances out the day. You can't lose ships you don't fight with and you can't kill ships unless you fight. While I am pleased at the 900 mark, I have much further to go and improve on. A 9-1 rate over the last few months is good, but I can do better. As always, time remains my biggest constraint on numbers and that isn't going to change. So I plod along.
As I've always said, my biggest advantage is I won't quit. There have been many other pilots along the way that have better records, or have stood in my way, or have scoffed at me or otherwise been a pain in my backside... most of them don't play Eve anymore. I still do.