Ups And Downs

I love it when people complain about being killed in lowsec: "hey, this is not fair, I was fighting rats!". I usually respond with "rat in hisec if you want to be safe", but I guess they still feel offended. That was the case with Yvie Ly whose Rifter I destroyed in Amamake on Tuesday. Don't they read the pop-up message when entering lowsec?
Shortly after that I saw my old acquaintance Brutus Severus in local and offered him to gank a ratting Rupture. Brutus agreed and we warped to the target belt. He arrived first and started to take damage from the Rupture's drones and autocannons. I was dispatching the drones, but by the time I dealt with them my partner's Rifter was destroyed. "I'll finish that Rupture," I thought, settling into a tight orbit around the cruiser with my afterburner on.
Or was it on? Damn, all my cap-dependent modules were off and I was taking damage from the Rupture's guns. I quickly toggled them on and continued to chew through the cruiser's armour, wondering what had happened. Then -- BANG -- my cap dropped to zero, everything went off again and I realised the other pilot was draining or neutralising my cap. Frantically, I tried to relaunch my afterburner to reduce incoming damage, but in vain. My Rifter exploded while the Rupture was just a few percent into structure.
I sent a sincere "gf" to Kastet Mamont, the Rupture pilot and apologies to Brutus for getting him involved in a failed gank attempt.
Just 40 minutes later, having got myself a new Rifter, I noticed another Rifter and a Thrasher in a belt. I figured out that if they were fighting, I could kill the survivor. Well, I was wrong: despite being less than a month old, Dedal Halfov downed my Rifter with Tech 2 150mm autocannons after dealing with his first victim. He was at a comfortable 53% of structure. Guess someone forgot to tell him new players should spend their first months studying learning skills.
Later on that day my homey Dr. Dre came through with a gang of tanqueray I moved to a neighbouring system of Auga and spotted a Rifter in a Faction Warfare complex. I jumped in, but the Rifter, equipped with a microwarp drive, quickly got away. I returned to a safespot to see and wait if he returns. He did, but together with a Blackbird ECM cruiser and my corpmates told me to stay away from that thing. Fortunately, the Blackbird soon disappeared and the Rifter was once again alone so I decided to try again.
This time the other pilot, mr kangaroo, decided to give it a try and started approaching me. We did the usual Rifter dance, watching each other's shields and then armour melt under autocannon fire. The fight was close, just the kind I really enjoy, but the speed advantage was on my side with mr kangaroo's MWD shut down by my warp scrambler. I was at 15 percent structure when his Rifter exploded. We exchanged gf's and discussed each other's setups: turns out he also had no damage control module and used a gyrostabiliser instead.
On Wednesday, I returned to Amamake and soon scanned down a Tristan at one of the planets. Its pilot Sojiuro, who had beaten me once in the same ship, offered a one-on-one. I lost the previous duel after orbiting too close to him, at the range where his Tech 2 blasters outdid my autocannons. I made no such mistake this time, settling into a 7.5 km orbit (actual distance was about 5 km). I destroyed his drone and then his ship comfortably staying out of blasters' range and laying down torrents of barrage fire. As usual, we exchanged gf's while I scooped the loot.
I moved around neighbouring systems in search of new pray and soon scanned down Gambuk's Breacher in Kourmonen. He chose to engage me, but I guess Breacher just wasn't designed to take out Rifters.
My next target on that day was Eddie Monaghan who ratted in Amamake in his Rifter. Unlike some other pilots, he made no drama about the loss.
In the evening, while watching gangs roam through Amamake limiting my attack opportunities, I spotted a lone Osprey cruiser piloted by another Amamake resident Speshtard. I offered him a one-on-one and he agreed, despite noting that his chances weren't good - I like pilots who do that! Indeed, it turned out his missiles weren't hitting me hard while I was dealing with his drones, keeping a tight orbit. I destroyed the cruiser and thanked Speshtard for the fight.
That was a good time to dock up and go to sleep, but I decided to hang around a little longer. Soon, I spotted a Caracal at the infamous belt III-1. I hesitated for a while, knowing this was one of the riskiest places in New Eden to be in, but then said "what the hell" and hit the warp button. Of course, that turned out to be a trap set up by the VooDoo Technologies alliance and the Drunk GanG corporation. As soon as the Caracal had a point on me, a Lachesis, a Jaguar and a Rapier warped in and quickly destroyed my ship. This was the second time I fell into their trap - I MUST become more attentive to pilot identities and affiliations.
All in all, a nice couple of days, but at least one loss could and should have been avoided.