Going purely after mission runners makes your brains soft. I've realised that after failing to kill a Taranis in a belt last week due to my afterburner burning out.
Sure, finding and destroying carebears is fun, especially when you have strong competitors like the Eternal Perseverance. Together with Ashnazg, Nalshee, Jyren's Rage and his corpmates we've had some juicy kills within the last week including a Dominix, an Ishtar, an Apocalypse (I wish we did that without a Falcon) and a number of battlecruisers and smaller ships.
But sometimes, I've decided, I must jump into a Rifter, forget about my probing mate and do things the "old school" way, relying only on my directional scanner.
That was what I did this morning, leaving Egghelende with a short roam on my mind. I didn't need to go further than Siseide, it turned out.
Upon entering this POS-infested system I noticed Mashashige in local chat. I had seen him in a Rifter in Egg a minute earlier and immediately requested a conversation, offering a duel. Mashashige suggested instead that we gang up on a Worm, an expensive Guristas faction frigate which I had just noticed on scan.
In a few seconds I had it narrowed down to a belt and sent my ship in its direction, informing Mashashige. I landed about 30 kilometres away from the Worm and was sure it would warp out. But as I approached the Worm, midslots overheated for maximum speed and tackling range, I was informed that one of the Angel pirates he was shooting started warp scrambling him. I guess that was why I managed to tackle the Guristas ship and quickly destroy it without taking any damage.
Mashashige, who arrived at the belt after me, didn't make it to the Worm in time. Instead, he targeted me, as did the Angel Cartel pirates. I did not return the lock, waiting to see if this was just a misclick or we were going to fight. And then, there it was, a red box and a message informing me of his aggression.
I quickly targeted him back, activated the tackling gear and guns and ordered my ship to settle into a 7.5 kilometre orbit. We entered armour at about the same time and I overloaded my guns to maximise their damage. The fight was close and slow as we stayed in falloff range and used our armour repairers to full effect. Mashashige entered structure a bit earlier than I did and it became clear he would lose. A few rounds later his Rifter gave up and Mashashige quickly evacuated his pod.
With 62 percent structure left, I quickly scooped up the loot from both ships and moved to a safespot, exchanging gf's with Mashashige.
I then asked him why he had attacked. He said that since I hadn't taken any damage from the Worm he considered it fair to accept my earlier duel invitation. I think that was fair play (we weren't even in a fleet) although I personally would have given my opponent a warning.
We chatted a bit more and agreed to blow up stuff together some day.
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