Our story

For months, the Empire's southern front had been carried by a handful of names. CTRL-V, the alliance built around Local is Primary, brought the same experienced pilots FL33T had fought all through the Siege of Auga. Beside them flew the Blood Eagle Syndicate and the AMR alliance. They spoke the language of holy war but knew how to borrow muscle. When a fight got out of hand, they called JUTSU, a pirate alliance, and JUTSU came.

That arrangement might have held, if another pirate banner had not taken an interest. Deepwater Hooligans, BIGAB on the killboards, pirates with a habit of shooting whoever was winning, began lending their weight to the work of breaking JUTSU.

Mikal Vektor, who led CTRL-V, blamed the pirates. He launched campaigns to recast Minmatar Fleet as a pet on Deepwater's leash, and renamed the pirates Dishwater Hooligans.

The name spread. When Metropolis Daily News published its guide to the warzone's inhabitants in December, it used Dishwater Hooligans as the heading and assured readers they were "harmless (and slightly delusional) industrialists."

Vektor raged against piracy in public while JUTSU still bled for his timers, and in private he courted Snuffed Out, another pirate alliance.

Deepwater Hooligans answered with an eviction. CTRL-V appealed to AMR for help — surely the alliance that shared their front would stand with them in defense of what remained.

AMR, surprisingly, kept finding reasons not to.

By December, CTRL-V was living out of NPC stations, refugees in their own war.

One morning an audio clip went round every comms server in the warzone.

On the recording: Mikal Vektor confronting CDLoon, leader of AMR.

Why does one of your structure directors have a capsuleer in Deepwater Hooligans?

Silence.

AMR, the other pillar of the Amarr south, was renting from Deepwater Hooligans.

Kanari Xadi, who had spent the summer headshotting FL33T's fleet commanders, stepped in to mediate. There was no squaring the clip with the holy war, and in time Kanari left the Amarr Empire altogether.

Nobody in FL33T loved Mikal Vektor, but the enemy's fracture was too useful to waste. Minmatar Fleet took CTRL-V's side in print. The same guide gave Red Sky Morning, CDLoon's corporation, a ballad:

Oh, CDLoon, you enigmatic soul, / Whose words are smooth, but actions cold. / … / So keep your Sosala, your structures of greed, / For loyalty's worth more than any material need.

AMR was dragged through the mud in public, and the crusade became a family argument with guns.

On the twenty-fifth of November, BearThatCares formed armor frigates. As the fighting across Siseide and Amamake escalated, so did the fleet: armor Heavy Assault Cruisers, then Cyclone Fleet Issues with force auxiliary support. FL33T reshipped four times before the night was out.

The Amarr answered in Prophecy Navy Issues. The Angel Cartel formed Caracals, then Ruptures. FL33T destroyed a JUTSU Bhaalgorn and a Vindicator, and wrapped a Minokawa around a gate.

Three hundred and eight capsuleers on the grid.

Nineteen and a half billion ISK.

Three hundred kills in a single night.

The following day they did it again, but bigger, because apparently the first day had not been enough.

A Providence timer brought FL33T's Cyclone Fleet Issues to KBP7-G, against the Nightmares of Curatores Veritatis Alliance. The plan was to signature-tank the Nightmares' guns while burning through their logistics.

The plan worked.

CVA re-engaged as the structure fell. FL33T dropped a force auxiliary, Naglfars chewed through a Minokawa, and in twenty-five minutes CVA lost twenty-one Nightmares and the Astrahus.

An hour later, FL33T's dreadnoughts were in Amamake, trading with JUTSU and the Zirnitras of Intergalactic Space Hobos.

Three hundred and fifty-two capsuleers.

Two hundred and forty-seven billion ISK.

In just over four minutes, FL33T lost every capital it had on the grid. Nine Naglfars, a Phoenix and a Zirnitra went first, then four Revelations, then the Apostle. The Hobos lost six Zirnitras. Five minutes after the last FL33T capital died, Deepwater Hooligans arrived and started killing JUTSU's Revelation Navy Issues.

BearThatCares wrote both days up as one battle record, under a self-deprecating title about feeding dreadnoughts into expensive situations. He could laugh about it, and he did.

Balls Deep Inc. had appeared on FL33T killmails as a hostile through much of YC125 — in AMR until late October, then in Fwodin's Call. In Amamake on the twenty-sixth of November, Balls Deep pilots had been on the killmail of every capital FL33T lost.

Less than a month later, they joined Minmatar Fleet.

The ceremony was real, which somehow made it even better. BearThatCares and Twan Molenaar, fleet commander of Balls Deep's Deep Ones, shared a ceremonial pipe and symbolically buried the hatchet between their organizations. Twan Molenaar would go on to become one of FL33T's primary capital fleet commanders.

Yet Balls Deep were the scorpion in the old story, and the river was still ahead of them.

They would fight beside the rats for eighteen months.

Then they would leave.

Red Sky Morning had held a Fortizar in Sosala for years.

In the last days of YC125, FL33T started hunting Red Sky ships around the system. On the twenty-first of January they killed two of the corporation's control towers.

The Fortizar died three days later, under a swarm of Kikimoras. The final blow went to Kreed Taron, who had been a Rattini for less than two months.

The ballad had told CDLoon to keep his Sosala.