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The war that ate the summer of YC127 was fought over the Watermelon, Ibn Khatab's Fortizar in Sosala, and it picked up its name somewhere between a joke in fleet and a Frontlines headline.

The Watermelon was FL33T's waifu. The war became the Waifu Wars, and the alliances lined up against it became the Waifu Bloc.

The Bloc had been assembled from the spare parts of three or four separate grudges. Sedition had been trading blows with FL33T on and off since the spring of YC126. Empyrean Edict and the rest of the Amarr militia filled out the grids. The backbone was Deepwater Hooligans, BIGAB, whose rent for Turnur had once been paid in pictures of a cat.

The Rattini had anchored an Astrahus in Ezzara for no reason except to start fights. It died on the fifteenth of May. They anchored another, and on the twenty-second, BIGAB, Sedition and the Amarr militia killed that one together. The battle record rated it ten out of ten.

On the seventeenth of June, BIGAB and Empyrean Edict killed the Rattini's Astrahus in Sosala, in the Watermelon's own system.

Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung.

On the twenty-sixth of June, after internal disputes, Balls Deep Inc. left the alliance. As DRY, it had flown beside the rats for eighteen months, ever since the ceremonial pipe in December of YC125. Within weeks DRY was turning up on the other side of FL33T's timers.

At least once, DRY arrived within minutes of a system push that had only been announced in alliance channels.

The worst of it fell on the newest pilots. One evening in July, Minmatar Fleet Academy spent hours working Arnstur toward vulnerability, running every site until the system was within striking distance of capture. Then a single DRY pilot in a Vedmak destroyed the Academy's twelve-million-ISK propaganda broadcast structure with two minutes left on the timer.

Hours of work.

Two minutes short.

Nobody needed to ask how DRY had known where to be. The veterans said what EVE veterans always say: accept the spies, fight the enemies, and don't let either change how you play. Recruitment stayed open. The fix went into the operations instead: doctrine and plans that still worked when the other side had read the ping.

By the thirteenth of July, the Waifu Bloc had pushed the Watermelon to its final timer, set for European prime time.

BIGAB brought Barghests.

Sedition and its Amarr allies brought Abaddons.

Seriously Suspicious brought Absolutions.

DRY came too, seventeen days after leaving, in Proteuses and Legions.

The defense was FL33T in Ravens and The Initiative — Drake Eldritch's alliance by then — in Machariels. FL33T bridged in at the same moment the Initiative warped to the Abaddons at zero.

The force auxiliaries went first. The Initiative lost both its Apostles inside a minute. Then Seriously Suspicious dropped dreadnoughts on FL33T's own force auxiliary.

FL33T dropped on the dreadnoughts.

And feasted.

Between them, FL33T and the Initiative put nearly ninety dreadnoughts on the killmails. Twenty hostile dreadnoughts died in under nine minutes, most of them flown by Seriously Suspicious. FL33T lost fewer than half as many. BIGAB had been bleeding all evening. Snuffed Out had come as a third party and spent most of the fight on BIGAB's Barghests, twenty-six of which died. With the Bloc's dreadnoughts dead and its logistics stripped, BIGAB and Sedition warped off.

The Watermelon held.

In the end, FL33T proved their waifu to be much more versatile than the hostiles' own.

Four hundred and forty-eight billion ISK was destroyed on a single grid. Frontlines ran it under "WATERMELLONE DEFENSE A SUCCESS! BIGAB LOVE LETTER TO SEDIT DREAD!!"

Through July and August, the warzone ran at a pitch FL33T had not sustained since the Providence war. Auga sat under Amarr pressure for days at a stretch.

In Hagilur, Isa Kento gave up his Chimera so the rest of the fleet could extract. In Amamake, the Snuffers began ragelogging, which tipped the ISK balance FL33T's way.

The Fraternity, evicted from Aldodan in April, had come back in July. On the tenth of August they brought well over a hundred dreadnoughts to Arnher. FL33T bridged into a fight already running between BIGAB, the Initiative and the Fraternity: nine hundred and sixteen pilots on one grid.

For three hours, nearly everyone on that grid shot the Fraternity, and some of them shot each other as well. BIGAB and Sedition, a month after trying to kill the Watermelon, spent the night on the same Fraternity dreadnoughts as the rats. Eighty-one dreadnoughts died in Arnher, and the Fraternity lost two hundred and thirty-three ships.

Later that year, the alliance turned the war into a comic.

Waifu Wars was drawn manga-style, and every episode title carried the same instruction: READ FROM R2L. The fourth was called Good Guys Win Again.

On the twenty-third of August, the Waifu Accords were signed, and as far as FL33T was concerned, the Waifu Wars were over.

COALITION HOLDS THE LINE AGAINST FRT IN ALDODAN! WAIFU ACCORDS SIGNED!

The Snuffers, who had spent the summer shooting FL33T in Amamake when they were not shooting BIGAB, paid reparations.

Or something close enough that FL33T could call it reparations, which was enough.

Every side would go on to explain how it had really won. FL33T's version was shorter: the alliance was still standing, and the Watermelon was still in Sosala.

The bill for the summer would arrive in November.

The Watermelon paid first.