Ridiculous

Poking around lowsec, checking out belts to see if they had stuff in it that would be worth the trouble of mining, I knew there was a neutral in system, but I hadn't seen him on scan, and I'm still getting used to the locals and their moods.

I destroy a couple of angel frigates, and then start climbing out of the belt to get clearer paths to warp away, and the neutral arrived in my belt in a rifter. He promptly yellow boxes me, and then red-boxes as I'm locking him in return. I'm flying a fleet stabber.

He scrams me and my MWD doesn't work. I web and scram him in return. I turn on my afterburner and keep burning away. I'm expecting that he'll be faster than me, and more maneuverable, but I want to try to reduce the transversal by making him pursue. I release my drones and order them to engage. My shields are dropping and I'm thinking "there are other blues in system, but I don't want to put them to the hassle of having to rescue me from a rifter".

The shield alarms go off, and I think I've run out of time; I have yet to do any damage to him. I start spamming the warp button so I'll get my pod out at least, and then my screens are overloaded by the explosion....

And he's gone. I cancel warp and approach his wreck to loot. His pod warps off before I can lock it.

Then I remember that I'm an armour tanker, and he'd not quite made it through the bubble-wrap around my ship that I call shields. Talk about unnecessary worry.

I did everything I should have, it all worked exactly as I expected. I just didn't really believe that it would until it happened.

That, I think, is the difference between knowing the theory, and knowing the practice.

And I still feel ridiculously pleased for killing a ship I seriously out-classed. I think I'm more pleased because I had a plan and it worked, even if I wasn't sure about that at the time. And I'm embarrassed too much to tell people about it.

So I write.