My First Fight

Entry: six hundred twenty one.

Since moving I haven't time for anything but reading. While reading to some of the public logs I follow though, a memory surfaced regarding my first combat experience. Not first gank experience, first combat experience.
 
I was still a wide-eyed pilot, the asteroids in space looking like a wallet ever increasing. I was still limited to my first Stabber, however, and mining was the way to make money. Level one missions sure don't pay much.

I remember mining into a jetcan, minding my own business, and someone flips my can, and starts orbiting me. I'm very poorly fit, and I know better to engage in combat fit like that, but there he is orbiting me. I have a hard time remembering what he was in, I think perhaps a Merlin.

I opened convo with him and asked him if he wanted to fight. His replies are at first terse, and mostly in the little bit of Gallente that I can understand. We shortly come to an agreement for an equal battle, or at least what I thought was one at the time.

He made a trip to buy and fit out a Cormorant, to Jita looking back on it. I made a trip to Eystur, fitted out an autocannon armor Thrasher. When he came back, we agreed to stop at structure and warped to an asteroid belt. Thirty seconds later, we landed within twenty kilometers of each other.
 
As we closed the distance, afterburners on, my heart began to hammer. All sound was drowned out by the blood pumping through my ears. We exchanged webs and scrams, my autocannons pouring bullets at him, his missile launchers assaulting my armor, concussion after concussion.
 
I tried to pull range, but couldn't get away. He was only marginally slower than me, so I turned around and barreled at him. It felt like nothing was changing. His damage was coming on just as strong, his shields dropping the same as before.
 
He entered structure before I did, myself at about a third remaining armor. We called the fight, congratulating each other on a great fight, and happy that neither of us had lost our ship to get it.
 
Xerophim was about the same age as me. We had roughly the same skill set.
 
After the fight, my blood still hammering, he was talking to me about him joining a pirate corporation. I had this concept of the wild west, no law enforcement at all, wide open spaces and ruthless bands of pilots just itching for the next kill. On reflection, however, the concept I had was of what low-sec would be like if there was no weaponry on the gates or stations, and if the population was vastly vastly reduced.
 
It was an awesome thing to imagine. It's a shame that low-sec didn't quite live up to the scene I had imagined. It comes close though. W-space is really what I had imagined, but low-sec isn't that far off the mark.

Computer: terminate recording.