Working with others

There's this rival pirate corp that hangs around our area, called the Flaming Brotherhood. I suppose you could characterize them best by saying that they tend to enjoy station-fights with big ships, and readily employ alts and various allies from several other corps, such that it is frequently difficult to assess a scenario in which they are involved.

As such, and because they are often ready to lose ships just to get fights, for a while Tuskers scoffed at them for their station-oriented style. But when Ka Jolo instituted a killboard campaign against them, the statistics quickly made it clear we had nothing to scoff at really, we were in fact losing money on these guys!

Anyway, Ronan has NEVER liked them, ESPECIALLY ollie123, essentially because of their technique of aggravating opponents in local chat. However today I did team up with them, and not for the first time...

As a breif roaming gang settled down into hevrice and most other Tuskers logged off for the time, I hopped into my Drake, looking for a little change of pace, and set out. Having spotted an FW Myrmidon moving around in costolle earlier, I headed that way. Distructo of the Flaming Brotherhood was in muetralle, but scans showed him in a pod and no real threat.
Moving into Costolle, I scanned around for the myrmidon before settling into a belt to rat, so at least he could say he had been there.
I was aligned and just reaching the edge of disruptor range when the myrmidon, piloted by a member of the 22nd BRDU warped in, but to my dismay it landed 85km away!
I pointed out that I wasn't leaving until the rats went down, but the Myrmidon pilot warped out contentedly, scoffing at the stink of bait on me.
As I was jumping out through Muetralle gate, Distructo jumped through in a shuttle, so I dropped a line asking him how many Tuskers he had seen on his way here with a little wink for the myrm pilot. Distructo convo'd shortly after.
They wanted me to bait out the myrm, and promised no hostilities. I was somewhat reluctant obviously, generally their style of hunting is not at all my style, and it wears greatly on my patience. But I figured hey wait, Ronan's in a drake...when in Rome I guess. I agreed to help.

They brought ollie in his Dominix, Distructo in a Rupture as well as Daniel Essig in another Dominix. In response the 22nd brought in a Harbinger, Ferox, and Armageddon to support the Myrmidon in attacking Ollie's Dominix on the station! I landed from warp and locked on as the myrmidon entered structure, and my salvo of Caldari Navy missiles tore into its detonating super-structure: http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=3412554
A blackbird had become involved at this point and so ollie and distructo gave the order to deaggress. As I had actually immediately put a point on each of the battlecruisers and opened fire on the harbinger, I had to warp-out before anyone noticed me...And so I wasn't really even needed, ah well. Thanks for the fun guys =)

Of my old 22nd buddies (posted on them before, BFF!), I didn't note whether Capt Thryss was piloting the Harbinger or Ferox, but the Armageddon named '<3<3not so lil gurl' was a dead give-away for Anna Sophia, who I'd never seen out of a particular crow named...'lil gurl.'

Anyway, my corp mates were properly scandalized, here I had gone and teamed up with some of my least-favorite neighbors to shoot some of my very favorite neighbors!
But to dig up some history, this is how I met ollie123: http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=757718

Basically he was hanging out in Tuskers public, probably spying, when I mentioned I had just had a megathron tackled in a belt. He immediately sent word to some friends of his and got on the scene himself within a minute or so to help me catch and hold the thing. When it went down my stabber was on fire, I have great pics of us all clustered around the wreck, my first time seeing a broadsword up close (before we had the fancy viewer thing in the info), and they of course ready and able to blow me away in an instant.
It was a great moment for me, and one when I realized reputation is a sort of mutual thing. Just as Tuskers honor is a practical manner to facilitate ransoms, these guys have an e-honor to facilitate the backup to have their fun, with friends in unexpected places.

So ya, I still don't like much about the Flaming Brotherhood, almost out of necessity I have to despise the idea of engaging with them unless it will clearly result in swift victory, because these guys tend to suck you in.
But everybody needs fleet-mates sometimes! And pirates are opportunistic creatures...