NE*RA Season 2.0 Kicks Off

I haven't been very active in Eve for the majority of the summer; partly thanks to some RL events and partly (I suspect) due to my bittervet status and my recent disenchantment after the whole Greed is Good debacle.

Only racing - the thing that made me really want to try Eve Online to start with - could manage to bring me back week after week.

Last season, my computer issues coupled with some clashes between my RL and the race schedules kept me somewhat disheartened and uninspired. I can't not show to a race if I possibly can make it, because even on a bad day it's easily the most fun I can have in Eve.

Now... I still have computer issues (biggest issue being not having cash to get me a new one :P) but at least the races have been rescheduled to a day and time that I can come back to racing in. For my part, I couldn't be more grateful to Gyra for the change ;)

Yesterday, Season 2.0 started. The race was... eventful, to say the least. My computer is still crap, I still struggle with system loading times, but my team was united again. Our team. And Quin was on the track. It was just like old times and I loved it. Even though by the end we at Scuderia Dragonstar were sad. But despite on-track setbacks, it felt to me like the races of old. I loved it.

My inspiration seems to be back. I wrote a report and posted it on the NE*RA forums. A blog is hardly the best venue for such a lengthy text, but if you want to know more about KayJay, the Scuderia, and how Quin's famous executioner met its end, that's the place to go.

Links:
Scuderia Dragonstar Race 1 Report
NE*RA Official thread on the Eve Forums
Quin's account of her loss
Norrin Ellis / Venture account of the race

Season 1.0 - Race 2 - Placid

Sixth to dock. Again. And this time none of the Re-Aw members of her roster had shown up. Not a single one.

So she had fleeted with reds, in one of her flashes of temper. She did seem to have a quicker temper whenever she was in her racing clone. But this time she didn't regret it one bit. She'd be damned if she was going to toss aside her personal beliefs plus her racing family and then be made to race alone.

Facing Ciarente wasn't going to be pleasant, but right now it didn't matter one bit how much she liked her CEO. Kayleigh Jamieson-Read was feeling both angry and betrayed, and not one bit repentant.

Season 1.0, Race 1 - Derelik - DSR Race Report

The official results aren't in, yet, but I managed to jot down my impressions of this race soon after, while things were still fresh in my mind. Follow the link and I hope you find it interesting reading.

http://www.pleasure-hub.com/nera/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51

Season 1.0 - Race 1 - Derelik

The jin-mei groaned. Sixth place. Sixth. She probably hadn't had a result this bad since Season 1 of the previous league. Sixth overall, sixth in her class - barring any time penalties the official results might uncover.

Embarrassing.

The Night Before

The night before was always one for fretting, worrying about all the tiny details. Spare parts placement, ship tuning, clone jumping... But this time around she had an added worry. She had had to let go of her old team and her new one was apparently leaving her hanging.

None of her pilots had confirmed they would be in Derelik tomorrow. Not a single one of them.

Kayleigh took a deep breath and rubbed her face. Right. It wouldn't be the first time she raced alone. But it would be the first time she felt angry and betrayed while doing so. Bugger the lot of them. She was a big girl. She'd pay for her mistakes - even if that meant an entire season thrown in the garbage - and then in the end no one ever again would tell her who she could race with or not.

ISRC Season 7 - Final Results

Final results for Season VII of the ISRC are in. Here are the winners of each category.

Interceptors
Professional: Takashi Kurosawa [VRT]
Amateur: --
Rookie: Bloodpetal [SLB]
Team: Venture Racing Team

T1 Frigates
Professional: Demon Flir [SDS]
Amateur: Julius Rigel / Messita
Rookie: Ayre Rowan [SDS]
Team: Scuderia Dragonstar

Assault Frigates
Professional: Quintrala [SDS]
Amateur: --
Rookie: Koronakesh [VRT]
Team: Scuderia Dragonstar

I myself ended up securing my vice-championship in Interceptors, where SDS also got second place in the Team rankings.

Note:
SDS – Scuderia Dragonstar
SLB – Solar Babies
VRT – Venture Racing Team

Season 7 - Race 12 - The Bleak Lands

-- Excerpt from personal logs, 23rd of August --

We made history tonight. Possibly even twice. First of all, it's now official that Quin is the first ever pilot to earn a title in each of the three possible classes. Not only that, but with her insane clone-jumping technique she docked before Takashi - before anyone, really - in an assault frigate. That's not a sight we see often at all in the League.

I don't care that critics might say 'oh but Takashi wasn't racing as usual; he was anchoring the Venture assault frigate challenger'. I know for a fact he tried to catch her toward the end; he burned past me in the space of three jumps as if I wasn't there at all. Yes, my ego suffers each time he does that. It drives me crazy.

Nevertheless, he tried to catch up to her AF in the later stages and couldn't. All the records will say is that Quin's assault frigate beat him and everyone else to the finish line.

I should be happy, jumping for joy, throwing a party. I'm not. I mean, I was at the time. I giggled and cheered and whooped as much as any of them on our team comms. But now the blood has cooled, the adrenaline has worn off and I can only feel a heavy heart. That's because I know this will be the last race where I'll have Quin alongside me on the track. My good friend Quin is quitting the piloting side of the races.

Sure, she'll be involved in the organisation side of things - and I swear I fear the tricks her brilliant mind will come up with - but she'll no longer be suffering and cheering and stumbling right along with us on the track. It's-- I can't quite explain just how much of a loss this is to me personally and to the team as a whole. I can't find the words. There's just this heavy, heavy feeling in my heart, and it has cast a bit of a shadow over the celebrations I should be doing.

I'm going to miss Quin horribly.

45 Seconds

Kayleigh's sense of pride and joy disappeared almost as quickly as it had burst to the fore while she was poring over the results for the latest race. The feeling which replaced it was apprehension, self-doubt.

45 seconds only had separated Takashi's arrival at the finish line from the first Scuderia Dragonstar pilot. It had been a long time since she'd seen such a small difference in times between her team and their biggest rivals on the track - Takashi Kurosawa and Venture Racing Team - and this incredible breakthrough had happened precisely on the one single official race she had failed to start in.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and released a tired sigh. Could it be that all this time she herself had somehow been dragging her team down? Was it possible that she was somehow distracting, interfering, getting in the way? Or maybe she'd simply lost the spark. She felt so tired all the time, these days. Nothing quite seemed to go right.

Verge Vendor, the region she'd called her home for so long, was overrun by Caldari militia. The Federation government seemed to be about to stumble and fall. Nakatre was off planetside conducting business and for the most part out of reach. SPHERE hadn't taken off for great flights yet, as she'd hoped after leaving Dragonstar. And now her own racing team seemed to do better than it had in the entire season when she wasn't around.

She sighed again.

As she stood, her doubts assailed her once more. Was she really becoming a has-been in the world of capsuleer racing? Should she quit while she still had some dignity? Should she go on but step back into less of a leading role and more of a support one?

She made her way toward the bedroom and let herself fall on the bed, curling up into a tight ball, eyes closed. She felt like crying but the tears wouldn't come. "I miss you Nakatre," she whispered tiredly into the velvety darkness.

ISRC Season 7 - Race 8 - Lonetrek

--Excerpt from personal logs: 5th of July--

But what a frustrating race. There were so many long dashes between waypoints! It was clearly a track made to Takashi's dreams. It would have to happen sooner or later, of course. Nothing we have been able to do so far even comes close to his gating times, although I shall have a staff meeting with my team of mechanics and engineers once more and I'll be damned if they won't find a place to shave off a few more seconds.

Maybe my mistake all along has been having a Minmatar leading the entire team which deals with my very Gallentean interceptors. I need to find a good Gallentean mechanical genius. Or maybe I need someone insane after all.

Speaking of which... I have yet to decide whether Quintrala is genius or insane. Out in Lonetrek she finally had a chance to use a trick for which she's been planning and preparing for on every single race for months. A mid-race clone-jump.

I positively hate clone-jumps. I do them out of necessity if and when I must. I'm always afraid I might be someone different when I wake up. I mean, imagine if the transfer is flawed and you forget something as essential as who your loved ones are, or how to undock in Dodixie traffic? Obviously Quintrala also doesn't go through the nauseating half-hour or so of disorientation after a clone-jump.

"I'm going to do it!" was what she said over team comms. We were facing a very long dash of about 12 jumps to one of the waypoints and her clone was really close to the destination. I said it to her face: "You're insane!" but I think the fact I couldn't stop giggling only made her want to do it even more.

Some reporter later asked me why I let her do it, why we risked a gamble which could have earned her a disqualification. There was absolutely nothing in the rules against such a tactic, that's the first reason. Secondly, what Caille brought to Dragonstar when we merged was precisely that: out-of-the-box thinking. I'm not going to stifle Quin's creativity. I'm going to laugh right along with her as we find new things to try.

And it would have worked in any other circuit in the season. After her clone-jump, Quintrala had a 2-minute advantage over Takashi at the next waypoint. But Takashi is a robot who gains 5 seconds on us at each stargate, and the track had many, many jumps. He gobbled up all that gap, overtook Quin, and got enough distance to not have to constantly look over his shoulder before he docked at the finish line.

As for me, I am so set in my ways of racing that I raced stupidly from then on. I mean, we had Quin feeding us the several waypoints over comms, so why didn't I think quick and do them out of the regular order as I came into the appropriate systems? I could have shaved quite a few seconds off my final time. Stupid.

Ayre and Demon flew more intelligently, at least - I was glad to see that. I will also cherish the holo of them docking exactly at the same time, side by side, two beautiful Firetails. I should display that somewhere...

Resignation

3 years, 3 months, 3 days. That's how long her record sheet said she'd worked for Dragonstar. A funny date, a coincidence.

Kayleigh stared at the datapad, dotted line flashing at the bottom waiting for her to press her thumb there, and she hesitated. She lifted her grey eyes to sweep the room.

Her office was already empty, naked of everything but the very last personal touch: the old Dragonstar Racing Team poster from Season I. She smiled faintly as her gaze lingered there, on the image of herself, Iconath, Loras and Scavanger. It seemed like a lifetime ago. It made her sigh as her smile faded.

In the fast-paced world of capsuleer pilots, three years was a long time. It was depressing to see it all come to an end, when three months back everything had been going so well on the way to a healthy and thriving corp. Now, Dragonstar was a ghost of itself. Most pilots had left to other corporations within Nox Draconum. They were down to Druif, Quintrala, herself and Kiarra, basically. Kayleigh simply didn't have the strength anymore, not after the rug had been pulled from under her in that way. It was time to let go, start anew, change scenery.

And yet she couldn't help feeling she'd somehow let the corporation down, that she should be doing something, anything. With another miserable sigh, she turned her gaze again toward the datapad. That dotted line still there, blink, blink, blink... Grey eyes hard as steel, Kayleigh finally thumbed it. With a quiet bleep her life with Dragonstar came to an end.

She felt that she ought to be crying, but she couldn't shed a tear. She was too tired, too defeated. She simply got up, strode to the poster and retrieved it. At the door she cast one final glance at what had been the Director's office, her home away from home for so long. She lowered her gaze, shook her head and walked out.

In the empty office, the automatic door slowly closed itself.

ISRC Season 7 - Race 7 - Black Rise (II)

Undock.

When the camera drones came online she could see the other competitors warp out. She tried to keep sharp but she was sluggish, her reactions dulled. Jump after jump, she was falling behind, losing touch with Takashi and even her own team.

She felt tired, weary. No matter how much she tried to focus on the race, the rush, the excitement, all she could do was fumble and make mistakes. Overshooting cans, slow selection of gates, bouncing off asteroids at waypoints...

It was doubly embarrassing because the League was testing new technology which kept track of each pilot's location and sent back telemetry to the viewers. Why did she have to perform badly precisely when all eyes got to see more?

Because she was tired. Because she'd lost her spark when the rug had been pulled from under her feet and Dragonstar corp had all but died out. Because she had been spending sleepless nights planning a move, trying to let go, and yet she still felt stuck. And it was getting in the way of her racing.

She struggled to push it all behind her back, to somehow recapture the thrill of the race. But it was a long struggle and by the time she managed to find her rhythm it was too late to catch the lead.

Or was it?

She caught a lucky break at a multiple-can waypoint: Demon and she tagged a can which might have been a fake, losing a little time to Takashi and Quin. But in a lucky break, it turned out to be real, so while the leaders had to go back, she kept on racing, fighting Demon for position.

They couldn't catch Takashi, even though this bit of luck had reinvigorated her. She found herself fighting for second place overall, almost like the old days, finally feeling the old thrill returning on the final dash to the finish line.

Then she got stuck at a gate. Demon went past. A delayed Quin went past and there she was, still stuck, error messages popping up. There was some problem with her authentication, apparently.

Her heart fell all the way to her feet, and the thrill was lost once more. She just felt so tired. She ended up docking in 4th place, third in her class. It felt hollow.

Kayleigh Jamieson-Read felt, essentially, defeated.

ISRC Season 7 - Race 7 - Black Rise (I)

Half an hour until start time.

Natalie raised her head from her book and swept the busy hangar with her eyes. Organised chaos, as it was every Sunday night. And in the center, literally under the spotlight sat the Distortion, with its pretty green and gold design which looked like dragon scales, being tended by a team of mechanics busy with last-minute tweaking. Daniel was busy polishing the number 2 on the Ares' wing, now.

What she couldn't see was any sign of the pilot, Mrs Kayleigh Jamieson-Read - better known among the fans simply as KayJay.

"She's late," came the low voice at her elbow.

She set the book down on her lap and turned her eyes to the chief mechanic, Steele, a big Brutor and the only man in that hangar to manage making the Scuderia jumpsuit look uncomfortable. "Yeah, she is," she agreed, swinging her feet now. Perched as she was on a stack of crates, Natalie was still only just taller than him. "Tell your guys to watch out. I don't imagine she'll be in much of a good mood. It's not like her to be late for this."

Ten minutes later, she arrived. Natalie noticed, even with her nose in her book, because it was as if the spotlight had suddenly shifted from the interceptor to the petite jin-mei striding quickly straight toward Steele. She wondered if all capsuleers did that trick of getting all attention focused on them in a room full of mere humans. For a moment, Natalie watched the scene.

The mechanics themselves, usually a loud and lively crew, suddenly were keping their exchanges strictly to the business at hand. Natalie smiled wryly. No one wanted to get noticed by the capsuleer. She didn't mingle with the grunts, as a rule, and it was taken as fact among the team that when she did deign to speak to you, you were about to get fired.

When she saw the conversation was nearly over, Natalie put her book away and hopped off the crates. Sure enough, just a moment later Jamieson-Read started making her way toward the pod dock, greeting Natalie with just a little nod. Natalie followed.

At the smaller, more secluded dock, Natalie assisted the pilot out of her regular clothes and into the Scuderia flight suit. She noticed the pilot was pale, and had long dark circles under her eyes as if she hadn't slept in days, but the distant, hard gaze invited no questions. Despite the quick change, Natalie had time to wonder, glancing at the jin-mei's naked back, if it had hurt to get all the sockets, or how it felt having them on day after day, or even what it was like to have a ship plugged in there.

But there was no more time for wondering; Kayleigh had stepped onto the lower half of the pod. Natalie got the first cable, smiled faintly and asked "Are you ready, captain?" All she got was a nod in reply.

One by one, the assistant connected each cable to the appropriate socket. Then she stepped back. "All done, captain. Fly safe," she said, punching the button which would trap the pilot inside the egg and start up systems.

ISRC Season 7 - Race 5 - Genesis

--Excerpt from personal logs--

I don't know how he does it. None of us can figure it out. Quin had the initial lead for a couple jumps off the start line and then Takashi overtook her and that was that; he never again lost the lead all through the race.

At least this time, despite all our little mistakes and mishaps, we didn't lose as much time as in previous races. When he docked at the finish line after fifteen waypoints I was four jumps from him. That's four to five minutes, roughly. There have been much worse gaps. And if Quin hadn't had the misfortune of a capsule systems reboot early in the race maybe the gap might have been shorter.

Of course we could get our act straight and stop miswarping, for one. And I personally could certainly use an intensive training session on how to handle multiple-can waypoints. It's unacceptable to keep losing so much time there.

On the other hand I'm really happy with the way Quin, Demon and I work together. It's such a seamless teamwork! It's really anyone's guess at the start line which one of us will arrive first at the finish line. Last night it was me, no doubt thanks to Quin's capsule glitch. A shame the rest of the team seems to have lost interest in the competition.

We may have got a new pilot coming in. It seems Demon convinced rookie Ayre Rowan to join our ranks. She was worried about team orders or that we would require her to change corporations, which surprised me. The thought had never crossed my mind. No one should quit their day job in order to race. That's certainly not what the Scuderia is all about.

Although in her case I doubt the term "day job" applies. Seems she's employed with the Hellcats, and therefor possibly makes her living as a pirate, for all I know. That's fine. It's always nice to have pilots on board the team who might know what they're doing if ever things get ugly on the track again sometime. But for now, I just hope she settles in well with the rest of us and finds fun racing out there.

Losing It

I think I'm slowly losing it. Lately I've had so much paperwork to do, so many people to talk to, so many things to take care of that I found I actually almost missed a real season race.

I checked the calendar on Friday night to make sure and I misread it. I thought Sunday, May 10th was to be the Cruiser Exhibition. So imagine my surprise when comms managed to filter through to Endland and I realised I was going to miss a race.

Except I didn't, because it ended up canceled. And somehow, even though that saves me the embarrassment of losing 25 points in a single race to Takashi, somehow that didn't make me glad at all. This season is limping, I believe. We have to stop canceling and postponing races. The viewership is going down, racers are showing less and less at the start line... *sigh* For crying out loud, even I got the calendar wrong, what with all the changes.

Exhibition race - Domain

[CENSORED] is what I have to say about it.

Took me 45 [CENSORED] minutes to get as far as waypoint 3/10, after much pulling of hair and puzzling at the [CENSORED] directional scanner to find cans. And then what happens? Yeah, KillJoy, that was a [CENSORED] genius idea putting that waypoint there.

2009.04.05 20:46:00

Victim: Kayleigh Jamieson
Corp: Dragonstar
Alliance: Nox Draconum
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Rifter
System: Milal
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 1015

Involved parties:

Name: Gallente Control Tower / Kermit Space Industies (laid the final blow)
Damage Done: 1015

I died while I was inserting the [CENSORED] password. Great. Well [CENSORED] that. >.<

Career Guide

I haven't been able to stop blushing ever since I realised that it was true and people weren't just pulling my leg. Somehow I got mentioned in an official CCP Career Guide. As a Speed Specialist, no less, right along with my racing arch-nemesis Takashi Kurosawa.

I feel proud and self-conscious all in one. Looking for a hole in which to hide, really as I'm used to going through the game in a sort of anonimity, to be quite honest.

And yet... It's such a heart-warming feeling to know someone out there has noticed some of what I do :) I'm all giddy!

...

Does that mean I'm expected to go fast, now, everywhere I go? >.>

ISRC Season 7 - Race 1 - Molden Heath

The entire press conference after the race had been somewhat of a blur. Moreso than the race, actually. Maybe she was simply getting old and these all looked the same nowadays. The diminutive jin-mei now could finally go around more or less anonymously in the more select gathering afterward with just pod racers, some jet-set guests and the organisers.

She nibbled on a cookie despite the fact she really wasn't hungry. She could never really eat just after getting off a pod, and to add to that she still had too much adrenaline from the race coursing through her veins.

The first race was done. She felt rusty, she felt clumsy; she'd been overtaken not just by tech-ones but also by Quin's assault frigate. That was always a blow on her ego, only somewhat lessened by the fact the ship was piloted by such a close friend.

But she kept grinning when she was too distracted to school her face into a more polite smile. They had done the impossible as a team: they'd got the entirety of Scuderia Dragonstar in at the finish line before the legendary speed of Takashi Kurosawa. All of them! Even Arcmako, the rookie. Even Quin in a Jaguar. It was such an incredible feat of team work that it still had her somewhat stunned.

A big part of that had been Nakatre. A missing waypoint at a turnaround on the track had brought Nakatre from last of the Scuderia to being in a very important first place and able to pull the rest of the team up into recovering from the extra jumps they'd had to do, compared to most other racers out there. And the civire had held on to that place until the very end, when Demon had finally gone past her.

She watched as Nakatre came in from somewhere and swept the room with her eyes, no doubt looking for Kayleigh herself. The jin-mei made no move, just gazing at her wife across the room, a little smile playing with her lips. I am so proud of you, Nakatre, so happy you're racing again.. At this point those keen blue eyes had picked her from the crowd and she'd started walking toward Kayleigh. I love you so much.

For the first time in many, many months, they left the post-race party together to share the journey back home.