Jaune keikakus harder

The simple fact of the matter was that you couldn't predict everything. You couldn't plan for everything. This is especially true for when you're planning against someone else, because then you're dealing with the fact that a good chunk of whatever you come up with is dependent on someone who most likely wants you to fail and, possibly, to die in a fire. Of course, there are many ways to help deal with that because another fact is that we often do go against one another, on many, many different scales and for countless reasons.

Personally, I'd been kind of hoping good old surprise would see me through. Surprise was a wonderful thing in any plan; sure, the other guy would try and stop you…if he knew what you were doing, that is. As he does not, his ability to react to, and thus disrupt, your plan is comparatively limited. That's the easiest way to deal with opposition, if you can manage it—don't.

Sadly, many times, even often times, that just wasn't possible. The same thing that made surprise a wonderful asset made it a dire threat if used against you, so people worked hard to keep it from happening to them. Maybe that was what happened here; there'd been a layer of security we hadn't noticed before, a lie that didn't add up, and maybe even just bad luck. Whatever the case, a problem had occurred.

The bright side is that occurring in plans is what problems did and people had been dealing with that for years, too. A lot of times, we try to plan ahead—the best way to never be caught off-guard is to simply be prepared for everything, after all. Rarely possible, unfortunately, but a nice thought and we do our best. Adam, Blake, and I had made a number of plans, though, and back up plans and more and while I wasn't arrogant enough to believe they covered everything, we'd covered what we could.

For that reason, I paused for a moment. With some unknown figure approaching, with Blake telling me we had a problem, with no idea what to expect, I calmly remained seated and thought things through.

A big part of planning ahead is, naturally, preparation—that being the very point of making a plan, after all. The same is true of contingencies and backups and, really, training of any kind. You make a lot of plans so you know what to do and how to react, if something happens, or to give yourself more options. A lot of the time, these are done in broad strokes out of necessity, because you just don't know what will happen, but that same thing can reduce a plan's effectiveness because it's not built for a specific problem. At times like that, you need something better.

Which is why the hilarious truth about planning is that often times, you practice and prepare and think over and spend lots of time on it—and then some step gets really blurry all of a sudden and you just have to think on your feet since step three suddenly became 'figure out how to make it to step four.' You hear a lot of comparisons of battles and life and whatever to games like…well, like chess. Chess is a common one, used in all sorts of metaphors about wars and combats and strategy.

I didn't see it. I wasn't a veteran of battles by any means but I'd gotten some experience in the last three weeks or so and I honestly didn't see it. I mean, I guess if you tilted your head at it and squinted, chess might be like a battle. If you couldn't always see the pieces. And if there were more pieces. And if the pieces could move however they wanted, move themselves, leave the game, come back in, switch sides, and had thoughts, feelings, and opinions. So, yeah, not really like chess at all.

But that didn't necessarily mean you couldn't play the game.

'I'll handle my side, you handle yours,' I sent back to Blake as I stood. 'This isn't over yet.'

'Okay,' She replied a moment later.

This wasn't chess and Blake and Adam weren't my pieces. They were people, they're own people, and each probably had vastly more experience than I did in terms of things going wrong. I trusted them and I knew they could handle themselves in a situation; I didn't need to hold their hands in a fight. If anything, it was the other way around on that particular battlefield, so I banished that side of the problem from my mind completely and focused instead on my own. I had the most important job now—the ship—so I gave it my full attention.

First things first, I opened my Inventory. I was still in the uniform I'd used to sneak onboard the ship and now I needed a change. I looked at Crocea Mors, at Dreary Midnight and my masks, and they were tempting, so very tempting.

But no. See, everyone always hears about the dangers of underestimating an opponent—and that was true and you shouldn't. But something you hear about less often that's just as important? Don't overestimate them, either.

It was easy to hear about the problem, to see that someone had entered the ship, and assume the worse. That my cover had been blown, that they knew everything, that they were coming for me. It's dangerously simple to see a problem and make connections that weren't there, to blame everything on someone else, to give in to sudden desperation and fear. Something goes wrong while you're plotting against someone; it's easy to assume they were responsible, that you underestimated them, that beneath it all everyone was some super genius.

But was that the case? Probably not. It was common enough to hear things like 'I don't believe in coincidences,' but then what do you believe in when something random or unlikely happens. I had more reason to think that way than most, since I had a stat that might well be able to manipulate probability, but even then, I'd seen a fair amount of stuff I'd attribute to chance and had seen a fair number of plots in movies and games and stuff that made me go 'sorry, no; you'd have to be God to plan all that.'

Did I believe then, that we'd just fallen into an elaborate trap, that someone had known all along or else found out in time to set us up? That they'd allowed me to get this far just to catch me here and now? A part of me wanted to, wanted to point out that Adam and Blake had recently suffered difficulties and now I was too, and wonder how they could have done it, but that didn't add up.

I wasn't certain what kind of trouble Adam and Blake had run into—I didn't hear any explosions yet, which I figured was a good sign—but whatever it was, if it had given me away, why send just one person? Maybe she was an expert Huntress like my mother, but if I was the one in charge of something this big and I suspected someone was attempting anything like I was attempting, there would be more than a small, subtle response.

Furthermore, thinking about it with the calm granted by the Gamer's Mind, how would they know it was me? Ignoring the things I know I'd done out of sight, what could have given me away? Again, I could have given into the urge to believe I was dealing with super geniuses who could spot the slightest inconsistency, but I knew that wasn't true. Most of my plan had been built on that not being true. Getting the information about the ship, getting onto the ship, and more, all proof of that people were people. I had gotten past some of the best security money could buy and then onto a cutting edge airship purely on that fact. So then, what had given me away?

Maybe, just maybe, nothing. In which case going out in a Grimm mask and a black cloak would blow my cover needlessly.

With one last glance at my items, I shifted my attention downwards and equipped the flight attendant suit I'd stolen beforehand and left the cockpit.