Seeing as my and MoP's counterpart aren't regarded as criminals or even suspected of wrongdoing in the present time (as far as I know), I would think that it wasn't an epic failure that caused them to break apart. You never know... But I'd say that there's more to their falling out than simply a plan falling apart.

By the way, Brian, about you having to do Page 156 twice... Do you know how many times I've had to redo an entire chapter of one of my fics, or get rid of one entirely? More times than I'd like, I'll tell you that. "Sorcerer Kings" was originally going to have a chapter where Chelsea dueled someone with a Des Frog Deck, and the whole chapter had been written before I decided that I wanted something completely different for that part of the story. So it was necessary to start over.