Interceptors Are a Thing

TIL; Interceptors Are a Thing

So I lost my Tengu alt's Tengu last week in what ended up being a rather fun duel.
Being Christmas, most of space (and certainly WH space) was pretty dead so I decided to log in my Tengu alt and pay a visit to BNI in their lowsec home, figuring they'd have plenty of things around to shoot.

I got through the half dozen odd LS jumps without incident and started poking around their home station which most of them were parked on.  They were busy chasing around an ex corp mate who was buzzing around belts in his Caracal and I managed to catch one or two frigs in by playing tag along.
After an hour or so I was getting bored and noticed that the Caracal was at a belt that I had covops eyes on along with a Crow that seemed unrelated to either party so I decided to go see if I could have better luck with the Caracal than BNI were having (to be fair, I think he was on his 3rd Caracal so BNI did have some luck).

On my landing the Caracal bailed immediately but the Crow came to play.  I wasn’t worried about that since I knew the DPS on a Crow is effectively zero against a shield T3 and that its tank is also basically zero against pretty much everything so even though I almost certainly couldn't catch it, I should be able to drive it off easily.

Turns out that I might have been slightly wrong on a few counts...

The Crow settled into a 23km orbit and was moving at 5.9k/s.  This should have been my first sign for concern but having admittedly little experience in frigs (I'm not allowed to fly them) it didn't even occur to me until afterwards that this meant he had a full high grade snake implant set in his head in addition to 3+ speed mods fit which more than likely meant he knew what he was doing quite well.
Anyway, there's very little that a 3k/s (overloaded) Tengu with the agility of a freight train can do to get out from under a point of a 6k/s Crow with the agility of a mosquito so I hit F1, missiles away.

My second alarm bell started ringing when I found out that my faction Scourge ammo could not break the passive recharge on said Crow.  At this point I had one more chance so I reloaded and started overloading when his shields stabilized at ~40%.  This had the desired effect and his shield slowly dropped to 20%, well below peak recharge. 
Unfortunately, this was around the same time my heat damage hit ~85% and I had to stop.

Looks like I'm in trouble here...

At this point I decided to try break point after all.
All this time I had been burning away from the belt we started at in order to put distance between me and any reinforcements that might come to the belt since he was calling out that there was a tackled Tengu to be had in local.
With me moving at 2.1k and him orbiting at 23km at 5.9k, the closest he was getting to me was 20km.  Now, my Tengu has a faction web on it that overloads to 18.2km so I figured a direction change with a burst of heat on the AB might just do it.
Turns out even at my best efforts, I could get him to 19km but was always ending up about 500m short :(
If I had a MWD, slingshotting out of point range or into web range would have been simple but the slow acceleration of the 100mn made it impossible.
That said, I DID somehow manage to break his point range once and warp off.  However, because I am so very bad at this game, I chose another belt to warp to instead of a station and since the Crow pilot was, unlike me, good at the game, he followed, landed well before me due to the new warp speed mechanics and caught me again easily.  The dance continues.

At this point I know I'm in a heap of trouble since even though no backup had yet materialized, some BNI had seen us at the belt and it had gotten mentioned on their comms a couple times which I was listening to.  I decide to log in my main in his 100mn Tengu and see if I can make it in to assist since 2 Tengus can definitely kill the Crow.
I jump out of our WH and set destination.  16 jumps.
Ok, we'll see.  I hit the edge of LS space just as the first wave of reinforcements descend on my Tengu alt. 
The reinforcements are kitchen sink junkers from BNI including a few frigs, 2-3 cruisers and, importantly, a Rapier decloaking 10km from me...
I figure I'm very dead since a DPS supported Rapier is sad face for a 100mn Tengu.  I hit overload on everything, point the Rapier and start shooting since that's my only chance.
I do a quick check and my top speed with heat is ~1200m/s. I am dual webbed and now considerably slower than the cruisers gaining on me.
By some miracle, the Rapier is weakly shield tanked and I manage to melt it fast.  By now all the other ships have caught up and I am still webbed but I am accelerating so only single webbed and by an Atron at that.
I kill off the Atron in a couple volleys and start pulling range at an acceptable rate, webbing a Stabber off me.

I somehow live and get out to range at 20% shield where I stop overloading and decide to send the Crow a one word mail:  "Ransom?"
I'm not a fan of ransoms as such.  I never offer them and have never paid one to date.  That said, the Crow definitely deserves a pay out here so I figure I'd ask.
I also decide the second Tengu plan is still a good one and start pushing through lowsec with my main.  Sadly, he runs into a camp 2 jumps out and while it was a camp I'd gladly engage normally, I AM dual boxing hard and decide to evade and dock instead.  My alt is on his own.
At this point my mail gets answered: "How much?".  I start off with 250mil, figuring he'll counter offer but it looks like he's not that interested and he never responds.

Round 2 of reinforcements include a very annoying Navy Vexor with sentries which REALLY hurt as well as the better part of the entire BNI fleet which had just returned from a roam.
I pick off a few more frigs but we're done here.  I GF in local as the webs start landing and switch my focus over to getting my, not cheap, pod out which I do manage.

 Farewell Tengu:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=21091317

All in all I don't have any regrets and thoroughly enjoyed the engagement :)
Props to the crow pilot, next time I will have precision ammo in cargo ;)

JM