(Untitled)

[you_look_ready]

WHO: Beatrix Kiddo, the tenth Doctor
WHEN: Friday afternoon. Lol backdated.
WHAT: Bea stealing a car and trying to get the hell out of dodge.
WHERE: The fasted way out of Salem.
WARNINGS: None, I think. Car-stealing. Maybe some swearing.
NOTES: Just putting this up now to keep it within comm chronology. IT WILL BE EPICALLY BACKTHREADED, since

Comments

Looks fine to me. Also, he can use his warden item to locate her, if he wants.

[you_look_ready]

The only thing that this car lacks is a stash of cash in the glove compartment. Oh, and a full tank. The fuel indicator needle hovering just outside the red area is what has her looking for cash in the first place, but as far as money is concerned, this car is as empty as a wallet on the night before payday. Well, you can't have everything.

The little gas that's left in the tank gets her out of Salem and onto the highway. She can feel the car slowing down just as she's driving up to the gas station exit, and uses the car's momentum to roll it up to the pump. Not to boast, but her timing is, as usually, impeccable. She kills the engine and gets out, pocketing the keys and heading for the shop entrance.

The gas station is not quite as out of the way as she would have liked for this purpose, but as she enters, she decides that it'll do. She takes a quick look around, noticing the three or four customers and the clerk behind the till--a middle-aged man with a bald pate that is almost certainly shaved, not natural--and then finding the highest shelf in the shop. She spots a row of oil canisters sitting on a board just under the ceiling, just so out of her reach. Well, at least it's not porn mags.

She nods at the clerk, friendly but not obtrusive, and heads for the oil canisters. A few fake, clumsy tries later, she turns around and finds the clerk watching her--or rather, staring at her ass, and quite unashamedly so. She gives him a helpless-woman smile.

"I'm so sorry, sir, could you give me a hand?"

She can tell that his air of disinterest is a facade; he's more than happy to come out from behind his counter and give the girl in the tight jeans a hand. She waits until he's occupied trying to reach the oil canisters on the shelf, and then slips away and slides behind the counter. The gun the clerk is keeping underneath it is a Smith & Wesson 686--not ideal, but better than nothing. A quick flick of her wrist assures her it's loaded.

"Hey, lady, what d'you think you're--"

"Stay where you are." She points the gun at the clerk, her expression flat and calm. "Your keys. Throw them to me."

The clerk is smart enough to do what she says. Not much later, she's transferred all the cash from the till into her pockets, and has unlocked one tank filling's worth of gas on the pump next to which she parked the Lexus. There's a phone mounted on the wall next to the till. She uses the butt of the gun to smash it in a quick, sudden gesture, and then walks back around the counter, the revolver pointing at the clerk again.

"Give me your cell phone."

He hands it over without a word of protest. She pockets it, grabs a packet of chips off a shelf--she's hungry; eating hasn't been a priority so far today--and then leaves the shop, tipping the barrel of the gun against her hairline in a casual salute as she pushes through the glass door back outside.

She fills up her car, gets behind the wheel, puts the gun on the passenger seat and the packet of chips on top of it to hide it from view, and then pulls out of the gas station. She doesn't look up as she does so. If she had, she might have noticed the rather unusual sight of a blue box spinning around and around in the air, making its unsteady way down towards the highway.

((I AM HAVING WAY TOO MUCH FUN COMING UP WITH BADASS THINGS FOR HER TO DO. She has a gun now. The Doctor needs to be careful. It's only got six shots, though. And sorry for that fail-post earlier; I SOMEHOW managed to accidentally hit submit without meaning to. -- ETA: Oh god I'm sorry I'll stop editing now. /o\))

Cool! Wasn't sure if it was fair to her for him to use it initially, but will do that now.

[doctor_of_time]

He isn't actually going anywhere, not really, but stepping into his ship-not the Barge, but his ship-gives him a little frisson of excitement, as it almost never fails to do. This is more like it.

He only wastes a very brief moment looking over the console and touching a few controls fondly, out of habit; because he's got to be quick about this. There's no telling what his inmate is getting up to on the planet below. She's run off before he's even had a chance to fully suss out what she's capable of, what is and isn't her style, and as a result, finding her could be a problem.

Except.

The Doctor stops, fishing in his pocket for the psychic paper he'd used not very long ago.

Yes. That. That was supposed to help keep tabs on her, wasn't it? He vaguely recalls hearing something to that effect, but he hadn't really been paying attention at the time-there'd been things to see, people to meet. Listening to a list of guidelines and rules hadn't been especially high on his agenda. Perhaps it should've been.

Still, never mind that. He flips the paper open, and now he's a step closer to pinpointing her location. Which is changing quite a lot, unsurprisingly, as that car she nicked should be able to go at a rather fast clip. He can't pinpoint it precisely, but he can at least get the TARDIS onto, say, the proper highway? He flicks a few levers, pushes a button or two, uses the toe of his shoe to nudge a loose cable back into its proper spot under the console, and he's on his way.

Yes, this is really more like it.

Of course, as he's had to point out once or twice, for a ship, she doesn't do much actual flying, and when he's in roughly the correct spot, he finds something to hang onto and works on the somewhat inconvenient task of flying her down the road.

Her stop at the petrol station probably won him a bit of time, and it isn't too long before he checks one of his screens again and spots a car that fits the right description. Right, time to speed up. And time to kick that small, round, metal thing that's just dislodged from the controls back towards the console. But more importantly, time to speed up.

[you_look_ready]

Bea's minding the speed limit, going at a steady 65 miles per hour while nibbling sour cream & onion chips. It really wouldn't do to attract any inopportune attention from the authorities. They are going to be on her tail soon enough, anyway. But for now, she's cruising along meekly enough, easing her foot off the gas pedal every time the speed indicator needle quivers too close to the 70 mph mark.

The car is not a convertible; it doesn't even have a sunroof. Therefore, Bea doesn't notice her pursuer until the TARDIS is basically right on top of her. At that point, she picks up the sound--an extremely unusual, out-of-place whining sound that she is utterly unable to place. Her eyes flit over the armatures; it doesn't seem to be the car making that noise. She looks up and sees a young girl pressing her face against the window a couple of cars over. It seems like the child is staring at something up in the air above Bea's car--a plane, maybe? A helicopter? It doesn't sound like either of these things.

Speed limit be damned. Bea floors the gas pedal; the car jumps forward and picks up quite a bit of speed quite quickly. She passes two cars on the left and then pulls over into the right-most lane in order to be able to look back over her shoulder out the window. This is when she spots the blue box that is spinning in the air, exactly above the spot where her car was only a couple of moments ago.

Bea has seen a lot in her life, and has gotten used to not being surprised at most things. Surprise is never useful; all it does is ruin your reaction time. But she can't quite help being somewhat baffled by the sight of a large, wooden box tumbling through the air, seemingly without any visible means of propulsion. Momentarily distracted, she doesn't notice the Massachusetts highway patrol car that's sitting in a side lane next to the highway, and goes past it at a speed exceeding the speed limit by roughly 25 miles per hour.

But then, considering that she is being chased down the highway by a blue flying box, the cop would probably have pulled out anyway.

((I was thinking we could use the cop to stop her. Then we don't have to work out how the tractor beam is going to work. Also, Ten will have to rescue her from local authority, and she might be less reluctant to go with him.))

[doctor_of_time]

The Doctor is working out how, exactly, he can stop that car and collect its occupant without causing any harm to either, ignoring any and all attention he's attracting from the neighboring vehicles on the road. That is, until she changes lanes.

She's spotted the TARDIS, hasn't she? That's a bit of attention he'd rather he hadn't attracted just yet, but there's no avoiding it; the ship is incredibly difficult to miss, when it's not parked inconspicuously on a street corner. And even then, really, it tends to stand out. It's quite remarkable how often he forgets this.

As if he-as if they-weren't attracting enough unwanted attention, there appears to be a police car adding itself to the ensemble. The Doctor makes his way across the floor, wrapping one arm around a coral strut to get a bit of balance since everything's extremely unsteady at the moment, and kicks one of the doors open, looking out and down. The new car is most likely-no, it's definitely-following her. Lights flashing, siren going.

She isn't stopping; it's not surprising, as pulling over for the police wouldn't be on the agenda of someone who's just nicked a car and is in the middle of a grand escape attempt. The other cars fall back as the police car increases speed, eventually pulling into the lane adjacent to her when she shows no sign of slowing down. It swerves to the right, broadsiding the stolen car once, twice-three times, and there's enough force built up for that one to push her off the road entirely.

Well, at least that's solved part of the Doctor's problem (and the police are no doubt practiced in forcing people into ditches, so he probably doesn't need to worry about her being hurt), but he can't have the police actually taking her into custody. Certainly not. Or asking questions. The police are always terrible for asking questions that he really, really can't answer.

He's good at being evasive, mind you, but something about this makes him really not keen on dealing with them at the moment. It's not the evading that's the problem; it's more that it isn't his own lifestyle that he's covering up, anymore. It's this new one. It's the fact that there's the Barge to worry about. (It's also the fact that he's feeling oddly congested and that he keeps needing to stop and cough into the crook of his arm every minute or so.)

And so he stumbles back to the console and flips the switches necessary to land the TARDIS nearby, as swiftly as he can manage. He has to get to her before they do.

((Works for me! I do like that better, actually. That makes it simpler on everyone involved. Hope this fills in enough action there.))

[you_look_ready]

It's remarkable how quickly things can go pear-shaped if you let them. The cop on her tail seems quite eager, maybe even a bit overzealous--giving chase she understands, trying to get in front of her car, she gets, too, but when the cop swerves and broadsides her, metal screeching noisily, she lets out a low curse under her breath, trying to countersteer and accelerate at the same time. Aren't cops supposed to wait for backup before they do this sort of thing? If so, this particular cop is quite apparently ignoring regulation guidelines.

She doesn't pay any further attention to the blue spinning box--she's rather busy trying not to be driven off the road, and the box doesn't seem to be doing anything. The cop bumps his car into hers again, and she hits the brake, the car sliding dangerously close to the side of the road. She's almost certain she'll be able to keep it from tumbling into the ditch--this is not the first time someone is trying to run her off a highway; she's got practice--but then the cop sweeps in and hits her again. Her car lurches forward and off the road, the jolt sending chips flying every which way.

If she hadn't slowed down just before the cop hit her again, she probably would have gotten hurt rather severely. As it is, all that happens is that the car's tires catch in the ditch gravel, the entire car tilts, and then, as if in slow motion, tumbles sideways down the short ditch slope. There isn't enough slope for more than one rotation, and so, not much later, the blue Lexus comes to sit at the bottom of the ditch, right way up, even, scratched up and the interiors covered in potato chip crumbs, but not exactly totaled.

Bea had been wearing her seatbelt, a habit she's thankful to have, right now. She's shaken, dazed from the spin down the slope, but not exactly hurt. She raises a hand to feel her forehead--she hit it on the steering wheel; another point, maybe, that's contributing to the dazedness--but there's no blood. Good. That's good. She fumbles for her seat belt buckle and unsnaps it, then leans over to the passenger seat, reaching for the gun that's slid all the way across the seat and into the gap between seat and door. She gets out of the way just in time to avoid having the driver airbag blow up in her face--a bit of a delayed reaction, that; she makes a mental note to not get a Lexus, should she ever decide she needed a personal car of her own. That's something to consider later, though; right now, she's got more pressing issues.

She manages to fish the gun out from between the seat and door. The moment it's securely in her hand, she snaps around and points it at the driver's seat window. Not a moment to late, either--when her eyes follow the direction the barrel of the gun is pointing in, she sees the cop peering through the pane, his eyes widening as he spots the gun. She smiles. She bets you wish you had waited for backup now, don't you?

[doctor_of_time]

The Doctor doesn't wait to watch what happens once it's clear that she's being forced from the road. He's well into the process of landing by the time her car tumbles into the ditch, which he then notices, belatedly, on his monitor. He double-takes, turning back to the image after an initial glance; that's not quite what he'd expected to happen, when he'd seen what the police car was attempting. This is much messier. Not the sort of policeman the Doctor wants to have much interaction with, if he thinks that was entirely necessary. Because the Doctor doesn't especially think it was.

He misses the sight of her car finally coming to a standstill, as well as the officer's approach, since the TARDIS finds her way onto solid ground during that, and he's now picking himself up off the floor after that less-than-stellar landing attempt.

Still in one piece, he darts over to the doors and has a look outside-not too far away from the action. Good. He can clearly see her car, some feet away, and the police officer, and then, upon closer scrutiny, his mind latches onto one thing. Gun. Hers is visible through the window, and not only that, but the officer's got one as well. Neither one of them can be allowed the opportunity to fire those guns. That's not an option. Nope, not going to happen.

He hasn't exactly got a plan, but he'll wing it. He does that. He'll probably creep up on the scene, appear behind the policeman is if from nowhere, and do something along the lines of loudly clearing his throat. The rest is anyone's guess.

((He doesn't actually have to do that. But I didn't know how you wanted to play it, so I figured he'd just try to distract the cop in some way and try to grab her and get out of there. Also, thank you for assuming that the cop is just breaking regulations and not that Ten's writer IS AN IDIOT who doesn't know anything about running people off the road. XD ))

[you_look_ready]

She's extremely tempted to simply pull the trigger and blow the cop's head off. She's determined not to get caught, either by the police or by her so-called warden. The former will result in all sorts of inconvenient legal issues, the latter will force her to go back on that ship--and that, she is not going to do, thank you very much. Of the two options, going back on that strange, nonsensical prison ship is actually the worse option--which is what saves this Massachusett's cop's life. She might end up having to choose between getting arrested by the police and getting dragged back to the ship by the Doctor. She'd always choose the former, and in that case, she'd prefer not being a cop killer. Those usually stand very little chance of getting off easy.

So for a few long moments, she doesn't move a muscle, doesn't even blink, pointing her gun at the cop, her eyes daring him to move. He doesn't--she thinks he knows that she won't hesitate to pull the trigger--until the Doctor appears behind him. Bea only notices him in the vague periphery of her vision; she's too busy making sure the cop won't pull a gun on her to pay him any proper attention--so she doesn't see what it is he does. It must have been something, though, since the cop suddenly snaps around in an abrupt, surprised movement.

This is her chance. Not lowering the gun, she reaches around and behind herself, her fingers finding the handle that will open the passenger door. It's stuck, and she has to slam her back against it, once, twice, before the door finally swings open. She half-tumbles out of the car, but is quick to get her feet back under herself; then throws a look across the car's roof at the cop and the Doctor, making sure neither of them has a weapon pointing at her.

They don't. Good enough for her. She spins around and takes off, leaping over a low bush and heading for a set of gnarly trees at about 30 feet's distance. They're not ideal, but they're the best cover her immediate environment is offering.

((APPARENTLY NOW SHE'S TAKING OFF. Have fun chasing her, Doctor. And. I should probably warn you; she won't hesitate to shoot him. If you have no idea how he should stop her without that happening, I could probably finagle something about the rounds in the gun being blanks, or the gun misfiring, or something like that. Oh, and re: the cop running her off the road; I don't know anything about what the regulations are, either. I was just Making Shit Up. xD))