Ulrik exploited the lull in the battle to yell toward the closer of the two titanic, all-in-one tank/hauler/mobile homes. “Princess Melban! Your flagship is awesome! Marry me! I intend to strike the enemy landship! Don't shoot us! Yet! Also, hello!”

“OK!” A caduceus poked out from the front of the gargantuan vehicle and waved. “Hello, Ulrik!”

The other four said hi as well before they revved up their engines and charged past the service station pumps, which landships could never do without causing an awful mess. Motorcycles might have been obsolete in Dust and Highway combat altogether if not for that. Before they cleared the store with all the chips and magazines inside, hostile shells started dropping. “I'd better hop off and browse before it blows up,” Wiffle said, followed by, “Oh. Too late.”

The time required to decide whether looking back at the shattered building or narrowing their eyes in determination would be more cinematic took them beyond any chance of doing either, and afterward the four riders required all their concentration to navigate the battle-broken terrain beyond, sliding through as many loose dirt piles as they could hit while avoiding craters except where landship bombardment had created convenient ramps.

“Woooo!” Kindo said.

“Yaaaaaah!” Ivar agreed.

Acolyte went with a “Kyrie eleison!” Though not to the taste of the other drivers, they appreciated the enthusiasm behind it. They kept his later pantsing moderate as a result.

The motorcycles separated during that furious ride as the bold officers and crusaders swerved to dodge incoming fire, jumped craters, and started carving their names in cursive into the disturbed earth before deciding they had too many Is and Ks to get good designs out of it.

“A sad reward for difficult driving to end up writing 'Wiffle,'” said Ivar. “A worse name for a phoenix and a warrior I have never heard. What say you to changing it to Fusberta?”

“Well, I've never heard a worse name for an element than Corporeal, so how do you like that?”

A geyser of pebbles delayed Ivar's response, but he did not neglect to give it after he flipped his vehicle, ran a few steps holding it over him as an umbrella, and threw it to land ahead of him wheels-down where he could jump on and resume his course. “Yes, but what of it? If you think of a better term, send it to the writers, a death threat with it. So I advise.”

“I don't,” Kindo said when his and Ivar's bikes crashed through a ridge made of debris together. “Doesn't sound like a likely sort of plan to me, but if you go through with it, at least sign the letter with a fake name like 'Wiffle' instead of Fusberta.”

“I'll research Corporeal more. Which Crusaders are in that category, when it was introduced, and so on,” Fusberta said. “No time now.”

The bikes and rival landship met each other just past the farthest crater dug by Vinnette Melban's batteries. Its external plates appeared a bit more granite in color than Vinnette's burnt orange armor, and large storage containers jutting to the left and right had replaced several of the small weapon arrays. The owner had placed complete confidence in the dorsal guns, which if anything out-lengthed and out-calibered the other vehicle's.

Ivar threw his furious weapon and buried it in the landship's front, leapt off his motorcycle, and grabbed his ax's haft. The fingers of his other hand found a lip he could hold while he wrenched the blade out of the plate and swung away after finding no window or other vulnerable section on the machine's expressionless front. Fusberta, for her part, flew out of the sidecar up to the top, where her lightning scrambled the raised periscope and caused it to retract.

Meanwhile, Acolyte swung his vehicle sideways, leaned, and slid under the steel mammoth all the way to the rear. He hopped up and grabbed a ladder on the back which offered transit between the ground and a door beside the much larger cargo hatch when extended. His mace set about reinterpreting the role of “key” in a fresh new way.

Ulrik rode into the closest crater and ramped off it, abandoning his motorcycle like a plumber riding a dinosaur, however briefly, to land on the top with Fusberta. “A classic returns! I shouldn't brag until I do it, but I can't live my life that way. I'm the best!” he shouted as he seized one of the forward gun barrels and strained to redirect it upwards. It defied his efforts to show off by rising of its own accord and waggling, which at least ruined its aim.

Kindo alone kept to his own wheels, and from his motorcycle made the enemy's wheels his target. After he turned and matched his speed to the landship's, he rolled out his lens in order to blast its tires, each the size of a life-sized polar bear painted on a wheel spun by a community of polar bears to determine which limb would maul their next victims, and whatever the crusaders said about Commandment of Hero's lack of an Accuracy stat, he hit them most of the time.

Kindo's marksmanship record embarrassed the landship's, which had the excuse of being troubled by uncouth foreigners. Its barrages battered the barren ground, its shells shut down the gas station for good, but all its firepower failed to affect the Road Empress's post-apocalyptic behemoth.

On the other side, Vinnette Melban remembered every word Ulrik had spoken, including “yet.” Especially “yet.” She opened up with her guns, and if the enemy happened to be moving, it also happened to be quite large, a real big boy. Shells smacked the target, tilting it left, tilting it right, and popping it in the air an inch or two when they landed under the chassis.

“Good!” Ivar yelled. He chopped a little tail on an “R” to finish writing his name and yelled again. “Very good!”

Fusberta enjoyed it less. “This fight is so conventional now. It feels a little touristy.”

“Look at me. Am I wearing swirly glasses?”

“Yes. Wait. Yes, you are, Scimitar Rare. It's hard to get a good look with that cannon swinging you around.”

“Do they increase my INT?”

“I think you claimed they did before.”

“They do. Judge the results. Grab a shell out of the air and shove it down these gun barrels. The consequences will enrich all of us.”

“Up I go!”

Fusberta's skilled wings and talons executed the suggested maneuver, and an explosion distended the landship's impenetrable armor from the inside, set off a few more detonations that had similar effects, and caused a voice that sounded as if it belonged to an Ultra Common character of the Cleric class from the mobile game Holy Legend Army to say, “Mercy! My head has been struck by a falling shell most prodigious in size and weight!” Above, Fusberta and Ulrik high-fived, which electrocuted the latter.

“Are you sure about that INT score?”

“INT doesn't give Storm resist.”

“What a worthless stat.”