“It's a little strange to call a bunch of motorcycles a fleet, but it works if it works,” Kindo said, and Ivar nodded in approval of fleets in general. “Regardless, they look a little too plain to be Lunacy Bike.”

Even a normal, everyday motorboat can carry J**** B*** through the canals as he unravels the latest villainous plot, and similarly those non-eccentric vehicles may have been operated by wacky, distinct characters for all the interlopers knew. They waited and watched, leaning forward, their hands warding off the obscuring rays of the sun from their sight, the whole bit, as the cavalcade approached. The drivers, they soon perceived, belonged to two factions: Team Spiked Helmet and Team Mohawk. They rode side-by-side without any violence or recriminations between them, perhaps united in their disdain for anyone who wore nice shirts after Apocalypse Day.

“Yeah, looking pretty post-apocalyptic,” Kindo said. “What do you think? Modern Incidence Record?”

Ivar shook his head. “MIR embraces the apocalypse. Revels in it, as do its players. Nothing of 'post' is permitted there. Further, its pixel art drinks deeper from the font of cuteness than of toughness.”

“Those jerks have two models. I don't know if they're jerks. I do know that nobody went to the gacha for these jerks. This may be an equipment gacha or city builder.” Ulrik eased down the cart, crossed his arms, decided he lacked the muscles for it, lowered his chin, and thought. The frontmost wheel almost touched the tree shade when he declared, “Dust and Highway? Ignore that question mark. Dust and Highway!! Sorry. I'm out of practice.”

“Practice with . . . talking?” Wiffle cocked her avian head.

“Yos. I mean yes.”

“That's all right. You've done your job already,” Wiffle told him. “Of stuffing up our gacha back home so players don't get URs all the time. Just think how awful that would be.”

“I'll keep doing that. I'll never stop!” The officers and crusaders cheered, made a circle to bump heads, and faced the bikers full of resolve.

The bikers, for their part, stopped their man-made steeds of steel and thunder at the edge of the waters, dismounted, and examined the strangers with the interest of thugs unsure whether they had just stumbled on prey or a major character. A mohawker approached, jangling with each step, his chains, keys, and knives more musical than Serdon Miloz, at least when he was baking cookies with oven mitts on and held a wooden spoon sideways in his mouth because he had to rush to pull the current batch out. To think Azalea got the cooking alt and not him.

“Hi there, strangers! Welcome to this oasis. You probably already noticed how clear its waters are.” They nodded, which made their first lie in that world. All water they had ever seen looked like that, even the well-trafficked harbor of Perandra Splendida, and therefore the lucidity of the oasis struck them not at all. “It's hard to believe, I know, but the fact is, that only a week ago those waters were brown and muddy. You know what else was? Our future. I'm not afraid to say it. I'm happy, because everything is different now. The sun isn't brighter, but our eyes are wider.”

“Great to hear. Is this Dust and Highway?” Wiffle asked.

“Sure is!”

“Fabulous! Do you sell postcards? Also, what's happened that's so amazing? Did you build a good city? That's what you do, right?”

“Going backwards, yes, yes, I don't know. We've been building up the city more gooder than ever now that we don't fight.”

“Cliffs and whirlpools!” Ivar spoke for them all. A game with no more fights? That made them want to start a few themselves. As a gift.

“Are you stupid?” Ulrik shouted. “You were designed for destruction and tuned for exact levels of said destruction based on your role, rarity, and the current meta!”

“No we weren't! We aren't gacha characters. We're generic laborers who get taken off projects and assigned to attacks. Some percentage of us come back. You can't even watch the battles!”

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“Ah. I no longer despise you. I despise this entire game.”

“Don't do that until you've seen our city. Ever since the Road Empress came, we've had way more time to build it up.”

“Who's the Road Empress?” Wiffle asked, oblivious to the shaking and quaking of the earth below that occurred then, flinging her comrades and the locals alike around the oasis and, worst of all, making it hard for anyone to answer.

“There she goes now,” the mohawker said after he picked himself up. “Our landship really rocks 'em nowadays. Rocks us too, but less so. And she does it all without asking for anything. Not even the title. We just decided to call her that.”

“Well, we know it isn't Quircy Rau then,” Wiffle observed.

“Did we not already, she having enjoined us to march hither?” asked Acolyte.

“Evil clones are common these days,” Ulrik said.

“Rogue UTASes are the future threat,” Kindo opined. While the other four contemplated that chilling scenario, he addressed the natives. “What else do you want to tell us about this Road Empress?”

Mohawk Prime considered the subject. “When it comes to talking more about subjects, you want our mayor, Doctor Erwin. I say Doctor Erwin to assert my individuality, since we look like the sort of people who would say Doc Erwin.”

“Or just Doc.”

“Yeah!”

The mohawker shook Kindo's hand before pointing the way, and the two parties parted on good terms bolstered by the cordiality of waxing prosperity on the one side and the anticipation of a boss battle against the Road Empress on the other. “But it is likely that this Road Empress, recently arrived, is one of our number, is it not?” Acolyte asked.

“We should think that, but, well, I'm not sure how to put it. It seems off, somehow,” Kindo said.

“Like a storm felt but not yet seen.” Ivar licked a finger and held it up. “None of those now.”

“It's tough to say,” Ulrik said. “If you're stupid. Look. This Road Empress sounds strong and helpful. Right?”

“Verily.”

“And the city is going to wind up sacked after we get there, right? By us.”

“Verily?”

“Probably, yeah,” Kindo said. Wiffle flapped once. Ivar hoisted his ax and grinned.

“Then who is it? Out of the officers who left home, anyone strong enough isn't that helpful. Anyone helpful enough isn't that strong. Except Hilliarde Feablas, and those jerks didn't look blind enough to call him an empress. Maybe Holy Legend Army brought more qualified crusaders. Maybe! I look at Ivar and say no.”

“It wasn't so hard to put in words as I thought, was it? I do have a couple cautions and stipulations on that train of thought.” Nobody begged Kindo to reveal his cautions and stipulations, but that leg of their trip gave them time for worthless talk. “One thing we got to consider is that post-apocalyptic types might not mind a little tyranny. Some stranger comes in, bosses them around, wins their fights, which part do they care about more? The only problem is that we know it isn't Quircy Rau, but maybe it's Darlotte Glofal. Somebody of that nature who cares about getting her way, but not whether the servants run out of breath before they finish rattling off her titles.”

“Road Empress Beryllia. We might see that after the collab,” Ulrik said.

“The other thing is that how strong is strong enough? If that guy wasn't lying, and I do like to think the best of people, all their fighters are generics with no skills. Could be even those Styleful girls have what it takes to set themselves up real nice here.”

“You're correct on every point. Don't think I'll forgive you. Who else dares incur my wrath?”

“I do!” Wiffle touched down to make her words easier to hear. “This is the post-apocalypse. What level of infrastructure for the prescription, manufacture, and distribution of corrective lenses can they have here? Maybe the Road Empress really is Hilliarde Feablas.”

The other four affirmed the merit of the observation, though Ulrik expressed his desire that in the future they think of those things before he made any bold proclamations. Rather than agreeing, Acolyte bought up another objection. “Leaving all else aside in the Lord's care as it ever is, I cannot think who there might be that travels freely from game to game as we can and do.”

“Think harder then! Be more like Vampire Lord. 'Friends, we must not fall victim to such pride as to think none but we have slipped the bounds of home.' Say that.”

“Ne'er did I think to hear such wisdom attributed to a Vampire. And yet, I can think naught but my own thoughts, not those of others.”

“Understandable. Stand still. I have an external thought insertion method.”

Ulrik pulled his sword out from under his robes before Ivar informed him of the list of prohibited actions he was writing up which included standing still, loitering, and lollygagging. He further suggested the restrictions, though devised for the trek to the city, might become permanent if his authority meant anything.

“Which it doesn't,” Kindo clarified.

“Even so,” Ivar said as he added something about not being stingy as to the bestowing of rings and bracelets to the list.

Though a Warrior of action, intellectual exercises such as that helped Ivar restrain himself from killing all his companions and bathing in their blood just to find out if anything would happen. Dust and Highway's terrain provided no diversions of its own, not even a highway in the direction they then walked. A single vulture circled above until a lightning phoenix charged skyward and vaporized it, which occupied one of them and gave the other four a little chuckle.