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  Riding a bike and riding a horse are very different experiences. There are some similarities between the two, of course, things like the way you sit on one of them are quite similar. The shape also is kind of the same, which means that when you want to take turns or go fast, the way you lean forward or to the sides serves the same purpose.

  That is about where the similarities end, if you don’t count my bike having its own thoughts and personality. While I am no expert on the nature of these machines, it is my understanding that the vast majority of them are simply that; Machines. You can’t rely on them to make decisions, but nor do you need to manage their moods. How well an average howler performs is based purely on the skill of the rider and the state of the machine.

  That is all without getting into the nature of their respective forms of movement. A bike might rumble and vibrate, but it still had a smoothness to its movement that a horse didn’t. If you simply hold on tightly to a bike, you will stay on it fairly easily; this is not the case with a horse. Given that it is an animal that runs or uses Qi to fly, you need to really match your mount's rhythm when riding a horse if you don’t want to be sent flying off the beast.

  As I rode my possessed Chrome Prophet in a charge towards the axe-wielding giant, I have to say I was not yet sure which mode of transport I preferred between horse and bike. On the upside, however, I was fairly confident that this fight was going to be an excellent way to find out.

  Before me, the man who had transformed into a true giant charged at me, his equally gigantic axe trailing behind him. The weapon’s blade dragged along the road, leaving a huge gouge in its wake. Between the speed of Red Hare and the huge humanoid’s length of stride, the gap between us shrank with extreme speed.

  With a little grin that was really anything but, Paul lashed out with his axe in an underhand swing. The motion brought the weapon forward to send head and abdomen-sized chunks of the cement and steel street hurtling towards me. The rock and metal filled the air in much the same manner as a spray of water sent from a child's hand, chopping down into a river or lake as they played.

  Narrowing my eyes, I leaned in close to the bike, so that my head was just behind the handlebars and my spear was held down low beside the wheels of the bike. I might only be steering one-handed, but Red Hare and I had been practicing hard to recover our synchronicity. I had never heard that word before being reborn in this world. Now that I understood it, however, I felt it was a perfect descriptor for the unison that Red and I worked in.

  As was so often the case, my capacity to predict where things would go based on their movement became my greatest defense against the volley of stones. As I focussed the world slowed to a near standstill as I looked out at the improvised projectiles. I don’t know how long exactly it took me to discern a path through the stones and metal chunks, but if I had to guess, I would say less than half a second. The very same moment that I concluded what I was going to do, the world returned to normal speed. That didn’t matter, though, the Red Hare and I were already in motion. Paul would no doubt try to use the screen of flying rubble as a way to predict my own movements, but I had accounted for that and accelerated with the confidence of a man who knew he was about to avoid everything sent in my direction.

  I was right, of course, I am the peerless one, and as such, my predictive abilities are near perfect. I will, however, admit it was a close thing, but then with the sheer amount of projectiles filling the air before me, it was always going to be. Shifting my weight to the left, Red and I swayed just out of the way of a diamond-shaped metal chunk that looked sharp enough to take a lesser man’s head. We were already speeding up, so the dozens of concrete pieces whose trajectory would take them to where we had dodged slammed into the ground behind me like a hail of arrows plunging into the dirt of a battlefield.

  Next, I leaned so far to the right that the tip of my spear sliced a thin layer from the street, and sparks flew as the weapon’s metal haft came into contact with the ground. A piece of metal bar and several more chunks of cement cut through the air where my chest had been a heartbeat earlier. Just as importantly, the sudden shift in my weight was accompanied by an equally sharp turn that sent us out of the way of the giant’s downward strike.

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  Paul had cleverly used his underhand cut to bring his axe up and into his waiting free hand, so that he could launch another attack that he had already prepared for. Like previously, the axe was brought down on a diagonal angle so that he could cover more of the street with either the weapon’s blade to cut me, or its haft to smash me.

  I am Lu Bu; he hit nothing but the street. The giant roared as he launched the attack, and I met his huge voice with a wordless battlecry of my own. The same second that I was past his axe, I launched a series of thrusts and cuts. First driving the red energy blade of my spear into his shin, then cut across his calf, before finally letting go of the handlebars entirely so I could use both hands to send my spear behind me in a backhanded cut across the tendon above his heel.

  The giant’s roar of fury turned into one of pain, but I and Red and I were relentless. Steering the bike with my knees and trusting Red Hare to turn on my behalf, my faith was rewarded by the bike turning to the left and skidding sideways as it reoriented to make another pass at the giant.

  Naturally, Paul tried to turn towards me, axe already swinging. It was pointless. Red and I had already moved on to assaulting his uninjured foot. This time, I wasn’t reacting to a wall of rocks flying at me, and easily lined up a thrust that drove my spear into that same tendon above his heel on his right foot. Still screaming, I put all the strength I could gather and all the momentum that my bike could generate into the attack.

  This time, when the energy blade met flesh, it drove so deep into the giant's tendon that it came all the way to where I was holding the weapon, and there was an audible snapping sound as the man’s tendon ripped in two. In order to stay mounted, I would have needed to release my weapon. Deciding I would rather push my advantage, I let the force of the collision lift me from my steed as the bike drove on. Then, with a savage yank, I pulled the spear from the back of Paul's foot and went to work turning his calf and thigh to ribbons.

  With his ankle tendon cut in half on one foot and heavily damaged on the other, the giant began to topple. Despite his size in this form, I have to admit my daughter’s lover was more nimble than he looked, catching himself in a crouch where he put more of his weight on one hand and his less injured leg.

  The huge man had turned sideways as he fell and nearly completed a spin. I looked up and met the huge man’s rage and pain-filled gaze. There was something else there too, a stubborn refusal to die or surrender that I knew mirrored one I had seen before on foes unwilling to surrender even in the face of utterly terrible odds. I had likely even worn such an expression myself once or twice.

  Face red, and steam rising from his body, the giant clutched his axe with his unoccupied hand and made ready to face what he had to know was his defeat.

  “You could just give up,” I told him. I smiled as I did so, as while the man whom my daughter had chosen might deserve a little clemency, it was obvious he wasn’t going to accept the offer. That would give me a little bit of an excuse for killing him when I spoke to my daughter next. Getting her to forgive me was going to be hard enough after I had beaten her senseless and stolen her clan. If I could show her Dioachan’s recording of this fight, she might not hold my killing of her lover against her for quite as many years.

  My mount had turned itself around further down the street and driven itself back to idle just out of range of the giant’s axe. I was already strolling over to it when the huge man made a clumsy swing at me, which I deftly avoided with a one-handed cartwheel, which took me just outside the arc of his swing. He wouldn’t know this, but such a move was a mockery on my part. Of course, I was capable of all sorts of acrobatics, but unless I was facing a flying cultivator, they didn’t tend to be particularly useful. On the other hand, I imagine the giant did realize that the laugh I let out was at his expense.

  “I’m not done.” He declared between obviously pained panting. It was an assessment I disagreed with, given that not only had I made one of his legs unusable, his back was also still pumping out blood from where I had cut him up when he was still man-sized.

  “Oh yes, you are.” Came the clipped and obviously frustrated call of a voice I knew very well indeed. Climbing back onto the saddle of my howler, I and the vehicle slowly turned to see that the other end of the street was now populated by six more bikes like my own, though obviously less impressive than Red Hare. The people upon them were armed and obvious clan members.

  I, however, only had eyes for the figure at their head, the white-haired, red armored form of my beautiful and mighty Lu Linqi.

  “Xiǎo Hǔ,” I said with a slightly condescending smile.

  “I’m not your little tiger.” Said Linqi with the smoldering glare she had inherited from Lady Yan. “And if you don’t get away from him, I won’t be your anything ever again.”