“Good to hear you’re safe and keeping sharp, Bit,” Brad said, leaning back in his chair. “Better not be rusty by the time you come back or Doc might end up pawning the Liger off.”

“Don’t joke about that!” Bit cried. “Besides, what’ve you been doing to train? You guys can’t be lazy either.”

“This and that,” Brad replied, unfazed by Bit’s attempt at criticism. “We’ll be eligible for all local competitions now that we have someone to balance us out, and what you mentioned about using a different Zoid is givin’ me some ideas.”

“As long as Harry’s up to it, of course,” Naomi added. “Otherwise it’ll be just solo competitions.”

Harry looked at her, totally mystified.

“We were talking about it the other day, remember?” Naomi said, giving him a reassuring smile. “We asked the Battle Commission about it and they said we’d be able to do group competitions as long as you signed on with us.”

“Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that,” Harry admitted, giving them an apologetic smile. “I’m up for it, can’t let myself get rusty either!”

“Looks like we’re all getting set up for some good battles, then!” Bit said. “Should we check back with the results?”

“Sounds good to me,” Naomi said. “I’m interested to hear how you do without Liger Zero, should be a good gauge of your raw skill.”

“And you’ll be reporting first since you’re fighting tomorrow,” Brad added. “Should be enlightening.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let you down,” Bit said confidently. “Maybe I’ll even get a trophy to bring back.”

Victor picked up the part, to Bit’s surprise. He examined it himself, then stood and checked the place Bit had pulled it from.

Kara appeared at Victor’s elbow and the two seemed to share a silent exchange as they looked at one another.

Victor began to walk out to a nearby cluster of rocks, Kara easily keeping pace with him.

Bit watched them without a word and followed to see what they were up to.

On closer examination the rock cluster revealed itself to be the body of a petrified Molga, half-buried in the dirt and with a massive hole blasted into the far side of its main carapice. Bit leaned in for a closer look and found that the hole ran deep into the Molga’s body; this was likely the blast that ended up killing it. A check around the front revealed that the head armor and cockpit canopy had been knocked askew, possibly when the pilot’s comrades had to bail them out of the dying Zoid, though the blast had been big enough that the head being affected wasn’t out of the question. Seeing Zoids in this state always dampened Bit’s mood, and he frowned as he stepped away from the Molga and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Help me find other parts,” Victor said as he walked around the Molga’s head and tossed the piece of armor to the ground. “You’re about to see something quite remarkable,” he added, giving Bit a mysterious smile.

Bit blinked and raised an eyebrow in confusion, then smiled. “Well alright, I’ll see what I can find,” he said, cracking his knuckles.

“It’s not just that, they’re probably working on rounding up the rest of the Backdraft Group right now. That’ll take a lot of resources,” Naomi added. She took a sip of her tea. “Good riddance. Only regret is that the Battle Commission didn’t take them out earlier.”

Harry grimaced and rested his chin in the palm of his hand. “Yeah, I wish. Maybe the Backdraft wouldn’t’ve gotten my first Zoid collection if that happened. It took forever to find a mercenary that was willing to win my Dark Horn back.” He realized Naomi and Brad were watching him again. “What?”

“I didn’t realize you lost to the Backdraft, when did that happen?” Brad asked, looking genuinely surprised.

“That was, you know, my sister showed up? I switched to the Iron Kong for a while?”

“That’s why you switched to the Iron Kong? I thought you were just trying to stack your chances with a better Zoid.”

Harry started to go red from embarrassment; he really shouldn’t have brought this up, it was still absolutely humiliating to remember. “No, I switched cause I lost all my Zoids. Mary was the one who bought the Iron Kongs afterwards. She went for the most expensive Zoids cause she thought she’d win that way.”

“How many Zoids did you lose to them, Harry?” Naomi asked, looking concerned.

Brad started to take a sip of his tea, his attention wandering to one of the paintings across the room.

“Well it was, uh… I’d have to check my records to get the exact number,” Harry began, his face and ears positively burning. “But it was probably around… Forty to fifty Zoids?”

There was a small fountain of tea and a very undignified noise as Brad exhaled into his straw. He put the glass down and started to drag a napkin over the mess—luckily he’d been over the table when the spill happened. “Harry, that’s an entire platoon!” Brad said once his words returned to him.

There was the whine of a set of small boosters whizzing past the back of Bit’s head, and something landed on top of the leg he was working on with a metallic clunk, prompting a surprised grumble from Liger. Bit climbed up to get a look, peeking over the top of Liger’s leg to see what it was. Metal feet. Metal dinosaur feet. Zoid feet? Small Zoid feet. But the only Zoids small enough to fit that description and that had boosters were…

Bit looked the rest of the way up and found a silvery grey Organoid staring down at him. A pair of sweeping horns crowned its head with a smaller central horn in the middle, with a pair of inquisitive purple eyes peering out from beneath prominent brow ridges. Its hands were surprisingly well-developed for a theropod-type, sporting three fingers and a thumb with four toes per foot to match. It let out a metallic coo and gave him a look that had to be a smile—as close as a metal face could get to one, at least.

“An Organoid?!” Bit was so shocked that his grip on Liger’s leg armor slipped and he began to fall. He threw out a hand to catch himself, but failed to find an adequate hand-hold as his fingers slid across a flat plane of Liger’s armor.

The Organoid yelped with surprise as it lunged forward and grabbed his nearest arm with both of its hands, stopping his fall. It shifted its feet to steady itself, Bit swaying gently over empty space as it did so, then lifted him up with a great deal of care and set him down on the top of Liger’s leg. Bit noticed that it was almost twice his height now that he was standing next to it, though he had no idea whether or not that was average for an Organoid just from the scant rumors he’d heard.

Only a few days into his vacation, and Bit Cloud was already in deep trouble.

“Give up the Liger Zero and we’ll let you walk away in one piece!” one of the bandits yelled over loud speaker, his Rev Raptor taking a step closer.

“Yeah, all the way to the next town,” another added with a cruel snicker, his Hel Cat seeming to bounce with amusement. “Hope your shoes don’t wear out before you get there.”

Bit put on a smile to mask his growing alarm. They’d caught him outside the cockpit while he was making dinner and getting ready to bed down for the night, and there wouldn’t be enough time to get all the way up to Liger’s head before they started firing. On top of that, the scrubby land on the edge of the forest left no place for him to get to cover or hide, so those options were out. If there was a way out of this mess, he couldn’t see it.

Liger Zero let out a low, frustrated growl as the foot closest to Bit flexed its claws.

“Hold on there, kitty-cat,” the Rev Raptor pilot said, and his Zoid shifted to point one of its arm-mounted beam canons at Bit. “Try anything stupid and we’ll blast your pilot to kingdom come. You wouldn’t want that, now would you?”

There was no vocal reply from Liger, but the fact that he stopped moving was all the answer they needed.

Harry was just putting the finishing touches on a new plan to win Leena’s heart when Sebastian found him at his desk.

“Harry, a Gun Sniper just showed up at the front gate and—”

“A Gun Sniper? You mean Leena’s come to visit?!” Harry leaped to his feet so fast that he knocked his chair over and then almost tripped over himself as he moved past the desk, sprinting for the door once he got his feet under him and leaving Sebastian far behind.

He passed Benjamin in the hangar, the robot’s question—whatever it was—falling on deaf ears as Harry shoved past and focused on getting to the entrance where Leena would surely be waiting. Harry’s mind was in a flurry as he tried to think of explanations for why Leena would visit, most of them good. Today was looking up.

The first thing wrong was that the Gun Sniper was red, Harry spotted that as soon as he got outside the hangar and finished catching his breath, and the woman who was walking toward him now was definitely not Leena.

“Uh… Naomi, right?” Harry guessed as he straightened, shifting awkwardly as she reached him. Without thinking he held the manila folder containing his latest plan in front of him, as if it could save him from the embarrassment of a near-stranger witnessing his mad dash.

“Yep, that’s right,” Naomi replied with a friendly smile. Her eyes drifted down to the folder and the visible label on it. Her smile dropped, and she snatched it out of his hands before he could blink.

“H-hey! Give that back!” Harry’s face went red with embarrassment as he tried to grab it and missed when Naomi side-stepped him. “Don’t read that!”

Naomi opened the folder and gave it a quick perusal, her expression dead serious as she held Harry at bay with one arm. Once done, she sighed and snapped the folder shut, then looked up at him. “If you wanna win a girl’s heart, this isn’t the way you do it.”

Harry stopped struggling and stared at her. “It’s not?”