Harry is crushed by Leena choosing someone else, and mopes over his loss back at his own base, which we see is loaded with rack after rack of Zoids. At this point, it's pretty clear Harry is That Kid. You know, That Kid who always had more money than you, That Kid that had more toys than you, That Kid that ended up flaunted his collection of stuff in front of everyone else, not always to be mean and rub it in people's faces, but just because they were proud of thier collection and wanted to show it off....but sometimes to be mean and rub it people's faces. You know, That Kid. We all had That Kid in our lives growing up (and if you didn't.....I might have some bad news for you).
In a not so subtle dig, it turn out Harry has no friends, with his only companions being a pair of robots he built and programmed . Ouch (and somewhat oddly. Harry's bank acount is best expressed by the mathematical phrase "finite but arbitrarily large", he should have loads of suckups hanging around him trying to get a piece of that). The robots, Sebastian (the small one) and Benjamin (the blue one), seem to be slightly more sane than Harry, but not so much that they attempt to talk him out of his obession, instead suggesting he get Leena back by challenging Bit. He likes the idea....a little too much, given the fit of manical laughter it provokes.
Back with the Blitz team, Brad fills Bit in on Harry's deal (IE, crazy rich dude, fights for fun, decently skilled, has a thing for Leena) as the two work out:
Brad correctly guesses Harry will try something, and warns Bit about getting involved, because Harry's crazy and you can't predict what he'll do. Bit brushes off the warning.
Elsewhere, Leena discusses her...."plan" with Jamie while the two are playing some sort of 3D chess thing. The gist of it that Leena sicced Harry on Bit to take him down a peg, as she thinks he's too cocky (though it's clear the real reason is that she's upset about being outscored on the battlefield). Her sore loser streak continues as Jamie wins the game, which she then "accidentally" knocks over and breaks.
-1.
Jamie pins the blame for her on Doc Toro's subpar parenting skills.
Given that Doc's busy Dark Helmeting it up at the moment.....yeah, I can buy that.
The next day, Harry changes Bit to a zoid battle over Leena, winner gets the girl, which Bit accepts immediately before Harry can even bring up the bit about Leena. Bit just wants to fight. Too her credit, while Leena enjoys the fantasy of men fighting over her affections (to a slightly unnerving degree, actually), it's at least made clear that her interest stops there, she has not interest in Harry whatsoever.....which given how insanely rich he is, is a credit to her character (but I'm not giving her credit for that to the tune of her getting points just for not being a gold digger).
Though at least Jamie manages to poke a few holes in her Helen of Troy phantasy by pointing out she's managed to arrange a fight between Bit and Harry where she's the prize, and that she hasn't thought through what that means. Bit winning, even if he's not actually interested in her, will just make him even cockier, defeating the whole point of this enterprise, whereas Harry winning is....well, the downside there is obvious. Jamie considers it a no win scenario.....unfortunately, he is wrong.
The next day, the battle begins, a so called "blind battle" in the ruins of an empty city. Visibility is limited and sight lines are short, so most of the battle is about finding the enemy, not fighting them. It's worth noting that in addition to being Harry's friends, Benjamin and Sebastian are also his teammates, piloting a
Stealth Viper and
Heldigunner, respectively. It's odd that robots are capable of piloting a zoid, because the Liger's intelligence as zoid is noted as being unusual, which doesn't quite makes sense if robots are smart enough to operate a zoid, there would presumably be a number of automated or machine pilots zoids in operation.
And while zoids can detect one other at close range, they either don't have IFF or it's disabled for this battle, so the risk of friendly fire is high, something demonstrated by Leena and Brad as they encounter one another coming around a corner and almost take a shot at a friendlies.
Predictably, Bit and Harry end up fighting, as Harry breaks through a building to flank Bit. Bit attempts to flee by exploiting the Liger's greater agility vs the Dark Horn, which he notes is bad at cornering.
Well, normally it is. Unfortunately, Harry's Dark Horn is tricked out with aftermarket upgrades, with additional high powered weapons (which he constantly fails to hit Bit with, despite being only 20 or so meters behind him).....and high capacity thrusters one the side of the zoid that let him drift around corners and keep pace with Bit.
Both Leena and Brad also find themselves engaged, each fighting one of the robots off by themselves.
Bit's battle with Harry has settled into a flight, as Harry pursues Bit across the city, constantly firing his thrusters to keep up as Bit ducks around corner after corner....oddly, he's insistent on only making left turns, at one point using the new shock cannons to blast through a wall to make a new left turn rather than take a street going right.
As for the other two, Leena manages to knock Benjamin and his stealth Viper, and after he taunted her about her aim earlier, targets his downed mech with her cannons and the clear intent to exact payback for that taunted....when she notices Brad's engagement with Sebastian a few blocks away, and decides to intervene....by intentionally targeting
both combatants with an alpha strike, disabling them:
-1.
The expression on Brad's face when he radios her to complain and realizes that she
intentionally fired a full salvo directly at her own team is priceless:
Back with Bit, the reason for the constant left turns finally reveals itself, as Harry takes one corner too many and his zoid's leg gives out.
As Toro explains to a mystified Jamie, the constant turning and overuse of the thrusters eventually overstressed the zoid, something that was exacerbated by the added bulk of the Dark Horn's extra guns, a tactic I really like as it plays into Bit's character and past. Bit knows zoid parts and what they can and can't do, and how to exploit their weaknesses.
Harry isn't down yet, his zoid can't move but is still online, and he vocally refuses to surrender the fight, a stance he sticks to even after Bit opens fire with the shock cannons and blasts off the Gatling cannon Harry had been trying to fire. Bit prepares to finshing him off with the laser claws, unaware he's made a fatal mistake.....he's within firing range of Leena, who alpha strikes both Harry and Bit, disabling them.
-1.
