After a quick strategy huddle, Lenny and his entourage figure they’re ready.

“… and you’re sure I shouldn’t do the Command-whatever against him?” Leonard asked, as he waited with everyone else in a forest clearing. Everyone was transformed with their belts, but without any equipment so they just had black suits and armor. Mara called it an “Entry Form”.

“I’m sure. Later on he’ll say that he’s ‘never seen’ that type of Raise Buckle before, so he can’t see it until then cause that could change something if he does.” the titular Rider-fan reiterated, looking at Leonard dead-on with a serious gaze. This despite her wearing a blue bull helmet and him wearing a calico-patterned cat helmet, ostensibly meaning neither could gauge the other’s expression.

“Alright, so what should he go for then?” Erica asked with a sigh. At this point, everyone was thinking that the Fever Slot Buckle basically gave Leonard whatever he wanted to get, due to his inexplicably being compatible with it.

“Boost’s always a safe bet. Since he won’t have to legitimately roll for it then he can exploit the hell out of it.” Mara answered, miming like she was revving up a motorcycle for some reason. “I dunno if you should try for anything fancier, though. Not much else to roll that actually exists yet.” she added as well, making a somewhat sobering sub-suggestion.

Nodding, Leonard muttered “Get Boost, do exploit, got it.” as the five got notifications on their Spider Phones. It was a message from Girori that Geats was inbound for his “Super Secret Bonus Round”.

Moments later, he was teleported in. The same tall and confident character as before, the one everyone called “Ace-sama”, had arrived. He was clad in a nice suit and longcoat, a bow tie on his neck and a long piece of cloth draped around him that reminded Lenny of the stole he’d see on the priest at his church as a kid during mass. It was quite a look, and Ace undoubtedly nailed it.

Smirking, he chuckled “Fellow Riders, eh? Quite an unorthodox challenge.” as he held up an Armed Buckle, specifically Armed Water judging from the water spigot attached to it. “Not like I’ll lose, though.”

In response, everyone readied their own compatible Raise Buckles, along with Armed-level Buckles of their own to combo. Except for Erica, who kept using the two higher-level Buckles (Beat and Zombie) as suggested by Leonard.

“Get the Boost, do the exploit…!” Lenny thought as he pulled the arm for his slot machine Buckle, trying to affect the results in line with what seemed to be the boon borne of his supposed compatibility with the golden item.

Immediately a bunch of lights and sounds had told him he’d done things correctly, perhaps even more successfully than he’d thought possible. Judging from the announcer voice that accompanied his rolled transformation, he’d gotten an upgraded form of the Boost Buckle, a “Boost Mark 2”.

Mara was gobsmacked, staring at him as the armor equipped itself to Lenny. It was a heavy-duty option that gave both his upper and lower halves a new look, one that was primarily red and black. As he got his new Boost though, Lenny noticed the Armed Shield Buckle flew off of his belt for some unexplained reason.

“Huh? Wait, why…?” he muttered, turning off to the side where the buckle had popped off a ways away, and jogging a little to get there quicker. Geats was here to fight, after all.

But when his running feet touched the ground, Leonard felt himself practically fly with unrestrained speed, massively overshooting as he barreled through the air. His momentum was only stopped when he slammed face-first into a thick tree trunk, and even then he ended up stuck inside the damn thing. Both halves of his body were hanging out while his middle was lodged firmly in the wood, his limbs dangling.

“W-What the…!? H-How is this one so fast…?” Lenny grumbled. He got stronger, certainly, but his current position meant he didn’t really have the proper leverage to free himself. And since his middle area where his belt was located ended up totally hidden by the tree trunk, he didn’t have an easy way of canceling the transformation to slip out of his uncomfortable position.

As he struggled fruitlessly with his relatively small limbs, the short man hoped desperately that those remaining could handle themselves without him.