The five of them do a bunch of stuff as Mara leads them through it.

They all then had to write down things that they wanted for winning the Grand Prix thing on a “Desire Card”, before being teleported to a kind of group locker room. There they each had their own sort of cubby-space to change into a stylish black-and-navy-blue uniform before they were again sent somewhere else.

The five of them were sent to the same rough area, before being told by the same girl in black-and-white that this round was a “treasure-hunting” game where they fought pirate guys to get items drops. Whoever ended with an item got past, and the remainder would get culled from the game.

“I don’t wanna find out what losing means in this sort of situation…” Lenny whimpered, though his expression lightened a bit as he said “… though this outfit is very slick. How’d they tailor this so quickly?”

“I could tell you, but it’d be a spoiler.” Mara chuckled, before pointing to a posse of threatening monsters with odd and identical heads who kept saying “Jama”.

Erica scratched her head, asking “So, we just fight those guys?” as she used her other hand to point at the creatures assailing the other uniformed contestants in their area. “Seems simple enough…” she added, before dashing to the group and punching one of the creatures square in the gut, making it fall to the ground with an exaggerated wheeze.

“Jama…” it groaned, falling over as a pink-and-black box with a question mark symbol fell to the floor. Opening it, Erica found a small device with a pink hammer emblem on it.

“Lenny-kun, catch!” Erica shouted as she threw the item at her roommate/coworker, turning to make a roundhouse kick at another nearby creature. “My body doesn’t feel as overpowered as usual, but I still feel pretty tough!” she assured him as she leaned back to dodge a swipe from one of the monsters’ sword slashes.

Lenny managed to catch it, but once he did Mara set upon him. “Armed Hammer’s kind of a bush-league buckle to start with, but everyone has their first Henshin sometime.” she sighed, taking the aforementioned “buckle” from his hands and sliding it into the side of his belt device closest to his right hand. “Now, do a pose and shout ‘Henshin’, Lenny-senpai!” she added as a big showy display formed around him.

“Uh… Henshin…?” Leonard croaked, his voice cracking as he just did a Superman pose with his fists at his hips. Then at some urging by Mara he pushed down on his attached buckle’s pink hammer to activate something.

A voice shouted “Armed Hammer” as he became clad in some kind of super suit with a hammer weapon in his hands. From what he saw it was a mostly black suit with a pink emblem strapped to his chest along with a silver shoulder guard.

“Sweet, now you can crack some skulls!” Mara shouted, before running off to face off with one of the creatures too.

Feeling very awkward, Leonard decided to just head after Erica who was now doing battle with four or five of the monsters. He managed to hit one over the head in a surprise attack, knocking it down as it popped out another pink box.

“Thanks Lenny-kun, hold them off for a bit?” Erica asked as she opened the newly dropped box. “Okay, maybe like this? Or maybe this…?” she muttered, trying out different transformation poses she could do.

“T-Take your time! I’m d-doing just fine!” Leonard screeched, as the three remaining monsters made threatening noises while making stabs at him. Unfortunately, his hammer didn’t have a whole lot of reach compared to the swords that this bunch had. Luckily he managed to dodge well enough, though he wasn’t exactly doing much damage to them.

Suddenly, Lenny heard “Duck!” from behind him. He did so immediately, and a spiked orange ball on a chain flew at the cluster of three monsters to knock them back.

A look behind him showed it was a newly transformed Erica, whose weapon was an “Armed Chain Array” buckle based on the voice announcement Lenny heard. “Thanks. Nice bear helmet, by the way. I like the star eye.” he commented, panting a little as he saw her brown-colored helmet

“Thanks. Your cat helmet’s nice too, looks like a calico.” she replied, before swinging her chain. “Ready to kick some ass?”

“I guess.” Lenny shrugged, before getting ready to charge alongside her.

Two of the three creatures each dropped a dark blue buckle with a shield emblem as an item, while the last one had a light blue water faucet buckle item instead.

The two tried to track down Angie, Mara, and Rena so they could distribute their newly acquired buckles, but it proved unnecessary.

Angie got three copies of the blue shield buckle from her own efforts fighting the monsters, and Rena got a green arrow buckle and a yellow claw buckle. “I’m just saying, I could definitely use the crossbow. You don’t even have a shield, why not take one of my spares?” “Your desperation isn’t enticing me.” Angie seemed to have a white bird helmet while Rena had a yellow fox helmet.

Meanwhile, Mara had gotten a bronze drill buckle along with a larger green one that seemed to have a spinning shuriken attached. “WHOO! NINJA BUCKLE FIVE EPISODES EARLY!” she hooted, excited as she held a drill in her left hand and a bladed bow in her right. Her helmet was a blue bull, which made her green-and-silver chest armor seem like a weird choice, though the red eyes matched well enough.

“… I guess we’re doing okay.” Lenny sighed.

“… guess so.” Erica sighed in turn.