Hyuga Corp. is in the final stages of developing the "Marishi Machina," a new powered suit utilizing an electronic interface and artificial muscle fibers. As the one in charge of the suit's development, Kotaro is anxious to complete the project quickly. He dons the Machina suit himself and heads out into the night in pursuit of Dan. What are Kotaro's motives? Who is Makina, and why is she lying in wait for them?

Despite his suit’s cutting-edge digital technology, Kotaro yet again loses sight of the “Zebra.” His pride in tatters, he rides aimlessly down nighttime R246, as if to calm his frustration-racked nerves and quell his envy. Dan returns to the Genesis Café and a slightly worried Sanae. Having no parents or kin of his own, Sanae raised Dan like a son, and she can’t help but be concerned for his well-being. But then, freelance journalist Makina appears at the Café. Knowing nothing of Sanae’s worries, she approaches Dan—who’s relaxing at the counter—tricks him into showing her his Hyuga Corp. ID card, and promptly snares it from him. What is Makina after? What are Kotaro’s true aims? The fates of these three riders begin to entwine...

Makina exits the Genesis Café with Dan’s Hyuga Corp. ID card and her camera in hand. She notices that the surrounding area has been closed for construction, but there was no construction planned for tonight... Seeing the Hyuga Corp. truck parked inside the construction site, she realizes that there is some kind of connection between the development of the powered suits that her father and Dan’s father were once involved in, and Hyuga Corp.’s closely guarded company secrets. Makina approaches Hyuga Corp.’s suit-testing mobile container to obtain irrefutable proof to back her suspicions with her camera, but the container’s computer system suddenly reacts to the pendant given to her by her father, and straps her into a prototype Machina suit—one with an incomplete brainwave-synchronization function. Who is Makina really? What did her father and Dan’s father have to do with the development of the Marishi Machina suits? The gears of fate begin to turn...