Chapter 46| Hero Names

Chapter 46: Chapter 46| Hero Names

The room went quiet.

"Training suits are retired," Vael said. "Each of you is now entitled to a custom hero suit. Designed around your Sigil. Built to your specifications within a budget that Instructor Mori" she nodded at the woman on the left "will brief you on individually."

The woman with the measuring tape finally looked up. Smiled once. Went back to her tablet.

"Your assignment," Vael said, "is to come up with a hero name and a costume design that fits your Sigil and your identity as a hero. Budget details from the instrumentation instructor. Submission deadline to follow." She looked across the room one more time. "From this point forward we are primarily practical. Theory takes a back seat. You’ve had enough of sitting in rooms talking about fighting." She picked up her folder. "Any questions save them. We start practical rotations next session."

She set the folder down.

"Dismissed for today. Use the time well."

The room erupted.

Forty two students who had just been told they were getting custom hero suits reacting in the specific way teenagers react when something genuinely exciting happens loudly, immediately, with zero restraint.

Zane sat in the middle of it and looked at the ceiling.

’Hero name,’ he thought.

’Hero suit.’

’Me.’

He looked at his palm.

The warmth of Impact Breaker sitting there. Sixty five percent output. Stolen. Not his. Someone else’s ceiling he’d been climbing toward.

’What kind of hero name do you give someone whose power isn’t theirs,’ he thought.

The system surfaced.

『 System Note: Hero identity is self-determined. The system offers no input on this matter. 』

’First time you’ve stayed out of something,’ Zane thought.

『 Some things are yours alone. 』

Maren leaned over from the seat beside him.

"Hero name," she said quietly. Like she was already running through options in her head.

"Yeah," Zane said.

"What are you thinking," she said.

He looked at his palm one more time.

"Working on it," he said.

The joint class broke into something between a session and a free period the few moments after Vael left the class.

Not chaos. Just the specific energy of forty two students who had been handed an assignment that required imagination rather than theory and had immediately split into two camps. Those who already had ideas and those who were pretending they did.

Instructor Bryne took a position near the practical coordination board at the side of the room and started fielding questions about the suit budget process. Instructor Mori moved through the rows with her tablet and measuring tape like she’d already started mentally fitting people before the assignment was officially issued.

Zane looked at his notebook.

Blank page.

’Hero name,’ he thought. ’Hero suit.’

He pressed his pen against the page.

Nothing came.

’What name do you give someone whose power isn’t theirs,’ he thought. ’Impact Breaker belongs to Dex. Overdrive belongs to Maren. I’m running other people’s ceilings at reduced output and calling it a combat style.’

’What kind of hero identity is built on borrowed pieces.’

The system surfaced quietly.

『 System Note: The system offers no input on hero identity. This is yours alone. 』

’Helpful as always,’ Zane thought.

『 Some things cannot be issued as a quest reward. 』

He looked at the blank page.

Maren was beside him running through something on her own notebook. He could see the corner of it from his angle, small neat handwriting moving across the page with the focused efficiency she brought to everything. Already working. Already three steps into the problem.

"You have something already," he said.

She glanced up. "Working on it."

"What’s your direction?"

She tilted the notebook slightly away from him.

He looked at the ceiling.

’Fair enough,’ he thought.

Across the room Sera caught his eye from her third place seat. She’d been moved to the front row with Theo Vane and Marco Ellis after the rankings were announced, the specific visual statement of a room that had decided the top three deserved the best angle on whatever came next.

She held up her notebook.

On it in large letters: HEATWAVE.

Zane looked at it.

She raised an eyebrow.

He gave her a flat look back.

She grinned and lowered the notebook.

’Heatwave,’ he thought. ’That actually works for her. Heat Sense plus Heat Emission plus that specific energy she carries into every room she walks into.’

’Heatwave,’ he thought again. ’Yeah.’

He looked back at his own blank page.

Staring lost in thoughts directly in space reviewing the Sigils he had obtained. Two of them. Neither registered. Both sitting in his slots producing output that was entirely his to use.

’Parasite,’ he thought.

He wrote it down.

Stared at it.

’That’s not a hero’s name,’ he thought. ’That’s a classification.’

He crossed it out.

From the front of the room Instructor Mori appeared at the end of his row with her measuring tape and her tablet and the expression of someone who had approximately zero patience for students who hadn’t started yet.

"Calloway," she said, reading the name from her tablet. She looked at his blank page. Then at him. "No Sigil on file."

"Perhaps working on it," Zane replied.

She looked at him the way Vael sometimes looked at him. Not hostile, just the specific assessment of someone filing something away under a label that said pending.

"Come for a budget briefing after class," she said. "My office. We’ll need to have a different conversation than the standard one."

She moved on to the next row.

Zane looked at the crossed out word on his page.

’Different conversation,’ he thought. ’She already knows the registered file doesn’t match what she watched on the arena floor yesterday.’

’Everyone does.’

He picked up his pen.

Wrote two words under the crossed out one.

Stared at them.

Maren leaned over slightly without turning her head.

"What did you write," she said quietly.

He tilted the notebook away from her.

She gave him the same flat look he’d given her ten minutes ago.

He almost smiled.

The session ended at 10:30 AM. Students filed out in the usual clusters. Some were already in conversations about hero name directions, some heading toward Instructor Mori with budget questions, others already sketching costume concepts on their notebooks.Sera moving through the room with the easy social confidence of someone who had just placed third and was comfortable with what that meant.

She stopped beside Zane’s row on her way out.

Looked at his notebook.

He’d closed it.

"Still blank?" she said.

"Working on it," he replied.

"You said that to Instructor Mori," she said.

"It’s accurate both times," he said.

She looked at him for a moment with that expression. The settled one that meant she’d updated her file and the new information was consistent.

"You’ll figure it out," she said. Simply. Like it was already true and she was just acknowledging it.

She moved toward the door.

Zane watched her go.

Then opened his notebook.

The two words were still there.

He looked at them for a long moment.

Then closed the notebook again and picked up his bag.