Chapter 47| Instructor Mori

Chapter 47: Chapter 47| Instructor Mori

Instructor Mori’s office was small and precise.

Everything in it had a place and was in it. Fabric samples organised by material type along the left wall. A measurement board with student silhouettes pinned across it on the right. Her desk in the center. Clean, functional, the tablet from the joint session sitting beside a cup of something hot and a neat stack of student files.

Zane knocked on the open door.

Mori looked up from her tablet. Gestured at the chair across her desk without standing.

He sat.

She pulled up a file on her tablet. Read something. Set it down.

"Calloway, Zane," she said. "Second Generation Initiative. Sigilless registration." She looked at him directly. "No classification. No rank assessment. No projected awakening timeline."

"That’s accurate," Zane said.

"Is it," she said.

Not a question exactly. Just two words sitting in the air between them with a specific weight behind them.

Zane held her gaze.

"I watched the trial footage this morning," Mori said. "Round One. Round Two. Round Three." She picked up her stylus. "Contact-based output. Speed enhancement. Two distinct activation patterns across three matches." She tapped the tablet. "Neither of which appears anywhere in your registration file."

Zane said nothing.

Mori looked at him for a long moment. The measuring tape around her neck caught the office light. She had the specific patience of someone who had been fitting heroes for long enough to know that what was on a file and what was on a person were frequently two different things.

"I’m not the NSA," she said. "I’m not here to assess your classification. That’s not my department." She set the stylus down. "My department is suits. And I can’t build a suit around a Sigil that isn’t on file."

"I understand," Zane said.

"So here’s what I’m going to do," she said. "I’m going to build your suit around your combat style instead. What I observed on the footage." She pulled up something on her tablet and turned it to face him. Paused trial footage. Him in the arena. The angular approach. Palm contact. Impact Breaker discharge visible in the composite floor reaction.

"Contact-based output through the hands," she said. "Speed enhancement affecting full body movement. Close range engagement style." She turned the tablet back. "That’s what I’m designing around. Whatever the mechanism, that’s what your suit needs to support."

Zane looked at the desk.

"That works," he said.

"Good." She picked up her measuring tape. "Stand up."

He stood.

She moved around the desk with the efficient precision of someone who had done this a thousand times and had stopped finding it interesting except as a technical problem. Shoulders. Arms. Height. Reach span. She noted everything on her tablet without commentary.

"Hero name," she said while she worked. "Have you decided."

"I’m still working on it," Zane said.

She glanced up from his arm measurement briefly.

"You said that in the joint session too," she said.

"It’s still accurate," he said.

She almost smiled. Almost.

"The suit design will influence the name sometimes," she said, moving to his other arm. "Or the name influences the suit. Either direction works. But they need to fit each other." She stepped back and made a final note on the tablet. "What does your combat style feel like to you. One word."

Zane thought about it.

Angular approach. Stolen Sigils. Borrowed ceilings. Output that wasn’t his running through hands that were.

"Borrowed.... I mean close range and projection for now," he said.

Mori looked up from her measurement. "For now?"

"Yh I might decide to change my fighting style later on," Zane said.

She held his gaze for a second. Then wrote something on her tablet without pushing further.

"Smart to leave room for that," she said. "Good suits grow with the hero."

" So let’s talk about budget details." She handed him a printed card — small, clean, the NSA logo at the top and a figure underneath it. "Standard first year allocation. Additional funds available if your Sigil classification gets updated before the submission deadline. Higher rank classifications receive proportionally higher suit budgets." She looked at him. "Something to consider."

Zane looked at the card.

The NSA classification assessment,’ he thought. ’Everything keeps pointing back to it.’

"Submission deadline for hero name and design concept is two weeks from today," Mori said, already moving back to her desk. "Preliminary fitting scheduled after submission. The final suit will probably be completed within three weeks of that, you know good quality takes time."

She sat down and went back to her tablet.

"That’s all Calloway," she said. "Close the door on your way out."

He stood up. Moved toward the door.

"Calloway," she said without looking up.

He stopped.

"Borrowed isn’t a bad starting point," she said quietly. "Some of the best hero identities came from people who were honest about what they were working with."

She kept reading her tablet.

Zane stood in the doorway for a moment.

Then walked out.

The corridor outside Mori’s office was not empty at this hour.

A line of students stretched from her door halfway down the hallway. Notebooks in hand, costume sketches visible on some, budget printouts on others. Everyone waited for their turn with the one instructor who controlled the suit process.

He stepped aside and kept walking.

’Borrowed,’ he thought. ’That’s what it feels like. Everything I’m running belongs to someone else. Dex’s Impact Breaker. Maren’s Overdrive. Two Sigils I didn’t earn,Technically I earned them. running at reduced output through slots that only exist because the system decided I was worth the architecture.’

He stopped walking.

Looked at his palm.

’But at least the angular approach technique is mine,’ he thought. ’I built that. Nobody taught me that. I figured it out from geometry and a highlight reel and two weeks of solo arena sessions at night.’

’The activation timing is mine. The chain sequencing is mine. The tactical read of how to use two C-rank Sigils against B-rank opponents is mine.’

’The Sigils are borrowed. Everything I do with them is mine.’

He closed his hand.

Opened his notebook to the page with the crossed out word and the two words underneath it.

He read the two words.

Added a third.

Looked at the three words together.

’That might be it,’ he thought.

The system surfaced.

『 System Note: Hero identity confirmed as self-determined. The system has no further comment. 』

’That’s the most restrained you’ve been since week one,’ Zane thought.

『 Some moments don’t need commentary. 』

He closed the notebook and kept walking.