Chapter 97| Instructor Mori’s Fitting

Chapter 97: Chapter 97| Instructor Mori’s Fitting

That moment was not 8:30 AM theory class.

At 9:15 AM his communicator buzzed.

Academy internal notification. Instructor Mori’s header at the top.

CALLOWAY, ZANE — Full hero suit fitting confirmed. Today. 3:00 PM. My office. Come prepared to stay for up to one hour.

He read it.

’Today,’ he thought. ’The real suit.’

He glanced at Maren.

She was reading the same notification on her own communicator.

She looked up and caught him looking.

"3:00 PM?" he said quietly.

"2:00 PM," she said. "She staggered the appointments."

He nodded. Went back to his notes.

At 2:00 PM Maren packed her bag quietly, gave him a short wave and slipped out for her own appointment. Her seat beside him stayed empty for the rest of the session.

Vael wrapped up at 2:30 PM.

Zane closed his notebook, shouldered his bag and headed out, the corridor filling with the end-of-session noise behind him. He checked the time on his communicator and set off across the campus at an unhurried pace.

’Instructor Mori,’ he thought. ’Wonder what this is about.’

_ _

Instructor Mori’s office. 3:00 PM.

Zane arrived exactly on time and stopped outside the door. ℯ

The office was the same as previous visits. Everything in its place, measuring tape, fabric samples, tablet. Except the display stand in the corner was different.

The suit was on it.

Not the preliminary construction from the first visit. The finished version. The real thing.

Dark charcoal. The narrow contrast lines running along the forearms and across the shoulders exactly as he’d seen in the sketch. The contact point reinforcement at both palms and forearms sitting flush with the material. Visible as a slight textural difference rather than obvious padding. The NSA emblem on the left chest in the same dark tone as the suit itself, present but not announcing itself.

He stood in the doorway and looked at it.

Mori looked up from her tablet.

"You’re on time," she said. " Come Change. The fitting room is through there."

Zane stepped inside.

He’d been to Mori’s office twice before but his mind had never fully registered her beyond the instructor and suit designer. It did now.

She was in a lab coat. Open at the collar in a way that appeared entirely professional until you looked at the collar. The neckline did a considerable amount of structural negotiation with what was underneath it. Her chest pressing against the lab coat with the specific authority of someone who had long since stopped worrying about what fabric could and couldn’t handle. Her cleavage was obviously visible from her clothing.

’She’s a...’ Zane started internally.

The system surfaced immediately.

『 Host. Don’t tell me you’re into MILFs now. 』

’Shut up system,’ Zane thought. ’She’s a middle aged woman. I don’t swing that way.’

『 The host’s eyes spent approximately 1.4 seconds on the cleavage area before completing that sentence. The system notes the contradiction. 』

Then Mori looked up from her tablet.

Directly at him.

The specific look of someone who had been in this profession long enough to know exactly what people looked at when they thought she wasn’t watching.

Zane’s eyes moved to the display stand immediately.

The suit. Very interesting suit. Fascinating suit. All of his attention was on the suit.

Mori said nothing.

Went back to her tablet.

’Professional,’ Zane thought firmly.

『 Absolutely. 』

Three minutes later he stood in front of the full length mirror in the fitting room.

The suit fit exactly the way Mori had measured it to fit — close without restricting, structured without being rigid. The contact point reinforcement sitting naturally at both palms, the projection capability built into the shoulder line exactly where she’d said it would be.

He looked at himself.

’Code Zero,’ he thought.

Not the name on a notebook page. Not the submission form in Mori’s file. Not the academy blog entry between forty one other names.

The name on a suit. His suit. Built around how he actually fought rather than what his registration file said he was.

Something settled in him that hadn’t been settled before.

He walked back out.

Mori looked at him.

Set her tablet down.

Walked around him once. Slowly. The practiced assessment of twenty years of hero suit design reading the fit, the line, the specific way the material moved with him.

She stopped in front of him.

Looked at his face.

"Activate something," she said.

He pressed his palm flat against the dummy standing in the corner of the fitting room. A reinforced training dummy with a small label on its chest reading A-RANK RESISTANCE indicating it could absorb Sigil output up to A-rank before showing structural damage.

He activated Impact Breaker at B-rank 20%.

The shockwave rolled through the dummy at the contact point. The A-rank resistance material absorbing it cleanly. No visible damage, no structural give. Just the specific deep compression of high grade composite taking a B-rank hit and holding.

He stepped back.

Looked at the dummy.

Then at his palm.

The contact point reinforcement in the suit had channeled the output distribution exactly the way Mori had designed it. Not dampening the force, directing it. Cleaner than bare skin. More precise.

Then at Mori.

She was looking at the dummy. At the contact point where the B-rank output had hit and the A-rank resistance material had held. Then at him. The expression of someone who had designed something specific and had just watched it perform exactly the way she intended.

She walked over to the dummy. Ran two fingers along the contact point. Checked the reinforcement distribution pattern.

Nodded once.

"The contact reinforcement is working as designed," she said. "The output distribution is clean." She stepped back. "Good."

"It is," Zane replied.

She picked up her tablet. Made a note.

"One adjustment," she said. "The left shoulder projection line sits two millimetres high. I’ll correct it before final delivery Friday." She went back to her desk. "Pick it up Friday after class. Don’t be late."

He almost smiled.

"That’s all Calloway," she said.