Eleanor Hart's administrative office, though organized with the precision of a master technician, was clearly under siege. The polished walls were covered not just with schematics of next-generation engines, but with thinly veiled rejection notices from Arbitral Council funding bodies. The atmosphere was one of perpetual, contained crisis. She was a Dean under Siege, fighting for the very soul and financial existence of the 15th-ranked academy.
The day had been a series of demoralizing virtual meetings with Top 5 representatives, all pushing for stricter adherence to standardized curriculum and threatening to cut Grimstone's already meager operational funding. The accusation was always the same: "Unpredictable research focus," which was code for "you tolerate low-born methods."
Eleanor felt the crushing weight of responsibility. Her tenure was a desperate, all-or-nothing gamble: she had to prove that unconventionality breeds results, or watch the entire academy be slowly absorbed and erased by the sterile, monolithic elite structure. She was exhausted, but her deep-seated idealism remained fiercely intact.
Her assistant chimed in with a high-priority notification: Dr. Zhao's final assessment report on the 'Sector 4 Anomaly' had arrived.
Eleanor immediately opened the file, bypassing the formal, carefully worded professional analysis and going straight to the core: the Bio Energy signature analysis and Zhao's final recommendation. She stared at the terrifying, jagged plot of the Divergent Flow—a waveform that defied two hundred years of established Cultech protocol. She read Zhao's attached note of severe professional caution three times.
Instead of alarm, Eleanor felt a rush of pure, exhilarating vindication.
"This is it," she whispered, her voice filled with a powerful, almost religious conviction. "The chaos they need."
She knew exactly why the Top 5 had rejected Kai Zore. They wanted students who fit into the suit. She wanted a Creator who could build a suit that shattered the mold. This boy, Kai Zore, was a technical prodigy whose mere existence and self-taught method were a physical defiance of the entire system.
She analyzed the risk with brutal clarity. If they failed, the disgrace would be absolute; the Council would dismantle Grimstone immediately. But if she didn't take this risk, Grimstone would die a slow, conformist death anyway. The real danger lay not in Kai's volatility, but in the academic stagnation that ruled the higher ranks.
She immediately began drafting a proposal to the Arbitral Council—not for funding, but for a Competitive Exemption for a specialized initiative: the Grimstone Apex Suit Initiative. The goal was audacious: design and build a final-stage, combat-ready suit using entirely unconventional methods and challenge the Top 5 in their own annual competition. She would stake the entire academy's future on a single, low-born prodigy.
Her objective wasn't just to win; it was to force the system to acknowledge a superior method born of low-born chaos.
She picked up her personal comm, bypassing all standard recruitment protocols, and initiated a private, heavily encrypted scouting message, addressed directly to the wrist-comm signal that Dr. Zhao's diagnostics had tracked to Kai's apartment block. She didn't offer a polite invitation; she offered a stark, exhilarating challenge. She was ready to welcome the chaos.
Part 1 of the expansion is complete. The narrative has established Kai's confirmed genius, Dr. Zhao's reluctant acceptance, and Eleanor Hart's audacious decision to build the entire academy's future around the Apex Suit Initiative.