Chapter 10: Operation Brain Hustle Begins

If Chapter 9 was panic, then Chapter 10 was chaos disguised as strategy.

With a school board presentation looming like a final boss battle, we had six days, one dusty garage, and the combined brainpower of four overstimulated teenagers and one sleep-deprived AI chatbot.

And one secret weapon: Sarah.

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The Recruitment

That night, I sent her a message.

Me: Random question—have you ever done a presentation in front of scary adults with judgmental eyebrows?

Sarah: Debate club nationals. Why?

Me: I may or may not need help convincing the school board that a former gambling app is now the future of education.

Sarah: ...I have so many questions.

We met the next day behind the music room—our unofficial HQ.

Javier brought snacks. Kwame brought his eternal pessimism. Zoey showed up with a stack of sticky notes labeled "brainstorm bombs."

And then Sarah arrived—laptop under one arm, laser pointer in hand, exuding the kind of energy that said, "We are going to win, or you are going to suffer trying."

She looked me dead in the eye.

"So. You made a battle app. For money. In a school."

I nodded.

"And now you want to make it educational."

"Exactly."

"And pitch it to the school board."

"Right again."

She sighed. "Okay. Let's turn this dumpster fire into a TED Talk."

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The Makeover

The first casualty? The name.

Operation Brain Hustle was unanimously vetoed.

Instead, Sarah wrote two words on the whiteboard: LearnArena.

"It keeps the challenge vibe but sounds smarter. Less Fight Club, more Brain Olympics."

It clicked instantly.

Kwame and Javier worked on the code. They swapped cartoon fights for trivia duels, logic puzzles, memory games, even math showdowns. Every win gave you experience points instead of coins. You could unlock badges, climb leaderboards by subject, and compete in weekly tournaments.

"We're basically turning Fortnite into a GPA booster," Javier said proudly.

Zoey revamped the avatars—adding glasses, graduation caps, and glowing calculators. The frying pan stayed, of course. We had standards.

Sarah took over the pitch. She was a machine.

Promotes gamified active learning.

Fosters digital entrepreneurship.

Teaches coding, design, and 21st-century skills.

She even threw in fancy phrases like "peer-to-peer knowledge scaffolding" that made Principal Diksakins sound smarter just by reading them.

"You've done this before," I said.

She smirked. "If I'm helping you, we're going full power."

Meanwhile, I rewrote the app's backend. Kind of. It was more vibe coding than real coding, with ChatGPT feeding me just enough instructions to keep things from exploding.

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The Garage Grind

Every night that week, our garage transformed into a tech war room.

Laptops humming. Diagrams everywhere. Zoey's sticky notes multiplying like viruses. ChatGPT firing off ideas like a caffeinated mentor with zero chill.

By Thursday, we had a functioning prototype and a twelve-slide pitch deck.

By Friday morning, we were running on nerves and sugar.

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The Presentation

We stood outside the boardroom like contestants about to pitch on Shark Tank. Inside sat Principal Diksakins, Miss Dicshard, and three school board members with expressions carved out of concrete.

Sarah took center stage in a blazer she clearly borrowed from her mom. I stood behind her, trying not to sweat through my clothes .

"Good morning," she began confidently. "We're here to present LearnArena—a student-built platform that transforms learning into competitive, skill-based challenges."

She was flawless.

Slide after slide, she explained our vision. She demoed the app, showing gameplay footage of a vocabulary showdown and a science duel. Then she pointed to me.

"This is Manuel," she said. "He led the development."

I stepped up.

"Um, hi. So, yeah. I built the first version… it wasn't exactly educational at first, but—"

Sarah cleared her throat.

"—but with guidance and feedback, we turned it into a tool that gamifies learning in a fun and engaging way," I recovered. "Students already want to play. Why not let them learn while they're at it?"

We showed them the leaderboard. Quiz battles. A subject-ranking system. Even a build-your-own-challenge mode.

One board member leaned forward. "So students can learn by making games?"

"Exactly," Sarah said. "Learn by building. And collaborating."

Diksakins raised an eyebrow. "What about the in-app currency?"

"No real money," I said quickly. "Just points. All school-safe now."

There was silence. The kind of silence that makes your knees start praying independently.

Then Miss Dicshard leaned back. "Well… it's certainly different. But I see effort. Growth."

Another board member smiled. "And initiative. I like that."

Principal Diksakins tapped his desk. "We'll pilot the app with one class. If it performs well, we'll consider full support."

I exhaled so hard I nearly collapsed.

Sarah turned and held up her hand.

I high-fived it like my life depended on it.

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Aftermath

We stepped into the hallway. Javier and Kwame tackled us instantly.

"Did we win?!"

"One class trial," Sarah said.

Zoey whooped. "That's just one step away from global domination."

I couldn't believe it.

We'd pulled it off.

Our rogue app was now… school approved.

We weren't just students anymore.

We were builders.

Dreamers.

Entrepreneurs.

And LearnArena?

Yeah.

That was just the beginning.