Having called his parents ahead of time and telling them they would go to Milo’s house after school, they took a different bus and stopped in front of a house that looked literally be pulled out of a horror movie from its outward appearance.

While it was a very beautiful villa, there was a strange gloom about it that made it feel shadier and darker as if the area was just a bit duller.

None of the group even cared as they knocked on the door and were invited in by a bright smiling woman that was Milo’s mother.

The inside was immensely different, brightly lit and furnished with a lot of nice furniture, this was the house of a Strong man level hero who was the father of their friend.

His father’s ability is called Bone manipulation, this ability allows him to manipulate the bones in one's own body. This includes, but is not limited to, the generation of new bone mass, projecting bones out from the skin or rearranging one's own bones.

As for his mother, her power is called summoning and isn’t limited to creatures. Summoning is the ability to summon beings or objects for assistance. This may range from invoking simple implements to mighty familiar spirits.

As one can tell, from his parents' powers, the result ended in an ability similar to Lola’s in which Milo can spawn undead skeletons from a special dimension of dead as well as even reanimate corpses by spawning only the soul from the other dimension to inhabit the body.

That said, because of the nature of the ability, he wasn’t really well received. It wasn’t that others didn’t like him but he was already afraid that his powers would scare others and was very shy to use it outside of home.

One thing about this power is that it is much better than Demon. This is because he doesn’t use Life force to spawn, instead uses his stamina itself or bioenergies for those wanting a more clear word.

“Is Milo home?” Robin asked.

“Of course, he is in his room. He said there wasn’t class today so he slept in. Did something happen?” she asked.

“No, nothing special. We just came for a study group.” Robin lied.

The others all felt their brows twitch upon hearing his words and silently sent a prayer for their friend. Of all of them, Milo was the one who suffered most with Robin because he has an incredible power but is too shy to openly use it and because he is introverted, he ends up not liking to come out of his home.

“We will go up to his room then.” Robin said.

“Go on ahead, I will prepare some snacks for you kids.” she said.

“Thank you Mrs. Knight!” Everyone said together and walked upstairs.

At the door of the boy though, Robin narrowed his eyes and opened without knocking. Amazingly Milo was sleeping soundly in bed.

Although Robin felt like just jumping in, he thought a while before grabbing his throat. “Ah! Aaah! Ohh!” slowly he made his voice thicker to something closer to an adult before walking inside and suddenly pulling the blinds open.

“Urg! Mom… didn’t I say let me sleep today.” Milo groaned.

“Son, it’s me. I got home early today. Get up already, it's 3:30 pm.” Robin said in the thicker voice.

“Urg… let me sleep dad.” he said.

Robin grinned and looked outside at the window of the neighbor which was closed. “You know, I thought even you would wake up to see that neighbor girl when she was changing.” he said.

The bed covers suddenly got messed up as a messy dark haired and pale boy jumped out and ran to the window and started outside with bloodshot eyes but saw the window closed.

“She isn’t even there!” He shouted looking at Robin like he was his dad and suddenly froze.

Robin let go of his throat and gripped his fist and cracked his knuckles. “So, want to explain why you avoided the physicals today?” He asked. “I will give you one good chance to explain before I beat you up.” Robin said.

“H-hey… Robin… seriously don’t dude.” Milo said, holding his hands up.

“Well… I am waiting?” he said.

“I-I was up late last night working on my skeletons and didn’t see the time!” he said.

“That is what you said the last five times you skipped class.” Robin replied while suddenly reaching for the boy.

The groggy eyes suddenly turned sharp as his hand glowed and a plate formed of hard bone around his arm as he deflected Robin’s hand but the rubber bodied boy didn’t let up since blunt damage didn’t even bruise him let alone hurt.

Milo, from the time the group met when he transferred to their school in 1st grade was always ‘picked on’ by Robin who couldn’t handle someone with such a powerful ability being so lazy.

Eventually he dragged the boy out and made him do many exercises along with their group who worked out together and went to the same gym. Naturally he was friends with Ruth as well even if Robin still tried his best to beat and surpass her while also trying to ignore her just to irritate her.

“Ruth! Please help!” he shouted.

“Sorry, you missed the physicals and Robin threw a tantrum because his rubber only punch was weaker than mine. I guess he is venting at this moment.” she said.

“Come on Robin, don’t be so petty!” Milo cried out only for Robin to suddenly swipe his leg, tripping Milo by kicking his leg up and grabbing it and suddenly spinning the boy face first into his own bed.

They were still friends so he didn’t want to hurt him.

“Much better. So what were you doing last night?” Robin said while dusting off his hands.

The boy slowly got up with his hair a mess. “I will show you so just get out so i can change and get ready.” he said looking down at his pajamas that were a mess now.

The group of four walked out and went to the living room and soon after Milo walked down with his hair brushed.

Milo was the same age as them at 10, his black hair, due to his laziness, was left to grow reaching his shoulder and he simply maintains it there and he mostly just ties it in a low ponytail to keep it from his face. He was lazy in the wardrobe as well using a plain white shirt and black shorts with sandals.

He went to the kitchen and grabbed some quick heat and eat snacks and returned while eating it. “Alright come on.” He said and walked to the door leading to the basement.

The basement was a very strange place you would imagine similar to a mad scientist room or the basement of an exotic pet owner. There were dozens of cages and glass containers holding different animals but among these were many human skeletons.

Of course Milo had never killed people. His mecromancy, as explained, has two modes of working. The first is revival of a corpse by giving it to a summoned undead soul that is bound by Milo but this breaches so many laws that it is not advised unless they are from criminals that have committed enough crimes the warren life sentence, aka death penalty. The other mode is full summon in which he summons both the soul and body of the undead.

The bones that are formed in the undead plain are actually very weak and brittle and the actual strength of the skeleton is no more than that of a child no matter the shape or form.

That said, the ability of necromancy doesn’t stop there, it has extra abilities besides undead spawn which is similar to Lola’s demon spawning. The other ability Milo named Undead Biology, is an ability that works in his brain allowing him to view the active undead in his control and by using a bit of his own energy, he can stimulate a special energy produced by the undead soul causing change and growth in the body. Naturally it wasn’t unlimited energy, the soul of the undead needed a great deal of stimulus to produce sufficient energy to be able to alter the body. Of the undead Milo had, he had one special one similar to Lola which was his best and most advanced.

The bone plates he suddenly summoned were actually armor pieces from that undead but it is generally unspawned due to the large mental load needed to control it.

The glass containers and cages all contained either reanimated corpses of small animals or reptiles. These were all very weak undead that Milo had made in hopes to produce extraordinary undead. Something else he discovered some years ago is that he can simply put bird wings on a lizard skeleton that was stimulated and using that energy, could adapt the skeleton to the wings making it part of it.

The changes weren’t as simple as hardening the bone and merging skeletal structures. He could make them grow bigger and smaller as well.

As you might have guessed from the previously mentioned example, Milo one day hopes to create his own bone dragon or zombie dragon using lizard bodies and animal wings and slowly develop them through training.

As for the subject he took them to look at, when the group saw it, they just looked at it frozen.

“Is this it?” Shoji looked at it, lowering his head to eye level on the table.

The creature in question was what could be called a prototype lizardman skeleton with a bird wing skeleton on its back.

“Is this it? Do you know how long it took me to modify and get it to this level?” Milo said, agitated and pulled out a packet of pictures. “Almost 70 tries!” he shouted, showing dozens of photos of improper skeletons and zombie geckos.

“So you got it right now… so what is it supposed to be?” Robin asked.

“This is the basics of what I hope will eventually be a skeleton warrior dragonman. Though just making it stand upright is a huge challenge.” he said.

He pulled out another that was a third smaller which was a zombie. “I used that success to make this but before I could reach the end to match them up I fell asleep and it is currently stuck at a point which it can momentarily stand up to look bigger.” he said and sighed.

“You are really stuck on the idea of dragons aren’t you?” Robin said.

“But they are so cool!” Milo said, his eyes sparking before he took a bite of his snack. He ran to a cage and looked around before taking one cage with a zombie and showed them. “Look look! The first zombie lizard I got that can get some air time.” he said.

The lizard was covered in a heavy coat of feathers instead of scales. They all knew this was his best achievement in zombie dragon creation.

Releasing the little lizard, it spread its wings and jumped out before flapping hard and floating around in the air until Milo stuck his hand out and the lizard flew a bit haphazardly and landed.

“It has some trouble flying.” Lola commented.

“Yeah, birds use their tails in a manner similar to planes to maneuver. I am still adapting it to flight and soon I will see if I can't make several of these to start the fine control flight. If I can do that then I can finally start to grow them until they gain enough strength to be sent to the undead plane where they can train by hunting the common undead there.” he said happily.

“Seriously, you will become a shut-in just like the stories of necromancers who search for eternal life. Seriously, aren’t you setting yourself up to be a recluse?” Ruth asked.

“I don’t need to worry.” he laughed, “I have you guys, I doubt Robin will let me. I bet he will even have someone make me wear some stupid dark cloak for armor and make a tech staff or something just so i can due hero work or something.” Milo shrugged.

“Heh, me do that for you?” Robin grinned.

Milo quickly jumped back as a kick came at him. “Hey stop trying to hit me!” he shouted.

“You are asking for it.” Robin said.

“Hey, since we are already here, let us actually do a study group.” Ruth said.

“No way!” Robin and Milo said with a frown.

“You boneheads will be left behind if you don’t study.” She said.

“Study what? Most of the material is easy and has been repeated for close to a week already.” Robin replied.

“And you wonder why my grades always have that one point above yours.” she said directly to Robin.

“I don’t need to be a nerd to beat you!” Robin said, instantly irritated.

“Oh right, speaking of beating, what was that about the tantrum Robin had?” Milo asked.

The others filled him in on the events of the physical making him chuckle. “Didn’t you try out that move before and said it hurts like having boiling water pumped into your bones?” Milo asked.

Robin’s face turned bright red as he remembered how he had actually told them he might not do that type of attack because of how painful it was.

“I-I couldn’t think of any other way to do it.” He said red faced.

“Hmm…” Milo tilted his head several times, “I remember there were several possible ‘rubber limb launch’ forms that several elastic heroes had tried before. Captain stretch in particular is one of the best at using that style with his elastic manipulation ability.” Milo said.

“Oh, why don’t we go to captain stretch’s website and see if we can’t see his ways?” Shoji said.

“Oh good idea!” Robin said excitedly.

Even with the traumatic incident that happened when he awakened his power, he never stopped being a huge fan of captain stretch.

They quickly went to Milo’s room where they found his massive number of files of anime and cartoon images of undead of different types but he quickly closed all the tabs before opening a new one to go to captains stretch’s main site.

Sadly, all there was were the same moves he had tried to do, without success due to his power being improper, which is why it caused pain. That said, that didn’t mean it was the only method.

Captain stretch has several types of ‘movement’ type moves and the safest and one of the hardest to do is actually making his limbs in the shape of a spring. Naturally the attack of twirling his arm exists but it is different from the spring format.

The rubber spring he does has to have him compress his muscles to the limit without letting it stretch until he is ready and when he lets it stretch, it produces a very strong impulse movement. It is a very fast movement style but it takes a lot of training. Captain stretch has only done basic training in this style and displays the basics of doing this on his site for other elastic heroes.

“Want to try the spring style?” Milo asked.

“I tried it once. It was two years ago.” Robin said.

“Wasn’t your range only 5 meters back then? From what I get, you need at least 10 to 15 to be able to even start doing this. Just look how much the captain stretches before he controls his limbs to curl.” Ruth said.

“Hmm…” Robin frowned but nodded as he also had noticed.

“Well we can try.” he said.

The study group, having turned into a power study, went outside.

Robin pulled back and punched out with his all and controlled his rubber from his elbow to his wrist making it expand to its max.

The first problem of this style is quickly finding a way to wind up the spring shape. The first try he just tried to use what little control he had to make it move but he wasn’t versatile like Ruth who can stretch at will.

“Try waving it around.” Lola shouted while spinning her arms in a circle in front of her.

Robin did that and it caused his stretched arm to spin in the desired shape so Robin controlled his arm to retain that shape but it was all stretched out. When he tried to pull it back, his fist suddenly began to spin and unwind before returning back to its original shape.

“Crap, this is harder than it looks.” Robin frowned and swung out again and did the same thing quickly forming the twirling limb before he tried to control only a small section slowly pulling the widely spread arm to just return in front of him while still swirling and twirling in front of him until it was all back.

He thought for a while and thought about how snakes curl up and used his fist like the snake head and slowly had it move in that fashion and slowly he curled it up causing it to start to stretch but that was great progress. This is the effect he wanted so he started to pull the arm back slowly forcing the slowly forming spring shape back until he formed five turns and his arm was back to its original size but the area between the elbow and wrist was three times thicker due to the curled arm.

Robin was gritting his teeth as he held his arm like this.

“You did it.” Lola said happy that her idea was successful.

“It’s… hard.” he groaned.

“Alright, here!” Milo said bringing out a training dummy he used to have bigger skeletons train on. This particular one is a mechanical one that tests the strength of hits given to it and how badly the damage is in the perspective of a common untrained human. This is because spawned skeletons are only as strong as children so this is a good starting point.

Robin lifted his arm like he was lifting a big weapon and slowly clenched the arms rubber making it build pressure until he couldn’t hold it, making it burst out towards the dummy.

PA!

After it stretched, the arm returned to its normal shape and returned to robin.

Milo walked over and looked at the pressure plate. “Well that would have crippled him it seems.” He said nonchalantly and got a small screen of data and took out some paper and began doing some kind of equation. “That punch was about somewhere around 500 points by trainee standards.” He said.

“Seriously!?” Shoji said, shocked. “And that was just the effect of the arm launching, if Robin put his back into it, how strong would it be?” Shoji said curious.

“I wonder if it is even stronger with his hardening.” Ruth said.

When her words fell they all nodded but Robin was frowning, “That is really hard and slow to wind up.” He said, flexing his hand.

“Does it hurt in any way?” Lola asked.

“Nah, it is just hard to do and slow. It will be really hard to use if I don't think of a way to keep my arms as springs.” he said.

“Well you don’t need to worry too much, there are tons of elastic heroes and I think I remember a few that used the spring style.” Milo said as he put away the dummy.

“So what now?” Ruth asked.

“Why not actually study?” Shoji asked.

“We did get lots of homework last week.” Lola said, groaning.

“Well I will leave you guys to that.” Milo said and yawned but suddenly a hand gripped his shoulder making him look back and find the extended hand from Robin while his eyes were shining. “Lazy one, we all know you finish your homework really fast.” Robin said.

Lola's eyes turned bright as she walked over and held his other shoulder, “Yeah, you should help our friends in need. How will you be a hero in the future?” she said.

“I don’t wanna be.” he said.

“Sorry but you have no choice in that.” Robin said before the two literally dragged him off to make him show them his homework to quickly fill in their own before they fix his mistakes and complete their homework in the quickest fashion.