My Plunderer System

Milo had a revelation while taking a breather in the hallway with Krista. When Truman put his hand on Milo's shoulder his first emotion he felt was uneasiness, but when doing so Truman squeezed his shoulder in an attempt to intimidate Milo, and when doing so he noticed something about Truman. He was weak. Milo never thought that he'd call someone who used to push him around so easily weak, but that was the only way to describe the grip Milo felt.

This action gave Milo the realization that he really had grown more than what he had expected in comparison to his former classmates. This led him to think of other things from his past involving Truman, and whole doing so, he remembered a moment from when the two were still friends.

It was during a heat wave one summer before the dimensional doors had begun to wreak havoc on the earth, and Truman and Milo were still in elementary school. Truman was determined that he would be able to cook an egg using the sweltering summer heat. Milo disagreed and said that there was no way the sun was hot enough to make the egg cook. Milo had also tried at one point when he was younger but his parents had told him that it wouldn't work, saying they had tried the same thing as kids. Because of this Truman spent an entire week trying to prove to Milo that he could cook an egg with the sun. After failing for a week straight and getting in trouble for taking all his family's eggs from their fridge, Truman admitted that he was unable to do it. Milo jokingly told him, "I told you so," and after saying these words, Truman grew angry and frustrated, he hated being proved wrong and after the incident he refused to talk to Milo for a month. Eventually the two made up but it was something that Milo still remembered as a funny story from when he was young.

Remembering this little moment from their past, Milo began to formulate ways that he could get back at Truman for calling him out. Truman was unaware of Milo's strength and thought that since he had always allowed himself to be pushed around, he could stroke his own ego by reminding the class of the old Milo. His main downfall was that he couldn't handle being proven wrong, and Milo figured he could use this to his advantage.

Truman continued on after pointing out that Milo was attending the reunion. "He's changed a lot since we left this school, but he's still probably the same old Milo we used to know. Come on up here Milo let everyone see you, I know I didn't recognize you at first."

Hearing Truman ask him to come up on the stage, Milo walked over to the small set of stairs leading up to the stage and made his way over to Truman. Truman was pretty tall at 6 feet even, but after awakening the system, Milo had grown to be close to 6 foot 3 inches tall. Previously, they were about the same height, but now Truman had to look up at Milo to make eye contact, not only this but Milo's physique was leaps and bounds better than Truman who had maintained his pot belly from school.

Milo strode over to where Truman was standing, as Truman continued to speak. "Now many of you probably don't know this but Milo enrolled at the Awakened Academy after graduation. They have quite the rigorous test to rank students based on their strength. I wonder what rank Milo was given?" As he said the last part, he turned to Milo and offered the microphone with a sly grin.

Truman was hoping that he could embarrass Milo by exposing that he was in a low rank. Milo smiled back at Truman and took the microphone from his hand, and opened his mouth. "Yeah, it was a tough test, you'd probably give up when you saw some of the stuff they made us do, but it's no biggie," Milo said exaggerating a bit about the schools ability evaluation, "I started at the A rank and was the only student to retest for the X rank," he then said.

Truman smiled thinking he had caught Milo in a lie, and took back the microphone, "Ha ha, very funny, Milo's always been a real jokester huh?" he said. "Now come on, tell us what you really ranked."

The rest of the class began to laugh a bit, Milo didn't back down though, instead he activated his holo and brought up his class info. Once it opened, a hologram projected up above his wrist and a bright red X was shown, glowing strong. He then looked at Truman and said, "is this enough proof?"

Truman grit his teeth in frustration due to him being embarrassed in front of the class, he didn't think Milo was serious, as if he had that much power why hadn't he fought back their first two years of school. Because of him awakened the system so late, Milo was weak in his first two years of school, it wasn't until the end of the summer following graduation that he finally began to grow strong, but Truman wouldn't have known about that. He then handed the microphone back to the student president who stood up on stage during the whole confrontation and refused to get involved. Once Truman left the stage, Milo shrugged and shut his holo off. He then walked off stage and returned over to Krista who was smiling.

"About time you showed him up," she said. Seeing Milo act so boldly and standing up to Truman made Krista happy for him, he was finally putting his old self behind him and moving forward with who he was becoming.

Milo smiled hearing Krista's remark. It had been a long time coming and it was an action that was a turning point in Milo's mentality. Zach was right about people changing to some extent, Milo had been improving at an alarming rate, and Truman hadn't changed at all, he was still a person who couldn't handle someone else proving him wrong or taking the attention away from himself.

Eventually the reunion had gone back to its previous mood, and everybody had forgotten about the little incident that happened up on stage. The only change being that Milo became a lot more popular, once everyone knew he was among the strongest at the Academy, everyone wanted to know more. It eventually slipped out that he would be working at the Incubus guild for the summer, and people wanted to see his provisional gatecrashing license. Milo showed it to a few people but eventually put it away as it was drawing a lot more attention than he was hoping to get, thanks to it saying that he was a B rank.

Truman was now sitting at the back of the gym and watching Milo enjoy himself, he hated his guts now even more. He had received a ton of attention following his parents disappearance and he had found a way to turn it around, so why couldn't he do it now? He began to think up a plan that could get Milo away from the center of attention, then he would be able to get back at Milo for embarrassing him on stage.

Milo eventually started getting thirsty and made his way over to the punch bowl which was located on a table with snacks for the students at the reunion to enjoy. Truman took notice of this and decided that maybe if he got punch all over Milo he would be able to get him to leave and thus lose all his popularity killing two birds with one stone. Truman stood up and made his way over to the punch bowl and made a show out of pretending to trip smashing into the table and sending snacks everywhere and tipping the punch bowl, he was waiting to hear the splash of punch on the floor but instead all he heard was a loud thud and felt the air around him grow cold.

Milo could tell Truman was up to something, as he took notice of him approaching the table, Truman was bad at hiding when he was going to try something, as he still had a smug grin on his face as if he was planning something when he approached. Eventually Milo saw him take a tumble into the table and everything appeared as if it was moving in slow motion, this was most likely thanks to his agility stat being raised so high, he could see the snacks begin to fall to the ground and saw the punch bowl begin to tip towards him, the punch was sloshing around as it fell and at that moment, Milo activated his Ice ability, frost began to spread through the punch as it was frozen solid in its bowl, and Milo took a step to the side so the newly formed red ice sculpture wouldn't hit him.

Truman stood up to see the eyes of all his classmates focused on him lying on the ground, and Milo standing off to the side with the frozen bowl of punch at his feet. A cold mist appeared to be forming around Milo's feet as the water in the air froze from the cold air he gave off in order to flash freeze the punch bowl. Truman slammed the ground in frustration before standing up and leaving the scene.

Milo grinned in satisfaction from being able to ruin his bully's plan and picked up the frozen punch bowl before shouting out, "Uhh, we might need a new bowl of punch!" This drew a laugh from his classmates before the party returned to normal.

The rest of the night Milo continued to be Mr. Popular as people inquired about his ability, and Krista enjoyed seeing Milo finally let go of some of the demons of his past. Eventually the reunion came to an end and Krista and Milo returned home. Milo was happy at the result of the night's activities. Not only had he gotten one over on his former bully, but he had also put a stop to his plan of embarrassing Milo again. His former classmates who hadn't paid him any attention all talked to him, and he was enjoying the changes that came with him awakening the system.

Milo had a big day coming up soon, the next Monday, he would be starting his summer internship. The Incubus guild wasn't considered one of the big four but it was still the biggest guild in New York City, and it would be his starting point as a professional gatecrasher.