Milo (Classic)

## Milo

### Origin

Born with the ability to manipulate "The Hyperlane," not realized until adulthood

## Gallery

  – **Milo** telling **Kevin DeWitt** that he doesn't want to fight him.

**Milo** is a significant protagonist in the **Lover's Stadium series**. On his twenty-second birthday, he discovered his connection to the mysterious cosmic entity, **The Hyperlane**. As a result, Milo and his friends became danger magnets for other Hyperlane users and villains. Forced to master his abilities to survive in the **Integrated Timeline**, he and his friends formed the **Necro Crew**. They became a secret hero team while pursuing a career in comics with his best friends, **Xiao** and **Raymond**.

## **Appearance**

Milo is a young man of good height, standing at six feet and of average build. He has shaggy light-brown hair and blue eyes.

In terms of fashion, Milo doesn't typically have a go-to style or sense. As stated by Raymond, Milo has a seemingly endless supply of red tees. However, Milo has also declared that he only "rocks Carhart and Champion." Granted, Milo said in jest, but he was telling the truth. Alongside his shirts, Milo wears joggers or pants. However, Milo's most iconic piece of clothing is his lightweight red pocket jacket and hat. The jacket and hat was a gift from Talula for his eighteenth birthday. However, as he lives in Las Vegas, he wears it primarily at night or in the colder seasons.

While he consistently, without fail, wears his red jacket and hat, there have been variations in his outfit. It is fifty-fifty if he will wear the hat, but it is rare for Milo not to wear his jacket. The only recorded instance of Milo not wearing his jacket was when he fought Kevin DeWitt because Sarah created a black leather jacket that could protect him from DeWitt's Hyperlane abilities. While it didn't, it was still an exciting moment.

However, after finding Sapphire Blackwood, Milo's style would begin to change, now involving two equally worn outfits. While he still wears Talula's red jacket, he began wearing a puffer vest with a jean jacket after moving to Downtown with The Necro Crew. This outfit is less outlandish and more conventional. It is typically matched with jeans and Nike Bruins rather than the Nike Mags that he historically wears. Granted, these styles have more variations, but it is always between the red jacket and the puffer vest.

Milo's skin tone is a bit lighter as he is mixed. His father is black, but his mother is white, resembling more of his mother than his father.

Milo's signature hat and jacket.Post-Trilogy Milo Outfit.
## **Personality**

  – **Talula** to **Sapphire Blackwood** about **Milo**.

A little neurotic and having ADHD, Milo is a relatively normal guy, which betrays his outlandish knowledge, extraordinary abilities, and unorthodox world. He is widely known for popping pop culture references and making quips at people's expense. Many who know him describe him as a "funny asshole" as he will openly mock and make fun of people for mistakes, but only if he is friends with them. He can be savvy and smooth, flirtatious even, but this is genuinely a facade that only the people closest to him know. The truth is Milo doesn't hold the highest opinion of himself. His primary weakness is that Milo often makes self-deprecating jokes or comments on how he will kill himself, which comes off to people as jokes. Being a single child has made him anti-social, and Milo keeps more secrets than a secret agent. He routinely goes out of his way to avoid social interaction unless it is with his close friends, who are few and far between.

His lack of confidence has led to Milo creating a comic called "*Disco Elysium.*" Milo utilizes the story as a metatext for his social failings and emotional trappings. Using the graphic novel of two time-traveled Samurai in the 21st century, Milo talks about his self-confidence issues, his relationship with his family, his problematic inability to connect with anyone, and more as significant plot points in the story. He has some measure of confidence, as he isn't crippled by it, but deep down, there are traces of self-hatred and a lingering feeling of wanting to belong. However, when Milo did find a friend group and formed a strong bond with them all, he and Xiao manifested powers and began to fight villains. These things led to a savior complex within him as he felt he needed to protect and save everyone around him. Darkly, this has changed Milo as he has used the facade mentioned above more often. Even this wasn't enough, as whenever Milo was greeted with the potential death of Xiao, Milo snapped and nearly killed his future counterpart.

This event, mixed with his growing savior complex and pre-existing self-confidence issues, led to Milo almost going, as he describes, "Vader" by accepting training from Akuma in his dreams. Training that he keeps a secret and continues to do in hopes of being strong enough never to put his friends in that position of nearly dying again. However, his biggest fear is becoming Necro Milo and plunging the universe into darkness, but Milo has hope.

Milo's views on his romantic relationships and entanglements are based mainly on his upbringing. He is a hopeless romantic. He becomes possessive but not overbearing and jealous whenever he gets into a relationship. However, he refuses to talk about these things. When Milo loves, he loves heavily, even if he doesn't show it often and makes mistakes along the way. And when these relationships end, and Milo is single again, he feels this deeply. He feels so profoundly after a relationship ends because he sees it as unwilling isolation, much like he was as a child due to him being an only. Milo feels he failed his partners in some way. Either he didn't love enough, he wasn't there enough, anything. However, it is Milo's self-loathing talking as Milo is talking himself down to have some semblance of closure. This and his self-confidence issues are why Milo has had only two **meaningful** **relationships**. He fears that his ways and his powers will lead him to the possible future of Necro Milo, who turned evil because his heart got broken again.

## **History**

*Click on the images above to see the respective histories.*

## **Attributes**

### **The Hyperlane | The Arcadist**

Milo is a dastardly engaging Hyperlane user. In contrast, many other users have broader concepts of how they can utilize, such as **Xiao** being a Technomage and Jonathan West being a psychic. However, Milo's is more wild and undefined. He has the unique ability to utilize moves from fighting video games and execute them, as seen in the said franchises. However, this is only specifically for fighting franchises, as he cannot do this for any other type of video games, as he has tried to use abilities from Final Fantasy and Star Wars.

In the beginning, Milo only knew how to do four super moves from the Fatal Fury series. Eventually, Milo began to amass more attacks and currently has over eight styles from various fighting games. The advancement of these moves is locked by The Hyperlane, meaning that he gains new attacks one at a time and at random. There is no rhyme or reason to this ability lock, as he has tried to do attacks from fighting games but won't be able to do them.

How it works is that Milo will invoke the cosmic energies of The Hyperlane and use it to simulate the attacks, taking the place of Ki or other denominations. Gandalf The White dubbed Milo "The Arcadist" because of his powers, as his capabilities are derived from arcade-style fighting games. Interestingly, his future counterpart, **Necro Milo**, later gained a secondary mutation to summon items through writing stories. However, Milo doesn't have this ability. **Sarah** theorizes that because Necro Milo was intervening in this timeline, The Hyperlane could be removing this ability from Milo and improving his combat prowess.

Interestingly, Milo learned during his fight with Necro Milo that he isn't forced to stick to a singular move when he uses it. Milo can combine, mismatch, alter, and completely redo entire actions. This was shown when he combined the Shinkuu Hadouken with the Royal Flush, having the cards explode with the same force as the Hadouken. Milo's body was enhanced to be considered superhuman to compensate for these abilities. However, he is nowhere near as physically strong as Sapphire or Kevin DeWitt. Nor is he as fast as Xiao. Milo is around the same base level of superhuman as Captain America from Marvel. This enhancement led to the funny question, "My birthday gave me abs?" Dexter has also stated that both Xiao and Milo have stopped aging physically, meaning they are immortal in some sense.

How Milo's attacks are set up is that there are two categories. The first is "Special Attacks," and the second is "Hyper Combos." Special Attacks are moves done routinely and can be done without needing anything. Milo is often seen utilizing these, such as Terry Bogard's Burning Knuckle from Fatal Fury or Cyclops' Optic Blast from X-Men: Children of The Atom. Hyper Combos are finishers, resulting in a massive attack with highly destructive capabilities.

This dastardly move comes from **an ability of the same name** from the **Street Fighter** series.

### **Forbidden Arts**

There has been a newly found third category. While not having an official name and Milo secretly being trained by Akuma within his dreams, the term he gave it was "Forbidden Arts." After being encountered by Akuma during his fight with Necro Milo and feeling inadequate to protect his friends, Milo has secretly begun his quest for power through Akuma, who has unlocked a few darker and demented moves for Milo that are intended for murder and violence. With these new attacks, Milo is more dangerous and powerful than before but keeps it a secret, not out of fear, but knowing that The Necro Crew would disapprove and that this is the path toward Necro Milo.

This Forbidden Art comes from **an ability of the same name** from the **King of Fighters** series.

### **Abilities**

As mentioned before, Milo is an extreme nerd. He makes quips and references to pop culture on a near-constant basis and has a great deal of knowledge about pop culture. He has seen most things in the cultural zeitgeist and has strong opinions about many franchises. Milo likened his experiences to Ben 10 and Spider-Man to better understand what was happening to him.

This even led to him having a "With Great Power" moment after he nearly destroyed his life with his abilities. He was inexperienced with his abilities, and Milo gained a mantra based on his pop culture knowledge, "Real world, real consequences," after fighting Jonathan West. His pop culture knowledge is a conduit for his remarkable intelligence, but it isn't what makes him valuable.

What makes Milo valuable is his research capability. Milo will research anything that interests him. It stems from his childhood. As an only child until his parents revealed his half-brother, Milo spent most of his time reading and learning more about different subjects. His unwilling isolation led to a preferred solitude that begat his ability to mass absorb information quickly. This ability was due to untested ADHD, but after gaining medication for it, Milo has become even better at it.

A section of his room in Raymond's house is filled with organized notebooks and journals on various topics—everything from detailed outlines of future novels to a 1-to-1 translated account of the Crucifixion of Jesus. His occult knowledge is his true "superpower" and his leg up against his more powerful peers. He has studied several translations of the Gigas Codex, the works of H.P. Lovecraft, tore through Dante's Inferno, and has even dabbled in Paradise Lost.

## **Other Appearances**

### The Realm

* The Realm
* Roaming Defenders
1/2
In The Realm Universe, there is an homage to Milo named "**Morph**," who has a summoning ability for constructed items instead of a move list. The only other similarity is that Morph is also a writer. Morph is purely a homage and isn't entirely Milo, but it exists. Outside of the those two similarities, Morph is an oddity in the other appearances of Milo as his signature red bomber has been replaced by a red biker jacket and more.

### Roaming Defenders

Within the Roaming Defenders Universe, Milo is a character among the pantheon of heroes. Taken by Vlad Plasmius after **Bears Like This** but before Mezzanine, this version of Milo became an alternative reality version after a universal reset at the hands of an unknown entity within Roaming Defenders. This reset resulted in this realities Milo being unable to return home and leaving him stuck in the Roaming Defenders timeline. While actively seeking a way home, Milo has since ingratiated himself in the new landscape he found himself in. Sadly, Milo still remembers his friends and life in the **Integrated Timeline**.

## **Trivia**

* Milo is addicted to nicotine. Often calling himself a "Nicotine Soldier" or a "Nicotine Warrior."
* Milo is allergic to seafood.
* Milo has won to Jack Kirby Awards and an Esiner for "'*Disco Elysium*."
* Milo has published six books and his comic is ongoing.
* Milo cites Dwayne McDuffie, Jack Kirby, and Donny Cates as his inspirations.
* At San Diego Comic Con to promote his book on a panel, Milo was given a replica of Luke Skywalker's Ceremonial Yellow Jacket by a fan. It was in reference to the *Disco Elysium* storyline called, "*Many Men*" which had the one of the two samurai protagonists wearing a similar jacket. Milo wears it often.
* Rap music is Milo's favorite genre of music.
	+ His favorite rapper is Danny Brown.
* Milo has an expansive CD collection.
* Milo does own a Playstation 5.
* Milo graduated college with a Film Degree and a Masters in Creative Writing.
* Milo has seen and watches more cartoons than he cares to admit. Same with comics as he is often seen reading them or playing video games.
* Milo is very surprised that he has a secret identity and that it is still a secret.
* Milo takes Adderall for his ADHD.
* Milo has often let his intrusive thoughts win when it comes to conversation. There have been a notable instance in which he has said some of the most outlandish shit to people's faces.
	+ When encountering a Zombie for the first time, Milo stated blatantly, "My god, you're unattractive." Which garnered a confused look from everyone in the room, the zombie included.
* Milo owns a Roland SP-404 MK. II and takes it with him randomly to make music. He has released two sample-based hip-hop beat tapes on Bandcamp under the name of "blasphemous."

## **Creation Notes**

Many of Milo's characteristics, stories, and friend groups are all roughly based on his creator, Morpheus', actual life, with a few notable exceptions and differences. Morpheus planned to make Milo a joke for something else entirely, but when he sat down to write it, Milo became an actual character with his problems and life. Even the name Milo is a reference to Morpheus' nickname.

For Morpheus, Milo is a way to weave pop culture into writing with more than subtle hints or references, so Milo's abilities are based on some of Morpheus' franchises. These are Kingdom Hearts, Star Wars, Fatal Fury, and others. Milo's personality also takes cues from Morpheus but still allows Milo to be a character without feeling like a self-insert.

The idea for Milo's overall story arc of "keeping him perpetually single until the end of the universe" came from Morpheus' friend, Tony. It was said whenever Tony was drunk, and they were making jokes about characters, but it became real when it came time to write Milo. However, the idea for Milo to write a comic book called Disco Elysium to talk about his life through metatext came from Morpheus' creative partner, NeoFantasy.

## **References**

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service
2. ↑ I Love You.
3. ↑ Trident Session Recording Mix
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Drill Music In Zion
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Definitive Edition
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Welcome to Forever
7. ↑ Never, Never, Land
8. ↑ OK, Computer
9. ↑ Midnight Release
10. ↑ GO:OD AM
11. ↑ MELTDOWN

 Necro Crew Allies | Dexter • The Powerpuff Girls • Gorillaz • Racer Motors • Lovecraft Country