From Rags to Riches - Hero's Lies Arc

Grant was around three years old when he realised that he had magic. Powerful magic, too. He wanted to create his own destiny, where he could become a hero and make everyone smile.

However, poor people were forbidden from using magic.

In the village of Lightley, when Grant was just six years old, a squad from the Acebian army came. They stole money, food, anything of value.

The angry child charged, using his Rust magic to destroy their weapons, but he couldn't do much in terms of beating them. He didn’t have the power or strength. The young child was beaten to a pulp and made an example in front of the whole village.

He hated the hierarchy. Why did some people get to live so freely, while he had to live in despair and horror? It made no sense to him. But he accepted that it couldn't be destroyed. It was there to stay, no matter how much he hated it.

The following year, he went exploring in the woods. He had no friends, so he often spent time by himself exploring, pretending to be a hero that he wasn't.

That's where he met Wisteria.

She, also seven years old, was using her powers, forming ice crystals with both of her hands and firing it at a dead tree. The trunk exploded into millions of tiny fragments. Grant's eyes glowed in awe. He had never seen anyone else use magic before.

"Wow..." he blurted out, still in shock at the magic Wisteria displayed.

"Oh no! I'm sorry! Please don't tell anyone!" Wisteria begged Grant, who raised an eyebrow.

"I wouldn't! That was so beautiful! What a cool magic, no pun intended," he giggled, performing a little bow. "My name is Grant!"

"Oh! You're that brave boy that took on the army last year!" Wisteria curtsied. "I'm Wisteria."

From there, for the next decade, the two formed a strong friendship. They secretly trained with their magics together, smiling and laughing. At sixteen, they both got into a relationship, and their love only blossomed from there.

However, although they both hated the hierarchy of power and magic, they could never agree on how to overcome it.

"Wisteria! Listen to me! We can be at the top of the food chain! We can be rulers! We can be happy with all the money in the world if we just go looking for it!" Grant exclaimed, arguing with Wisteria.

"No Grant! That would make us just as bad as our oppressors! We have to take it down! From the top to the bottom!" Wisteria argued back, standing her ground.

That was the first time he hit her.

No matter how many times he beat her, she would never fight back, even though she could, and her belief stood strong.

"We can tear it down!" she would cry, defending herself from being hit again.

Grant thought it was a naive idea. Destroying the hierarchy completely was a stupid ideal. It was near impossible. Eventually, he had enough of Wisteria’s constant fighting spirit.

“I’ll show you! I’m going to make so much money, and I will live in a lap of luxury at the top of the hierarchy!” he announced boldly as he left the village forever, almost a year before Hiroshi came to the world.

After a week of travel, he made it to the capital. There, the young man struggled to find work. He had no home, so he slept on the street every night. He hardly had any food, and often scavenged the streets looking for any small bit of loose change somebody might have dropped. All he wanted was money. Then, he wouldn’t be poor. He would be respected. He could use magic.

Most importantly, he would be happy.

One day, as he was resting by a lamp post. It was down a dark, creepy alleyway, and the light flickered and twitched. Grant coughed and spluttered, the smell of garbage tickling down his throat. Just as Grant was about give up on life completely, a man kneeled down beside him.

“Hey…you don’t look so good,” the man said, sympathy in his voice.

"Give me...money...Loads of…money…." the boy grumbled wearily, on the verge of death.

"Sure, how much would you like?" The man offered his hand down to Grant.

"One hundred thousand Dexes," he said somberly, not expecting anything from it. To him as a poor child with no prior wealth, it seemed like an impossible number to obtain.

"Sure, follow me," said the man, with a big smile on his face. With nothing to lose, Grant sighed and followed him. He was taken through dirty, damp streets, then slowly, nicer and nicer streets, with functioning lights, big houses, and not a trash bag in sight. There was a hierarchy here too. He hated it.

Eventually, he was brought to a big palace in the center of Lodestown. Grant’s eyes lit up. All the rooms were so bright and colorful, ranging from oranges to reds to yellows to blues. The rooms were so large that you could almost fit half of Lightley into one of them.

“So, is this what it’s like to be atop the hierarchy?” Grant thought to himself, still in awe at the sheer size of the palace. Eventually, Grant was led into a room with a massive vault door.

“What’s in there?” he asked the man, speaking up for the first time since they started walking.

“It’s what you asked for. Money,” the man beamed, opening up the vault door slowly. Grant’s jaw dropped to the floor. Inside the vault, money was piled up to the ceiling all around the room. There were hundreds of millions of Dexes, if not billions, stacked neatly around the vault. Grant was dumbfounded. He never knew how much money was in the world.

“See, young man? There is plenty of money here,” the man smiled. “Us heroes make a lot of money, and we get to do whatever we want with it.”

“Whatever…I want?”

“Yes! Gamble it, spend it on booze, who cares? There’s nothing in this world money can’t buy! Why don’t you become a hero with me?” the man held out his hand. “My name is Touma Schulz, it’s a pleasure to meet your acquaintance.”

“Grant is my name,” Grant replied, shaking his hand.

From that day forth, Grant swore to protect Touma with his life. He would never fail him. He never wanted to. Which is why, at his most emotionally unstable point, at that moment, to protect his one and only friend, he met the requirements to perform Carte Blanche.

“I don’t care what happens! I don’t care if I’m battered and bruised beyond repair! I don’t care if I die and get cast into hell! Touma saved me! He’s my hero! He may not be yours…” he said, pointing at the drone, broadcasting the video live to the world. “But he is mine! He saved me when I was a nobody! A loser! A bit of dirt on the ground! No matter what, he is my hero and savior! That’s all that matters to me!”

With that, he put his hands together in the pose needed to perform Carte Blanche.

“Carte Blanche – Relentless Rust of the Periodic Table!”