Villain to Hero: Naruko Motomiya

Chapter 10: Attacked

The pen in Motomiya's hand whizzed across the paper as he wrote down all of the Hiragana, Katakana, and popular Kanji over and over and over again nonstop. He had been steadily working on improving how fast he could write over the course of summer break. With all of the quirk training going on, he had greatly improved his characters per minute from thirty-two to sixty-five; he had almost doubled his writing speed.

"And... stop," Aozora said as a timer rang.

He stopped writing, put the pen down, and then started counting how many characters had been written. He had realized that his writing was much faster with a pen instead of a pencil as it glided across the page with ease instead of needing to waste time and strength with a pencil. It helped even more with never needing to sharpen a pen or worry about led breaking. "Sixty-eight," He told his teacher.

"Good," He replied. He looked out the window and saw the orange and pink colors of the sunset. "Have a good rest of the day and see you tomorrow," He said with a smile.

Motomiya got up from his seat and bowed. "Thank you," He said before leaving the classroom.

When walking down the vast halls of the school, he always felt so small compared to everything. Sure, it had been completely empty during his time here so far, but he couldn't help but feel like an ant.

After changing out of his school uniform in the locker rooms, he left the campus and walked into town, his walk slowly turning into a brisk jog. Even with his classes being over for the day, he still fit in some more training into the day by going on evening and morning runs. As he ran up a hill, he looked up. The sky had quickly changed from a beautiful watercoloresque assortment of oranges and pinks to a dark wash of blues that almost resembled black.

Now that it was dark out, most of the crowds had left, and he had the sidewalks all to himself for the time being. He breathed in the fresh, cool air that came with night. His life was so different now. Just a few weeks ago, he had been committing petty crimes for a group of people who didn't care one bit about him, not to mention dealing with the abuse of his father and living in an unsafe environment. At the time, it felt like the end for him when he had been captured by Kaillapse, but no. It was just the beginning. It had brought him to UA and had made him begin a journey to becoming a hero. He had finally left all of the bad in his life behind and had now been given the well-deserved good in life. He felt odd, but in a good way, as if something had reawakened inside of him, something that hadn't shown itself for much too long. Against his will, the edges of his mouth curved up, forming a smile. He couldn't quite describe what he was feeling; it was all so sudden, yet he knew deep down what it was. It was happiness.

"Motomiya?" A voice from behind him said out of nowhere.

He stopped running and turned around. When he saw who it was, his heart nearly stopped. He knew the quirk of this man all too well, his arms made of rocks too familiar to him.

"H- Higuchi," He gasped. Why was he here? He should've been closer to the edge of the city, not in the middle near UA. He would've been better off running into anyone from his former group, but why did it have to be him of all people?

"Where the hell have you been?!" Higuchi shouted at him. "You just up and leave without a single word! Hell, I bet you even stashed all of the goods from that job you did and ran off like a greedy little shit, didn't ya?"

"What? No- no, I-" He stuttered. He felt so worthless, so ashamed. After all this time, he couldn't even face Higuchi. At this rate, he wouldn't be able to even face an actual villain.

"Gimme that," He spat, ripping the backpack off of Motomiya and rummaging through it. "You have the goods in here, don't ya?" Unzipping the front pocket of the backpack, he felt a plastic card and pulled it out, holding it up to his face. He had grabbed his school ID. "The fuck is this?"