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When All Might told me I couldn’t become a hero without a Quirk, my entire worldview was shattered. The man I looked up to above everyone and everything else had just single-handedly crushed every hope and dream I’d had for the future. Looking back on it now, I can understand why he would have wanted to dissuade me. There were a number of reasons somebody without a Quirk would endure many a hardship on the path to trying to become a hero. At the time, though, I didn’t have that kind of perspective. All I felt was complete and utter devastation and the seeds of a bitter resentment that would grow and fester within me from that moment onward.

I didn’t end up on the scene of the sludge villain’s second attack on Katsuki. I took a different, longer route back home and would only find out about the incident later on the news. As it turned out, Katsuki’s determination to resist the villain was what inspired All Might into action.

I went through a really dark time after that. Depression hit me harder than it ever had before and, frankly, I had no hope for myself anymore. I was contemplating suicide almost every day and the lack of anything to keep myself occupied over the summer didn’t help in the slightest. It was in that timeframe that I packed a bag of the bare essentials and ran away from home in the middle of the night while my mother was asleep. I didn’t bring a single piece of All Might memorabilia with me.

I didn’t know where I was going or what I planned to do, but I felt like I couldn’t stay there anymore. I couldn’t face my mother again knowing that I had given up on everything I had been working toward in hopes of getting into U.A.. It would only have broken her heart a second time and I knew it was already hurting her to see my depressive state get worse and worse every day.

A couple nights into my journey without a destination, I encountered the Hero Killer called Stain. I indirectly bore witness to one of his murders. I was sleeping at the back of an alleyway that night, stomach empty and feet sore from hours and hours of walking. A commotion woke me up and I saw two figures down the alley: Stain and one of the local heroes he had pinned to the wall by the throat.

I remember his words about how heroes had fallen from grace, how All Might was the only “true” hero, and how the rest of them were just pathetic frauds with no real sense of justice. I remember the taste of disgust in my mouth and speaking before my mind had caught up with my actions. I said something to the effect of All Might being the real fraud, an outburst that drew Stain’s attention to me after he had already finished off the hero. He came closer until he was looming over me, that murderous, blood-chilling look in his eye that paralyzed me where I stood.

He asked me to repeat myself, so I did. I told him, despite All Might’s warning against uttering a word of the secret he had revealed to me, that he was only putting on a show for the rest of the world and that his time was coming to an end. Stain grabbed me and warned me that if I were lying, I would regret it, but I only reaffirmed my stance instead of backtracking. He seemed to see the truth in what I was saying and let me go. He said that, if that’s the case, then there truly was no hope for heroes. I couldn’t help but agree.

Stain had a change of perspective then in much the same way that I had. He asked me what I was doing out here by myself in the middle of the night and I told him I had nowhere else to go, so he told me to follow him. Given what I had just said, I had no reason to refuse. From that point on, he took me under his wing. While he had lost what little conviction he had left to reconstruct our heroic society, he found a new goal that he confided in me. He wanted to completely abolish the concept of heroes. If the pillars of “justice” themselves couldn’t even maintain their own moral code, then they had become obsolete.

By the time Shigaraki had recruited Stain to join the League of Villains, I had become a proper apprentice of his. Even though I didn’t have a Quirk, or maybe because of that, he trained me under his own guidance, taught me how to wield a knife and how to kill someone with it. I was scared at first, of course, but every time I would see All Might’s likeness in a shop window or on the TV screens in town, all I could think about was what he told me. If the best of the best himself didn’t believe in a world where anyone could become a hero, then I thought, perhaps, no one should become a hero.

Stain agreed to join the League under the condition that I be included as well. Shigaraki initially expressed distaste at the idea, but Kurogiri managed to convince him that Stain’s assets were enough to make up for any liability I presented as a mere Quirkless boy. Little did they know how much they had underestimated my potential.

I didn’t like Shigaraki, plain and simple. I didn’t like his attitude, I didn’t like his short-sighted approach, and I especially didn’t like the tantrums he threw every time something didn’t go according to plan. I expressed my discontent with Stain in private and I was surprised to find that he agreed despite joining the League so readily. He told me that he never intended to follow Shigaraki’s leadership forever. His current obedience was merely a ruse to gain the other’s trust, but he fully intended on overhauling the entire operation himself. He told me that, should be fail to do so, he would entrust his goals with me instead.

As the League of Villains began recruiting more members, I found myself making moves to put into action what Stain had envisioned for the League’s future. I planted seeds of doubt in the others’ minds about Shigaraki’s intentions for them and his real plans. I sabotaged certain aspects of the League’s movements to paint Shigaraki in a bad light.

Eventually, I managed to catch All for One’s attention. Shigaraki, who had no qualms with expressing his continued distaste for me all this time, begrudgingly told me that I was to meet with his “Master”. He had Kurogiri warp us to AFO’s place of hiding, but before Kurogiri dissipated the gate, AFO told Shigaraki to leave so he could speak with me in private. He pitched a fit over it, but eventually did as asked when AFO raised his voice.

AFO told me he wanted me to take over the Nomu project. He said that it would be a test of sorts to see how I would handle being in a leadership position within the League. It was a step up from what was essentially errand boy status, so I agreed. Shigaraki wasn’t happy when he heard the news, which only delighted me further.

After the display of Quirks during the U.A. sports festival, I took a special interest in some of the students. While Bakugo was amoung them, I knew better than to try to sway him from his path. He was the stubborn, hard-headed type who wouldn’t listen to reason. If I wanted to break down his will enough to question his dreams of becoming a hero, I had to take other measures, starting with his classmates.

After a handful of failed attempts, I did have one success. Todoroki Shoto. Aggrieved by his father and still yet to show any interest in acting like a hero, it was surprisingly easy to convince him to think my way. Thus began my undercover recruitment process, helped along by Toga, who was particularly good at infiltrating the school and planting the seeds of doubt in students’ heads.

Called to an impromptu meeting by Todoroki at a nondescript location, he brought along some of his classmates who had similarly lost their faith in heroes thanks to recent events orchestrated by the League of Villains. Denki Kaminari, Kyoka Jiro, and Mina Ashido. They, along with Todoroki, would all become my spies. My operation was growing larger by the minute and I couldn’t have been happier that I had done it all on my own.

Of course, when Shigaraki caught wind of this, he immediately took his complaints to AFO. According to Kurogiri, who witnessed the entire exchange through his warp gate, AFO cruelly reprimanded Shigaraki for his impudence, saying that my forward-thinking initiative was one to be emulated rather than criticized. AFO then had Kurogiri take me to him alongside Shigaraki, who looked as though he were in the midst of a full-blown mental breakdown on the floor. I ignored him.

AFO offered me a reward: any Quirk of my choosing that he had at his disposal. He offered powers of all kinds in an attempt to appeal to some desire within me to seize it. I turned him down, much to his confusion. I explained that I didn’t need a Quirk to do what I had to do. All Might was right in that I couldn’t become a hero without a Quirk. Instead of that, I would become the Anti-Hero. Neither a hero nor a villain, but a third party who would dismantle the foundations of each faction from the inside out, starting with the League of Villains. By that point, Dabi, Toga, Twice, Mr. Compress, Spinner, and even Kurogiri were wrapped around my fingers. I told AFO then and there that if he wanted a place in the new world order, he would be wise to join me.

He laughed and said he’d consider it, but for the time being he would watch from afar without interference. He claimed to have taken a keen interest in seeing the fruits of my labour and I was determined to show him that I was capable of achieving my goals. Without a Quirk.

My next recruitment target was Hitoshi Shinso. His Quirk was particularly interesting when I saw it used in the sports festival and I could only see the merit in having it at my disposal. I planned an abduction scheme, one facilitated in much the same way as Bakugo had been kidnapped in canon, and succeeded in containing Shinso in a secret underground facility that was intended to be used to expand the Nomu project before I terminated it.

Despite everything I had to say, every trick and ace up my sleeve, every word that I twisted, Shinso didn’t budge an inch. He was steadfast in his ambitions and he reminded me a bit of Bakugo. I asked him why he thought he could make a difference in a decaying society. He asked me why I thought I could make a difference without a Quirk.

I had avoided all of his questions up until then, but that one set me off. Once he had me under his control, he forced me to untie him and took me as his hostage before my other pawns could make a move. I remember Dabi saying something to him along the lines of “Now who’s not acting very heroic?”

Shinso effectively subdued me and carried me off a fair distance from the hideout once he managed to escape through all the traps that had been set as precautions. Tied up and gagged, I was more or less helpless when his mind control wore off. He kept going on and on about how sad it made him to see a kid his age so burdened and hurting that I had resorted to villainy, and that he would promise to become a hero that I could look up to again. I hated how much those words stung.

I was brought to a villain containment location—not quite a prison, but rather a temporary place of holding—while police and heroes alike interrogated me. I didn’t say a word to any of them. I refused to speak to anyone. I overheard some of the discussions about what they should do with me. I was Quirkless, after all, but I was also the mastermind behind a large-scale villainous organization that had caused so much destruction and even death. Some of them speculated over whether or not I had an invisible Quirk that made me smarter. It was funny to see the confused and mildly horrified looks on their faces when several tests produced negative results on any Quirk genes.

Finally, they brought in All Might. All Might, who had turned me away all those months ago. All Might, whose face fell with shock and guilt upon seeing me. All Might, who knew without having to ask that he was the reason for the chaos inside U.A.'s walls. He was the first person I spoke to, laughing in his face when he attempted to plea with me to cooperate. He asked me why I had resorted to villainy and I corrected him that I wasn't a villain—I was an Anti-Hero. I explained how he had opened my eyes to the pain heroes were causing and that I knew, now, that reformation was necessary. Heroes and villains alike needed to be abolished in order to start anew, but my plans didn't stop there. I told him that Quirks were a disease that made people believe they were better than others, and that as long as Quirks existed, there would be no peace. I was going to eradicate Quirks in their entirety, once and for all.