After living for so long and amassing so many quirks, All For One had come to realize something: quirks were useless. A quirk could not truly define a person or guarantee their safety or happiness.

All For One had come to face this reality only recently. After centuries of stealing, giving, and manipulating quirks, he felt that all of these flashy bits of magic were nothing more than status symbols. Those with half decent quirks had a leg up on those who had bad ones, or even worse, no quirk at all. His life was coming to an end, and no combination of quirks could keep him from his fate.

Over his lifetime, he had seen the people become gluttonous and greedy with their power. Quirks did not indicate a person's heart or intellect and yet those with strong quirks were praised as someone higher.

This society that had grown around him while he had hidden away and recovered from his wounds, clawing his way towards a 'recovery' he would never reach, was broken and twisted. It had given guns to fools and told them to shoot at whatever moved; placing 'Heroes' onto pedestals and pointing at 'Villains' as the scum of the earth.

He envied the quirkless, they were not dependent on these social crutches. They advanced by their own strength. It was these few who society should honor, to who this fantastical commodity should truly belong.

He was amongst these thoughts when he stumbled upon a group of children at a park. (He had been strolling through the streets of an urban neighborhood, savoring his few remaining days of mobility to experience the streets and people he would soon be confined from. He knew that his health would not hold for much longer. Even if he still had ten years to live, they would all be spent bedridden, and so these few months would be one of his few opportunities to see the outside world. Most people would have traveled the world if they found out that their days were numbered, but not him, he had had a few hundred years to see the world and its treasures; so, instead, he preferred to take in the common people as they lived their lives. It was a pity though, he would never be able to show them his real face. He had to use a quirk to produce an illusion around himself in order to walk in public, since his scarred face and body would have spooked any normal person.)

These children who played in the park, they were small, probably only seven or eight years old. At first glance he had thought that there were only three of them, since he recognized them by a quirk which read out other quirks. But then he looked closer, they were huddled around something, shouting and kicking at it, the kid in the middle, the one with the explosion quirk, was shouting especially loud and letting out threatening explosions from his hands.

That's when the boys shifted and All For One saw what they had been jeering at. A girl with short green hair, curled up in the fetal position and crying violently as she sat on the floor. The small boy with the explosive quirk called out louder, so that All For One could hear him now.

"Your Useless Deku. A purely useless deku! You'll never be anything."

The other two kids parroted the first boy.

"Yeah, useless."

"You'll never be anything."

"You don't even have a fucking quirk!" The first boy said before landing a vicious kick to his victim. The girl didn't respond except to tighten her shield of limbs.

Ah, so the fourth child was quirkless…

All For One frowned, he wouldn't say that he was angry, more disappointed. This girl was a perfect example of what happened to the quirkless people nowadays. He thought for a moment.

While he would have normally opted to remain a passive observer, it occurred to him that it would take such little effort to diffuse the situation.

"Hey you three." He called out as he entered the park.

"Ah! An adult." One of the kids exclaimed in surprise.

Another one looked to the boy with the explosive quirk, looking for a signal. This boy with the explosive quirk glared at All For One with his beady red eyes for a moment, before giving a grunt and a 'lets get out of here' and leaving with his two friends. After a moment All For One felt it was appropriate to inform the victim.

"It's okay now." All For One said evenly to the girl who still lay curled up on the floor. "Those three are gone."

The girl peeked her head up and looked around to confirm that her aggressors were indeed gone. She wiped her snot and tears on her pants before turning her big curious green eyes towards her benefactor.

"W-why did you stop them?" She asked with a sniff, confused as to why a stranger would stop to help her when everyone else had simply ignored her cries for help.

"I just had a moment to spare." He said with a smile.

Her curiosity turned to suspicion, nobody else had had a 'moment to spare.'

"What do you want with me?"

All For One chuckled, "Nothing. I was just curious." He paused for a moment. "Why didn't you try to defend yourself?"

The girl's green eyes narrowed and she looked away from him.

"I gave up on fighting them. I'm not strong enough."

"Not strong enough? Why is that?"

She wrapped her little arms around her little knees and squeezed them towards her chest, as if that would protect her from judgement. "I'm quirkless, useless."

"And?" All For One asked, as if this were inconsequential.

The girl looked up in surprise.

"Find a way to protect yourself. You can still grow into someone amazing. Take my brother for example, he was born quirkless, just like you. Granted my brother and I had a few disagreements, but he ultimately became a great hero who left a legacy of hope and ambition."

Her face was alight with wonder. "Are you saying that I can become a hero? Someone like All Might?"

All For One flinched, of course she had to mention him, but he smiled nonetheless. "Perhaps, in your own way. But, what's important is what's up here." He said, tapping his temple. "Today, flashy quirk users are a dime a dozen, but what really makes someone stand out is what they can do with their skills."

The girl watched him with big eyes, full of wonder, as if she were ingraining this moment in her memory.

Suddenly a voice called for him, from the edge of the park.

"Sir, what are you doing here?" A young Kurogiri, fresh out of college, stood by the gate, his voice was stiff with disbelief.

"Ah, I'm just keeping this young woman company."

"Well, b-boss," Kurogiri began evidently at a loss for words, "we have a meeting later today, you can't miss it."

He must have been quite the sight for his underling. The horrible, terrifying, villain All For One, a legend who haunted the nightmares of the proudest heroes, was sitting in a park comforting a beaten little girl. The thought brought a smile of amusement to his lips

"My friend is right, I have to be going." All For One said down to his new friend. "I guess that I'll be seeing you around little miss."

"Wait! My name is Chisaki." The small one blurted out suddenly. "It's not 'little miss', my name is Chisaki Midoriya."

All For One looked down in astonishment, and he was sure that Kurogiri's eyes were going to pop out of his eye sockets. The girl's eyes were filled with a solid determination and a bright smile was her lips. It was almost hard to believe that this same child had been crying and hurt only minutes before. That optimistic resilience was rather amusing.

All For One smiled slowly at her innocence. "My friends call me Sensei."