Garaki settled back into his chair, admiring his creations that were sleeping peacefully in their glass containers. All of his High-End Nomus were developing nicely, despite All for One's arrest. It was much easier for him to make copies of quirks, as well as manufacture more Nomus with All for One's quirk, but he would be able to make do with his current stash of stored quirks.
Sure, the Nomus were nowhere near the testing stage, not to mention they still had to be stabilized before they could be used to fight heroes like Enji; it was a pity that Dabi had failed to retrieve Hood, or he could have made used of that information to potentially figure out a way to speed up the activation process.
Mocha let out a small yip, and the small Nomu stopped by his foot, looking up at him as he wagged his spinal tail. Garaki reached down, gently patting the Nomu on the head, and Mocha squeaked in content.
Garaki turned back to his computer, analyzing his data that came from Shigaraki's capsule. The burden of artificially transplanting quirks was huge, but for such an ancient and powerful quirk like All for One, the burden was immense. He had put Shigaraki in a death-like state so that it would be easier for him to withstand the advanced surgery that granted him the quirk of his master.
At least, in the capsule, it would be easy for Garaki to keep track of the state of Shigaraki's body, and it would only take him the press of a button to revive him when the process was finally complete; the boy only needed a month and a half before he was ready.
Garaki let out a sigh. He had spent years building up his reputation. After much effort, he founded Jaku General Hospital, and used a lot of time to set up orphanages, nursing homes, and even charities; all so that he could have a proper workstation and materials to treat All for One after his multiple fights with various users of One for All.
Even though the past users of that damned quirk were no match for All for One, he just wanted to make sure that he would be able to treat his friend properly; he knew that One for All was a quirk that grew stronger as it was passed along, and eventually, it would end up with a user that could really give All for One a run for his money. Even with Garaki's own quirk, there was a limit to how far All for One could go, and the old villain would need a successor sooner or later. All for One also intended to take One for All back, so the boy's body had to be able to take the strain of both quirks.
Plus, working in the medical community allowed him to access various medical information from all over Japan, and more importantly, to keep an eye out for potential quirks for All for One to nab.
And as time went past, he had a new project in mind; the Nomus. Mindless super-soldiers with a multitude of quirks that could overwhelm any hero that existed, beings that only obeyed commands from their master with absolute loyalty.
But this project proved to be much more complicated than he expected. Human bodies aren't made to hold multiple Quirks without a base quirk like One for All or All for One. The former was already out of the question, having fallen into the hands of Yagi long before then, and All for One was way too complicated for him to replicate.
Garaki had spent ages learning how to drastically alter the corpses before All for One could successfully implant new quirks into the dead bodies. However, despite his best efforts, most of the bodies weren't even functional, and would never activate.
And then, All for One heard about a quirk called Erasure through the UA Sports Festival, which was airing live on television. It was a quirk owned by a scrawny first year student, and it allowed its user to temporarily erase the quirk of anyone that the kid looked at, at least, until he blinked.
It was the perfect quirk for a Nomu; Garaki could just mimic fish, and add an additional membrane over the surface of its eyeballs, and remove the eyelids, so there was absolutely no need for the Nomu to blink. It would be able to immobilize almost any hero, since most of them were reliant on their quirks, and for the rare cases of heroes that aren't entirely reliant on their quirks, the Nomu would definitely be able to trip them up, and use its other quirks in order to completely defeat them.
There was also another kid that could travel around the arena quickly with a quirk called Cloud, and while Garaki could potentially think of a way to turn it into something useful, it definitely wasn't as interesting a quirk as Erasure.
All for One had used a couple of his contacts to dispatch a villain called Garvey to bring the black haired child to them, but the idiot launched an attack while the boy was on an internship with a pro hero and two of his friends. The villain was arrested in the end; it wasn't like they cared anyways, since Garvey was disposable to them. But while the villain wasn't able to achieve their original objective, he did manage to kill another kid called Shirakumo Oboro, so that was a plus.
Using a teleportation quirk, All for One managed to steal the body before it was to be cremated, and from the seventeen-year-old's deceased body, he had created Kurogiri. It was a miracle that the Nomu he had created from the carcass was even alive, let alone able to talk, and even take initiative and strategize, his quirk mutating in the process into something completely new, though it was very likely that this was possible due to the usage of All for One's quirk in the quirk transplanting process.
But this just proved that it really was possible to create Nomus; these monstrous beings were no longer a dream.
Ever since then, Garaki had spent countless hours trying to figure out how to create a Nomus without the help of All for One; he had finally found a way to properly repay the man who listened and respected him, and he couldn't possibly ask the old villain to help him develop every single Nomu he made. All for One was a busy man, and the Nomus were the biggest assets they had against future users of One for All.
Garaki had been taking any dead bodies he could easily get his hands on, and even using some of All for One's contacts with minor, disposable villains to take out people with desirable quirks so that he could experiment on them. And he remembered his old research paper, the one that theorized that the quirkless could have quirks that surpassed those of regular quirk users, but it was because of that very strength that the quirks were unable to manifest in a regular human body without outrightly killing the user; those quirks could potentially be even more powerful that One for All, or even All for One.
Yagi's existence just proved his point; with his access to medical records, he could definitely confirm that Yagi was quirkless before Nana passed One for All down to him. Most of the previous users of One for All died due to the strain of the quirk on their bodies, but Yagi was running around and defeating villains with no problems at all.
He was able to take the strain of a ridiculously powerful stockpiling quirk like One for All. If so, if he found more quirkless kids, kids who had been thrown away by society, just like he had, then maybe, just maybe, he could use them to create an army of super-soldiers that could think for themselves.
After all, in his experiments, the alterations he made were what ceases higher brain function in his current creations, so if a quirkless body was capable of tolerating the strain of multiple quirks, then he wouldn't have to alter their bodies in the first place. Even if they couldn't entirely handle the strain of the alteration, perhaps it was possible that he could reduce the alterations so they could still retain higher brain function.
Sadly, he was too late; they were living in an era where most quirkless kids had already taken their own lives and committed suicide, so even if he were to retrieve their mangled corpses (provided they weren't cremated), he would have to alter their bodies just so that they could stand up and fight, which would completely defeat the purpose of having enhanced intelligence.
At the very least, he would have some practice for making Nomus, so that was a plus.
One day, Garaki went in for his day job, working as a quirk specialist in a clinic just outside Musutafu for children whose quirk had just manifested, or children who had reached the age of four and had yet to manifest their own quirks, and found a boy who met his specifications.
A quirkless child, who wanted so badly to be a hero like Yagi. His mother was the one who brought him in for the consultation, while his father had been away on a work matter. He scheduled another appointment with them, and after the mother and child left his office, Garaki looked up more information on the boy. The mother had a supposedly weak telekinesis quirk, while the father had a fire breathing quirk, and was actually working as a pro hero overseas.
Garaki decided to wait for a little while. The child was still too young, and way too naive. He wasn't stupid; Garaki didn't have the time nor patience to raise a kid for a few years, and he knew that he would kill the kid if he even tried to give him an extra quirk, and possibly destroy the only quirkless person that was easily within his grasp. He would just continue booking "check-ups" so he could keep a close eye on the kid. The boy's mother was nice enough, but Garaki knew that it was only a matter of time until the quirkless boy experienced the darkness of the world.
A few years passed, and Garaki decided that it would be better if the child was under his care. At least, he could keep an eye on him, just in case the mother decided to visit a clinic that was closer to their home. Get some villains to kill the lady and take the child, that shouldn't be too hard. After all, the police aren't going to care too much about a missing quirkless kid; they'd probably do an hour's worth of research and call it a closed case.
After so many years of working with All for One, Garaki used his own contacts to pull a couple of strings and get some help. What he didn't realize, though, was that the boy's father had come back, so his attempt at getting the quirkless child had failed when the house went up in flames, and the child being sent into foster care.
Oh well. A corpse was still a corpse, no matter how burnt it was. Plus, he was the father of a quirkless kid; analyzing his body should provide him with some useful information.
And now, he had perfected his craft. Sure, with All for One currently residing in Tartarus, producing Nomus, let alone High-End Nomus, was an extremely arduous task, but that just meant that all his efforts had finally come to fruition. He was capable of creating dangerous soldiers from the corpses of the most battle-crazed villains, but now, all he could do was wait for the Nomus to stabilize from the surgeries involved in the artificial quirk transplant process, before he could do a couple of test runs and fully activate them.
It was just a shame that he was neve able to fully experiment with a quirkless person; that would have been fun.
Now, all the sentient Nomus he had that were currently active were Johnny, Mocha, and one of his earliest successful creations. Mocha was one of his newer creations, having the Double quirk that he had obtained from Bubaigawara, and it didn't take him long to stabilize. Johnny was a slightly older Nomu that possessed the Warping quirk, but neither of them were too hard to make since they only had one quirk each; all he had to do was obtain the corpses of some dead children that was lying around.
That other Nomu that he had on hand... had a lot of issues. He was obedient most of the time, but there were instances where he would act out and start destroying things, or disobey orders at random, or set stuff on fire. He was more of a minor nuisance rather than a major problem, though, but none of the other Nomus he created ever disobeyed him, but Garaki wasn't eager to terminate him, at least, not yet.
It was hard enough to make a Nomu, and he could easily deal with any behavior issues with electric shocks. And now that Shigaraki was given All for One, and that the League of Villains were now working with the Meta Liberation Army, they needed all the firepower they could get when they decided to start a war with the heroes.
Plus, Garaki could always use him as a test subject to try out any post-activation improvements that he already had in mind for his precious High-Ends. Once Shigaraki had stabilized and was awake, Garaki could turn his attention to more experiments; at the moment, Shigaraki was his priority, and was of utmost importance. And the doctor was definitely interested as to why this particular Nomu was so disobedient.
Garaki looked at the numbers on the screen, and smiled. He knew that All for One had something planned, and he couldn't wait to see what would happen. A person who wielded both All for One and One for All... that would truly be the ultimate weapon, and Garaki intended to make that dream a reality.
The doctor gently picked Mocha up, and beckoned Johnny towards him, who seemed to be enjoying himself with short walks around his laboratory, but did seem to occasionally trip over the wires and would fall since he was unable to regain his balance.
"Soon, all our efforts will bear fruition." Garaki smiled, "Johnny, please warp me to my office. There's something I'd like to check."
He may not have any direct access to the medical files of the UA students and teachers, since all that data was stored remotely in a database in Shuzenji's office, instead of in a database that all doctors could access, but he should be able to dig up enough information on Aizawa. Not to mention, UA also had a quirkless child that Shigaraki deemed a pain in the butt. It would be really fortunate if he could get his hands on him as well, but even if they were to rope in the help of mere children, there was no way the Hero Commission would be desperate enough to delegate a quirkless child to the battlefield.
Still, one prize was better than none; he still wanted to get his hands on Erasure, and since they were going to fight sooner or later, he might as well figure out a potential way to get what he wanted.