A/N: Man, this fic is kinda hard to get back into writing after a long break... Though it probably would be a bit easier if I kept better notes lol.

Speaking of, sorry for not updating this in like a while. I kinda got distracted from it a lot for a variety of reasons that are, admittedly, mostly my own dang fault. Honestly, I've not been feeling quite as inspired with this fic as I used to. That's not to say that I'm giving up on it, I definitely don't want to do that, but it might be a bit slow-going for a bit, especially because I've got a few other projects that I'm feeling more inspired with at the moment. Sorry in advance, but please bear with me.

xoxoxo

I adjusted my tie as we walked into the meeting room. I spotted... was that Wash? Huh, I suppose that made sense. Despite his... comical appearance and persona in (washing machine) costume, Wash more than earned his high hero ranking, both in terms of popularity and effectiveness. He could use his Clean Bubbler Quirk to attack villains with high-power streams of bubbles, restrain or protect people by sticking them in very strong bubbles, and even had some first-aid capability because his bubbles acted as disinfectant. Wow, I was going to meet Wash? And... help him and several other heroes arrest Endeavor.

Fun.

Aside from Wash, I recognized Manual, Backdraft, and a few other water-related and firefighting heroes. That made sense; even if they weren't also there to help with directly confronting Endeavor, the man wasn't known to back down easily so any attempt to arrest him would likely end with them needing to help put out fires.

And then there was... "Oh hey, Aizawa-sensei!" I said, waving to my teacher.

"Again, call me Grimalkin when I'm on the job, please," he sighed. "Right, is that everyone here, then?"

"Looks like, unless you or Wash invited someone else to the party that I wasn't aware of," Torino-sensei chipped in from my side. "So, let's get down to business."

"Before that, why's the kid here?" Backdraft asked, raising a hand. I winced at the tone of his voice, remembering that time all those months ago (was it really only a few months) when he and a few other heroes had scolded me for attacking the sludge villain. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I saw his work at the Sports Festival-unless he happens to be some other kid with freckles and curly green hair-but he's a first year, so unless he's been taking a lot of extra-curriculars I doubt he has his provisional license."

"Oh, that was my idea, actually!" Wash said. Wait, Wash vouched for me? Oh, wow! "I also saw his performance in the Sports Festival, and what stood out to me wasn't just his power in combat but also the support and healing abilities he showed, washa! When I heard from Grimalkin-san that he could do more, and that he was now a licensed healer, I just had to have him along to help!"

"Thank you, sir, that means a lot to me," I told Wash, not bothering to hide my smile.

"So, how are you going to be supporting us?" Manual asked. "And for that matter, I suppose we should talk strategy now." He looked around at the assembled heroes. "I'm guessing most of us are going to mostly be on firefighting duty or protecting civilians, Wash is going to be doing the fighting, and... Deku, right?" I nodded at his question. "Deku is obviously going to be on support, but what about Grimalkin and Gran Torino?"

"I'll be fighting with Wash, mostly," Aizawa-sensei said. "My Quirk allows me to disable other Quirks, and I've recently developed... a certain form of magic that so far seems to be unique to me, which I suspect may come from my Quirk in the same way that elemental affinities do. To be honest, I don't think I've even so much as scratched the surface of its full potential so far, but what I have figured out so far is... pretty ridiculous in a way that I believe is particularly effective against people who throw around massive amounts of a single element. To demonstrate..." He nodded in my direction. "Deku, throw some fire at me, please."

"Do you want magic-based fire, Quirk-based fire, or chemical-based fire?" I asked, opening up my inventory and Quirk windows.

"How would you..." Aizawa muttered, furrowing his brow, then shook his head. "Doesn't matter, just throw a fireball spell at me, please."

"Okay," I said, dismissing the windows and calling up a fireball to throw at him. He caught it effortlessly, despite residual magic in spells usually making it harder to control spells made by others even if you have the right element for it, and then... again, a wave of peculiar blue magic washed over the fire and suddenly Aizawa was holding a ball of water, about the same size as my fireball had been. "This should work on Endeavor's flames as well, and is surprisingly energy-efficient for literal energy-to-matter transmutation, so I'll be using it to turn his own attacks against him and give our hydrokinetics more material to work with."

"Seriously, how are you doing that?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's a sort of... conceptual transmutation or whatever. My magic seems to be, well... it seems to let me elementally manipulate magic itself the same way elemental magic allows people to manipulate elements." He turned the waterball back into a fireball, then used what seemed to be regular fire magic to make it shuffle through a few different colors. "There's probably something ontologically weird about how I'm doing it, but to me it feels a bit like shifting fire between different colors with magic, if I squint a bit."

"Ah, is that the thing we talked about that one time, Deku?" Torino-sensei asked me. "The magic element I brought up?"

"It's... possible," I said, rubbing my chin. "From the way Grimalkin described it, it sure sounds like it..." I turned Eye for Magic on and got myself ready to Analyze Aizawa's spell. "I've got a few magic-analyzing skills, so if you use it again I can try to get some answers."

He nodded and- "GAH!" I cried, suddenly blinded from a bright flash of indigo and a sharp pain in my eyes. I didn't even have time to use Analyze before recoiling like I'd just stared into a blue sun.

"Midoriya, are you okay?" I heard Aizawa-sensei's concerned voice ask, as well as a few exclamations from the other heroes.

"Sorry, I'm fine, just got a bit of backlash." The pain was already gone, though I didn't know if that backlash would be more serious on another person, between The Gamer's changes to my body and the fact that I had Hyper Regeneration on. I opened my eyes and, yup, no permanent vision damage, though there was a system error text box saying that Eye for Magic was forcibly deactivated because of overexposure to "&/!(&$^ #&%!$," which was interesting to say the least. Whatever Aizawa had turned the fireball into, it was gone now. "Yeah, all I'm getting is error messages from that. I should probably warn Hatsume and the other support course people about that..."

"Error messages?" Wash inquired.

"Ah, my Quirk, The Gamer, works by... I guess you could say it affects how I interact with the world, or maybe how the world interacts with me, so that I act a bit like a video game character. Part of that is having what's basically a UI that automatically alerts me of level ups, stat increases, and, in this case, error messages for when a skill-that is, a spell-gets disrupted or something like that. It also makes me learn and improve spells a lot faster than people usually can, because video game characters usually don't need to spend years mastering high-leveling magic, just enough stats, levels, and whatever other prerequisites."

"That sounds quite useful!" Wash declared. "I suppose that's how you were able to master so much useful and powerful magic, washa!"

"Yeah, pretty much," I nodded. "It also helps that video game logic, at least according to whatever system my Quirk uses, means pretty good stat growth even without using my stat points. But back to Grimalkin's magic, I unfortunately probably can't make heads or tails of it quite yet."

"I suppose I can't complain about that," Grimalkin said. "Thanks for the attempt, and sorry about your eyes. As I was saying, I'll be drawing fire from Endeavor if it comes to a fight and will use my elemental conversion to turn his fire into water, air, and ice." He looked around at the assembled heroes. "Most of you should be able to use water or ice magic, or at least control water somehow. If you somehow don't know how to use magic yet, we have some time scheduled before the operation for you to get pointers from Deku, Wash, or myself. I suggest you make the most of it." He then shifted his attention back to me. "Deku, I believe you have a few support effects you can provide us. As some of them will likely take everyone some time to get used to, I'd prefer it if you gave everyone an idea of what you can do for us now."

"Of course," I said, nodding. "I guess... the first thing is probably the party system?" I cringed, noticing a few odd looks from some of the heroes. "Um, it's another aspect of my Quirk. I guess it'll probably be a bit easier to show off if you can see it, so... can I use my Quirk on everyone? Raise your hand if you'd prefer I didn't, I guess." After giving myself a minute to do the standard clearout of chat logs and secret party members that should be dead, I mentally recited the party invites for all of the present heroes except Backdraft, who had silently put his hand up after a moment. Or, rather, the hose spigot he had instead of a hand. "Right, as... most of you can see, you now have access to some of the informational aspects of my Quirk. Everything's off by default, but you should be able to use the status, party chat, and map menus, and in the options menu you can enable UI elements like a status bar and minimap. You don't really get any of the physical bonuses of my Quirk like EXP gain, but it should hopefully be helpful to everyone to have your stats quantified and bars you can just look at to see how much fight you still have left in you. It should respond to both verbal and mental commands, so I should probably give you all a few minutes to get things set up?"

I waited a bit, watching the heroes set themselves up and react to their stats. I snorted at a few grumblings of "Why is my WIS so low..." and "Oh, fuck you game, I know I have shit luck," as well as some more positive appreciation of some good stat or other. As they got their bearings straight, I messed around in the Party Options menu a bit. Ah, good, there was an option to put the health bars of everyone in the party in my HUD. And it didn't even clutter up my vision despite all the people currently in my party. Like with my own health bar, I just saw them somewhere that I felt was in the corner of my vision, yet could still focus on perfectly without having to move my eyes.

When the chatter started to die back down, I spoke up once more. "Alright, everyone good?" I asked. I looked around to see if there was anyone with any questions, then nodded and continued after a wave of nods and 'yeah's. "Great! Next, does anyone have any support items or materials that they'd like me to hold onto? Another part of my Quirk, Inventory, gives me the ability to store... pretty much any object that can fit through the window it makes, as far as I'm aware." I pulled out a water bottle to demonstrate. "Living animals get ejected automatically, but plants and inanimate objects stay in just fine. Any food I put in there doesn't go bad or even change temperature, but I wouldn't say that no time passes because clocks track time accurately... without losing any battery charge. There seems to be some kind of stasis going, at least, so if it's something time-sensitive I should probably be able to keep it fresh. I've already got plenty of water jugs, rocks, dirt, batteries, seeds, and other elemental sources, so don't worry about that, but if you've got anything else I should be able to hold it for you."

Backdraft put a spigot-hand to his mask. He looked pensive, but it was a bit hard to tell for sure since I couldn't see his face and he didn't have any fingers to stroke his chin with. "Hm..." I idly wondered if he had some form of special dispensation to use his Quirk to hold things, given that his Quirk seemed to fully replace his hands. I didn't ask him, though, because I was worried it would be rude to ask how he did things with spigots for hands. "Deku, you can store fluids, right?" he asked after a few moments.

"Not by itself, technically, but if it's in a container, even an open container like a cup, it goes in fine. I guess it's a safety mechanism to prevent my inventory from just sucking in large amounts of air whenever I open it?"

"Can I borrow a cup or something, then?" Backdraft asked. "I wanna try something." As he said that, a thin stream of water dribbled out of one of his nozzles and formed a ball in the air.

"Sure," I said, pulling a cup out of my inventory. Observe told me that his Quirk only let him control the water that he produced, and only for twelve minutes at max before the effect faded and it just became normal water to him. I could guess at what he wanted to see, so I just held the cup out to him. "I'm guessing you want to see if I can preserve the water you make with your Quirk?"

He nodded and floated the water into my cup. "That's what I was thinking. I can feel water under my control, but not well enough to tell how much time I have left with it until it's about to run out of time, so I figure we wait until after my current max time limit and see if I can still control it."

"Sounds good," I said, then Observed and Analyzed the water out of curiosity. Observe gave me... some TMI about how Backdraft's Quirk produced water that made me very unwilling to drink it even though it also assured me the water was perfectly sanitary. Analyze, meanwhile, was a lot more helpful than its older brother and informed me of the name of the Quirk currently acting against it (Water Pump), said Quirk's owner (Tachikawa Dansui, AKA Backdraft), and a live-updating countdown for how long that Quirk effect would last (about eleven and a half minutes when the box opened). "It looks like I can tell how long it's gonna last with one of my Quirk's analytical powers, but to be safe, let's put it in for thirteen minutes." I put the cup in my inventory, noting that the countdown on the Analyze box paused the moment I did, then pulled out my phone and set a timer for it.

"Thanks," Backdraft said. "And, ah, I changed my mind about the party thing. You can include me, if you don't mind."

"Oh, of course!" I said, quickly sending him an invite. "Honestly, it's gonna be more convenient for me with everyone in it, because it'll let me track your health more easily and that'll let me know who needs healing the most. I mean, hopefully we won't really need it, but as Wash said, I have a healing license and that's probably the biggest reason I'm here, so, uh..." I trailed off and just brought out my license. "You're... in good hands if you get injured, hopefully."

"Ya might wanna sound a bit more confident the next time you say that, kid," Torino-sensei advised me. A few of the other heroes muttered agreements.

I winced. "Sorry," I muttered, and put the card back in my inventory. "Uh, I guess the last thing we need to go over is..." I readied myself to use my four buff spells, then had an idea. 'I wonder if I can combine them...' I thought to myself. I held my hands out in front of me and concentrated, forming four balls of magic in front of me. Green for Regeneration, blue for Defense Up, red for Attack Up, and yellow for Speed Up. I thought about how I'd combined skills in the past and how those four skills would mesh together with each other (rather well, given that I made the other three as variations of the first), then I clapped my hands together around the four orbs. The magic almost slipped between my fingers, but I forced it to come together and solidify. There was a flash of light from between my fingers and the ping of a notification, and then I opened my hands to show the completed magic orb. "This is... I guess you could call it a crystallized buffing spell," I told them. It was the same sort of glass-looking material that the individual buff orbs were, but instead of being a solid color it had slowly-shifting splotches of the colors of the four spells that made it up, plus a small amount of white. "It's a combination of four spells, put in a solidified form that holds itself without discharging for about an hour or until crushed." I tossed it to Grimalkin. "I figure I could give one or two to everyone, it's not really that expensive to me because of how many options I have for restoring MP, but first I think everyone should probably practice a bit first under the effects because the speed and attack boosts could throw you off a bit."

"That's an excellent point, Deku," Grimalkin said, crushing the orb between his finger and his thumb. The magic inside burst out and wreathed him in a multicolored light that sunk into his skin and vanished after a moment, the solid shell dissolving away with it. "That's actually why I arranged for us to meet here, because there's also a gym with a shooting range in this building. I knew Deku had a few support abilities that we might want to practice with before the operation, so I made sure we have time set aside for that. Deku, can you put those spells in your inventory? And if you do, do you have any more on you?"

I almost nodded, then shook my head. "I... can, but at the moment I don't have any of the composites in it, just a few of the individual spells. The skill I used to make that is... relatively new, so I haven't gotten around to making any to just put in my inventory yet." I decided not to mention that by 'relatively new,' I meant 'I only just got it.' Speaking of, I pulled up the window for the skill I just made by combining the four buff spells.

A new skill has been created through special action! By combining multiple compatible skills, the skill 'Skill Synthesis' has been created!

Skill Synthesis (Active) LV 1 EXP 0.00% MP 200x
A good mage knows not only a large variety of spells, but also when and how to innovate and combine those spells to create new effects. This skill represents the ability to merge compatible spells together on the fly.
The user may use this skill to merge multiple other skills together to combine and/or alter their effects, as long as they are eligible.
Ability to use skills for Skill Synthesis determined by compatibility and level of all skills involved.
MP cost of Skill Synthesis is multiplied by number of skills combined using Skill Synthesis. MP cost of Skill Synthesis does not cover costs of skills combined using Skill Synthesis, which must still be paid as normal.
Distinctive enough results of Skill Synthesis may result in the creation of new skills.

Huh, that wasn't quite what I was expecting. It was probably a lot better, though. Would that work with passive skills? It didn't say anything about it, but it wasn't like I could smash, say, Physical Endurance together with one of my skills to make something new. Or could I? "I guess while you guys are practicing, I can work on putting more in my inventory while you guys are doing that." I made another orb (this time without quite as much dramatic fanfare since now that I had Skill Synthesis I could simply focus on combining the four skills and have the finished product come out just fine) and immediately shoved it in my inventory like I said I would. As I made a few more, my mind whirled with possibilities of what I could do with Skill Synthesis.

"Of course!" Wash declared. "We should go over a few more things before that, but I don't believe there's anything that requires your input. As long as you are still paying attention, it should be perfectly fine for you to get ahead on making more of those spell orbs for us, washa!"

I smiled. "Thank you, Wash. I won't let you down." Saying that, I opened up my skill menu. "And while everyone else is practicing with my buffs, I think I'll try to experiment and see if I can find any other support I can give everyone else."

"That sounds like a good idea," Grimalkin said. "Keep us updated with anything you find."

xoxoxo

We marched to gate the large estate in silence, escorting a few police officers with us. Since they were the ones with the arrest power and we were only here in the likely case that things got ugly, they were going to be the ones leading the conversation until Endeavor tried to attack. Grimalkin and I flanked them, both poised to protect them and get them out of the line of literal fire the second anything happened. My Quirks were currently set to Super Regeneration and Fear, with Swift as the Wind for my title. Grimalkin would attempt to use an intimidation spell of his invention if Endeavor lit up in the hopes that it would get him to reconsider attacking, and when he did I was supposed to use Fear to help him. Once the fighting started, I was ordered to immediately exchange Fear for a new Quirk, Fireproof, that one of the fire rescue heroes had volunteered to give me when I mentioned being able to copy Quirks. As the name implied, it gave me drastically increased resistance to fire damage, as well as resistance to some fire-related hazards like smoke inhalation. On top of that, I'd applied a new skill I made to myself and the other heroes through the composite buff orbs.

A new skill has been created through special action! By synthesizing the skills 'Physical Endurance' and 'Elemental Aura,' the skill 'Elemental Aegis' has been created!

It was mildly disappointing because I'd been hoping for a passive elemental resistance skill like Physical Endurance, but it still was pretty good. It worked a bit similarly to Elemental Aura, in that I could use it for any element I had affinity for and continuously paid the price for it as long as it was active. Instead of enhancing my abilities, though, it gave me resistance to the element I used it with and lesser resistances to related damage types, with the resistance scaling based on WIS and elemental affinity. It was a bit tenuous because Elemental Aegis was low-level and self-targeted, but after I managed to grind another level on both it and Skill Synthesis I was just barely able to put it in my combined buff orbs. Which meant that I needed to make even more, but everyone agreed that the fire resistance would be worth it if we had to fight Endeavor. The skill seemed to be less powerful when I put it in the synthesized spell, but its duration increased to be at the level of the other buffs instead of running out after a minute.

"Last check, is everyone ready?" Wash asked everyone.

I double-checked that my inventory and Quirk menus were open to the right areas for me to quickly pull out and switch what I was supposed to, then nodded. The other heroes checked their support gear, activated various spells, and checked to make sure they still had the orbs I gave them. One of the heroes popped their buff orb in their mouth, which to be fair probably was a good place to hide it and yet still have it an a place where they could easily break it.

"Good, washa," he said, then nodded to the police officers we were escorting. "Officers, you may proceed. If Todoroki uses any powers, you will get behind Grimalkin and Deku immediately and comply with any directions they give you."

One of the officers nodded, then pressed the buzzer to the side of the Todoroki estate's main gate. After a bit of waiting, Endeavor's face appeared on a screen next to the buzzer. Or, I suppose, Todoroki's face, since he wasn't in costume and didn't have his trademark fire beard. "What do you want, officers?" he asked. We'd been careful to keep everyone but the police out of the view of the gate call box's camera so he wouldn't suspect anything until he came out.

"We need to speak to you in person," the leading officer said. "It's somewhat urgent."

He raised an eyebrow. "Should I get my costume?"

"That won't be necessary," the officer shook his head. "Just come out here, I'll tell you more then."

Enji scoffed. "This had better be important, then." And with that, the screen shut off.

"And now we wait," Grimalkin said. "Remember, nobody show any signs of aggression-and especially no overt power use-until he actually starts fighting. Even if you think he's probably going to fight immediately, we want to give him a chance to turn himself in first. Even aside from the fact that it's better for everyone if he comes quietly, it won't look great for us if we shoot first against the number two hero."

I looked at the sheathed sword that I still had as part of my hero outfit and quickly dequipped it with my inventory. In hindsight I was a bit surprised that nobody had commented in it, but then again I wasn't the only person there with a weapon as part of their outfit. After a bit of thought, I also put up my costume's bunny-eared hood. I wasn't sure exactly what Endeavor thought of me, but if he thought I was related to All Might in any way like Shoto had then I was a bit worried I'd set him off if he recognized me. What else could I do to prepare...

I was jolted out of my thoughts by a ping and quickly checked the popup that created the sound.

A quest has been created!

Firefighter Support
Yeah, we all know that Endeavor isn't going down without a fight. Do your best to make sure the heroes you're supporting are able to keep Endeavor from escaping or causing too much collateral damage.

Oh. That was... worrying.

xoxoxo

A/N: Wasn't gonna bother with the rewards for that quest, really at this point the numbers probably aren't that meaningful beyond the fact that they're there. In case you're curious, it's not as much as the Stain quest (because Izuku isn't really supposed to be an active participant in the battle and is just making sure a bunch of way-more-experienced pro heroes can do their jobs). Might have it include a title, though. Haven't quite decided yet, which I probably shouldn't be admitting to but oh well. You won't tell anyone, will you?

Again, sorry about not updating in a while. I'd like to say I'll try to update sooner, but honestly I feel like I should probably refrain from making promises given that I can be kinda bad at actually following through on that promise sometimes...

And sorry for not getting to the Endeavor fight even though I've been hyping it up for so long and spent so much time writing this chapter. The first bit of the chapter kinda got away from me, and while I originally thought of just doing an extra long chapter to make up for the recent lack of GHD I kinda realized that if I did that I probably wouldn't get any chapter out until after the new year because my writing has been slow going recently (I blame a lack of schoolwork to procrastinate on lol) and I wanted to get at least something out this year. Perfect is the enemy of just getting it out already and all that. So... cliffhanger, I guess.

I feel like I'm probably gonna struggle with making sure Skill Synthesis is properly used a bit (elemental god knows I'm probably already neglecting a bunch of things I introduced as is lol) but I liked the idea after I thought of it and have like zero moderation when it comes to giving characters in my stories cool powers so we're all gonna have to deal with this.

Also, something I only recently thought of that honestly I probably should've thought of before and now I can't decide on, would you say Shigaraki's Decay is a time-based effect (like it immediately fast-forwards whatever material it affects until it breaks down from the ravages of time) or a particle-based effect (like it just straight up rips apart whatever it affects)? I kinda wanna say time because... I don't know if this is just me but "decay" kinda implies things breaking down over time, but I could also see arguments to the Quirk's mechanical effects being more like ripping stuff apart on the molecular level... I mean I guess ultimately it's my decision but as I said I can't really decide at the moment, so I suppose I'm hoping for a bit of feedback to push me off the fence one way or the other.

Elemental list:
Midoriya: Halitus, Dune, Rayne, Blaise, Juniper, Mifuyu, Raimon, Iggy, Sonia, and Claude
Bakugou: Pyra and Leaf
Tokoyami: Corvo
Uraraka: Nebula and Ion
Hagakure: Lucy
Tsu: Bubbles
Aizawa: Charlie and Cassiopeia
All Might: Seth O'Scope