Alright, welcome back to RoCP! This is a pretty short chapter to bring things down from last episode, and hopefully introduce a new character. That's all up here, so let's get reading!

Chapter 14: Expulse

My dreams weren't usually normal. Normally, I didn't dream, or at least I didn't remember my dreams, but the ones I did remember were almost always the same. I was always young again, walking through that horrifying Fire, stepping past both building and body alike. There was screaming, shouting, shrieking. They all punctured the snap and crackle of flames in my ears. IIt hurt. It hurt so much, walking along that scorched ground, bathing my feet in flames. THey traveled up my legs, burning my skin and blistering my muscles.I kept walking.

There was nothing else to do. I ignored the people's cries for help in the hope that maybe, just maybe, I could make it out of that inferno alive. Nobody would come to help. I had to do it myself.

Then I stopped walking. I fell to my knees, unable to continue as my tendons burnt away into nothingness. Even so, I kept crawling forward on my elbows. They were scorched to ash as well. Just as I thought I would die, another figure appeared in the blaze.

The fire appeared to slide over his skin as if he were controlling it. His black coat and equally black suit was repelling the flames as well. His face...

I remember that face. It was a face so happy, so filled with simple joy at the prospect of finding another living human that my broken, addled mind had to wonder if I could ever be as happy as him. Then everything went black.

That was how my dreams usually went. The only exception was when I was fighting in the Grail War with Saber, where I'd dreamed of her past life as Arturia Pendragon. I expected my dreams that night to be no different.

I should really stop expecting things.

The world skidded to a halt around me, shapes and images going from the raging flames of a horrid inferno to a green meadow with silver flowers dotting the bed of emerald. A single tree stood in the center of the meadow. Around that tree were two figures, one small and lithe, the other hulking and monstrously muscled. The smaller form, a woman with black hair, was speaking to the larger man. I couldn't make out what she said, but the man nodded and walked away. I watched him as he disappeared into the ring of trees. There were Grimm dotting those trees, of every conceivable variety. The woman just snapped her fingers.

More fire appeared, but this time it seemed tame, controlled, and very much unlike the torrent of fire that scalded my skin and mind. She grinned a wicked grin. The Grimm melted away from the flames, returning to the shadows that hid their forms. The flames flicked off, and the woman took a seat under the shade of that one, single tree.

My eyes snapped open, then, and I sat up almost out of reflex. That woman was unfamiliar, but if dreams had told me one thing, it was that you really shouldn't trust them. On the off chance that it was some sort of prophetic vision, which was highly doubtful considering the only way for a person to use the power of Prophecy was to tap against the boundaries of Akasha, and oftentimes it had a high fatality rate. So far as I knew I hadn't even come close to reaching the Swirl of the Root, and with my super-specialized Origin and Element, it was unlikely that I'd reach it in my lifetime. Perhaps Tabitha would, if I did pass down all the knowledge I'd accumulated from Unlimited Blade Works to her, but definitely not me.

That didn't stop me from feeling proud enough of my Reality Marble to call it a True Magic, though.

A second thought hit me as the dream faded into the back of my mind. I had been feeling a lot more pride since I'd come into Remnant. Perhaps I had found my true worth in being a Huntsman or after defeating Gilgamesh for the first time.

Whatever the reason, it wasn't as important as tending to my rumbling (and now wholly regenerated) stomach. I glanced myself over for any more signs of damage, then stepped towards the kitchen. Blake must have moved back to her own bed sometime in the night, because I could see a lump under her bedsheets.

A wave of foulness almost as bad as Berserker's stink washed over me. I hesitantly twisted around and sniffed my armpit. Eugh!

"Okay," I muttered, "shower first. Then I can work on breakfast."

It didn't take very long for me to feel clean, but it took a hell of a lot longer for me to smell clean. Apparently a lot of blood and grime had gotten rubbed into my skin during the fight, and only by rubbing my skin half-raw did I managed to get all of it out. With that matter accomplished, I walked into the kitchen, a fresh tunic and pants on my person. Blake was standing next to the stove, grumbling about whatever was hissing and spitting in the pan in front of her. I craned my head up, trying to get a look at whatever it was.

"Are you trying... to cook coal?" Blake jumped and whirled, her hand half an inch from Gambol Shroud's grip. Her face went through several interesting emotions, from shock to indignance to flushed embarrassment. She glanced down at the pan, flinched, and looked back up at me.

"Okay, don't scare me like that," she hissed. "And also, don't you ever mention this..." she gestured to the lumps of blackened material popping about the pan, "...attempt at making pancakes to the others."

I blinked. The anger and embarrassment I could understand, because I had made the mistake and felt the exact same thing several times while I'd been learning to cook. What I couldn't understand, however, was how she managed to turn them into lumps of charred darkness. "Those aren't pancakes," I told her bluntly. "Those are not pancakes."

She flushed, just a little, and turned back to the stove. "Well, teach me how to make them, then." she said. I shrugged and reached around her for the box of pancake batter.

"Alright, first we've got to get rid of this," I told her. "Store-bought mix doesn't make very good pancakes. Secondly, you need to add liquid ingredients first, not dry ingredients. It's not just water, either. You might want to add a bit of egg to those, or maybe some apple juice."

And so it went that I began to teach Blake how to cook. She wasn't abysmal at it, or at least not as bad as Taiga and Kiritsugu, but she need a lot of work if she was even going to make it to Rin's level, never mind Sakura's or even mine. The two of us went over the process slowly.

"But why apple juice?" she asked. "Wouldn't that just evaporate?"

I added a bit of sugar to the mix. "Not exactly," I replied. "If you let the apple juice simmer with some sugar at first, you'll get a syrupy mixture that has a hint of apple flavoring to it. When you mix that in with the pancakes, you'll get a nice, fluffy material with a good flavor to it." I demonstrated by tipping the now syrup-consistency apple juice into the pan at the same time as the pancake mix. The smell of apple and flour filled the air for a few brief moments, then a low sizzle started to hiss from the bottom of the pan and I set it down for the time being.

"Jaune." I turned to face Blake. Her eyes glinted with something akin to worry, although I couldn't be too sure. Out of everyone in team SRBR, me included, she was by far the hardest to read or get a straight answer out of. "Why did you tell us to stand down when you fired those arrows? We could have kept of shooting and made it even easier for you."

"Oh, that's guys might have been in the blast radius." At her confused look, I elaborated. "I've only ever seen Caladbolg II used in battle once, but that one time was enough to leave a mark on me. The explosion was, as I'm sure you know, massive. I didn't know how big it would end up this time around, so if it did end up reaching all the way to the school, I didn't want you guys and the other students to get hurt. I probably could have have stopped it from reaching you with a Rho Aias, but it's better to be safe than sorry."

Blake didn't even blink at the unfamiliar terms, instead glaring at me. "That means you would have been killed by the blast too."

Oh. Oops, I hadn't even thought of that. "Well, better me than someone else, right?" I tried to avoid her gaze.

The pancakes came flipping neatly out of the pan and onto a plate that I'd pulled out of the cupboard. I set another batch to cooking, then turned to Blake, a bit of trepidation in my limbs. Hold on, were those tears in her eyes?

Indeed, her gold eyes were gleaming with unshed wetness, and she gently took my hand as I sat down again, almost as if I would break if she held it too hard. "Jaune," she began. Her throat seemed to seize up, and she stopped for a second, but she plowed onwards. "Jaune, try not to think like that. Of course you're worth something more than just helping people. I've done a lot of... unsavory things over the years, but I know that nobody's worthless, no matter how despicable they are. And you, Jaune Arc, are not despicable by any stretch of the word." She fell silent, then spoke up one last time. "I knew someone like you as well, back in the day. He was a good friend of mine, and he hated humans, but he would do anything for a Faunus in need, no matter the cost to his own life. Jaune, you're not worthless."

"I know that as well," I told her. She blinked back at me, surprised. It was hard explaining my Distortion to people, so I usually left it as "I don't feel self-worth unless I help people", but Blake deserved more than that, both as my teammate and a friend that cared about this simple sword. "I do know that, don't get me wrong. I just don't feel it. I can understand why people help me and care for me, but my mind is the part that tells me that."

You know, when I really thought about it, it really wasn't my mind that got fractured so badly in that Fire. Sure, it was messed up, but that was something completely different, a trauma that faded with time until I could accept it for what it was and not wake up screaming every night to the image of fire and corpses littering my room in the Emiya estate. No, what really got torn to shreds that were incapable of repair were...

"My feelings." I breathed slowly. "My emotions were the things that got shattered so badly back then. After that, I was completely and totally unable to understand people sympathizing and empathizing with me- not with my mind, but with my heart. Instead, it all must have gone into sympathizing and empathizing with other people. I can understand why you're worried about me, but at the same time, I don't understand why I'm so important to you."

"Why you're- Jaune, of course you're important to me!" she exclaimed. "You and Ruby and Ren, you're all important to me. You're my partner, and my friend besides that. I'm not going to let you think that way while we're partners, either."

"You're not the only person to say that," I told her. It was true; I'd heard almost the exact same thing from Rin, Saber, and even Taiga at one point.

"Yeah, I understand," I continued. The pancakes were swiftly slapped onto a plate. A third batch followed in relative silence, until- "Thanks, Blake, but in the end Jaune Arc is someone who cares about other people over himself."

Blake looked like she wanted to argue, but after a moment of irritation, her face gave way to resignation. "Just don't throw your life away for a stupid reason, and we'll have no problems," she said, looking me straight in the eyes. I nodded and smiled. A faint tingle of happiness and genuine warmth that I hadn't felt since my last moments with Saber was running up and down my spine.

"Agreed." After that, we set to work, side by side and completing our task of making breakfast in amiable silence.

Ruby was the next to get out of bed, though judging by the light bags under his eyes and the book he was immersed in, Ren had probably been awake since Blake's outburst. He nodded a greeting to me as I walked past and slipped into my blazer. His eyes raked my form for no more than three seconds, then nodded as if he was confirming something and returned to his book. Ruby, on the other hand, was much more worried about my condition.

"You're sure you're alright, then?" she asked for the fifth (and probably not the last) time as she sat down. Despite her obvious love of sweets, her eyes barely strayed from mine as she ate, which was a testament to how worried she was about me. I smiled.

"I'm positive. My Aura is many things, but I'll be damned if it isn't powerful." I flexed a bicep to demonstrate. "See, everything's fine, and I can't feel my stomach brushing against my skin anymore. That probably counts for something."

She giggled and took another bite. "So, what's going on today?"

I checked my Scroll. "Well, since the Grimm attack started in the West and North wings several of the classrooms are damaged and most of the labs aren't connected to the power grid right now, so even if we did have classes we wouldn't learn anything. Since the teachers and the older students managed to fight off the rest of the Grimm last night, though, I'll bet you that us first years are going to be clearing the grounds or the classrooms."

Right on schedule, a voice popped out of our Scrolls, playing in eerie unison. "Attention, students of Beacon Academy," Glynda's voice droned. "Since our defense efforts against the Grimm were a success, we have some time on our hands. As such, all classes will be canceled and students and teachers alike will be assisting in the restoration efforts. First years will be contracted to fixing the campus grounds and park. The second years will be tasked with the restoration of the West Wing's first and second floors. The third years..."

It went on, listing each of the students' responsibilities before wishing us luck and ordering us to get to work at the nearest possible convenience. I pushed away from the table as soon as the message ended. Ruby groaned about finishing her pancakes, but belatedly followed us out the door.

"Ren!" I shouted past the noise of water beating against tile. "When you get out of the shower, meet us at the grounds in front of the Ballroom!"

"Alright!" he yelled back. With that done, we headed outside to deal with the worst of the damage.

Usually, when it came to battlegrounds, the damage was extensive and not easily fixed. With Aura, however, it was much easier to do. The big problem was that the grounds, which were once lush, green and vibrant, were now just piles of dirt and grass thrown every which way in an attempt to gain ground against the pressing attacks of the students. The damage was by far the worst at the junction between the walls and the ground, where circling Grimm and scrabbling Huntsmen and Huntresses had carved what amounted to a thin, deep moat into the ground. Already, the first years were setting to work, using their Aura to help them lift heavy loads of dirt and mud. A multicolored glow settled around the shadows cast by the morning sunlight being intercepted by the trees that ringed the plateau.

"Alright, let's do this!" Ruby shouted before running over to a pile of dirt nearly as big as she was. She imbued her arms with Aura and tried lifting it.

Before I continue, I'd like to point out that dirt isn't a single, solid object, but rather a multitude of small, solid objects. As such, the moment Ruby tried to lift it over her head, it collapsed on her with naught but a cloud of dust.

I sighed. "Ruby, let's get some shovels," I told her. The pile of dirt replied with a dispassionate grunt. I felt the corners of my mouth twitch upwards as I asked an older student for a few wide-bladed shovels. Blake and I immediately began filling in the holes the Grimm had created while Ruby extricated herself from the pile of dirt she'd buried herself in.

The work was tedious, but I liked that kind of work. It was slow and methodical, which gave me plenty of time to discuss the more recent events around Vale with the rest of my team. Ren joined us about ten minutes into our efforts, wearing nothing but a towel at first. Our supervisor, a second-year named Velvet Scarlatina, had to send him back after a few minutes from almost every female and several males in the vicinity blushing furiously at his near-naked body, including her. Ren just shrugged and went to grab his green battle outfit.

Ruby and I got into a heated discussion about what types of desserts were better than what. Ruby seemed stalwart on chocolate chip cookies, even when I described a number of other dishes. In the end, I promised to make her try a chocolate zuccotto at some point, to which she readily agreed. Blake and I mostly kept silent when we were working near each other, although the occasional banter didn't go unappreciated. It was comfortable work, one that provided just as good of a workout as any sparring session.

Several hours and a few metric tons of dirt later, the first year class broke for lunch. I was handed a bottle of water by Velvet that I guzzled down without a second thought. The sun was stiflingly hot in its apex, even for a day which by all other means should have been blustery and cold. Most of us were burnt out of Aura by that point, which made the growth of the grass a serious issue. There were airships and helicopters in the sky, circling the area around the Academy. I idly trained a sword-arrow on one as it passed by.

"Hey, keep that thing away from my ship, Jaune!" the pilot snapped, his voice clear even though we were a quarter mile apart. Oh, that was the guy with the really nice leather seats, wasn't it? To be fair, those seats were extraordinarily high quality leather.

I set the sword down and replaced EMIYA's bow on my back. "Sorry!" I yelled back. He flew away, satisfied, and returned to observing the ground with a keen eye. Blake gave me a strange look, but I brushed her off with a raised hand and turned to the approaching footsteps from behind me. Ozpin was picking his way around the eating students. His eyes were set on me, a spark glinting in their brown depths.

"Ah, you're awake and fully healed," he said as he approached. "I'm surprised, Jaune. Most people would take days to repair having their internal organs liquefied, and that would be with Cander's strict supervision. Maybe there's more to your fantastical tale than I gave you credit for."

"Can I help you, Headmaster?" I wasn't really in a bad mood, but Ozpin was maneuvering around a subject, and that was never good. Something was keeping his mouth from forming into its tiny, natural smile as well.

"Jaune, be nice!" Blake and Ruby hissed in unison, kicking me in each shin. They recoiled, clutching their feet, when I Reinforced my body to make it about as hard as iron. Ozpin's grim frown lightened just a little bit. "Actually," he replied, "you can. If I may speak to you in my office, we can discuss the situation further."

"Ah." So that was it. Either he'd found information on Nrvnqsr, or he'd managed to track down Mr. Dawn. Either situation most definitely required my assistance, considering I was the foremost expert on my world in Remnant. I stood and, motioning for Blake to remain seated, followed Ozpin to his office, high up in the Beacon towers.

The walk was made in silence. As I passed, I noticed various teachers and students repairing the damage made to the infrastructure of the building. From pillars to walls and even the windowsills, nearly everything except the ceilings had taken some form of damage. The teachers glanced at Ozpin and I as we passed. They probably assumed that I was some troublemaking kid who got in trouble for goofing off.

When Ozpin entered his office, he wasted no time in sitting in his seat and calling up several screens from the holographic projectors on his desk. He motioned me over.

The picture on the screen was one of a thick-jawed man with a pair of small sunglasses and spiky chestnut hair. His skin, tinted green from the projector's light, was almost as brown as his hair. Mr. Dawn looked back at us, his profiling showing no expression whatsoever. Next to his picture, his name, approximate age and a few other statistics were listed in bullet order. Ozpin gestured to the tiny description underneath his age meter.

"This describes everything we know about Mr. Dawn," he explained. "As you can see, it's not very much." Just like he said, there were only four or five lines detailing his various personality traits and a few other minor details. "The thing is, he's been recorded since about forty years ago, and his age doesn't change at all. Is he one of the Dead Apostle Ancestors?"

I immediately shook my head. "No, that wouldn't be possible. I can almost guarantee you that one of the Burial Agency is a Dead Apostle, but it's not Mr. Dawn. He doesn't have the right look for it, first of all. Other than a few rare cases, most of the Apostles I know of have pale skin. I think the only humanoid one that doesn't have pale skin is Nrvnqsr, and even then he doesn't have a particular form. There's no way that Mr. Dawn can be an Apostle, and that's not the only evidence I have for it. I won't explain it now, but you can kind of tell where an Apostle is depending on how much blood follows in their wake."

"That's good," Ozpin commented, sliding another screen around. This time it was an image that I was much more familiar with. "I take it you remember the Lumen orphanage?"

"How could I not?" I asked him, grinning.

"Well, he's shown up there again." That cut my fond thoughts short. "Yes, I see you understand the gravity of the situation. I want to keep Mr. Dawn on our good side for now, and you're the best person to do it. There's also the factor of Tabitha and Martin Warner. Tell me, how are they coming along in their studies?"

"I'm not there enough to be a really good teacher to Tabitha," I admitted. "Not by a Magus' standard, anyways. She soaks up information like a sponge, though, and she and her brother are smart and independent enough to start practicing Magecraft. I'm trusting Tabitha to keep her brother's impulses and lack of moral code in check, and so far she's doing a good job."

"Will she be able to defend herself and the orphanage if it comes down to it?"

"Absolutely not!" I said. "She can barely perform Projection, for Akasha's sake! Ozpin, you can't seriously expect someone who's been practicing Magecraft for four months to be strong enough to defend an entire orphanage of people, can you?"

"You seem to be an exception," he noted. There wasn't a trace of emotion in his voice, just a grim determination that bled through the brown in his eyes and made them seem cold and grey, just like his.

"That's different!" I roared, slamming my hand down on the desk. The lens of one of his holographic projectors cracked under my palm, and when I took my hand away, Mr. Dawn's face was splintered around the room. "I have a unique specialty that makes me suited for combat, and I still had to train for ten years and fight in a fucking war to master my skills to this extent! You can't expect a complete novice with average talent for Reinforcement and Projection alone to protect a group of fifty one children and twenty pious, pacifistic adults from someone of a Burial Agent's level!"

Ozpin said nothing during my outburst. He sipped from his coffee, but other than that, there was no sound other than the crackling of a stray spark in the projection unit and my slight increase in breathing. That silence stretched for one minute, then two, and five. Finally, painfully, Ozpin set his mug down.

"Alright, I'm trusting your judgment on this, Jaune," he muttered, his voice almost a whisper. "If I find that this was just a reason to go on some heroic crusade and you've wasted the use of one of my teams, I will not hesitate to punish you severely. Normally, first years don't get to undertake missions until the second semester, but I'll make an exception this one time. As of tomorrow, you and the rest of Team SRBR are to report to Lumen orphanage until either I say you leave or Mr. Dawn leaves. Question him if you can, but don't make any aggressive movements unless he attacks the orphanage."

I nodded wordlessly, still angry with the man, and turned to leave. "Jaune!" he called as I opened the door. I spun again. There was genuine remorse in his eyes, and for a moment, it threw me for a loop. "I really do have the safety of those children in mind, you know. I guess I'm just assuming too much of the Magi."

"Word of the wise, Ozpin," I shot back. "Never underestimate a Magus."

With that, I slammed the door shut and stalked down the hallway, ready to reunite with my team and return my focus to menial labor.

On top of the spire of a tall church's steeple, a man stood. His large feet were balanced perfectly on the tip of the spike, as though he weighed less than a feather. His long brown hair waved in the wind, above shaved eyebrows and dark olive eyes. Those eyes narrowed sharply, becoming a focused, paralyzing glare out of a vacantly bored expression. He dropped to the ground without a second thought. The orders from his Master were clear, and he was not about to disobey them, even if he didn't like them.

He was a Servant after all, and Servants typically served their Masters. It was just the way things were.

When he touched the ground, the only indication that he was there at all was the slight tap of toenails on stone and a faint breeze blowing outwards from the crushing weight. His target, a young girl with strong black hair, looked back for a scant second, then continued on her way into the woods. She had a knife in her hands, a ritual dagger from what he could see. It was an interesting sight to see on a child so small, unless she was a Magus. The possibility of such a thing was high. Nevertheless, the Servant still refrained from attacking. Children could be dangerous Magi, but in the end their powers were still lesser to a spirit like him. His innate Magic Resistance, B rank at its finest in Saber class, would protect him from any spells the girl could cast anyway.

The girl met up with a boy that looked too much like her to be a simple acquaintance in the shallows of the woods. The two discussed something he couldn't hear for a long while. Neither made any indication that he was there. Whoever this Magus girl was, she wasn't very good at detecting Heroic Spirits. At least she had the ability to weave a Bounded Field, however rudimentary.

He made sure to keep his eye on the priest with the strange power to walk between dimensions during the whole encounter. He noticed the emblem of the Burial Agency, a sect of the Christian Church that specialized in dealing with spirits and vampires, much like himself. There was no doubt that the priest could see him, even in Astral form. He pondered on their identities for a while, even after they left.

It seemed like his Master was right. This Tabitha Warner did have some potential after all. It would truly be a shame to kill her.

Ooh, a mystery's afoot! But putting that aside, let's get to reviews.

snoogenz: Thanks for coming back! When it comes to Avalon, I think it's debatable. Most people write about how he knows everything about anything he looks at, but when it comes to Conceptual Weapons like Avalon, it gets a bit more complicated. Conceptual Weapons should really defy Gaia's authority, but they don't. If it were anything other than a Conceptual Weapon, you'd be right, but things like Avalon kinda throw it up in the air. Basically, the reason this Shirou can Trace Avalon is because he's so attuned to it, not because he knows everything about it. Yes, he does have a connection with Saber, but... well, I can't say anything else, because that would spoil the plot.

Tsamoka: There was a description in there, but I wouldn't be surprised if you missed it. I tend to describe things within the flow of the paragraph, instead of stopping the action completely to write out a brief summary of whatever I'm describing. If I remember correctly, it's in between the Grimm Classification chart and Shirou and his team entering the ballroom.

ShadowofAxios: heh.

NewAgeOfPower: Shirou, in this fic, has 74 Magic Circuits. In this case, he's just not using them all at once.

TheConstellation: Thanks for reading! On the contrary, however, last chapter was the second-longest one I've written for this fic!

Skywrd Swrd: You're absolutely right on Shirou winning by ability rather than strength. The example I was pointing to was, you guessed it, James D. Fawkes. The guy's a good writer, and I enjoyed Shirou in Fate/Revenant Sword and Miracle of Zero, but his power scale for Shirou is off the charts. Must come from writing all those Naruto fics.

Karlos1234ify: Well... heh.

That seems to be it for this chapter! I hope to have the next one out on Tuesday, and it'll either be early Tuesday or very late Monday, since Planetside 2 is launching on PS4 on Tuesday and I'm probably going to spend two straight days playing that. Well, that and FFXIV: Heavensward. So long for now, and happy reading!