To say that their arrival wasn't noticed would be a lie. To say that it was noticed would be an understatement.

The various people within the JSDF base were in equal parts shocked and awed. The villagers were mostly the latter, as while they had been told that the Red Dragon had been slain, to see it was another matter entirely.

On the other hand, the JSDF had had estimations based on the descriptions they had, but to see it in person put things way more into scale.

The white haired man sighed as he stood to attention. Turning slightly, he spoke to the elf beside him. Lelei, who stood near to him, could just barely hear the words he spoke.

"Are you sure you have this handled?"

"Of course, you have mine word that no unsavory individual will dare to come near it."

"Right." He gave a nod, "I'll leave it to you."

"Oho?" The playful voice of the Apostle as she sauntered up was unmistakable, "You sound like you have somewhere to be, leaving all this to poor old Adrianne."

"Lady Mercury!" The elf had an embarrassed look on her face, even as Shirou nodded.

"Unfortunately, I do. If you need me for anything, I'll be in a meeting for a while." With his piece said, he gave one last nod to everyone, with them returning nods of their own, before turning around and heading further inside the base.

"I suppose that I should check on the perimeter." Rory stretched as she heaved her halberd into the air, "Who knows, maybe some of those bandits are stupid enough to try their luck here."

"I shall organize mine people then. Thank you for thine help, Lady Mercury, Lady Lalena."

The two women left, leaving a silent Lelei to stare at the dragon's corpse.

"Ah, Lelei!" The Sage waved to her with a grin on his face, "With all the commotion, I thought you might be back." He gestured to the seat next to him, the offer to take it unsaid.

They were currently in the dining room, the one that the JSDF base referred to as a 'mess hall'. Similar to a tavern, really.

"Master Cato." She plopped down next to the older man, her gaze already wandering about.

It wasn't that she was suspicious of the JSDF's goals - it was the same with just about every nation out there. Expansion and exploitation, two things that would always be at the forefront whenever a significantly advanced species comes through the Gate.

Or at least, that's what she gathered from all the texts that she'd read. Lelei certainly hadn't been alive for any other Gate opening, so experiencing this was a novel experience, one that she still hadn't gotten over.

All that to say that she didn't particularly care if the JSDF did the same as the Saderan Empire. No, she found her gaze for the sole reason that these people from beyond the Gate were just so different.

Take for example, the name JSDF. An odd name, one that she was confident that she was part of only a handful of the locals that actually knew. Whenever she would overhear them, it would always be 'the men in green'.

Or, in the case of Shirou Emiya, 'the man in red'.

But that implied that the man was part of the JSDF. He wasn't, as far as she could tell. He wasn't even a mercenary. He may as well have been an outsider completely detached from the JSDF himself, which begged the question as to why he hadn't been kicked out yet.

Suffice it to say, this was perhaps the most exciting time in Lelei's life, if only because of all the things that she didn't know.

"You should really try this out, Lelei." The companionable silence that had formed between the master and student was broken when Cato spoke out, "Apparently, this 'ramen' is pretty common where they're from."

She looked down at the bowl that Cato had in front of him. Inside was a soup, with long strands of something that she didn't entirely know of. With a tilt of her head, she watched as the Sage used a pair of wooden sticks to grab at the strands, before eating them with a noisy slurp.

Without a moment's hesitation, Lelei stood up and headed for the front of the mess hall.

A line had already been there, and as such, she was regulated to waiting and watching the people who were already eating.

To her mild surprise, she could spot a few of the elves already using the wooden sticks as utensils.

Originally, she had seen the JSDF use these sticks to eat, but since she had a few more things in her mind, she had put the idea of using these 'chopsticks' to the back of her head. Now that she had some free time, she decided that it would be a good time to learn, as well as try out the ramen that her teacher had recommended.

It was definitely not because she was leery to see other people do it before she did, of course.

Soon enough, she was at the head of the line, where she was handed a bowl of ramen. She could see that it wasn't just the long strands and soup, but a smattering of a type of dried leaf, some cuts of meat, and more than a bit of some greens that she didn't know about.

With bowl in hand, she headed back to Cato, to see him already finished with his bowl and eating a piece of soft bread.

She sat down and stared at the steaming soup. It certainly smelled good, and her stomach was already rumbling. Lelei picked up the sticks to the side, and emulating what she saw the JSDF do, she held them in between her fingers and tried to pick up one of the long strands.

The strand plopped back in the soup.

With a determined air, she tried again, and again. The only thing she got in return were aching fingers.

"Here, try to copy me, Lelei." Cato had been watching her with an amused air, and had finally decided to take his role as teacher even here, "Good, now try to pick it up from the side."

She did so, and soon enough, she was eating.

The first thing that hit her mouth was a rather distinct taste that she couldn't truly describe. She hadn't had this type of food before, after all, and the ingredients were likely sourced from beyond the Gate. She couldn't say that it was bad, though. In fact, by the second bite, Lelei had already decided that this was one of the better meals that she'd had in a long time.

It still paled in comparison to whatever the man in red made whenever he was in the kitchen, but it wasn't exactly a fair comparison. The man was a monster, it seemed, both on the battlefield and in front of a stove.

She finished her ramen, savoring the taste of the flavorful meat that she soon recognized as pork, the vegetables, and the broth itself.

All in all, a great meal that Lelei was already planning on learning how to cook. Just behind finding out how those metal monsters that dug up the earth worked, and how the transport vehicles that the JSDF functioned without horses.

All throughout it, Cato had remained silent. A far cry from how the old man usually was.

Lelei couldn't help but feel worried.

Ever since news that the Gate had opened, her teacher had been oddly serious. For all that he was strong and knowledgeable, Cato was almost always goofing off. In fact, that was an understatement. The man was an unrepentant pervert, if she had to describe him. Thankfully, that excluded Lelei herself, and was mostly reserved for the older people within the village, and even then, she could tell that he played it up more often than not.

Nowadays, her teacher was more serious than she had ever seen him before.

Case in point, not once did Cato make a comment as she ate, when he would normally be regaling her with stories of his past, with hints of spellwork and how to do it, as a sort of test for Lelei to figure out on her own.

"So, how was the trip?"

Cato kept a genial smile, and yet, when she looked into his eyes, she could see what he was really asking.

"Strong. Not a fluke, deliberate."

Shirou Emiya's power was terrifying to behold. They had watched him rain down death on the Imperial forces when they first arrived here. A mass slaughter that broke the will of an entire army. Corpses with red thorns laid bare for all to see.

She had thought that to be the extent of his power. That he was still a human, capable of being defeated by a significantly powerful foe.

The destruction that she saw in the ruins of the elven village was the dragon's fault, she was sure of that. The acrid smell of death and ash would remain in her memory for days, maybe weeks.

Lelei had seen the dragon before the elves had gotten to work. An eye, completely destroyed. A wing completely shredded, with the other barely hanging on. A hole right in the middle of its chest, right to its heart.

Dragons, by their nature, were nearly impossible to harm through conventional means. Their resistance to magic was too much for a regular mage. And yet, Shirou had inflicted such wounds, then turned around and fought off an army.

The dragon was a force unto nature. What did that say of the man that killed it?

"Good person, doesn't like killing."

At the same time, he was much more than a brute. Lelei saw the genuine shame that had crossed the man's features whenever he came back from clearing the battlefield. It wasn't the look of a person that had killed thousands for the sake of killing.

It was the face of a person that killed because he needed to do so, and hated every second of it.

Even then, with those observations in mind, Cato was not convinced that the man wasn't a threat. She saw the logic behind it - power corrupted, and it was inevitable that a man with power like Shirou had some sort of agenda in mind.

And so, she had been tasked to follow him on his little trip, to gauge whether he was a threat.

So far, Lelei could definitely say that he was not.

If anything, she would say that Shirou and herself shared a lot in common.

She liked to learn for the sake of learning. Of knowing for the sake of knowing. People around her, back in the Rondel, saw her thirst for knowledge, and almost always assumed that she was doing it for something else. That she had motives beyond learning.

She didn't. Lelei La Lalena just enjoyed learning new things.

When she watched Shirou Emiya, she saw a man that helped for the sake of helping. An altruism that bordered on inhuman. The same type of thinking that isolated Lelei throughout her childhood.

A kindred spirit.

"Heh." She watched as Cato gave a wry smirk. She didn't need to say anything for the man to understand what she was thinking, "I'll take your word for it."

Lelei gave a nod as she tried to think of a way to voice her thoughts. She wanted to continue to join Shirou Emiya on his travels. She wanted to learn more about the man that reminded her of herself. She wanted to see just what he would do.

At the same time, in order to do so, she would essentially be leaving her teacher for a good while, to wherever the man in red would go. Lelei didn't know how her master would take that.

Thankfully, she didn't need to.

"You're free to join them, you know?"

Her wide eyes met Cato's for a moment, who gave a wry smirk, "I've been taking care of you since you were a brat. You would think I'd know how you thought by now." He brought a hand up to her head and tousled her hair.

"So go, better to hang around other people that aren't old farts like me."

"...Thank you."

"Thank me by getting me some souvenirs, alright?"

With a small smile and one last nod, Lelei stood up and made her way to the exit, determined to find the man in red.

A/N: If you like what I do and want to support me, check out my P-atreon at P-atreon•com(slash)Almistyor.

And a special thanks to: FireRogueWolf25, brutalcrab and Tassimo.