The White Curtain Falls

Procession
"Can you just tell us who it is, dandelion head!?" Mary yelled at Jason as the group continued to run downstairs. "I hate being left in the dark!"

"It's Wendy!" Jason called back as they ran. "And she's brought some gue-" He stopped dead for a moment, and everyone stopped as well to avoid a six person pile-up. The reason for this soon became clear, as the entire group was treated to the sight of nearly half of the building and outside landscape destroyed, leaving no need to reach the exit, the destruction had caused that for them.

"So this was what I felt..." Jason looked around for signs of corpses. "And yet Iris and Len aren't here...." He gritted his teeth. "Is she alright?"

Iris, being Iris, would certainly be fine. She was made of diamond, after all. She could survive being in the epicenter of an explosion and walk it off. There was absolutely nothing that could harm her completely now.

Rea looked around, staring straight at the six people who were approaching quickly. In any case, it seemed that it would be completely honest to say that Akatsuki were a walking disaster area. "...Wait, these people are new."

"Not quite, only a few." Jason noted. "This is what I was talking about, here comes We-" He never did get to complete that sentence, as Wendy cut ahead of the oncoming group, quickly smacking him in the face. This stunned both Jason, his group, and Wendy's group, leaving everyone dead silent for a moment.

"Hello sweetie." She said, smiling. "That is for leaving me with this lot instead of taking me along with you!"

"I told you she was mad..." Makoto whispered to Chelia.

Jason rubbed his face for a moment, blinking. "Sorry about that, Wendy. I was in a bit of a hurry when I was assigning teams, alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." She huffed. "You owe me for this."

Giselle was just standing there, watching, waiting in anticipation to see if a fight would break out. Giselle Mercury was just the type of person to laugh at the expense of others. "...Three, two one. Place your bets people, let's see who'll get their teeth kicked in." Of course, she wanted to leave as soon as possible to escape them.

"Anyway, so, we just found two stragglers." Wendy jerked her head at Giselle and Tsuruko. "Giselle and Tsuruko. Tsuruko's alright, Giselle, not so much, and...wait..." Wendy's eyes drifted over to the body in Alaskiel's arms. "Is that....Gaikou?"

"Took ya long enough." Alaskiel's quiet voice replied.

Giselle dusted her clothes off. "You people bore me. Anyway, here's your Tsuruclone, I'm gonna vamoose here-"

Tsuruko grabbed Giselle by her labcoat like a child. "Stay!"

"No, I left you here, you stay. These people are idiots."

Tsuruko's eyes widened like a puppy's. "Please?"

"She seems to want you to stay, so why don't you?" Jason inquired. "It's not like it'll be an inconvenience...Giselle, right?" Whatever anyone could say about Jason, 'rude' was at least not on the list.

Tyrone gritted his teeth to the point where they chipped. "Enough of this pointless banter! She died? That means you failed, right Jason? You failed??"

Jason sighed. Tyrone's attitude wasn't something he really wanted to put up with at the moment. "Yes, we failed. There's nothing we can do about it now."

Giselle immediately brushed past Jason, clearly not caring about the man at all ."Yeah, hi to you too." Her focus was on Gaikou. "She kicked the bucket?"

"Yeah." Rea nodded meekly.

"Ah ,well, lemme just take her back to my lab and turn her into a cyborg! There, good as new."

"I don't think that's a good idea, neither a morally right idea." Chelia sighed. Once again, she was dealing with a mad scientist. "Shouldn't we just let her sleep for a long time, to honour her death?"

"Of course." Jason nodded curtly. "In fact, we're going to be heading back soon, and back at the Guild, we will have a funeral for Gaikou. There is no way we are burying her anywhere than outside of our Guild."

Wendy smiled a bit. Mad at Jason though she may be, she wasn't blind to the fact that insisting Gaikou be buried outside the guild and tat they have a funeral procession for her was his own good-bye. "I'm quite sure an abrupt subject change is distasteful but..." His eyes turned to Giselle and Tsuruko. "While we may have been given your names...what are either of you doing with my Guild here?" His voice, while sharp, expressed his confusion, and he turned to Erza. "In fact...I believe I had sent you off on a different mission entirely; did you get sidetracked?"

Erza sheepishly chuckled momentarily. "Well, you see-"

Giselle cut her off. "You went to find SOMETHING in that forest, turned out you slipped into Bevelle via a time warp. Well, let's just say that you got up shit creek without a paddle now."

Erza seemed stunned. "Wait, I thought all it did was release you."

Giselle began to explain, "Thirty years ago, I sealed something else inside that coffin after the original Tsuruko kicked it's ass up and down the block. And now that I'm unsealed, so is it."

Jason's eye twitched, and he glared at Erza. "Erza...you and I are going to have a talk about how following orders properly works best for everyone in the end after all of this is done." He sighed. "Giselle, I hate to impose, but after what you just said, would you consider returning to our Guild with us? I can't simply ignore a statement like that, I have to know more, but..." He gestured to the corpse. "Gaikou is the more pressing matter."

Giselle sighed. "Guess there's not much I can do about it, really. Look, I don't even want to get within three kilometers of you guys, But if that THING is on the lose we don't have much choice. Let's go start up a funeral first, however."

"The only remaining question..." Jason frowned. "Is Iris alright?" He thought for a moment, and knew she wasn't the type to die. "Well...it's worth a shot." He pulled a small bell out of his kosode, and rang it, the sharp chime resounding throughout the area.

"I'mcomingimcomingimcomingimcomingimcomingimcoming!" Iris Lavra was...energetic as usual. There was absolutely nothing that could put her down, even for a moment. She came running, straight into Jason's arms...only to crash into Giselle instead.

"Oof! Stupid mutt..." Giselle scratched her head, as she looked plainly at Iris. "Oh, it's you, number 2411. What a surprise."

Iris tilted her head in surprise. "Ehh!? Issit you? You're the one who made my race, right!?"

Giselle sighed as she stood up, helping Iris. "I do a lot of things. Don't expect me to remember them all. Anyway, 2411. I'm glad to see you got out of there safely." She lightly pulled Iris in for a hug. "It's good that you seem to be happy here."

Jason was very surprised to see how this woman was treating Iris; it was almost like she considered her a daughter. That action in itself cemented Jason's view that this woman would be an alright person. "Iris, where have you been?" Jason inquired, looking at her with concern. "This entire area is destroyed, and yet you look like you're not any worse for where. What happened?"

Iris' ears perked up like a...rabbit's. "Len and I got into a big fight and then I supposedly turned him into a shooting star and then I blacked out and then I saw baboon-face and then he gave me magic rings and then he said Viv is his daughter and then-" She had run out of breath.

Despite once again wondering just what animal this girl was, Jason was more focused on trying to understand what she was saying. "Iris, you're going too fast. I barely caught the last part of that." He sighed. "E is Vivian's father..." This was less shocking than it should have been, for Jason at least. However, Wendy was looking at Iris, agape.

"That...thing is Vivian's father?" She asked incredulously. "B-b-but..." She was at a complete loss for words.

J"They always did have similar signatures in their magic." Jason explained to Wendy, trying to snap her out of whatever shock she had just fallen into. "Faint differences but it was there."