Chapter 07: Jellal of Days Gone By

"Right, then..." Lucy sighed as she finished tying up the unconscious Angel with her whip, giving one final look at the Celestial Gate Keys she'd fished up before laying them down just out of the dark mage's reach. "So what's the plan now?"

"We've gotta regroup with Erza and head for Nirvana, whichever comes first at least." Gray pointed out, joining Natsu in leaving the river as water slowly began to flow through the scorched area again. "Lucy, you good?"

"Huh? I'm..." Lucy swayed, only for Natsu to grab her by the waist before she fell. "Tired...?"

"Looks like you can't such magic without keeling over yet." Even as he was speaking, Natsu had already moved Lucy around until he was piggybacking her. "No matter, we're good to go now. We gotta find Wendy, and then catch up to Bell and Erza!"

"Aye!" Happy concurred.

Lucy looked around. "I wonder where Carla took Wendy to, though."

"I-Impossible..." Brain gasped as one of the keys to his seal disappeared from his face. "After I just reapplied it... Angel got defeated again...? Your death will not be in vain!"

Brain stared back up at the pillar of darkness that was Nirvana's awakening. "The extinction of the light will soon begin!"

"I'm not dead, buddy." Angel muttered as she struggled with her bonds before turning to the side. "Aren't you going to help me?"

"Nope." Vulpecula hummed from the next tree over as she napped, her tails swishing idly. "I'm only manifesting here with my own magical power to keep you company, my foolish Master."

Erza huffed as she and Bell kept pace, both of them now running slower to preserve their stamina, with her having even dismissed her Flight Armor.

A good thing, too, with how much she was lost in her thoughts. 'Jellal is alive? But how? And wait... why is he here?'

Erza grimaced as more memories of him flowed through her mind. 'I don't know... I don't know how I should face him...'

"Erza." Bell called out, snapping her out of it. "We're coming up on a cliff. Prepare to jump."

"R-Right." As soon as she saw and reached the cliff in question, she and Bell easily leapt off to reach the other side before continuing their run towards Nirvana. "Hey, Bell. What will you do... if we run into Jellal?"

"Don't worry." Bell answered. "My animosity with him isn't nearly as bad as it is with Oración Seis. If anything, I have too many questions for him. And you guys, too."

"Questions?" Erza inquired. "What do you mean?"

"For starters?" Bell turned to glance at her. "Why is that everybody so far has been referring to Wizard Saint Siegrain as Jellal?"

"...ah." So that was how it was for him, who didn't know what Erza herself knew. "Allow me to give you a quick explanation.

"You say that Nirvana is a magic that can change people's personalities?" Jura replied to Hoteye's incredulous explanation of Oración Seis's true objective.

"Exactly, indeed..." Hoteye confirmed as he gestured to the rising pillar of dark magical energy. "The first stage is that black light which forcibly changes anybody abnormally uncertain in their alignments between good and evil, indeed."

"Which means... that you were uncertain between being a good man or an evil one?" Jura determined.

"For the sake of money, I had been doing lots of wrong deeds all these years." Hoteye confessed with a little smile. "Now, I feel quite terrible about it, indeed."

"You seemed pretty happy about it to me." Jura deadpanned.

"It was all for my long-lost brother... All to search for him!" Hoteye clarified. "It was for that, I wanted money, indeed!"

By now, the two had started to head towards Nirvana to the past, Hoteye having given Jura a brief backstory of the brothers' sad childhood and unfortunate separation. "When I look at you, I remember the past..."

"Could it be...?" Jura guessed. "Are you saying I resemble your brother, perhaps?"

That would explain that sudden hugging back then, along with the triggering of his moral alignment changing.

Hoteye chuckled. "You are the spitting image of the potatoes my brother used to eat!"

"Potatoes?!" Jura exclaimed in shock.

"Now, let's stop Brain and the others for the sake of love! ...indeed."

"R-Right..." 'Potatoes...'

The dust cleared, revealing how ineffectually Midnight had been hurt. "What's wrong?"

"What the heck has been going on?" Ren demanded. "None of my magic has..."

When Midnight chose that moment to chuckle mockingly, Ren snapped. "Damn it! Air Magic: Aerial Shot!"

Powerful bursts of wind through the earth, sending both flying rocks and flaying wind currents towards Midnight. However, Midnight's eye narrowed as not a single thing still managed to even touch him.

"I missed again?!" Ren exclaimed in disbelief, only to sway when a wave of something hit him. "Goddamn it...! But why...?"

"That makes two." Midnight sighed in disappointment. "How boring. Isn't there anyone stronger?"

"I wonder how Bell-nii and Natsu-nii are doing..." Wendy wondered as she and Carla watched the setting sun from the mountainside. "And the others, too..."

"Don't worry." Carla shrugged. "For all of his faults, Bell is the most powerful mage we know, and your other brother isn't a pushover compared to that he-cat. Just focus on recovering."

"But we left Natsu-nii and the others in such a precarious situation." Wendy fretted.

"You were literally struggling to breathe, Wendy." Carla pointed out, albeit sympathetically. "I'm sure that they understand."

Wendy buried more of her face into her knees. "...I hate being weak. I know that I'm the youngest, and I still have more room to grow into... But still, I hate it."

"...well, that's one thing you absolutely share with your brothers. You're all such sucky losers." Carla sighed. "By the way, you were quite surprised to meet that Jellal person, right? Where do you know him from?"

"Oh, yeah... I never told you or Bell-nii, did I?" Wendy realized. "It was seven years ago... when I'd been sent back in time with the others, only to wind up alone and with missing memories..."

"I still remember wandering along that road..."

"Grandine..." Wendy sobbed miserably. "Where are you, Grandine?"

Wendy sniffed desperately around, but was unable to find any familiar scents. None of Grandine's. None of any dragons at all.

Everywhere was a strange new place she didn't have any knowledge of.

However, somebody had apparently been attracted by her cries. It was a slightly older boy with blue hair and a mark on his face, looking like he'd been traveling. "What's the matter? What are you doing here?"

"She's gone..." Wendy sniffled before running into the boy's confused arms for comfort as she started crying anew. "She disappeared!"

"That was how we met. He was in the middle of traveling, and had told me that he was lost as well. Now that I think about, I'm pretty sure I'd gotten attached very quickly because he was the same age as Bell and was unwittingly a substitute... So for the next month, we traveled together with no destination in mind..."

Following Jellal around was fun.

Wendy thought as much as he let her travel with him. He didn't use magic as often as she casually did, nor could he smell as well as she could, and was even weaker in stamina compared to her.

But Jellal was the best! He could find food in the rain, even though it always washed away the scents! He even said that she could tag along with him forever!

...then he said otherwise after learning of an 'Anima' or something.

"But one day, he forcibly left me behind after learning what he'd apparently been searching for."

"NO!" Wendy protested, the rain pouring down lightly on them. "I wanna come with you!"

"You can't." Jellal shook his head. "It'll be dangerous if you come along."

"But I'm stronger than you!" Wendy shouted. "I even have more magical power than you!"

"Ironically, that just makes it worse for you to follow me."

"But why?!" Wendy cried and shook her head. "I don't want to leave you, Jellal!"

"...if you head past this forest, there's a guild." Jellal kept talking words Wendy didn't want to hear. "They'll take care of you there."

"No!" Wendy hugged his legs, the boy lost as she started crying again.

"But in the end, I was taken in by the guild, and that was Master Roubaul's Cait Shelter..." Wendy finished with her story.

Carla hummed. "Then, what happened to Jellal?"

"We never met again afterwards." Wendy replied. "But Bell-nii and I heard rumors later, about how a council member that looked just like Jellal had done a bunch of really bad things recently."

"That would be Wizard Saint Siegrain, then..." Carla surmised.

"But he was really nice back then." Wendy smiled, before frowning. "I wonder if that 'Anima' thing had any connection to what changed him so..."

"I wonder if Jellal still remembers me... He didn't act like he did back at the cave..."

Bell grunted as he and Erza forced their way through the wind pressure from Nirvana, now just before the rising pillar of energy. Right before them, the blue hair that belonged to Wizard Saint Siegrain(or Jellal as Erza had labelled him) blew as strongly as his longcoat, the man turning to regard them stoically after sensing their presence.

Soon enough, the wind pressure died down to a negligible breeze, allowing all three of them to see each other properly. Well, two, at least. Erza kept staring as if she was seeing a ghost.

'...well, Wendy did get kidnapped solely for her to heal somebody. She was probably present at this guy's supposed death.' Bell surmised. "Yo, Siegrain."

Siegrain only turned to regard Bell a little before shifting his focus back to Erza. "Erza..."

"Jellal..." Erza responded before finally asking an important question. "Why are you here?"

"I don't know..." Jellal quietly replied, a bead of sweat dropping down his chin as he gained a lost expresion. "Er...za... I don't remember anything... except that word... Will you tell me? Who am I? Do you know? Who is Erza? I... can't remember anything!"

"Alright, I tried to be civil, and I'm done with it." Bell spoke up, getting the two of them to focus on him. "Jellal, or Siegrain or whatever, what exactly is your intention with Nirvana? Or if that fails to jog your apparently messy memories, the giant pillar of dark magic you just unleashed right here?"

"Bell!" Erza chided. "We can't just-"

"This is gonna sound rich from me, but you're getting too personal with this." Bell shot back. "Even if he hadn't just unleashed Nirvana, he's still the guy responsible for devastating the Magic Council, among other stuff. He is not just whatever he used to be to you. Not anymore."

"...I understand" Erza relented. "But, please... Let me handle this."

Bell locked gazes with her, neither relenting until the former sighed and stepped back. "Fine. He doesn't seem like an actual member of Oración Seis, so do as you like."

"Thank you, Bell." Erza gave him a wan smile before began approaching the former Wizard Saint. "Jellal..."

Jellal unfortunately flinched at that, firing a golden blast that hit her head on. "Stay back!"

"Erza!" A plume of pressurized water manifested around Bell's fist before Erza suddenly raised a hand at him to stop, the smoke dispersing to show the rest of herself merely scuffed. "You okay?"

"I'm alright." Erza still didn't take her gaze off Jellal. "As Bell here just said, I am Erza. If you don't want me approaching you, you come to me."

Jellal gasped.

"Your name is Jellal. You were once my friend." Erza continued, much to Jellal's visible surprise. "But you went mad, desecrated the dead, hurt your friends, and even destroyed the Magic Council as Bell just said himself... You killed Simon, a friend we both knew."

Bell grimaced as Jellal began to cry, either from the bluntness of Erza's testimony or maybe her words resonating as true to the amnesiac.

"If you..." Erza's voice shook before it grew into a shout. "If you are trying to say that you forgot all that, then I will thrust a blade into your chest and engrave it into your heart! Now, come here!"

But Jellal did none of that. More broken tears fell from his eyes as Erza's words apparently hit deep home. "I... To my friends... No..."

Jellal clasped one of his hands against his face in despair. "What have I done? What... What should I...?"

Bell turned away in discomfort from the sight, focusing more on Nirvana. Now that he could think clearly, he had probably been affected earlier. 'How dangerous. But still, I thought being so close to it would've been more of a hazard, the magic forcibly changing our alignments regardless due to the proximity.'

On the plus side, it looked like it was starting to calm down a bit. Maybe then, he could get Jellal to undo whatever he'd done to awaken it. He wasn't sure he liked whatever it meant for the pillar of dark energy to start shining white.

"Okay, I get that you don't remember anything."

Bell fired a blast of water that was immediately dodged by the approaching Cobra. "Oh, one of you finally showed up."

"Put on a hold on it, Leviathan. I'm more interested in this guy than picking a fight with you at the moment." Cobra snarled before refocusing on Jellal and Erza. "No wonder I couldn't ever get a proper grasp on your thoughts with how all over the place they were..."

Cobra paused while Cubellios slithered up to coil over his shoulders. "How'd you manage to get here? And why did you unlock Nirvana's seal?"

"Wait, so you guys didn't revive him for that?" Bell asked.

"Brain told us about him, but today was my first time actually laying eyes on him." Cobra answered, with Cubellios hissing in agreement. "So what's your deal, Mr. Amnesiac?"

"...I heard someone's voice while I was asleep. It said, "We're going to obtain Nirvana."." Jellal finally said, getting back their attention. "I dimly remembered the place where that magic was hidden. This is a dangerous magic. It can't fall into anyone's hands."

Bell blinked in surprise. 'So he still knew enough to consider it dangerous? So why did he then release it?'

"And that's why I released the seal..." Jellal's tone moved from lost to resolute, delivering his next line with utter seriousness. "To destroy it completely."

"EH?!" Bell exclaimed.

"What?!" Cobra's jaw dropped.

"To destroy Nirvana?" Erza repeated in her shock.

"I've already set up the glyph to initiate it's self-destruction." Jellal revealed, the glyph in question manifesting behind him to span wide over the pillar of energy. "Nirvana will shortly destroy itself."

Cobra desperately rushed forward to try and interfere with the incredibly complex glyph, but clearly failed in his efforts. "What the hell is this high-level glyph?!"

'Well, he was a Wizard Saint.' Bell shrugged as he let Jellal's hard work unfold on it's own. 'Along with being a Magic Councilor, his expertise on glyphs would be pretty high.'

"At this rate, Nirvana will be destroyed!" Cobra turned to threaten Jellal. "Jellal, spit out the cancellation code!"

"Do you really think I'd allow that?" Bell chimed as he stepped towards Cobra. "As far as I'm concerned, Jellal's doing a pretty good thing. In fact-"

Jellal suddenly staggered in pain, causing all of them to focus on his clammy face. "Erza... I can feel the kindness from that name..."

He suddenly coughed, drawing some concern from Erza. "I can feel kindness, cheerfulness, and warmth..."

'This is so awkward to hear right now. Is he... confessing?' Bell winced, and judging by Cobra's expression, he felt similarly displeased.

"I'm sure you'll continue to hate me... But I can't help that... It's only natural." Jellal continued to speak, even as he staggered back a little more towards Nirvana. "But hatred will steal the freedom from your heart. It will eat away at you from within..."

"You..." Erza stared as Jellal's coughs worsened, only to flinch back at the sight of another self-destruction glyph manifesting over his chest from the hand he'd placed over it. "Jellal?!"

"I can't go that far... I can't go before you!" Jellal let himself fall backwards, causing the others to startle towards him. "You will be liberation from 'Jellal'... I will take your hatred and sadness... with me... You are... free!"

"Jellal!" Erza wasn't the only one to rush at him, the knight's eyes beginning to leak with tears.

KingVessel: I hope I conveyed the emotions of this well...