fading alpha in one mc causes fade in another

[wannaBgeek]

I'm working on a movie that displays a series of images and associated words. At the end of the third wordsMovie, which is the last wordsMovie, I call a function I've defined on the main timeline that reduces the alpha by 20 with each loop, then removes the mc when the alpha hits zero.

The function is supposed to only fade out the wordsMovie mc (if you look at the attached .fla you'll see that I've referenced a specific path to it). But it's also fading the "closingWords" mc that starts up near the end of the final wordsMovie. The movie is behaving as though I've either a) reduced the alpha of everything on the stage but the background, or b) somehow attached the closingWords mc inside the last wordsMovie. But there is nothing apparent to me, after several hours of looking, that would cause the closingWords mc to fade.

Anyone know what I've done wrong?

Please note that there are external JPEGs included in this zip archive.