Hello all! This is Lauren (kaliawai512), and me and Nicole finally have our first chapter up for the fic we promised! This begins before we met, when I was skimming through stories and first found hers. Well, I guess that's it. Hope you all enjoy, and please REVIEW! Oh, and this.

Disclaimer: No part of "Wicked" belongs to Nicole nor to me. We both greatly mourn that fact, and are incredibly jealous of Gregory Maguire, who does own it.

Alright then, on to the story!

Chapter 1: The Witch is not Wicked, and Texas is not a Wasteland

Lauren sat in her little purple chair next to her desk, a freckled hand on the mouse and brown eyes unmoving from the glowing flat screen. She slowly scrolled down the page, examining each title and summary closely, one of the few wonders in her life. A place where obsessive people like her could read and write about those copyrighted stories they loved so much. But now, she only explored one small section of the seemingly-infinite website, and its name was "Wicked"

She must have been on there for hours now. Or maybe just a few minutes. She could never tell when she was so absorbed, and personally, she didn't really care. Sure, it was a Saturday night, and she was going to die in school Monday from lack of sleep over the weekend. But this was what she did; how she survived without the groups of friends everyone else around her took so much for granted.

A soft sigh from behind her stirred Lauren temporarily. She turned her head slowly towards her bed, gazing at the person that sat there.

The woman wasn't a day over 38. Pointy, frightening features may have tricked the others into thinking she was older, but Lauren knew better. Her long black hair was tied into an interestingly loose bun, as it always was, and a nice brown frock hung down to her ankles. Her eyes were fixed intently on a thick leather-bound book she held in her hands.

In a lot of ways, she seemed almost completely normal. Except for one little detail: she was green. Yes, green. Like emeralds, artichokes, plants, cabbages and frogs. This, Lauren was used to. She had never minded it. After all, everything the woman ever did was read, eat, sleep, and occasionally throw out a rude and sarcastic remark or fly around on her broom. So Lauren could just go on with her life like she wasn't even there.

Her name was Elphaba Thropp, though hardly anyone knew her by that anymore. To most she was the Wicked Witch of the West, supposedly melted around six months before in the country of Oz, by the hands of a little Kansas girl, Dorothy Gale.

But that was all wrong. The whole country was being told--telling, spreading--nothing but lies. The Witch wasn't a puddle on the floor; she was reading the Grimmerie silently on a 13-year old girl's bed. Dorothy wasn't even around. And the worst wrong of them all was that they were not in the slightest bit in Oz. This was Texas.

"Elphie, do you ever stop reading that thing?" Lauren asked after a few more moments of studying the green lady. Elphaba looked up, annoyed, and replied in that sarcastic voice that made all of Oz tremble.

"Do you ever move away from that machine?"

Now Lauren was beginning to wonder how in the world the Ozians could be scared of her. She was more amusing than anything else, what with her sarcasm and rudeness. Besides, this was the 21st century. And Elphaba was from, well, not the 21st century. Lauren knew technology like the back of her hand, and was still working every day to explain to Elphie what a computer was, and what it did. God, how far back exactly was Oz?

Lauren rolled her eyes and turned to attention back to the computer. She surely wasn't in the mood at one o'clock in the morning to deal with Elphie. She scrolled down some more, but didn't necessarily concentrate on the summaries anymore. Instead, she thought.

Elphaba had been there for approximately a month now. It was a funny story, really, how she had turned up here, along with every other experience onward from that.

Lauren had been racing around the house after an unusually loud crash was heard, trying to figure out what in the world it had been. None of the rest of the family seemed frightened; apparently she was quite the paranoid one. After a while she gave up and went back to her room.

But, oh, what a surprise she found there! A green woman in a long black dress and pointy hat stood staring at her computer, looking baffled by the contraption. Lauren screamed in surprise, something she rarely ever did. The lady looked over at her and fell back, shocked to find that this room actually belonged to someone. And the introductions began later, after quite a bit of confusion, some explanations that the crash had been the woman on her broom, and more than enough "Who the HELL are you?"'s.

And things had hardly changed since. Lauren knew everything there was to know about Elphie, simply because she already had before she even met her. Elphie didn't really care about Lauren that much. At least that was the impression she gave.

But one thing still sent Lauren throwing out questions. One little fact she never got to establish. Was this Elphie allergic to water?

She still didn't know for sure, but the day she came up with her hunch had been all an accident, a simple mess-up. Lauren had just walked outside to her backyard, where Elphaba sat quietly on the trampoline, reading, as always. Her father, without warning, suddenly flipped on the sprinklers, and water sprayed everywhere. And, well, let's just say Elphaba made sure the entire neighborhood knew she was being "tortured by a strange Texan assassin named Michael." Plus Lauren was locked out of her room for hours afterward by the green girl, and later found an empty bottle of oil lying in the trash can.

Now Lauren came upon a new story, completely unfamiliar in title and author. "Water and Oil," it read, by "Fae5288." Definitely a "Wicked" fan, she thought, very sure that this person must love the show to have a pen name related to Elphaba. She skimmed over the summary after a moment, now quite interested.

"Thanks to Glinda, a couple of girls discover a secret that Elphaba would rather have kept to herself. What will happen when Fiyero finds out? Oneshot, bookverse."

Lauren smirked. She most certainly knew what that secret was. She waited a second, checking the rating to make sure it wouldn't be something too mature for her. Seeing it was 'K', she opened it.

As usual, she skipped the author's note and went straight to the actual story.

"Fiyero

Fiyero noticed that Elphaba harbored an intense, unnatural dislike for water. He found it strange that, although she could sit by the lake for hours, although she liked to stand and look at the fountain outside her dorm, although she would sit at her window and watch the rain fall, she would not let the liquid touch her. It was as though she was almost… dare he even think it?... afraid of the shining droplets."

"Elphie, come over here, I think I found a good one!"

Elphaba looked up again, sighed in hatred of having to read this fan fiction stuff about herself, and slowly came over. By now, Lauren had taught her the English writing system, which was in fact quite odd but surprisingly easy to learn. She read the story slowly as Lauren did, the girl scrolling down bit by bit until they reached the end.

A smile stretched across Lauren's face as she lifted her hand from the mouse. "That was so cute!" she mumbled, in that unintended and somehow unavoidable high voice she got after she read something romantic. Elphaba simply stared at the screen, amazed.

She had to admit it, though she wouldn't say it aloud. This had been...good. It was truthful, matched up to her and Fiyero's personalities, and… oh, how she would kill if Lauren found this out… adorable. A nice little one-shot--as fan fiction authors apparently called it--all about her and her darling. She was rather glad Fiyero was gone, because she was blushing like hell.

Lauren quickly snatched the mouse and fixed her eyes on the little button that read "Submit Review." She hardly ever reviewed anything, considering how much she read and how little time she had. But this story was special. Something told her giving some feedback wouldn't end up as a bad thing. Maybe it could even turn out to be something… worthwhile.

Nodding to herself, she moved the cursor over a bit and clicked the little violet button on the bottom of the screen.