A/N: This is an iPod Shuffle Challenge series of drabble on Oz The Great and Powerful. (Set the iPod to shuffle. For 10 songs, each song inspires one drabble, which is written in roughly the time the song takes to play.) OTG&P is owned by Walt Disney or somebody like that, certainly not me.
1: Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark: "The History of Modern, Part 2"
The first rule of the con is that the way you get the mark to trust you, is to first trust the mark.
A grin from Oscar Diggs meant You're special. You're the one who can see the magic. You're the one I trust behind the curtain.
Girls all across the dusty prairie lapped it up.
The first mistake you make is forgetting that when you see greatness reflected in their eyes, that's the lie. That's the con. Believe it back, and you'll be swept away by forces that make a tornado look like a summer breeze.
2: Echo Revolution, "Good to Be Home"
The second rule of the con is that human nature's the same everywhere. St. Louis, Kansas City, Abilene, San Francisco. . . even this place, which sure as hell ain't Kansas. Whoever saw flowers as big as a house?
People like if you they help you.
Women particularly like helping. You're instantly a son or a brother or a candidate for suitor.
This one's got more curves than the road up Mount Sunflower. She'd better not be feeling sisterly.
3: James Durbin, "Back for More"
The third rule of the con is to know when to fold 'em. You can bluff your way into a job, a city, friends, and something resembling love.
Just don't cross the line into believing their trust means you owe them anything. They'll look at you with soft, pleading eyes and touch you with soft, willing hands. They'll promise you power and unimaginable riches. They'll say it was meant to be.
That's how you get tricked into believing you belong to them.
4: Frank Ocean, "Not Just Money"
The fourth rule of the con is that everybody has a price.
Sprawled on his back in the treasury of the Emerald City, making snow angels out of pure gold—he'd dive into it if he could, he'd breathe gold—Oscar Diggs thinks he's found his.
5: Echo Revolution, "High Road"
The fifth rule of the con is never to look back. You never know who's chasing you.
Or, in this place, what. Talking monkeys, talking lions. . . this place makes the carnival look like a Sunday church social.
The girl made of china—how do these people not spend their lives huddled in a flat place for fear of breaking a toe?—isn't the crippled girl at the carnival. Healing one doesn't heal the other. You can't fix in one place what was broken in another. You don't owe—
She's crying. And glue's such a simple thing.
6: Roxy Music, "Same Old Scene"
The sixth rule of the con is. . . but that's Annie.
A wicked witch emerging from a graveyard on a foggy night is supposed to be a hag. Give her green skin. Give her snaggleteeth. Give her bloodshot eyes and a hunchback and warts.
Don't make her Annie.
It occurs to Oscar Diggs to wonder if Annie's sweet, trusting face is the perfect disguise for a core of evil.
It occurs to Oscar Diggs that he doesn't really care. Annie.
7: Florence + the Machine, "Lover to Lover"
The sixth rule of the con is that there's no situation so bad you can't con your way out of it.
When he looks out over the crowd of Annie's—Glinda's—people, Oscar Diggs' smile doesn't slip. If anything, it's wider and smugger than usual.
No one, not even Annie—Glinda—can guess how their insistent, demanding hope is like sunlight reflected in a mirror. It goes past illuminating into scorching and blinding. It makes him want to curl deeper into the well of his own soul, where everything is cool and secret.
The woman on the broom—Evanora—is rescue from this crazy hope. Look at the ugliness I had a hand in making. I can't save you. I can't save anything.
If Evanora had thrown him on her broomstick and whisked him away, he might have thanked her.
8: Haley Reinhart, "What You Don't Know"
The sixth rule of the con is that there's no situation so bad you can't con your way out of it.
The heart of the con is about believing in miracles. The heart of the con is about believing in magic.
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
Oscar Diggs knows how to turn the scorching light into the illusion of magic.
Funny how redemption turns out to start with one more lie.
9: Steel Bill, "Booze in My Veins"
Oscar Diggs has always been told that power corrupts. As he helps Glinda's people prepare for revolution, he decides what power does is intoxicate. It's a heady feeling, everybody listening to him, not because he's come up with a glib line of patter, but because he's got real answers that their lives and future depend on.
Power intoxicates, and it leaves one hell of a hangover. Glinda says nobody in Oz kills, but he can't believe some of these people listening to, thanking him, aren't going to their deaths.
If he'd been born with real power, would he have had the sense to choose to spend his life on a gray wooden porch in Kansas, watching Annie shell peas? Or do even the people with real power keep chasing the buzz?
10: City Rain, "Don't Stay Inside"
Annie's arms are around his neck, and she's kissing him.
Annie—no, Glinda—did something to the other sister, the distant yet alluring one, that made her as ugly as the first one. When it comes to creating ugliness, Oscar Diggs and Annie are even now. She says she was just revealing what was really there, but he has to wonder.
It's too late to wonder. He's got the girl, he's got the treasure, he's got the throne. . . there's the tiny detail that he's officially dead, but apparently this bothers no one here.
He's never ruled anything bigger than a stage in a traveling carnival tent. Don't worry, Annie says. I'll tell you what to say. I'll tell you what to do. They love you. I love you. It'll be fine.
He used to tell Annie that he was nothing without her. He's starting to suspect that it's true.
The seventh rule of the con: there's no one easier to con than a con man.
A/N: The middle sentence of #8 belongs to Arthur C. Clarke, but it fit so well that I couldn't resist.