AN: I don't own Wicked, but I hope you like what I've done with it.
Chapter One
Six was on edge, but she wasn't completely sure why. Something had changed in the past few hours, and none of her sister seemed to notice. The soldiers were doing something, whispering among their ranks. She didn't like it; she didn't trust them, especially their Commander. Commander Cherrystone could be considered a handsome man, she assumed, but something about him made her squirm whenever he was near. There was a certain coolness in his eyes that told her he would do anything if he was commanded to by his Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Six had the sinking feeling that when that command came something bad would happen at Kamio Ko. Her sister and the children, including the Lirr boy, were in the kitchen when Commander Cherrystone and a few other soldiers entered. Sarima smiled at him in welcome and Lirr pattered over to him like the puppy he acted like whenever the soldier was near. Six however stiffened, the hair on the back of her neck standing up at the expression on the man's face. "Hello Sarima," he said a strange glint in his eyes
"Commander," her sister tried to purr in greeting. Even Six, with her limited knowledge of men, could tell that her attempt to flirt fell short, by a long shot. She glanced around at her other sisters. Their chests were thrust out until their backs arched at strange angles and Three looked as though she had dust in her eyes. Five tried, and failed, to flip her hair and Two, well, Six wasn't exactly sure what she was doing, but it made her look like a cross between an owl and one of Auntie Witch's flying monkeys. Six leaned against the wall, drew her hair across her face, and closed her eyes to block out the desperate and almost comical picture her sisters painted. She did her best to try to fade into the wall like one of the chameleons she had read about in a book called "Exploring the Land of Oz". Although Six didn't really need to try hard; she was already skilled at being invisible. In fact, she couldn't even remember a time when she hadn't been unseen. Maybe she hadn't been the day she'd been born. Maybe her parents had looked at her and actually saw their daughter as a daughter for the first few moments of her life. Of course, if that were true wouldn't they have bothered to give her a name? No, her parents had never noticed her or loved her in any way shape or form. All of their attention had been directed solely at Sarima. Why had they even decided to have more kids after their precious? Six had thought this multiple times over the years, but could never find an answer, and she would never be able to ask them because of their death only years after her birth. She was pulled from her thoughts as the air shifted; she opened her eyes.
"W-what?" Sarima asked Commander Cherrystone.
In a chillingly formal voice the Commander spoke. "We have been ordered to take you and your family as political captives of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz." It happened almost too fast to follow. Cherrystone seized Sarima by the bicep and the other men came forward to ensnare sisters two through five who all had yet to catch up with the situation, but Six had. When a stocky, balding man, who she had heard being called by the name of Carolton, came forward to grab her, she kicked him in the stomach, making him stumble back a few steps.
"What the fuck?" he exclaimed, surprised by the force of the kick and the fact that she had enough guts to deliver it and went to grab her again. She punched him in the face as hard as she could and was pleasantly surprised when she heard the satisfying crunch bone. She had broken his nose. "You little bitch!" he roared and she dodged him as he once again lunged at her and darted for the door. The other men after a moment of stunned confusion realized what was happening and one was quickly in front of her, grabbing, but she ducked under his arms only to be confronted with another. This one was huge and was blocking the entire door with his sizable body. She back pedaled and immediately crashed into another male body. His arms snapped around her waist and he lifted her off the floor. Profanities that she had never heard spoken and only knew from her books spilled from her lips as she kicked out at the other men grabbing for her. The scuffle lasted only about half a minute, due to the fact that it was twenty against one (her sisters just stood there stupefied) and she was five time weaker than them. She ended up in a position with both arms pinned behind her back and her neck being constricted by a man's hand until the world started to fade at the edges. At a nod from Commander Cherrystone the man holding her released her neck and she slumped taking in deep breaths. She heard his footsteps and then his military boots came into view.
"And what do we have here?" Cherrystone asked perplexed. He'd never expected any of them to act as she just had; especially not the one who had never spoke a word and stayed in the background most of the time. He'd been under the impression that she was dense and stayed quiet because of an empty head. Those thoughts had fled at the shouted curses and the calculated struggle. He jerked her head up by the chin so he could see her clearly and harshly whipped her knotted hair from her face. His eyes studied her impassibly. He tilted his head with a small sinister smile and chucked her under the chin. "You're actually quite pretty," he commented genuinely surprised.
"And you're actually quite a bastard, although I already guessed that!" She reinforced her cutting words by spitting in his face. Calmly he wiped the saliva off of his cheek.
"Get them all ready for the journey," he said to his men and then regarded her apathetically, "keep this one separate."
Six had the strangest feeling as suddenly she had been noticed alone, not with her sisters. She wasn't a number among numbers any more, but someone who was to be separate, a number all her own. Though she was frightened, as she should be, there was also a strange thrill about it. Yes, she was still just a number; she was still just six, but now she wasn't only one sixth.