Musical.

Headquarters had been thrown into a frenzy. The gears that powered the Mind whirled so fast that they seemed little more that common wheels, the white-noise ticking replaced by an almost maddening ringing of alarm bells. Fear flew around the console, pressing buttons, flipping switches, trying anything and everything. It wasn't working. Nothing seemed to be working.

"Come on, come on, come on!" Fear urged as she used those buttons on the far side of the console. Those buttons had been seeing much use lately. More use than they'd seen in years, in fact. As Anger had put it, "Desperate times call for desperate measures." The other emotions hadn't questioned Anger. Not only were the buttons in her section of the console, she had been the first emotion to appear in this Mind, and had asserted her dominance ever since. She had been the one to insist that they were perfectly normal emotions, no matter what their host looked like. However, Fear had insisted upon using the console after learning of what was going on with him.

"I thought for sure that would work!" Fear exclaimed. "What's going on?"

Anger stepped forward, holding an idea. "Fear," she said in an attempt to get the purple nerve's attention.

Fear whipped the current candle-shaped idea out of the console and jammed in a new one. "Oh, please let this one work!"

"Fear..."

"Gah, what if it's too little too late? What if - "

"FEAR!"

Fear whirled her head around, long black hair following close behind. "What?!" she snapped at Anger.

"Obviously this isn't working," Anger said. "Why bother trying? Everyone is against us. We may as well prove them right." With that, Fear was shoved away from the console, which Anger gripped with a passion. The idea she had been holding spiraled downwards. "No more Miss Nice Girl..."

"Wait." Every eye was turned to Sadness, who held three gleaming memories in her blue arms. "What about those others?" She slipped one Core Memory after another into the ever-present jet of air. "What about our sister? Our teacher? Him?" As the others watched, she discreetly released the idea, hoping no one would notice.

The three memories played in sequence. A blue-green memory, watching their sister happily play. A golden-red memory, sharing lunch with their favorite professor. And a memory of every emotion's color. Created only a day or so ago. The first kiss.

Disgust abruptly knocked the Core Memory out of the jet. "Seriously, Sadness?" she chastised. "Those memories are just that - memories. They're gone. They're all gone. There's nothing we can do about it."

Grabbing the idea back, she joined Anger at the console and plugged it in again. "All we were doing was trying to get attention," she added. "And boy, did we get attention."

"It's time we make that attention deserved," Anger growled.

Before long, a new memory had been created. A swirl of red and green. But this one was glowing brightly. Heading for the Core Memory podium.

Joy gasped, "Wait- no..." from her position in the back, near the window to the Personality Islands. Fear and Sadness nearly tripped over their black frocks to get by her side, only to be stunned speechless.

Two of the Islands had crumbled. As they held each other tightly, a new one was forming.

The one that all three of them had hoped and prayed would never come into existence.

Their worst nightmare had come true.

Meanwhile, on the outside, Elphaba Thropp had come to a very important conclusion. "All right, enough, so be it!" she exclaimed. "So be it, then...

Let all Oz be agreed... I'm wicked through and through."

The Wicked Witch of the West had arisen at last.

I've had this one in mind ever since I started this story. Elphaba's just such an emotional character. I just had to explore her mind. Hints:

1. The gear/clock motif. The book that inspired the show features a clock as an important plot point, and the set of the play makes extensive use of gears.

2. The candle-shaped idea. Oz doesn't appear to have electricity, being lit by either fire or magic. (And yes, the Wizard does appear to use electricity, but he's not Ozian by birth.)

3. Five gals. You all know what that means...

4. Anger is the ringleader. Elphaba is very morality-driven, and she has a very short fuse. How could she not be Anger?

5. The Core Memories detail Elphaba's relationship with her sister Nessarose (implied), Doctor Dillamond (before and during the song "Something Bad"), and Fiyero ("As Long As You're Mine"). The new one that's created at the end grows into Wickedness Island. That would have been a huge hint, though.

6. Fear has black hair, and she and Sadness both wear black dresses. Elphaba's hair is black, and she rarely wears anything but black.

7. The buttons for Elphaba's powers. She usually only uses them when she gets angry (at first), and is reluctant to use them at all for much of the first act.

8. I make it clear that the emotions are perfectly normal. Elphaba, aside from having green skin, is just like you and me! Besides, making all the emotions green would have been confusing.

9. The highlighted moment is "No Good Deed". After learning that her love Fiyero is being tortured, Elphaba tries desperately (out of fear) to use her powers to save him. She grows angry with her own failure, deciding to live up to her give name. She then sadly remembers the people she loved, who have either been killed (presumably) or rendered incapable of anything but submission. Goes right back to anger and disgust, and she decides to become the Wicked Witch that everyone calls her.