A/N: Here we go, ladies and gentlemen- the second-last chapter. I hope you've enjoyed this one, because in a week or so, it'll be at an end; read and review, my friends!

Disclaimer: Wicked does not belong to me. I've checked with all my counterparts across the different dimensions, and none of them own it.


Deep inside his echoing tin skull, the mind of Nicholas Chopper (formerly known as Boq) is a warped, ruined mess: his psyche has been so catastrophically shattered that to compare it to a broken mirror simply wouldn't work. This is a mirror that has been smashed to pieces, each piece ground down to powder, fused back into glass and smashed to powder all over again. But as his mind takes in the sight of Glinda fleeing the room, some of the scattered particles of his sanity begin to cluster together, slowly taking on a new shape.

This dust has assumed shapes before, but always at random, always visions of a world as dead as his heart: of skies crimson and black above forests of petrified trees and scorched-barren wastelands, broken only by the occasional pool of syrupy black water almost as toxic as the air. The land is covered with scars garnered during the war that obliterated its people: mass graves of animals and rebel humans executed by the Loyalists; the old artillery pieces used by both sides, long since corroded beyond repair; the ruins of Loyalist fortresses gutted and destroyed by Rebel magicians. And all around them, ruined cities and blasted villages, citizens lying where they'd fell- not rotted, but horrifically preserved by the alchemical weapons that killed them.

But this time, the dust latches on to the sight of Glinda, and takes on the shape of Oz before the war:

It is just a day after his transformation, and Boq is lurking in a cornfield, trying to get to grips with what he has become and not entirely sure how to react to Nessarose' death. He is fearful, he is ashamed of his new form, and he is teetering on the very brink of psychological collapse, but he is safe- because Glinda is nearby. Her presence gives him the strength to hold onto the last fragments of his sanity.

He follows her through the cornfield, being very careful to stay out of sight, trying to pluck up the courage to beg her for help. But she is approaching a clearing and...

Suspended from a rough assembly of poles, Fiyero Tiggular is being methodically beaten about the face with the butt of a guardsman's halberd, while another guard is slowly crushing Fiyero's feet with a wooden mallet; what little of his face that can be seen under all the blood is purple and black with bruises- the young prince is handsome no more. At the sound of Glinda's approach, a young guard-corporal turns without bothering to sheathe his knife; he looks quite young- perhaps nineteen at the most.

The corporal greets her pleasantly enough, but Glinda isn't in the mood for politeness or flattery: she wants Fiyero released immediately and taken to a doctor immediately. Without dropping his smile, the corporal informs her that he can't do this for a number of reasons: firstly, this man is not only an accomplice of the Witch, but a traitor; even if the guardsmen had the authority to release him, they wouldn't dare allow a defector to roam free. More to the point, the traitor is still being questioned, and it may take some time before he confesses to where the Witch has fled to.

But Glinda isn't interested in excuses. The argument skids on for another ten minutes, with Glinda insisting that the guards take Fiyero down from the poles and at least try to stop him from bleeding to death and the young corporal listing the reasons why he can't do this and getting progressively impatient. Unfortunately, as a final attempt to placate her, the corporal adds the fact that Fiyero had forsaken her in favour of the witch and is now being justly punished for it- whereupon Glinda smacks the corporal in the head with her wand.

And in a fit of pique, the guardsman returns the favour- completely forgetting that he is still holding a knife in his hand.

Glinda has just enough time to take a step back, so that the blade misses her face and tears through her throat, slicing cleanly through the jugular and splattering both herself and her attacker with blood. There is a horrified pause as every single man in the clearing stops to take in the sight of Glinda the Good, mortally wounded and staring back at them in disbelief; then, she very gently collapses to the ground. Instantly, she is surrounded by guardsman trying in vain to staunch the bleeding, all of them shouting, swearing, panicking and flinging accusations at one another.

And Boq can only watch; he wants to run to her side, but his limbs refuse to move. He can only stand and watch as the woman he has coveted from a distance for the last few years of his life dies, choking on her own blood, her last words almost lost amidst the last tormented gasps for breath:

"...Elphaba..."

Then, very slowly, she goes still.

And behind the stalks of corn, Boq sinks to his knees, feeling as though he has just been stabbed in the chest with a dagger of ice, the hollow where his heart once sat alive with pain. Inside his skull, thoughts are slowly fracturing, taking vast tracts of his sanity with them, and all he can do is try not to scream as his mind shreds itself to pieces.

The guards begin arguing amongst themselves: several of them want to have the young corporal fired on the spot, to have him arrested, to have him executed right there and then. After all, Glinda was loved and revered throughout all of Oz, and anyone who dared strike a blow against her was guaranteed the loathing of its people, to say nothing of the guardsmen who'd actually seen it happen. But the captain- Fiyero's replacement- will have none of it: if anyone were to find out what had happened, the entire unit will be disgraced; they are already treading on thin ice following Fiyero's betrayal, and another scandal like this could sink them for good.

Grudgingly, the men agree. After a few more minutes of arguing, they eventually decide to pin Glinda's murder on the Wicked Witch; it made sense- hadn't the two been fighting when the guards had found them? It would be easy for the Witch to be blamed for the death, provided they thought out their alibi carefully enough. The incompetent corporal should be punished, but gently, so as to not arouse suspicion: perhaps a posting to somewhere he wouldn't be likely to return from, like the Deadly Desert. Of course, they'd have to make sure that Fiyero didn't say anything-

There is a pause, as they realise that the ex-captain is no longer dangling from the poles behind them; their captive is gone. Desperately, they search the cornfield, hoping to follow the trail of blood he should've been leaving, but find only a few lengths of straw.

Less than six feet away, Boq is laughing very softly; he is faintly aware that his eyes are blurry with tears, and he knows that Glinda has died and taken his last pathetic hopes of acceptance with her, and he knows that his head hurts with the thoughts burning through it, and oh glorious Oz he hates himself and he wants to tear his eyes out and to kill everything that ever lived starting with himself... but he can't get over something that the guard captain had said- that Elphaba should be blamed for what had happened.

The captain was correct, so correct that it's absolutely hilarious: Elphaba was to blame. She'd not only transformed him at the behest of her sister, but she'd led Glinda to this situation, hadn't she? She'd drawn her to the cornfield with Fiyero's torture; if she'd been a friend of Glinda, if Glinda had meant anything to the Witch, then she would have been there to help, she would have been there to save her life or at least be there to mourn her passing. Where the hell is she? Why couldn't she have helped?

LOOK WHAT SHE DID! Boq's mind shrieks from the flaming wreckage of his sanity. LOOK AT WHAT HAS HAPPENED BECAUSE OF HER!

...and in that blazing instant, Nicholas Chopper is born from those charred fragments of personality.

He knows what he has to do.

He has to kill Elphaba.

And a few short days later, having accrued a gaggle of companions he never wanted from one end of the Yellow Brick Road to the next, received an entire page of orders from the Wizard that he wasn't interested in obeying, and having wasted far more time than was necessary, Chopper finally arrives at Kiamo Ko.

But to his outrage, Elphaba surrenders her neck to his axe- willingly, calmly, and almost gratefully. Dorothy is left whimpering at the "horror" of the sight, but a few harsh words silences the brat readily enough, and all four of them march back to the Emerald City in silence; the Scarecrow is in a particularly dark mood for most of the journey, Oz only knows why. But then, Chopper's still fuming over the fact that Elphaba hadn't even put up a fight and is currently trying to soothe his nerves with the trophies he managed to secure: he's carrying the Witch's head, after all, along with just about everything she'd had in her pockets- including that mysterious green bottle.

In the end, Chopper presents the Wizard with both the head and the bottle.

Not long afterwards, the first suicide attempt is made, and the Wizard is dragged away in a straightjacket. With his Ozness spending retirement in a padded cell, Morrible having taken his place, Dorothy left stranded in Oz, and the country's populace utterly baffled by the shift in the political landscape, the Scarecrow takes the opportunity to steal the Grimmerie and go underground. He reappears a week later with a small army of rebel animals, including the Lion; they demand that Morrible surrender her power to a democratically elected leader, and that the anti-Animal laws be repealed.

Those loyal to the Wizard and Morrible initially believe that the animals will be alone in this revolution- and are quite dismayed when a number of humans join the Scarecrow's army: some are members of the army protesting Madame Morrible's grab for power, others have been harbouring sympathies for the animals for years and only just gathering the confidence to speak out. There are even a few magicians among the ranks, having left the Wizard's employ now that his replacement is no longer interested in paying for their services. The list of demands begins to grow...

Eventually, Morrible and the loyalists hire Chopper as a "negotiator," augmenting his body with enchantments before sending him out to disrupt the Scarecrow's demonstrations; Chopper, having nothing else to occupy his time but his own frustrations, takes to the job with bloody enthusiasm. Eventually, as the demonstrations become riots, the army are forced to join in, sometimes even trying to frighten the protesters with artillery barrages. The Press Secretary turned President even goes so far as to bombard the gatherings with lightning to disperse them on one occasion.

But what finally sets the Scarecrow and his army to war is the death of the Lion, courtesy of one Nicholas "Tin Man" Chopper. It isn't an assassination, per se- after all, Morrible had been on the brink of agreeing to the demands of the rebels if only to prevent an outright civil war, but Chopper has come to enjoy violence, and he isn't interested in seeing the fun end so soon.

But truth to be told, Chopper doesn't remember much of the war that results; he recalls the faces of the Rebels he killed in battle, and recalls that a few of his victims might just have been Loyalists. He even remembers the spectacular mass grave he created after learning how to see Elphaba's corruption. But other than that, everything blurs out of sight. He isn't even sure how long he spends on missions or lurking around the increasingly fortified palace for his next assignment: the only thing that marks the procession of months is the slowly changing sky, as the collision of alchemical weaponry and weather magic begins to discolour and poison it.

So lost in his own blood-streaked world is Chopper that he doesn't even notice when the orders from his superiors stop flowing. The first he knows of the collapse of the Ozian government is on a brisk morning six months after the conflict began, when he looks up from throttling a young woman to death and realises that the village he'd been sent to investigate is empty. After wandering for days, he finds that the surviving population of Oz has fled across the borders on anything that could cross the Deadly Desert without dying; those too scared, stubborn or stupid to leave died en mass, leaving him alone in a country so contaminated and ravaged that nobody would ever think of resettling it. The Wizard is dead, having finally succeeded in chewing his wrists open. The Scarecrow is dead, having burnt to ashes with Elphaba's name on his burlap lips. As for Morrible and Dorothy... well, he catches a glimpse of them fleeing the capital together, but he presumes that they will not last long. After all, how can a withered old woman and a traumatised child survive a journey across the hell that Oz had become?

Weeks went by, and Chopper roams the country aimlessly, occupying his time with almost anything he can think of; he buffs his tin to a gleaming finish; he plays around with some of the props and disguises the Wizard once used, before hanging his corpse from one of the tallest buildings left standing in the Emerald City; he builds a pyramid of human skulls gathered from some of his own victims; he even tries to build a statue of Glinda, before he realise that the face appears to belong to Nessarose, whereupon he kicks the thing to pieces in a screaming fit.

He begins to worry that he is going a bit eccentric: he begins experiencing curious doubts over what he has done; he hears whispering voices and the patter of feet on the periphery of his senses; once, he even feels a twinge of unwanted remorse.

But somehow, it all seems worthwhile: every single pint of blood spilt in the name of his own angers and sorrows, the weeks and weeks of solitude that followed, all of it has been validated; for now, he now stands in another Oz, a world as pristine and unsullied as his once was, and he knows that Glinda is within reach once more. But first, he has to fight for the privilege of her company; he has to kill his misguided counterpart, and the Witch who commands him. He also has to kill all who she has corrupted- the Scarecrow, the Lion, and yes, even the child.

This, he thinks quietly, is going to be so much fun...


It hadn't taken Boq long to learn that his other self had a serious advantage: not only were Chopper's legs perfectly symmetrical, but they worked perfectly too; he didn't limp, hobble or shamble his way across the room. Instead, he darted about the room with incredible speed and agility, his legs blurring gracefully as he charged through the dissipating clouds of smoke, his axe swinging towards Boq in a deadly arc.

Fortunately, while Boq's legs were crooked and misbegotten, his arms moved swiftly enough to deflect the blow. Equally fortunate, the enchantments that Elphaba had placed upon his body still retained some presence, meaning that any of the attacks that he couldn't block glanced harmlessly off the magical shielding; they couldn't last forever though. Before long, they'd fade, leaving Boq with only the defences his tin body could afford him. And at the speed Chopper moved, those mightn't last very long at all...

"You know," said his other self, as he sidestepped one of Boq's wilder swings, "If anyone here really surprised me, it's you. I mean, anyone in your position with the slightest bit of brain would have set out to kill Elphaba the moment they'd seen themselves in a mirror; but then, you don't have any sense, do you?"

... and Boq's temper wasn't holding up well against Chopper's jibes, either: the man didn't seem capable of shutting up; throughout the entire battle, he'd been talking, joking and laughing that weird, monotonous laugh of his as he dodged and parried the swings aimed in his direction. He'd rambled on about what he'd love to do to Elphaba, how he'd had so much fun tearing her head off, and what he was going to do this time, and all the while, Boq could only do his best to hold the bastard off and hope that he wouldn't notice the figure of Nessarose lying on the divan not six feet from him.

As Boq raised his axe for another swing, Chopper's left foot shot out and hammered into his chest, propelling him across the room and into the wall; for a moment, he struggled to rise, until he noticed that his counterpart was too busy talking at him to attack- which was just as well, because Boq's legs couldn't find purchase enough to lift him upright.

"I have no idea what compelled you to join forces with Elphaba; did your mind collapse in on itself at some point during your transformation? Judging by how badly that went, it certainly looks the case. So, care to give me an answer, or has the cat got your tongue-"

Boq, who'd already heard enough to hate this version of himself, brought the monologue to an unscheduled stop by snatching up a mahogany chair and flinging it at Chopper; as the talkative construct tore the thing to matchsticks, Boq charged as quickly as he could, bringing his counterpart thundering to the ground. Unfortunately, even pinned to the floor and bombarded with punches, Chopper was still a lot quicker; a swift lunge under the next strike, and a dart to the left, and he had Boq in a headlock. "It's not very nice to interrupt, my friend," he giggled. "You'd have learned that if you were ever pitted against me in the war-"

Boq elbowed Chopper hard in the gut with a satisfying BOOOONNNNGGGGGG of warping tin, and wriggled free, kicking his parallel self across the room with a grunt of "shut up". Attempts at coherency aside, he knew he had to finish this lunatic off as quickly as possible: the enchantments defending him were almost gone.

"I think not," Chopper sneered. "I've got a lot more to say, things that I've only said to corpses up until now." He hauled himself upright with the aid of (Boq's eyes widened in horror) the very divan that Nessa was lying on; then, his eyes alighted on the figure asleep beneath the blankets. Slowly, he drew the covers away from her face... and froze.

"What," he said quietly, "is this doing here?"

There was an icy pause. "Why isn't she dead?" he hissed, the venom in his voice almost as palpable as the shock. "She's supposed to be dead; she's supposed to be lying under the Brat's house, dead and rotting. What is she doing here, and why is she alive?" His voice suddenly rose to a shout: "WHY ISN'T SHE DEAD?" he roared furiously. He looked wildly from one end of the room to the other for an answer, and eventually settled on his counterpart: "YOU!" he accused. "YOU'RE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS, AREN'T YOU? YOU SAVED HER LIFE EVEN AFTER WHAT SHE DID TO YOU, TO ME! YOU KEPT WORKING FOR HER SISTER EVEN AFTER WHAT SHE DID TO US!"

With a bloodcurdling scream, he launched himself at Boq, his axe threshing the air in front of him; but anger made him clumsy, and on the third swing of the axe, Boq was able to seize him by the arm, toss the axe aside and tackle him to the ground. Pausing only to curse his own incoherence, he snatched up a bit of parchment, and scribbled We deserved what happened to us; we broke Nessa's heart before shoving it under Chopper's nose.

Chopper laughed mechanically. "The little bitch didn't have a heart, you self-deluding little traitor; I lost so many years of my life to the cripple, and what did I get in return? Nothing but this body and the chance for revenge- which the little whore invalidated by dying." He laughed again. "But perhaps Nessa being alive in this world isn't such a bad thing- perhaps now I can finally take some well-deserved vengeance..." Chopper's right hand snaked towards his axe, and flipped it with astonishing accuracy toward Boq's face; as he struggled to stop his head from ringing, Boq intercepted a sharp jab to the chest that toppled him across the room, leaving him to roll dazedly to a halt just in front of the gigantic window.

He was just getting to his feet when Chopper strode purposefully over to him, and delivered yet another brutal piston-kick to the torso; this time, there was no sturdy wall to fall against, only an awful lot of glass and a flimsy metal framework. Boq ploughed cleanly through the window, ripping the intricate structure to pieces as he left both the ground and the building and shot into thin air.

The last thing he saw, in the split second before gravity took hold and sent him plummeting towards the earth, was his other self, standing at the window, leering triumphantly down at him.


Elphaba, her face still streaked with angry tears, arrived in the room just in time to see Chopper crossing the room towards Nessarose, axe in hand, giggling monotonously. She couldn't be sure if Boq could have survived the fall or not- she couldn't even be sure of what condition his body would be after it hit the ground- all she knew at that moment was that Chopper was going to kill Nessa.

He was already raising his axe to strike when the first surge of raw magic knocked it out of his hands; the next one blasted him off his feet, propelling him headlong into a small coffee table, where a tendril of magic snaked around his waist and tossed him into the fireplace- which, with another spark of energy, exploded into a blazing inferno. And Elphaba let her powers and her rage stoke the fire to a temperature which would almost certainly melt Chopper to slag; at no point did any of the small library of spells she'd memorised from the Grimmerie enter her mind, nor did any of the other magical techniques that she'd been taught back at Shiz- only this, the earliest and most potent expression of her power.

Once upon a time, the most she could have done with this was project a few startling green lights and wheel Nessarose' wheelchair back to her; now, it turned the fire an electric blue as it held Chopper inside the fireplace, pounding him into submission with all of Elphaba's fury- the anger that after all that'd been done to save Nessa's life, this madman was trying to kill her, compounded by the nasty little revelation she'd been subjected to less than five minutes ago. All of it, from the painful fact that the Wizard was her father, from the downright humiliating fact that the truth had been right in front of her from the moment she'd learned about the Wizard's bottle of green elixir- all of it fuelled her assault against the Other Tin Man.

Finally, Elphaba released her grip on her energies, her anger spent- for the moment anyway...

... and saw Chopper staggering, glowing a dull red and slightly dented, but otherwise unharmed. He's been augmented with defensive enchantments, she realised, just like I did with Boq. Question is, who enchanted him and how much abuse can the enchantments take?

"Well, well," the Other Tin Man whispered said softly, brushing imaginary dust from his shoulders, "it seems that some just can't wait their turn. I remember how eager you were to put your head on the chopping block last time..."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, you were listening when your father told me that I came from another world, Elphaba: it's not too different from yours, but in my world, the Land of Oz is dead, and has been for quite some time. You'd have loved to see the war that killed my Oz, Elphaba- it was waged for your cause, after all..."

The mantelpiece abruptly tore itself from the wall above the fireplace and crashed spectacularly into Chopper's head. "You'll have to do better than that," he said smugly.

Elphaba snarled her frustration, and tried to think of what to do next; did she have the energy to blast away Chopper's enchantments and mangle him into scrap metal? Maybe so, or maybe not, but she might have just enough in reserve to toss him out the window- assuming a four hundred foot drop would be sufficient to kill him. She toyed with the idea of calling Chistery and the Flying Monkeys as reinforcements, but a swift dose of reality killed that idea almost immediately: not only was she not sure if they could even lift him, but it was almost certain that Chopper would kill a great many of them.

And then, just as she was readying her attack, the Wizard appeared at her side.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she hissed.

"Trying to save your life," he whispered frantically. "You run – I'll distract him."

"And leave my sister undefended? You run for it."

"Not to interrupt any heartwarming reconciliations," said Chopper loudly, "But I think you should know that I can actually hear what the two of you are saying. Don't bother trying to run; it's very hard to move with an axe embedded in your spine." He spun the aforementioned axe in his hands. "I'm a very good shot."

Elphaba took a deep breath; this would be her first attempt at real diplomacy, but it might be a better alternative to being minced to death when Chopper's defences refused to collapse under her next barrage. "Look, Chopper," she said soothingly, "I know you're angry at what my sister did to you back in your world, but she did it to save your life."

"Do explain."

"The transformation spell she cast- it was to save her life. Now, in your world, it worked much better than it did here, but-"

Chopper laughed bitterly. "You think that your halfwitted cripple of a sister could create this? Oh no no no no no no, Elphaba, in my world, you did this to me; in my world, you saved my life- only so your sister would never have to give up her favourite toy. But I escaped! I ran and hid, and when I Nessa died and took my plan for revenge with her, I decided to go after you. I did everything I could to track you down: I joined Dorothy, and I put up with her constant moaning about wanting to go home; I put up with the Lion's endless whining and the Scarecrow's pretentiousness, I vowed before the Wizard himself to assassinate you, I even led the Witch hunters in their charge on Kiamo Ko... and then you took all the joy out of it by surrendering, by letting me kill you!" He was screaming now. "You didn't even beg forgiveness for what happened to me, FOR WHAT HAPPENED TO GLINDA!"

And then the Wizard did what was simultaneously the bravest and stupidest thing in his entire life; seeing that Chopper's attention was focussed upon Elphaba, he took off his coat, and holding it in both hands, dashed towards Chopper- apparently intending to pull it over the insane construct's head. Unfortunately, Chopper heard him approaching, and seized him by the throat: pausing only to toss the coat aside, he thundered over to the nearest wall sconce, and hung the Wizard on it by the collar of his shirt, leaving him dangling a good three feet off the ground and unable to escape. "Enjoy the show," he added nastily. Then, he began to advance on Elphaba again...

"Wait!"

Chopper very slowly turned around to see Glinda standing in the doorway, her wand raised to strike; and even though she was pale and shivering with nerves, Elphaba didn't doubt for a minute that she'd actually use it.

For a moment, she felt a deep surge of admiration for her old friend; then she wondered if Glinda had made any improvement to her magical talents in the last few years, and went back to worrying. And then she saw the faraway look on Chopper's face as he examined the slight figure readying to attack. He'd said something about wanting to see Glinda again, hadn't he? But what had happened to Glinda, back in whatever insane world he'd been recruited from? What was going on behind those glaring metal eyes?

"Glinda," Chopper whispered softly. "It's good to see you again. You needn't have run off so soon, by the way; I wasn't going to hurt you. After all, we've known each other for a very long time, you and I..."

Elphaba sighed wearily; not only was Chopper getting the two worlds hopelessly confused, but he was also operating under the same obsessive delusions that his other self had only managed to conquer through self-loathing and physical trauma. But then again, Boq (the real one) was still delusional, after a fashion; he'd merely deluded himself into thinking that everything that had happened to Nessa was his fault, and that everything that Nessa had done to him was justified. I'll need to have a word with him about that once this mess is over and done with, she thought, assuming he's still alive... and assuming Chopper doesn't kill us all.

Glinda, meanwhile, didn't seem convinced by Chopper's air of gentility. "How would I know you from anywhere?" she asked flatly. "I was listening when the Wizard had told us you were from another world, you know."

"Yes, but its history is so closely tied with yours... well, up until I killed Elphaba and the war began, but that's another story for another day. I don't exactly blame you for not recognising my face; after all, you couldn't recognise my counterpart's face. But tell me, would you happen to remember a tragically beautiful girl in a wheelchair?"

"You're standing a few feet away from her- of course I remember."

"And you remember feeling so sorry for her, because you and Fiyero and a dozen other students were off to the Ozdust ballroom and leaving her behind, right? So, do you remember the lucky Munchkin you arranged as her date- the one who'd been asking you for a dance earlier that day, perhaps?"

Glinda's jaw dropped; her eyes widened in realisation. "Biq?" she whispered.

"It's Boq," Chopper replied, his voice resolutely polite. "Or it was, anyway. I changed my name- in case you hadn't noticed."

"But... but... but that means that the Tin Man must be... "

"Just like me, yes. But then, you've probably noticed he's utterly insane by now; still serving the Witches even after all that they did to him. So many years of servitude to the Wicked Witch of the East, so many years enslaved to a spoiled, bullying cripple, it drove him around the bend and up the spout- only reason why the poor fool's still at her beck and call."

"She has a name, you know," said Elphaba quietly.

"A name which she no longer deserves," Chopper shot back.

"And why's that? Is it because of what she did to the Munchkins or what she did to you?"

"Both."

"And you don't think that was at least partly your fault? I mean, you did break her heart, Biq."

It was about one of the most childish attempts at a distraction that Elphaba had ever made, but she knew that it had worked: Chopper's left cheek was beginning to twitch. "I've already told my drooling imbecile counterpart this much: your sister never had a heart to break."

He turned to Glinda, sighing bitterly. "As for you, Glinda, you wasted far too much of your time trying to make the little harlot happy; you wasted even more of it by taking Elphaba's side."

"And why's that, may I ask?" said Glinda indignantly. "I've been friends with her since university-"

"So was the Glinda I knew; look what good it did her. She died in my world- because of you," he hissed, rounding on Elphaba. "She was murdered because she took your side, and because you couldn't be bothered to save her life- one of a series of innocents you corrupted then abandoned to their fates: the Lion, Dr Dillamond, Fiyero, Glinda, all of them discarded by you!"

"That's as maybe," Elphaba replied coldly, "But I'm not the Elphaba you knew, Biq."

"Bullshit. You're exactly the same: same thoughts, same mind, same filthy, distorting influence... exactly the same. But you're going to die a bit differently this time; you're not going to die peacefully or gracefully. You're going to die screaming in pain and anguish, with your sister's death still fresh in your debased brain. And you'll thank me for it," he said, turning to Glinda with sudden optimism in his voice. "One day you'll thank me for it. Her influence is a disease, a plague; why else would the Wizard in my world kill himself? Why else would his counterpart here defend her?"

"You're crazy," said Glinda. "You're completely and totally out of your mind, do you know that?"

"On the contrary, Glinda, I see things more clearly than I ever could have before my transformation." Chopper's voice was distant, almost ethereal. "I can recognise the corruption she spreads- like black veins twisting through people, through building, whole countries, even. And I can see it in you, but you can be cured. You can be redeemed... and all you have to do is trust me." He extended a hand. "Please," he whispered. "I've wanted to help you in any way I could ever since I met you; I won't abandon you like my counterpart did; I won't break your heart, I won't betray you, and as long as I live, I will never hurt you. Just... please, trust me."

There was a deathly pause, as Glinda exchanged glances with Elphaba. Then, her wand swished upwards and a beam of intense light shot in Chopper's direction- perhaps the most powerful magic that Glinda had ever utilised: it was clearly the same spell that she'd often used to cut the ribbon at opening ceremonies, but deliberately overpowered to such an extent that Elphaba actually felt it rip through Chopper's magical defences and start cutting through his right shoulder.

A moment later, Chopper's right arm hit the floor with a clatter.

As the echoes died away, he looked down at the severed limb with an expression of profound disappointment. "Not a wise move, Glinda."

The arm let out an earsplitting shriek of metal on metal, and began clawing its way across the floor with astonishing speed towards Glinda, clearing the last few feet with a pounce; it didn't quite succeed in grabbing her by the neck, but it did manage to latch onto her arm and began swiftly grappling its way towards her throat.

Elphaba immediately stepped forward, chanting the words of a spell that would flatten Chopper into a hubcap. But Chopper had been ready for the magical onslaught this time; his left fist swung around and crashed into her side with a gruesome crunch of splintering bones. As she collapsed to the floor, flickering in and out of consciousness, Elphaba realised somewhat abstractly that her ribs had been broken, which might explain why she was having such difficulty speaking the next words of the spell. Through the veil of flickering lights covering her eyes, she saw that the deranged tin man was now going through a speedy but methodical check of all the door locks, pausing only to retrieve his axe along the way.

Then, he began the slow, leisurely stroll towards Nessa, humming tunelessly and swinging his axe cheerfully to and fro; with the Wizard dangling helplessly from a sconce, Glinda trying to flight off the disembodied arm, Elphaba in too much pain to concentrate on magic, and all the doors locked, nobody would be able to stop Chopper from killing Nessarose. He could afford to take his time.

Now looming over the divan, Chopper looked contemptuously down at the comatose figure lying upon it. "If only you were awake," he mused sadly. "I'd have the chance to explain how much I lost because of you and your sister." He raised his axe, and-

There was a deafening crash, followed by a loud, inarticulate scream as a gleaming silver blur dashed into the room as fast as its crooked legs could carry it; even though the intruder didn't bother to stop moving, Elphaba already knew that it was Boq- battered, dented and his magical defences currently hanging in tatters, but very much alive and pissed off. His path carried him across the room, giving him just enough time to snatch the renegade arm from Glinda's throat before he dived at Chopper.


Boq was beyond furious; he was beyond apoplectic; he was in the throes of a rage so potent and tempestuous that the only word for it could be "apocalyptic." It wasn't because he'd a chance to listen to whatever Chopper had been rambling about as the others tried to fight him off or negotiate with him or whatever they'd been doing; it was because, as he'd been hauling himself out of the crags below, he'd been thinking about Chopper's response to his one attempt at communication:

"The little bitch didn't have a heart, you self-deluding little traitor; I lost so many years of my life to the cripple, and what did I get in return? Nothing but this body and the chance for revenge- which the little whore invalidated by dying."

Not a single thought of remorse or regret; just deluded self-interest.

It was loathsome.

It was disgusting.

Worst of all, Boq knew that it was the kind of dark and unpleasant train of thought he himself would have entertained in the days before his transformation.

After all, Chopper really was just another version of him, wasn't he?

And it sickened him: seeing all his bitterness, all his selfishness and cowardice magnified by a thousandfold and glazed with a kind of rambling madness that seemed so appropriate to his personality, it nauseated Boq. The fact that this vision of what he could have been was trying to kill Nessa only stoked his hatred further. By the time he'd arrived back inside the castle and found his way to the right corridor, he was in the grip of a fury that Elphaba would have been proud of.

He wanted to see everything about this thing, this echo, dead.

He wanted to see that smiling, self-righteous face pounded flat, and the body torn to shreds.

Now, back in the present, he lunged at his other self with a scream of hatred: he barely registered the fall to the floor, the surprised look in Chopper's eyes, and even the struggling of the disembodied arm. He only knew that he was hitting him with it, again and again and again, first puncturing what little remained of the mystical defences, then thundering down on Chopper's tin, again and again, crumpling it and eventually breaking through it, tearing down into what lay beneath. And every time he landed a blow on the other Tin Man's skull or his torso or any other part of his body that happened to be within reach, he attacked every part of himself he'd come to despise: every stupid mistake, every selfish decision, every mad aspiration, and every self-pitying whine he'd uttered when it had all gone to shit.

And it came as something of a surprise when, after five minutes of this, Glinda's voice abruptly cut through the bloody haze surrounding his brain: "Boq..."

Somewhere in the depths of his battered tin skull, a long-dead thought process sparked to life, exclaiming, she remembered my name! But Boq very quickly stamped the guttering thought into oblivion almost immediately; he'd long since abandoned his misguided fantasies of managing to earn Glinda's attention, and anyway, he had his duty to Nessa to attend to. Then, he realised that Glinda had something other than his name:

"Boq, I think he's dead; you can stop hitting him..."

He looked down at the figure of Chopper, and realised that Glinda was right: his counterpart was lying dead before him, his body crumpled and his skull all but ripped apart, his badly dented eyes staring blindly at the ceiling. And it could have been the way his face had bent under the last onslaught of punches, but he appeared to be smiling- as if not comprehending what had just happened.

Slowly, he rose from the corpse and turned to the others, and assessed the situation: the Wizard looked shaken, but otherwise unharmed; Nessa was very much alive, though still unconscious, of course; Glinda was unhurt apart from some scratches around her arms and neck; as for Elphaba, she looked to be in serious pain, but she'd at least managed to clamber to her feet. As Boq watched, she staggered over to Chopper's mangled body, and waved a hand: instantly, it exploded into flame.

"Just to be safe," she said through gritted teeth.

Boq watched as Chopper's remnants slowly melted away, and found himself unable to suppress a sigh of relief, for not only was the defective bodyguard dead and Nessarose safe, but somehow, he felt as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders; the guilt and shame over his misdeeds had lessened, and he felt closer to true freedom than he'd ever felt in his entire life. Of course, he still had to wait for the remaining sixteen days of Nessa's coma to pass before he could truly feel at ease...

As Glinda fussed over Elphaba's injuries, the Wizard was clamouring to be helped down from the sconce. Eventually, Boq hobbled over and untangled him from the wall fixture, all the while trying to pretend he wasn't enjoying the looks of terror the aging fraud was sending in his direction. "You know," he said, as he tottered back towards the two Witches, "I think it might be time we continued negotiating. After all, we never got around to your demands before."

Elphaba took a deep breath, and winced. "Were the words "I never want to see you again" so hard to understand?" she snapped irritably.

The Wizard once again looked aimlessly about the room for support. "Glinda," he said desperately, "Could you-"

"Would both of you calm down, please? Elphie, you wanted this meeting in the first place; why have you changed your mind?"

"Because he claims that he's my..." Elphaba suddenly looked as though she'd swallowed a lump of arsenic. "... my father."

Glinda blinked. "Look," she said wearily, "I've just been attacked by the right arm of a psychoticated bodyguard from another world, found out the Tin Man used to be somebody I knew back at Shiz, and now you spring this on me. I am well and truly lost; could somebody please explain what's going on?"

"So long as we can at least try to talk things out afterwards," said the Wizard, "I've no problem with that. Besides, I think Elphaba needs to hear the whole story."

Elphaba sighed deeply. "Very well then; I suppose it couldn't hurt..." She winced. "And speaking of which, I think I might need something for my ribcage before we continue. Oh, and Boq?"

Boq snapped to attention.

"Could you please put that arm down?"