Disclaimer: If it were mine, would I seriously be writing FANfiction?

Alright, so the last chapter only got 2 reviews again so I'm wondering if I'm loosing people. Maybe this is already too long...which is not good because there is a LOT more to come.

lizziemagic and BeautifullyTragicGirl, you two are AWESOME! here are the answers to your reviews:

Beautifully Tragic Girl: I think Fiyero and Elphie have a great gene pool, yes, Raye is quite like Elphie; First there's the obvious, second I figured that she had an upbringing that might have resulted in a similar sort of personality even if it is for different reasons. Anyway, hopefully you'll like this chapter and its little addition from the original story, just as well.

lizziemagic: Here's your Fiyero appearence! Enjoy!

So, please read and review everyone, tell me what you think about the appearence of some other characters in this one please!

Pt 1 ch 8

The little band that went on 'tour' consisted of Madame Morrible, Annette, Liir, Raye, a few Animal servants (Which included Jack) and one or two of the current crowd that was 'in favor' with the King and Queen of the school.

One of the last stops along the way was in Munchkinland of all places. Liir was curious to see the place that Elphaba was born but in which she would never set foot. He didn't see why she had such an aversion to it quite frankly. The people were quite…well tiny (He didn't know where her 5'9 came from) and perhaps somewhat comically deranged but they were at least—oh who was he kidding. His mother would hate it here. For such strange, quirky people they had an alarming intolerance for anyone different to themselves. Not to mention the state of blissful insanity they seemed to keep themselves in.

Lady Dorothy was…interesting though he couldn't help but wonder if she had all her marbles. She was clearly an adult (he would guess at least 30) but she dressed like a child of about 7 and acted like a child of about 5. And the Lion! Liir could see why the Animals thought of him as a traitor. Every word that came out of his mouth that wasn't some terrified squeak might as well have been something out of a propaganda pamphlet. To be fair though, Liir didn't know what they had done to make him act this way. For all he knew the Lion could have been threatened or hurt beforehand. He certainly seemed shaken enough (permanently, it seemed) for that to be the case.

When the carriage pulled into the square the munchkins darted into the grand palace-like building and came out with a woman behind them. Her hair was ringleted and pulled into two pigtails on either side of her head and she was carrying a little jewelled basket. Her dress was blue and white and clearly made of silk but was in a child's cut almost, with the skirt reaching only to her knees with short, puffy sleeves and socks which went half-way up her calves in a rather childish way. On her feet were a pair of dazzling ruby shoes—the only age-appropriate article in her entire wardrobe. The thing was, she clearly was an adult, around 30 if they were any judge. Liir and Annette had met the Lady Dorothy before, but only once and their tall, slender friend had never encountered her.

"Oh my!" Dorothy cried when she saw them, hopping up and down in excitement as the group started to climb down from the gilded carriage

"Ponies and dresses and gold, oh my! Oh my lady Madame Morrible you have come back to munchkinland! Oh I am so happy to see you!" she simpered as she rushed over to the weather witch. The Press Secretary gave her a sickly-sweet smile that made Rhonaraye gag slightly, a look of disbelieving disgust on her face as she watched the scene from her position just in the carriage door, her head bent slightly to go through the door.

"Oh Madame, have you been able to talk to the Wizard yet? Or the Lady Glinda? Have they found a way to get me home to Kansas and Auntie Em? Oh have you? Have you?" the woman asked with bubbly hope.

"But my dear, this is your home. What about the munchkins? They all love you my dear, as does all of Oz!" Dorothy's face fell and her bottom lip started to tremble.

"She's gonna blow…" Annette murmured to Liir out of the corner of her mouth.

"It's like a train wreck." Raye muttered to no one in particular as she continued staring with that somewhat revolted look "No matter how much you want to you just can't look away…"

Morrible too, seemed to have sensed the rising tantrum and quickly jumped back in

"Oh no, now none of that! We must keep the Governor happy, now mustn't we? My dear, come along I've brought you a gift." Immediately Dorothy's face lit up and started bouncing again

"Ooh! Is it some more hair ribbons? Ooh, is it jewels? Oh I love presents! Ooh, please can I see it now? Please, please, please? Its so difficult to wait! Oh I do love you Madame!"

Raye was unable to keep quiet any longer

"I'm sorry, how old are you?" she asked the "Governor".

"Miss Throular!" Morrible reprimanded harshly as she whipped around.

"It's a valid question." Raye retorted dryly as she motioned with one hand towards Dorothy before finally stepping out of the carriage completely. She was still taller then their teacher by several inches. The Press Secretary decided to let this one go for the meantime and bustled off to see to Dorothy's present. As she did so Liir and Annette sidled up to their friend

"That's the person supposedly running this place?" the mage asked as she pointed to the woman skipping along with her basket.

"Haven't you heard all the stories about the Governor of Munchkinland before?" The girl with the blue streaked blonde hair asked

"Yes but I thought they were exaggerating." Raye replied "Apparently they were being kind."

Dinner was an absolute nightmare. Dorothy had few topics of conversation, none of them very interesting, the Lion shrieked at everything, Morrible was gloating and the Lullaby League were constantly trying to perform for them along with the Lollypop guild. At one point Raye asked Liir who had let the munchkins into the helium. This made the teenagers (and Jack) all snigger, to which they received a glare from their teacher.

Raye apparently found it too much and the prospect of staying in the place for another 2 days disturbing to say the least. The next party awoke to find Rhonaraye gone. The Innkeeper, when asked, told them that she had left a couple of candle-marks (hours) before dawn gave them a note in her neat and almost elegant handwriting,

I have decided to take advantage of an existing shortcut and the fact that we are staying a few days in the general area. I am going to visit home.

I won't hold you back, if I do not return before you are scheduled to leave, then be my guest, I shall catch up.

Sincerely,

Rhonaraye Throular..

Morrible was quite upset at this letter, it was almost as though she were under the impression that the Teenager was going to run away and was determined to prevent such a thing.

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Rhonaraye had actually told the truth in that note. Not the explicit truth, as she had left out all but the bare essentials of information, but she was indeed headed towards the cottage in which she had grown up. Her childhood would have seemed too outrageous for any of them to believe anyway. After all, who else could say that they had refined the art of layered clothing in winter because a fire was too risky for a man made of straw? Who else (in these dark times) had received a high-quality education from a Goat? Who'd been protected by a Bear? And who had been raised by all three in a secluded corner of the woods surrounded by trees and wild animals?

When the teenager neared the trickle of water that should have been the stream she froze. Smoke. She could smell smoke! And where there was smoke…

"Farro!" she breathed as she broke into a run, leaping over the stream and fallen logs, not stopping until she reached the pitiful scene of the clearing in which the cottage stood. The trees surrounding it showed marks of a fight, some of them felled completely while others had had branches ripped off messily. Many sported deep grooves in the bark. Crouching swiftly with a silent grace she ran her hand over the tips of the blades of grass that were still left, finding a pool of something sticky. Her heart pounded as she dipped her fingers into it and brought them closer to her nose to inhale the scent. She breathed a sigh of relief. Oil. Not blood. At least it didn't look as though anyone had been dragged off or hurt except for a machine…or a man of tin. Regardless, damage to property or injury to that particular agent were of little concern to her. If it was the latter, she viciously hoped that he had been reduced to scraps. Not a desire she was particularly proud of, but not one the Mage could in all honesty deny either.

The door had been ripped right off its hinges and was lying a few feet away, along with some other pieces of broken furniture.

The cottage, or at least the room connected to the door, was a mess, but again, the signs pointed to acts of vandalism, not violence against another living creature, except the plants of course.

A sound from further into the little house caught her attention, it sounded like bickering.

"…co-ome o-on, le-eh-et's see if we can ge-eh-et him u-up." An elderly voice said with a familiar, bleating stutter. It seemed to have been aggravated by recent stress and fear as it was apt to do.

"I don't know what good that'll do." Commented a gruffer, yet somehow more feminine voice, "He's lost nearly half his stuffing by the look of it, poor blighter." Now Rhonaraye was following the two voices until she reached what had been their "sitting room", in which a very elderly-looking Goat was lifting a scarecrow off the ground. A large, majestic Bear was standing up to her full height and held a sofa in the air by her front paws while looking down at the other two. Clearly the piece of furniture had been pinning the scarecrow beforehand.

"It was a damn fool thing to do—even if it was brave of him."

"What was brave of him?" Raye asked in a slightly quavering voice as she rushed in, dropping her bag to the floor with a low thump as she rushed to her guardian's side. The two Animals whipped their heads round in shock

"Raye!" the Bear gasped, throwing the couch to the side so that it landed with a crash as she rambled over to her 'cub', enveloping her in a true bear-hug. The force was just short of enough to crush bones and was welcome, even if slightly uncomfortable physically.

"What are you're doing here?" Ralimla asked as she pulled back slightly.

"Visiting you! I was in the area. I guess you didn't receive my last letter, but never mind. What happened?"

"It was B—The Ti-in Ma-a-an. He a-a-and a troop of Ga-ale Force soldiers ma-anaged to find the co-otta-age." Dr. Dillamond told his ward.

"So I see." She replied, kneeling down by the scarecrow.

"We were fortunate." Ralima put in. "A Bird saw them coming and warned us."

"Farro got us out through the passage, but he stayed behind." By now the Bear had opened the secret compartment full of straw and the three of them started stuffing the scarecrow, giving him fresh straw in a similar way to a human being given a blood transfusion.

"He thought that, since the T-t-tin Man was an old acqua-qua-quaintance and was looking for him, it wouldn't be too bad for him."

"Didn't the last time teach him anything? Lurline's sake I thought I hated T Woodsman enough for his books. Looks like being an author hasn't done anything to curb that thing's blood thirst!" Raye grumbled angrily as she continued with the task of re-stuffing the Scarecrow. Her other two guardians looked at her with surprise. They'd no idea that she had remembered anything from that last incident. She'd only been around 5.

Just then 'Farro' started to make a sound similar to a moan. What his name actually was, Raye wasn't all that sure. When she was little she must have heard it somewhere and imitated it, but her attempt had come out as 'Farro' and the name had just kind of stuck.

"Rhona-raye? What are you doing here?" he asked, jumping up now that he had been filled with straw again

"Long story Farro." She said with a smile. He returned it, but then seemed to remember something which made his face fall.

"Raye, the tree in the back…" he trailed off upon seeing the expression on her face. There was a tree out behind the garden, a small thing that was only about the same height as her. When she had been young a great oak had stood there until one stray bolt of lightening from a particularly nasty storm had split the old trunk in two. The young girl had been heartbroken. She had clambered all over that thing and even started to build a treehouse. So Farro, hating to see her upset, had taken the (then) 11 year old girl and together they had taken cuttings from the tree and planted them around the area, placing one in the same spot its parent had occupied.

But now, as Raye helped Farro out to the back door, she saw a partial source of the smoke. Someone had drenched the tree in what smelled like cooking oil and set it alight. What remained in the aftermath of the incident was a charred, whizened imitation of a plant, hunched over in shame at the violation that had been metted out upon it and its fellow trees. Rhonaraye felt it call out to her, she felt the pain of the forest around her and responded instinctually. She allowed the scarecrow to slip his arm off her shoulders and grope for one of the many caches of spare straw hidden among the cottage for emergencies such as this and continued to re-stuff himself as the young redhead walked to the blackened remains of the tree like on in a trance. The redhead reached out and put one hand on the trunk of the small tree. The moment her hand made contact with the now coal-like bark a bright emerald glow spread out from her palm across the rough surface until it encompassed the entire tree, all the way down to the roots. From there it rippled out through the ground into the roots of other trees until the bright green light radiated all around them from the damaged trees. Rhonaraye's eyes rolled into the back of her head though she remained standing with her hand on the bark as the Goat, Bear and Scarecrow watched. Before their eyes, split tree trunks sewed themselves seamlessly back together, burnt, shrivelled things straightened and thickened, branches reached and leaves sprouted.

The tree in front of her had received the same miraculous treatment, only 3 fold. The formerly 6-foot sapling was now nearly twice that height with a base that would take two of them to reach around the trunk to touch their fingertips together. Slowly, Raye's eyes opened and she blinked in slight shock, yet even then she knew that she wasn't quite done. There was one spell that she had already memorized from her Grimmerie. She whispered the incantation, one hand on the bark of the trunk as she did so. The now (almost) full-sized plant shuddered again and the blossoms all took on a kind of glow to their colour whilst the bark seemed to have a silver sheen to it.

Be safe, friend. She told it silently. To her surprise it 'answered'.

I intend to be. You will always be welcomed here. It was only then that the teenager looked around to see that the entire grove now had the silver sheen to their barks and glow to the leaves. The damage done to them also seemed to have repaired itself.

Maybe that's why I'm a little dizzy. She thought to herself. The Lein Tree alone still glowed faintly, but then again, they were known for their magical properties.

"I had no idea I could…" she trailed off

"We did." Ralima told her as her three guardians went over to her. She didn't bother to respond to that. Of course they had. What watchful parents wouldn't?

"Come with us." Farro said after a mew moments, "It's time for us to show you the place where you were born."

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"Well, she isn't in any of the houses near here." Liir told Morrible as he walked in through the door. She didn't seem to have heard him, so engrossed was she in the scrying tool she held in her pudgy hands

"I know she's around somewhere! Where is she? Show her to me now you stupid piece of glass!" the older witch snarled at the mirror she was looking into. Clearly arguing with an inanimate object didn't seem at all strange to her.

"Madame Morrible?" he asked hesitantly. The fish-like woman spun around, her overly-made-up face now the model of civility as she addressed the teenage boy.

"Liir!" she said cheerily

"Um, Madame, why don't we wait a little before we send out the bloodhounds? She did say she was just going to see her family, and it's not like she got to leave The Academy over Lurlinemas to do so."

"Yes, of course." The Press Secretary said, "But we must make sure that she is safe."

"Oh she's fine." Liir said before he could stop himself. The forced smile disappeared from Morrible's face

"What do you mean by that?" she asked him. Now the boy had to grasp at an answer that would have him sent for 'psychiatric evaluations'

"W-well if she wasn't," he began, "We would know, right? There would probably end up being some kind of explosion this time!"

Thankfully this seemed to satisfy his Sorcery teacher and he could leave without too much more of a fuss.

"Farro, where are we going? I have to get back before they leave again." Raye reminded the Scarecrow as he led her to a familiar cave near the cottage.

"Don't worry Rhona-Raye, you'll be back in time." He said as he leaned over a set of stalagmites and pushed one of the ones in the back of the cluster to the side. The ground shuddered a moment before sinking in a fashion that created a spiraling set of stairs. Farro leaped down them quickly and easily, disappearing into the darkness, the teenage girl close on his heels. However, before she even reached the halfway point, the Scarecrow had come back up carrying something dark and pointy which he handed to her. She felt cloth between her fingers, and as soon as light touched it, she discovered that it was some sort of...was it a hat?

"Um…what exactly is this…hat?" She asked skeptically, holding the black pointed thing at arm's length to scrutinize it. The scarecrow let out a chuckle. It was then that the girl looked around at the swirl of colours in front of them.

"Is that a Portal?" she asked him in a whisper, shocked. Gates were extremely rare, very powerful creations of magic that were scattered throughout the realm Oz. It was said that the Three Great Mages of the Ancient times had set a system of them up so that they could watch the world and protect it. Whether or not such stories were true, no one could prove. In the present time it all boiled down to whether or not you believed in such things.

"Come." The Scarecrow said as he stepped toward it. The girl paused a moment but then took his offered hand and stepped with him through the portal.

So there we have it, bit of a cliffy for you there. Please tell me what you think.