Disclaimer: I got off my ass and updated. I hope you're happy, I hope you're happy now... Wicked and RENT are not mine. -LostOzian
The OzDust was represented by streamers all over the place. They weren't all the nice pretty crepe paper streamers (ribbons, ties, a few of Maureen's glittery belts, the belt out of Mimi's jaguar coat, and a three oddly colored shoelaces were given equal glory to the pieces of pink, blue, and white crepe paper streamers all over the stage. In the sixteen beats before the party 'started', Collins, Benny, Angel, Mimi, and Mark all ran about on stage to get al the decorations up, then all but Benny and Collins cleared stage to start the party.
The two began the solo dances, looking like someone had put a mirror down the middle of the stage and only one person was dancing. Roger and Joanne joined them soon, and they danced as a couple, and after that Mark rolled Mimi onstage in the Nessa Chair. Nessa herself took this as the beginning of the Great Bessa Scene of Musicalverse, and took Boq's hand. Mark was standing about awkwardly, watching Joanne, and Mimi sipped at an empty Deer Park paper cup.
"What's in the punch?" she asked to make conversation. Mark didn't look at her.
"Lemons and melons and pears," he recited.
"Oh my," Mimi said innocently. Elphaba hit her leg in an unexpected display of violence.
"Wizard of Oz!" she hissed. "I hate Wizard of Oz! Completely screwed everything up."
"Calm down, Elphaba," Fiyero said, holding her close. "It was supposed to be funny." Elphaba just fumed as Mark started singing, "Listen, Nessa?"
"Yes?" Mimi perked up. Mark seemed to be turning red, like Roger's mashed potatoes and ketchup analogy of fourteen chapters ago.
"Uh, Nessa, I've got something to confess-a reason why, well…" Mark seemed to become increasingly awkward as he continued singing, and Mimi didn't really seem to notice. She just kept making puppy dog eyes at him, waiting for him to get to the point. "Why I asked you here toni-i-ight. Now, I know it isn't fair…" Mimi looked down, finally 'understanding' what Mark was saying.
"Oh, Boq," she said. "I know why." Roger led Joanne off toward stage left, behind Mimi but in Boq's line of sight.
"You do?" he asked, worried that she would hate him forever, or something like that.
"It's because I'm in this chair, and you felt sorry for me," Nessa looked up, teary-eyed, and Joanne and Roger started kissing. "Well, isn't that right?" Mark looked at her, and was 'distracted' in the middle of his line by Joanne and Roger sucking face.
"No, it's because… uh…" he seemed to swallow and work up the nerve. "Because… because you are so beautiful!" He knelt down to prove his point. Mimi was over the moon. Not in Maureen's protest style, but really, really happy.
"Oh, Boq! I think you're wonderful!" Mimi sang.
Maureen reached thirty on her paddleball, and bit her tongue to keep from screaming out, "I DID IT!"
"And we deserve each other, don't you see this is our chance?" Mimi continued.
"There are three or four songs that just keep getting reprised over and over again…" Fiyero noticed. 'Listen, Nessa' was one of them.
"You know what?" Mark said, letting go of his nervous awkwardness. "Let's dance."
"What?!" Mimi exclaimed, not entirely sure if Mark was speaking to her.
"Let's daaaaaaance!" Mark held out the note for a while, taking Mimi's chair and pushing her out in between Benny and Collins, breaking the mirror look.
"Not on the soundtrack!" Glinda noticed. Elphaba rolled her eyes.
"Of course. The soundtrack edits out all of the major plot." Elphaba said.
Mark and Mimi danced for a little while, and everything was going well when Mark gasped. He skipped a turn, instead bending down to kiss Mimi's cheek, and then pushing her toward offstage, leaning heavily on the chair.
"Mark, what are you doing?" Mimi hissed.
"I did something to my ankle," Mark whispered back. "It hurts."
"Oh," was all Mimi could say. If Mark was hurt, she couldn't really say 'suck it up', because that would be mean, and it wouldn't do for her to injure one of her dancers further. Though really, if Mark couldn't dance, that threw everything off. "Okay, um… Could you tough through the end of Dancing, and then sit out classroom scene, and be back in action later?" Mark just nodded, and Angel the Savior took her entrance a little early and simply took her time going to interrupt The World's Worst Non-Canon Couple Ever in the middle of making out.
Boq forgot he was holding Nessa's hand, and Nessa conveniently forgot to remind him.
Angel had the time of her life pretending to make her nice comments mean comments, and then make the mean comments nice comments again so Joanne wouldn't suspect her of being evil. Joanne had the time of her life going through her carefully self-scripted internal monologue of guilt and revelation as to the nature of the human race, and Roger had the time of his life not pressed up against Joanne's face. Finally, Roger said his lines and he and Joanne started dancing again, only to be interrupted by Maureen and the Boho Hat.
"Who in Oz is that?!" Roger exclaimed, and in his interpretation of Fiyero, decided that he had fallen in love with Elphaba then and there just because she was like nothing he had ever seen before. In explaining it to Mark, he had said, 'Y'know, like skin, skin, skin, skin, GREEEEEN, skin; so you'd immediately go look at the green, right?' Mark had smiled and nodded and filmed something, letting Roger's nonsense go in one ear and express lane out the other.
"Don't you know, it's the girl who has a straw fetish…" Fiyero said, displaying his Aesthetic Manifestation's knowledge of how the show ends.
"It's only a straw fetish because it's you," Elphaba said. "Nobody else could pull it off."
"Well, he's going to try to…" Fiyero pointed to Roger.
"'Try' being the key word there." Maureen was dancing the funny little hat dance, and Joanne was going through another self-scripted internal monologue, with Roger's prompting with little lines about 'your fault' and stuff like that. Finally, Joanne broke from the sidelines and joined her girlfriend.
"May I… cut in?" she asked nervously. Maureen looked at her for a long time, making the lesbian lawyer squirm a little, then took a baby step back for Joanne to do whatever she wanted.
Joanne started slowly, unsure, her every instinct telling her to turn back as guilt drove her on. Maureen watched as her dance was taken and developed further, turned into something elegant and refined. She joined in, and the two were dancing together. And then Benny and Collins joined in, not really dancing with each other yet playing off each other wonderfully. Roger found his place somewhere in the scheme of things, and Mark found a way to push Mimi around with a bad ankle and join in.
"Dancing through life!" Everyone sang enthusiastically. "Down at the OzDust, if only because dust is what we come to!" Glinda was practically in tears seeing the moment she and Elphaba became friends done so beautifully. "And the strange thing, your life could end up changing, while you're dancing…" Everybody did their final spins, Mark sufficing to spin Mimi around in her chair while standing rather than the choreographed running around it and spinning it with him.
"THROUGH!" everyone belted, but it ended too soon, and Glinda was left singing by herself in the audience.
"Throu…" she died out quickly though.
"Glinda, let them sing." Elphaba chided playfully. "It's what they're pretending they're getting paid to do."