AN: Oof. Okay, I haven't updated in a while, and I'm sorry about that. I have been busy, especially since I had two mock TAKS tests in the past two weeks. One today, and another exactly one week ago. Today's was math and it took FOR-EVER. I swear, my head was about to EXPLODE. Luckily, I took Wicked with me to read after I finished (we're only allowed to either read or sleep after we're done), so I was able to quickly and seamlessly immerse my self in the girls' life book-verse life at Shiz University and melt into Ozian society within a matter of minutes, which helped take the stress off IMMENSELY. Anyway, I'm working on a Percy Jackson story. It's about what I think will happen when Annabeth, Leo, Jason, and Piper go to the Roman camp to get Percy and the events that will take place when the people from the two camps meet for the first time. However, I'm questioning whether or not I should post it. I'll give a few more details to anybody who sends me a PM about it or mentions it in reviews, but...yeah. I need opinions on this. Also, I have a question for you, but since this is starting to turn into a very rambling AN, I'll save it for the end of the chapter. Thanks for being patient and waiting for updates, my pretties, I'm glad that you haven't abandoned me!
xoxo,
Maggie & the Gang
"RISE AND SHINE, EVERYONE!" Maggie yelled as she came into the room. Alice wasn't far behind, beaming her signature smile as the two of them sat down on their lounge. Boq and the Dinglesquats came up from the basement, and everybody else came out of their bedrooms.
Maggie was wearing a grey Defying Gravity t-shirt with clock gears along the bottom that were a darker grey, and the famous silhouette, in green, of course, was large and in the center with "Defying Gravity" going down the left side, also in green. Her thick curly hair, usually shoulder length, had somehow grown to the middle of her back overnight.
The thing that was most different, however, was her hair color. Maggie was a natural brunette. Her hair was a dark shade of brown, just a shade or so darker than Nessa's. But today, instead of the usual dark brown, it was black, like Elphaba's. Solid, pitch black.
She had on black fingerless lace gloves, and her nails were painted differently. Instead of in the black-green-black-green pattern, they were black with green-and-gold sparkles.
She was wearing a thigh-high navy blue sock on her right foot, a light grey knee-high on her left, and black Converse All-Star high-tops with sharpie doodles all over them.
The Wicked Gang plus Two Dinglesquats didn't know this, however, because she had on a floor-length black skirt the socks and shoes, as well as a black cape. The top of a black spaghetti strap was peeking above the neckline of her t-shirt.
"Okay!" Maggie said. "First review is from Elphaba wannabe-aren't we all?" she added with a laugh. "Okay, here we go. Fiyero, if you had to pick your favorite thing about Elphaba, what would it be?"
"Oh, jeezum that's hard." Everyone laughed a bit. "Um...She...her...Okay, hang on, gimme a minute." Everyone fell silent so he could think. After several moments, he finally said, "As far as her personality, I'd probably have to go with the way she never gives up. Like, ever. And other than that-I know she's not gonna like this, but I'm gonna say it anyway-her skin." He braced himself, but surprisingly, she didn't smack him.
"Elphaba, what's YOUR favorite thing about Fiyero?"
"Sweet Oz, how do you expect me to answer a question like that, it's impossible!" There was more laughter, then silence again for her to collect her thoughts. A smile spread slowly onto her face and her eyes moved in Fiyero's direction.
"His sexy blue diamonds," she said, causing Fiyero to turn bright red. Boq wolf-whistled and all the girls went "Wooooo!" like on T.V shows. Fiyero turned an even brighter shade of red and grabbed a pillow to bury his face in, but Elphaba's skin remained a shameless emerald green.
Once the giggles and laughter had subsided, Maggie looked at the clipboard again. "Oooh, this is a fun one!" she said, her hazel eyes getting wide with excitement. "What, what is it?" Alice said. "Lemme see, lemme see!" She put her chin on Maggie's shoulder and read it. "Oooh, I wanna ask this one!"
"Go for it."
"Okay, okay! Glinda, if you could kill one person, who would it be?"
Glinda kept a calm face, her hands folded in her lap, as she said without hesitation, "I think we all know the answer to that." Vicious grins turned in the Wizard's direction. Glinda's mouth turned up at one corner ever so slightly as she continued to look directly forward.
"Nessa, what did it feel like when Elphaba put that spell on your shoes?" Maggie continued. "Um, were you not paying attention to the play? I specifically said, 'Ah! My shoes! It feels like...like they're on fire!'"
"Nessa! Don't be rude," Maggie scolded. "Boq, what did it feel like to become tin?"
"Uh...very difficult to describe." he said. "Dinglesquats, you've been dared to make out for 10 minutes. If you refuse, you get locked out of the basement tonight and Emmett will be in here with you. If either of you falls asleep, he'll wake you up in a very unpleasant manner."
The Dinglesquats looked at each other, as if trying to decide whether it was worth it or not.
10 minutes later...
"Aaaand STOP!" Maggie said as she pushed a button on the stopwatch she was holding. "Okay, let's see...Next review is from gettera! Skipping that first one" Alice snatched the clipboard. "HOW DARE SHE!" the small vampire screeched. Maggie patted her head as if she were a pet before speaking again. "Gettera, just so you know, I've read the book, and I know all about Turtle Heart and the glass beads.
"Gettera asks, 'Nessa, in the book, you have no arms. Why do you think that is?'"
"Because, when my mother was in labor with Elphaba, the dim-witted, nosy, and probably thieving little midwives made her chew those ridiculous pinlobble leaves so she'd go unconscious. After Elphaba was born, she obsessed with the things and started chewing them day and night, just like in the play she chewed milkflowers. The stupid leaves did what the flowers did, but in a different way. The milkflowers simply took my ability to walk, which I can live with for the most part. The pinlobble leaves, however, took away my arms before I was even born! Thank Oz that part of the novel isn't true!"
"Okay. Elphaba, in the book, your father felt some fleeting affection for you as a child, at least until his Unionism obsessed younger daughter was born. How do you feel about this affection, brief and minor though it was, being taken from you in the play? She also says, 'Jeez, I feel like a shrink.'"
"It depends on which part of my dual-universe personality has more control. When it's the bookverse me that dominates my personality, it's a bit upsetting, but when the musical-verse me has dominance, I'm pretty much indifferent."
"Another one for you. What are your personal thoughts on fan fictions, particularly..." Maggie shuddered in disgust. "...Gelphies..."
"I actually don't really have that much of a problem with them, just as long as I get to make out with Fiyero at one point or another, but...the, um...other pairing..." Elphaba was careful to avoid using the actual name of it. (AN: *shudders* not a fan of that pairing. *backs away from pairing slowly*) "Well, um...If it's strictly friendship, fine, but otherwise...No. Just...no." She shook her head. "Agreed," Maggie, Fiyero, Glinda, and Alice said together.
"Wizard the Gizard," Maggie and Alice said together. Then Alice asked the question. "Please give us your thoughts on being Elphaba's father in the musical! Also, Ms. gettera would like to comment that, like our friend Maggie here, she is terrified of heights and would like to know what exactly you were doing in your hot-air balloon in the first place when you accidentally landed in Oz."
There was a pause while the Wizard thought about how to answer. "You can tell us about the hot-air balloon first, if that would be easier," Maggie said finally. He nodded. "It would, actually, thank you. I was just riding in it for pure fun. I always liked the way everything looked from so high up, and it's nice and quiet, too. Very peaceful. I've always been able to think more clearly when I'm in my balloon."
Maggie nodded. "I can't really handle loud noises," she said. "I have a lot of neuro-sensory issues and anxeity-based disorders and stuff. One of them doesn't let me talk at school. I've always been more...at ease when I read books. They give me a way to escape the real world, the real me, and become somebody else for a while, live someplace entirely different. With books, I don't have to be the shy girl who keeps to herself and blends into the background, or the girl who doesn't talk.
"That's also why I write stories. When I'm alone in a quiet place, like my bedroom, I'm peaceful and relaxed. I have an easier time thinking when I'm by myself, especially after I've been reading or writing for a while. I can pick up a book and start reading, then I don't put it back down until hours later. I lose track of time. It's that kind of thing, right?"
"Exactly." Maggie nodded. "I can relate to that on some level, surprisingly enough." Her hazel eyes flickered over to Elphaba. She noticed the expression on her face and decided it was time to get the other question out of the way, the one she knew had to be gnawing on everybody, herself included. "And...your thoughts on...you know...What about that?"
There was another pause. "If you don't mind, I think I'd like to get back to you on that. Next chapter?" Maggie chewed her lower lip. Finally, she sighed. "Alright. Fine. But just this once, and don't think this means I'm going all soft on you!"
Maggie glanced at the next question. "Oooh, one for me, fun!"
"What's it say?" Nessa asked. "She's asking about Nor and Liir. Well, gettie-is it alright if I call you that?-I'm going to assume you mean this as in 'why aren't they here?' Well, I'll tell you; it's because neither of them was in the musical, and I'm really only focusing on musicalverse. However, I may decide to do another one of these that leans more towards bookverse characters in the future, or maybe more minor characters, including ones that perhaps didn't make it into the play, and if I do, Nor and Liir will both be in that one."
She glanced at a few papers on the clipboard, scribbled something down, then paused before scratching it out and continuing. "Glin, this next question's for you. Same question given to Elphie about fics."
"No Gloq, and unless it's strictly friendship, no...that other pairing mentioned in the question." She shuddered, along with Maggie, Alice, Fiyero, and Elphaba. "Boq!" Alice sang out.
"First off, no nervous dodging like with the Bessa thing last chapter, that is a specific request from gettera. The question is...Maggie, clipboard, please?"
"Oh, sorry." Maggie handed it to her. "Let's see..." She flipped the page. "Ah, here it is! Okay, it says, 'In the book, there's no Ozdust-'"
"Which there's not," Maggie interjected. Alice nodded once. "Right. Anyway, she says, 'and you grow up to get married,' which, Maggie, we know you know," she added before the younger girl could say anything, which they all knew she was going to. "'Although you are 'not the same as he-' a.k.a you- 'were before the Philosphy Club.' TRUE THOUGHTS PLEASE!' And again, no nervous dodging."
"Remind me who I marry?" he asked. "Milla!" Maggie said, not one second after the last syllable left Boq's mouth, which just proved further to everybody present that she truly was a hard-core Wicked fanatic that knew everything there was to know about it as far as both universes went.
"You marry Milla, she's a girl who didn't make it into the musical, but in the book, she played basically the same role as Pfanee and ShenShen. In the book, Galinda had three cronies, for lack of a better word. She only has two in the musical, but there's three in the book, Pfanee and ShenShen, who are the ones from the musical, and then there's also another one that didn't make it into the play, and that one is Milla."
The fourteen-year-old brunette said all of this in a single breath without pausing or slowing down once. Elphaba raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Impressive," she said. Maggie smiled. "Thank you," she responded with a small curtsey. She'd jumped out of her seat when she'd yelled "Milla!" before launching into her monologue, so she was already standing up.
"Uh, well," Boq said after he got over his shock of seeing the true extent of Maggie's Wicked knowledge for the first time. "Well, gettera, to be honest, I don't actually think about the book-verse all that much. See, we all have kind of a 'multiple personality' thing going on where we each have two personalities. One personality is closer to what we're like in the book universe, and the other one is closer to what we're like in the musical universe.
"We sort of go from one personality to the other mostly at random. We have some control over it, but not much. When our 'book-verse persona' is more dominant, we act more like we do in the book. But, when our 'musicalverse persona' has dominance, we tend to behave more like we do in the musical. My book-verse persona isn't dominant very often for some reason. I'm usually in my musicalverse persona. I guess one of them is just a little stronger than the other. That's the only thing I can think of that might explain it.
"Anyway, to answer your question...Since I'm not in my book-verse persona very often, I don't ever really think about being married to Milla, so my thoughts on that really aren't very insightful, and I don't think they're the kind of thing you're looking for. Sorry."
Alice was fascinated with Boq's explanation of the different personas and had been hanging on his every word. "Woooow," she said when he finished. "That is so. Cool!" She turned to Maggie, smiling. "Just wait'll I tell Carlisle, Raven! Imagine what he'll say! Maybe he'll even wanna do research on this kind of thing to find out more about like he and Edward did when-"
"Yes, Alice, we get it," Maggie interrupted. "Who's Carlisle?" Glinda asked. "Carlisle is the leader of Alice's coven," Maggie explained. "They think of him as their father. He created most of them, meaning he made most of them vampires. He did it to save their lives, though. For example, Emmett got mauled by a grizzly bear, and his mate, Alice's sister, Rosalie, found him and carried him over a hundred miles back to Carlisle. He was dying, and if Carlisle hadn't turned him into a vampire, there's no way he would've survived."
Alice nodded. "Since we don't drink human blood, we have an easier time blending in with the humans than most vampires do. And as part of our human charade, Carlisle works as an emergency room doctor. He likes to research this kind of thing. That's why I thought it'd be interesting to him."
Together, the girls said, "Carlisle doesn't end lives. He saves them."
And that was the end of the conversation.
Alice glanced down at the clipboard. "Oh! Maggie, this dare looks like fun, can I please read it?"
Maggie looked over Alice's shoulder at it and laughed. "Sure, Ali, go ahead."
"Yay! Alright, after this, we'll be done for the chapter. Gettera has a dare for you guys. It says, 'Dare for all except the Dinglesquats: Climb the chandelier and try to pull it down on the Dinglesquats' heads, like in Phantom of the Opera!" The song "Point of No Return" from the 2004 movie version of Phantom suddenly started playing. Maggie started singing along with Christine.
"How long should we two wait before we're ooooooone? When will the blood begin to race, the sleeping bud burst into bloom, when will the flames at last consuuuume uuuus?"
She stopped there, but the music kept going. Everybody started looking around at each other, evil smiles on their faces. "Maggie," Nessa said, "let me have my slippers."
*About 5 minutes later, because that's how long it took to get everybody safely onto the chandelier. We have magic, what do you expect, ten hours? Thirty? A gajillion?*
Phantom of the Opera music continued to burst from the stereos at full volume as the Dinglesquats struggled against the chains holding them to the floor, both of them going into full-on red alert panic mode.
All the furniture had been pushed against the walls and the rest of Maggie's friends who helped her control the room had come down to watch the action, including Jasper and Emmett. They all stood together off to the side, watching eagerly and cheerng.
Elphaba, Fiyero, Glinda, Boq, and Nessarose (equipped with the Ruby Slippers) were clambering about on the chandelier in a way that reminded Maggie of Chistery and the other flying monkeys trying to find a creative way to send it plummeting downward. (Maggie had told them they weren't allowed to go near the fixtures that held it into the ceiling because that would just be too easy and spoil the fun, so they were having to find some other way)
"I blame you for this," Morrible told the Wizard. Maggie heard this and laughed. "For the love of Oz, Glinda!" Elphaba cried. "What in the world are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing, Elphie?" the blonde retorted. "Trying to take the chandelier apart piece by piece, obviously." The taller woman raised an eyebrow at her friend. "Glinda?" she said. "You do realized that what you're yanking on isn't a crystal, let alone part of the darn thing, right?"
"Don't be silly, Elphie! What else would it be?""Um, how about a dead bug that's gotten wedged between two pieces of crystal?"
Glinda froze and looked at the object. "...It's not an opal?" she asked. Elphaba snorted. "No! What in Oz's name made you think that?" Glinda said nothing. Instead, she just glared murderously at Fiyero, who had somehow managed to get his arm caught in the framework of the chandelier doing Lurline knew what, and was now struggling to get it out.
Then, she slowly looked back at the thing her slender fingers were curled around. Her blue eyes widened in horror. She screeched at the top of her lungs, making everybody stop what they were doing and cover their ears. (Poor Fiyero, however, could only cover one ear, since his left hand was busy being stuck, and as a result, he felt one eardrum shatter. Poor guy)
She promptly scrambled down from the chandelier and ran into her bedroom, still screeching, presumably to scrub her hands until they turned raw and red in the sink. (AN: Yeah, that's right, I'm so awesome that I even gave everybody their own private freaking BATHROOM attached to their bedrooms!)
Once they could finally hear themselves think again, they all went back to what they'd been doing before. (Vamp!)Bella chewed on the edge of her nail as she watched the remaining members of the Wicked gang move around on the chandelier. Boq and Elphaba were now both trying to help Fiyero free his arm, though they weren't having much luck, while Nessa continued searching for a way to detach everything from the ceiling.
"Wait a second," she said suddenly. Maggie turned to look at her. "Mm?"
"They're trying to make the chandelier fall, right?"
"That's the idea, yep!"
"What about them?" Maggie scrunched up her brow in confusification. "Prettygirlsaywha?" she said.
"Well, I mean, they're actually on the chandelier, so when it falls, won't they go with it?" Maggie started laughing. "Silly Bella! Don't be ridiculous! They'll be fine! They'll all just...go into...free...fall..." Her smile disappeared. "Oh...Styx."
Thunder rumbled in the distance, but Maggie ignored it. She opened her mouth to speak, but was interruppted when suddenly...
*CRASH!*
She and Bella turned, Maggie's smile instantly returning.
Horrible Morrible the Absolutely Deplorable and Wizard the Gizard were in a crumpled heap on the floor beneath the chandelier. Glinda was standing in her bedroom doorway, eyes wide, torso leaning forward, her arms out in front of her. Her hands were positioned as if she was trying to catch something, and the others were suspended in the air several feet off the ground...
...in a Really.
Big.
Bubble.
Maggie smirked at Bella.
"Told'jya they'd be fine."
AN: Betchya didn't see that one comin' huh? XP Anyway, like I said earlier, I have a question for you, my pretties. Okay, here it is:
Who would win in a fight? Me or a hobo?
Before you answer that, I made a list of opponents and the results that I came up with, like for example, "Fiyero vs. Gale Force captain" I crossed out "Gale Force captain" and wrote off to the side of it, "Fiyero kicked his butt." And, also, I have "Rylee vs. her shoe" and next to that, I put, "Wait, WHA?" And a sharpie beat Lee's shoe, next to which I wrote, "Sorry, shoe." Anyway, you get the idea. So, like I was saying, keep in mind that I got beaten by not only writer's block and plot-holes on my list, but also by a flat surface (I tripped and face-planted), a wall (I ended up saying hello with my face), and myself. Before you go, "Wait, how can you beat yourself in a fight," let me explain: I talk to myself. Not only that, I also get into a debate with myself, lose, then refuse to speak to myself for the rest of the day. In fact, yesterday morning, I had a debate with myself about pumpkin pie versus strawberry pie. See, Myself told Me that pumpkin is better. Then Me said, "No, strawberry is." So it went kind of like this:
Myself: No, no, you see, pumpkin is much better than strawberry because strawberries have seasons that they grow in, therefore, you can't make the pie without the berries of straw, so pumpkin is better.
Me: So? Pumpkins have seasons, too. Plus, you also get jello with strawberry pie, because that's what holds all the berries of straw together.
Myself: Yes, but does that taste good with whipped cream?
Me: *drooling* EET EEZ DEELEE-SHUS!
Myself: True, but pumpkin pie has the creamy part of the pumpkin.
Me: ...I hate you. I'm not talking to you for the rest of the day.
So, anyway, before you decide, keep that in mind. But, me or a hobo? Who would beat who?
xoxo,
Maggie & the Gang
Disclaimer: Me: HEYYOEVERYBODYGETINHERE!
Everybody: *gets in here*
Me: I OWN YA'LL!
Ya'll: NO YOU DON'T!
Me: *checks list titled "Stuff that I Bought from People on eBay"* Let's see...Elphie wand...*mutters to self* ...SHIZ!