Part 2 Familiar tales of different perspectives

Chapter 1: The Witch, the Storm and the O.Z

She was wrapped in darkness and silence. Her mind was blank and she couldn't remember what had happened before. Besides that, her head was spinning and her muscles were hurting. Something was wrong and an unknown fear was slowly crawling into her consciousness. With a racing heart and a silent scream on her lips she opened her eyes and raised her body.
What she saw stopped her from screaming and took all the breath from her lungs.

She was lying in a pile of wooden planks... parts of her house... their house... her parents' house. Besides that there were other belongings of her home. Everything being ripped or dirty from the wet underground. What scared her more than the view of her destroyed home, though, were her surroundings. Something that seemed to be a wood, a clear blue sky, but with TWO bright suns shining above her. The whole world was still spinning lightly and she knew that she was feeling dizzy but when that wore off the two suns were still there.

"A storm is coming."

She needed to find her parents and get out of this nightmare, if only she could remember what had ripped them apart. She seemed to recall that there had been men wearing long black coats who attacked them and that her parents had told her to jump into a storm but this sounded all much too crazy. On the other hand there were still the two suns and the lack of memory so maybe it wasn't that crazy at all, considering the circumstances.

"Mom? Dad?" She heard her voice for the first time and it was horrible. It was much too croaky and she sounded much too lost for her taste. With careful but determined steps she walked through the mess that once had been her home. With wide eyes she stopped at a place without trees where she could observe the suns more closely. Their color was a bit different from the sun she was used to as well.

"Where am I?"

The shock and the surprise captivated her, but suddenly she was sure that she had heard something. The creatures that were hiding in the trees were masters of silence, but D.G. was a girl with good ears. Not knowing what would await her and being frightened by the unfamiliar surroundings she grabbed a long stick, a branch of a tree, and held it in front of her as a sign that she knew how to use a weapon, and that she wasn't a little helpless girl from Kansas, but a fighter.

"Hello?" She screamed, but nothing came back in return. She looked to the sky and at the tress but spotted nothing. Was she going nuts or were her senses playing tricks on her?
There had been a noise, a strange one, she simply knew it.

"Hello!" A louder scream but still no response. Fear was building up in her chest and her eyes went wide. She walked deeper in the woods and hoped to find something there when she suddenly heard faint voices. So there was something, or rather someone. More than one.

She turned around in a quick move, and came face to face with two little men who were hanging on ropes and whose skin was colored in blue and red. The wore strange clothes with feathers and they had pointed sticks. If their size and color weren't so funny she would have felt threatened by them.
"Oh, you have to be kidding me!" Even more little men fell down the trees in graceful manners and now surrounded her.

"Watchful, be watchful," One of them ordered the others and everyone pointed their sticks at her.
She shooed them away with her own "weapon", but their size was misleading. Those little men didn't fear her as much as she had hoped for.

The blue guy now warned his fellows that she might turn them into some kind of creature that she had never heard of before. She was then addressed by the red guy in front of her.

"Who are you?" He said with a deep husky voice that didn't fit his size.

"I'm D.G.. Who are you?" She responded, feisty.

"I'm red-head resistance fighter of the Eastern Guild."

"Don't speak to her of who we be," The blue one interrupted, and D.G. noticed that he was much too suspicious for her taste. In rhymes he accused her of trickery which drove her mad since she had just lost her home and parents. This was more than a crazy dream, this was something far worse.

The situation got weirder when the creatures called her a spy from the sky and got closer with their pointed sticks. Now D.G. knew that talking to them was useless, so she slowly walked backwards in the hope that something would stop the little men from threatening her.

"No. I'm not a spy, I'm not a spy," she kept saying with her stick raised, until her feet got caught in a rope and something made of ropes came out of nothing with a loud swoosh . A net! She had walked into a trap. With a loud scream she tried to defend herself but she knew that a loud voice would not help her to escape from this kind of prison.
Before she could do another thing, her world went black again.
O.O.O.O.O.O.O.o.O.

When she awoke from darkness the second time that day, she found herself in some kind of wooden cage that was hanging extremely high above the ground between a thick collection of trees. Outside the cage, the blue guy and the red one were standing on a bridge watching her intensely. Around them a whole village seemed to exist between the trees which fascinated but also confused her.

"Will Azkadellia attack from the East?" The red guy barked at her from the distance. It annoyed her that they again were asking her questions that she couldn't answer and throwing random names at her after they had captured her didn't really help to raise her mood.

Whoever this Azkadellia was she didn't have an idea what the little man was talking about, nor did she want to answer this stupid question.

"Who?" She asked, confused with a pissy undertone.

"The sorceress Azkadellia, the one for whom you spy," the blue guy responded equally annoyed. So he was the one who accused her of being a spy. She silently wished that she would get her chance to beat him up after escaping from this cage.

"Okay, how many times do I have to tell you guys that nothing you say makes any sense to me?" Maybe she could get out of here by trying to be the men looked thoughtful for a moment.

"Perhaps she is just a girl," the one called Red-Head suggested .

"Yes, I am. I'm just a girl." Relief got evident in her voice. They finally seemed to believe her.

"Azkadellia has raided almost all the villages searching for the stone, are we next on her list?" The red guy interrupted her joy. Or maybe they still didn't believe her. What had she walked into?

"I don't know about a list, but if this is how you treat strangers it's no surprise you have enemies," she answered wickedly before her gaze froze when the blue guy eyed the inside of her locket. It showed a picture of her and of her parents.

"You know, can you just please put my locket down it has sentimental value." She couldn't believe that those ... those Munchkins had locked her up and were now even invading her privacy by stealing her belongings. Instead of showing some understanding and kindness they seemed to get even nastier when she had finished 'threatening' them.

Now they accused to have seen her parents being accompanied by god knows whom and they definitely couldn't drop their spy theory that was slowly but surely going on her nerves. The news that her parents were alive was a relief but the little dwarves and their questions made her angry.
Before she could protest though, they were suddenly talking of heating blades and squeal as you peel which made her feel rather uncomfortable. What were they up to now? The blue man dropped her locket. She could only watch it falling down the trees and landing somewhere on the too far away ground.

After their promise of punishing her to get some information out of her, they left her alone for good. At least she was suddenly feeling much lighter, no matter if they wanted to cook her or not.

The silence was much better than those annoying questions that she couldn't answer anyway. She was hoping that the silence would help her unravel some of her own mysteries. However, she couldn't help herself but feel a presence around her. When she listened closely she could hear low sounds of rustling.

She raised her head and looked at the ceiling of the cage to assure herself that she wasn't alone. When she spotted the second inmate of their prison she suddenly knew that she wasn't in Kansas anymore.

After rising from her place close to the dizzying hole in the middle of the cage, she observed her company more closely.

"What are you doing?" She asked out of curiosity even though she could tell that she wouldn't get a proper answer, at least none that would help her.

"Up here? Little... ankle biters-," the last word was screamed and addressed to the little men, "-thought it would be funny to keep me hanging around. Loosen that robe and I might have the last laugh." The creature formed a laugh with its stitched mouth before it faced D.G. with wide... well, buttons and raised patch eyebrows.

"Come on doll, if mom and pop are really on their way to Central City then you are falling further and further behind." Now it seemed to mock her by making a face that looked rather silly, since the burlap crinkled in the most uncommon places. However, she didn't let herself distract by his appearance and listened to his words carefully.

"You know the way?" She asked cautiously. She had experienced a lot in the last hours, she had jumped into a storm, been captured by little painted people and now she was talking to a living animated Scarecrow.

"Sure!" He assured her with a look that seemed to resemble that he was hurt by her distrust and much too sure of himself. "But it's kinda hard to give directions like this... unless you have a better offer." Now he talked to her mockingly as if she was a little child which only raised her anger, but he was the first one willing to help her, so she kept to herself that she seemed to have stumbled upon the most rude Scarecrow in this whole dream world.

Reluctantly she opened the knot that was holding the ropes together and that were binding the Scarecrow to the top of the ceiling. When the creature was released it sank to the floor with evident sounds of much effort which amused her a little.

"What the hell," she murmured.

"What? You're not so hot on first glance either, honey." It or he responded in that sarcastic manner that she was slowly getting used to. The Scarecrow organized its ragged clothes before it cocked its head and looked at D.G. with those hollow button eyes that in addition with his fake eyebrows reasembled confusion.

"What is ... is there a problem?" He seemed to have noticed that she was staring at him, so she decided that telling the truth would be the best way to get some answers.

"You're a scarecrow," she said matter of factly.

He blinked at that and D.G. was even more surprised that he could actually do that with his buttons.

"That is a marvelous deduction, I must say, but let me repeat my question: Is there a problem?" He repeated now sounding a bit more forceful rather than questioning.
"Well you talk and move and you're much too nasty for something that can only be out of some fairytale, so I was wondering myself how it can be that you're capable of all that," D.G. replied, and for the first time she could see something like sadness crawling on his burlap face.

"I haven't always been like this you know... at least I think so ... my memory has been better too, I guess. This is all the sorceress doing," he mumbled, and D.G. couldn't believe the sudden change of his attitude. Maybe he wasn't such a nasty guy... thing ... after all.

"Why would she do that?" She asked curiously while the Scarecrow removed the last remains of the ropes. When they dropped to the floor he eyed her with a serious glance.

"Because of what I know... or used to know... whatever it was," he answered shortly, which made her hope that he wouldn't always talk in riddles like that.

A silence feel between them – an awkward moment in which neither of them knew what to say until the Scarecrow suddenly spoke again, this time a broad smile on his face.

"Name's Glitch, on account that sometimes my synapses don't fire right," he paused for a second before he repeated himself "sometimes my synapses don't fire right." What an odd being he was.

"You just said that," she answered with a laugh on her lips. The Scarecrow was shocked and confused at the same time when she told him that he was repeating himself.

"Did I? There you go, glitching again!" He snickered and shook his head.

"And here I was thinking this nightmare couldn't get any weirder." Seriously, a talking Scarecrow with the strange name Glitch had offered her to help find her parents that had been captured by men that had arrived in Kansas through a storm. Was there anything more awaiting her?

"This isn't a nightmare. This is the O.Z ... The Outer Zone. Used to be a piece of heaven too , until Azka-dee got her claws into it." All sarcasm and joy had left his voice and were now replaced by anger and grief. The name that he mentioned sounded familiar to her.

"Azkadellia!"

"Hmm"

"The sorceress of darkness"

"Yup."

"Village raider… the one who curses people."

Glitch nodded to all of that before he froze in his tracks when they could hear the fighters from the Eastern Guild yelling that Longcoats had entered their territory. They watched as the little men ran around furiously and D.G. herself got nervous at the prospect of being caught by those stinking men that had taken away her parents.

She looked down on the floor and suddenly something hit her. She kneeled down and started to climb out of the hole that was covering most of the cage. The Scarecrow seemed to be confused about that

"What are you doing?" He asked with an unsure undertone.

"I've got an idea," she yelled back before she jumped out of the cage and grabbed the edges of it with her hands. Now she was hanging outside, her feet and body dangling in the air.

"Hello... D.G... it's too high to jump," she could hear from inside the cage and she was too distracted to ask herself how it was possible that Glitch knew her name although she hadn't introduced herself.

Now wasn't the time for questions like this. She swung herself back and forward until the cage was moving enough to bring her closer to the bridge. Glitch was rambling and cursing nonstop but she ignored him. One last swing and her feet touched the wooden planks of the construction and with a brave jump she landed on the other side.
The Scarecrow was holding onto the bars of their cage as if they were lifesavers and staring at her pleadingly.

"Come on we don't have much time," she encouraged him and although she had doubted that he would do it, he climbed out of the cage and jumped after her.

When they were both standing on the bridge they looked at each other for a second before they quickly fled the place. Luckily there was a rope that had appeared out of nothing and that would lead them away from the resistance camp and from the Longcoats which were examining the grounds.

A.N: Okay well that was the first chapter of the second part…uhm I'm kind of afraid that I now lost the few readers that I had up to this point or that you want to strangle me for what I did to Glitch but I guess I have to live with that. I'm really sorry and I don't blame you if you don't like this crazy idea of mine but I wanted to give it a go and I really hope that someone likes it. The thing is that I didn't want Ambrose to turn into the Glitch we know because Cain shouldn't recognize him. Like in the original series they both should be strangers to each other and with all the Original Wizard of Oz stories and the background I chose for Ambrose it seemed like a nice idea to turn him into a Scarecrow. There will be explanations why he isn't a human anymore and other things will happen so please don't give up on me now. Also I need to say that I tried my best to add lines from the series but sometimes I had problems to understand what they were saying so I apologize if there are mistakes. Chapter 2 of Part 2 will follow next Saturday. Thanks for reading , I hope you enjoyed it.

PS: If anybody read my story 'You're my heart no matter what will be', they know that I used the idea with the Scarecrow before …I didn't intend to repeat that idea but it came in handy.