A/N: I did actually write out the contract and put it in the chapter, but you can skip it if you want. It's not that important to the basic understanding of what's going on. I just felt like writing it. Also, there won't be any kind of romance in this story. Not only can I not write it in the first place, but there are only three main characters: I'm not the hugest fan of ScarxEnvy, and me having a romantic involvement with my own imagination is a bit messed up (not to mention the fact that I can't imagine myself in a relationship with either of them; frankly the idea weirds me out. My affection for them is more of a friendly, and in Scar's case respectful, admiration) But there will most certainly be friendly fluff; that, I can write. Thanks if you actually read this whole thing, now enough of my blabbering and on with the chapter!


Muses O' Doom

Episode 02: Uh Oh


Ieva dug through the messy piles of paper on her desk while Scar and Envy watched on curiously. Finally, she found what she was looking for: a small piece of paper containing two blocks of text and several lines at the bottom. She displayed it to them triumphantly, "Found it! This is the contract. It says what you guys have to do here in the paragraph at the top, and what I have to do in the paragraph under that one. We all sign down here," she pointed at various points on the page, "Here, you can read it," she held it out, and Scar took it and began to read, with Envy looking over his shoulder. This is what it said.


CONTRACT OF THE MUSE-NESS

This contract hereby signifies that you are officially Ieva's Muse(s). As such, you are required to do the following: help Ieva with her writing by inspiring her with ideas and such, help Ieva keep her imagination running properly, and do what she tells you (provided that her request is reasonable). You retain the freedom to: go /do wherever/whatever you want in any free time you may have, argue with Ieva as much as you want (provided that it does not get in the way of your duties), play immature pranks on Ieva, and cause Ieva minimal harm (e.g. bonk her on the head). You may not: cause Ieva any sort of bleeding-involved or lasting harm, attempt to sabatoge Ieva's writing, or break Ieva's stuff on purpose.

Ieva, in signing this contract, hereby states that she will do the following three things. One, she will protect you from any sort of danger that stems from your job as her muse should you be unable to protect yourself for whatever reason. Two, she will not cruelly abuse you. Three, she will steadfastly defend you as best she can in any debates concerning you or your actions. Ieva is permitted to: draw you as an adorable chibi, give you friendly hugs when she feels like it (this will probably be often; she likes to hug things), and laugh at you if you do something she finds funny.


The two of them read it carefully before Scar handed it back to Ieva.

"It seems fair enough."

"Sounds like a good deal to me."

Ieva smiled broadly, "Yay! Now we all sign," she grabbed a pen off the desk and scribbled her signature, and Scar and Envy did the same. She clapped her hands together and Envy flinched, but didn't flee under the desk again, which was an improvement. Once again Ieva smacked herself in the head, "Darnit, I did it again! Sorry, Envy…wait. Why is it so quiet all of a sudden?"

"…I think the horde of girls outside have gone…I don't hear any more banging or screaming."

"You're right, they have stopped!" Ieva walked carefully over to the door and put her ear to it, "I don't hear anything out there. Do you think they've given up and left?"

"Really? They've gone?" Envy's voice was hopeful, and he nervously crept over next to Ieva to listen at the door as well, and the two of them held a quiet conversation, "How can we be sure?"

"We could always do what penguins do."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"Shove someone outside to look."

"WHAT?"

"Not you, Envy, don't worry."

"Then who? You?"

"Uhhhh…I don't really want to go either…"

"Coward."

"Oh look who's talking, Mr. Please-Don't-Kill-Me."

Scar sighed again, "You are both arguing like an old married couple."

Ieva and Envy looked at him, then at each other, and leapt away from each other with a loud 'GWAH!' of weirded-out-ness.

"Don't say creepy things like that, Scar-san!" Ieva rubbed her hands against her head vigorously in a frantic attempt to scrub the mental image from her brain.

"No kidding," Envy wore an incredibly silly look of horror mixed with disgust.

"Well, now that I have your attention," as Scar spoke, Ieva swore he had an aura of smugness about him, "I will go out and look."

"Really? Scar-san, that's so sweet of you!" Ieva squealed and threw her arms around him from behind in a friendly hug. Scar stiffened, not really quite sure what to do; Ieva soon realized this and jumped backwards, looking a little embarassed, "Sorry, Scar-san. Maybe I should have warned you, but I do tend to hug people and stuff sometimes. It's kind of a habit."

Envy seemed to be returning to his normal self, because he was snickering at Scar, "Hehehe…the look on your face…"

"Oh, stoppit Envy," Ieva shook her finger at him before turning back to Scar, "Anyway Scar-san, are you sure you want to go? It could be pretty dangerous…I mean, they're crazed fangirls, and there are a whole lot of them…"

"I believe that I can take perfectly good care of myself," Scar lifted his right arm, but Ieva shook her head.

"Actually, that won't work on them. You see, they aren't actually part of this universe, and as such are pretty much immune to stuff like that. It just doesn't affect them. But they can still affect this universe…it's really pretty complicated."

"I see…that complicates things somewhat. Can they be hurt at all?"

"Well, yeah, you can kick them and punch them and stuff, and it'll hurt…but not much."

"That explains why they didn't even get injured when I was fighting them," Envy said thoughtfully, then saw Ieva and Scar staring at him, "What? You thought I turned into a terrified nervous wreck immediately upon seeing them?" a few seconds of silence, and Ieva coughed. Envy sweatdropped and muttered sarcastically, "Thanks a lot…"

"But I should be perfectly fine. It isn't me that they're after, now is it?"

"Not unless the Horde also contains Barry the Chopper fans or people who still hold an unfounded grudge about the whole Nina thing…so okay, but I'll look outside first," Ieva unlocked the door and poked her head outside, looked from left to right, and pulled it back in, "They're not there as far as I can tell."

"I will go out and search further. It is possible that they are lying in wait somewhere for us to let our guards down," and with that, Scar walked out the door, then turned back, "I will be gone for a time. When I return, I will knock on the door. If I have not gotten back within an hour, something has happened to me."

"And then we come rescue you!" Ieva added cheerfully, "Good luck, Scar-san!"

Scar looked like he was about to reply, but shook his head slightly and continued walking. Ieva waved goodbye before closing and locking the door again and turning to Envy, "And now, Envy, we clean!"

"What?"

"Now that you guys are here, we can actually make this place look like a studio, and add extra rooms and stuff. But we have to clean this room first. I'll go get the mops!"

Envy sighed as Ieva ran off to a corner where random stuff was piled in a heap and began digging through it. This would take a while.


Scar had only gotten about thirty feet from the door when he passed a very narrow, very dark, intersecting alleyway. He squinted into it, but was unable to make out anything from where he stood. That was when he made the biggest and most common monster movie mistake ever: he went alone into an unfamiliar place with only one known exit where he couldn't see his surroundings clearly and there was no room to fight effectively should he run into something that he knew was probably in there. Too bad Scar doesn't watch monster movies, or he would have probably not done this. But what's done is done, and the error proved to be fatal.

After he had gotten some ways into the alley, he tripped over a tightly stretched length of blackened rope that he had been unable to see. Before he could get up, he was tackled from behind by what felt like possibly fifteen people. Scar was caught by surprise, and the attackers used the second of delay in his reaction to their full advantage by swiftly looping rope around his wrists and tightly securing them behind his back. A hand was clapped over his mouth to prevent him from calling for help. Crimson eyes widened as Scar fully realized the extremity of his mistake. An observer would have heard the sounds of a brief struggle and a few muffled yells, and seen several flashes of red light before everything was silent. Within minutes the only thing left of Scar in the alley was a slightly damaged pair of black sunglasses that were soon picked up and moved to sit conspicuously in front of the entrance.


It had been nearly an hour and a half since Scar had left Ieva and Envy, and Ieva was getting nervous. Finally she dropped her mop and nearly sprinted out the door; Envy sighed and followed a bit more slowly. It wasn't long before she found the sunglasses.

"Oh my GOD! SCAR-SAN!" Ieva, needless to say, completely flipped out, "THEY GOT SCAR-SAN! WHAT'RE WE GONNA DO?" suddenly, she stopped yelling. The tips of her ears twitched as she heard the sound of a footstep coming from the dark alley next to her. The footstep was definitely not Scar's. She whirled to face Envy, who was still about five feet behind her, "RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIFE!" she shouted as she began to race back towards the safety of the studio.

Unfortunately, she had been far too close to the alley entrance to get away; the Horde overtook her within seconds, but not before she took the key to the door out of her pocket and tossed it to Envy, who had gotten enough of a head start to make it back inside. But before he closed the door, he gave one last look back at Ieva, who was kicking as many shins as she could in a futile attempt to get away. She noticed this, and yelled at him, "I'll be fine! It's you they're after, so close the door you idiot!" she noted with some happiness that Envy looked a little bit upset as he shut and locked the door. She muttered to herself as she kicked shins left and right, "Aaaawwww…he does care!"

The Horde was muttering amongst itself, and as one all the girls in it turned to Ieva, "You keep us from our vengeance? You must be punished!"

"Uh oh…" Ieva squeaked as she was lifted and carried swiftly from the studio to an unknown destination. This was not good.


End Episode: 02

A/N: -gasp- Oh no! Scar-san! -eyes glow menacingly- Must…rescue…
Scar: Rescue would be nice. You've told me already what's going to happen to me, and I'm not going to enjoy it…
Envy: She told me what I'm going to be doing too, and frankly I feel a bit-
SSHHHH! Don't spoil it for the readers, Envy! By the way, I drew some absolutely adorable chibis of you two. I can't post some of them until after the next chapter though…but I put the others on my Homepage gallery so everyone can see!
Envy: I know; you were griping about how my hair was absolute hell to draw all yesterday. -smug grin- And I got more pictures, too.
Scar: Ieva, you need to go work on Grudging Respect! I know this is fun to write, but I don't want to be stuck as a cat in fanfiction limbo forever.
All right, all right, I'll go work on it right now. Well, after I answer all the nice reviews I got, anyway.

DrainOnSociety: Poor, poor Envy. He was too freaked out to transform. Of course, who could blame him? I won't steal it, you go on ahead. Envy is such a wonderful muse. :D And yes, I challenged Envy to a thumb war. We couldn't decide who actually won, and we had to go bother Scar, but he didn't want to get involved so we argued for a while. XD
SmallestMechanic: Ah, but he soon discovered that he couldn't maul the fangirls, and so there was no choice but to flee. Glad it was funny.
Scar's fangurl: Ack, of course not! That's just disturbing…although I did see some really sweet, adorable pictures while I was looking at fanart…but that's beside the point!
Hinote-chan: Whoo! Another Envy supporter! I have a propaganda sign in my Homepage Gallery if you want to go see.
Anasazi Darkmoon: Yay for fellow Scar fans!
Halfmetal: Go on ahead. So long as it isn't too much like mine, I think it's really neat that you would. It's cool to see that Scar is your muse as well.
FantasyFreak: Thanks. :)