A/N: The chapter when Thea and the gang arrive in Malaysia. A little crappy, but I'll try to make it better. But still, enjoy! P.S., Chapter is completely Renamed and rewritten.

Disclaimer

I don't own Dodge or the Charger, they are registered trademarks of General Motors. The PS90 is a registered and patented firearm model of FN Herstal.

Chapter 2

Meeting The Guardian

Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Sepang, Malaysia.

Friday, August 14. 12.00 p.m. (Local time)

Thea's perspective

After a few hours later, we touch-downed on the runway, officially landing on Malaysian soil. It was hoped that Geronimo stuck to the landing and didn't feel terrified or experienced nausea, and thank Gouda he did. We stepped down the jet and walked on the tarmac of the airfield to the terminal entrance, being blown by winds. The sun was on top of our heads scorching hot as ever, at the same time, dark rain clouds covered the sky a few miles away, and we were lucky enough not to be extremely jet lagged.

"Search for the imported cars in the arrivals section! They should have arrived a while ago!" Geronimo informed, shouting because of the loud turbine noise as they moved to the terminal entrance.

"Have you got the keys?" I asked, shouting as well.

"They're in my pocket, hold on a sec," he said, reaching into his jacket pocket. He got a set and handed them to me. "Here!"

"How will we know how to get to our places?" I wondered again.

"The GPS is programmed with the coordinates to our destinations. All we have to do is drive to where it tells us to."

After speed walking across the terminal, we exited the arrival doors, seeing the white and red Dodge Chargers we were meant to drive parked directly at the road in front of the doors. Both had New Mouse City Interpol plates.

I pressed the alarm key to unlock the doors of my car and to know which car was mine, which was the red Charger. I popped the trunk open by pressing a button on the alarm keys and I set my pink compact carry on into it, then slamming it shut.

After the others did the same, we pulled out of the scene and activated our GPS system so it could guide us where to go. As briefed, I will protect, and the rest will handle The Technologists.

Arif Mansion, 1.25 p.m.

My perspective

My guardian had arrived after Interpol informed me an hour and a half ago when they landed in Malaysia. Agent Geronimo Stilton called, said that his sister, Thea will look after me. I saw her at my front gates as I looked out the living room window, stopping at my first line of defense, the spike strips. I assumed that she saw them by the way she stopped her Dodge Charger suddenly. I decide to call the car's built-in phone to get confirmation with the use of my microchip.

"Special Agent Thea Stilton?" I asked.

"Yes, this is Special Agent Thea Stilton," he answered. "Is that you Mr. Arif?"

"Yes, it's me. Sorry about the spike strips. I couldn't allow strangers to come to my home. But I'm familiar with you, so come on in. Park your car inside my garage." Then she drove in, onto my dirt-paved road in the front yard, after I deactivated the spikes of course.

The road split into two at a junction. One lead to the front door at a roundabout with a fountain in the middle of it, and the other road led to a dead end, used as a flower patch.

The garage as said in the last chapter, was underground. The entrance to it was the dead end road. She looked around as the road of the dead end began to sank, revealing a part of my garage inside. "Is that the garage?" Thea asked to confirm.

"Yeah, it is. Just drive into it," I resolved. And so, she drove in.

Arrows on the floor of the garage lead her to the guests' parking space. A spinning turntable. I came down from the elevator to welcome her to my home and assist her in any way I can.

She got out of her car and greeted me in sight. "Hello Mr. Arif! I'm Special Agent Thea Stilton! It's a pleasure to meet you!" We shook hands.

"It's a pleasure to meet you to Agent Stilton. And please, call me Danny," I said.

"Whoa , I did not expect such deep voice from you." Yes dear reader, I am a 13 year old whose voice is extremely deep for my age because of puberty. I'm turning 14 in the 31st. I'm also a little bit shorter than Thea.

"Glad you noticed, and do consider me as a friend, if you will," I insisted.

"Anyway, you can call me Thea," she said. "I did a background check on you and I found out that your father had inherited to you some weapons for you to use when you're old enough. You don't happen to have some here, do you?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. All of them are stored in the armory."

"Great, I'll have my brother to get a court order for you to carry a gun in public for your own self defense. It is illegal to own a gun in this country under the age of 18 right?"

"In some cases it's legal to own guns in the age of 16. It is illegal for civilians to own full-auto guns though."

"Good. I'm going to call Geronimo."

While she was talking to her brother, I wondered why my dad owned full-auto guns when we lived at America. He brought them back here to Malaysia. Strange, how did they get past the customs? Meh, never mind.

"Well, you want to see your room or what? J-Son!" I called. By the way, it's pronounced 'Jason'. It stands for 'Japanese-Security Online'. He's my smart home system. Programmed by me, with a little help from my Japanese friends of course. He speaks in a British accent.

"Sir?" J-Son answered.

"Would you take Agent Stilton's luggage to her room?"

"Of course, sir," he answered. He opened a little door next to the elevator as Thea got her compact pink carry on from the trunk. I told her to put it in the small space, and assured her that it would be in her room.

I took her back upstairs to the dining room so we could have lunch since it was in the afternoon. Then I took her on a tour around the house that took the whole day. Finally, I took her to her room, where she could settle in and rest.

"This is it, your room. Hope it's awesome for you," I said to impress. It looked I took her breath away, by the way she walked to every edge of the room. "If you need me, I'll be in my room, taking care of things."

"And if you need ME, I'll be in MY room," she answered, claiming the room to herself as she looked around.

7.00 p.m.

It was seven. I was busy fixing up dinner in the kitchen as Thea was busy communicating with Geronimo through FaceTime in the living room. In the kitchen, noises of steam, boiling broth filled my ears as I stirred a pot of tomato sauce for the pasta. All the herbs and spices made the cooking smelled so good, and it may have attracted Thea to the kitchen as she showed up beside me.

"Look what we have here!" she squeaked in reaction. "I never knew you could cook!"

"And despite all my press conference appearances, there's actually a lot of things you don't know about my personal life," I replied, closing the pot with a lid to let it boil.

"So who taught you?" she asked as we went to sit on the bar stools at the counter.

"Well," I paused to climb onto the stool, "the interest came to me when I just turned 11. My folks forgot to get a birthday cake, so they replaced it with something else. My mom cooked me my first plate of pasta. I've never tried pasta before that, so I'd give it a taste test. She said it was also her first time making pasta, and said she can't guarantee how it tasted. The second that string of pasta smothered in tomato sauce touched my tongue, it changed my life. I enjoyed it with my eyes closed and said: 'ma, this is absolutely delicious. I love it. Can you teach me how?' That was when I learnt how to cook, and every new recipe she acquired, I'd ask her to teach me how to cook it myself. Ever since then, I'd cook for the family every once in a while."

"If it wasn't for her, I couldn't be independent right now. I owe it to her, and I wish I could repay her back," I added, starring at the deep space.

"She sounds like a great mother," Thea commented.

"She was. You know, if she were alive today, I'd be celebrating her 42nd birthday last November the same way she did when I turned 11." I started to sound sorrow, but my mood was changed when the egg timer I set had rang. The sauce was done.

I got off my seat and took off the lid, it was bubbling as steam floated up. I turned off the stove and took a sniff. "Perfection..." I said. "Thea, grab a plate from the top cabinet for me, would ya? The pasta sauce is done."

"Can't you reach it?" she joked as she got off her stool.

"I'm five-foot-three, Thea. I can't reach anything past ten inches of my own height," I replied.

"Alright, alright..."

We had some discussions over our pasta dinner. This was one of them.

"Hey Danny," Thea began after swallowing her food.

"Yeah?" I responded.

"Geronimo briefed me that you were being hunted down because of the microchip in your head. He said that it could control electronics remotely."

"True," I agreed, scooping a mouthful into my mouth. "I'll demonstrate, take out your phone." She got her iPhone out of her pocket and set it on the counter. "Watch closely," I said. I gestured three fingers at the phone and channeled out commands from the chip in my head. I made the phone to unlock its screen, swipe the home screen pages left and right, activated the Settings app, and adjusted the volume.

"That's pretty cool," she commented with an amused smile.

"It takes the fun out of everything though. I got bored of the powers in a year since I got them. But I still use them every once in a while."

"How did you get rich so fast then?"

"There's a program that the creator of the chip made so that uploads all knowledge into my chip, then it sends it to the brain if the one in the chip gets lost. By that, I could understand everything. I had an interest for gadgets and video games, so I started to work with major electronics companies like Microsoft and Apple Inc. I currently work at Apple as a the designer of the iOS as you might know. Plus, the first person shooter games that I sold made billions more. And, my father was a weapons scientist that made him rich. So when he passed away, all of his fortune got inherited to me."

"So with the knowledge, have you invented stuff?" again she asked, chewing up her pasta.

"There is one, you see that thing on the far side of the counter?" I reached it and picked it up. It had a screen as big an iPhone and it had two electrodes on top.

"What is that?"

I picked the device up and held it. "This is a cloner. As the name implies, it clones stuff. Let me demonstrate. I'll clone that coffee mug."

"How does it work?"

"Well, it first scans all the molecules that make the coffee mug. Then it make copies of those molecules and it reconstructs itself," I explained as I scanned the mug to get a 3D image, then cloner reconstructed the mug. "I don't use it often, only on situations when an item is not enough for a number of people."

"Do you plan to release it for industrial use?" Thea asked.

"No way. I know it will help save the planet and all, but greed can lead people to misuse this piece of technology. Imagine if civilians got there hands on it and taking it home. They can clone their own crisp $100 bills for themselves. And you know how much damage a country's economy could suffer only by money laundering."

"Fair point," she said.

Just like that, her first day in Malaysia has ended. To avoid sleeping in, Thea went to bed a few minutes after having her dinner. I stayed a little bit late to secure the house perimiter. And before I turned in, I was still wondering if the car had already left. Because on the street outside my estate, a peculiar blue Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X FQ-400 was parked since 5 in the afternoon, and the driver never came out. As a safety precaution, I've put an FN PS90 personal defense weapon on my bedside table before turning out the lights.