Mokuba showed Shizuka the surprise photo he took of the drone-flying guy, and she bent over his screen to inspect the man.
"He looks tall," was all she commented, and Mokuba shrugged, shoving his phone back into his pocket.
"Guy is like a meter tall," Mokuba growled as he recalled the man standing beside a pillar near the building. "At least 190 cm. Seriously, he's big."
"Ooo," Shizuka nodded and looked thoughtful for a moment. "So he's the one flying the drone?"
Mokuba blinked at her in shock. What?! How did she know that?!
"I heard Joey yelling about it," she replied with a happy smile and a shrug. "So what does he want?"
"Dunno, but nothing good," Mokuba answered as he showed her the photo of the destroyed drone on the ground by the pond. "He might come for me now that he knows my face. I'm…kinda fucked. He called me a 'little VIP' the way Yami does when he talks about targets."
Shizuka grimaced and offered her solution, "Anzu has sedatives in her fanny pack. Let's go take some of those."
"Sweet. How do I get them without raising suspicion?" Mokuba asked with a sarcastic eye roll. "She'll tell Yami instantly. That's what we're trying to avoid."
Shizuka looked thoughtful for a second and then nodded, "follow my lead," and she trotted forward to join Anzu and Joey by their putting flag where Joey was lining up a shot.
"Hey Anzu," Shizuka gave her a smile. "...Hypothetically, how many of those sedative patches can take out a guy who is about 193 cm?"
"And muscular," Mokuba added, staring at the back of Anzu's ponytail where a bright pink hair tie was sitting in place.
Anzu leaned on the back of her golf club, giving the two kids an appraising look while her heart clenched with a suspicious pang, "...hypothetically…about 3 or four, and it'll take a while for them to work," she answered, trying not to feel worried about why they were suddenly asking. "What's up?"
"Nothing is up," Shizuka replied with a shrug as she leaned on the back of her golf club too. "Mokuba and I were just talking about scenarios." Then she gave Mokuba a knowing look that said, 'now you talk,''
So Mokuba launched into it, "Yeah, scenario A, a guy here wants to kill me because I took out his surveillance drone with a golf ball…and he might be coming around to take me out in return. But I can't always rely on Yami or Seto, because… they're relaxing."
Anzu narrowed her eyes and noticed a tall man with dark hair and dark skin hovering by the edge of the pond where Joey and Mokuba had just evacuated from, and with him were two golf course employees in bright green shirts.
"Is he, like, 6'4, with dark hair past his shoulders and dark skin, with really high cheekbones, a nice nose and scary eyes?" Anzu said flatly, and the shocked looks she got from Shizuka and Mokuba told her all she needed to know. "Don't turn around obviously. Next hole, let's go."
Mokuba faked a stretch and glanced over his shoulder, furious to see the tall man trying to fish out his drone with the help of two employees, and he saw Shizuka peek over her shoulder too.
The man glanced up and made direct eye contact with them.
CRUD…
Don't look, don't look.
Walk away fast.
He ran to catch up with Shizuka who was whispering with Anzu.
They needed a plan, asap! This guy was getting too close.
Mahad hissed under his breath in annoyance when he noticed Mokuba Kaiba staring at him from a distance, undoubtedly taunting him. The kid was here alone, he was pretty sure. The groups he stayed with changed again, giving him the impression that the boy was sticking to other strangers for protection.
Smart, but not smart enough.
The boy would need to use the bathroom again…
"Here you are sir," the golf course employee held out his smashed drone on the end of a rake, and Mahad's blood boiled at the sight of it.
Little Kaiba was sending him a message, and it was: mess around and find out.
Oh, that boy would find out.
"Thank you," Mahad muttered under his breath, remembering to bow and unhooking the drone from the rake's end and gripping it in his fist.
He would never kill a child, but he was very close to breaking that oath.
Stalking back over to the golf cart, Mahad sat in the back and fumed while the employees kindly drove him back to the main building.
When they parked, Mahad hopped off the cart and decided to store the remains of the drone back in his car and dissect the footage later.
Right now, he wanted to wring a certain Kaiba's neck.
Hovering by his trunk, Mahad unlocked it with a button press and tossed the plastic pieces into it, hating how he was being annoyed by a kid, and then slammed it shut and stalked back to sit by the bathrooms again.
Mokuba and Shizuka stayed seated in the golf cart they'd 'borrowed' from a neighboring group of golfers, promising to return it because Shizuka had a 'bathroom emergency'. They'd just managed to follow the other cart back to the building, and watched the foreign man ditch the drone in the trunk of a high-tech car with rental plates.
Nice.
"Should we slash his tires?" Mokuba asked Shizuka as they hopped out of the cart and walked over to the car to inspect it.
"No, we can just let all the air out of them," Shizuka grinned and she knelt to pull a bobby pin out of her hair and unscrewed the tire pressure cap, sticking the end against the tiny pin and making the tires hiss when it depressed fast.
She handed Mokuba another one from her hair, and Mokuba went to work on the front tires, viciously letting out all the air from the tires by pressing on the metal pin.
This was taking foreverrr…..
In the chrome reflection of the bumper, he saw someone coming, so he jumped to his feet and ran to grab Shizuka to pull her away from the car.
"Wait! We have one more tire left!" Shizuka whispered as Mokuba dragged her away behind the trunk of another car for cover, and Mokuba gave her a panicked growl, "...someone was gonna see us! And it was him! Look…!"
Mahad walked angrily back to his car, having decided to give up waiting by the bathrooms. The boy would be playing the long game, so this gave him time to inspect the sim card footage from the drone.
He unlocked the trunk, extracted the tiny card and slammed the trunk again, walking back into the building and deciding to get a coffee.
Today was less than stellar.
Maybe it was the grief making him feel this way.
Shizuka and Mokuba let out a tiny sigh of relief when the man walked away again.
"Now what? That won't stop him from following us later," Shizuka said with a sigh. "Someone will refill the tires for him, and he'll come for you again."
Mokuba groaned in frustration and sat down on the pavement, annoyed.
How the frick did Yami do this shit?!
He was beginning to see the benefits of a long range gun.
Slipping his phone out of his pocket, he texted Yami's grandpa for help.
"Hey old man, he fished the drone out and locked it in his car. I let all the air out of his tires. Now what?"
"Who is…Solo…mun?" Shizuka read Mokuba's screen intrusively over his shoulder.
"Yami's gramps, remember?" Mokuba said gruffly, making a bandanna motion around his forehead. "Old geezer with the head wrap."
"Oh…Ah," Shizuka nodded and remembered avoiding a gloomy old man who sat in the garden by himself, smoking a cigar. "I thought it was Seto's business contact because they were talking the other day."
Moka shrugged and gripped his phone anxiously when a reply came, "...good job boy. How about you check out the gift shop? Bring me back something fun, won't you?"
"Gift shop it is," Mokuba rose to his feet and Shizuka followed him, handing him two flesh-colored patches of sedative, still in their wrapper.
"In case he attacks us, here's two, and I can apply the other two," Shizuka grinned mischievously. "They were right next to Anzu's tampons. I couldn't resist. I was already lying about a bathroom emer–"
"Cool thanks!" Mokuba swiped them out of her palm and his ears burned. Awesome.
This was why girls were scary.
Keeping sedatives next to tampons.
That's the last place a man would look to steal stuff.
They walked quietly back into the building through the automatic doors and headed straight for the gift shop, spreading out into the aisles to look at products.
Mokuba wrinkled his nose at all the visors, t-shirts, and golfing pants for sale, and moved down the row, seeing snacks, energy bars, and golfing gloves.
Ehhhhh…
"This is cute!" Shizuka called from three rows over, holding up a waterbottle with the golfing team logo on it. "Will Grandpa want this?"
"No," Mokuba replied grumpily. "He likes strategy FPS games andtech stuff."
The employee at the cashier heard this and raised her hand to wave them over, "I heard someone's grandpa wants tech stuff?"
Mokuba perked up and drifted over to the glass case by the paying counter and saw multi-colored golf balls mounted on tiny glass pyramids on display. Cool…but boring?
"This right here is a RFID chipped ball," the employee pitched as she pulled the display out and pushed the ball closer to the two highschool kids who looked like they had money and were itching to spend some… 'for grandpa'. "Tired of mom and dad complaining that you're wasting balls? Well, look no further. It has great battery life and a yardage calculator up to…6 kilometers, so you'll never lose this on the green!"
"I'll take it," Mokuba said aggressively as he reached for his wallet, glancing at the other balls in the display. "Is this the best one you guys have?"
The employee nodded and gave him a practiced smile. "Would you rather have one with less range? Here we have…3 kilometers chipped, and…1 kilometer chipped."
"We'll take that one!" Shizuka reached intrusively to pluck it off the pyramid and tilted her head curiously. Cool toy.
Mokuba paid with a swipe of his card and ignored the employee's questions about needing a bag. He grabbed the ball and almost forgot to take the glass pyramid stand too.
Thankfully, Shizuka picked it up and followed him out of the gift shop, where they reconvened by the shade of the building behind the hedges, where a private bench tucked between the shrubs, glancing at the shitty golf ball he'd just bought.
"Great, so when he's within 6 kilometers of us, we'll know," Mokuba said flatly, and Shizuka placed the glass pyramid down between them and corrected him, "...if we can even make him take it. He'll know it's chipped! RFID is literally printed on the freaking ball."
UGH.
"Get me some acetone. I'll rub it off," Mokuba growled, and Shizuka shook her head, exasperated.
"Maybe we can slip it in his pocket without him knowing?"
"It's heavy!" Mokuba exclaimed, weighing the ball in his hand, hating it. "Let's smash his car window and put it in the backseat."
"Then he'll know even more!" Shizuka exclaimed with an eyeroll. "Put it in his car without him knowing…then we'll know if he's near us, or if he's returned the car, right?"
Right… Mokuba's mind churned as he gripped the ball in his fist, tired of worrying about this.
It was so annoying.
So he would GPS tag the guy and hope that wherever the car went, the guy went. Sure.
They were in the middle of nowhere, and the only way off the green was the highway back to the city. It could work.
Now to get into the guy's car….
"I think I saw a tutorial online how to hack one of those cars," Mokuba announced as he pulled up history and began searching for the video he'd watched at 1AM on a random wednesday,
"Can you do that?" Shizuka asked curiously as she watched Mokuba flit through his phone, typing in a long string of numbers and letters. W-Wow, what was that?
Mokuba downloaded the software and resolved to save his allowance to buy another one. This was why Seto and Yami had two or three phones, and this was why Seto had his Heavy Duty phone with him at all times. To do this shit.
Maybe he could get Gramps to buy him a new one, because he'd already wasted 30k on a stupid golf ball….
"Okay I think I got it," Mokuba eyed the files he'd downloaded and skimmed the tutorial written in the blog page. Easy peasy…except he'd need 12 minutes undisturbed.
"Can you keep him away while I hack his car?" Mokuba asked with a flush to his cheeks as he glanced at Shizuka, who was on the lookout for them, staring through the hedges at people coming and going from the front of the club.
"Okay. I'll find him and text you about where he is, and you hack," she said seriously, standing up and taking the glass pyramid with her. "I have a weapon disguised as a gift. I'm good."
"Cool, okay," Mokuba nodded and felt something tight sitting low in his chest as he added, "...don't die."
Shizuka laughed cheerfully and walked off with her ponytail swinging, "are you kidding me? This is a level 1 mission. I'm stalking a guy who doesn't even know me."
Ha, Mokuba smiled in spite of himself and got to work.
He stuck the ball in his pocket and rushed to the guy's car, making sure no one was paying him attention or looking his way while he leaned on the door like he was waiting for someone while he pressed his phone to the door handle, letting the program work.
The trick was to scramble the car's computer and wait for it to find a 'key' that would unlock the car. It was trial-and-error.
Kaiba glanced up and noticed their group in the distance. Everyone had moved on a few holes so they were alone…which was perfect.
Yami was leaning on his lap with his eyes closed, enjoying the warm breeze ruffling through his bangs.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, so Kaiba slid it out, annoyed that it was a purchase notification from Mokuba's allowance card.
What the fuck was Mokuba buying that was over 20k at a golf course?!
"Who is it?" Yami asked lazily, not opening his eyes, but he could feel Seto's legs tensing under his neck, indicating mild anger. Work, maybe.
"Mokuba, buying random expensive shit again," Kaiba rolled his eyes and tapped on the notification to see what Mokuba had bought. "That kid is out of control. You didn't see me doing this shit at 13."
"Ah yeah, because you overthrew an evil fuck at 13 and became a millionaire with his war funds," Yami replied easily with a chuckle, and Kaiba felt a pang of affection ripple through his chest. Yami… always knew just what to say to make him feel better.
"What did he buy?" Yami opened one eyelid to glance up into Kaiba's handsome face, enjoying how the sun glinted off his pale skin.
"A… fucking… golf ball…" Kaiba growled as he scanned the purchase receipt for the insanely expensive ball Mokuba had bought at the gift shop 10 minutes ago. What the FUCK.
Yami let out a laugh, and Kaiba sighed.
Not funny! Mokuba needed boundaries!
He wasn't trying to bring up a little monster with no concept of money.
He'd have this talk with Mokuba…again, later today.
Right now, they were trying to have a nice weekend out.
"Come onnn, come on!" Mokuba hissed at his phone, seeing three numbers out of the 15 that had finished decrypting. Stupid key. Taking longer than 12 minutes to decode. Maybe this was a car that got patched already?! Fuck.
Did that mean he messed up and used the wrong program?
Ruffling his hair in frustration, Mokuba received two texts that made his phone vibrate and drained his battery by 2% because of how hard it was working.
FUCK.
One of the texts was from Seto, which he ignored and read Shizuka's first.
"Found him! He's chilling inside the restaurant drinking coffee. I got a table facing him so I could watch him. [image] Can you facially scan him? Or is this too blurry?"
Busy! Mokuba muttered, thinking he couldn't activate the facial scan on the phone that was currently hacking. Dammit.
3 phones was looking to be a good investment.
Seto sent him a second text, so Mokuba had to open it to read them.
"Hey kid. Why the fuck are you buying expensive golf balls for no reason?! If you want a rifd ball, i can just make one for you! Why are you buying stuff thoughtlessly?! We MAKE this tech for less than a 14th of what they're selling this shit for."
"We're going to talk about this later tonight."
Ugh, now I'm in trouble?! Mokuba ground his teeth angrily and muted Seto.
Whatever. He could be in trouble with Seto later.
He was in trouble right now, because the key was taking forever to generate.
It had now been 16 minutes, when the program said it shouldn't take longer than 12.
This was an updated car. FUCK.
Back to step one.
Walking away from the car to sit back on the bench, Mokuba hissed when he saw a man sitting there smoking, so he turned on his heel and decided to sit by the emergency exit stairs to download another program on the building's wifi.
He was gonna add 'pocket router' to his list of stuff to get.
While he searched for another program, Shizuka texted him again.
"! he's getting up! Warning, warning! He is getting up to leave. I'm gonna follow him!"
Crudddddd!
This was supposed to be easy in theory but why was it actually so hard?!
Gripping his hair with one hand, Mokuba searched the forum for another program and just decided to download another one, and he got up to try it again.
This was one was brute force entry and the programmer's warning was in bold, "MIGHT ACTIVATE CAR ALARM" but honestly at this point, he was out of time, which meant it was time to use invasive options.
Dashing over to the car on the passenger side, Mokuba crouched down and hovered his phone over the door handle, praying.
Could this stupid thing hurry up and unlock already?!
His phone blipped and the screen turned black. Great. Did that mean it worked or…?!
The car alarm blared so shrilly, it made him jump in fear, but the door handle popped out, so Mokuba grabbed it and flung the door open to roll the golf ball under the passenger seat, and then slammed the door shut, rushing back to the safety of the hedges, hoping no one saw him.
"DONE!" He wrote to Shizuka and saw her reply come up, "he heard a car alarm and he's going out to the parking lot Moki! RUN!"
"That was me! Ok let's get the fuck out of here!" Mokuba wrote back as he spied his golf cart parked by the front, so he calmly walked over to sit in the seat, but as he passed the door of the building, the tall, foriegn man came rushing out, and their shoulders bumped.
Shizuka covered her mouth in shock and watched the man give Mokuba a disdainful look but brush past without hurting him. Whew jeez.
"You touched him?!" Shizuka breathed as she glued herself to Mokuba's side and they both climbed into the cart together, and Mokuba gave her a frantic headshake.
"You gotta return the other cart, remember?"
She nodded and climbed out to run towards the cart they had parked in the roundabout shade and started the engine with a quick twist of the key.
Mahad stood by his car, inspecting the windows for damage and then fuming when he realized Mokuba Kaiba had managed to set the alarm off, only to mess with him.
Kid pranks. What was the boy trying to do?!
Annoy the living crap out of him?
It was working.
He glanced up and saw the boy driving past in a golf cart, and his rage boiled over.
"Hey! You!" He gave chase and he heard a shrill scream behind him that made him stop in his tracks, and he turned around to see a young girl swerving around him, clearly trying to avoid him, so he leapt aside and saw her slowly try to drive around him while staying on the road, when the cart could go on the grass perfectly fine, but she didn't seem to know that, and wanted to stay on the road, drawing attention from other golfers walking by with their bags and coolers.
Dammit!
"S-Sorry!" Shizuka called as she drove past him slowly and made sure not to run the man's toes over, wondering if he knew she'd been following him. Oh well. He looked mad and she wasn't going to stick around to find out.
She'd successfully put distance between Mokuba and this guy.
Mokuba dug his phone out and saw a message from Seto.
"?! Where tf are you? You and shizuka are taking the longest bathroom break in the history of the universe! And didn't you just go?! Literally 10 minutes ago?"
Crud.
He'd think of a reply later. Right now, he was trying not to attract further attention to himself, so he wouldn't get into more trouble.
If anyone had seen him, they could easily report him for car prowling.
Shizuka zoomed past him in a blur, "RACE YOU BACK!" And Mokuba stamped on the pedal to follow her across the rolling green, aiming for Yami's spiky hair in the distance, standing beside Seto's tall form.
Parking haphazardly by a small tree, Shizuka hopped out and felt Mokuba park beside her and follow suit. Everyone looked worried, so she made sure she was smiling as they walked forward and was immediately confronted by Joey and Seto.
"Where were ya guys?!"
"Care to explain what the 'emergency' was?!"
Unfazed by their concern, Shizuka shrugged and said loudly, "I started my period, okay? Jeez. Lay off."
Kaiba fell silent and clenched his fists.
Sure, but did it need to take 25 minutes?!
And why did Mokuba have to go with her?
"I brought our cart back so you can stop whining about walking," Mokuba gave Joey's arm a light punch. "We're fine, sheesh."
Yami said nothing and only noticed the new item Shizuka was holding, so he asked about that instead. "Nice…pyramid?" Presumably also from the gift shop when Mokuba had bought the 'insanely expensive' golf ball.
"Oh, yeah this is a display for your grandpa!" Shizuka held the glass point up in her palm to show it off. "Think he'll like it?"
Touched, Yami nodded and smiled. "He'd love that. Anything that reminds him of home."
"Why would that remind him of home?" Mokuba asked loudly, grabbing a golf club for appearances and gripping the handle.
"Because we used to live near the pyramids in Egypt," Yami replied calmly, and Mokuba swallowed thinly and nodded. So, it was no coincidence that the tall, long-haired, drone-flying guy was also from Egypt, right?!
"That explains your camel story," Seto said with a grin and he picked up his golf club to follow Anzu across the grass, hearing Mokuba stick to his side and ask, "what camel story?! Tell me!"
"No, it's a bad story," Yami replied with an equally maddening grin, and he shared a loving look with Seto over the top of Mokuba's head while Mokuba stamped his foot and gave Seto a shove.
"TELL ME! Tell me the camel story!"
"Stop shoving me," Kaiba growled, elbowing Mokuba away, quite fed up with him. "You're in trouble, you little brat. You want to have that talk now? And where's that golf ball?"
Shizuka froze nervously and Mokuba broke out into a cold sweat, holding his breath for a second before deciding to go into full tantrum mode.
"You're seriously so restrictive! So what if I wanna buy a golf ball just for the stand?!" Mokuba raged as he clenched his fists at his sides and decided to stamp his foot for effect. "I hate that you track my purchases like you can't trust me to do anything! You think I give a shit about RFID balls?! The pyramid was cool, okay? Leave me ALONE! You SUCK! Let's go wait in the car, Shizuka. I'm done golfing for today. I WANNA GO HOME!"
He turned on his heel and stormed off back towards the golf cart, hearing Shizuka follow him and call out, "...Moki, it's okay! Just explain yourself without yelling… Moki?"
Kaiba pinched his brow and felt a headache coming on. Yami patted his shoulder sympathetically and Anzu merely shook her head and walked on to the next hole with Joey quietly following, eager to disengage from the family fighting.
"It's only for purchases over 20k! He's acting like I'm a dictator!" Kaiba cried, and Yami gave him another pat on the back.
"They said it was 'for grandpa' so maybe you can excuse it this time?" Yami asked gently and Kaiba gave him a cold look.
"Why are we spoiling that old man with gifts? He doesn't want to come out golfing with us anyway."
"Indeed, that's why they got him a glass stand instead, right?" Yami said with a sly smirk, reaching down to hold Kaiba's hand with a firm grip. "Mokuba is going through puberty mood swings. Fighting with him now will only drain you. Let him win this one. We can enjoy our day while they wait in the car, away from us."
Yeah, thank fuck, Kaiba growled as he left Yami lead him down the grass to another hole, trying not to worry too much about Mokuba.
Author's note:
This golf course day is spanning so many chapters haha