Secret Planning

                                    

                                          
7/3/19
                          
Judai blinked at the feeling of something hitting the top of his head and bouncing off, looking away from his sketchbook to see what it was. Upon seeing that it was a little paper drawing of Sonic Chick, he barked out a laugh, looking up at the offender who'd thrown it with an elated smirk.

                          
"It has been two weeks," Crow stressed, his expression torn between exasperation, annoyance, and being impressed, "Two weeks, and I am still finding these things."
                          
"Yeah?" Judai snickered, picking up the piece of paper and placing it in-between two unused pages of his sketchbook so it wouldn't get damaged - he could reuse them obviously, plus it was a good little doodle. If worse came to worse, he could just make a compilation page or something containing all the little cutouts he and Yusei had made.
                          
"Yeah," Crow replied, sighing before admitting, "They are pretty cool though, I guess."
                          
"You guess?"
                          
"...Fine, they're cool. Just flat out cool, y'know, like the paper they're on."
                          
Judai snorted at the joke, which was so bad yet so good due to how monotonously it'd been said. He decided he wasn't going to get anymore sketching done for now, putting his supplies back on the coffee table and stretching himself off the couch; he pet Pharaoh in apology afterwards when he meowed in annoyance at losing his headrest.
                          
"Sorry old man, but I bet Crow would be more than willing to be your new pillow right now," Judai said, raising an eyebrow up at Crow with a mischievous grin.
                          
Crow rolled his eyes, but came down the stairs anyway, unable to resist the urge to pet the cat, "This was not my plan, y'know. It was simply to flick some paper at you like every other time I've found one of those things."
                          
"I'm very good at destroying carefully laid-out plans," Judai nodded sagely, earning himself a snort from Crow, "Speaking of plans though... hopefully this one I don't destroy somehow."
                          
Crow looked up from the cat at that, staring at him in confusion, "What plan? What're you talking about?"
                          
Yusei wasn't there at the moment, having had to go out to a last-minute work meeting (which, considering it was late at night, had prompted an extremely annoyed sigh that startled Judai when he heard it), so it was the perfect time for him to bring it up.
                          
"Yusei's birthday is coming up," Judai answered simply, watching as Crow continued to stare for a few moments before it clicked in his brain and his face slowly lit up at the realization.
                          
"He doesn't like doing much for it, though," Crow warned, but Judai was already ten steps ahead of him.

                          
"Well, I suppose it's a good thing I got permission from him to plan something," Judai grinned toothily, thinking back to two months beforehand when he'd first learned when his birthday was, "If I remember right, his words were, 'Please don't do anything too big,' so that's permission in my book."
                          
Crow whistled, laughing before calling up to Jack, whose door was open so he could actually hear what was yelled up to him, "Hey Jack! Get down here, we need your help with something!"
                          
"You guys don't look like you need much help," Jack replied a couple seconds later, looking down at them in judgement.
                          
"Judai managed to get Yusei to agree to doing something on his birthday."
                          
Almost instantly after he processed what was said, a feral grin appeared on Jack's face, quickly trailing down the stairs to join them, "We need to plan. Now."
                          
Damn, what had Yusei done to them? Clearly he must have threatened them with something in order to get them to willingly not celebrate his birthday, especially since they were very much the type who would stop at nothing to embarrass who they considered to be their younger brother. Nothing else would explain why they both were so damn ecstatic to be able to plan something for it in the first place.
                          
"Nothing too bad, obviously, but we definitely need to make it memorable," Judai mused, silence falling over the three for a minute or two as they thought, "Small but memorable..."
                          
"...You know, now that I think about it... Yusei's hard to think of a present for," Jack mentioned, Crow nodding in agreement.
                          
"I don't have to worry about that too much considering I'm going to bake the cake," Judai said, "but you do have a good point."
                          
"This isn't something we're going to be able to think of in the thirty minutes before he gets back," Crow stated, moving Pharaoh's head for a moment so he could fish his phone out of his pocket, "I'll make a group chat - if we end up getting anyone else involved in this, we'll just add them to it as well."
                          
They all shared a determined nod and sly smirks, knowing that even if it took them until the day of to do it, they'd come up with something, and that it'd be damn good.