Season 3 chapter 10
The Five-Day Failure
Exactly five days had passed since Kniya and Malesh had rescued the young Yatsua priestess and her little brother from the highway. Five entire days since they had sworn a dramatic, heavily funded oath to uncover the federal government's darkest secrets and exact revenge for the military massacre of the holy town.
Currently, inside the sprawling, incredibly expensive executive suite of the Seistain Main Hub, the two most powerful corporate warlords in the Republic of DI were doing absolutely nothing of value.
The heavy mahogany desks were covered in stacks of unread intelligence reports, empty coffee cups, and scattered newspapers.
Malesh was sitting on the leather sofa, his legs crossed, intently staring at a broadsheet newspaper. He slowly lowered the paper, his face a perfect mask of deadpan disappointment.
"Kniya," Malesh stated flatly, breaking the silence. "I have not found a single piece of information related to the military incidents in the daily media. The state press is completely silent."
Kniya, who was lounging in his massive executive chair with his feet kicked up on the desk, narrowed his eyes. He leaned forward, squinting to read the large, bold headline printed on the back of Malesh's newspaper.
Kniya's face instantly twisted into pure, unfiltered rage.
"Malesh!" Kniya yelled, slamming his hands on the desk. "You are reading fucking fart articles! How the fuck are you going to know about the government and their military plans?! You are literally reading weekly market updates on fart cylinders!"
Malesh didn't even flinch. He just calmly folded the newspaper.
"And I told you!" Kniya screamed, aggressively pointing a finger at him. "No fart articles related to the fart cylinders are allowed in my fucking office! I am literally tired of this shit! Why are you always so obsessed with that?!"
The Demon Lord Defense
Malesh placed the newspaper down on the glass coffee table, completely unbothered by Kniya's outburst. He adjusted his dragon-themed tie and looked directly at the brightly colored, heavily illustrated comic book resting on Kniya's lap.
"Kniya," Malesh replied smoothly, his voice devoid of any emotion. "You are also currently reading about the Demon Lord's novel. You are just reading a useless, wasteful comic. It has absolutely nothing to do with gathering federal intelligence."
"It is literature!" Kniya defended loudly, quickly trying to hide the comic book under a stack of blank corporate ledgers.
"How are you gaining actionable research from this?" Malesh pressed, his tone dripping with cold sarcasm. "Are you getting research that shows how the Demon Lord and the federal government are mixed up with each other? Are you reading about those things to uncover the President's dark magic?"
"Shut up!" Kniya snapped, his cheeks flushing slightly. "I have actually done my research regarding the situation! While you were reading about pressurized gas, I was doing deep-dive financial analysis regarding the statues of the Yatsua God!"
Malesh raised an eyebrow. "And what profound intelligence did you gather?"
"I have logically noticed that the price of these specific rare-earth statues is increasing day by day in the private collector's market," Kniya declared, puffing out his chest with absolute capitalist pride. "It is a massive spike!"
Malesh stared at him. The sheer, terrifying greed of his best friend was sometimes too much to process.
"You are literally wasting your fucking time on knowing that the fucking price of the statues is priced high in the market," Malesh criticized harshly. "Are you literally an illegal dealer now? Do you want to make profits with this tragedy? Or do you just want to secure the holy land for your own benefit so that you can sell the statues at a highly inflated price back to the corrupt government itself?!"
The Holy Investment
"It is not like that!" Kniya argued, looking genuinely offended.
"Yes, it is," Malesh countered bluntly. "I think so. You are not doing research to save the innocent people of KDC. You are doing research just to sell the artifacts at a high price, you fucking idiot. You are trying to monopolize a religious tragedy."
"I am not!" Kniya yelled, pacing behind his desk. "The prices are aggressively increasing, and I realized that I do not have a personal statue of the God for myself! As a devout follower of the faith, I felt an empty void in my spiritual portfolio!"
Malesh's eyes narrowed into tiny, highly judgmental slits. "Get to the point, Kniya."
Kniya stopped pacing. He cleared his throat and looked at the ceiling. "So... yeah. I recently acquired one statue for myself through an anonymous black-market broker. Just one. For my desk."
Malesh let out a long, deeply exhausted sigh. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling a massive headache forming behind his eyes.
"Okay," Malesh said, his voice entirely deadpan. "So, definitely, you are doing this research just to get the inside information, just so you can turn around and sell that specific statue at a high fucking price. You are a corporate parasite."
Kniya gasped, his hand flying to his chest in pure, dramatic outrage.
"Please, Malesh!" Kniya scolded, his voice suddenly thick with fake, highly exaggerated religious sanctity. "You should be ashamed! You are not aware of spiritual burdens! I know that you are a complete atheist, but do not ever use the word 'fucking' with the word 'God'! It is really, really not allowed! And you are also using the word 'fucking' right next to the 'statues of God'! I am absolutely not allowing you to do that in my presence!"
Malesh stared at him, completely baffled by the sudden moral high ground from a man who regularly extorted politicians.
"Please be respectful in this case!" Kniya continued to preach loudly, wagging a finger at Malesh. "As I know you are basically racist against believers, and you are entirely not believing in God! You are a shithole full of atheist feelings! Just keep those filthy atheist feelings away from myself!"
A Deeply Emotional Crisis
"Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck the hell," Malesh groaned, throwing his hands up in defeat. "Okay! I am not talking about this thing anymore. You are impossible to debate."
Malesh stood up from the sofa, his expression finally dropping its completely deadpan shell to reveal a rare glimmer of genuine, frustrated anxiety.
"Let's talk about something else," Malesh demanded, pacing across the expensive rug. "Because this is literally devastating, Kniya! You are literally doing intensive research about the fucking statue prices instead of the actual crisis! Why is the government doing everything?! Why is the federal army attacking innocent people?! What does it have to do with clearing the religious city?!"
Malesh stopped and glared at Kniya, pointing an accusing finger at him.
"You are not doing that research!" Malesh yelled. "And basically, it is a disaster! Five entire days have been passed! We didn't gain a single amount of useful information in that entire period of time! What are we literally doing here?! Some kind of shithole thing! It literally does not matter what we promised that girl, because we are completely failing! We are not taking it seriously!"
Kniya rolled his eyes, waving his hand dismissively as he sank back into his luxurious chair.
"You are taking it way too seriously, bro," Kniya sighed, picking up a gold-plated pen and spinning it between his fingers. "Relax. We can tackle this down. We have infinite money. We will just bribe a General tomorrow."
"You are not taking this seriously," Malesh shot back, crossing his arms tight against his chest. "You are completely distracted by your own greed."
"And you are completely distracted by your own weird obsessions!" Kniya snapped back, pointing his gold pen at the discarded newspaper on the table. "You are also not taking this seriously because you are sitting in a corporate headquarters reading the fart articles! Do not act like you are the responsible one here!"
Malesh stiffened. He looked down at the newspaper, then back up at Kniya. His eyes grew incredibly dark, entirely serious, and deeply intense.
"Kniya," Malesh whispered, his voice dropping into a register of profound, emotional vulnerability. "I know that you hate it because of the smell. You really hate the biological reality of it. But the thing is... the supply chain is crumbling."
"Malesh, do not do this right now," Kniya warned, his eye twitching.
"There are only exactly two massive companies that produce industrial fart cylinders in this entire world," Malesh continued, his voice trembling ever so slightly with genuine distress. "And you know the recent, violent changes in the price of the fart cylinders? The massive inflation?"
Malesh placed a hand firmly over his own chest, right over his heart, looking at Kniya with a completely straight, sorrowful face.
"It has affected me deeply from my heart, Kniya," Malesh confessed softly.
Kniya stared at his best friend. He stared at the man who was completely unfazed by military massacres, regime changes, and billion-credit corporate frauds, but who was now practically on the verge of tears over the global pricing of weaponized flatulence.
Kniya grabbed the heavy ceramic coffee cup off his desk and aggressively hurled it at the wall.
"Stop the fucking shit, you idiot!" Kniya screamed at the top of his lungs.