The Washroom Panic
Back in the corporate watchtower, the heavy reinforced glass was shaking so violently it felt like the entire building was about to tear itself apart. The red emergency lights were flashing, casting a frantic, chaotic glow over the boardroom.
Suddenly, the heavy steel door of the executive washroom violently burst open.
Kniya sprinted out, his expensive suit jacket half-off, aggressively pulling his zipper up and completely dropping his mint gum on the floor. He took one look out the window at the distant, towering mushroom clouds, and his chaotic energy instantly morphed into an absolute, full-blown meltdown.
"What the actual fuck did you just do, Malesh?!" Kniya screamed, kicking the heavy steel door in pure, unadulterated frustration. "Are you fucking kidding me?! I step into the washroom to take a piss for two minutes, and you turn the ultimate dark entity into a glowing parking lot!"
Malesh slowly stood up straight, casually brushing a speck of dust off his pristine white shirt. He looked at Kniya with a completely deadpan, deeply exhausted expression.
"He was being a highly arrogant prick to all of us, Kniya," Malesh replied smoothly, his tone stubborn and dead serious. "I hated that guy from the absolute second we met him. He was a complete waste of our time. So I dropped the bombs. Problem solved. Why the hell are you crying about it?"
"Problem solved?!" Kniya shrieked, dramatically throwing his hands into the air. "You just vaporized my entire plotline, you absolute fucking psycho! We were supposed to have a brooding stare-down! A dramatic monologue! You don't just speedrun the entire fantasy genre by slamming a red button fifty times!"
Kniya aggressively spun around, glaring at the other two executives who were cowering near the door.
"Filoska! Salesh! Why the fuck didn't you stop him?!" Kniya yelled.
Salesh wildly threw his hands up in defense, his face pale with terror. "Stop him?! Kniya, he completely lost his goddamn mind! He was laughing like an absolute maniac and pounding that launch button! I literally thought he was having a stroke! He didn't listen to a single word we said!"
"He had a total, unhinged executive meltdown," Filoska agreed, glaring fiercely at the Head of Production. "The so-called Dicklord called him a 'worm' and insulted us, and Malesh's massive ego couldn't handle it. So he just erased the entire geographic region."
"It had absolutely nothing to do with my ego, Filoska," Malesh shot back, crossing his arms defensively. "It was a highly necessary executive decision. That homeless cosplayer disrespected us, and I wanted him gone from the start. I simply fast-tracked his retirement."
"Fast-tracked?!" Kniya yelled, pulling at his own hair. "You dropped fifty intercontinental ballistic missiles on his head! You don't just skip to the end credits with weapons of mass destruction!"
"I value my time, Kniya," Malesh retorted bluntly, completely unapologetic. "Why would I stand in a muddy forest listening to some edgy medieval monologue when I can just press a button from a climate-controlled room and be done with it?"
"Guys, can we please focus on the fact that we just authorized a nuclear holocaust?!" Salesh panicked, grabbing his own head. "The paperwork for this is going to be astronomical!"
"Exactly," Filoska sighed, aggressively rubbing her temples. "The amount of structural damage we just caused to the environment is going to ruin my entire weekend. I am not filing the incident report for this, Malesh. This is entirely your mess."
"Okay. Fine. Just... fuck," Kniya muttered, aggressively pacing back and forth, entirely ignoring the administrative complaints. "We have to go to the site right now. Hurry up. We need to see if anything survived. Maybe a piece of his evil cape, or a cursed ring, or literally anything! Filoska, teleport us right now before I lose my fucking mind!"
Malesh immediately held up a hand, completely halting the chaotic momentum of the room.
"Wait," Malesh stated, his face completely deadpan but laced with absolute disgust. "Kniya, you literally just sprinted out of that washroom aggressively pulling your zipper up."
Kniya blinked, completely thrown off by the interruption. "So what?!"
"So," Malesh sighed, pointing a strict finger toward the bathroom door. "First, you should go back in there and wash your fucking hands, and then we will go. Hygiene is really important, and I absolutely refuse to hold hands for a spatial jump with a guy who doesn't use soap."
The Radiation Sponge
Filoska grabbed Kniya, Salesh, and Malesh by the shoulders. The air violently warped around them.
Zzz-crack!
They materialized in the air, instantly dropping onto the high ridge of a surviving mountain peak that overlooked the blast zone.
The heat was absolutely suffocating. Below them, where the Demon Lord's encampment had once been, there was nothing but a massive, bowl-shaped crater of glowing, molten glass. The air was thick with highly toxic, glowing green and orange radioactive ash.
Salesh instantly covered his mouth with his silk handkerchief, stepping backward in sheer medical terror.
"Don't step down there!" Salesh muffled hysterically, his eyes wide with panic. "Are you guys insane?! The ambient radiation levels are astronomically fatal! If we even breathe this air, our flesh is going to literally melt right off our bones!"
Kniya gritted his teeth, wiping a dramatic, fake tear from his eye. "Well, how the fuck are we supposed to check for the Demon Lord's remains if we can't even step on the dirt?!"
Malesh sighed heavily. He smoothly unbuttoned his suit jacket, handing it to Salesh, and carefully rolled up the crisp white sleeves of his dress shirt.
"You guys are always complaining about my methods," Malesh muttered, stepping right to the very edge of the ridge. "Just give me a second. I will clean up the mess."
Malesh closed his eyes and slowly raised both of his hands toward the apocalyptic crater.
Instantly, the thick, swirling clouds of radioactive ash and the ambient, lethal energy radiating from the glowing glass stopped expanding. Like a massive, invisible vacuum had just been turned on, the deadly radiation began to violently reverse course.
Now, you have to understand the completely broken, unhinged physics of how their powers actually functioned. Absolutely none of these four idiots had a single drop of magical talent or mystical mana inside their bodies. So, whenever they pulled off some overpowered god-tier stunt—whether it was Kniya pulling heavy military hardware out of his ass, Filoska glitching through spatial dimensions, Salesh doing telepathic audio translations, or Malesh literally inhaling an entire nuclear wasteland—their cheat abilities had to violently steal the raw fuel from somewhere. And unfortunately for the planet, their powers treated Mother Nature like a personalized, all-you-can-eat buffet.
The exact second Malesh started sucking up the radioactive fallout, the surrounding landscape got aggressively bullied. A perfectly healthy patch of grass on the nearby hill instantly shriveled in botanical agony and collapsed into gray powder. Deep in the dirt, a family of innocent mountain moles probably had their souls violently yanked out of their bodies just to charge his palms. The cheat system was an absolute menace to the ecosystem—it mercilessly slurped the life-force out of ancient trees, rich soil, wildlife, and demonic monsters until they were completely desiccated husks. But for some bizarre, wildly unfair reason, it strictly gave humans a total pass. You could stand two inches away from Malesh while he was committing biological terrorism against a shrub, and you wouldn't even lose an eyelash—meanwhile, a fifty-foot oak tree sitting behind you would literally die of instant, unprovoked cardiac arrest.
The sheer, unfathomable nuclear fallout visibly funneled directly into Malesh's outstretched palms. His veins glowed with a terrifying, brilliant white light as his body effortlessly absorbed the supersonic energy that had just destroyed an entire mountain range.
He didn't scream. He didn't burn. Within thirty seconds, the glowing crater completely dimmed. The toxic clouds vanished, and the air became entirely sterilized and perfectly breathable.
Malesh slowly lowered his hands, rolling his shoulders to relieve the heavy tension in his muscles. He let out a long, deep exhale, looking down at his faintly glowing palms.
"Wow. That was a massive dose of raw energy," Malesh noted seriously, cracking his neck. "I feel entirely awake right now."
Without hesitating for a single second, Kniya scrambled down the rocky ridge and collapsed onto his knees right in the middle of the cooled glass crater. He scooped up a handful of gray ash, letting it slip through his fingers as he wailed at the sky.
"He is gone!" Kniya cried out, his voice thick with unhinged, Shakespearean tragedy. "My beautiful, dark antagonist... reduced to literal fucking glass! We didn't even get to see his evil castle! What if he had a highly tragic backstory, Malesh?! What if he was just deeply misunderstood?!"
Malesh slowly walked down the ridge, crossing his arms and staring at his Managing Director with sheer, unfiltered disgust.
"What kind of absolute melodrama is this, Kniya?" Malesh groaned, glaring down at him. "Just look at yourself. You are crying over a pile of radioactive dirt. He wasn't misunderstood. He was a giant idiot with glowing eyes and terrible hygiene who wanted to peel our flesh off. Get up."
"You have absolutely zero respect for the narrative!" Kniya yelled back, pointing an accusing finger at Malesh from the dirt. "You just don't get it!"
"I get that we are wasting time," Malesh replied bluntly, completely unfazed by the screaming. "Now wipe your face, you look like a complete idiot."