Season 3 chapter 2
The Midnight Fart Crisis
Location: Kavilson Executive Tower, Antrious Hub
The heavy mahogany desk in Kniya's executive suite was completely covered in empty coffee cups, scattered comic books, and unplugged video game controllers. The two most powerful billionaires in the Republic of DI had spent the last eight hours doing absolutely zero corporate work.
Suddenly, the heavy brass telephone on the corner of the desk started ringing loudly, shattering the quiet of the 3:00 AM office.
Kniya, who was staring blankly at the ceiling while nursing a massive caffeine crash, didn't even move his head.
"Attend the call," Kniya groaned, waving a lazy hand toward the desk. "Hey, Malesh. It's the private line from your company. You need to listen out."
Malesh, sitting on the leather sofa with dark bags under his eyes from staring at a glowing screen for too long, slowly stood up. He walked over to the desk, picked up the heavy receiver, and immediately decided to embrace the absolute delirium of the hour.
Instead of a standard corporate greeting, Malesh put the phone to his ear and began to sing in a completely deadpan, rhythmic voice.
"Who the fuck it is?" Malesh chanted bluntly. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. You know fuck, I know fuck. Everyone knows, how to fuck."
On the other end of the line, there was a long, agonizingly stunned silence. The production manager of a multi-billion-credit oil refinery was absolutely, fundamentally astonished that his head had just answered an emergency call with a vulgar nursery rhyme.
"...Sir?" the factory manager stammered, completely terrified. "What are you actually talking about?"
Malesh dropped the singing act instantly, his voice returning to its cold, pragmatic baseline. "What do you want, and why did you call me at this hour?"
"Sir, I am the refinery manager at the primary refineries present in KDC," the man explained quickly.
"Sir, we have a massive emergency," the manager panicked. "There was a huge fart attack in our refinery! Someone lobbed a cylinder into the main processing vent! It was so vulnerable and heavily concentrated that people cannot work inside the building anymore!"
Malesh pinched the bridge of his nose, his deadpan expression shifting into pure, exhausted annoyance.
"What the fuck are you literally telling me?" Malesh asked flatly. "There was another fart attack? Oh, fuck. This time I am going to aggressively punish those perimeter guards. How did someone get a cylinder over the fence?"
"Sir, we cannot do anything about that to the guards or the culprits!" the refinery manager cried. "There are absolutely no fart laws in the country! It's a legal gray area!"
"Fuck this shit," Malesh cursed, gripping the phone tightly. "If I were the President, the first thing I would do is to create the fart laws so that people cannot just blast out fart cylinders on anyone's private factory! This is exactly why there is no law and the people can just do anything they want. It is an administrative nightmare."
Malesh let out a heavy sigh, shifting into crisis-management mode.
"Don't worry," Malesh ordered. "Use super large industrial fans. If you need any extra funds for that, use emergency capital. Buy massive air conditioners, heavy-duty ventilation fans, and industrial-grade scent spray. Whatever you want. I am funding all of this from the corporate treasury. Just fix this thing. Don't worry about the cost."
"Thank you, sir!" the manager pleaded. "But it is really bad down here. Can you please, please, please come down to the factory to assess the damage?"
Malesh covered the receiver with his hand and looked across the room at Kniya. "Kniya. We need to go to the refinery. Drive me to KDC !!!"
"Absolutely fucking not!" Kniya yelled from the sofa, not even opening his eyes. "We are not going to the refinery! It is not my job to drive you across the state to a refinery because of a fucking fart attack! What the fuck is going on in this country?!"
Malesh uncovered the receiver. "We are not going to the refinery. Just clean the room. It is not a big thing."
The Fart Black Market
Kniya sat up, rubbing his exhausted eyes and laughing at the sheer absurdity of the situation.
"Why the fuck does this kind of thing happen in our country?!" Kniya laughed, throwing an empty coffee cup into the trash.
"Our country is facing coordinated fart attacks from a very long period of time," Malesh analyzed calmly, hanging up the phone. "When the news reporter on TV was talking about fart cylinders costing a million credits, they were actually reporting on the black market pricing. Fart cylinders are technically illegal because they are explicitly meant for biochemical attacks, but there is absolutely no federal law regarding their regulation. So they are illegally purchased and sold in the open. The news was just casually reporting on a black market weapon."
"It is really funny to say out loud," Kniya cackled.
"It is a severe gap in our national defense," Malesh argued, crossing his arms. "I would definitely draft a comprehensive memorandum if I am ever able to go to the Presidential Council one day. I would demand the authority for a specific fart research and development organization. We could call it the Federal Fart Control Commission. The F.F.C.C."
"Yeah, whatever," Kniya waved his hand dismissively. "Just tell them to clean the shit up. We aren't going."
"It's not that simple," Malesh noted, looking at a text message that just pinged on his encrypted phone from the manager. "I also just got to know that forty of my refinery workers were heavily damaged from this attack."
Kniya paused, looking at Malesh in disbelief.
"Ah, fuck, this is so shit," Kniya mocked, rolling his eyes dramatically. "They are 'damaged'? You mean they are suffering from a fart? What the fuck?! They cannot bear a single fart?! How are they going to bear the actual hardships in life if they get taken out by a bad smell?!"
Malesh looked Kniya dead in the eyes, his face completely serious.
"Kniya," Malesh stated coldly. "A compressed industrial fart is significantly more dangerous than a fucking hardship in the fucking life !"
"Stop this fucking shit right now!" Kniya screamed, completely losing his mind and throwing a comic book across the room. "Always you are saying it! Fart! Fart! Fart! Just stop this shit! I am so tired of this fucking shit in this country!"
The 3:00 AM Walk
Malesh ignored Kniya's screaming. He walked over to the massive floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out at the dark, smoggy skyline of the Antrious Hub.
"We have been sitting in this room for too long," Malesh suggested, fixing his dragon-themed tie. "We should go on a walk, Kniya."
"Absolutely fucking not!" Kniya yelled, pointing at the clock on the wall. "Because it is fucking 3:00 AM! You want to go on a morning walk at fucking 3:00 AM?! What the fuck are we going to do on a walk in the pitch black?! People will assume us as robbers or thieves or some kind of corporate psychopaths!"
"Okay, so you were the one who wanted to stay late," Malesh pointed out logically. "We were doing shit-like things in the office for hours. I was watching the news, reading comics, and playing video games. You were also doing the exact same thing. We didn't even get to know that it is now 3:00 AM. We are literally awake so late because of your terrible time management."
"It is all because of the fucking coffee we drank!" Kniya defended aggressively, pointing at the graveyard of empty cups on his desk. "We drank a huge amount of coffee, really! My heart is literally vibrating right now!"
"Okay, so burn off the caffeine," Malesh offered. "Why don't you want to go on a walk?"
"Absolutely fucking not!" Kniya repeated stubbornly, sinking back into the sofa. "I am not interested to go on a fucking morning walk at 3:00 AM! It's fucking midnight, Malesh! You need to understand how normal human sleep schedules work!"
Malesh stared at Kniya for a few seconds, his dark eyes analyzing the situation. They were both completely wired on caffeine, bored out of their minds, and refusing to do any actual work.
A very rare, incredibly chaotic idea sparked in Malesh's pragmatic brain.
"Okay," Malesh said slowly, stepping away from the window. "If we cannot go on a walk... should we call Salesh? At least at this time?"
Kniya blinked, looking up from the sofa.
"But not with the main head telephone line," Malesh clarified smoothly. "If we use the executive line, he will get to know who we are immediately. We need to call him from an untraceable number, and act as a random person. A prank call. What do you think of it?"
Kniya stared at his best friend. For a man who usually hated wasting time, Malesh was suggesting the most childish, chaotic thing possible just to cure their 3:00 AM boredom.
"Are you fucking mad?!" Kniya yelled, though a massive, wicked grin was already spreading across his face. "We are going to call Salesh at this time?! He is probably sleeping! He would be absolutely mad at us!"