Season 3 chapter 4
The Weird Expedition
Kniya threw his phone onto the desk, still laughing at Salesh's furious reaction. The office was quiet again, the caffeine still buzzing heavily in their veins.
Malesh had walked back over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out into the dark, windy night of the Antrious Hub. Suddenly, his dark eyes locked onto something floating past the glass.
"Look at that," Malesh stated flatly, pointing a finger at the window.
"What?" Kniya sighed, rubbing his temples. "Did someone throw a brick?"
"No," Malesh said, leaning closer to the glass. "It is a flying underwear. We should go catch it."
Kniya slowly turned his head, staring at his best friend in absolute, unfiltered disbelief. "What the fuck are you literally talking about?"
"I am talking about an expedition," Malesh replied smoothly, never taking his eyes off the piece of cloth twisting in the heavy updraft outside. "Okay, Kniya, you do not want to go on a walk. I understand. But we can at least go on an expedition. An underwear expedition. You know how great it is to achieve a goal at this hour."
"Are you fucking mad?!" Kniya yelled, completely baffled. "You want to chase a random piece of flying trash in the middle of the night?!"
"We will not walk, bro," Malesh compromised. "We will use a car to walk."
"That is called driving, you idiot!" Kniya screamed.
"We will call it a car-walking underwear expedition," Malesh corrected seamlessly. "How does it sound like that? It sounds great. It is a completely new corporate initiative."
"Just shut the fuck up!" Kniya groaned, standing up and walking over to the window. "What are we doing anyways? Why do you care about a piece of fabric?"
"Oh! Yo, yo, see, see!" Malesh pointed aggressively, breaking his usual calm demeanor. "There is a hole in the underwear! On the left side! We can also spot that thing! It is highly distinctive!"
"What the fuck is it?!" Kniya squinted through the glass, actually getting invested despite himself. "I am not going for that, Malesh! It is probably full of diseases!"
"It is caught in a southern crosswind," Malesh analyzed, already walking toward the office door. "If we do not intercept it now, it will cross the state line. Come on. You are bored. I am bored. The coffee is demanding action."
Kniya stood there for three seconds, fighting his own common sense.
"Ah, fuck it," Kniya snapped, grabbing his keys. "Let's go catch a fucking underwear."
They sprinted down to the underground garage, completely abandoning their work. Kniya didn't bother with the stealthy motorcycles this time. He bypassed them and unlocked his massive, R-12 armored luxury sedan.
They tore out of the parking garage, the heavy tires screaming against the concrete.
Above them, illuminated by the streetlights, the tattered underwear was caught in a massive jet stream, flying incredibly fast over the Seistain skyline.
"Go there! Go there!" Malesh barked from the passenger seat, pointing frantically through the windshield. "Take this turn! Take this turn! Take that turn, bro! Move right! Move left! Move ahead!"
Kniya slammed the gas pedal to the floor, drifting the heavy armored car around a tight city corner, knocking over a row of trash cans. "I am pushing it! Where is it going?!"
"It is heading toward the federal highway!" Malesh directed. "Accelerate!"
They hit the open highway, and Kniya absolutely floored it. The speedometer climbed furiously—150, 200, 250 kilometers per hour. The engine roared as they completely ignored every single traffic law in the Republic of DI, their eyes locked on the tiny, fluttering piece of fabric in the sky.
They drove like absolute maniacs. They drove past sleeping towns, through dark tunnels, and across massive, empty stretches of desert highway. For four straight hours, Malesh barked directions while Kniya drifted the sedan at lethal speeds.
The Ruined Chase
Time: 7:00 AM Location: Highway 44,
1,000 Kilometers outside of Seistain
The sun was just starting to rise over the barren, dusty landscape. They had covered a staggering thousand kilometers in just four hours. The flying underwear was still visibly drifting about two hundred meters ahead of them, slowly losing altitude.
Suddenly, the luxury sedan jerked violently. The engine sputtered, choked, and completely died.
The heavy car rolled to a silent stop on the shoulder of the empty highway.
"What the fuck?!" Malesh yelled, looking at Kniya. "Why did you stop?! The target is escaping!"
Kniya aggressively slammed his hands against the steering wheel. "I didn't stop! I had low fuel in the car when we left, and now it is completely empty! The R-12 burns gas like crazy at 250 kilometers an hour! We have to walk to get to that flying fucking underwear!"
Malesh stared at him in absolute horror. "What the fuck? I need to walk? I need to use my legs, not the wheels?!"
"Absolutely, yes!" Kniya yelled, kicking his door open. "We have to walk! Get out of the fucking car!"
Grumbling furiously, Malesh stepped out onto the hot asphalt. They both started jogging down the empty highway, keeping their eyes on the fluttering piece of fabric drifting over a nearby sand dune.
They made it exactly one hundred meters.
Malesh suddenly stopped, bending over and resting his hands on his knees, panting heavily.
"Oh, it's a lot," Malesh wheezed dramatically, acting as if he had just run a marathon. "I cannot walk anymore. It is really, really hard. The human body is not built for this level of exertion."
Kniya stopped and turned around, his face turning bright red with rage.
"Fuck you! Fuck you!" Kniya screamed, pointing at the sedan sitting just a few yards behind them. "We have only walked a hundred meters! Not hundreds of billion meters! You are acting like you just crossed a fucking desert! Move your ass!"
"My premium leather shoes are not designed for highway terrain," Malesh argued, standing up and completely refusing to take another step. He watched as the wind picked up, carrying the underwear over the horizon and completely out of sight.
"Well, there it goes," Malesh sighed, completely deadpan. "The underwear mission failed. All because of your fuel mismanagement."
Kniya threw his hands in the air, completely exasperated. "Why did you even care so much?! It was a piece of garbage!"
"It was not garbage," Malesh corrected, dusting off his shirt. "Did you not see the specific hole on the left side? It was a premium tattered underwear belonging to Loxard."
Kniya froze. Loxard was a highly eccentric, reclusive billionaire who ran a massive tech conglomerate on the western coast.
"Wait," Kniya said, his eyes narrowing. "Loxard's underwear?"
"Yes," Malesh confirmed smoothly. "Loxard had a highly publicized mission on the newspaper yesterday. He placed a massive bounty because his premium tattered underwear was flown away in a storm. He put a bounty of exactly one billion credits on that specific piece of fabric. That is why I told you to follow this underwear. Because if we recovered it, Loxard would provide us with the money."
Kniya stared at Malesh, his brain struggling to process the sheer depravity of the situation.
"It is so weird to see that some person is providing a one billion credit bounty on his own used underwear," Kniya muttered, completely disgusted. "Yeah... he might be using that underwear for a very long period of time. That is why it is so heavily tattered and ripped like that."
"Exactly," Malesh nodded.
"Yeah, and it also had a really gross, yellow-colored tint to it," Kniya remembered, shuddering violently. "Which means he was also masturbating in that underwear for a very long period of time! Without washing it! Oh my god, we almost touched it!"
"Yeah, yeah, we know that," Malesh said, totally unbothered by the grotesque details. "It is really weird. But a billion credits is a billion credits. Financial opportunities often come with severe biological hazards."
"I am actually glad we ran out of gas," Kniya gagged, spitting on the asphalt. "Fuck the billion credits. I am not handing a billionaire his own yellow, crusty underwear! We need to call a fucking tow truck before I throw up."
The Roadside Casualty
Kniya and Malesh continued their miserable trek down the shoulder of the empty federal highway. After about a mile, the harsh, dusty terrain of the small desert patch abruptly ended, giving way to a massive, incredibly dense green forest that bordered the asphalt. The sun was fully up now, casting long shadows across the road.
"I cannot believe we are walking," Malesh grumbled, his premium leather shoes crunching against the gravel. "This is a profound failure of modern transportation."
Before Kniya could yell at him again, a sudden rustling noise echoed from the thick tree line up ahead.
Both billionaires stopped in their tracks.
Bursting out of the dense forest brush was a young woman. She was sprinting blindly toward the highway, her clothes completely tattered and torn by the branches. She took exactly three steps onto the hard asphalt before her knees completely buckled. She collapsed forward, hitting the ground with a harsh thud, and instantly fainted.
Kniya and Malesh stood frozen exactly twenty feet away, staring at the unconscious girl lying in the middle of the road.
"What the absolute fuck has just happened?" Kniya asked, looking around the empty forest to see if anyone was chasing her.
"I do not know," Malesh said flatly. "But statistically, this is a massive inconvenience."
"It's really weird," Kniya muttered, crossing his arms and refusing to step any closer. "What should we do right now?"
"I don't know what we can do," Malesh replied. "If she is dying, medical intervention is traditionally required."
"Ah, fuck," Kniya groaned, aggressively rubbing his face. "Listen to me, Malesh. If we have to treat her and basically move her back to civilization to go to a hospital, we need gas. And for that, I need to call a private corporate helicopter to fly out here and drop off premium R-12 fuel. Then we will fill the thing, and it would be so much costly! The aviation fuel alone is a million credits!"
"Kniya," Malesh sighed, his voice dripping with pure exhaustion. "You should actually fulfill your human duties like a normal fucking human being for once in your life. A woman is dying on the asphalt."
"No, I'm not going for that!" Kniya stubbornly refused, pointing at the unconscious girl. "I am going to recover every single penny that I am going to spend on that helicopter fuel!"
Malesh turned his head slowly, glaring at Kniya. "How are you gonna do that, you fucking idiot?"
"I am going to sell her into the black market," Kniya stated with absolute, terrifying capitalist confidence. "It's so easy. We scoop her up, drop her at a shady broker, recoup the helicopter fees, and walk away with a net profit."
Malesh stared at him, completely devoid of emotion. "Yeah, Kniya. You are talking like that is like buying a fucking bread from the fucking grocery store. You know it is not like that! You cannot do this thing! Human trafficking requires massive logistical overhead, and we do not have the proper supply chain for it!"
"Why?!" Kniya argued passionately. "It's free inventory!"
"Stop talking like an idiot, you fucking fool!" Malesh snapped, adjusting his tie. "It is literally not possible to fence a random forest girl without proper documentation! Now come on. We need to assess her vitals."