Season 3 chapter 49
The Capitalist Hesitation
Before Kniya could raise his weapon to initiate the execution, a faint, agonizing sound echoed from the destroyed street directly adjacent to the courtyard.
Malesh immediately held up his hand, signaling Kniya to freeze.
They both carefully shifted their gaze through the branches. Sitting alone on the edge of the pulverized asphalt, her knees pulled tightly to her chest, was a teenage girl. Her clothes were torn and covered in ash. She had her face buried in her hands, crying softly but uncontrollably into the silence of the ruined city.
Malesh's highly analytical brain instantly calculated the tactical variables.
"Kniya," Malesh whispered urgently. "If she does not stop crying within the next forty-five seconds, the acoustic reverberation is going to alert those royal guards. They will find her out."
"And if they find her out, they are going to drag her straight into their twisted entertainment barracks," Kniya muttered, his eyes narrowing. "Or they will just shoot her."
"Okay," Malesh stated, sliding the dossier back into his coat. "First, I think so we should secure her and help her. Then, once she is out of the crossfire, we can tactically tackle these idiots in the courtyard."
Kniya paused. His ruthless, highly arrogant corporate programming suddenly glitched.
"Well... I don't want to do that," Kniya complained, letting out a frustrated sigh. "Helping random people costs way too much money, Malesh. It requires logistics, transportation, and medical supplies. We are literally on a highly classified assassination mission! We don't have the budget to run a mobile daycare! Be a capitalist, for God's sake!"
Malesh slowly turned his head to stare at Kniya. His eyes were completely dead, but his voice was laced with pure, aggressive venom.
"Fuck you, Kniya," Malesh cursed, entirely dropping his robotic tone. "I don't give a single shit about your corporate budget right now. If you are going to come with me, then come. Or just fuck off and stay in these bushes. I don't want to listen to this financial crap anymore. Helping her is an objectively greater idea than letting her get captured by degenerates."
Kniya stared at Malesh, slightly taken aback by the sheer aggression. He let out a long, dramatic, deeply exhausted groan, rolling his eyes.
"Okay, fine! Yeah, let's go help her!" Kniya whispered angrily, carefully creeping backward out of the bushes. "Boring-ass life. We are trillionaires! What the fuck kind of horrific situations are we constantly getting stuck at?!"
The Interrogation of Tears
Kniya and Malesh silently flanked the ruined street, approaching the crying teenage girl from the blind spot of the courtyard walls.
They stopped a few feet away from her. Kniya shoved his hands into his pockets, clearing his throat awkwardly.
"Hey," Kniya asked loudly, completely failing to modulate his terrifyingly arrogant CEO voice. "Why are you crying? Has something happened to you? Tell me right now."
The girl flinched violently, shrinking back against the rubble, but she didn't speak. She just cried harder, burying her face deeper into her arms.
"I asked you a direct question!" Kniya demanded, stepping closer. "Why are you crying in the middle of a warzone?! What is the exact problem?!"
She still didn't reply. She was entirely paralyzed by fear, staring at the ash-covered cobblestones.
Malesh sighed, aggressively pushing Kniya out of the way.
"You lack basic interpersonal communication skills," Malesh reprimanded flatly. He took a step forward, trying to apply his own version of comfort.
"Identify your primary grievance," Malesh ordered, his voice sounding exactly like a robotic medical examiner. "Are you physically compromised? What is the current status of your guardians? Please provide a verbal update so we can optimize your survival."
The girl just sobbed, completely bewildered and terrified by the two heavily armed, incredibly weird men yelling corporate and medical jargon at her.
"Why isn't she talking?!" Kniya hissed, throwing his hands in the air. "We have asked her several questions! 'Why are you crying?' 'Where is your family?' She is ignoring a direct executive inquiry!"
"Listen, kid," Malesh tried again, leaning down slightly. "We require actionable intelligence. Please vocalize your traumatic experience."
Silence. Just more shaking and crying.
Malesh stood back up, rubbing his temples. He looked at Kniya.
"She is not replying, Kniya," Malesh deduced perfectly. "And I think so, it is because our voices are statistically too tense. We sound like we are about to execute a hostile corporate takeover. We need to talk to her in a little softer, more biologically comforting way, I think so."
"I don't need your fucking suggestion, Malesh!" Kniya snapped, highly offended by the critique of his tone. "My voice is incredibly soothing! I negotiate billion-credit mergers with this voice!"
"You literally just screamed at her to explain her trauma," Malesh pointed out dryly.
The Hero Complex
Malesh looked from the crying girl to the bushes where the royal targets were still laughing. A rare, highly vindictive spark lit up in his dark eyes.
"Actually, Kniya," Malesh stated, aggressively adjusting his dragon-themed tie. "You always try to be the hero. Every single time we get into a combat scenario, you jump out, do some cinematic poses, and shoot the bad guys, while I am forced to calculate the logistics."
Kniya blinked, completely confused. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"I don't want this fucking shit right now," Malesh declared coldly. "The fucking shit is that she is not replying to us, and we have asked several times. So... you are going to stay here and tackle this emotional situation out. I am going to go to the courtyard and kill those royal idiots."
"What?!" Kniya yelled in a hushed whisper, his eyes widening in pure outrage. "No!"
"Yes," Malesh nodded firmly. "Because every time, you always leave me in the helping position, babysitting the traumatized civilians, and you become the hero of the shootout. This time, I am going to be the one pulling the trigger. I need the kinetic release."
"No, Malesh, absolutely not!" Kniya argued frantically, grabbing his business partner's arm. "I wanted to kill those bastards! I already drew my gold gun! I am terrible with teenagers! You should help her!"
Malesh easily slapped Kniya's hand away. He reached into his coat, pulling out his custom-machined, heavy-caliber pistol and checking the magazine.
"No, Kniya," Malesh rejected, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly serious threat. "You are going to stay here and comfort this crying girl. Or, you will face some severe consequences. When we get back to the Seistain Hub, I will personally burn every single volume of your degenerate Demon Lord novels in the executive incinerator."
Kniya literally gasped, clutching his chest as if he had been physically shot. The sheer cruelty of the blackmail was completely paralyzing.
"You wouldn't dare," Kniya whispered in absolute horror.
"I am a man of logic," Malesh replied deadpan, racking the slide of his pistol. "Try me. I am going."
Without looking back, Malesh smoothly turned on his heel and silently vanished back into the ash-covered bushes, leaving the absolute richest, most arrogant CEO in the Republic completely alone to deal with a weeping teenager.
The Soft Capitalist
Kniya Anderson stood completely alone in the ash-covered street, staring down at the terrified, weeping teenage girl. Malesh was entirely gone, having vanished into the overgrown bushes to commit high treason and mass murder, leaving Kniya to handle the one thing he feared significantly more than the federal military: emotional vulnerability.
Kniya took a slow, deep breath, aggressively forcing his arrogant, screaming CEO persona into a tiny, locked box in the back of his mind. He knelt down in the dirt, carefully keeping his expensive tailored coat from touching the rubble, and tried to arrange his face into something resembling human empathy.
"Okay. Hey, child," Kniya whispered, deploying the absolute softest, most unnaturally gentle voice he had ever used in his entire life. "Why are you crying? Has something happened?"
The girl sniffled loudly, peeking through her soot-stained fingers at the towering billionaire. She didn't say a word, her shoulders shaking violently as fresh tears streamed down her face.
Kniya cleared his throat. He realized quoting corporate statistics and market index funds wasn't going to work on a traumatized teenager. If he wanted her to stop crying, he needed to give her a sense of perspective. He needed to tell her about true, harrowing survival.
"Look, I get it," Kniya started, offering a deeply awkward but genuine smile. "The world is literally falling apart right now. Your city is on fire. But you know, sitting here crying isn't going to fix it. Do you want to know what I just survived a few hours ago? A literal fucking war against the most dangerous, psychologically unhinged man in the entire Republic."
The girl blinked, slowly lowering her hands. She wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve.
"You... you were in a war?" she whispered, her voice cracking with nervous curiosity.
"An absolute bloodbath," Kniya nodded, his face turning incredibly serious and grim. "It started on a highly classified, encrypted phone line. A shadow assassin tracked my coordinates in the middle of a hospital room. He was trying to psychologically break me by threatening me with... premium, fluid-absorbing cotton undergarments."
The girl's eyes widened slightly. Her tears paused entirely as pure confusion set in.
"Underwear?" she asked, her eyebrows furrowing.
"Yes!" Kniya exclaimed, gesturing wildly with his hands as he fully immersed himself in the exaggerated tale. "He wanted me to buy a combo deal! I refused his terms, so I had to fly across the entire country, straight into the scorching, unforgiving Antovian desert to face him! I was fighting for my life, dodging sniper fire, machine guns blasting everywhere! Rat-tat-tat-tat! Bullets grazing my premium tailored suit! It was an agonizing, multi-day siege in the scorching heat! I was stuck in the desert trenches, fighting off endless waves of royal guards, and because my supply lines were cut off, I had to wear a single pair of underwear for a very, very long period of time!"
The teenage girl stared at him. The sheer horror of the military purge in her mind was suddenly violently interrupted by the image of this immaculate billionaire hiding in a trench.
"Wait," she mumbled, her nose wrinkling in profound disgust. "You wore the same underwear for... for days? While fighting?"
"It was a tactical necessity!" Kniya defended loudly, completely unashamed. "When you are in the trenches of the Antovian desert fighting an intelligence agency, laundry is a secondary objective! But do you know what happened when I finally cornered the mastermind behind the rusted water tower?"
"Did he... did he have a rocket?" she asked, leaning forward slightly, completely invested in the absolute absurdity of the story.
"No!" Kniya shouted, throwing his hands up in sheer exasperation. "He pulled out a plastic-wrapped packet of generic white briefs from a dirty canvas duffel bag and offered me a thirty-five percent discount! He was a telemarketer disguised as a top-tier federal spy!"
The girl's jaw dropped slightly.
"I was ready to shoot him right in the chest with my gold-plated handgun," Kniya continued, his voice dripping with dramatic, exhausted outrage. "But then he used a magical sandstorm to disappear into the wind like a complete coward. All that war, all those machine guns, and wearing the same underwear for so long... just to get harassed by a discount clothing vendor. So you see? Tragedy is temporary, kid. But the audacity of federal telemarketers is forever."
The girl stared at Kniya for a long, quiet moment. Her brain processed the completely unhinged, wildly exaggerated story. She realized this incredibly powerful, heavily armed billionaire was sitting in the ashes of a destroyed city, passionately complaining to her about his laundry and a guy selling briefs in the desert.
She let out a sudden, unexpected snort.
She quickly covered her mouth with both hands, but she couldn't hold it back. A genuine, ringing laugh broke through the grime on her face. Her shoulders shook, but this time, it was from giggling at the absolute ridiculousness of the corporate warlord sitting in front of her.
"Yeah, good girl," Kniya grinned, immensely proud of his highly unconventional humor. He reached into the inner pocket of his tailored coat. "Here. I have some premium imported chocolates in my pocket. Have some. Sucrose is highly efficient for trauma."
He handed her a handful of chocolates. She took them, a bright, genuine smile finally replacing her absolute despair as she popped a piece of candy into her mouth.