Season 3 chapter 76
The Artillery Barrage
Kniya completely lost his mind, bursting into a loud, obnoxious laugh of pure joy. He grabbed a massive boulder from the dirt and aggressively shoved it down the iron tube.
"This is our ultimate weapon!" Malesh announced, holding a lit match over the fuse. "Help me reload this, Kniya!"
"Yeah, Malesh! They cannot survive this!" Kniya cheered wildly.
Malesh lit the fuse.
FSSSHHHHH—THUNK! BOOOOOOM!
The heavy iron mortar violently kicked back into the mud with a deafening roar. A massive, heavy boulder launched high into the sky, arcing perfectly over the farm before crashing down on the opposite side of the property.
KRA-CRASH! The unmistakable, highly satisfying sound of a house roof completely caving in echoed across the fields.
"Direct hit!" Kniya cackled, frantically grabbing more gunpowder. "Load the next one!"
CLACK! FSSSHHH—BOOM! CLACK! FSSSHHH—BOOM!
Kniya and Malesh turned the family dispute into a literal bombardment, aggressively launching massive boulders across the property line. On the other side of the farm, the heavy stones ruthlessly smashed through the wooden walls and tiled roofs of the opposing brothers' houses, completely obliterating their real estate in a cloud of dust and splintered wood. The incoming rock-throwing from the brothers instantly stopped, replaced entirely by distant screams of sheer panic.
The Federal Snitch
Just as Kniya was trying to load three boulders into the tube at the exact same time, a loud, sharp noise echoed over the fields.
BANG!
A heavy gunshot rang out in the air.
Kniya and Malesh froze, dropping their boulders in the mud. They peeked over the top of the trench. Marching aggressively through the tall grass from the main asphalt road was a fully uniformed soldier of the DI'an Army, holding a smoking service rifle aimed directly at the sky.
"Stop! Drop your weapons!" the DI'an soldier roared, pointing his rifle down at the trench. "Hey! What the hell is going on here?!"
Kniya and Malesh slowly raised their hands, exchanging a highly confused look.
"You all guys are under arrest!" the soldier shouted furiously.
"Wait, arrested for what?" Kniya asked, thoroughly baffled. "What kind of offense is this?"
"You are officially arrested for the unauthorized deployment of heavy artillery in a civilian zoning dispute, and aggravated domestic terrorism!" the soldier yelled back.
"Wait a minute, what is actually going on?" Malesh muttered, brushing the mud off his tailored suit.
Kniya and Malesh slowly climbed out of the dirt trench, leaving the smoking mortar tubes behind. They walked up to the soldier, acting entirely innocent, as if they hadn't just destroyed three houses with boulders.
"Sir, what is happening?" Kniya asked, offering a highly genuine, bewildered reaction. "We are just official third-party mediators."
Malesh narrowed his dark eyes, his pragmatic baseline instantly scanning the variables. A random federal army soldier doesn't just casually stroll onto a remote dirt farm without a highly specific dispatch order.
"Sir, a genuine question," Malesh asked flatly. "Who complained to you about this? How did you even get to know about this exact location and what we were doing?"
Right as Malesh asked the question, the tall bushes near the main road rustled.
Salesh and Filoska stepped out from behind the DI'an soldier. They both had their arms crossed, glaring at their bosses with pure, unadulterated executive exhaustion.
"We did this," Salesh announced loudly, entirely unapologetic. "We called the army."
"Because you always leave us with the actual office work and you go out for the fun!" Filoska accused fiercely. "This happens always! You literally always do this to us! You left us with a mountain of corporate paperwork just to come play in the mud with artillery!"
Kniya's jaw literally dropped. His baseline entitlement flared up into sheer, whining outrage.
"Why the fuck did you do that to us?!" Kniya yelled, pointing an aggressive finger at his own core team. "We were winning the property division!"
Malesh let out a long, heavy sigh, looking between the angry DI'an soldier holding them at gunpoint, and Salesh and Filoska standing behind him. His deadpan mask returned, completely desensitized to the chaos of their lives.
"You know, Kniya," Malesh stated calmly, adjusting his dirt-stained cuffs. "I think so it is bad that we always leave them for work. We definitely hold some blame here."
Kniya scowled. "So what should we do?"
Malesh didn't blink. He looked at his best friend with a perfectly cold, calculating stare. "I think so, we should do what we always do."
Kniya's unhinged, massive smirk instantly returned. He slowly lowered his hands.
"Yeah, Malesh," Kniya agreed smoothly. "I think so, we should do what we always do."
The Power of Candies
Kniya stood perfectly still in front of the furious DI'an soldier, his massive, unhinged smirk never leaving his face. Without breaking eye contact, Kniya slowly reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out a thick, heavy brown paper bag.
"Hey, you," Kniya called out casually, tossing the heavy bag directly into the soldier's chest. "Take these candies. You look stressed. Have some sugar."
The soldier caught the bag, his face twisting with pure, uncompromising rage. "I don't want your fucking..!!!"
He paused. The bag felt entirely too heavy to be candy. The soldier slowly peeled back the top of the brown paper. Inside, tightly banded together, were massive, brick-like stacks of high-denomination DI'an federal credits. It was enough liquid cash to buy a small mansion in the capital.
The soldier's furious expression instantly melted. His eyes went wide, reflecting the sheer, absolute power of the bribe. He quietly closed the bag, clearing his throat and rigidly adjusting his uniform collar.
Kniya leaned forward, resting his hands on his hips. "Okay, I think so. After feeding you those premium candies, you should probably go away. Tell me, officer, what did you see here today?"
The soldier looked at the smoking artillery tubes in the trench, the completely obliterated roofs of the neighboring farmhouses, and the terrified brothers crying in the distance. He didn't blink.
"Nothing, sir," the soldier replied crisply, snapping a sharp salute. "Absolutely fine out here. We just saw that you boys were playing with some bricks. You are just trying to build a new home, and nothing more. Keep up the good community work."
Without another word, the soldier turned on his heel, aggressively waved his two backup guards off the farm, climbed into his military jeep, and drove away down the asphalt road, leaving a cloud of dust behind.
The Master Mediators
Filoska aggressively rubbed her temples, letting out a heavy, soul-deep groan of pure exhaustion.
"This is the fourth time you did this to us, Kniya!" Filoska shouted, glaring at the two corporate warlords. "We call the federal authorities to arrest you for absolute madness, and you literally just buy the army in front of our faces! How can you be like that?!"
Malesh smoothly dusted the dry mud off his tailored sleeves, stepping up beside his best friend with absolute, deadpan pride.
"Well, Filoska, you guys simply won't understand the absolute power of the bribe," Malesh bragged flatly, raising his chin. "It is really one of the finest specialties of Kniya and mine. A well-placed bribe solves any ballistic trajectory. You lack the vision for this kind of high-level diplomacy."
"You literally just launched boulders at a civilian house!" Salesh yelled, pointing at the smoking ruins across the property line.
"Exactly," Malesh agreed smoothly, ignoring the outrage as he turned back to the trembling management secretary. "Well, Secretary. I think so we have officially won the war. The opponent is heavily injured, their morale is completely broken, and they have suffered massive infrastructure losses. It is time for diplomacy."
Ten minutes later, Kniya and Malesh sat at a splintered wooden table in the middle of the dirt farm, acting like perfectly respectable corporate mediators. The secretary's brothers, covered in dust and nursing severe bruises from the falling roofs, aggressively signed away their land claims without uttering a single complaint, terrified that Malesh would load another boulder into the iron pipe.
"Sir, thank you!" the secretary wept with joy, aggressively shaking Kniya's hand as the peaceful meeting concluded successfully. "Thank you very much for helping me out! Please, as a token of my extreme gratitude, take a hectare of my family's land! You earned it!"
Kniya laughed obnoxiously, waving his hand in complete dismissal.
"Keep your dirt, Secretary," Kniya chuckled, picking up his duffel bag. "We were just joking about that. We don't actually want your muddy farm. We only came to blow off some steam. Welcome for the help, though."
"Yeah, whatever," Malesh deadpanned, tossing Kniya his black helmet. "I think we should go before the army realizes how much we underpaid them."
"Wait, underpaid?" Salesh choked out, staring at Malesh in horror. "You literally handed that soldier a paper bag thick enough to buy a luxury mansion!"
Kniya rolled his eyes, catching the helmet with a highly arrogant smirk. "Salesh, it was entirely stuffed with low-denomination notes wrapped around pieces of crushed cardboard. It just looked heavy."
"It is a highly standard corporate illusion," Malesh added flatly, walking away. "We are sixty trillion credits in debt. We absolutely cannot afford premium bribes right now."