Season 2 chapter 16
The Squatter's Rights
Exactly one week passed.
Malesh had successfully purchased a massive, multi-story commercial building in the center of Seistain to serve as the temporary headquarters for Malesh Energy Limited. It was sleek, professional, and completely devoid of human warmth.
Currently, in the main executive office, a vicious corporate dispute was taking place.
"Why the fuck are you taking an interview in my office?!" Malesh snapped, glaring at Kniya across the mahogany desk. "This is a petroleum headquarters! You cannot conduct Kavilson Steel interviews in my building! I am not going to allow this!"
"Bro, we are partners," Kniya said casually, kicking his boots up onto Malesh's pristine desk and chewing his mint gum. "We have to do this. Sharing is caring."
"We are partners in extorting the government, not in real estate!" Malesh argued, swatting Kniya's boots off his desk. "Rent your own fucking office in the capital! You have tens of billions of credits in liquid cash! Why are you squatting in my chair?"
"Because renting an office requires signing a lease, and I hate paperwork," Kniya yawned. "Plus, your air conditioning is better."
They argued for an entire hour. They were so busy yelling at each other about the economics of commercial rent that they completely ignored the receptionist buzzing the intercom.
Finally, the heavy glass doors swung open. Filoska Vinten walked in. She was dressed in an incredibly sharp, tailored business suit, holding a leather portfolio.
She sat down in the guest chair, completely exasperated from waiting outside for an hour while listening to two billionaires scream at each other about air conditioning. She opened her folder and slid several thick, gold-stamped papers across the desk.
"Here is my CV," Filoska stated crisply. "My Curriculum Vitae. It details my academic history, my degrees in economics, and my strategic management qualifications."
Kniya didn't even look at the papers. He leaned forward, steepling his fingers like a serious executive.
"Okay," Kniya said, squinting at her. "Let's start with the basics. Tell me your name. N-A-M-E. What is your name?"
Filoska stared at him. "You know my name. We literally met a week ago. Why are you asking this fucking thing?"
"Yeah, I think so, Kniya, she is right about that," Malesh chimed in, perfectly deadpan. "Your questioning is redundant and highly inefficient."
"I know that, Malesh, but I'm just kidding around," Kniya rolled his eyes. "You know how corporate HR works. We need to ask every fucking thing which is not required to establish dominance. It is standard protocol."
The Brutal Truth
Malesh leaned back in his chair, deciding to participate.
"Let me ask a question," Malesh said. "What would happen... Okay, I am giving you a hypothetical assumption. What will you do if you become the Managing Director of Kavilson Steel for one day?"
Filoska looked at Malesh. She looked at Kniya. Over the past week, she had finally started to understand their completely unhinged, cutthroat vibe. She decided to play their game.
"If I were Managing Director for one day," Filoska said with a cold, ruthless smile, "I would immediately fire Kniya from his own company, freeze his assets, and execute a hostile takeover of the entire board."
Kniya's jaw dropped. "Okay, so this is the way you are telling me you are going to betray me in my own job interview? What the fuck is this? This is literally irony!"
"This is not irony," Malesh corrected him, looking highly impressed. "This is the brutal truth of your life. It is pure free-market capitalism."
"Fuck you, Malesh!" Kniya complained, throwing his hands in the air. "Why are you fucking involving psychology in this fucking thing?! She just threatened my job!"
"Malesh, if you want to ask questions, why don't you be the interviewer instead of me?!" Kniya groaned, aggressively rubbing his face. "I hate this fucking job! Being an interviewer is so boring!"
"I am not going to be an interviewer," Malesh replied, looking out the window. "I am just here for time pass."
Filoska slammed her hands down on the desk. "What the fuck are you two doing literally right now?! You are literally just arguing! This is not an interview! This is a circus!"
The Wage Laborer
"Okay, okay, calm down," Kniya sighed, picking up a random piece of paper that definitely wasn't her CV and pretending to read it. "Next question. So... how much is your father earning as wages?"
Filoska froze. Her eyes widened, and then her face flushed with absolute, murderous rage. Her father was the Patriarch of the Vinten Family. He owned estates. He owned politicians.
"Wages?!" Filoska shrieked, gripping the armrests of her chair.
Malesh slowly turned his head to look at Kniya with profound disappointment.
"Why the fuck do you ask this question everywhere to every person, bro?" Malesh sighed. "This is literally insulting. You are specifically mentioning 'wages' instead of 'salary'. By using that terminology, you are referring to her father—a Royal Patriarch—as a daily wage laborer. Do you know how insulting that is?"
"It is just for fun, you know," Kniya cackled, highly amused by how angry she was getting.
"Are we done?!" Filoska yelled, grabbing her CV off the desk. "Because I am not going to sit here and be mocked by—"
"Yeah, the interview is over," Kniya interrupted casually, tossing his pen onto the desk. "You are selected by the company. You start next week as the Vice President of Kavilson Steel. Welcome aboard."
The room went completely silent.
Filoska froze halfway out of her chair, her brain entirely failing to process the whiplash.
Malesh turned to Kniya, his deadpan expression cracking into genuine annoyance.
"What the fuck, Kniya?" Malesh snapped. "You explicitly told me that you would not recruit her to a top position in the company! We agreed on this because I am a misogynist, and that was my rule!"
"Yeah, but I am not," Kniya grinned, popping his gum. "I believe in the things that work perfectly for me. I am not a fucking misogynist. She just threatened to steal my company to my face in her own job interview. She has the exact level of sociopathic corporate ambition I need to run the steel market while I take naps."
Filoska stood there, her CV clutched in her hand, looking back and forth between the two billionaires. She had secured the second-most powerful position in the biggest steel monopoly on the continent, and the entire process had consisted of fake names, hostile takeovers, and being asked about daily wages.
"What kind of interview was that?" Filoska whispered to herself, completely in shock.
"A successful one," Kniya smirked. "Now get to work, VP. The government wants to buy more steel boats, and I need you to overcharge them."
The Corporate Split
Three days later, the empire temporarily divided.
Kniya boarded a private, heavily armored Kavilson freight train and headed back to the dust bowl of Sulwai to oversee the massive new expansion of the steel furnaces.
Malesh packed his meticulously organized briefcase and took a direct flight right back to the burning, oil-soaked desert of Sulwadiya to secure his extraction pipelines.
As for Filoska Vinten? She was left entirely alone in the massive Kavilson Steel headquarters in the DI'an capital of Seistain.
"This is the absolute peak of executive management," Kniya had told Malesh on the telephone before leaving. "She is currently doing one hundred percent of the administrative paperwork, and I am taking one hundred percent of the net profit. Free-market capitalism is truly beautiful."
The Sunday Summons
It was a fine Sunday morning in the capital of Seistain. The birds were singing, the financial markets were closed, and the citizens of the DI'an Republic were enjoying a peaceful day of rest.
Malesh Bulwadi was not resting. He had been emergency-summoned back to the capital, and he was absolutely furious.
He was currently tearing down the central avenue on a loud, incredibly cheap, beat-up motorcycle that sounded like a dying lawnmower. He had literally hundreds of billions of credits in liquid cash, but he despised luxury. To Malesh, buying a ridiculously expensive town car or hiring a chauffeur was a biological flaw and a massive waste of capital. He preferred the underground, down-to-earth dirt of reality.
"A Sunday," Malesh whispered to the wind, his voice dripping with venom as the cheap engine sputtered beneath him. "They summoned me on a fucking Sunday. Sundays are explicitly reserved for compound interest and complete silence. Who the fuck does the government think they are?"
He aggressively slammed on the brakes, skidding the rusted motorcycle to a halt right in front of the massive, intimidating concrete structure of the Department of Commerce and Federal Auditing. It was the most feared financial branch in the DI'an Republic, responsible for crushing monopolies and regulating trade.
Malesh stepped off the bike, not even bothering to lock it because it was such a piece of shit no one would ever steal it, and marched straight up to the front doors looking like he was ready to surgically dismantle a politician.
He bypassed the security checkpoint—because the guards took one look at his deadpan, sociopathic stare and decided their minimum wage wasn't worth stopping him—and marched straight up to the top floor.
He violently threw open the heavy oak doors to the Head Director's office.
"Listen to me, you bureaucratic parasite—" Malesh started, fully prepared to threaten the entire department with absolute economic ruin.
He stopped.
Sitting directly behind the Head Director's massive mahogany desk, spinning casually in the expensive leather executive chair and throwing metal paperclips at a framed federal painting, was Kniya.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Malesh asked, dropping his battered briefcase onto the floor. "I thought you were in Sulwai."
"Bro, tell me about it!" Kniya groaned, tossing another paperclip that bounced off the painting of the DI'an flag. "I was literally in the middle of blowing up a mountain to build a new slag pit, and the fucking military showed up with a federal subpoena! They dragged me onto a train at 3:00 AM! Do you know how much a mountain-detonation delay costs me?!"
Malesh walked into the room, looking around the empty, highly secure office. "Where is the idiot who summoned us?"
"I don't know, he's probably hiding," Kniya laughed, putting his muddy, steel-toed boots right up on the Director's pristine desk. "If they are trying to tax us, I am going to buy this entire building, fire everyone, and turn it into a parking garage."
Before Malesh could agree with that highly logical real estate plan, a side door clicked open.
The Head of the Commerce Department walked in. He was an older, heavily decorated government official, but he looked completely exhausted. He had deep, dark bags under his eyes, and his hands were physically trembling as he looked at the two twenty-five-year-old billionaires currently squatting in his office and holding the entire country's economy hostage.
"Gentlemen," the Head of Commerce said, his voice tight with severe anxiety as he stared at Kniya's dirty boots ruining his desk. "Thank you for coming. We need to have a little talk."
Malesh crossed his arms, staring at the official with a look of pure, unadulterated hatred.
"Make it fast," Malesh stated coldly. "You are currently wasting my Sunday, which means you are costing me approximately nine million credits a minute in sheer annoyance. What the fuck do you want?"