[log] you need to wash your hands. YOU NEED TO WASH YOUR HANDS.

[logosmaxima]

Who: Magnus the Red & Konrad Curze (+ siblings??)
What: Magnus will have his revenge conducts a perfectly normal intervention on his brother's level of Stench.
When: Slightly before the 9th.
Where: The showers
Content warnings: Who even knows with Warhammers; will tag in comment headers as they come up. Minimum, someone's getting stuffed in a shower against his will.

Magnus the Red is plotting revenge on his brother.

He will not acknowledge what he is doing by that name, but it is most certainly revenge he is intending to take on one Konrad Curze.

All the ingredients are there: A tangible injury (to Magnus' pride), the sense an injustice has been done that needs redress, and the intent to cause hurt (to Konrad's ... dignity? His patina of filth?) in return.

But he will not call it revenge, because Magnus -- master of the ulterior motive -- has other well-justified reasons to hunt his brother down and shove him into a running shower until the stink's washed off of him. First and most importantly: Konrad needs it. (Everyone around Konrad needs it. Anyone who wants to live with him in the Library long-term needs it.) Second: Konrad is unlikely to acquiesce to this necessity if Magnus were to ask. Third: There is something off about Konrad's vitality that he had noticed, but not thought to question, last they argued spoke. Something that might or might not be tied into the intended medical condition that necessitated constant servitor monitoring. Thus, fourth: Since Konrad would not answer questions about what required such monitoring, he likewise would not answer questions about what had dimmed the palpable sense of inhuman strength every primarch bore coiled in his aura.

Thus, to address all of these at once, Magnus will have his revenge address them all at once by forcibly arranging the much-needed shower.

The Cyclops does not enact his plan immediately. (Revenge is, after all, best served cold.) He takes his time to luxuriate in the Library, to meditate, to think over all he has heard about the Imperium's future -- near-term and far -- from his other brothers. He does not avoid Konrad; nor does he seek his dark brother out, merely makes note of his habits and where he is -- and is not -- during the Library's endless lumen-lit day. He scouts the (woefully spartan) sanitary facilities, making note of their layout and relative dimensions, and what is and isn't present to use.

Then, when the time is right, Magnus strikes.

Like any good ambush, it looks wholly innocuous to start. Magnus does not stoop to sneaking up on his brother -- he merely approaches him in a moment Konrad happens to be near the living quarters. "Konrad," he says, warmly.

Then he makes a lightning-fast grab for his brother's shoulder. If this were a mortal -- granted, a mortal of truly prodigious size -- it would be nothing to spin the other man around and pin him in a restraining hold.

He expects much more resistance. For all his height, Magnus is not the most skilled of his brothers in physical combat. Konrad should easily break his hold, under normal conditions. This will be a useful test!

Comments

[curzed]

Curze generally didn't get out and about much during what passed as 'day'. He generally found some quiet out of the way place between the towering shelves of books, and steadfastly avoided people as a matter of habit. Once the lumens dimmed a little and what passed for night arrived, then he's more likely to be found. Occasionally the garden deigned to be nighttime, and it was inevitably a refuge. Could he tolerate light? Yes. Did he like it, absolutely not.

There comes a point where he must reluctantly admit he should probably do something about the lacking routine maintenance for his power armor. There was that stuck tooth, its fate still undecided, and if that's there, who knows what else was missed. His return to the living quarters is only to reluctantly get to it, he didn't need the lightswitch flipped to see what he's doing and not all of it required rummaging around carefully inside a coolant intake of the thing's power supply and hoping nothing got damaged. Power armor was astonishingly rugged on the outside but that was decidedly not on the outside.

Magnus is terribly difficult to miss, and him turning up around where everyone semi-mortal slept is not entirely unexpected but it's definitely ... unwelcome.

"Magnus."

Ordinarily his foresight gives him plenty of warning even when dealing with things that move as fast as a primarch, because he is one, but that was before he put a hole through Kaiisteron he size of his fist and was sharply reprimanded by the library for it. Knowing Magnus is going to strike a moment before he does is absolutely no help now, though he recoils as soon as his brother actually moves. Not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. For even an astartes, he wouldn't be difficult to catch. Keeping ahold of him is rather like grabbing hold of an angry raccoon that has no problem doing absolutely anything necessary to get loose. If it weren't for his own hobbled strength, tearing literal chunks out of Magnus would be a real risk.

Rather less so, now. "Unhand me!"

It's not technically doing harm, whether or not he's actively fighting back, though not because of a lack of effort.

[logosmaxima]

It should not have been that easy.

It is, in fact, a bad sign that, kick and bite and struggle as Curze might, Magnus is not having chunks ripped out of him. Certainly it's more pleasant than the alternative, but he had not chosen to do this because he thought it would be nearly painless. It's concerning, that it is.

But it is also convenient, and he won't ignore that this must be embarrassing for Konrad. Who he does not really want to humiliate ... but take him down a peg?

Oh, absolutely.

So he smiles, pleasantly enough, as he makes a harness of his arms and starts to half-drag, half-carry Konrad to the showers. "Make me," he retorts, not above that bit of brotherly jibing.

"Or can you, without a battlecruiser to point at me?"

[curzed]

He's nothing if not quick to adapt, and where sheer power and speed fail, his methods change to working on slipping free instead of pitting his hobbled strength against a physically superior opponent. It's not going to be completely effortless to keep hold of him, but Magnus' reaction time is currently far superior.

It's embarrassing, yes, and he's lucky no-one else is awake or paying attention enough to interfere ... and it's also infuriating. Enough so that the answer is a guttural growl Russ's wolves would have been proud of and a sharp twist to try to free either arm with full intention to rake ragged nails across Magnus' only remaining eye.

He knows damn well he won't succeed before he even moves, and even if he did that the library would interfere and send him to that damned ship again, but that's not the point!

[logosmaxima]

The change in tactics -- from attempted assault to attempted escape -- does catch Magnus just enough off-guard that Konrad slips a little loose of his hold. He clucks his tongue, tightening his arms -- and leaning out of range of the flailing hands -- and remonstrates, "Really, Konrad. I'm not trying to kill you. You're even going to get out of this uninjured."

Not only because Magnus has also heard about "the boat" in passing, and getting relocated against his will (if the Library could do such a thing) would ruin his revenge plan.

Eventually the repeated escape attempts get bothersome enough he shifts to outright sling Konrad over one of his shoulders. While they're in clear sight of the showers, no less. If -- for some completely bizarre, known-only-to-unhinged-Nostramans reasons -- Konrad has somehow been faking his own disability, here is where the real escape would be made.

(Except Magnus, also, knows that no such thing will be successful. There's not even a presentiment of a world where Konrad gets away from him.

Worse and worse.)

[curzed]

The escape attempts will continue, and with heightening aggression. The lack of ability to actually cause harm is not through lack of effort on Konrad's part, but that had been the entire point of the assistant's deliberate indexing of his abilities. No-one else had struck to kill, and did it with enough force and speed that the automatic defenses of the place had no time to act first.

It complicates things like trying to escape things he has zero interest in actually being there for, like whatever it is Magnus is up to. Being slung across a shoulder doesn't stop him either it just frees up his hands; unfortunately it doesn't provide the force needed to rip gouges in his brother's crimson hide. "I don't care what you're trying to do! Put me down!"

It also still.. hasn't really processed why they're here of all places. Curze's ongoing grime and generalized filth isn't an active decision, it's just one that never really registers as important, even now.

[logosmaxima]

They're very nearly to their destination, and all Konrad's flailing has amounted to as much as an unarmed mortal might have accomplished: Exactly nothing.

Well, beyond one eye-watering hair-pull that Magnus shakes off like a bull irritated by a biting fly.

He strides into the sanitary facilities and to the showers, now grown to match a primarch's size, and promptly deposits Konrad on his feet in one of the stalls. "You are put down," he intones, and snaps a kine shield into place to block any further attempts at escape. One also shimmers into being, invisibly blocking the drain. "Though I expected to be at least bloodied for it.

"You aren't whole, are you?"

[curzed]

All of this ... to lock him in a shower.

The kine shield is immediately tested, then the walls of the stall itself, but Magnus' shields could hold through heavy bombardment, they won't crack now. Not as he is. The narrow confines are sized up with only their presence, but even with Magnus there it would be overly generous to suggest the shower stall is spacious. He backs against the far wall anyway, scowling.

It isn't the first time he's been ambushed by a bath, though his First Captain wasn't foolish enough to get within arm's reach while doing it. Shang preferred just asking, but the request was.. less important than nearly any other matter that crosses his attention, usually necessitating Sevatar's interference some weeks later. But that was his own Legion, not an obnoxious sibling he'd love dearly to leave some scars on.

"Give it time." The grinding rasp is a promise of retaliation sooner or later, because escalation to violence because of all of this is CLEARLY the only option. Well. He's going to be just as uncooperative with his brother as he ever had been with Sevatar, and there's a distinct lack of high powered hoses here.

No psychic might is at this point needed to know Curze has been hobbled or the last minute or so would have gone very differently. "That is no concern of yours. Keep it up and that will change however and you'll find out directly."

Calling him whole even before being summarily indexed would be awful generous. He's been damaged goods since he was created