kishiria:
ceressiass:
Oh, Konrad - we all know, that old blood and other body liquids on armor look creepy. But hey - they are also kinda smelly. In other words - Night Haunter is stinky. Someone really should tell him.
I don’t think he cares. Or he thinks that’s a feature, not a bug.
It all begins innocently enough - following a particularly grueling campaign, the Night Lords’ techmarines beg the opportunity to run maintenance on Curze’s armor. It’s been accumulating a great deal of nicks, dents and scratches over the past few actions and is beginning to look much the worse for wear, doubly so with the trophies the Night Haunter likes to string from its barbed edges. In one of his good moods following the action, Curze agrees and leaves his gear in the ship’s armory, walking the decks in little more than a spare smock.
Approximately an hour later, he gets a call from Jago asking him to come down to J deck to take a look at a potential problem with the reclamation facilities. Curze huffs, but with nothing better to do right now he goes, descending into the bowels of his command ship to meet with his first captain.
He’s brought up short when he steps into an empty, bare-walled chamber just ahead of the ship’s habitation plants. Sevatar is waiting for him, standing in the doorway opposite, but as Curze crosses the room towards him, the first captain of the Night Lords casually slides the door shut and dogs the hatch.
Curze is just opening his mouth to ask his chosen captain what the hell when he hears the sound of the room’s other hatch slamming shut, and turns around to see the wheel spinning until it locks. He turns back to Sevatar with fury in his eyes, and he takes his first step towards his second in command, ready to kill him before he can enact whatever betrayal he’s been planning.
That first step is all he gets. With a cacophonous bang, the port-side wall of the chamber suddenly splits open, the lower half falling to the floor. The VIII Primarch is treated to a brief glimpse of armored Legionaries wielding what looks like flamer nozzles before he’s struck full-force with ten powerful jets of water, enough to knock him backwards several steps.
The squad of Atramentar terminators advance on their primarch, keeping him on the back foot as they train their firehoses on his torso. Within a few moments the water in the room is already ankle-deep on a space marine and Curze is practically lost amidst the raging torrent. However, all may be lost as he suddenly makes a prodigious leap into the air, grasping at the piping that lines the ceiling and levering his feet up into them as well, clinging there like some manner of giant humanoid spider. Then he begins to make good his escape, scrambling back towards the hatch from which he entered, while the terminators continue to train their jets of water on his back in the vain hope of knocking him loose. Yelling erupts as they attempt to keep him from reaching the escape hatch.
But Curze is undone. He does not know that Sevatar is not the only officer involved in this conspiracy - the captains of the Night Lords have anticipated this reaction, and so brought the one man capable of bringing Konrad Curze down.
Zso Sahaal’s jetpack kicks on with a roar and a whoosh of steam as it boils away frothing water. The commander of raptors flies at Curze at full speed and slams into him, a full-bodied tackle that loosens Curze’s grip on the slippery piping. Sahaal whips his arms out and gets them both around his primarch’s neck before he can fall and lose this opportunity, and with a full-bodied yank he tears Night Haunter’s hands from his precious escape.
They crash to the ground, Sahaal keeping a headlock on his primarch, and a moment later Sevatar is upon him as well, throwing himself on Curze’s right arm. Under normal circumstances, a primach would throw off a pair of space marines with barely a thought, but Sahaal and Sevatar are both fully-armored and Curze is disoriented and reacting without thought from the onslaught of sound and water.
The terminators keep their hoses trained on the tangle of bodies, and with them in place, members of the VIII Legion apothecarion rush forward to make the most of what time they have. One of them cuts away the grimy smock the Night Haunter wears, while the others begin applying solvents and oils to his body, ridding him of the myriad stains and blotches that have been left to mar his pale skin. Llansahai himself uses his custom-made scalpel to hurriedly trim Curze’s ragged mane of hair so that it precisely falls about his neck and shoulders. Someone hurls a small, pale blue ball like a grenade into the churning water around the melee, and soon it froths with foam.
As quickly as the attack started it ends, the Night Lords stepping back from their primarch as the terminators shut off the flow from their firehoses. Water sloshes and drips from overhead, steam from Sahaal’s jetpack beading on every metal surface. The two first captains are the last to disengage, slinking from the primarch’s body and standing, their posture fully that of a man expected to be made dead in the next moments.
Curze thrashes for a few more moments before finally getting to his feet and lashing out with a flood of invective. For several minutes the Night Lords - particularly the officers - are subjected to an exacting description of how their body parts will be rearranged for taking part in this. He decks Sevatar for entrapping him at one point, knocking him from his feet and only when he rolls onto his side with a groan do the other Legionaries know he still lives.
When it’s finally over and the Night Haunter stands, breathing heavily from the effort of laying down such curses, someone brings forth an offering - a pair of glossy black boots atop a folded bodysuit. Curze glowers at it for a long moment and then relents, pulling on the fresh duty clothes with a snarl that his officers have won - this time.
