carter's options.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Carter is only a few steps out the door when it swings open again behind him. Wyrmbreaker's rage precedes his voice.

"Carter."

[Carter Roth] He'd left, he'd failed his own test of himself and left the meeting in a fit. He feels the rage that eminated from the building as he left and only a second later he hears the voice of Wyrmbreaker. He was glad his hands were still in his pocket as he turned and looked at the Alpha of the Shadowlords.

"Yeah?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "The Grand Elder has a message for you. That little scene you caused. You know who's on their hands and knees cleaning up broken glass? Your fellow kin. Good job, Roth.

"The Fenrir Alpha has a message for you too. You're barred from her territory.

"I have a message for you. You've shamed your Tribe. You've dishonored us. I told you once, don't make me play the tyrant. You didn't listen, and I can't trust you to run amok in this city any longer. So I'll give you a choice. One: leave this city. Go elsewhere, find yourself a nice liberal Coggie Sept to angst it up in.

"Two: be confined to my pack's territory -- specifically, Katherine's city loft -- and your workplace until you've proven yourself fit for public consumption. You will have a stormcrow monitoring your every move. If you want to keep on training kin, we'll talk about that after you've stopped behaving like an infant.

"There is no equality, Roth. Not in the Nation, not in the world. When the Grand Elder says jump, I ask how high. Why do you deserve special treatment?"

[Carter Roth] Carter turns fully then and looks at Lukas his eyes narrowing into dark slits. "I don't. I'm a criminal, a mass murderer and a complete asshole." He says flatly as he watches wyrmbreaker closely. "But every single kin you fail and your kind fail, every single one of them like August does deserve it. They are owed equality because for all your abilities, all your great power. You and your kind are still human or at least part human, which means your just as petty, arrogant and selfish as the rest of us."

"And what are you going to do if I say fuck your options hmm? You gonna kill me Wyrmbreaker?" He says fully expecting the alpha to answer in the positive. "You can't silence us, not unless your willing to kill every single one of us, you heard it in there Wyrmbreaker, alot of us kin aint happy."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Yes."

He breaks in to say that, right after Carter asks you gonna kill me? And he waits, eyes are cold as glaciers, hands folded neatly behind his back.

"If you don't choose for yourself, I'll choose for you. You will be confined. And if you violate my terms, you will be exiled. If you come back, I will kill you."

[Carter Roth] "So you are just like her then." He snorts as he stands there a slight smirk crossing his face. "Good to know that deep down inside you Wyrmbreaker, is something that only accepts killing as the answer when it doesn't get its way."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Your mother?"

[Carter Roth] Carter simple nods to his question, and does not elaborate.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] A pause, and then a sigh. Lukas paces closer, but it's not a threat. He shakes his head, head bows; lifts it and looks Carter in the eye.

"Until I was eight years old, I thought I would be kin all my life. Until I was five, I lived with my parents in what was Czechoslovakia. I saw them used as pawns in the power games Shadow Lords play. I saw them swept from the board when they were no longer needed, uprooting our entire family. We had to flee for our lives, leaving everything behind, become some Garou wanted more power, gambled, and lost. That's how I ended up here.

"Life isn't fair. And I know the life of a kin, especially a kin of Thunder, isn't pleasant. But there are Garou who would have killed you already, Carter. I don't want to. I'm giving you chance after chance.

"And not because you can heal -- because frankly, Carter, I can heal myself with a goddamn gourd of water at a fraction of the cost it would take on you. I don't need to hurt you to heal myself. I don't want that, and that's not why I don't want to kill you. I'm trying to keep you alive because I don't want your blood on my hands. It's not tainted enough yet. I'm trying to keep you alive because underneath all that rebel rhetoric, you're still trying to train these kin. To help them grow stronger. You're deluding yourself about equality, and you're deluding yourself if you think even humans have a semblance of it. But you haven't turned into an instrument of the Wyrm. Yet.

"That's why I would kill you if you didn't step back into line, though. Because my concern is for the safety of the entire Sept. There's always unhappiness. I'm unhappy. We're losing this war. I won't live to see my children grow up. My parents and my sister and my mate will be left unguarded when I die -- given into the care of some Garou whose honor I can only pray holds. But it's one thing to be unhappy; another to actively encourage it. And if you're running around telling kin not to come under the protection of Garou, you're endanger them. If you foment discontent, you're splitting our forces. If you get yourself banned from the Fenrir's territory, you drive a wedge between our tribes.

"I won't allow that. That's the work of the Wyrm. And if you can't stop yourself from doing it, I'll stop you.

"Look beyond yourself for once, Carter. Shit happens to everyone. Only the weak let themselves get twisted. If you can't see that there are monsters far more terrible than me, or this faceless Oppressor Garou, or even your mother -- then you are truly blind."

[Carter Roth] The gun is produced remarkably fast for a human. Its held in the light and its raised, but it does not fire, no...infact if Lukas knows anything about firearms he would know that the safety is stlll on and the hammer is still down.

"So its a choice of monsters is it? A choice of monsters or a bloody fucking death huh?" He asks as he stares back at Lukas his eyes never blinking, he gaze never wavering, he knew he was very close now to that bloody end he just spoke of.

"What would you do in my position huh? With all the shit I've seen, hell all the shit you've seen? You'd take it, let yourself get locked up because you chose to stand for what you believe in?" He's trying to breath deeply, but even with all his training it was hard, adrenaline coursed through his veins, making him shake without his wishes.

"You tell me here and now Wyrmbreaker, what would you do?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [okay, lukas's firearms is 0, so he wouldn't know a safety from a sack. we need to go to inits!]

[Carter Roth] [hahah whoops!]

[Carter Roth] [Init plus 5]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [+20 *feels bad*]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4

[Carter Roth] [Declare: Nothing, No way is Carter fast enough to catch this, sides...hes still got the safety on lol]

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [1. disarm
R1. leg sweep
R2. pin!]

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [okay, since carter isn't resist we're just staying IC!]

Carter never gets a chance to get a word out. The gun flashes out -- remarkably fast for a human -- but Wyrmbreaker isn't human at all. He's faster than most people can think, and he doesn't see that the safety is on. He doesn't see anything at all except a gun, a deadly weapon, a threat from one Shadow Lord to another.

It takes one second to tear the gun away; another to sweep Carter's legs out from under him; a third to twist his arm behind his back, pin his face to the asphalt. Wyrmbreaker's hand is viselike on the back of Carter's neck, on the wrist he holds against the center of the kinsman's back. His voice is unsettlingly calm.

"If you pull a deadly weapon on me again -- or on any one of your allies in this war, garou or kin -- I will kill you. Only the Wyrm willingly threatens those of Gaia with death." A beat. "And if by that definition your mother is Wyrm-touched, then so be it."

Another beat, and he lets the man go, stepping back so he can get up. When Carter's on his feet again -- or indicates he's not getting up -- Lukas speaks again. Still calm. Still level.

"Last time we met, you said you'd fight back if I came at you. Why didn't you?"

[Carter Roth] Carter is on his back sooner then he could blink, sooner then he had a chance to take the safety off. It was a bewildering sight or perhaps a feeling, because normal eyes, normal senses couldn't possibly have captured the pure speed at which Wyrmbreaker moved. Carter screams his defiance as he hits the ground, and more a moment he tries to fight back, but with no weapon, and a vice like grip on his neck there is no choice but to relent.

He's laughing a moment later as he stays on the ground, slowly pulling himself upward. It is the laughter of defeat of sorrow and anguish, it is a rare sound an uneasy sort of sound that usually slips into a person moments before they lose it entirely. But Carter pulls back from it and points at the gun with another bout of laughter.

"I couldn't have shot you if I had wanted to." He says through the laughter. "The safety was still on." Tears threaten to slide down those cheeks of his, tears he barely keeps in check as he looks up at Wyrmbreaker.

He sobers slightly, the near death experience...because that is what that was causes him to shake even as his voice levels out. "Besides...I wanted to know what the great wyrmbreaker would have done in my position."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [btw, carter didn't get his speech out -- you might wanna rephrase that!]

[Carter Roth] [DLP]

[Carter Roth] Carter is on his back sooner then he could blink, sooner then he had a chance to take the safety off. It was a bewildering sight or perhaps a feeling, because normal eyes, normal senses couldn't possibly have captured the pure speed at which Wyrmbreaker moved. Carter screams his defiance as he hits the ground, and more a moment he tries to fight back, but with no weapon, and a vice like grip on his neck there is no choice but to relent.

He's laughing a moment later as he stays on the ground, slowly pulling himself upward. It is the laughter of defeat of sorrow and anguish, it is a rare sound an uneasy sort of sound that usually slips into a person moments before they lose it entirely. But Carter pulls back from it and points at the gun with another bout of laughter.

"Maybe....maybe I didn't feel like dying today after all." He said as the laughter calmed and he began to settle slightly even as his hands shook. "Besides...I never got my answer, I was asking you, as you threw me on the ground. What would you do? If you were in my shoes Wyrmbreaker, with all that I've seen, or hell...all that you've seen." He said with a cough as he rubbed his throat.

"If you were given a choice between monsters and a hard bloody death. Would you accept being locked up? Even if it meant giving up what you stood for?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I don't believe that," Wyrmbreaker replies. "If you didn't want to die, you would have fought tooth and nail to live. That's what people do when they want to live, Carter -- they fight, they take whatever chance they're offered. I think you didn't fight back because either you don't want to live at all, or you didn't think you'd really die.

"I think it's the latter. I think somewhere inside you knew I wouldn't kill you unless I had to. Or even hurt you. I think somewhere inside you know I'm not the enemy."

And while Carter is pulling himself up, Lukas is taking a seat -- over on a nearby parked car, the slate-blue Infiniti G37x he came here in. And he watches Carter, listening now, the gun lax in his hands. When the kinsman is finished Lukas shakes his head.

"And what is it you stand for, Carter? Some ridiculous notion of equality that even the humans don't practice? Or do you stand for the idea that no matter how bad you think things are now, they'll get a hundredfold worse if the Wyrm wins?

"I know what I stand for. I stand for the war. I stand for victory over the Wyrm. And yeah. Shit happens. Life isn't fair. But those are the details. There will be time for that later, when the war is won. Right now, bitching that kin and Garou relations are dysfunctional is like ... worrying about peeling wallpaper while the house burns down.

"So if I've sinned so badly that my elder feels I need to take a timeout and think about what I've done, I'll take that timeout. I'll think about what I've done, and what I want to do. I'll do my time, pay my penance, and then I'll come back stronger.

"But that's me. You have your choice."

[Carter Roth] "Huh....that so." He said as he takes a deep shaky breath, it was like he was coming of a particularly bad mission the sort of feeling he hadn't felt in over three years.

"Are you certain you want someone like me coming back stronger?" He asks as he finally stands up. "You've seen what I do now, or do you think time with your pack is going to change that?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I don't know," Lukas answers honestly. "I think it might not. But I hope it will. Because I'm running out of options here, and so are you."

[Carter Roth] Carter takes a moment, just a moment to stare off into nothingness as he thought. In the end he looks over at Wyrmbreaker and nods. "Alright...fine, I'll stay at your damn condo." He says with a reluctant tone.

"But I won't stop training, I have several kin on the go right now and I won't leave them to flounder and give up, its easy to do with the sort of training I do." Even in defeat he pushes, even if Carter came to accept the garou, or at least tolerate them, it was obvious he would never simply give in to their demands.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The look on Lukas's face is almost relief.

"It's Katherine's house. I'll talk to her and see if you can use the upstairs rumpus room to train the kin. Otherwise, I'll see about renting you a dojo.

"There'll be a stormcrow following you. You'll stay at the Loft, and if you have a job, you can go to your job. That's it. Everything else is off-limits. If you have to meet a friend, invite them over, and give Katherine advance notice. She's your hostess, whether you want to be a guest or not.

"If you can go a month without causing me another headache or embarrassing your entire tribe, you'll be free again to do as you like. But Carter, take the time off to reflect. Figure out what the hell you actually want. Don't just do your time and then go back to your old ways, because it'll land you right back here -- or worse.

"I don't want to have to do this again. We do this for cubs who won't behave. You're not a cub. You're a grown man, and I don't want to feel like your mother."