Marina Scherbatskaya (scherbatskaya) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2016-11-27 19:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2019 [11] november, marina scherbatskaya, ryan mccormick |
Who: Marina Scherbatskaya and Ryan McCormick
Where: Scherbatsky residence
What: Ryan has some questions about the Hellhounds.
When: [slight backdate] November 8th, time TBD
"Hi." Ryan took a seat in the vacant space that had just opened up next to Marina at the kitchen table, then reached for another helping of pie. "Do you want some?" he asked, serving himself some and glancing over at her expectantly. “Only if it’s one of the ones you brought. Can’t fucking trust most of these hounds with making a piece of toast,” Marina said, cracking a smile at Ryan. He sure was an oddity. How did someone who cooked and ate that much stay so goddamn skinny? Ryan grinned, glancing over at one sad, mostly-untouched pie that sat on the side of the table before reaching for the spatula. "Yeah, we made this one," he said, setting a slice on Marina's plate. (There was more on his mind besides pie, of course, but seemed like an easier topic to start with than 'Hey, can you tell me more about how you guys should be in jail instead of in this comfy house?') "I'm glad you like it," he added as he got them both forks. “You can’t really go wrong with this crowd when it tastes like booze,” Marina grinned back. “Up until a little while ago I think most of us drank our calories. And it wasn’t like the moonshine could ever expire, unlike some of that shitty canned food we ate.” "That was definitely a big factor behind the recipe I chose," Ryan admitted. "I saw how you guys like to drink at that party they threw for you." Except thinking about that night -- and how much fun he'd had with the club -- just set his anxiety off again, and even bites of pie weren't helping. After a moment, he glanced over at Marina again. "Can I ask you a question?" “Think you already did, but you’re allowed to ask another question,” Marina said with amusement, bringing another bite of pie up to her mouth. "Fair enough," Ryan said, smiling slightly before it faded away. "I was just, you know… Since I'm new, I don't know a lot about what things were like before we got here. I watched your interview, but I guess…" He shrugged, not really sure what he was asking -- or what he wanted to know, before asking the first thing that came to mind: "Why did you guys need blanket amnesty?" Marina’s eyebrows rose in surprise. This wasn’t the conversation she had been expecting, but it wasn’t as if she was going to shy away from it either. Setting down her fork, knowing there was no quick answer to this, she said, “Well, most of the really bad shit happened before I was even in Austin, so I was lumped in on this amnesty mostly for associating with the Hellhounds. But also for the shit I talked about in my interview. But the guy who was President before Bishop was a guy named Rodeo. He and the Mayor really had it out for each other because Rodeo and the rest of the Hellhounds never followed his rules and questioned things Olinger didn’t want public, like the fact that we suspected there was civilization outside of Austin before we had it confirmed and how it was bullshit that we were barely scraping by when the people in the Capitol and UMCB had a lot of shit no one else had. Both of them played for blood and a lot of people died on both sides. I guess we got the amnesty because we were reacting to the shitty circumstances we were put in and not making the shitty circumstances, you know?” "Wow." Ryan's eyes were wide, he was sure, but it couldn't exactly be helped. The picture she painted of the city was grim and bleak, so far removed from the city he was beginning to love. "What kind of... " He frowned, his eyes lifting quickly to scan the rest of the room before he looked back at her. "Has everyone here at this party killed someone?" “Probably,” Marina deadpanned as she looked around the room as well. “I mean, Bunny, she’s probably got the most blood on her hands. She looks all sweet and innocent and offers you pie and shit but that’s how she fucking gets you.” "Oh." Ryan looked over at Bunny, dismayed by this turn of events. Maybe the pie Marina had mentioned was poisoned. He looked at the slice on his plate as though to make sure it was one he'd brought. "I, uh. I wasn't expecting that, but I guess you never know, right?" After waiting a moment and taking in Ryan’s reaction, a smirk grew on Marina’s lips. “I’m fucking with you. Bunny really is as sweet as a lamb. And besides the whole Emmanuel thing, it’s not like I just kill people for fun. That shit was personal. Shit was bad here and people did what they had to to survive. Survival isn’t some fucking fairytale.” "Like how bad?" Ryan couldn't help but ask, even as he blushed at the joke she'd played on him. Hadn't it been bad all over the place? Whole parts of the country had been cut down and left to the zombies to overrun it, after all. Sure, Chicago was pretty safe now, but it wasn't like they hadn't gone through that same kind of stuff. They'd survived, too. "I know the old Mayor was super crazy… I guess I don't know how it could've gotten to the point where everyone was killing everyone." “Well we were supposed to be some test site or some shit for that prax drug. Mayor was supposed to be feeding it to the zombies to see if it helped kill them or cure them or whatever, but that didn’t fucking happen. I don’t know the whole story because it was before I got here, but either Rodeo stole it before they started testing it or Olinger was doing something else with it? Fuck if I know. But once they got their hands on it, they saw that it was manufactured after the city was bombed and that set off some red flags, like there was more to the story that they weren’t telling us,” Marina said, pausing to take a drink of water. "Did anyone do anything about that?" That seemed like a pretty big red flag as far as Ryan was concerned, too. "Was that something everyone knew? It sounded like it was a pretty big surprise when they talked about it on the news, but I don't know if that was actually true or not." “We didn’t know that there was life out there. Olinger fucking knew and he used that to fuck with us all and make us follow his insane rules in order to get food and shelter and clean water. That’s why the Dog Park even exists. Because no one would help them so they had to find their own place to get water and shelter.” Ryan nodded aimlessly, thinking through all of this. Food and water and a place to live -- all of those were basic human rights, as far as he was concerned. And like Marina had said, it was really questionable that the previous government had known the rest of the United States existed and didn't do much about it. Still, there were a few more things he couldn't help but wonder. "Why wouldn't they help them? Do you know?" It was a complicated thing where Rodeo and Sarge basically didn’t want to give their names to get into a shelter, but instead of saying that, Marina said, “They weren’t exactly welcomed. And when they went scavenging in abandoned places to try and find food, Olinger’s private police goons said all that shit was government property, so they were stealing. They made it a fucking crime to try to survive.” "Okay." That was pretty fair, as far as he was concerned -- not what she'd said about Olinger, but the fact that they'd needed to survive, plain and simple. Still, as much as he hated the fact that survival hadn't been a given and that their government had failed them, he knew he'd need some time to come to terms with the things his neighbors and friends had done. "Thanks for answering my questions," he said, offering Marina a small smile. As uncomfortable as he still felt, she'd been really cool about everything. "Sorry if I was annoying." “You’re not annoying,” Marina said, glancing at Ryan. “What is annoying is how fucking good this pie is. God damn,” she said, shoveling another bite into her mouth. “Do you serve this at the restaurant?” Despite everything, Ryan couldn't help but laugh. "Not yet," he said, grateful for an easier topic, something he could handle for the time being while he figured everything else out, "but maybe we should." |