Betony-Surprise

Yup that's right! My fav OC twins are back after New War! And they're much better characters now, yay for character development. Y'all just wait, Marshal will get her badass haircut sometime in this fic(aka, the haircut I just got and am in love with bc it's super cool!)

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For the next month, they went from car to car, gas station to gas station, until they came across a farmhouse. Which let to this moment in time where they were held at gunpoint by two girls that looked oddly familiar to Rin.

"Drop the sword, Samurai Jack." One woman demanded with a mild southern accent. She had ice-blue eyes with an interesting dark blue ring around the irises, freckles dotting her tanned skin, and chin length, wavy chocolate-brown hair. She could've been anywhere from eighteen to twenty-five, Rin couldn't tell. She held the gun with obvious experience beyond surviving in the Zombie Apocalypse–she might have had a job that had to do with guns before everything went down.

The second woman had neatly cut blunt bangs and straight hair the same shade as the firsts' that went to her collarbones, her freckles much fainter and fewer. Aside from the straight hair, lack of freckles, and slightly darker blue eyes, Rin figured they could have been twins or at least sisters close in age. She didn't have any weapons pulled, only standing next to her sister in front of the strangers intruding on their claimed home. She fully trusted her sister's skill in taking care of unwanted company and Rin hoped they could get out of this without anyone getting hurt.

Their faces seemed familiar to Rin for a reason he couldn't remember and it clicked for Ryuji before it clicked for Rin. "Babe, do you think that's those same girls?" He muttered to his boyfriend. Rin shrugged in response. "So do we risk pulling out the photo?" Izumo wondered. "It's girls!" Sachi interrupted the adults quiet conversation.

"'Scuse me?" The first girl asked, furrowing her brow. "Girls from the house!" Tsukumo agreed. "What?" The second girl asked, with no accent at all. "Sorry! You see, we stayed in a house a while back and there were pictures of a family with two daughters. The children think you're them." Shiemi apologized in her deceptively soft voice. Rin had seen her bash the shit out of walking corpses with her shovel mercilessly and the gardener had taken him down during training with brute strength alone. Rin figured gardening and being active her whole life kept her fit, even if she did still seem to hang on to that childish roundness in her cheeks.

"You said something about a picture?" The second girl asked. "Yea! We have picture of girls!" Sachi said. Rin sighed. "We need to teach you about Stranger Danger." He huffed while Bon nodded in agreement. "You too, Tsukumo." Izumo told her sister, who pouted.

"Cute kids. Mind if I see that picture?" The first girl asked. "Thanks. And no, I don't mind. It's in the duffel bag. Front pocket." Rin answered calmly.
The second girl put down her gun and searched said duffel bag. She pulled out a picture and started laughing.

"O-ho my God, Marshal look at this!" She laughed, showing the picture to Marshal. "Oh my-How?! And why that picture of all the photos in the living room?!" Marshal groaned. "So that is you?" Rin deduced.

"Wow. Small world." Shima commented. "Did y'all take anything else from the house?" Marshal wondered, lowering the gun some. "I mean, we took the dolls, but Barbie doesn't look like she used to." Shura admitted, nodding to Sachi's little backpack. "Yeah, uh, they modified all the dolls to make them look like our group and then you two, for whatever reason." Ryuji explained sheepishly. "Before I put this gun all the way down and let you inside, I got a few questions. Answer 'em right and I'll let ya stay." Marshal told them. "First, What are your names and where are y'all from?" She began.

"I'm Rin, that's my boyfriend Ryuji, our daughter Sachi, Torako, my brother Yukio, Izumo, her sister Tsukumo, Shura, Shiemi, Renzou and Kinzou are brothers, and that's Konekomeru." Rin introduced, pointing to each one.

"Okay, so I'm guessing you're all from Japan?" The sister guessed. "How'd you know?" Renzou asked. "Anime." Both sisters answered in unison. Ryuji and Kinzou both snickered. "All that's left of our culture in the Apocalypse....." Ryuji muttered distatsefully. "Anime." Yukio whispered regretfully, Kinzou nodding sullenly beside him.

"Hah! Well, come on inside. I can make some sweet tea and we have some candy for the lil' ones." Marshal invited them in, finally. They gratefully went inside and sat on the furniture. Rin, Ryuji, Shima, and Kinzou sat on the floor so the others could all sit on furniture.

"Aw, none of that now. The kids can sit on the floor, they have more meat on their bones than you do." Marshal sighed when she came in with the tea.

Chelsea pulled out coloring books and crayons that had definitely seen better days and invited the little girls to sit on the floor around the coffee table and color with her. Rin slumped into the armchair the kids had been occupying and Izumo moved to let Ryuji drop into the comfy-looking rocking chair. "I sat around and did nothing but play dolls most of the time on the roof, so you can have the actual furniture now." She murmured to him. He smiled gratefully at her and her cheeks heated.

Rin somehow felt the heat across the room even though it was only a small rush of hot blood to her cheeks. He felt heat start building in his chest and forced it back down. Now was not the time to burn like a nuclear reactor in front of his family and two strangers whose childhood home he'd stayed in once.

"Hmm, neglected love-triangle. Sounds about right in the Zombie Apocalypse. Nobody's got time to pay attention to much romance nowadays." Marshal commented on the interaction. She must have taken Rin's prolonged gaze at the two the wrong wat-he'd actually zoned out. Various snickers from around the room, a groan from Bon, more blushing from Izumo, and a nondescript hum from Rin were the responses to the callout. Rin was too tired to care much at the moment.

Everyone thought Rin's tiredness was just because of him taking out all the zombies on their way to this place. They'd honestly just been looking for somewhere that could possibly be long-term for them-a place they could one day call Home. But he'd been having flare-ups more and more often in the past months. A couple times, he had to tell the group he was scouting ahead, run way ahead of them, and get his body temperature to calm down before returning to the group. It physically tired him out having to force the heat away.

"Marshal, what did I tell you about outing people's personal stuff?" Chelsea, the second girl, lilted. "They're gonna have to acknowledge their romance issues if they're gonna stay because I wanna know who's taken and who I can flirt with." Marshal threw back. "You don't hide anything, do you?" Shura pointed out. Marshal smirked. "Nope." She said, popping the 'p.' "And neither do you, pretty thing." Shura grinned and her cheeks tinted pink in pleasant surprise.

"So, Rin is your leader. How'd you all meet? Were you all already together when this started?" Chelsea changed the subject.

"Ah well, Rin and I grew up in a monastery with our adopted father and six other priests in Tokyo. We were poor, so we were used to having to make do. We lost our father and Rin found him eating the priests when this whole thing hit, so he grabbed me and ran. We found a few other people and stuck with them for the first few months. We got good at surviving quick." Yukio began. He went on to explain about him getting overtaken by a hoard and supposedly being turned, but not really and then about the group dispersing when a hoard collapsed their base.

Rin picked it up from there and explained how it was being on his own. Miserable, Lonely, and Boring. "I was going through phases of the virus during that whole time." Yukio chimed in helpfully.

Ryuji told them about his Inn in Kyoto and how they stayed safe and cozy up on the mountain until a little after Rin came along. He told them about finding Rin in the middle of a huge hoard of Corpses, taking them down all around him. "I thought he was a god for a minute there." He laughed. Rin covered his face with his hands as it burned red at the compliment. "But, he started slowing down and those things weren't, so we went back to help him. Took down the rest of the crowd. Bon here goes to introduce himself to Rin and what does Rin do?" Kinzou took up the story. "Fuckin punched me in the gut!" Ryuji answered, still laughing.

Rin let out an amused chuckle. "I was alone for so long. Didn't really know how to react. Needed to be alone to think and I was actually sick during all of this-probably just a regular common cold or maybe from an infection that could've come from the gashes from the zombie bear-so I pulled a hit and run. Retreated to a building. But then their older sister started talking," He pointed to Shima and Kinzou. "And I came back out because she seemed a lot like a mom and I figured she would be the least likely to hurt me. Convinced me to go back with them to their little Safe Haven. Sounded too good to be true to me, but maybe my luck was just consistently shit before I met Mr. Lucky over here." He nodded at his boyfriend, who sputtered indignantly at the nickname. "I called you a god and this is what I get?!" He cried indignantly.

"It was nice. I recovered from the cold. For maybe a month, I helped out around the Inn. Got to know everyone, actually had friends for once. That was back when her folks were still with us. Back when all the servants and all the Shimas were alive except for the father. The little kids too. Good people." Rin's voice grew wistful as he looked down at Sachi.

"But, life isn't supposed to be easy and I must have cursed the whole damn Inn because a Radiation storm hit, complete with acid rain and orange clouds, both of which melt people like candles and make others very, very sick."

"I couldn't warn everyone in time and even the ones I could warn didn't listen. They all kept running back out into the storm to retrieve others and never came back. Happened to Sachi's Dad when he was trying to get the kids inside. Her mom got really sick along with most of the other survivors. Right before she went, her mother made me promise to raise her daughter to be strong and survive in this world. The rest of us left the Inn and picked up Shiemi there along the way. So that's our part." Rin finished.

"Jesus Christ, that just kept getting darker and then didn't get better at all." Marshal winced. Rin nodded with a shrug. "Pretty, much, yeah."

Shura and Izumo explained what they'd been doing over that first year of the Apocalypse all the way up until Sasebo. Torako explained about the Wisconsin and how they spent about a year sailing to America.

Rin closed his eyes and eventually, all he could hear was their voices, not the actual words they were saying. A hush came over his tired mind and he was almost asleep when someone called his name. He barely twitched in reaction and they called his name again. Finally, Sachi called him and he blinked his eyes open. "Daddy!"

"Do you wanna go sleep in an a bed or are you fine with the chair for now? Your boyfriend is already out." Chelsea wondered politely. Rin nodded and closed his eyes again. He heard Marshal say something about letting them sleep until dinner was ready and then just murmurs of conversation from various people before falling totally asleep.