Rin loved his life.

Sure, there were still plenty of struggles, but as long as he had his husbands and his son, he'd be okay.

Nothing could ever replace the hole in his heart from his first family–especially the Ryuji, Yukio, and Sachi shaped holes–but he learned to love and appreciate the things he did have.

He had Mephisto and Amaimon always taking care of him even though he could do it himself and he had a son to raise together with them and they had a house and an entire town sized area to call home, full of people.

He learned how to lead the dead to stay away from the places that were vital to them. He learned how to collect them all into a herd in an area used for that purpose and then burn the place to high hell until there  was nothing left. They'd actually found a natural tar pit that went really deep into the ground. They'd been dumping the dead in there for weeks and there was still plenty of room left in it. It was so hot that it melted them away and then sometimes, dumping more bodies in would force clean bones to the top and they pick them out and use them. 

They scouted out natural resources and had farms going with plenty of people to run them. They made sure all of their personnel were well-trained for accidents.

They had taken in so many people that despite the odd psychopath that needed to be put down(they'd learned the hard way in their early days that exile would only bring their downfall, thanks to a certain nutjob gathering and leading an entire heard of undead and destroying their base camp to show them why being undead was wonderful), that they had sent out several parties to start villages and towns across the U.S.

Most parties had successfully started whole towns and took in the few living people left in the country. They trained them and had them choose what they wanted to help with (Agriculture, engineering, architecture, zombie herding, hunting, scouting for other survivors, gathering, teaching the kids, rearing kids, etc.). The kids that were brought in were protected and safe, but trained when they hit ten years of age or were any older than said age when they got there). Ammo had long since run out, so guns were useless unless you needed a last resort to bludgeon the dead with, so training was learning how to throw your weight around and how to take down the dead quickly and efficiently with blades or makeshift weapons if there were no blades around.

They even had at least one person in every town that recorded what went on and their techniques for how to run everything and how they got back on their feet after the world ended. They would need historians.

As for the radiation that was still around, they made sure to create an alarm specifically for warning the population of incoming radiation storms. So far, they'd avoided any deaths via Radiation Storms and no one had gotten sick enough from the lingering radiation to die, though some people did have their senses destroyed by it and others had some hair fall out.

Meanwhile, they watched from afar as nature reclaimed the big cities and watched the sky clear up over those cities. Without pollution, the world was returning to it's natural state. Animal populations were back up and so were insect populations. There was plenty of livestock to eat and breed and plants grew well if you had a green thumb and good soil.

It was a beautiful world. Rin wished he could just look out over this world from his balcony forever, enjoying the peace and happiness of the town below. Maybe one day, they could expand it to be a city, but one that didn't need to function on technology. Just the good of the land.

"I'm going to miss this place." Mephisto sighed quietly as he slipped onto the balcony behind Rin, wrapping his arms around the shorter man.

Rin nodded in agreement. "It's our home."

"Yes." Amaimon agreed, joining them at Rin's side. "But someone needs to go out there and start these homes in the rest of the world. We need to help jump start the new beginning."

"Besides, won't it be nice to have a full crew while sailing that destroyer across the ocean this time?" Mephisto pointed out, chuckling.

"You're not wrong about that. I'm still an little skeptical of taking three pregnant women with us, though...." Rin frowned.

"We need to repopulate. If we can find survivors there and they help raise these children, it will count for both diversity and multiculturalism as well as raising the next generation." Mephisto countered.

"Yes, but imagine how much that's going to strain everyone emotionally. And what if they get so stressed that someone loses a baby? When I was with–" He stopped dead for a second, recalling the hurt and loss that always punched him in the gut when he brought up his first family.

"When I was with the others, there were so many times Marshal almost lost those kids. We did everything we could to the point of most of the adults nearly starving and freezing just trying to feed the kids and the pregnant woman and keep them all warm for the cold months. It was a  terrible nine months." He said.

"And they're all going to give birth in that ship, too." Amaimon added. "But as long as we have the proper supplies to care for them, I think it will be fine. You're familiar with off-key baby singing echoing around aren't you?"

Rin choked back a sob and laughed. "Yeah. Yeah I am. I kinda miss it, to be honest."

Amaimon had a way of talking about things so casually no matter the context that it soothed the hurt or anger or sorrow over the matter.

A piece of Rin's heart would always belong to Ryuji Suguro, the fiancé he never got to marry, but he had plenty of himself to give and he loved Mephisto and Amaimon just as much. He had a dream where one day, he'd find his lost fiance and precious baby girl and they'd meet Mephisto and Amaimon and they'd all be one big family.

Rin didn't know what happened to the rest of his group, but he could just tell some of them were gone. He guessed he'd never know which ones unless those still alive showed up. He did know for sure that Yukio was still alive though. So was Suguro and definitely Sachi. If only they could find each other and Rin could unite all the people he loved the most.

"Come back to bed, we don't have the Leader's meetings for another three hours." Amaimon insisted. The two men whisked Rin away, back into their sheets, and cocooned him in the sheets and thick duvet and warmth.

Soon, in just a few days, all the preparations would be ready to launch Mission: Genesis. They'd gathered people to drop off in the bigger countries–diplomats and a few trained families with kids to help start a town, along with a t least one engineer and one person who either spoke the language and studied the culture of each country or was from each country. And there were a few pregnant women who volunteered to go on the journey too. One came to America from Russia a few years ago to marry an American man she fell in love with and now she would return home to keep the culture alive and also teach people how to survive in Thai new world.

God it was all so much. It'd been so many years since the sickness hit humanity so hard that there was almost no one left. But humans were like cockroaches–they survived everything.

There were even important people like engineers, builders, and doctors of every kind who'd been hidden away in shelters when the sickness hit. America had been able to prepare only to that degree before the sickness made it's way to them from the East where it started somewhere in Asia. Those people and been hiding for year until now. They'd lost a few since they'd don't understand the situation fully, but there were still plenty that could teach their skills to others and write whole new textbooks if none could be recovered on their subjects.

Rin was helping build a whole new world. Almost a decade ago, he'd just wanted to survive so his twin's death would mean something. Then, another year and he'd met the first love of his life and promised to raise Sachi to survive in this world. Then, a few more years, he'd built a family that pushed through harsh cold seasons and simmering hot seasons. A family that kept four babies and their mother alive come hell or high water and succeeded in keeping all five alive through the bringing process. Then, they lost it all again, and that time, Rin lost his family with it. And then he'd been alone again and then he'd been found and taken in again. Rin hoped that cycle was done with him, because he was sure as hell tired of it.

He let himself slip into peaceful sleep, dreaming of the future he so desperately wanted, yet knew he could never have.

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Happy Halloween, Y'all!!! If I have the second chapter done by the time I post this, I might post that one too since y'all had to wait so long for this!

This book is probably going to be very short and might be closer to a series of oneshots than a whole story, or maybe it'll form into something while I write. I went through so many different plots for this last book and now I've settled on this because it feels right. I hope you like it.