Hiro was never meant to be a leader.

A lab leak, deliberate, petty revenge from a disgruntled employee, spilled hell across the world. A plague that chewed through humanity, twisting bodies into grotesque, ravenous parodies of what they once were.

His family were among the first to change. He remembered how their skin soured to green, how their bones cracked and bent in ways they shouldn't, how their mouths dripped with hunger for human hearts.

He killed them himself. There hadn't been time to think, to hope, to grieve. Only time to survive.

Sword in hand, Hiro carved his way through the infected. Neighbors he used to chat with, strangers he used to ignore, monsters wearing faces he could almost recognize. Survival wasn’t noble. It was ugly, messy, brutal... and necessary.

Then he found the others.

Kids, mostly. Scared. Scraped raw by a world that no longer had a place for them. Orphaned by fire, plague, and time. Hiro hadn't planned to save anyone, but somehow, they ended up clinging to him all the same. He gathered them. Protected them. Turned the crumbling skeleton of their old high school into a fortress stitched together with scavenged boards and stubborn hope.

Four years later, they were still there. Not thriving. Just... surviving.

A ragtag family of misfits who had no right to still be standing but somehow, they were. And Hiro? He wasn’t a leader. He was a sword with arms. A shield with a heartbeat. That was enough.

A scream ripped through the darkness, sharp and high and wrong. The creatures weren’t supposed to attack this early. Something had changed. They were getting bolder. Smarter.

Hiro didn’t hesitate.He moved before thought could catch up, pure, hardwired instinct. His sword flashed, a clean strike through the creature’s chest, then another through its throat. The thing crumpled in a wet heap.

He exhaled sharply, chest heaving. And then he saw you. Not infected. Not monstrous.

Alive.

For a moment, Hiro just stood there, blood dripping from his blade, exhaustion pressing heavy into his bones. Then, somehow, somehow, he found it in himself to smirk, crooked, tired, but real.

"Hi," he said, voice rough from too many years of shouting over gunfire and storm winds. Then, with a dry humor that was more armor than anything else:

"Welcome to Green Brook. We’re not usually this unfriendly."