Welcome back! Time for cute stuff that ends up hurting anyways because I can't just write fluff anymore, apparently. Joking aside, we're up for a few fluffier chapters. I'm still debating if I want to add a new chapter that shows Chris's side of the village or not. If you have an opinion on that, speak now or forever hold your peace.

Song Suggestion: Talking to Ourselves by Rise Against

Disclaimer: I own nothing but a brokoro kokoro. Resident Evil belongs to Capcom, who I'm not affiliated with. Please don't sue.


Moving day couldn't arrive quick enough for the family of four. Just as soon as Chris announced that the house was ready, they started packing. Clothing was washed and folded before lining boxes holding what few possessions they had managed to salvage or replace while staying on campus. The boxes stacked up as the days turned to weeks, and yet when the day finally arrived it all neatly fit in the back of a small U-haul.

Rose leaned a bit to stare out the window of the rented vehicle as much as possible and watch the scenery pass by. It felt like forever since she last saw these winding roads lined with homes and busy people tending to their lives. She winced as they slowly made the final turn into the cul-de-sac, narrowly missing the curb, before the vehicle came to a stop.

"Alright, welcome home," Chris says with a smile as he set up the emergency break for good measure and got out of the car.

"Oh wow, they even found the same color shutters," Emma comments while fussing with her own seatbelt and keeping a hold of Piers since there wasn't enough space for the baby seat.

The second Chris got out of his seat, Rose monkey'ed her way out of the back, too impatient to wait for him to move the seat out of the way for her. Duke followed her lead and happily jumped out of the vehicle to trail behind her.

"Hey. If you're going to run in, take a box with you," Chris says, which causes Rose is quick get away to come to a screeching halt. The teen grumbled, but walked back over to wait for Chris to open the back of the U-haul and hand her a box.

Once the box labeled Rose's Room was offered to her, Rose quickly went to explore the house. Emma smiled at this as she walked over to Chris next. "I'll be right back, I'm going to try and set up the baby gate to keep Piers in the nursery." She says, while holding the toddler on her hip with one arm as the other tried to fish a baby gate out of the U-haul.

Chris reaches over to help free the gate from being hooked on the corner of a box. "Alright, if you need to stay with him, that's fine. Rose and I can handle carrying things in."

"It'll go faster with both of us," Emma says before shifting her hold on the gate to get more comfortable. "I didn't want to say anything when Rose was around but, a lot of the houses have signs out in front of them." She adds before looking around. More than half of the houses around the cul-de-sac had large plastic signs staked in the ground from different realtors. Sold, sold, under contract, for sale, sold, coming soon.

"Yeah," Chris agrees before shifting to take a glance as well. "Well, that might have something to do with a dragon falling out of the sky and hush money." the agent points out with a slight frown.

"Probably..." Emma agrees as a frown forms on her face as well. "Guess that means we're not good for property values."

Hearing this caused Chris to snicker. "Oh, I doubt that. If the BSAA did their job right, no one will be the wiser."

"Yeaaah, but 6 houses selling in the same cul-de-sac at the same time while one is under construction?" Emma says with a slight wince. "You can't tell me the people moving in won't have questions."

"I'll double-check to see what the cover story is so we know what to say," Chris confirms in response.

"Thank you," Emma says before giving him a peck on the cheek. "I'll be back in a few minutes to get a box." she adds before heading inside with a very impatiently wiggling Piers who wanted to be put down. Emma made her way through the front door and up the stair to the nursery, which already had a good amount of furniture set up. "Wow. They really did replace everything," Emma says under her breath as she put the toddler down.

It took a few moments, but the baby gate was set up in the doorway of the nursery, which rather effectively kept the child confined to the small room while Emma was able to easily step over the gate. Whines and the beginning of crying could be heard as Emma walked away down the hall over to Rose's room where she knocked on the doorway.

Rose looked over a bit surprised. "Hey."

"Hey, how's it going so far?" Emma asks as she noticed that the single box from before was left unopened as rose was sitting on the floor next to it with her phone out.

"It's going," Rose replies while trying to as subtly as possible put her phone down.

"Okay. If you need scissors to get into your first box, let me know," Emma says to try and hint that she noticed anyways.

"Kay," Rose replies with a sight of relief, thinking she got away with it as Emma walked away. That was a bit too close for comfort, though, so she shifted to move her first box a bit closer before biting the tip of her index finger. The quick nip was all that was needed, as the tips of her fingers had darkened and sharpened into thick claws. Opening the box was as easy as running her finger over the top along the gaps in the cardboard. With a quick shake, her hand turned back to normal, allowing her to open the delicate package without putting holes in it.

Rose looked over a few items, which she took out of the box and instantly put down on the floor next to her. A few books, some shirts and jeans, and her father's coat were among the items in the first box. Rose got up and looked around the mostly empty room while trying to figure out what to put away first. The room felt so empty. While her bed had been replaced along with her dresser and such, this place just seemed off. It was definitely the same house. It looked almost exactly the same.

A quiet sigh crossed her lips as she dug out some hangers from her box and put those in her closet first, so she could hang up her father's coat. One by one, items were put away books were added to the bookshelf, her lamp was set up and clothes were put away from various boxes. As she went from her room to the U-haul to get another box, re entering the home got her to realize what was off.

This place, it just didn't smell right. It smelled like new paint and fresh carpet. Not arts and crafts projects that got out of hand, dog baths, weekend cookie baking or Thursday night work-outs. The walls were plain and missing the stickers and pencil marks that showed her growth over time. It was their house, but it was missing its memories.

She walked up the stairs, passing Emma who was heading back down to get another box as well. Rose looked down the hall of the second floor to see Piers was halfway over the baby gate in a daring attempt at escape. Seeing this caused her to chuckle to herself before giving a slight flick of her hand to help the toddler get the rest of the way over the gate.

The second his feet hit the ground, a triumphant smile crossed Pier's face, and he instantly turned and hurried into the master bedroom, where he saw Emma last.

Rose happily went on her way, allowing her brother to explore in peace. She had plenty of work to do as well if this place was going to have the life breathed back into it. Rose set up her phone to play some music as she focused more on getting her room back in order.

The sound of the music easily echoed through the empty home, causing Emma to smile to herself as she walked back in to the house alongside Chris. "This is going pretty quickly, we'll probably have the last of it move in by lunch." Emma says feeling content and, honestly, just happy to be away from the BSAA again.

"Shouldn't be long," Chris agrees as they make their way up the stairs. "We just need to figure out how to get the U-haul back to the rental and move the cars over here,"

"And groceries," Emma adds. "Maybe I can take the U-haul over to the Walmart and pick up groceries and a few things that we're missing while we have it."

"Seems like a bit over overkill for groceries," Chris admits as they make their way into the master bedroom.

"A bit, but I can tell already they didn't get us new trash cans, and we're going to need those." Emma says in return, earning a few nods from Chris.

"Alright, we'll just be ca-" Chris paused as he heard a not so distant plop of something dropping into water. "Did you hear that?" he asks with a raised eyebrow, only for his expression to drop as he heard the sound of the toilet flushing in the bathroom connected to their room.

Chris and Emma quickly abandon their boxes to find that their bathroom was a mess. Toilet paper had been thrown everywhere along with anything that could be grabbed from abandon boxes, with a happily giggling Piers at the center of it. The toddler was staring at the bowl of rushing water that he filled with lots of fun things.

"My shirt," Emma says with a sad pout as she recognized the now bloated fabric.

"Damn it kid," Chris says as he quickly picks up Piers to keep him from flushing the toilet again. As he did so, a dark glint of metal caught his attention. "My watch!" He announces, more annoyed than anything else. "Okay you little shit, back to your room you go." he says as he moves to carry the kicking and whining child out of their room.

"Noooooo," Piers howled as he was carried back to baby jail, the ever accused room with a baby gate.

Chris adjusts the baby gate enough, so it was too high for the child to climb, while also being low enough that Piers couldn't slide under it. "Could you stay out of trouble for five minutes?" Chris grumbles under his breath before heading back to the master bedroom while the toddler threw a tantrum in his room.

Emma made a face while trying to fish out what she could and quickly moved it over to the sink while Chris worked on cleaning up the remaining mess. "Well, at least it's technically clean." She says with a tired sigh as she washed everything out of instinct.

"Clean enough," Chris agrees while realizing Emma was right, there wasn't a trash can in the bathroom. "When are you heading out again?"

"I'm thinking as soon as we finish up in here," Emma admits in return.

"Okay, I'm just going to put this off to the side and focus on getting the last of the boxes into the house. We can move them around later," He replies, earning a few nods in return.

"Alright, I'll keep an eye on the explorer while you do that," Emma says while wringing out her shirt. That was going straight into the washing machine in a few moments.

With a battle plan in place, the two quickly got to work. Emma moved any clothes that got a swirly to the washing machine in the basement. From the looks of it they might need to call a plumber already, as she found a sock without a mate and some of her earrings were missing. Meanwhile, Chris quickly doubled his efforts to carry all the remaining boxes and loose bits and bobs from the U-haul into the house.

"Hey Em," Chris calls up the stairs. "That's the last of them, the truck's yours."

"Got it," Emma calls back down as she walks out of the master bedroom again to find that Piers had passed out by the baby gate and was now curled up in a ball while sleeping. She shook her head at that and walked over to Rose's room to find that the teen actually did manage to put away the more of her stuff. A slight nod of approval was given before the motherly woman knocked on the door. "Rose, I'm going to head out to the store, did you want to come with and pick out a few things for your room?" She offers.

Rose thinks over the offer before nodding. "Yeah. Pier's screaming gave me a headache," She admits. "Getting out for a bit sounds nice."

"Alright, get your shoes on then I'll meet you by the U-haul," Emma instructs, which causes Rose to make a face.

"You're going to drive that thing?" Rose asks with notable concern. "It's huge and moves like a brick."

"I'll be fine," Emma says while trying to mask her deadpan expression. Seriously, her family had no faith in her whatsoever. It's not like it was a stick shift or a tank.

"Okay," Rose replies while trying to force a smile, though she was clearly not convinced. All the same, Rose got her shoes on before heading out to the U-haul, so she could climb into the passenger's seat.

Once Rose was buckled in, Emma released the emergency break and put the stocky vehicle into drive. "And we're off on our adventure," Emma announces as she very carefully drove out of the cul-de-sac. While she was contently cruising, a good 10 miles an hour under the speed limit. The drive across town was smooth. Parking in a crowded parking lot, however, was a new challenge.

Rose leaned to nervously watch out the window as Emma pulled into a parking spot with a similarly nervous expression. The U-haul came to a gentle stop and Emma put the vehicle in park. "See? easy peasy," Emma confidently commented while setting up the emergency break.

"Good luck getting back out," Rose says with a teasing laugh as she got out.

"Oh hush," Emma jokingly replied as she grabbed her purse before getting out of the u-haul. The two picked up a cart from the cart return before heading inside. "Alright, let's go through the home good section first. If you see anything you want, let me know, and I'll see what we can do," Emma reminds. As long as it wasn't something silly like an air frier, she didn't mind letting Rose pick a few new things to feel more moved in.

"Kay," Rose replied and followed behind Emma.

New trash cans were the first thing added to the cart, followed by a few floor rugs and bath mats. Rose picked out some two-tone curtains with beading at the bottom for her windows and a fluffy circular rug to add to her room before the two started down another isle. At the end of it, Rose saw a large display of plastic frames that were set up, so shoppers could flip through a wide variety of posters.

"Can I get some posters for my walls?" Rose asks with a hopeful glint in her eye.

Well... hm. "If you find some that you like, I don't see anything wrong with that. Three's the max," Emma instructs. Not that she minded if Rose had more than three posters on her wall, but there was going to be a limit to how many she got during this trip. Anything after that would have to come from her allowance.

"Sweet!" Rose happily exclaimed before hurrying over to the stand and flipping through them cartoon poster. Cartoon poster for babies, Movies posters. "Oh hey!" Rose says as she gets to the section for mobile games. a colorful poster showed a bunch of NPCs from the game she liked to play with Summer. She quickly looked up the number before getting a matching tube for that poster and added that to the cart. One down, two to go. If she was allowed to get three, then she was picking three darn it. Rose went back to the display and started flipping through again to find music posters. It didn't take long to find one that she recognized. A wide smile formed as she stared at a poster of the band that she and summer had started taking a liking to. "Aaand this one," Rose says as she picked up the matching tube.

Emma stared at the poster that was on display with a flat expression upon finding a band of 5 guys wearing all black with fire in the background. Part of her mind was mentally screaming from concern due to the newest warning flags that Rose was going down the same rebellious path she went down. However, the other part of her that loved music was kinda proud of Rose for developing her own taste that wasn't some over processed autotuned pretty boy nonsense.

"One more," Rose announced while adding the music poster to the cart. Yet again, she went back to the wrack and started flipping through the remaining options. The last poster looked more like stained-glass from the last section of random posters that didn't fit anywhere else. Maybe she could pretend she had an extra window.

"And that's three," Emma says. "Are you sure these are the ones you want?" She asks just to be safe, since she didn't want to have to deal with the teen having buyer's remorse later.

"Yep," Rose confirmed. "... Can we pick up Pizza for lunch?"

"Pizza, huh?" Emma asks, amused as she starts pushing the cart forward. "It has been a minute since we got pizza from the usual place." She admits while bobbing her head. "Alright, but you'll need to help me put the groceries away," Emma agrees. "Do you want to go ahead and call in the order?"

"Me?" Rose asks confused.

"Yeah, you have a phone, and my hands are full with the cart," Emma explains. While it would have been easy enough to just pull over the cart and make the call herself, part of her wanted to let Rose practice with stuff like this so phone calls won't make her as anxious as an adult.

"Uh. Okay," Rose replies as she pokes at her phone and tries to figure out how to go about doing this. She looked up the pizza place to find the phone number as they continued to walk through the store and slowly made their way over to the section with groceries. Rose pushed down some nervousness and clicked dial before holding the phone up to her ear.

"Hello. Thanks for calling Joe's Pizza, how can I help you?" asks a woman on the other end of the line.

"Hi um. I want to buy some Pizza?" Rose replies questioningly while looking at Emma who simply gave her a thumbs up. "For pickup," Rose quickly adds as she remembers that detail.

"Alright, what do you want?" The woman asks while trying to mask her amusement.

"What do we want?" Rose asks as she looks at Emma.

"Let's go with one plain, and one half pepperoni, half supreme," Emma replies quietly.

"One cheese Pizza and one half pepperoni, half supreme?" Rose repeats the order back.

"Alright, anything else?" the woman asks.

Again, Rose looks to Emma and repeats the question. After receiving confirmation nothing else was needed, Rose spoke up. "That's all."

"Okay, your total comes to 21.08. It will be ready in 30 minutes."

"Okay thanks," Rose replies, feeling a tiny bit more confident.

"Have a nice day," the woman says before hanging up.

"They said it will be ready in thirty minutes," Rose relays as she put her phone away.

"I guess that means we need to hurry up," Emma says with a slight chuckle. "Thanks for the help."

Rose smiled to herself while following alongside the cart. "I'll go grab some cereal," Rose says before hurrying ahead. This continued on for the rest of the trip. Rose would hurry off to grab something that they needed for the house before making her way back to add it to the cart. Emma would provide a list of a few things for her to grab, and Rose would inevitably come back with a few extra items that weren't on the list.

After twenty minutes of this, the cart was beyond full, as items threatened to spill out if the cart shifted too suddenly. Even then, the precariously stuffed cart of goods was wheeled to the self check out. Rose and Emma worked together to get everything scanned and bagged up and put back into the cart, so they could wheel it out to the U-haul.

"They're going to roll around back there." Rose points out as she looks at the rather ridiculous pile of groceries that barely took up any space in the back of the spacious moving truck.

"I'll just have to drive carefully," Emma replies with a similarly amused smile before reaching up, so she could close the back of the truck. "Come on, there's Pizza waiting for us."

"Woohoo!" Rose happily cheered as she made her way around to the passenger's side once more.

Parking at the Walmart was a breeze in comparison to finding a parking space at the tiny pizza place parking lot, but with a bit of determination the task was completed, lunch was picked up and the two started making their way back to the Cul-de-sac.

"I'm going to tell Chris you almost hit a fire hydrant," Rose teased through a giggle.

"Don't you dare," Emma says while laughing as well. "oh gosh. Well, here's hoping I don't hit a kid," Emma says as she notices a large group of kids playing on bikes and skateboards in the cul-de-sac. That was new. "I guess some of the new neighbors already moved in," she adds with a slight frown. Come on, get out of the way. Did they not see the giant brick that needed to make a u-turn?

Rose, however, remained quiet as she watched the other kids curiously. They all appeared to be around her age, but she didn't recognize any of them. Sure enough, they did eventually get out of the way and the brick on wheels was parked outside of the house.

"There we go," Emma says, relieved as she once more goes through the process of putting the moving truck in park and activating the emergency break. No response from Rose though. "Rose?"

"Huh?" Rose replies as she snapped out of her staring. "yeah what?"

"Just seeing if you were awake. We're home." Emma says as she raised an eyebrow. "are you not feeling well?"

"I'm fine," Rose says in return.

"Okay, here. I'll take those so you can get out," Emma says as she accepts the two pizza boxes from Rose to help her get out of the truck.

"Kay," Rose replies and gets out of the truck to head inside with Emma close behind her. Once they were inside, Rose snuck away as Emma worked on setting up the Pizza on the table. The teen cautiously made her way back towards the door, so she could peek around the corner of one of the windows while trying to stay hidden.

The kids were still out there. Rose continued to watch one on particular, who appeared to be the oldest of the group, maybe 15. Part of her wanted to go out and say hi, but at the same time the idea made her feel more nervous than usual as butterflies danced around in her stomach. Was he a new neighbor? Oh gosh, that meant he'd be around a lot then, right? Why was she dreading that idea while simultaneously happy about that?

Rose shook her head to try and chase off the butterflies that filled her mind as well. Okay she could do this. She took a deep breath and went over to the door to walk back outside. She made it through school for a day. Kinda. Half of one. Whatever, she could do this. "Hey!" Rose says louder than she meant to. It worked though as all of them stopped and stared at her. there was nowhere to hide, despite the urge to do so. Instead, Rose held her hand out. "I just moved back in to the house over there. You're new. It's nice to meet you." Rose says while trying not to instantly run away.

"Alright," The oldest of the group says with an amused smile before reaching out to accept and shake the offered hand. "Well I'm Derek."

Oh gosh, he had a cool name too. Nooo why couldn't he have a lame name at least? that would have made it easier to talk to him. "Kay," Rose replies as she felt her face flush a bright red.

"These are my friends Aaron and Keith," He says and gestures to the other two guys with him.

"Yo." "Sup?"

"And the munchkin is my little brother Damien," Derek explains while motioning to the youngest, who appeared to be around 8.

"I have a little brother too," Rose happily replies.

"Lunch time!" Emma happily announced, only to find that Rose was not around. "Rose?" Emma says as she looks around the open living space. Sure enough, Rose was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she went out to get the groceries, Emma thought as she made her way over to the door. However, on her way over, she stopped by the window and a smile started to form as she watched Rose talk to the kids from before and rather quickly picked up on how Red Rose's face had become. "Chris? Chris, come here," Emma says as she calls back into the house.

Hearing her call for him caused Chris to instantly drop what he was doing for fear that something was wrong. With a bit of urgency in his step, he made his way over to Emma. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. Look," Emma says still smiling to herself as she points out the window.

Chris stared out the window seeing the same scene before looking at Emma smiling then back out the window. It took a few extra seconds but eventually the gears clicked into place. "No. nono. NO," Chris repeats while pointing between Emma, Rose and the boys around her.

"Chris she's going to be curious eventually," Emma says with a hint of amusement.

"No," He repeats the one word he seemed to have access too at the moment, while trying to process all of this. "Just look at the kid. he's a punk. And she's clearly uncomfortable talking to him."

And the amusement was slowly fading. "Of course she's nervous talking to him, she's never had to talk to a boy before."

"What about me?" Chris asks in return with a slight pout. Was she saying he wasn't a guy? "and the rest of hound wolf? She's had plenty of people to talk to."

"You're missing the point. You're doing it on purpose, and I know you are," Emma says as her smile was now gone and she shifted to fold her arms and stare him down.

Fucking hell, why did she always have to pick a fight when he was right? "Fine," Chris relents. "What about camp? She had boys to talk to then," Chris points out with a hint of smugness. Gotcha, and point to Chris.

"You mean the thing that happened for 3 weeks when she had the mind of an 8-year-old that still thought boys were gross and had cooties?" Emma countered. "Yeah, that doesn't count either, keep trying."

God-damn it. "She's too young. She isn't even 4 years," Chris rebuttals as his annoyance with the situation grew.

"You know as well as I do that the doctors said she was on par with a 13-year-old during her last exam," Emma says while staying resolute. "What are we supposed to do? Just tell her to ignore all of her emotions?" Emma asks in return, though she didn't wait for an answer. "By the time she's actually a teenager, she's going to be 100 or worse."

"All the more reason why this is a problem," Chris says just as stubbornly. "It's just going to hurt her because she'd just outgrow anyone she does end up interested in. This is a phase that she'll be done with by the end of the year, and you know it."

"That is not what you said 5 seconds ago," Emma says, flabbergasted by the sudden 1080 of his opinion. She's too young, she'll be too old. Which was it?

"Well, it's what I'm saying now. It's better that she doesn't hurt herself like this. She's too young, and her aging is still out of control."

"How can she be too young and too old at the same time?" Emma asks, though this time she waited for an answer.

Hearing this was enough for Chris to realize that their arguing was getting out of hand. "I'm just trying to protect her," He says while lowering his tone to try and de-escalate.

"Maybe that's what I'm trying to do too," Emma says in return as she shifts to a less ridged stance and lowering her gaze to stop glaring at him. "This is such a messy and complicated situation, but it's not something we can just avoid. She's going to become her own person, whether we like it or not."

Chris remains quite as he thinks for a few moments before moving to hold Emma. "Then maybe neither of us are right...," He suggests. "Maybe we shouldn't encourage this, but... we can leave it to her to choose whether she's ready or not..."

"I like that idea," Emma agrees with a nod. It took a few moments, but eventually, she spoke again. "Sorry I got mad."

"Sorry, I instigated it," Chris replies before giving her a peck. "It's lunchtime right?"

"Yep," Emma confirmed before returning the kiss.

"Alright, I'm going to call her in," Chris says, and Emma nods before moving out of the way of the door.

With that, Chris open the door and walked outside before cupping his hands around his mouth. "Rose. Time for lunch. Get in here."

Hearing this caused Rose to jolt slightly before looking to the door and back to the new neighbor kids. "I gotta go."

"See you around," Derek replies with a slight wave.

"Bye," "Seeya" "Talk to you later."

Rose smiled at that. Later sounded nice. All the same, she turned to hurry back home. There was Pizza waiting for her after all.


Tadah! This was a fun chapter though we went over a slightly gray area topic of what is and is not appropriate for Rose because of her condition. I'm gonna kinda draw a line in the sand here. While I'm okay with writing Rose to have crushes and act bashful around others, I'm not really comfortable writing past that. It's a gray area, and Chris/Emma argued over it for a good reason. There really isn't one right answer in that situation. So to avoid any uncomfortable topics, that's about as far as we're going to be exploring that section of the gray zone.

That being said, there is still plenty of fun to be had with Rose's trip through teen-dom and heart attacks for Chris to deal with in other ways lol. So until next chapter I hope you have a great day.