May 7th, 3:30 pm,

'So, you found him two days ago, right?'

Clone: Yep.

'And what have you been doing to him this entire time?'

Clone: You know, beating him up and down the tundra.

'… You remember the reason we searched for him was to deliver on the promise, right?'

Clone: Yeah, well, the part of you that really likes Kiana came along and made it a bigger deal than necessary.

Phillip groaned and closed the textbook he was reading to place it on his chest. A relaxing study session to counteract his hectic week would have to wait if his clones were being a bunch of idiots a continent away.

'Look, just keep him close by. I'll head over there in a second to deal with him correctly.'

Clone: Up to you, boss. I say we're handling it fine.

Phillip cut the telepathic connection and placed the book onto his nightstand to sit up, and threw his feet off the side of the bed. With a swift motion, he stood up and made his way to the door, only to stop as the door swung open violently. Phillip had a brief second to brace himself before Kiana charged into his room and lunged at him for a hug.

"...Hi?" Phillip cautiously wrapped his arms around Kiana, unsure as to her reasons for the eventful entrance. "Was there a reason for all this?"

"Hm... nope," Kiana muttered, snuggling in closer. "Just wanna."

Phillip shook his head at this, though with a slight smile on his face. "Well then, are you prepared for the first day of training with Durandal?"

Despite his statement against her, Durandal upheld her intent on helping Kiana train. Whether Otto had any hand in convincing her to take up the idea, Phillip had no idea, but he was thankful to the S-rank for the intervention.

Kiana slumped out of her hug, letting out an exaggerated groan at the mention of the training session as she leaned against Phillip's arms for support. "I don't wanna go. Why can't you or Mei-senpai train me?"

"Because Mei doesn't use guns, and I've been out of practice with CQC gunplay for a while now."

"Please~?" Kiana complained loudly, jumping to her feet and shooting her best puppy dog impression at Phillip. "I promise to actually pay attention this time."

Phillip reached up and poked Kiana in the middle of her forehead. "Even if I wanted to, I have other things to address. So, go get ready to meet Durandal at the helipad. She'll be here at 4, so you got thirty minutes."

Kiana pouted deeply at this before stomping out of the room to prepare for her "hell day", as she put it the day before. Phillip watched her turn the corner for her room before he summoned a clone to his side.

"Keep an eye on her training. I might be happy with the training partner, but that doesn't mean I trust her."

"Then why ask her to train Kiana?"

"Lightens the load," Phillip admitted before heading to the window over his bed. "I might be back late. So, until about 6:30, handle them until I get back." With no looking back to notice the clone's reaction, Phillip opened his window and leaped down to the ground floor. Upon hitting the dirt road below, he ran off toward the entrance of the school and off into the world.

4:30, in the Siberian tundra.

"Alright, where are those morons?"

Phillip made several sweeping looks over the tundra from the highest point he could find, which wasn't much considering the vast plain of snow. While he could see obvious signs of battle, there was very little rhyme or reason to them, so he couldn't pinpoint them even by sensing out his clones' chakra.

As Phillip made for a tenth sweep, a pillar of snow erupted several miles north from him. Taking his chances, Phillip shot toward the pillar like a bullet. When he got close, Phillip found two of his clones standing on top of a slight incline in the plains as they looked outward where the pillar of snow slowly settled.

"Oi!" The two clones looked over to Phillip as he slowed down a few feet before them and walked the rest of the way. "Where's the super-idiot and Siegfried?"

"You mean the super-idiot and your clone?"

"I know what I said." Phillip reached the same point as the others, stationed between the two, and immediately found both Siegfried and the third clone only a few feet away, both panting away from the three-day brawl. His clone was hunched over with hands on its knees while Siegfried was seated and leaned back into the bottom of a capsized truck. Phillip dispersed the clones beside him and jumped the rest of the way to land next to the last clone, who looked at him in mild surprise.

"Oh… Hey, boss…" Phillip didn't deem it necessary to respond to this and simply dispersed the clone. He then turned to Siegfried, who was wide-eyed at the sudden revelation.

"… I need to find the guy who spiked my drink," Siegfried said, rubbing his eyes with his one hand as if this would dispel the image in front of him. Phillip walked over to him, causing the older man to lower his guard. This ended up being a mistake as Phillip slammed his right foot against Siegfried's shoulder.

"Argh! What the hell?!"

"I'm here to fulfill a promise," Phillip stated coldly as he increased the pressure against the shoulder. "So, just stay still and take your punishment like a man."

Siegfried didn't answer immediately, focused solely on the pain of Phillip's sole against his shoulder. After a couple of seconds passed, however, his eyes stuffed in realization.

"Oh, you mean the promise you made to me- ow, ow, OW!" Siegfried reacted instinctively to Phillip increasing the force on his foot with his other arm, which was still a useless stump. Upon realizing this and the futility of the action, the older man pointed said stump at Phillip. "Look, I had my reasons for not staying with her, alright?"

Phillip slowly moved his foot off Siegfried, causing the man to sigh in relief, only to slam it with enough force to toss the truck behind Siegfried away from them. This caused Siegfried to scream in absolute agony as he was pushed into the ground, something Phillip relished for its entirety before he addressed what Siegfried said.

"One of them better be a God-given answer. Otherwise, I'm leaving with an extra arm I don't need."

"She's a Herrscher, dammit!" This managed to drop the pressure against his shoulder, which Siegfried used to collect the rest of his answer. "When Kiana turned 12, she also awakened as the Herrscher of the Void. It took an entire squad of Valkyries and me unsealing Shamash to deal with her, and that squad all died, and I lost an arm."

"... That explains the second large Honkai source in Nagazora." Phillip cupped a hand over his mouth, realizing his most recently acquired ability could have uncovered this truth quicker had he remembered its existence. Deeming it better to wait for a better situation to beat himself up over the forgotten ability, Phillip pressed forward with the interrogation. "Why did you deem it necessary for you to leave her alone, though?"

"I didn't leave her alone," Siegfried explained, seeming a little uncomfortable with his statements. "I paid attention from the background, but I couldn't be closer when I'm the trigger that caused her awakening."

"What convinced you of that?" Siegfried only waved the stump of an arm as proof, something Phillip acknowledged and moved on to the next question. "Alright, then what are you doing on this end of the planet?"

Siegfried did his best to shrug, something that looked extremely awkward when someone has a boot against his shoulder. "Some friends told me that Otto was doing some experiments on Herrschers and had an envoy going through the area. Thought I'd check what's up."

"Right," Phillip said slowly, finally dropping his foot down from Siegfried's shoulder. "And how much information did you gain by smashing up convoys?"

"Uh..." Siegfried looked over to the truck, which now lay upside-down several meters away. "With this one being the only one, not much."

Phillip brought a hand up to his eyes, a wave of tiredness suddenly washing over him with this statement. He decided to sit down on the cold snow below, bracing himself with his other hand as he did. As a tired sigh ripped through Phillip's throat, Siegfried risked fixing his position and sat up.

"Guess I can be certain my baby girl is doing fine. Heard you, her, and the Raiden girl got yourselves in St. Freya for the semester."

"Yeah," Phillip admitted, his anger from before dissipating with the snowflakes' fall. "She's getting some special training to improve her gun kata skills."

Siegfried let out a hum in response, his mind on something else entirely. "Considering you're here to make due on that promise, I can also you two have a pretty good relationship, right?"

Phillip decided to not mention Kiana's insistence on the two of them being boyfriend and girlfriend to avoid a father's rage. He simply nodded at the question. "Something like that, yeah."

"Then I have two things to tell you." Phillip dropped his hand, only to see a wide smile on Siegfried's face and a thumbs up. "You have my approval, and I want grandkids before I hit 50!"

Siegfried didn't expect the sudden gut punch Phillip hit him with.

6:55, St. Freya High after Phillip beat and extracted information from Siegfried,

Phillip climbed through the window of his bedroom, fully expecting to see his clone there to be relieved from his duties. What he didn't expect was the broken form that the clone came with.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"What happened," the clone said, pulling together the strings that were once a shirt, "is that your actions yesterday made both a lot of admirers and haters at the same time. Removing your shirt and then attacking the S-ranked Valks wasn't exactly a grade-A plan."

"Tell the haters to bite me," Phillip stated as he dropped to the floor silently, unconcerned by the fact that there were people that disliked him. "I'm guessing the 'admirers' did the damage."

The clone snorted at this. "No. This came from that Rita chick throwing me to the wolves. Apparently, wherever Durandal goes somewhere, she needs to be right behind her."

"Fair enough." Phillip dispersed the clone and flinched at the memories given to him. "Damn fangirls. I really need to find a way to counter them." Deciding a better time for that thought, Phillip looked back to the same corner as before. "How was her training?"

"It was fine," the other clone said, dropping its illusion as it spoke. "Durandal tried teaching her the proper stances, Kiana got uppity about being corrected, and then they talked about things."

"And Durandal?"

"Nothing that we haven't found already. Given a surrogate birthday of January 1st due to amnesia, took a mission into something called the 'Sea of Quanta' and came back looking older than before, and has some hyper stats."

"Right," Phillip said in disappointment, heading for the door so he could head down for dinner. Before he got far, however, the clone asked a question.

"Have you heard of a woman called Cecilia?"

Phillip shot the clone a flat look. "You would know if I did. Why are you asking?"

"She came up in the talk with Durandal and Kiana," the clone stated as it fished out a photo and held it out to the original. "Turns out she was Schicksal's last S-rank and Kiana's mom."

Phillip grabbed the photo from the clone and looked down at it. He flinched upon seeing the exact same face of the woman he saw behind Theresa's back in March with snow-white hair, brilliant blue eyes, and fair skin. She was holding a bundle that held a newborn baby that Phillip assumed was Kiana.

"So, Theresa had a connection to Kiana's mom," Phillip muttered, absorbing what the photo showed him. "I'm guessing she used this as leverage about to keep Kiana close by."

"You'll have to ask her yourself," the clone stated before releasing the jutsu. With the little bit of info the clone didn't tell him now with him, Phillip continued his original actions and headed down to the dining room.

Everyone else had already gathered around the dinner table as Mei and, somewhat surprisingly, Rita whipped up a storm. From the smell, Phillip could tell they were working on a pork belly, so he walked towards the table and scanned it for a seat amongst the four people already there.

Before Phillip got too far, however, Mei spotted him out of the corner of her eye and called for him. "Phillip-kun, could you please come here? We could use some help."

Confused as to why he was being called upon, especially when two culinary gods existed within a single kitchen, Phillip changed course to aid Mei. As he did, Phillip passed Kiana, who reached up and grabbed him by the wrist.

"Hey, could we… talk about something?" Phillip looked down to address her, to ask her to wait until he healed Mei, but the look on Kiana's face stopped him. It showed the same pain and desperation from three days prior.

So, instead of complying immediately with Mei's request, Phillip stopped in his tracks and turned his complete attention to Kiana. "What's wrong?"

Kiana seemed to lose the confidence she had merely a moment prior, retracting her hand from Phillip's wrist. Her eyes traded glances between him and the kitchen as if looking for a chance to dismiss Phillip instead of addressing her concerns immediately. After a few seconds of hesitation, she turned away from him.

"Never mind. It's nothing."

Phillip didn't accept this as an answer and cupped her cheek to turn her head back to him. "Kiana, what's wrong?" She didn't resist him but refused to meet his eyes, her discomfort growing with the passing seconds. When it became apparent, Phillip regretfully agreed to Kiana's wish. "I'm going to go help Mei now, but please tell me what's wrong later." Earning a nod in response, he planted a kiss against her forehead and headed for the kitchen.

As soon as Phillip entered, Mei turned away from her cutting board, covered in chopped and diced vegetables, and handed him a small black bowl filled with the rest of the vegetables Mei didn't get to. "Could you handle cleaning the uncut ingredients? While Rita and I are doing our best, we started so late that I don't think dinner will be ready on time without help."

"Sure," Phillip said, immediately heading towards the sink upon receiving his task.

"Thank you," Mei sighed in relief. "Ever since the Herrscher training began, I haven't had the energy to create much of a dinner. I'm grateful to have two people to help me with this."

As Phillip began scrubbing the vegetables, he shot a glance back into the dining room to check on Yuna. The girl was swaying in her seat, the day of training has taken its toll on the most average of the apartment's occupants. Phillip won't be surprised if Yuki ended up falling asleep before dinner was served.

Phillip then shifted his eyes to Rita, who worked on the other side of Phillip to prepare the meat. "What about you, then? A bit odd for a maid to forget her schedule, especially once she knew before."

Rita didn't look up from her preparations to answer the question. "Master Durandal request my aid in her own training after helping Miss Kaslana in her gun kata. It took a bit longer than necessary, so dinner time had to be postponed."

"And Durandal isn't here because…?"

"Because she isn't finishing training yet," Rita said as if it was a matter of fact. "Rest assured, I will separate a portion of the meal for her to eat later tonight."

Phillip let out a hum at this, finishing his scrubbing of the coarse skin of a potato. Giving it a quick look-over, Phillip pulled himself from the sink and placed the potato next to Rita's cutting board. As he did, Phillip whispered into her ear.

"So what does Otto gain from sending three Valkyries to attack me?"

Rita froze at this, her eyes finally pulling away from her prep work to stare at the potato Phillip placed. An image had been inscribed into it from the scrubbing somehow, depicting a lone figure standing before three others that bore a variety of weapons. As she investigated the image, Phillip walked to her other side and leaned against the countertop.

After a few minutes passed without speaking, Phillip decided to push forward. "Well?"

"Mister Stuyvesant, I understand your distrust in us, but I don't believe this point in time would be the best to talk about this."

Phillip raised a brow at the sudden use of his last name but discarded it for a moment to look around. He looked at Mei first, who was stuck mid-cut off one of her many carrots. Then, he looked back into the dining room, where Yuna succumbed to her tiredness and was a millimeter from signing her head into the table, Bronya was one hit from defeating the boss in her mobile game, and Kiana was getting teased by a slightly drunk Himeko. With this in mind, Phillip looked back at Rita without care.

"I think we're in the best position to talk about this."

Rita seemed to realize this too because, as soon as Phillip said this, the maid's right hand snapped out with a knife. Phillip caught the attack with two fingers, stopping it from hitting the intended part of his neck. The two struggled for a brief moment before Rita let out a sweet giggle and released her hold on the knife.

"I see the spar yielded results," Rita said as Phillip spun the knife in his hand. "Durandal seems correct in her assessment of you."

"Thanks for the compliment." Phillip placed the knife back on the cutting board where it came from and then leaned back into the counter. "I still need you to tell me why Otto used what could be interpreted as an assassination attempt."

"Please understand that we didn't know your full capabilities at that time, and I doubt we know it even now. Our actions were to make use of any drop in defense to gather DNA samples for Lord Otto's experiments."

"At the potential expense of the S-rank Valkyries' reputation?"

Rita gave a sugary sweet smile that hide a slight smirk. "You'd be surprised at how well a few words and nostalgia can keep a person's reputation in high standing. Something you might stand to pay attention to."

"No thanks." Phillip looked over to the dining table, contemplating his next move as he looked at a flustered Kiana. With a breathless sigh, he pulled himself from the counter and walked towards the sink. "I had to convince Kiana and Mei to forgive you to get her trained by Durandal, so please keep on your best behavior."

"On the topic of behavior," Rita said as she stepped into Phillip's path. "Don't you think the soon-to-be-husband of the heiress of ME Corp should learn to be more eloquent in his speech?" Phillip grunted at this and tried to sidestep the woman, only for her to step right back in front of him. "Then, what about little Miss Kaslana? I'm certain two people in a clan can't be dunderheads about communication."

"We're not talking about this." Phillip dodged around the island of the kitchen, hoping to evade the maid. It didn't work, as Rita simply followed him along the opposite side and blocked him once again.

"What will you do, then, should either of them come to harm's way-"

Phillip didn't register Rita's words as a possible situation that could occur. He registered a potential threat coming from a person that wouldn't have qualms with going through with that threat instead. So, before Rita could finish her hypothesized situation, Phillip grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground, glaring her down as he did so.

"If you attempt anything with any of them, I will remove every bone in your body one by one and keep you awake throughout the process. Do you understand?"

"...Crystal," Rita groaned out through the strangle. With this as confirmation, Phillip slackened his grip to allow her to slip out of his hand, leaving her on the floor to heave down breaths of air. Phillip retook his position by the sink and restarted cleaning the vegetables. Rita stood up quickly, shot his back a weary look, and took up her knife once more. At that moment, life returned to the apartment as a loud crack sounded as Yuna's face slammed against the table, startling everyone other than Phillip and Rita.

No one questioned them about their lack of reaction, as the two continued with their side of dinner preparations.

Several minutes later, in the living room,

Dinner finished rather quickly, allowing the others to spread out for their own free time before bed. Rita excused herself from the premise to take Durandal, who still hadn't come by for dinner, her portion of the meal. She and Phillip shared a glare before she fled out of the apartment door. Mei opted to clean the dishes due to the slightly late dinner, but Phillip forced her into accepting a clone for help. Meanwhile, Kiana and Bronya began their video game challenges against each other while Himeko enjoyed a Homu Beer on the couch as she watched the two go at it. Yuna decided to move to her room to continue her studies, not wanting to falter behind the others.

When Phillip was certain Mei was allowing the clone to work alongside her and the clone wasn't trying to flee, he joined Himeko on the couch. Before he could get too comfortable, Himeko decided to drop a bomb on him.

"I've decided to take Kiana on a mission."

Phillip whirled towards her at breakneck speed, his eyes wide but decided against yelling the idea down. "What do you mean you're taking her on a mission?!"

"Remember when Kiana skipped class two days ago?" Phillip nodded in recollection; he had spent a lot of chakra on clones to search the island. Himeko was the one to find her and bring her in, leaving Phillip to disperse his clones as violently as possible.

With the nod as confirmation, Himeko continued. "Well, I got the feeling that she needs to know what it's like as Valkyrie before she takes classes seriously. So, that's why I decided this."

"Let Mei and I handle her with classroom problems," Phillip demanded, trying to convince Himeko to not continue with her plan. "But don't put Kiana in a potential death trap after a few days of training just to teach a lesson."

"We're not going anywhere extremely dangerous," Himeko stated. "Besides, you and Mei can't help her forever with classroom assignments."

Phillip let out a small grunt at this, knowing Himeko had a point at the last bit. He just wasn't sure any one of the four girls were ready to deal with Honkai beasts just yet. Three of them barely managed to escape Nagazora, one was pulled out later on, and none of them had enough experience with the weaponry they were now dealing with.

However, another thing became apparent at that time: a chance to talk with Kiana. As Bronya, like every time before, won a match against Kiana, the oldest of the two decided to sulk for a minute. Deciding this was a good time to nip the bud, Phillip slid off the couch and onto the floor and scooched up to Kiana.

"So, are you ready to talk now?"

Kiana jumped slightly at Phillip speaking and turned to him with a startled expression. When his words finally sunk in, she became somber and placed her controller at her other side.

"It's just... when that Durandal girl was training me, she said some things about you and Mei." Kiana brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them to keep them secure. "She said that you guys might get hurt if I'm not strong enough. That you might..."

Phillip understood why the girl trailed off and wrapped his arm around the girl's shoulder. "She just wants you to treat the training seriously. If everything goes okay, you'll be a lot stronger after all this. Also, don't forget both Mei and I are doing our own training. We'll be fine."

Kiana didn't seem comforted by these words, placing her chin on her knees as she stare solemnly at the screen. "But... what if she's right? Aunt Himeko said we're not always going to be together on missions, so you and Mei might go on different missions than me and get hurt 'cause I wasn't there."

"You're not omnipresent, Kiana," Phillip stated. "If we head on different missions and someone gets hurt, we just hope they get better quickly. We can't change what happened, only what we can do at the moment."

"...Phillip?" Phillip looked directly at Kiana and saw her staring back with pleading eyes. "Please don't take any missions that might be too dangerous. At least, not without me and Mei to come with you."

Phillip sighed and forced her to lean into his shoulder so he could rest his head on hers. As the two sat there in the one-handed hug, Phillip made his vow.

"I promise."

9:30 pm,

Time swiftly slipped them by with the coming night, forcing the group to separate for their rooms. Phillip watched Kiana slip off to talk with Mei, probably to speak about the things she addressed with him. Deciding the two didn't need him in their conversation, Phillip went into his room, the door creaking as he entered and shut it.

As Phillip removed his jacket and shed his shirt, a loud ding sounded from his pocket. His hand dove into his jeans and pulled out his black smartphone. On it, messages came through like machine gun fire, all coming from the same unknown number. When he opened them up, however, the sender became apparent.

S: Hey! Thanks for deciding not to take my arm this time around! Ryoma gave me this number so I could say that.

S: Also glad you weren't over the moon about Kiana being a Herrscher. Kinda thought you'd get antsy, but I guess living with the third does that.

S: Though that's not the only thing.

S: Got some crazy info from some friends in AE. Apparently, Cocolia managed a takeover and wants to grab Mei.

S: Idk when the operation should be a go, but I'll keep you posted.

Phillip snarled at this and dropped the phone off to his side to stare out the one window of his room. He didn't know the effectiveness of the defenses around St. Freya, but it didn't matter to him. Should Cocolia show her face at the entrance of the school, Phillip knew what to do.

Before Phillip stuffed his phone away and finish changing into his nightwear, another ding sounded from the device. Phillip took another look at the device, only to flush red from the message.

S: Also, I'll accept 2 to 3 grandkids. I want to say 4 or 5, but that's a bit of a stretch.

S: Oh, hold on. Ryoma says he won't lose to this and demands 10 as the bare minimum.

'God damn it, you two.'

Hello, and welcome back to the story!

This will be the last filler chapter before heading into the more canon parts of Honkai's story. Hopefully, that makes the chapters come out a bit smoother than before.

Also, I've decided to put thoughts into apostrophe. Hopefully, that makes it easier to read.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I'll see you all in the next one.