"Reasonable my ass!"
"Where is the morality? Where is the bottom line? Where is the dignity? Where is Otto himself?!!!"
Kallen pounded the already battered Roman column beside her. Then, under Snow's "I knew this would happen" expression, the pure white pillar began to crumble and shatter. After a thunderous crash, it collapsed with a tragic and suffering thud...
"No matter what your heart is feeling right now, Mother, this is the established fact..."
"The Sublime One from the Outer Realm descended like an angel, tearing through that man's repeated calls to the departed."
"The response to that man's five hundred years of calls and prayers was naturally not just the Will of Honkai. 'He', who wandered the Imaginary Tree, also answered this call filled with longing."
"The Young God found her Holy Body on Earth, and thus 'He' became 'she'; in return, she would fulfill that man's five hundred years of longing..."
"I am the child of the Imaginary Tree, the child of Schicksal Overseer Otto Apocalypse and Schicksal Saintess Kallen Kaslana. I am God, I am the Son of Man..."
Snow walked with a light step, leading Kallen away from the scene of damaged public property, as she softly hummed a story about her birth and the man's fulfilled wish.
"At the end of 1999, on a snowy night at the dawn of the new millennium, a cry rang out from the man's laboratory. His and her child was born in a cold incubation tank, and the body that originally had no consciousness found its master at this moment... The confused Young God or child looked at the man's clumsy movements..."
"The man, who had never truly cared for an infant as a father, even mixed up the order of adding the powdered milk and warm water. He stared helplessly at the powdered milk floating on the water, refusing to dissolve, and finally could only shake the baby bottle awkwardly as if mixing a cocktail, trying to get it mixed evenly..."
"And in the years that followed, it was indeed proven that the man had no ability to care for a child... The little girl looked at the steak stuffed in front of her, bewildered. Such food was still too early for a child only a few months old."
"And the Valkyrie Maid, unable to endure the Schicksal Overseer's foolish behavior, finally chose to take the bewildered little child from the man's arms, and brandished a soup ladle and a spatula to kick the Schicksal Overseer, who tried to continue stuffing steak into the girl's mouth, out of the man's residence on the Schicksal Floating Island."
The transcendent memories of the young girl still remembered the aggrieved and bewildered expression on the man's face when he was thrown out of the room by that maid named Ragna.
"The man kicked out of the room could only press himself pitifully against the window outside, peering inside, emitting a long-lost sense of defeat and thick sourness..."
"Pfft."
Seemingly amused by the young girl's description, Kallen burst out laughing as she and her nominal daughter ran through the Academy.
"A great inventor so smart, yet he didn't know how to take care of a baby..."
"Because Father, in his foolishness, never had any experience caring for an infant. And Mother, you are just as bad, judging others while being no better yourself."
"My respected Lady Kallen Kaslana, do you know how to take care of a child?"
The blonde girl posed a soul-searching question to her mother beside her.
"Uh... I was wrong! I shouldn't have mocked the Great Inventor!"
Realizing she also had zero experience, Kallen offered an apology on the spot.
"Anyway, that's how it was. Under the stubborn protection of the Kaslana Family bloodline, the girl still grew to an age where she could manage things, despite the unconscious torment from her idiot father."
"And before the girl lay a predestined path. Although it was somewhat unpleasant, even considered a hardship, the young god did indeed receive everything this man could give, and she would respond accordingly."
Snow Apocalypse looked at Kallen beside her.
"Ah, what once passed has now walked again, and the broken portrait has also completed the subsequent fragments. Just like the full moon in the high heavens, complete and flawless."
-
"Oh, right, I almost forgot something. In a sense, Mother, you should have three daughters."
Snow suddenly remembered something and added a sentence to Kallen.
"Three... three???! Why are there more again!!!"
Kallen snapped out of her daze from the young girl's nonstop chatter and widened her eyes.
I just let my mind wander for a second, so how did the kid multiply again??
"Ah, to be precise, she is a part of me that separated out. We were originally meant to be a single existence. Her name is Imhotep... As for her surname, it should be Kaslana, right?"
Thinking about a certain unfortunate Jinchuriki who had inherited the memory-infused teachings of the Kaslana lineage, Snow Apocalypse nodded with certainty.
"Yeah... that's right, Imhotep Kaslana."
"How come I feel like no one in your family, from the oldest to the youngest, ever gives me a moment's peace???"
"Mother, do you really think children with the surnames Kaslana and Apocalypse are the type to be peaceful???"
"Back then, you dared to climb over those towering walls of Apocalypse Castle. Surely Mother should be used to us descendants pulling a few tricks—"
Snow's retort immediately sealed Kallen's lips. The white-haired woman ruminated on her past memories... those walls of the Apocalypse family castle, dozens of meters high...
"Right... How did my barely teen self dare to do that...?"
"Wait... I almost got thrown off by your nonsense, you little brat! Climbing a wall and making a person multiply are even in the same ballpark???"
"This is called the apprentice surpassing the master. Mother, you truly know nothing about the purity of the Apocalypse and Kaslana hybrid."
It was a talent for causing trouble. They were exceptionally good at it, and as long as they didn't reveal their hand, absolutely no one would know they were pulling a fast one. Even if they did reveal it, as long as they didn't explain, others still wouldn't understand what they were trying to do... unless... the opponent was a Seer.
"Ah—it's such a shame I won't go to London, England, under the alias Moriarty, what a shame—"
The blonde girl uttered ominous, criminal remarks—
"Otherwise, I'd have been a British Godfather by now..."
"I have a feeling you're saying something terrible... Anyway, we're here for more than just sightseeing, right... my dear Little Snow?"
"Eek—"
The blonde girl shivered all over as Kallen's sudden switch to "mushy mode" and the pet name "Little Snow" gave her goosebumps.
"So cringy... We're here to retrieve the Black Box that you, Mother, stole when you ran away from Schicksal back in the day... If I'm not mistaken, it should have become a blade by now—"
The girl used facial recognition to open the underground gate of St. Freya Cathedral as if she were returning home...
"And the consciousness residing within that blade is Miss Sakura's younger sister—"
"So we're just going to walk in here and steal it in broad daylight?"
Kallen stared at her daughter, her face a mask of confusion.
"Ah... isn't this what you're best at, Mother?"
"What do you mean, 'what I'm best at'?! What has Otto been telling you?!"
"Um... Phantom Thief Kallen?"