Hanabi's Input

Hanabi's Room (Rias P.O.V)

Rias approached Hanabi's room and knocked on the door.

"Hanabi, it's Rias." She called out. It wasn't really necessary to keep her voice down; the rooms were all contained in silencing barriers. Knocking temporarily disabled those barriers and allowed for communication through the closed door.

"Rias? Did you need anything?" Hanabi asked confusedly as she quickly got to and opened the door. It was rather late for an in-person meeting. Rias didn't like unnecessary late meetings. 'If it wasn't urgent, it could wait till tomorrow when we're awake' was the common thought process they had come to learn Rias operated under. For her to be here at night must mean the news is relatively urgent.

"Yes. I meditated on Kaguya and had a few very clear visions about her. I'll brief the group later, but I wanted to share their contents with you immediately. Hopefully, you'll be able to give some context to the situation." Hanabi's eyes started widening. It was time. They were finally about to hunt that woman down and from Rias's tone, it looks like she was here in this dimension.

"Come on in then. Let's get to it." She said in a hurried manner as she moved them over to a low wooden table with two thin blue cushions. Hanabi's room was made with a traditional Japanese theme in mind, so this wasn't surprising. That said, Rias sighed as she internally wished they were using an actual table. While she had an appreciation for most things Japan due to an otaku inclination she developed as a kid, traditional Japanese tables like these didn't fall into that category.

Hanabi sat in a Seiza position on one of the cushions, while Rias sat on her but with her legs crossed. While she appreciated being proper, comfort was king with friends. It may have been different if she experienced her full childhood in her household, but she didn't. She spent it traveling alone at times and with friends at others for roughly a decade. Hanabi, on the other hand, had clearly been raised in a clan-like setting for most of her life. These subtle proper mannerisms were evidence of that.

"Alright. Where do I start" Rias pondered to herself, then looked at Hanabi and began her explanation. "Alright, let's go in order. The first thing I saw was Kaguya joining an assault on the Shinto Gods with nine other members of the Otsutsuki clan an unspecified number of years prior." Eyebrow raised, Hanabi looked at Rias with confusion. "I don't know why the attack was conducted, but a clue could be a seed and bag full of unknown goods one of the two survivors seemed to carry out upon their exit. That was the first vision." Hanabi began to speak, but was silenced by a hand from Rias.

"Before you start, I think you should hear about the second vision. It should give context to the first." Hanabi nodded. "Basically, Kaguya betrayed the clan. I don't know the reason, but she became a mole for the Shinto faction to enable their execution the entire clan. The scene I saw was littered with Amaterasu's divine black flames. She mentioned this truth to the only other survivor as she killed them and used them to feed the seed that they had taken from the Shinto faction. The vision then implied that she used the corpses of the dead members of her clan to provide additional nutrition for the seed." Hanabi was starting to realize a few things.

This seed sounded pretty important to the whole situation and when you consider the original source of her divine powers, it didn't take much to start drawing some initial conclusions. Then, there was the black flames of the sun god Amaterasu. She remembered hearing tales about the Mangekyou Sharingan and its powers. Sasuke Uchiha, the last of his clan was famous for his use of the black flames. This tale was getting more and more convoluted.

"Then she took the seed an merged it with their clan's ancestral divine eye. The eye was fixed upon an odd-looking clay figurine. It was originally purple with four concentric circles spanning out from a central pupil." Hanabi's eyes widened and she whispered the thought that came to her mind out loud.

"The Rinnegan." Rias heard it, but continued without pause.

"Once it merged with the seed, the eye shifted to a red color with nine concentric rings, three on each of the first three rings from the inside." Then the figurine along with the eye turned into the seed. Lastly, for that vision, two crystals were merged into the seed and everything in the area was engulfed in a large black sphere that should still be hovering in place. The vision gave me a rough approximation of what she did. It seems like she performed a form of sudo-world creation. That was the end of that vision." She finished. Once done, she looked toward Hanabi, wanting to give her some time to process what she had heard.

Hanabi's eyes were wide. It's not every day that you hear what potentially amounted to the true creation story of your world. Things were starting to make sense. What the Rinnegan was and why it suddenly gained Shinto-like powers upon transformation to the Rinne-sharingan; the sharingan portion came from the Shinto god's power. Effectively, they must have stolen a portion of the Shinto God's power in some way and merged it into their existing divine eye through that seed. Then, whatever those crystals were combining with the seed allowed for the Shinobi world to be created. Then, the seed was grown into the God Tree in their world. Kaguya would then descend and eventually consume the tree's fruit, taking control of the god tree. The reason why the fruit had such dominating power in their world was likely due to its role in the world's creation.

Looking at Rias, Hanabi told her of her thoughts on the matter.

"Interesting. Well, let's get into the third vision before we make our final conclusions." Rias said as she recounted the final vision regarding the death of the white-haired man and the five divine-eyed men.

Hanabi's eyes widened into saucers.

"Pain!" Hanabi shouted before noticing Rias's confused eyes. "Did you say that event happened a month ago?" The event she just described remind her of the story she heard from her father regarding the death of a legendary ninja. It happened about two months before Pain's assault on Konoha, which was many years ago for her.

"Yes. Those events happened about a month ago." Rias clarified.

"That shouldn't be possible though. Those events should have happened a decade or so ago!" Hanabi responded with an almost frantic countenance.

"I don't know what to tell you, but I do believe I mentioned there being remnant elements of temporal influence on you. Aside from dimension hopping, you had a much higher chance of hoping back in time. Though, it's clear you didn't survive the encounter. It's honestly a miracle that you were discovered and revived by the Graal. That kind of travel is always fatal, so there aren't ever any instances of its success other than the occasionally discovered corpse leaking temporal energy. The Graal was the only treasure theorized to be able to revive them through the interference of the energy. It literally took the god with the highest level of faith to perform the resurrection. Well, by proxy through the Graal." Rias said calmly, trying to calm Hanabi down.

Realizing what this meant, Hanabi frantic countenance turned to slow realization.

"I can save them…." She mumbled to herself as her face morphed into an excited smile. "I can still save them!" She cheered.

Rias smiled at her friend's newfound cheer. There was still a chance for her to gain something better than revenge. She could preserve the lives of her loved ones. They both knew that this wasn't likely to be Hanabi's actual world. More than likely, this would probably be the equivalent of traveling to a parallel timeline. It didn't matter though. It would still help her get some closure.

It didn't take high-level thought to realize that this was going to be more than a revenge kill. They were likely going to have to assess the current situation of that world and push events to the best outcome.

"Let's talk about this more tomorrow. I want you to consider how you want to handle this situation. My current thoughts are that we'll likely end up spending a year there to make sure your world moves toward the best outcome once all's said and done. I had already provisioned that amount of time, so it shouldn't require any additional preparations on our part. Once you've finished celebrating, take some time to consider what changes you'd like to make, aside from preventing the end of the world." Rias said with a smile as she started toward the door. Looking at her new master's back, Hanabi started sobbing in tears of joy.

"Thank you *sob* Thank you for everything" she managed to get out. Rias smiled.

"One of my core duties is to make sure my family is happy. When you became one of my pillars, you became a part of that. Never forget, I will move heaven and earth for you; don't ever think you're alone." Rias finished before she walked out the door.