Something was wrong. Nagashino was sure of it.
Their group had spent over three days at the site where they encountered Anegawa. First, it took them about half a day to round up every human in the settlement, enter the big building, escape, and decide to send a group of her Combees as envoys to Hiei and Inabayama. Then, almost a day on the road for her children to reach the cave, half a day there, and another day to guide the pair to this site. Then, it took the group just a few hours to recruit the ghost, get ready, and then depart Eastward.
Through all this time, Trainer was making sure the captured humans were alive and well, likely from a misguided impression they would make for valuable hostages. The split in attention and resources to make sure the humans did not escape, nor died in captivity, was minor enough for Nagashino to overlook it. Prematurely raising tensions within the group was a much higher risk than letting their human liaison play jailer.
She knew that once more humans came and proven just how ineffective it was to take hostages, she could easily push for execution of the entire group.
Except, there were no reinforcements.
Humans were weak, physically pathetic creatures, at risk of being maimed or killed by kits of most Pokemon kins. They were also extremely vicious and cunning, overcoming any obstacles through the power of subterfuge, just like her Hive did. Except, they substituted her children' unity and coordination for tools and weapons. Some of these tools and weapons, were Pokemon they captured, cross-species collaboration on a far greater level than in any Pokemon Village. And, most importantly right now, was their substitute for Nagashino's mental network.
Humans had tools to communicate through impossible distances. Two humans could talk in real time, while being on opposing sides of the world. ANY two humans. And humans also had security protocols, allowing them to know whenever something happened to the others, be it because they were contacted about it - or because they were not.
Her Hiveguard learned it the hard way.
A settlement such as this had to have communication protocols. They had to have at least one human - or likely, multiple humans - they contacted on a regular basis. This was needed for rapport, and to organise and distribute supplies - few human settlements were built in a self-sufficient way, they always preferred to have specialised farming fields, specialised production sites, specialised data centres et cetera. This place in particular did not have any food production, despite a river in its vicinity. The food was brought here, likely on a weekly basis. At first, she thought it was brought from a town less than a day to the West from here.
Except, once some of her scouts braved the freezing mountain peaks to reach it, they found the settlement on the shore of a massive lake completely abandoned, and partly in ruins.
This left a massive city to the North-East from the site. The ground routes were less likely, but humans also had aerial vehicles to reach anywhere on the islands. And yet, they did not.
Nagashino did not understand why.
And she could not afford to not understand something so important - her Hive lived and died by her decisions.
Which was why she had these scouts make their way through the ground routes towards the big city, while sending another group across the mountains via aerial routes. Hopefully, sacrificing a couple dozens of her children was going to provide the information their group sorely lacked.
It could certainly prove her Hive to be valuable - even if it did not exist on the same level of power as some of them.
She looked over the rest of the group.
Inabayama walked in the front, carrying the white-green fairy of unknown kin in her arms. After them, was Anegawa, who substituted his torn down human hide coverings for ones made out of a Pokemon hide. Then, flew Nagashino, followed by Trainer and Honnoji, and then Okehazama. Her Hive, and the contingent of her Pokemon servants, traveled along with the road, monitoring everything around them in a half-day radius.
During the 'spar' on the last day of stay, Nagashino learned that just because the dragon had her back to them, did not mean she could not see them - those eleven eyes covered enough ground to make sneaking up on her practically impossible. Additionally, it became almost instantly clear why the Goodra decided to fight all three of them at once - she knew how to counter any single one of them, and had enough physicality to do so with impunity. Which meant the spar was modified to better test their capabilities. She was also correct in an assumption that Nagashino held back during the fight due to its necessary nonlethality, but Vespiquen was certain, the dragon could wipe all three of them simultaneously in a serious fight.
And yet, the dragon clearly deferred to Hiei.
Nagashino was not there to see hers, or Anegawa's power first-hand, but she could make reasonable assumptions. Honnoji was nothing special, and was not a threat on her best day. At least, for now. Okehazama was much more dangerous - during their first confrontation, Nagashino estimated roughly 60-70% chance of him winning due to highly unfavourable conditions of the encounter. His chances dropped to about 30% in less unfavourable conditions. And judging by the aftermath of his encounter with Anegawa, he had less than 10% chance against the ghost.
Hiei, on the other hand, subjugated Anegawa with only a couple of scratches.
In other words… Nagashino was very unlikely to contend with Anegawa or Inabayama, let alone Hiei, in case either of them turned on the rest of the group. All three had to be considered threats too dangerous to fight. Additionally, Nagashino had to remember that Okehazama was also a close enough threat not to be ignored completely. And Honnoji…
While she was not a threat yet, the white-green fairy took some sort of an interest in her.
Since the first day, the two took time to talk apart from the rest of the group. At first, Nagashino assumed these were talks about Absol's visions, and how to avoid their worst outcomes - except, she overheard them on the second day.
"Dark Type energy is both abstract and literal in its expression," white-green fairy explained, "It represents void. Oblivion. Lack of matter. Lack of air. Lack of even nothingness"
"Exc-except, it's still- still energy?.."
"It is," Hiei nodded, "All matter consists minuscule particles, too fine to perceive with naked eye. They have a push, to prevent other particles from getting too close, and pull, to prevent particles from getting too far apart. Their collective also has a pull on the surrounding objects, normally too insignificant to notice, except for objects with immeasurably high mass. You can actually see one of these objects right now"
At this, Honnoji tried to look around, but obviously did not find anything. Neither did Nagashino, despite her many different perspectives stretching beyond the horizon.
At this, white-green fairy pointed downwards.
"Our world, our planet, is the greatest source of this pull in our vicinity, its landmasses, its oceans, and everything else just small parts of a great whole. We all live on a massive sphere of matter hurling through the void of space, stuck on it only thanks to its pull, its gravity. Except, these gravitational forces can go much further than this. And if you compress the matter enough to disregard the push between its tiniest particles, to force it to only pull…" she raised a finger, and a perfect orb of the deepest, most unnatural black appeared at the end of her claw, air suddenly shifting and swirling towards it, "You get to a state, in which the pull becomes too great, and it begins to devour everything that enters its gravitational field. Ever expanding, ever compressing. The closest thing to Oblivion for physical matter. A black hole"
"You… Think s-something like this can be- can be done with energy?.." Absol asked, clearly shaken by the demonstration
"If there is anyone who can achieve it, it's you."
The purpose of their talks was clear to Nagashino. The white-green fairy saw some sort of potential in Honnoji, and was training her for some unknown purpose. And this could possibly result in Absol becoming yet another threat to her Hive.
No.
Nagashino already knew the Absol was a threat, from her battle with Metagross. That time, it was clearly subconscious, and inefficient, but if she learned to use this power consciously-
Too many threats.
Even if the group was successful in their mission, she had to trust Hiei to uphold her end of the deal, and trust the other five not to attack her Hive. And Nagashino did not trust anyone.
Not anymore.
Which meant… She had to find countermeasures. Ways to strengthen the Hive, or to strengthen herself. Enough to be able to defend, if not against the God-to-be, then against the rest of them.
Suddenly, her attention snapped to her scouts, who finally made it to the big human settlement to North-East. She finally understood what was wrong. Everything suddenly made sense, as if spoken in one, true universal language.
Fire.
Screams.
War.