Note:
If you've read Bliss, this fic happens 12 years earlier when Himiko was born.
That's the crazy idea I've mentioned about Machi getting pregnant just before the big Hisoka vs Chrollo fight, and having the child in the Dark Continent. It obviously won't be as easy or peaceful as Bliss, but I hope you'll enjoy it!
A big thank you to Kirenette! The idea and the original characters exist thanks to her and she's being a great beta reader, editor, and giving the best suggestions and additions!
It started with a mild pain that she barely even noticed. All she had felt for the last months was pain, in her body, in her soul. But this pain wasn't something to be ignored, and soon it began spreading up through her belly until she felt like it was trying to cut her open from her insides. And then it stopped.
"What was that?" Nobunaga asked when he noticed the way she stopped in her tracks and flinched.
"Nothing. Let's keep going," Machi coldly dismissed his curiosity.
The drive to keep going was more important than her pain. That's how she managed to stay alive until then. After five minutes of walking, however, the pain slammed into her again, making Machi squeeze her eyes shut and grit her teeth.
"Machi," he said cautiously, making her look at him with a wave of quiet anger in her eyes.
"I'm fine," she spoke through her teeth right before the pain went away.
"It's time. We have to head back now before it's too late; you know that." Nobunaga tried to touch her shoulder, but she slapped his hand away.
It wasn't a good time for that, but what time would be a good one? Good. They'd been striving for survival for so long now, Machi had completely forgotten about such a positive concept. Hope was also something that had sunk along with the Black Whale.
It had been six months since she woke up desperately coughing up water on a strange beach, jagged pieces of debris strewn everywhere; all that was left of the Black Whale. It took her some time to understand where she was and what had happened. Then memories came rushing like the bodies and debris that were still washing ashore.
Given how unstable things were on the Black Whale, it was only a matter of time when disaster would strike, but Machi could never have predicted what came next...
Phinks and Feitan had gotten caught up between the Mafia and Morena. Their fight had destroyed part of the lower tiers, forcing an agglomeration of passengers in the higher decks. Machi didn't know what happened to them, but she had a sinking feeling they would never return. Shizuku, Bonolenov, and Franklin had all been found dead, in such brutal conditions that it was hard to tell what happened to them. Not long after that Illlumi and Kalluto had simply vanished, like the assassins they were. In the end, there was only her, Nobunaga, and Chrollo in the middle of a terrible war. Kakin's Royalty and their nen beasts against each other, the Zodiacs against Beyond.
And, of course, the three of them chasing Hisoka.
He could always cause so many emotions in her, some she couldn't even name; some she couldn't bear to look at. But anger, hate, and pain were the easier ones. And those mixed emotions were the fuel that motivated her in that hunt. She should be the one to kill him, no other.
Machi had failed in her mission to take him down herself, though. She never even saw him, and still, he managed to trap Chrollo along with himself in a wrecked, abandoned lower tier; his will and bloodlust such that he would still fight Chrollo to the death, even with the ship sinking around them.
And when it finally did, Nobunaga grabbed her before she collapsed. All she knew was that, somehow, she woke up on that beach next. Skies in shades of blood and fire, fitting perhaps, considering what she had gone through. They were crossed by giant vultures attracted by the smell of death, and not even the cries of pain from the survivors were enough to make them go away.
Machi felt a stinging sensation in her head and her body was sore, but she didn't cry.
Nobunaga was near her in the sand, and together they started their journey to survive the Dark Continent, with the grim knowledge that they were the only remaining limbs of the spider now.
"We can't afford to miss this ship; it would be another couple of months trapped in this hell of a place," Machi said, but then she bent over herself, gasping in pain.
"We're still one day away from the shore," he crouched down beside her, now succeeding in touching her shoulders. "And the baby doesn't seem like waiting for so long."
She didn't want to recognize this out loud, but she knew well enough that the baby's will was supreme. It had been like this since the beginning. This whole new human being inside her body didn't ask for her permission to be conceived, it just seized the opportunity when Machi got too distracted to even think about the possibility of such a thing happening. Too eager to feel the man she loved before a death match when it could be the last time.
With both of them.
And in the same week, she spent the night on two different floors at the Heaven's Arena, for the last time.
Now the baby wasn't asking for permission, it was demanding to be born and wouldn't wait another day; the clear liquid running down between her legs only emphasized that point. It was useless to continue arguing with Nobunaga when she knew he was right. Machi didn't protest when he lifted her in his arms and took her outside the main route to the coast; searching for a shortcut. She hated those twisted trees, those strange bugs with human eyes jumping from the branches and silently observing while they were passing, the constant lightning and sounds of thunder in the dark skies. She hated the constant nightmares and every single thing she'd lived there so far.
She hated this place more than she hated Hisoka. Maybe she hated it even more than the grief of losing her friends.
And now it would be the place of birth for her child.