Chapter Text
*
The streets around the auction hall buzzed with a tension Molly could feel in her bones. The Phantom Troupe moved like shadows along the edges of the crowd, slipping between security and aristocrats, a storm ready to strike. Molly stayed close to Pakunoda, her kimono heavy and restrictive, her zori soft against the pavement, yet her aura-augmented blood coiled within her like a living weapon. Nobunaga was elsewhere, watching Gon and Killua, at least, he had been. She could only hope they weren’t causing trouble, though he’d never admit concern.
“Stay close. Don’t draw attention until I signal,” Pakunoda whispered, her tone firm but calm.
Molly nodded, letting her blood Nen pulse subtly through her veins. The moment the first alarm sounded, she surged forward.
It started small: a guard turned the wrong way, a door slightly ajar. Molly didn’t hesitate. With a flick of her wrist, her aura-infused blood leapt like liquid steel, wrapping the unsuspecting guard in a binding tangle before he could even react. Then another. Then another. Within seconds, a dozen guards collapsed in a heap, immobilized but unharmed. Her kimono swirled with each motion, the layers catching on her limbs, but she moved with a fluid grace, eyes scanning for the next cluster.
The Troupe moved around her like the teeth of a well-oiled machine. Shalnark and Feitan went for the hall’s upper floors, neutralizing anyone with a weapon. Machi’s threads darted through the room, binding hands, tying ankles, moving faster than human eyes could follow. Molly felt herself merge into the rhythm of their assault, her blood Nen, her restricted movements in silk, and her awareness all syncing perfectly with theirs.
She glanced at Pakunoda. “You okay?”
“Perfectly,” Pakunoda replied, eyes sharp on the next target.
Together, they created a pocket of controlled chaos, Molly’s blood swirling, weaving, and striking with lethal precision. Guards fell silently, their resistance snuffed out before it could begin. Her movements were efficient, brutal, precise, and yet never careless, the Troupe was lethal, and she couldn’t afford to be anything less.
By the time they reached the banquet hall, the action had died down. Molly pushed open the heavy doors and froze for a heartbeat. Chrollo lay near the back of the hall, propped against a pile of rubble, his jacket scuffed, a few faint cuts marring his hands and arms, and a gash across his cheek. He had been almost overwhelmed by Silva and Zeno, pressed to the edge of defeat, but their employers had died before they could finish him. Around him, the rest of the Spiders stood, alert but relaxed, each bearing subtle signs of their own skirmishes throughout the city.
“Good timing,” Chrollo said, voice measured, acknowledging her without fanfare.
Molly inclined her head slightly. She had kept up, survived, contributed, and here, with the Troupe gathered, it was enough.
The return to their hideout was quieter. Nobunaga met her at the door, his expression unreadable for a moment. Then, just as she began to step inside, he bent slightly and pressed a brief, soft kiss to her forehead.
“You did good,” he murmured, low and gravelly.
Molly felt a rush of warmth that had nothing to do with exhaustion. She nodded, allowing herself a faint smile. “Thanks.”
Inside, the little hideout smelled of aged wood and faint incense, the comfort of their shared space. She slipped off her outer garments and set down her kimono, neatly folded, straightened her layers, and let herself sink into the quiet. Nobunaga lingered near her, silent but close, and for a moment, the chaos of the auction felt distant.
Molly moved to sit beside him, the weight of the day settling in her shoulders. Outside, Yorknew pulsed with the normal rhythm of its oblivious citizens. Inside, the Troupe’s world was small, precise, and terrifyingly controlled. Molly had finally carved her place firmly among the shadows.
And Nobunaga’s quiet approval, brief as it was, was more valuable than any words.
But the Spider as a whole only lasted so long.
After Yorknew, the quiet wasn’t just unfamiliar, it was grieving.
It stretched on longer than anyone expected. Days turned into weeks without movement. Without Chrollo’s direction, the Troupe didn’t dissolve, but it lost its center of gravity. Members came and went, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, never all together. The warehouse was still theirs, but it felt like a place people passed through rather than occupied.
Pakunoda’s absence was heavier than Chrollo’s. Chrollo was gone in a way that invited anticipation. His soul remained. His presence remained untouched. Even his silence felt deliberate, like something that would eventually resolve. Pakunoda, however, was gone in a way that refused narrative. No footsteps crossed the concrete floor in the mornings. No voice quietly correcting assumptions before they hardened into mistakes. No presence beside Molly when tension climbed too high, when information became dangerous simply by existing.
Her seat stayed empty. Dust gathered on it. No one filled it. No one sat there, even by accident. Molly found herself glancing toward it more often than she wanted to admit, especially during moments that required restraint rather than force. Pakunoda had understood restraint. Had practiced it like an art. Without her, jobs splintered. Some were taken too aggressively. Some were abandoned halfway through. There were gaps now, not failures, but inefficiencies that would have been unthinkable before Yorknew.
It was in those gaps that Molly began to drift. Not away from the Troupe entirely. Just… outward. She took work because stopping felt wrong. Stillness made her think too much. Think about Pakunoda’s hands on her shoulder during the auction, grounding her. About the way she had trusted Molly without explanation. So Molly worked, but she chose different contracts. Ones that required precision instead of spectacle. Intelligence instead of brute force.
Her background resurfaced in pieces. Forensic work translated better to Nen than she had expected. Blood, after all, told stories. She learned how to separate toxins from circulation using aura pressure alone, forcing venom, drugs, or contaminants to congeal and isolate before extracting them through controlled incisions. She learned how to slow hemorrhaging without sealing wounds improperly, how to keep someone alive just long enough to answer questions, or long enough to recover.
One night, she worked on a man who had been poisoned with a rare neurotoxin. His eyes fluttered under the fluorescent light of her temporary clinic, his pulse irregular. Molly’s aura coiled around his veins like soft steel threads, guiding the poison into small isolated clusters she could extract with surgical precision. Nobunaga stood outside the door, blades resting against his shoulders, breathing quiet and measured.
“His body is fragile,” she murmured. “I’ll have to reroute his circulation slowly. Any sudden movement and it’s over.”
He nodded once. “I know. Take your time.”
Hours later, she leaned back on the edge of the table, her palms warm with residual aura. The man’s pulse stabilized. Nobunaga’s eyes softened for the briefest moment before returning to their habitual steel.
Word spread. Quietly. If someone had been poisoned and conventional medicine failed, Molly was mentioned. If a body needed to be examined without attracting attention, to know how someone really died, or whether they could have survived, Molly was called. She didn’t advertise. She didn’t linger. Her work became known for being clean, discreet, and final.
Nobunaga noticed. Not because he was watching her, but because people stopped asking him about her and started asking for her. He heard her name spoken with caution, sometimes with relief. He started accompanying her out of habit. At first, just to keep an eye on things. Then because it felt wrong not to. He didn’t interfere. Didn’t direct. He learned how she worked by observing the details: the way she washed her hands longer than necessary, the way she always checked a pulse twice, the way her blood Nen moved differently when she was focused versus when she was angry.
“You’re not like the others,” he said once, not accusing, just stating fact.
“I know,” she replied. That was enough.
They didn’t call what they did dates. But they developed routines. Late meals after jobs that left her exhausted. Quiet walks home where neither felt compelled to fill the silence. He learned to recognize when she needed space and when she needed him close enough to feel his presence.
Sometimes they lingered on the rooftops above the city. Molly would trace faint patterns in the air with her Nen, coiling blood threads to mimic the stars, and Nobunaga would sit silently, watching, until the threads dissolved into nothing.
Eventually, he stopped leaving.
The house was her idea, even if she didn’t frame it that way.
She mentioned it one evening, the comment slipping out between tasks. She was cleaning her tools, blood rinsing clean from her hands, when she said she was tired of places that felt borrowed. Of rooms where nothing stayed. Of living out of bags, of never arranging things because there was no point when you might leave by morning.
Nobunaga didn’t respond right away.
The next day, he came back with keys.
The house sat in a quiet district on the edge of the city, far enough from main roads that the noise dulled to a distant hum. The building itself was narrow and deep, two stories, with a small fenced yard out back and a roof flat enough to stand on. No distinguishing marks. No obvious defenses. The kind of place people walked past without looking twice.
It was unremarkable.
Which was exactly why it worked.
The front room opened into a simple living space, wooden floors worn smooth by years of use, a low table, a couch that had clearly been chosen for durability rather than comfort. Light filtered in through narrow windows, softened by thin curtains Molly bought later, pale fabric that diffused the city glow at night.
The kitchen sat just beyond, compact but functional. Nobunaga claimed it immediately. He sharpened knives there that were never used for cooking, reinforced the cabinets so they could bear weight if needed, and learned where everything went without being told. Meals became routine, not elaborate, not rushed. Rice simmering quietly while Molly worked. Soup reheated late at night when she came home exhausted.
Upstairs held two rooms.
One became a bedroom, sparse but solid. The bed was low and sturdy, pressed against the wall where Nobunaga could see the door from where he slept. Molly added blankets, thick, clean, practical. No decorations, no excess. They slept close, not tangled, not clinging. Aligned. Like soldiers who trusted each other to wake when needed.
The other room became hers.
Molly turned it into a workspace within days.
Shelving lined the walls, organized with a precision that bordered on obsessive. Glass vials labeled in neat script. Stainless steel trays. Clean cloths folded and refolded until the edges lined up perfectly. A reinforced table at the center where she could work standing or seated, depending on the task.
Part clinic. Part lab.
She cataloged blood samples there, testing reactions under controlled aura pressure. She refined filtration techniques, isolating toxins, drugs, and foreign Nen residue with a delicacy that would have horrified conventional surgeons. Some methods bordered on medical miracle. Others on controlled horror. Molly treated them all with the same calm respect.
Blood, after all, told stories.
Nobunaga reinforced the house like it was a fortress.
Steel bars went into the window frames, hidden, removable. Locks replaced, doubled, then backed up with mechanisms only he understood. Floorboards reinforced in places Molly never noticed until she stepped wrong and felt how solid they were. Escape routes mapped. Sightlines memorized.
They rarely spoke about it.
Their time together filled in the spaces between work and vigilance.
Some evenings, Molly sat at her table long after dark, aura threads glowing faintly as she tested reactions. Nobunaga stayed downstairs, cleaning blades or leaning against the counter, listening. The house carried sound differently than the warehouse ever had. Every movement mattered. Every breath felt shared.
Other nights, they did nothing at all.
She would sit on the floor, back against the couch, reviewing notes. He would rest nearby, sharpening a sword that didn’t need it. The silence between them wasn’t empty. It was earned.
Small signs of permanence appeared without either of them commenting.
A kettle left on the stove. Extra towels folded neatly in the hall closet. Molly’s kimono hung on a hook by the door instead of being folded away. Nobunaga’s zori always placed in the same spot, angled toward the exit.
The house learned them. And slowly, almost invisibly, they learned how to exist in it together, violence held at the threshold, domesticity threading itself quietly through the gaps.
The ring came months later, on a night that didn’t announce itself as important until it already was.
They were on the floor of the living room, backs against the couch, the house settled into its nighttime stillness. Outside, the city breathed, distant engines, voices dissolving into background noise. Nobunaga had his sword across his lap, cleaning it with slow, habitual care. Molly sat beside him, knees pulled in, reviewing notes from earlier, her sleeves rolled up, fingertips still faintly warm with residual aura.
It was peaceful. That should have been the warning.
Nobunaga finished first.
He set the sword aside more carefully than usual, then sat there for a moment longer, shoulders tense, gaze fixed somewhere ahead of him like he was measuring distance. Molly noticed the hesitation before she noticed him reach into his pocket.
When he held the ring out, he didn’t say anything at first.
It was plain. Unassuming. No gem. No shine meant to catch light or attention. Just a smooth, solid band, worn-in rather than polished, something that looked like it belonged on a hand that worked, fought, survived.
Molly stared.
“For you,” he said finally, voice low and rough around the edges. “I’m not… good with speeches.”
Her heart started pounding anyway.
“This is me asking,” he continued, jaw tightening slightly, eyes fixed somewhere just past her shoulder. “Not for a ceremony. Not for safety. Just—” He swallowed. “For you to stay. With me. However long we get.”
She took the ring from his hand with a sharp inhale, turning it slowly between her fingers. It was heavier than she expected. Grounding.
Then she noticed it.
The inside.
Her breath caught.
Engraved on the inner band, small, precise, easy to miss if you weren’t looking, were their initials. Nothing ornate. Just enough to say this is taken, this is known, this belongs.
Her eyes burned.
“You hid it,” she whispered, half laughing, half stunned.
He glanced at her then, just briefly. “Didn’t want it to make you a target.”
The words landed heavier than they should have.
She smiled anyway, wide, bright, unguarded, and didn’t bother hiding the way her hands trembled as she slipped the ring onto her finger herself.
“Yes,” she said immediately. No pause. No doubt. “Obviously yes.”
That did it.
The tension drained out of him all at once, like he’d been braced for rejection he didn’t even believe was possible. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and reached for her hand, thumb brushing over the ring, grounding himself in its presence.
“You sure?” he asked quietly. Not because he doubted her, but because this mattered.
Molly leaned in and pressed her forehead to his shoulder, laughing softly, eyes wet.
“I’ve been sure,” she said. “I just didn’t know when you were going to catch up.”
He huffed a weak, incredulous laugh and pulled her closer, resting his chin against her hair.
“Guess I got lucky,” he murmured.
They didn’t announce it. Didn’t tell anyone unless it came up. If someone noticed the ring, they noticed. If they didn’t, that was fine too.
On the outside, it was nothing special.
On the inside, it was theirs.
After that, Molly’s work escalated.
Not in volume, she was careful about that. Not in spectacle either. What changed was the importance. The kind of work that arrived at her door didn’t come with contracts or intermediaries anymore. It came with urgency. With people who could not afford witnesses, hospitals, or failure.
She performed emergency surgeries in basements, in abandoned apartments, in rooms hastily scrubbed of identifying features. People arrived half-conscious, bodies already rejecting conventional treatment. Poisoned by rare toxins. Wounded by Nen that lingered like infection. Bleeding in ways that refused to clot.
Molly adapted.
She learned how to filter blood mid-transfusion, isolating incompatible cells with aura-thin precision, forcing them to separate without triggering shock. She learned how to identify foreign Nen residues embedded in tissue, how to pull them out strand by strand, letting her own blood Nen envelop and neutralize them before they could spread further.
Sometimes, she saved lives no one else could have.
Sometimes, she kept people alive just long enough to finish something unfinished.
There were rumors.
That she could remove curses from circulation before they settled into the body. That she could rewrite how blood responded to Nen interference. None of it was entirely true, but close enough that people began to fear her as much as they sought her out.
That was when things went wrong.
The job should have been routine. Dangerous, but within her control. A client suffering from systemic Nen contamination, something experimental, something unstable. Molly began the procedure as she always did: steady, methodical, her blood responding in familiar patterns as she isolated the problem.
Then her Nen hesitated.
Not failed—hesitated.
Her aura recoiled inward instead of extending outward, tightening around her core like it was protecting something else. Her blood pressure spiked unnaturally, warmth blooming low in her abdomen in a way that had nothing to do with exertion.
Her hands shook.
Just once.
It was enough.
She forced herself through the rest of the procedure, adjusting on instinct, pulling back before the strain became visible. The client survived. Barely. But Molly walked away unsettled in a way she hadn’t felt since Yorknew.
Her Nen had overridden her intent.
That night, she sat awake long after Nobunaga fell asleep, one hand resting unconsciously against her stomach, aura thick and guarded beneath her skin. She didn’t need confirmation yet. She already knew something fundamental had shifted.
Whatever was happening inside her, her Nen had chosen it over the job.
The favor came shortly after.
Not a demand. Not a threat.
A door opened where there hadn’t been one before. Access to information she couldn’t have found on her own. A single intervention that smoothed over the consequences of that job, quietly, efficiently, without tying her to anything long-term.
Illumi’s name was never spoken aloud.
It didn’t need to be.
She understood the shape of the exchange immediately: once, no more. A recognition of anomaly, not ownership. A line drawn and respected, for now.
It was enough.
By the time Molly realized she was pregnant, she already suspected something had changed. Her Nen responded differently, protective, inward-facing, reluctant to leave her body for extended periods. She adjusted instinctively, refusing contracts that required prolonged exposure or excessive exertion. Her aura layered itself inward rather than outward, and her blood hummed differently, slower, warmer, guarded.
The night she told Nobunaga, she didn’t plan it. They were sitting in the house, late, the city quiet in that way that made everything feel exposed. Molly had just finished sterilizing her tools, moving more slowly than usual. Nobunaga watched her for a long moment before speaking.
“You’re moving too carefully,” he said. Not a criticism. An observation.
She stopped. Her hands rested against the table, fingers splayed, steadying herself. For a moment, she didn’t turn around.
“I didn’t want to say it wrong,” she admitted.
He straightened slightly. “Say what?”
She faced him then. There was no drama in her expression, just gravity.
“I’m pregnant.”
The word hung between them, heavier than any threat either of them had ever faced.
For a split second, Nobunaga didn’t react at all. Then something shifted, not panic, not doubt, but a sharp, visceral awareness of scale. Of consequence. Of continuity.
“A kid,” he said quietly.
Molly nodded. “Yours.”
That did it.
He stood abruptly, then stopped himself, like he wasn’t sure where to put the force of what he was feeling. His hands curled into fists at his sides before he crossed the room and knelt in front of her, not ceremonially, not deliberately, but because he needed to be level with her.
“You’re giving me a future,” he said, voice rough. “In a world that doesn’t give those.”
Her throat tightened.
“I know what this costs,” she said. “I know what kind of world this is. I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t sure.”
He pressed his forehead to her abdomen, breathing slowly, grounding himself the way he always did before a fight.
“I’ll protect you,” he said. “Both of you. No matter what that takes.”
She rested a hand in his hair, fingers trembling just slightly.
“I don’t need you to be fearless,” she whispered. “I need you to stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he replied immediately. No hesitation. No qualifiers.
From then on, everything changed in ways neither of them announced. Nobunaga adjusted without asking. He intercepted work before it reached her. He stood closer during meetings. He sharpened blades more often, not because he needed to, but because it calmed him.
Molly adapted her Nen deliberately now. She discovered she could create a secondary circulation, a controlled aura-buffer that reduced strain on her primary blood flow. It was slower, less efficient in combat, but infinitely safer. She experimented carefully, documenting reactions, noting which techniques caused fetal stress and which stabilized it. Her Nen was learning alongside her.
The summons came not long after. Illumi’s message was characteristically precise, no greeting, no explanation, only coordinates and a single line that framed itself as courtesy.
A repayment.
Nobunaga went with her without discussion. That alone said enough.
Kukuroo Mountain did not soften for circumstance. It did not care that Molly moved more slowly now, or that her breathing had changed, or that something in her aura resisted the altitude as if negotiating with the air itself. The climb thinned the world down to pressure and intent. The gates loomed ahead, vast enough to feel less like an entrance and more like a judgment, weight pressing inward, daring the body to fail.
Molly felt the land before she felt Illumi.
The mountain was saturated with disciplined violence, power layered so densely it became environmental. Her Nen responded instinctively, tightening, reorganizing, less outward reach, more internal reinforcement. Preservation over expansion. Nobunaga noticed immediately. He adjusted his pace to hers without comment, his presence a constant at her side, hand never far from her back.
Illumi met them before the gates.
He looked unchanged in the way a blade looks unchanged, still sharp, still clean, still dangerous. His gaze moved over Nobunaga briefly, dismissively, then returned to Molly and stayed there. Longer than politeness required.
“You’ve changed,” he said at last.
It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t curiosity. It was observation, delivered with the quiet certainty of someone who catalogued alterations the way others counted breaths.
“So have you,” Molly replied, evenly.
Illumi’s lips curved, almost fond. His eyes did not.
The work involved a subject whose blood Nen had been altered beyond safe parameters, experimental interference, poorly controlled, layered too aggressively. The body was failing under the strain, systems collapsing into each other. Molly worked without haste, even as the mountain pressed in around her, even as Illumi’s attention never fully left her hands.
She filtered contaminated Nen from circulation with aura so fine it bordered on surgical thread, separating hostile resonance from viable blood mid-flow. She stabilized organs that should not have held. Reconstructed vessels with controlled regeneration, precise enough to avoid triggering rejection. Her Nen adjusted continuously, pulling inward, compensating, prioritizing.
Illumi felt it.
Not as force, but as decision.
Her aura behaved less like a technique and more like a living system, adaptive, selective, intolerant of unnecessary loss. It rerouted itself automatically, shielding something deeper, something central. When a spike of hostile Nen surged, her power folded around it instead of striking back, as though violence were secondary to continuity. Nobunaga did not move from her side. Silent. Unyielding. A line drawn without words.
When it was finished, the subject stabilized, breath steadying into something like life. Molly straightened slowly, fatigue settling into her bones. Illumi inclined his head.
“Debt repaid,” he said.
But his gaze lingered again, measuring, assessing, recalculating.
They descended the mountain more slowly than they had climbed it. Molly leaned into Nobunaga’s support without protest, his hand firm at her back, grounding. Neither of them spoke until the gates were far behind them.
The Phantom Troupe remained in suspension. Pakunoda was gone. Chrollo unreachable. The world they had known was paused in grief and uncertainty. But Molly had built something in the absence. A name that traveled faster than rumors. A home reinforced against both intrusion and impermanence. A life balanced between violence and restraint, sharpened by loss but not hollowed by it.
Whatever came next, Troupe, Zoldyck, or something worse, she would not face it alone. Illumi did not stop thinking about her after Kukuroo Mountain. That, in itself, was unusual. He had seen bodies engineered past pain, children broken into tools, Nen warped until it resembled machinery more than will. Molly was none of those things. And yet her presence unsettled him more deeply than most. Her blood Nen did not behave like a weapon. It behaved like a system that knew exactly what it would protect.