Chapter 9

The next day, Snek was getting things ready.

He emptied out the massive pantry near his room and managed to clear out some space to put everything coming today. Beds, furniture, clothing, the works! Yet as he was about to plan, he saw something hovering outside his window. He has seen those things before. Alley's construction drones! "What the hell are they doing here?" he said.

Opening the balcony window, one had a video camera and screen. Alley popped up! "Hi Snek! I heard you are renovating, can I help?" she asked.

"I won't refuse. I am trying to convert a pantry into a small room…" Before he could finish, the drone flew in and took measurements of everything. Even Snek's room before Angela and Drax woke up! Yet as quickly as it took them, she announced she could do a lot better than the pervious idea.

"Did you know the apartment next door has been vacated for ages?" she asked. "I have spoken with the manager of your building, and thanks to the association, they paid for it. So… I can tear the whole thing apart and really make this a great living space if you want? Everyone can have their own room!"

"Wow… that's… a lot of work, isn't it?"

She laughed. "You do realize, I turned our house from a small little tea hut into a Japanese mansion in less than 10 hours right?"

"Well, in that case, I'll get the two up, we will head out and you do your thing!"

Snek did just that, he got Angela and Drax up for the day and took them out for breakfast. The moment they left, he could already hear his apartment get torn apart. "That's some friend you got." Said Drax. "She can make anything can't she?"

"Alley is very creative and brilliant," explained Snek. "She was the one who modified the house after I became the snake monster. She made a whole room for me that would expand when I grew and my bed was the floor. She made the whole thing out of a firm memory foam so I slept in great comfort."

"Remarkable… Just how did you meet them?" asked Angela.

Snek forced a smile and explained the incident before the martial arts tournament. He met Hunter and Pac for the first time, however, prejudged them since they were the sons of Garou. "Yet, the more I talked with them, the more I realized they weren't anything like their father. They were careful with their words and spoke respectfully… that didn't happen that often with me. Still, I felt terrible after for judging them. When other fighters came along to challenge the brothers, I tried to get them to back off. But the kids held their own."

"So… what happened? They said you got turned at the tournament." Asked Drax.

Snek nodded. "There's something called the house of evolution, they want to expand the idea of superhuman in a sense forcing an evolution in people, the scientist was trying to force Pac and Hunter to turn into what their father is by his own methods. He laced the food with monster cells and somehow gave it the ability to delay the reaction. Well, what this guy didn't know was that there was a fighter out to get the brothers. He took all their food from the table and scattered them to Max, Suiryu, his own and mine. We ended up eating it…" Snek paused and shook his head to the whole thing. "That asshole…"

Drax stared at him, bewildered to say the least. But he was fascinated too. "That's what turned you? But aren't monster cells suppose to make you into a full monster? You are… or you were, weren't you?"

"Drax!" Angela protested.

"No, he can ask me, I don't mind. What I looked like before, what you see you know who is now. Believe it or not, it wasn't a full transformation. I retained my mind, my hair to say the least. Garou believes if I fully turned, I would have at least grown to five times my size. I wouldn't know who I was anymore, and I would have gone on a spree destroying… consuming anything I could. Alley was working on a cure at the time. Thank God it took! It prevented me from becoming any more of a monster." He laughed a little. "Is it weird of me to say that… I'm starting to prefer being that than human."

His words stunned the two. "Really?" Angela questioned.

"I would have been the last person you would say such a thing if you knew how much I was complaining before. Out of the three of us, I wanted to be human again the most. But, when I was turned back… this happened a while ago. I had the monster bio energy sucked out of my body. I was human again. But, I began to realize that despite it… I didn't feel like the same hero I once was. Even now, if there was a monster attack, I wouldn't be able to do much but take a hit and bide a stronger hero some time to get there. But, with what I was… I could take the bastard down in an instant and have lunch covered for the next week or so"

Drax snickered at the comment. Snek smiled as well. "Seriously?" Drax asked. "You could survive off of one monster for a week?"

"Give or take, depends on the size of it, how active I have been and how long I have gone without eating."

"Snek, you can't really mean that, can you?" Angela asked. "I know you did wonderful things as Biting Snake Fist too. But as the snake?" she said with great uncertainty.

"I know, it's hard to wrap one's head around the subject matter. But let me explain this. Ever since I became that, I hardly touched my bank account. I just checked it recently… I got MORE than enough to live off of for the next few years…"

"Whoa. M Class get paid a lot, don't they?" Drax asked.

"We're equals to the S Class, so we better. Not to mention I provide two services, take out and clean up. I save the association money when I eat. So, it works out rather nicely, wouldn't you think?"

They arrived at the restaurant. The three sat down together, Snek began to notice the stares people were giving him, the whispers soon followed. "Is that Snek?"

"How can it be, Snek's a snake monster!"

"But, he looks just like him, before he was turned."

Angela heard them too, she looked to him with great confusion. "Do they not know it's you?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "No one knew who I was when I was human anyway, so meh." He said. "Ooo they got back bacon here!"