Chapter 85: Snarks.

Author: I know the previous chapter is confusing. It will make much more sense in the future after I get into his past.

Thank you for the wishes. I am feeling better now. I will continue updating as usual. One chapter per day!

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2 days after Kilgrave. In a clinic at Hell's Kitchen. 

"Kaii~" A pair of Mexican kiddie twins run towards Kai with their short legs and hug his legs. One for each. 

"Kids, you should call him Dr. Vera." Their mother shook her head helplessly. Kai picks up the twins in his arms.

"I don't mind it, Sofia," Kai said while dismissing the mother's concern. Sofia Corazon, a woman who used to be an illegal immigrant, shakes her head.

"You're too soft with them Kai." She said in English. For years when the family comes in for a checkup, Kai gives them carefully written books that he made for them to learn the language. Right now, the non-English speaking parents have become fluent language speakers when they are calm.

Anya Corazon, 3 and a half years old, and her twin sister, Arana Corazon, are looking at Kai's white hair. They are curious about white hair. It is the first time they have seen that on Kai. 

Their chubby cheeks are kissed by Kai. They giggled when he did that. "Beard…ticklish…hehe"

"Let's get started. Will you be brave today?" He put the children together on the chair. Their small legs are hanging midair. They keep moving their legs excitedly. "Yes. We Brave"

The kids have a special connection with Kai. The pair of twins that Kai helped when their mother had a complicated birth came by for their vaccination today. They have grown up hearing the tale of the kind doctor. If Kai isn't there at the time, only one of them will make it. 

Their favorite person in the world, ranked from the highest, is their mother, Kai, Peppa Pig, and then their father. Kai quickly gives them a checkup and injects them with influenza vaccines. His technique is among the best in the world and it didn't hurt at all for the kids. 

"Why is… hair white?" Arana asks in curiosity. She couldn't speak full sentences yet. She wonders if Kai is getting old. Old people have white hair. The granny across the street has white hair.

"Yeah. White. Why?" Anya asks too. She too wants to know.

Suddenly a spooky voice is heard from the door. " He is cursed by an evil demon. That's why his hair is white. Only a true love kiss can break the curse." Phil barges in. He comes to notify Kai that his house is fixed. He heard the question so he decided to have some fun.

" You know it's illegal to barge into a doctor's room during a medical examination right?" 

"I will arrest myself later on." 

The men suddenly are distracted as they are hearing the sound of crying. The twin girls are running toward Kai and hugging his legs tightly.

"Oh my." Sofia gasped. Phil is startled. Kai glared at him for making the girls cry. He avoided the glare skillfully. Kai crouches down to talk to the girls.

"El Diablo…" the girl is sobbing. They think Kai is going to die. 

Kai thinks for a while. He got it!

"The demon said if no one who loves me kisses me, I won't be here anymore. I wonder if there is anyone who loves me." 

"Anya Does!" "Arana Too" the girls kiss him on his cheek. Kai pretended to get better. "The curse is now lifted. You princesses have now saved me. The demon curse won't affect me anymore!" 

The situation is so Nickelodeon that Kai almost couldn't keep his facial expression together. Phil is covering his mouth, stifling his laugh. Sofia too.

The girls couldn't stop kissing Kai. They need to make sure of it. It only ended when Sofia pries them away. She thanked Kai and left the room.

"Oh, Good Afternoon." She greeted the agent who was standing outside the door. The agent just nods at her while looking lovingly at the kids.

Inside the room, Kai is cleaning up his equipment. Phil is talking to him while he does that. "Your curse is broken when your fiance kisses you that night?" He teases.

"More like I get molested. You're going to pay greatly for making the kids cry, Phil. You've ruined my 100-day streak of no children crying in the clinic"  

Kai is sanitizing the room before the next client. Phil is already used to this. He figures that no doctor is as clean-freak as Kai. 

"Come on, she said she will bear your child. I don't know her full face, but she is a beauty. Don't you get excited? You can get married." A true friend won't stop teasing you. But Phil had said the wrong thing. He realized that when Kai's face suddenly changed. 

"There is only one for me, there will be no others," Kai said with a hint of sadness and longing in his tone. 

Phil is solemn. He fucked up.'Why did I touch on the topic? It's not like I don't know what happened to his family.' 

 "I'm sure she would want you to be happy and move on. You deserve to be happy." He tries to comfort Kai. And this is what he truly believed in. A kind person like Kai is rare in this world. He truly deserves to be happy.

"I'm sure she will say exactly that," Kai said slowly. He turned to look Phil in the eye and said decisively, "But I don't want to." Phil should drop the subject.

Phil realizes it. The previous owner of the heart is still there. Locked inside by Kai, the key is thrown away. She will stay there, forever.

Outside the room. The agent heard the conversation. Her face changes a little. From the nervousness of being too late to sullen. She leans her back by the door, her head looking at the ground. 

The Black Widow heard the entire conversation. Natasha ped in her tracks because of it. She is trained to enter and shake someone's heart to get what she wants. But with a heart already filled, would there be any place for her? She is deep in thought outside the room. Should she enter the door?

Phil didn't realize her presence at the time. Inside the room, he changes the topic to something less depressing.

"The rapist superpower is dead," Phil said.

"How did that happen?" Kai pretends to be curious. 

"We are not sure about it. The video of his confession and death is all over the dark web. It seems that he touched something he shouldn't touch." 

Shield had taken the video down. They also have submitted the evidence to several judicial departments and the wrongly accused are now free. They confirmed him to be a superpower because they noticed some traces of a virus in the severed hand they found. Otherwise, the framed people will still be in jail as the confession video is lacking in foundation.

Fury mourns the loss of a special individual that can get him all the information he wants. He won't care about the rapist's past if he could prove to be valuable. 100-year in a locked container with reusable air so that he will affect other people, and send in the ones to be interrogated to him. 

With only the severed hand, Shield couldn't achieve the effect of pheromone control as Kilgrave does. The research quickly comes to a dead end.  

"You always talk about how good your team is, but you don't know?" Kai insinuated mockingly.

"(Sigh) These days I keep hearing the same sentence," Phil is exhausted. He continues,

" There is someone who I think can bring change to the team, but my boss has burned all bridges with him." 

"Fury will kick your ass if he hears you say that." Suddenly a seductive voice sounded from the door. After collecting herself, Natasha enters the door. She looks at Kai's face and becomes very satisfied with his reaction.

"You're VERY late. I got sick of looking at Phil's face." Kai hugged her while smiling. He is glad to see his close friend. He has been waiting for her to come by.

"I have made an original watch, just for you. It's been waiting for you at my house."

"You kept your promise." Natasha is a little touched. He mentioned he wants to make an original watch just for her, to thank her for letting him stay with her while he is in LA.

"What about an original watch? How come I didn't get one?" Phil interjected.

"You are banned from taking a new watch for a year. Half a year for each kid." Kai said sternly. 

Phil is sullen. Natasha amused herself by seeing his misery. She decided to add fuel to the fire. "When the kids go outside I see they are still crying." 

"Wait…No...She is framing me… They already stopped crying here!" Phil is anxious as Kai starts to get physical. Kai is removing his watch and folding the sleeves of his shirt.

"Come here, you baldy!" Kai exploded. The level-7 senior agent of Shield has to run away like a bullied kid at school because of Natasha. 

She didn't lie though, but that thing happened every time the kids went back home. They want to be with Kai longer. 

…

That night. In a certain hidden base in New York.

A man in a full, classy suit and holding an umbrella is facing others in a training suit.

"From now on, while training, I will refer to you with your code-name"

"Skye, you will be Lancelot." 

Skye is getting ready for the training that she begs Kai for. Although Kai has trained her for a long time, she feels the need for actual combat experience. She is wearing a skin-tight cotton training cloth that accentuates her figure. 

"Jessica, you will be Gawain" 

"Can I be Galahad?" Jessica asks. Gawain feels a little bit weird.

"No, I'm Galahad," Kai said sternly. "Also, as you questioned me…" He shoots out a grain of rice from his finger. The rice hits Jessica directly on her forehead. 

"Ouch," She fell from the shock. Then, her forehead is throbbing. The grain of rice has already disintegrated because of the force. 

Skye looks at her like she is an idiot. 'Don't she know during training, don't question the instructor.' She has a lot of experience in this before, so she keeps her mouth shut when Kai is talking. She was shot a lot of times with rice that she thinks there is a dent on her forehead. 

"Lastly, Ava will be Bedivere," Kai concluded the introduction today. He is dazed when Skye brings Ava to the base. So does Ava.

Skye then explained that they have been sparring in her bedroom, and it broke many things. The base has a training room she requires.

"I thought you and Ava were dating," Kai said at the time. They have been acting suspiciously in the bedroom and coming out all sweaty and satisfied. One can only assume.

"What…? I'm straight!" Skye is flabbergasted. That's why Kai had been acting so weird and hinted about coming out of the closet so many times.

"Even if you like women. I don't have a problem with it," Kai is concerned about Skye. Almost 5 years together and she hasn't had a single boyfriend. At this rate, she will be a virgin forever.

Ava knows that Skye bringing her in will get her scolded by Kai. Or so she thought. Kai was only a little surprised at first, but he didn't say anything. It deepened her curiosity about the mysterious doctor. 

She asks Skye about Kai many times. Skye gives her a knowing look. As his daughter, she knows what is happening. She has seen it too many times. "Someone has a little crush~" Skye teased. Ava is bright red at the time.

Back to the training. 

"The first lesson today is… survival. You all need to survive against me." Kai's tone changed. The girls feel like they are stared at by a predator. It will be a long and painful night for them. But the mood is interrupted.

"MEOWW! ( WHAT ABOUT ME?)" There is another participant who is dissatisfied with being left out of the code names. 

The white cat is excited about her superhero training arc. 

"Felicia, why are you here?" Skye is crouching towards the cat. She doesn't even notice the cat is here before. She picks her up and is bringing her to the side."You can't be here. You will get hurt." 

The cat yells in reluctance. "Nyaa!!( Vengeance needs a training arc!!)"

Too bad none of the girls could understand her. Kai smiles a bit and continues what he is doing. To beat up the girl into shape. 

"I am not going to lie… I am going to enjoy this a little bit." He warned the girls. He is starting training.

"Nyaa ( let me in!!!) " The cat is knocking on the steel door with her soft paw, demanding to join in.

…

Mars. The biodome. Ryan has just finished fixing the spaceship at the time. He is excited to get his reward when the sensor alarm is triggered.

"Gwen, we got a visitor." He says with a grin. They come at a perfect moment when the spaceship is fixed, but not the communication channel. 

Gwen put on some clothes and walked outside. "What should we do?" She is nervous about the extraterrestrial encounter. 

"Calm down. It is just one person. If you are really scared, then say 'Ryan is the most handsome' in this"  He gives her a bracelet. 

"Can I change the keyword? I want to make it 'My boyfriend is a dumbass', " She said while rolling her eyes at him. He can still joke around even when the situation is tense. She both loves and hates that about him. Quickly, she put the bracelet on. 

Outside the biodome, a bipedal, humanoid alien snake with a long neck and a tail is walking toward the biodome. His face is full of scales, and his tongue is split into two.  He gestures he is not hostile by holding his arm up. 

Zn'rx. This is what the race calls itself. It has a distinct feature that is they are 11 feet tall (higher than 3 meters) and has a digitigrade leg. Humans call this race Snark. 

This particular Snark is named Kal-hye. He has no special position in the Snark empire, but he prided himself on having a good head. (literally, not his mind) 

He comes here to get some help from the beings in the biodome. He has to gamble that the being there has a sense of empathy and kindness towards another being. He knows that the other races in the universe fear what the Snark looks like, but he has to try.

The heating system in their spaceship is broken. Their oxygen level is low. In a few hours, all the sleeping crew and their cargo will die. They get into a shoot-out with another race and have to crash land on the dead planet. 

"We have sss-survived because of the biodome, even when some of us lost our lives-sss." He licked his lip with his split tongue while contemplating his choices. If he lost his gamble, then he is going to die here. 

The stupidity of his crew and captain has made them wary of them. He knows this. But he is desperate for survival. For them all to survive.

He reaches the entrance of the biodome. Usually, the entrance is open. But now it is sealed. No doubt it is because of his crew's action of stealing the spaceship. 

He stopped a few meters from the entrance. He shouted "Plea-sss-se help us-sss!!"

"Ho ho, this is new." Ryan mused himself. The extremely scary alien is being very polite and is now begging him for help. Gwen is very startled.

"That is a walking snake. Oh my god. Someone pinch me." It all feels unreal. She is on Mars trying to grow plants on a dead planet on a biodome. Now, there is a talking snake. 

*pinch* Ryan pulled her cheek. "Ouch!" She screams. 

"Why do you do that?" She asks with tears in her eyes. Her cheek is now red and in pain. 

"You're the one who asks for it!?" Ryan said while facing the unfair accusation. Their banter helped Gwen to calm down and process the situation.

"Should we let it in?" She asks. By visual it seems that the being has no malicious intent. 

"It is a…him." Ryan corrected.

"How do you know?" The decisiveness makes her intrigued by the reasoning. 

"No Boobs," Ryan said with confidence. 

*Bam* Gwen elbowed him in the head. "I THOUGHT YOU KNOW SOMETHING!" She yelled angrily.

Ryan wanted to yell because of the unfairness. It is the rule of this universe. A humanoid alien that has boobs is a female. If they don't have one, then they are a male. There are only a few special cases.

He rubbed his temple. "Let's ask him than" he opens the entrance to let the alien enter the biodome. Gwen's heart is beating wildly.

Kal-hye is excited. They have a chance now. "I need to make sss-sure of it. They sss-still give me a chance even when my crew has destroyed their sss-spaceship. They must be a kind race." 

He places his hope on them. He didn't know that the spaceship was already fixed. He enters the biodome, fully nervous. Walking for a few hundred meters, he finally sees the being waiting for him. They look like a descendant of the apes, except they are hairless.

"It reminds me of the annoying Starlord," He is slowly walking towards them. He can only hope that the being has a universal translator. His translator is broken from the crash.

*hisss-sssss* Ryan and Gwen could only hear a snake sound. 

"Oh, no translator." Gwen realizes it. How are they going to talk to each other?