Disclaimer: I blame marathons of Karate Kid movies on TV for making me writing fanfic of it, haha.
Story: John Kreese lost everything, Drunk and a mess, his life changes for the better when he's found and helped by the girl who ruined him in the first place. Danielle LaRusso helps pick up his pieces and puts him back together.
Set as a genderbent AU of the third Karate Kid movie.
Spoilers: Yeeeessss. Yes, yes, yes. Beware?
Warnings: Age difference, initial racism towards Asians, excessive drinking, some violence and language, PTSD, gender roles and gender expectations, societal expectations…
Pairings: Eventual John Kreese/fem!Daniel.
Prison Gates Won't Open Up
Chapter One: Have a Pity Party
His life was a mess. Nothing was right and everything was wrong.
He'd been Captain John Kreese, "Karate Champion", for the longest time, and now he was nothing.
It was all their fault.
Danielle LaRusso and that slanted-eyed bastard. They'd ruined his career, his dojo, and his reputation. He had nothing now and he was spiraling downward.
"Damn her," he snarled and kicked a bottle out of the way, stumbling a bit as he then felt the urge to vomit. "Damn him too."
John stumbled again, though this time he had to steady himself against the wall, which he ended up leaning against. Deciding to slide down it and sprawl out on the ground, he closed his eyes and tried to keep the nausea at bay.
He shouldn't have had all those drinks at the bar.
"Why is everything messed up?" he hit his fist against the ground.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Nothing was right. Nothing.
"Ugh," he groaned, feeling like he needed to throw up.
"Hey. Hey! Are you…alright?" the familiar voice asked hesitantly.
He opened his eyes and squinted to see who it was, sneering when he saw none other than that LaRusso brat that had a hand in ruining him and his life. He opened his mouth to say something degrading, when instead he finally succumbed to his nausea and threw up to the side. Humiliated, he passed out like that, knowing that his life couldn't possibly get any worse than it already was.
When John regained consciousness, he realized he was on a bed. And that he didn't recognize the room. Sitting up, he looked at himself and realized he'd had his clothes changed. Soft and comfortable sweatpants covered his legs, and he wore an unfamiliar shirt. They were clean. He was clean. Smelling himself, he realized he didn't smell like alcohol, but a strange feminine flowery scent he wrinkled his nose at. Feeling around his mouth, he'd been shaved too apparently.
He pushed himself off the bed and stumbled to the bathroom, where he looked at himself. He'd been cleaned up alright. Clean-shaven when he'd previously been gruffly sporting a beard, his hair neater instead of the mess it was, and looking normal in the sweatpants and shirt that was put on him. Somehow someone had grabbed him, groomed him, and made him go back to as normal as he could of the man he had looked like in the past (even after everything).
The last thing he remembered…the last person he remembered…was Danielle LaRusso looming over him as he sat slumped against a building's brick wall like a homeless person. Of all the people to witness him at his worse, it had to be her.
But she couldn't have…she couldn't have gotten him cleaned up like this, could she? Why would she anyway? He'd tried to destroy her and her mentor, humiliate her in front of so many people. He couldn't even get one over the old man back in that parking lot.
Was it pity? Because he didn't want or need her damn pity! He didn't need to be felt sorry for, especially by her.
He didn't understand that girl. He didn't get her reasoning why she would have helped him out like she had, checked on him like she had, even though she could have turned away once she saw who exactly was sitting like a bum on the ground.
She could have left him there to lay in his own vomit pathetically, and to be passed over by so many other indifferent people.
Sighing to himself, he took a quick piss and then washed his hands, splashing some water on his face to wake himself up more. Despite his fresh look and feeling slightly better than he had in days, he still had a pounding headache, courtesy of the binge-drinking he did.
What time was it anyway? Had that occurred last night, or was it only an hour or two since the girl had found him?
He heard a door open and he swiftly exited the bathroom, tensed as he readied for whoever intruder had come in. When he heard them come near enough, he rushed them and slammed them against the wall, bracing his arm against their throat but not exerting any pressure. Yet.
He shouldn't have been surprised that it was the girl after all, blinking wide-eyed at him with big, brown eyes the shade of chocolate.
"You," he growled.
She huffed slightly. "I have a name. It's Danielle. Use it." Danielle then held up a paper bag, with the aroma wafting deliciously from it. "I heard greasy food takes the edge off hangovers. I got aspirin and some water too, though I'd appreciate it if you let me down."
Slowly, he let her down and then backed away. She then handed over the food to him, before grabbing the backpack he hadn't noticed she had on. Rummaging through a side pocket, she produced a bottle of aspirin and then a cold water bottle from inside the backpack.
He grabbed them from her when she held them out and headed over to the bed, dumping what he'd acquired onto it. He focused on taking two pills of aspirin before chugging down nearly half of the water bottle, and then went on to examine the food. A burger with all the works, some fries…and a cookie. He blinked.
"The cookie's mine," she said helpfully from behind him, and he grabbed it and held it out to her.
She hesitated before coming closer to him and accepting it. Clenching his jaw a moment, he forcibly relaxed and went for the burger, sitting on the bed and starting to unwrap it.
"Where am I?"
"Ah, the guest house of Miyagi-san's home," she said uncomfortably, taking a tentative move to sit near him.
He sneered. "So the slope's nearby?"
Her eyes narrowed and she hit his arm, making him wince. She actually had a really hard hit. "Don't call him that!"
John reluctantly kept quiet, which was helped by him shoving the burger into his mouth so that he wouldn't have to talk.
"Um, are you feeling better?" she asked awkwardly.
He swallowed the food in his mouth, eying her warily. "Better." He scoffed. "I would feel better if I had students, a job, and money to pay bills. Yeah, I feel better alright, just because I got a change of clothes and got cleaned up."
But seeing her wince and slightly shrink into herself made him shift uncomfortably and his gut to clench. He'd never liked talking down to women or doing or saying anything that would make them feel bad. Despite his grudge and contention with her, Danielle LaRusso was still female and he admitted feeling like a sonofabitch when he had gone through the tournament and ordered Bobby Brown and then Johnny Lawrence to injure her severely. He'd reasoned then that it was near the end of the tournament and she would get help quickly enough, and it wasn't that bad a spot and injury not likely to be permanently damaged by. Hell, she'd already proven by then that she was a tough cookie, enough that he was convinced she could handle the pain.
"Yeah, I'm better than I was," he bit out. "Head's hurting less and I'm feeling more refreshed after being all cleaned up. Can I ask who managed that?" That last part came out sarcastically, but he was genuinely curious.
"I dragged you from the ground to my car and drove you here," she told him blandly. "I washed the vomit off the side of your head and then shaved your beard off, and then Miyagi-san helped me give you a bath and then take off your clothes. I bought the pants and shirt nearby a little after that, and then got you into them."
As much as she sounded embarrassed, John felt more humiliated. She and even that slope had seen him the way he had been, and the fact she'd had to clean him up (vomit on the side of his head!). She had cleaned him up from that embarrassing state, and he wasn't even sure if that included seeing him naked.
To avoid talking, he focused on his burger and looked away from her, enjoying the greasy burger she'd gotten him. She'd taken to nibbling her cookie, so it was finally quiet between them for a moment.
"Do you have a place to stay?" she asked suddenly, catching him off guard.
Startled, he furrowed his eyebrows and had to go through her question through his head again.
"I used to stay at the Cobra Kai Dojo. I still stay there, but since the bills haven't been paid, I haven't really kept the place up, and electricity and water aren't on," he couldn't see why he was telling her that though. Like she needed to know.
"You can stay here," she said quietly. "You can stay in this room and guest house, while you get it together, figure out what you're going to do now." She bit her lip, making his eyes get drawn to it. "…You…you really lost all your students?"
He tore his eyes from her lips and frowned at her. "Yes. After the tournament and the fight in the parking lot, my dojo and my own reputation was in tatters."
"Well, maybe you shouldn't have attacked Johnny," she frowned at him.
He felt his temper flare, but he put a quick lid on it, forcing himself to calm down. "He was the idiot kid so strung up on beating you, and when the time came, he couldn't cut it."
"You didn't have to be immature and insult him –you're older and the sensei. You should know better," she snorted. "And don't get me started on that chokehold!"
He opened his mouth heatedly, only to close it. John knew by then he had let his temper go out of control, and he shouldn't have put Johnny into a chokehold. But it hadn't been too far off to how things were handled in his household when he was younger. Corporal punishment was the usual when it had come to his mother, and his father fought and beat he and his brothers and sisters if they got out of line. Part of him felt that what had happened with Johnny had gone too far, and the other part thought he hadn't done anything wrong or anything different from how he'd been raised.
"Probably for the best though," she surprised him. "He got a lesson in humility and how not to act like. If you hadn't, God knows he would've continued on the path he was going on and become a world class jerk like you!"
He glowered at her, but kept quiet. He had no ready retorts and he was tired (had been for weeks). He was also not about to raise a hand against her.
John admitted he usually didn't condone it. This whole thing had been a first, something that had gone out of hand. He admitted he was aggressive in fighting and in personality, and he fought dirty and mercilessly. But at the least, he made it clear he was in a fight and was pulling that person he felt was an enemy into a fight.
The weak were too weak, and women were women. Simple as that.
He finally finished off his burger and wiped his hands on the bedsheet. He then focused on the fries, noting that she was still nibbling on her cookie and barely putting a dent on it.
"And what have you been up to?" he surprised himself by asking, though as he thought more on it, he was actually curious.
She blinked at him. "Well, after the tournament, I finished up high school. And then I just took a trip to Japan, where I made even more enemies," her tone turned wry.
He gave her a bemused look, though he admitted that some amusement seeped through as well.
"Apparently, Miyagi-san's best friend was 'arranged' with a female who Miyagi-san fell in love with and wanted to marry, and so pissed off said best friend who challenged him to a duel. Miyagi-san decided to get out of the country instead, and basically became enemy number one to him. We came back, and Sato-san –Miyagi-san's best friend –is still apparently pissed off about it years later. He was convinced for most of the time there that Miyagi-san was a coward, and had his nephew hollering about it too.
"Given to them, I'm Miyagi-san's student, that made me Coward #2, and then I ended up somehow besmirching Sato-san's nephew by revealing he was swindling the people he was selling to, breaking a stack of ice that his uncle and Miyagi-san bet on me to break and winning the money he declared was his, and then by saving a young girl in the storm while he got too scared to come out of the shelter and help me with her."
He was pretty sure he looked bewildered as he stared at her, but she shrugged.
"But at least, as crazy and didn't really make any sense as he did, I think I prefer his weird reasons over your former pupils'. As far as Johnny and his group were concerned, they couldn't hear the teacher right and thought my name was 'Daniel', that my baggy clothes made sure I was a boy, and that since my voice was high and girly that it hadn't been broken in yet, and as I looked girly that apparently I was definitely a guy but a fairy, and yet still trying to steal Johnny's girlfriend –who by the way wasn't his girlfriend at the time; they'd been broken up for weeks," she said in more amusement, as time had whittled her ire into entertainment at the memories.
John almost choked on a fry. "They thought you were a boy?" That just…boggled his mind. "They never told me the entire reason for the feud between you and them, and I went along with it as their sensei and was supposed to side with them. But…"
Were they blind? There was no way to have not seen that Danielle was a female. Hadn't anyone in school ever referred to her as a girl in front of them?
Danielle grinned smugly. "They didn't find out until Miyagi-san and I came to your dojo to talk to you. I bet they just felt stupid and was too proud to admit their mistake. Hence, you getting pulled into this idiotic feud that shouldn't have happened in the first place! Ali always did tell me Johnny was a stupid boy and a worse boyfriend," she grumbled the last part quietly, but he still heard it.
John didn't know whether to feel pissed or amused at that point. Pissed that his life fell apart because of a stupid misunderstanding, or amused at how it all came to be.
"I fucking need another drink," he muttered.
Her smug grin dropped. "Hey, you know, maybe it'll be better if you didn't. I got some more water?"
He finished off his water bottle and crumbled it. "I would prefer some kind of hard liquor."
She gave him a hard look then. "Then get back onto the street because you aren't getting any here."
She stood up, clutching the rest of her cookie, and then stormed out of the room.
Started 1/18/16 – Completed 1/19/16
A/n: Funny, this was the first Karate Kid I started writing and finished, but it's the second to last I'm posting up. Ah well. I hope everyone enjoyed this first chapter~ Please remember to review!