CHAPTER 30
Miguel turned off the shower tap and looked at himself in the mirror. He barely recognised the face staring back at him. What had he become? Some kind of hunter? Assassin? But the worst thing was that then and there, he had never felt so at peace. It was like he was made for a battlefield. Suddenly, his thoughts were cut off when he heard a knock on the house front door. Miguel, still slightly wet from the shower, quickly put on a bathrobe and hid and watched as Elena went and opened the door. Miguel's eyes widened as he saw Sam at the door. Johnny had eventually relented and told Daniel where Miguel was staying, and they all knew that Sam was their only chance of convincing Miguel to pull out of the mission so they let her go to the house alone, with the others staying in the car.
"Can I help you?" Elena asked Sam.
"I hope so, yeah." Sam said. "I'm looking for Miguel Diaz."
Elena quickly looked at Sam, and then looked away again. Sam nodded. Her question had just been answered.
"So you know him." Sam pointed out.
"Knew him." Elena corrected. "He's my nephew. But I haven't heard from him in months."
"Well, if you do hear from him…" Sam said.
"I won't." Elena snapped. "Who are you anyway?"
"Uh, Samantha Larusso. A friend of Miguel. He's gone AWOL." Sam said. Elena raised an eyebrow.
"I'm sorry… Ahwhol?" She asked, faking confusion.
"He's missing." Sam explained. "Can I at least leave you my contact information in case you hear anything?"
"I said there's no point." Elena snapped, and she started to close the door. Eventually, seeing the pleading look on Sam's face, she sighed. "Fine." Elena relented, opening the door for Sam to come in. "Write something."
Sam followed Elena inside and Elena handed her a notepad. As Sam looked around the apartment, she noticed a small puddle of water on the ground and her eyes widened. Someone else had clearly been showering in the apartment as Elena was bone-dry.
"Here." Elena said, passing Sam the notepad. Sam wrote her name and number down and nodded at Elena.
"You'll let me know, right?" Sam said. Elena nodded.
"I won't see him, but if you do, tell him I said to fuck himself." Elena snapped. "He'll know why."
With that, Sam left the apartment and when Elena shut the door, Miguel came out of his hiding spot.
"She's pushy." Elena remarked. Miguel sighed.
"Fucking Johnny. Sold me out." Miguel murmured. "You find anything with the phones?"
Elena nodded and passed him a file. They then walked into the kitchen and opened the file.
"The numbers you gave me… they were already dead. So my tech guy tried the next hundred numbers. Look."
Miguel looked at the map and his eyes widened as he saw that the hundred numbers were all in the same compound. That meant that the whole cartel was gathered in one location.
"Where is this compound?" Miguel asked.
"Just outside Juarez." She replied. "Two floors, high walls, guarded. You'll never get in."
"I'm gonna need your car." Miguel replied.
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Miguel walked into the parking lot and he unlocked Elena's car. Suddenly, stepping out from behind the car was Sam. Miguel sighed.
"So, you found me. Congratulations." Miguel remarked.
"I don't think it's wrong what you're doing. In fact, I'm sympathetic..." Sam said.
"Good for you." Miguel snapped.
"But you have to stop." Sam demanded.
"Now you're losing me." Miguel joked.
"You're being hunted, Miguel. There's a kill order out. This is a suicide mission." Sam cried.
"That's what you say." Miguel said.
"And that's if the cartel leadership is even in Juarez at all." Sam said. Miguel didn't reply and Sam realised something. "You know where he is." Sam realised.
"No." Miguel replied, stoically, shaking his head.
"Miguel! Don't do this!" Sam shouted.
"What?" Miguel asked, not losing his steady, serious tone.
"It's too dangerous." Sam cried.
"Yeah, you said that." Miguel commented.
"I can't let you take that risk!" Sam yelled.
"Here's the thing. It's not up to you!" Miguel shouted back. "I was stupid enough to join Cobra Kai the first time! I was stupid enough to come back to karate when you asked me, so I witnessed my almost-death and the slaughter of my family. And I have never, ever been so convinced of what has to happen now! So if you've lost your way or nerve, fine. What you need to do now is get out of my way."
"Miguel… I'm sorry." Sam whispered. Suddenly, the doors to the parking lot swung open and Daniel and Johnny stepped inside. Miguel groaned in annoyance.
"Oh, great." He muttered. "Really, Sam, really?"
"I'm sorry." Sam said again.
"Miguel, please just come with us. We don't want to have to take you by force." Johnny said, pain etched in his face. Miguel scowled at him.
"Why couldn't you have just fucking listened to me and stayed in California?" Miguel growled before getting into a fighting stance. He tried to fight off both grown men but fighting two trained karate senseis at once was impossible, especially given that they taught him everything he knew so they could anticipate every step. Miguel eventually took drastic measures. He knew he needed to buy himself time to get away, but as long as both senseis and Sam were standing, that wouldn't happen. Miguel pulled out a gun from his ankle holster, a blank gun, mind you, so it wouldn't kill anyone, but they didn't know that. Fear temporarily flickered in their eyes, but after a couple of seconds of Miguel not pulling the trigger, they assumed he wouldn't do anything. They thought wrong. Whipping the pistol downwards, Miguel shot Johnny in the thigh, causing him to cry out in pain and fall backwards.
"JESUS CHRIST, MIGUEL!" Sam shouted, running towards them. "YOU SHOT HIM?!"
Miguel looked at a pain-consumed Johnny and then looked at Sam.
"Don't get your panties in a bunch. It's a blank gun. Means he isn't going to be long-term injured from this. It is gonna hurt like a son of a bitch though."
Daniel started walking towards Miguel again and Miguel raised the gun at him too. At this point, Sam tried to pull Miguel away, but he spun around and grabbed her by the neck, choking her.
"For once in your life, you need to listen!" Miguel growled. "Go. Home."
With that, Miguel walked out of the parking garage, and into the night…
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Within 24 hours, Miguel was at the cartel compound in Juarez. He perched on a balcony not too far away, and he silently scoped into his binoculars and counts the number of guards, every guards comings and goings. However, he needed a better look if he wanted to truly go through with the plan and take all of the guards out.
Meanwhile, the others had just arrived back in the motel after their failed recovery mission, and Johnny collapsed on the bed. Although he knew his leg would be just fine - it wasn't even bleeding - it still hurt and throbbed like holy hell. Nobody dared say anything as they sat in the small motel room. Suddenly, the silence was broken as Daniel's phone rang. He raised an eyebrow and picked up the phone.
"Hello? Robby?"
Johnny's head whipped around at the mention of his son, and Daniel walked towards him.
"Robby wants to talk to us, in private. Can you get up and walk?" Daniel asked. Johnny nodded and the two of them walked outside to get privacy from the teenagers.
"Hey, Robby, what's up?" Johnny asked once they were in the clear. Johnny and Daniel then noticed rare tears in his eyes as he turned on his facetime camera.
"What happened?" Daniel asked, slightly worriedly. The kid had been through pure hell during his lifetime, and the move out of state with his mom was supposed to be like a fresh start.
"My mom died last night." Robby whispered. Johnny and Daniel's hearts dropped and they gasped. "She went to sleep, and she never woke up. They say it was a massive stroke."
Johnny and Daniel looked at each other. They were absolutely floored in shock.
"Can I come stay with you?" Robby asked, suddenly. "Either of you. I've been crashing with a friend up until now, and I…"
"Yeah, of course. Come stay with either of us." Daniel said. They had a quick phone call with him before hanging up. Once they were off the phone, Daniel pulled up the Flights app on his phone and started scrolling through the listings of flights from Mexico to L.A and eventually clicking on one.
"All right. I can get us two tickets on the next flight out from Baja. It takes off in a couple of hours, so we need to leave as soon as pos…"
"I'm not coming." Johnny interrupted him. "At least not yet."
Daniel looked at him in shock.
"You're… you're not?" Daniel stammered. Johnny shook his head.
"I still have unfinished business here. Robby needs at least one of us there, and Miguel needs at least one of us here."
"Really? Because last I checked when Miguel found out you were here, he shot you in the leg!" Daniel exclaimed. Johnny, who was near tears, shrugged.
"I'm sorry. I can't just desert him here. I wouldn't just be betraying him, but I'd be betraying her as well." Johnny whispered, once again thinking about Carmen. Her death had messed him up much more than he let on, but for Miguel's sake, he forced himself to ignore the pain. "I brought Miguel into this world, it's my responsibility to keep him safe."
Daniel eventually nodded.
"Fine." Daniel relented. "But you need to come home soon. You saw how Miguel took his mom's death. Robby's gonna need both of our support."
Johnny nodded.
"I will." Johnny agreed. "But Daniel, one more thing?"
"What?" Daniel asked. Johnny sighed.
"You need to bring the kids home with you." Johnny said. "Today was just me, you, Sam and Miguel and one of us got shot. Throw in an entire cartel… I don't like those odds."
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Miguel was hard at work now. He had less than a week to build something that normally takes months to make. As he daisy chained wires together, he was surprised his hands weren't trembling. I mean, it wasn't every day you built a bomb big enough to level an entire compound, with no experience whatsoever! Well, not no experience. In his insanely rough childhood, he had unfortunately been forced by a certain father to help make many explosives before, but never make one completely alone. But that was a story for another day.
Elena watched him as he worked, a cup of coffee in her hands.
"Your girlfriend left you a message." Elena said. "To call her. She sounded upset."
"Well, she's used to getting her way." Miguel snapped.
"I don't think it was that." Elena said. She then walked around and looked at the progress he had made so far. "This is it, huh? Pretty big."
"It's got to be." Miguel replied as he attached two wires together.
"How do you get it to the cartel?" Elena asked.
"I don't." Miguel replied. "The cartel comes to it…"
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Daniel and Johnny had just finished telling the group about what had happened with Shannon Keene, and by the end, they had convinced everyone to come back home. Well, almost everyone. Sam sat in the corner of the room, processing all of the information she had just been given. She felt… cheated. Cheated out of adolescence. Cheated out of her teenage years. Her senior year. They had all suffered so much loss, and if she felt this way, she couldn't imagine how people like Miguel and Robby were feeling.
"I'm not going home." Sam stated, determined. They had lost so many people, and she wasn't going to lose Miguel - the person she loved most in the world - too.
"Sam, I…" Daniel started.
"No." Sam snapped. "Think about what Miguel's been through for us. He's put his life on the line countless times for us and although now the stakes have been raised, we owe him the same. I don't care if you guys are going home. I'm staying.
"Sam, you can't…" Daniel started again, but Sam cut him off again.
"And besides, let's be honest. Miguel is too far gone for all of us to be able to talk him down. If anyone's gonna do it, it's going to be me or Johnny, so we need to stay."
Daniel, who had just finished packing his duffel bag in a rush, sighed and then turned to Johnny.
"You keep her safe, okay?" Daniel demanded. Johnny nodded.
"We'll be back before you know it. WITH Miguel…"
Hey, so as you guys have probably guessed given I'm writing about it, I'm a HUGE Cobra Kai fan and I stayed up to watch Season 3 right when it was released. So I was wondering, what parts of season 3 do you think I should incorporate in this story. I have in my mind decided on a few things that I am going to make similar or different to season 3, but I want to hear you guys' opinions.
