A/N

Context:

- Tells the story of Miguel's return from Mexico and what happens while he's in Mexico

- Centered around Miguel, but also main characters are Robby, Johnny, Sam, Carmen, Hawk

- Takes place around mid season 5, approximately a month after the All-Valley

- Miguel is in Mexico, and Robby and Johnny are there too looking for him

- With Johnny gone, Eagle-Fangs have all migrated to Miyagi-Do, where they are being coached by Daniel and Chozen for the time being

- Tory has ALSO migrated to Eagle-Fang (for the sake of the story), and her and Sam are in a place where they're not friends, but at least they're no longer trying to kill each other.

That's pretty much all you've got to know. Hope you enjoy!

CHAPTER 1

This isn't the same Miguel anymore.

With trembling hands, Carmen read Johnny's single line text message over and over again, trying desperately to comprehend it. What did he mean, he wasn't the same Miguel anymore? Was Miggy okay? Had something happened to him? For the past month that Miguel had been in Mexico, Carmen hadn't been able to sleep. She had been restless with worry, and those feelings only eased up a fraction when Johnny had called her early that morning to let her know that Miguel had agreed to come home and they were on their way back to the Valley. Miguel himself hadn't spoken to her, but even just hearing that her baby boy was okay and was on his way back home allowed the crushing iron weight that been sitting on her chest to ease up a little. That was, at least, until she had gotten this latest text from Johnny a few hours ago, and the fear and stress had all come tumbling back once again.

Subconsciously, Carmen's mind dragged itself to the worst possibilities of what had happened. She knew better than anyone that her husband wasn't a good man, so a small part of her feared that her husband had done something vile like he had tried to harm Miguel, or he had tried to rope Miguel into one of his schemes. No… it was too horrible a thought to even entertain. Her mind slyly nudged her towards those dark thoughts, but her common sense yanked her out of that hell hole. If any of those horrifying things had happened to her baby, Johnny would've told her.

Carmen continued to tell herself that over and over again, as she paced around her living room, unable to sit still. She put her head in her hands. She was already up to her ears in worry, and Johnny, Robby and Miguel were less than 5 hours into their 30 hour trip back home. It was going to be a long night for her, that was for sure…

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

"I heard you've been looking for me."

Miguel's head shot up as the voice broke through the boisterous Mexico City bar that night. It sounded a lot closer, and sure enough as he looked up, he saw a man standing over him. Immediately, his eyes widened in alarm. He knew exactly who this was, for it was like he was looking in a fortune-telling mirror…

As Miguel sat opposite his dad for the first time in his entire life, he couldn't help but notice the similarities between them. This was definitely his father. Their eye color, hair color, skin color and face shape were all spitting images of one another. Only a few things were physical distinctions between them. As opposed to Miguel's longer, flowy hair, Manuel possessed short, spiky jet black hair. In addition, as the man wore just a white wife beater on his upper body, Miguel spied that every inch of his chest, neck and arms were covered with different colored tattoos. He also possessed a lot more muscle than Miguel did, and it was particularly obvious as his arms tensed and untensed as Miguel struggled to think of a way to tell his father what he wanted to say. The man looked extremely intimidating, and Miguel had to stifle a gulp of fear as the man looked at him. This didn't seem like the kind of person to piss off and keep waiting, so Miguel quickly began to speak.

"Uh… my name is Miguel Diaz. I…" Miguel was barely able to formulate a sentence in his anxiousness, and his father noticed and did something Miguel never thought he would be seeing from the terrifying looking man: he smiled at him.

"Relax, my friend." He said warmly, reassuring his son. "What can I do for you? Are you here to make an appointment?"

As the man said this, he slid a small business card across the table in Miguel's direction and the teenager looked down and read it.

Manuel Diaz

Trabajador Social / Social Worker

Organización Segundas Oportunidades / Second Chances Organization

+52 6591740482

Miguel's jaw practically hit the table in shock as he scanned the business card over and over again. A small part of him was trying to search for some kind of hidden message within the card, some snippet that linked him to the terrible man that his mom had told him about and he had read up about online. For a moment, he wondered whether this was even the same Manuel Diaz. Diaz was a pretty common surname after all. But no, this had to be him. If the surname wasn't indication enough, then their similar looks definitely were.

"You're… you're a social worker?" Miguel eventually stammered, shocked. Manuel nodded proudly.

"Si. I help former convicts who are out of jail start over and clean up their lives. I know first-hand that it's never too late to change, so I've dedicated my life to helping others realize the same thing." Manuel said proudly. Miguel's eyes were wide as saucers as he listened to the man speak so passionately about his job, shattering every prior image he had painted of the man inside his head.

"Wow. That's really cool." Miguel found himself replying.

"Thank you." Manuel beamed at him. "But if you didn't know what I do, obviously that's not why you're here. I ask again, how can I help you, Miguel Diaz?"

Miguel took a deep breath, gathering his nerves. He had come all this way, and it was now or never.

"I, um… I don't really know how to say this but I think I'm your son." Miguel said. The man looked at him for a moment, a mere few seconds that to Miguel lasted an eternity, and then he suddenly burst out in raucous laughter.

Miguel didn't know what to feel right now. Was that good? Was that bad? What did this laughing mean?

"I think you made a mistake, my friend. I don't have any children." He replied. Miguel looked at him, confused.

"You… you don't know who I am? Dad, I, um…"

"Not your dad." The man interrupted. "Trust me, I would know if I had a child. I'm really sorry if you wasted your time coming here."

The man began to rise to his feet, but Miguel shot up to face him. He had come all this way and sacrificed so much to be here right now. He had left everyone he knew and loved back home to fight without him in a tournament that the entire Valley was counting on them to win; and he had spent money he didn't have on the trip down to Mexico City and accommodation at the cheapest motel he could find. Not only that, but he knew that he couldn't return to his normal life until he had truly found the answers he was looking for. He needed to find out who he truly was, and he wouldn't be able to do that without digging to his very roots, his origin.

"Please! Don't leave!" Miguel begged him. "I swear to you, I'm your son!"

Manuel shook his head, sad to see the young boy's clear upset at the news.

"Look, I don't know what to tell you, kid. You're not mine." He told Miguel with absolute certainty in his voice. "Even when I was at my very lowest, I wouldn't have abandoned my son."

Manuel himself had come from a long line of shitty fathers who hadn't been there for their sons so if he knew that if he had a son, he wanted it to be different. However, as he looked closer at Miguel, he realized that to his alarm, there were some very similar features between them. He was staring at an 18 year old version of himself and it shocked him to his very core. Could this American kid really be his son?

"If you don't know me, maybe you knew my mother?! Carmen Diaz. Quito Ecuador. 2002."

Manuel's face blanched in shock, going pale as a sheet of snow-white paper. He knew Carmen, knew her very well. She was his ex-girlfriend nearly 20 years ago, his high school sweetheart. The two of them were blissfully in love, and he thought they would be together forever. That was until one day, while he was at work, she and her mom had fled the country. He thought maybe she wanted a break or something, and he searched for her far and wide for her for many years before finally giving up. Realizing that his wife was well and truly gone and the reason why had torn him to shreds. It completely broke him, and it took him many, many years to mend his heart back to normal. At the mere mention of her name, all of those gut-wrenching, spine-crushing feelings of despair, misery and sorrow came flooding back and wracked his body with a pain unlike anything else in the world. He had been shot, stabbed and beat up many a time in his lifetime, but none of that even compared to the unrelenting emotional pain he had felt back then, and he was feeling right now. In fact, it was that pain that had forced him to stop and realize the error of his ways, and give him the courage to try and fix his life. Bringing his life back on the right track had been the only thing to make the pain ease up, but even after all of those years, he never forgot Carmen Diaz.

"Dad?" Miguel slowly asked. His father had been quiet for a while, looking like he had seen a ghost or something. And he was silent for a little while longer too, as he tried to gather himself enough to speak but finding his mouth bone-dry and his brain completely scrambled. Eventually, however, he managed to do so.

"Please… sit down." He said to his son. "I believe we have a lot to discuss…"

Miguel's eyes snapped open as he suddenly awoke to the feeling of Johnny's van coming screeching to a halt. Before he could do or think about anything, a searing pain flashed through his abdomen, right where he had been hurt. And with that pain, all of the memories of what had happened came rushing back too. It was like they had been branded in his mind by a scalding poker. If only he had not sat down with his father, he wouldn't have been there when it all happened. Wouldn't have been there to be hit with what he had been hit with, wouldn't have hit what he had been forced to hit. He had witnessed something and done something that he was never going to forget for as long as he lived and breathed, no matter how badly he wanted to.

As Johnny pulled into a parking spot, Miguel finally looked up for the first time in hours and saw where he was. They were at a motel somewhere close to the border between the US and Mexico. And by 'they', it wasn't just Johnny and Miguel. It was Johnny, Miguel and Robby. Yup, Johnny in his infinite wisdom had decided to bring Robby with him. The boy Miguel loathed with every fiber of his being, the boy who had kicked him over the balcony and had been the root cause of every bad thing that had happened to him, was sitting in the front passenger seat of the van just a few feet away. Why had Johnny brought Robby with him? Miguel didn't know and he wasn't really in the mood to ask. In fact, in light of everything that had happened to him in the past 48 hours, their rivalry was the very last thing on his mind. In fact, Miguel had not said a word in the close to 7 hours on the road. When spoken to by Johnny, grunts and nods were his method of communication and he slept or pretended to sleep for most of the journey anyways. He completely tuned out Johnny and Robby's quiet conversation, or the classic rock music Johnny had playing on the radio: he couldn't pay attention to any of that while his mind was drowning him so loudly in the events of 48 hours ago.

Miguel didn't know if it was exhaustion, the powerful pain meds he was on, or a combination of both, but it was a unique feeling that Miguel was going through right now. It almost felt like his consciousness had left his body and entered his mind instead. He was so captured in the horrifying flashbacks of what had happened that his body was working on autopilot. He barely recalled the car coming to a halt and him opening the car door and stepping outside into the cool night air. He didn't hear Johnny as the man told him and Robby to grab their bags as he checked into the motel, but somehow made his way around to the trunk of the car to grab their bags. Only when he turned around from picking up his bag and found himself face to face with Robby did he finally regain consciousness enough to remember his surroundings.

Immediately dropping his bag and readying himself for war, the two stood mere inches apart for several long moments, both of them not moving an inch. Their eyes flickered rapidly around, eyeing each other up. Like wild animals, both were trying to sniff out any sign of danger, ready to bring their hands up and fight at the slightest movement of aggression from the other. Both were briefly reminded of everything that had come between them earlier, all of the animosity they had for each other that even if it wasn't in the forefront of their minds, was still stored deep within. Tension so thick in the air that even a bullet couldn't have tore through it, the two remained like that, absolutely motionless, for nearly a minute, before Miguel finally made the first move…

It wasn't an aggressive one though. He merely picked up his bag and walked past Robby without a second look, and made his way into the motel, where he, Johnny and Robby would all be staying the night together. With that lineup, if they managed even a few hours without a physical brawl breaking out, it would be an absolute miracle…