CHAPTER 66

As Marcos walked into his apartment, he could practically feel the anger radiating off of every wall. It was midday so Marcos wasn't walking into another pitch-black apartment, but if anything that made everything worse. There wouldn't be any possibility of him slipping past his father through the darkness. There wouldn't be the possibility that he wouldn't see his father. The two Oliveira men laid eyes on each other immediately, and Marcos' father slowly rose from the armchair in the living room as he faced him.

Marcos could immediately see that the rage on his father's face was like nothing Marcos had ever seen before. He had seen his father angry, furious even, but nothing like this. The man was threatening to spontaneously combust in rage, rooting Marcos to the spot in fear like a deer in headlights, towering over his smaller son as he approached him.

"Where were you?" His father snarled with deep menace.

"I… I… I was staying with a friend." Marcos stammered fearfully, not able to say any more than that before a vicious hook connected with his jaw, sending him staggering backwards with a massive THUD!

"Don't lie to me!" Marcos' father bellowed. "Where the fuck were you?!"

Clutching his jaw, Marcos forced himself to look up and look his father in the eye.

"Dad… I swear. I was at a party last night and I was staying with a…" Marcos began, but he was interrupted with another brutal punch, this one to the abdomen. It was a miracle that Marcos' rib wasn't blown to smithereens from the wrecking ball his father called a punch.

"I'm going to ask you one more time." Marcos' father uttered, sending an entire combination of strikes his son's way, knocking him to the ground. "Where were you? The police? Child Services? Where. Were. You."

"I swear… I swear… I'm telling the truth." Marcos responded weakly, panting and gasping for breath after this brutal onslaught of attacks. His father was torn whether or not to believe him. The paranoid majority of his brain was certain that his son had gone crying to the cops about him and that any minute now, the police would be banging on his door. He needed a sure-fire way of knowing that his son was being truthful and sure enough, it didn't take him long to think of one. As Marcos lay on the ground in pain, his father sat on top of him, raining blow after blow after blow on every inch of the teenager's body, every so often asking him the question about his whereabouts the night before. And after taking longer and longer of a beating, Marcos continued to stick with his story. He was telling the truth. He hadn't been with the police last night. He had just been with his friend.

Eventually satisfied that his son hadn't ratted him out, Marcos' dad ceased the blows and prepared to turn around and walk out of the apartment. However, before he could do so, he heard the weak, quiet voice of his son coming from the ground behind him.

"I'm going to do it one day, you know?" Marcos remarked. Marcos' dad slowly turned around to face him once more and cocked his head in confusion. "I'm going to go to the cops one day. Tell them about what you've been doing to me."

Marcos had no idea what had driven him to speak up now, knowing that it was probably only going to seal another few minutes of having the stuffing kicked out of him. His father didn't either, looking at his son incredulously as the boy somewhat stood up to the bully. The shock didn't last long though, as his father turned to walk back over to him and he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, pulling him up so that they were at eye level.

"Let me make something clear for you, Marcos, in case it hasn't been already…" Marcos' dad remarked. "You will not go to the cops under any circumstances. Do you understand?"

"How are you going to stop me?" Marcos remarked, summoning inner strength that he didn't even know he had as he faced his father. For a second, anger flashed through Marcos' father as he looked like he was about to punch his son once more, but he refrained this time around, chuckling loudly at Marcos.

"Oh, I won't stop you, son. You can go right ahead and call them if you want. But I'd advise against it. Not just for me, but for you too."

"Huh?" Marcos grunted. Marcos' father sighed.

"So you go the authorities and then what?" His father asked. "You get out of my custody? You get me arrested?"

"Sounds pretty good to me." Marcos remarked. His father scowled at him.

"Does it? Because you're under 18 and you're not American, so if you get rid of me, you're getting deported all the way back to Brazil in a heartbeat. We don't have any living family left there either. You won't even be able to live in a house like we used to. You'll be just another homeless person living on the streets, destined to rot away and be forgotten by the entire world, doomed to live a meaningless life and die without so much as a single person even knowing your name."

Anger rushed through Marcos as he heard all of this, followed by an immense feeling of helplessness as he knew that his father was right. His father knew it too. The middle-aged man laughed sadistically and grinned so widely that Marcos could see his yellow, decaying teeth and his silver fillings, glinting in the sunlight.

"That's right, son. You need me! You need me!" His father giggled and laughed uncontrollably at his son as he let that fact hang in the air. Allowing the desperation and hopelessness of Marcos' situation to kick in, Marcos' father then finally left the apartment for his afternoon work shift, leaving his physically and mentally beaten son behind him…

However, as Marcos watched the man leave the apartment, he didn't feel broken. He didn't feel weakened by this latest confrontation with his father. Instead, it filled Marcos with an all-consuming, billowing rage. It was an inferno that set all of his bones alight, not allowing him to stand still for even a moment, desperate to find an outlet for his fury. For a while, that outlet was the wall, Marcos beating the solid plaster wall until his knuckles were bloodied and the wall was beginning to take on a crimson hue from the blood. He threw punch after punch, kick after kick at the stationary surface, trying with all his might to relieve this scalding-hot wrath from inside him.

It was at that moment that Marcos finally received a promising way of doing this. From his jacket pocket, his phone audibly beeped, indicating that Marcos had an incoming text. He walked over to his jacket and picked it up, taking out his phone and checking the notification.

8 pm

Canyon

No weapons

Last man standing

- Hawk

Oh shit! Marcos realized that after he had left Robby's place, he never had actually texted Hawk to cancel their fight. In the heat of everything, it had completely slipped Marcos' mind and right now, he was absolutely delighted by that. The fight was still on if Marcos wanted it, and right now he wanted nothing more than to beat the fucking shit out of an inferior fighter, a way of trying to feel less powerless like he did every time his father was around.

So ignoring everything that they had talked about at Robby's house, Marcos shot back a response…

I'll be there

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

As Hawk drove his motorbike to the canyon that night, he felt something that he rarely ever felt when fighting anyone in the Valley in the past few years: fear. He was a little bit scared, although the Hawk would never admit nor accept that. If Hawk was being brutally honest, he felt a little inexperienced going into this fight. Not that he hadn't fought in street fights against enemies before, but there was a massive difference between fighting the likes of Kyler and fighting the likes of Marcos. The only street fight Hawk could remember fighting against a top fighter was against Miguel in Coyote Creek over a year ago, a fight which he had decisively lost. That fight, as well as his most recent trip to Coyote Creek, where Marcos had dispatched of him even easier.

However, Hawk shoved these thoughts deep down inside him. He couldn't think like that. He had to assume that his opponent was on the top of his game, both mentally and physically, and if Hawk even wanted to stand a chance at winning, he needed to be even better than that. If he had even an iota of doubt about his abilities, he knew that Marcos would eat him alive, so he forced the Hawk to swallow down any fears that he had and internally prepare himself for the slugfest that was inevitably to come that night.

As Hawk got closer and closer to his destination, watching as the sun set further and further into the horizon, a thought occurred to him… he could die tonight. It wasn't a thought that Hawk wanted to entertain. It wasn't a thought that he'd ever thought he'd have to. But given that his only tough street fighting experiences had come in controlled environments like Coyote Creek, he had no idea how far tonight was going to go. There were no referees. Nobody to tell the boys to get off of each other if things got too much. The animosity between the sides was higher than ever, so Hawk knew full well that there was a possibility that something like what had happened between Robby and Miguel at the school would happen here too.

Several times Hawk almost cowered out of the fight, turned the bike around and went home. Eli Moskowitz was screaming at him not to do this, and he would've been heard too if not for the Hawk not gagging him inside. He forced himself to keep going though and not back out. He wasn't only doing this for himself, but for the entirety of Miyagi-Do. To force the Cobra Kai champion under the radar upon losing; to send a message to Cobra Kai not to mess with his friends any longer… all of this was why Hawk was doing this. Not to mention the fact that his anger towards Marcos was higher than ever, and he was ready to settle this issue with the Cobra once and for all.

He'd better hope he was at least. Because when Hawk finally arrived at the canyon, he found that it was entire vacant apart from one person: Marcos. Of course Marcos was already here warming up, trying to eek out any advantage he could get over his opponent. He had been preparing for this fight for hours. After the beatdown from his father, Marcos definitely needed this fight.

"Hey." Marcos murmured as Hawk got off his bike, turned the engine off and then walked away from it towards him. No matter how badly they both wanted this fight, to say their hearts weren't pounding like bass drums would be a lie. They knew very well the potential repercussions of this fight. For Marcos, he didn't care so much about the risk to him as unfortunately now, with everything that was happening, he had very little to lose, if anything at all. Hawk was more scared as he thought about everything he held dear in his life, everything he was putting at risk by taking this fight.

The cocky personas were gone now. It was time for business. The midnight sky and the blanket of sand providing the perfect stage, the two boys prepared for what would surely be an all-out fight to the death…