CHAPTER 80

"She told us to meet her here?" Sarah asked as her and Marcos stood in the main village square the following afternoon, waiting for Kumiko.

"Yeah, she said she'd meet us here at Tomi Village Square at 4." Marcos replied. Sarah nodded but didn't say another word. She had been quiet the entire evening and following morning, still stewing over the secrets that she KNEW Marcos was keeping from her.

Something was seriously wrong. Marcos' word meant a hell of a lot to him, and the fact that she was accusing him of lying was almost hard to even think about. But she could tell he was. With all of the time they had spent together over the past few months, she knew him well enough to know that something big was going on, something big enough for him to be too scared to tell her. For that reason, Sarah was reluctant to confront him about it - she didn't want to increase the stress and worry even more - but at the same time, all that did was cause her own worry to increase severely.

That meant that every time Sarah was around him, she couldn't help but have her mind dragged to the worst possible places, thinking about what terrible things could be happening to the person she loved most in the world. However, she was pulled from her train of thoughts when she saw a small smile grace Marcos' face and she followed his gaze to see a Japanese woman, presumably Kumiko, walking over to them. Alongside her was an extremely old Japanese man. He looked frail. He looked ancient. He looked more like a relic you'd find in a museum than a human being. And yet there he was, walking with only a cane to support him, a stony expression on his face.

"Ah, Julio. You're here!" Kumiko exclaimed in delight as she walked over to him. Marcos nodded, reminded of his fake-name for cover.

"Yeah, thank you for coming back." Marcos said to her. Kumiko nodded, and for a moment it seemed like the two of them had silently communicated something else. A subtle nod here and traces of a smile there… It was almost like the two of them knew something the others didn't.

"Not a problem." Kumiko replied. "I spoke to the sensei of Miyagi-Do last night. As I predicted, he wasn't comfortable letting you into the dojo. Like I said, the number of people who are accepted into the dojo are very few, and especially with the owner of the dojo… out of town, he wasn't willing to let you two in."

Marcos' shoulders slumped in defeat.

"Right. Well thank you for trying anyway." Marcos murmured. Kumiko shook her head.

"Don't be so unhappy. Like I said yesterday, even if the Miyagi-Do sensei says no, I was going to help find you an alternative option." Kumiko stated. "And I did. This is Sato."

The frail old man standing beside Kumiko, who couldn't have been younger than about 90, didn't shake Marcos or Sarah's hand, but instead nodded at them in greeting. Sarah and Marcos looked at him, before glancing at Kumiko, confused.

"Um… are you sure about this?" Marcos murmured to Kumiko quietly. "Isn't this guy a little… old?"

The man let out a grunt of disapproval, muttering under his breath in Japanese, and Kumiko chuckled.

"Don't worry. I assure you, Sato knows what he's doing." Kumiko reassured him. "For decades, Sato taught Miyagi-Do to the United States Military. He is Miyagi-Do's most experienced living student and has deep roots within the dojo so can teach you everything you need to know."

Marcos nodded.

"Look, I meant no disrespect. I'm sure he has plenty of experience and he's really good. But… can he still teach?" He asked. Another grunt of annoyance from Sato and Kumiko noticed and chuckled.

"Sato retired a long time ago. He passed on his dojo to his only family, his nephew who currently owns Miyagi-Do. But he is still capable of teaching. His body might be fading but his mind is still well." Kumiko explained. Marcos nodded.

"Alright. I trust you. Thank you so much for this." Marcos said to both her and Sato. They finished their conversation and Kumiko then left, leaving just Sato with the two teenagers. Marcos and Sarah were about to say something to him but before they could, the man grunted once more and gestured with his cane for them to follow them.

So Marcos and Sarah did. They followed Sato away from the main village square, almost having to jog after him as he swiftly walked further from civilization and into the forest. For a 90+ year old walking with a cane, the man was freakishly quick. He didn't say a word, practically gliding with speed, to the point where Marcos and Sarah were struggling to keep up. He didn't say a word to them in a nearly 15 minute walk, not giving any indication that he was tiring out even at his age, it was incredible.

Eventually though, he came to a halt, not quite out of exhaustion, but instead because they had arrived at their destination. As they did, it was clear to the teenagers that this was the type of location you would never in a million years find unless you were explicitly looking for it and you knew where to go. As Sato slowly pushed open the gate, they realized that they were standing inside a karate dojo. It clearly hadn't been visited in at least a decade, dust settling on almost every surface, but it still stood upright. This wasn't the Miyagi-Do dojo that they had been to the day before, but instead this place was a lot more secluded.

It was extremely bare-bones, not too dissimilar to the Miyagi-Do dojo back in the Valley. Only a wooden fence, a small inside dojo and a large back garden made up the dojo. Although the students were unsure about their location, it appeared that Sato was right at home here. Slowly stroking his hand against the side wall of the dojo, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. For too long, he hadn't been here. Since bringing his time as a sensei to an end and passing on his legacy to his nephew, Sato had figured that sooner or later, his time on Earth was going to come to an end. He was extremely old, with the number of people left his age steadily declining. He was at peace with the fact that his time was coming soon, and so he was almost waiting for it. He didn't think he would ever be back here in the dojo, let alone teaching, and yet here he was. He had been visited by Kumiko the night before and had been coaxed by her back into teaching, convinced that these students really needed him. Sato hadn't bothered to ask why exactly, but Kumiko's word was enough for him to be convinced to teach again, even if it was just for 2 weeks.

"My dojo." The first words that Sato said to the students, spoken in broken English but well enough for them to understand. According to Kumiko, Sato had taught American soldiers Miyagi-Do, so they figured that this had been the location for that. This wasn't the main Miyagi-Do dojo, but was instead a gem hidden deep within the Okinawan forest.

Sato wasted no time getting started, already walking towards the side of the dojo, where a collection of buckets seemed to be stacked up. Marcos and Sarah immediately walked over to him, helping him carry two buckets to the center of the dojo's backyard. The next step was pouring sand into both of the buckets until they were filled to the brim. At that point, Sarah and Marcos were instructed to stand in front of a bucket each, and Sato stood facing them, leaning slightly on his cane. The teenagers weren't exactly sure what to do next, as a long silence had overtaken them as they eagerly awaited instructions from Sato.

"Strike the sand." Sato demanded, his voice frail with age but still as demanding and firm as his more youthful days. Sarah and Marcos looked at each other, confused.

"Pardon?" Sarah asked. All of a sudden, Sato grasped her hand in a vice-like grip and opened her fist so that it was instead in position for a knife hand strike. He then gestured to the bucket of sand with his cane.

"Strike it." He ordered. Understanding his instructions now, Sarah and Marcos stared down at the sand and, readying their hands, they struck down onto the mercilessly tough bed of sand.

THUD!

Immediately, flashes of pain stabbed through both of them and they both winced, but Sato's face showed no emotion.

"Again," was all Sato said, and so Marcos and Sarah had little choice but to strike down onto the sand once more.

THUD!

This time, both teenagers let out audible grimaces of pain as they could feel their fingers begin to bleed from the sheer impact of having to punch such an unforgiving, ruthless wall of brown. Once again though, Sato showed no mercy.

"Again." He demanded once more.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

As Sarah and Marcos continued to rain down blows on the buckets of sand, Sato began to speak a bit more to them, pacing up and down the backyard as he did so.

"Physical training is not enough!" He barked. "Your head must forget pain!"

That was interesting, Marcos thought to himself as he struck the sand. In Cobra Kai, they were told to channel their emotions, and in particular their pain. Use their anger as fuel for their aggression. However, even though this merciless training exercise wasn't too far from their drills in Cobra Kai, the mental side of it was completely different. They were to push pain aside, out of their heads.

"To succeed, you must overcome!" Sato shouted. "Train mind! Then train body!"

Train mind, then train body. An interesting concept, and one that Marcos had never really paid much attention to before. His first line of defense had always been his physical strength and his ability to fight. He had always relied on that and only that. However, recently, with the amount of suffering he was being forced to endure and the amount he was being attacked, he felt like the biggest loss he was taking was within his mind. He could take the physical beatdowns, but it was his mind that was truly suffering, too weak to hold together. Every time his father laid his hands on him, the force of the clobbering blows paled in comparison to the excruciating agony that he felt about the fact that the man who was hurting him was the man who had given him everything in life.

Sato relentlessly trained the teens for hours, not even allowing them so much as a water break. He taught them all about the mental side of Miyagi-Do, as well as draining them physically to the point of exhaustion. With the age that he was, Sato wasn't fit enough to actually spar or do anything physical himself, but he still didn't hesitate to have Marcos and Sarah fighting with each other and incorporating the techniques he taught them into their sparring.

All in all, it was an extremely successful day. The first of the 14 that they'd be in Okinawa for, and Marcos and Sarah already felt like they were being immersed in Miyagi-Do's teachings. It was night and day with the training they did with Cobra Kai, so the teenagers knew that if they managed to find a way to combine their Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai teachings together, they'd become unstoppable…

A/N

I know Sato's probably dead in the show. His actor unfortunately passed away a while ago, so he's definitely not coming back in any other form but flashbacks. However, I decided to include him in this story and pretend he's still alive. We don't really explicitly get proof that Sato's dead in the show, as we know that Chozen is continuing his legacy but we don't know for sure if he's dead. I was going to have the person who teaches Marcos and Sarah be a random original sensei but I decided that I might as well include someone who we've already seen in the franchise in Okinawa so I went with Sato. It also provides more of a link to Chozen with everything that's going on right now in Okinawa with Marcos and Sarah.