CHAPTER 81
"You okay? You wanna take a break?" Robby asked Anthony as they entered hour 2 of the obstacle course. To say it had been grueling was an understatement. Along with the long treks to each obstacle, some legs of the journey lasting up to 30 minutes, they had to undertake all kinds of extremely physical obstacles, at each checkpoint receiving a small keyring to clip to their compass and signify that they had been to that checkpoint. There was climbing an at least 10 meter tall tree and snagging the keyring from the top, which Robby had volunteered to do, given Anthony's fear of heights. There was swimming all the way across the lake to a wooden boat almost exactly in the middle, at least a 500m swim away, which they were both forced to do if they wanted to be able to reach their keyring on the empty boat. There was also punching through a thick wooden board to reach a keyring underneath that Robby had made Anthony do.
These were just a few of the unmanned obstacles that Robby and Anthony had made it through as they continued to obstacle number 6, their first obstacle where there would be a sensei. They weren't sure which sensei it would be, as all that was written on their map was a red number 6, as opposed to the black lettering that had been used for the unmanned obstacles. They were nearly at the obstacle but not quite, which was why Robby asked Anthony if he wanted to take a break. Anthony, wheezing and panting for breath, nodded.
"Thanks." He murmured, and the pair drew to a halt. They had no idea how far along the other teams were in the race as they hadn't come across anyone yet, but that didn't make much of a difference for them. They were moving as fast as they could, more concentrated on just finishing the obstacle race rather than winning it. At least, that's how it was for Anthony, who was both fortunately and unfortunately paired with the most athletic guy in the dojo, Robby hardly having broken a sweat so far.
"You want some water?" Robby asked, holding out his water bottle. Appreciatively, Anthony took it, having already downed all of his water and they would anyways be able to refill both water bottles as soon as they arrived at the sensei-manned training exercise.
"Thank you." Anthony said after finishing all of his water. Robby nodded, sitting on a log opposite Anthony.
"No problem." Robby replied. A long silence overtook the two of them for a while, before Anthony spoke up.
"How are you doing, man?" Anthony asked him. Robby looked at him, taken aback for a moment.
"Huh?" Robby grunted, confused. Anthony chuckled.
"I feel like I haven't spoken to you in ages." Anthony remarked. "It's like outside of training, you just vanish off the face of the Earth."
Robby ran a hand through his hair and looked down at his feet.
"Yeah, um… with everything going on with school catching up 1 and a half years out of school, training for the Taikai and everything else… just been really busy I guess." Robby replied. Anthony raised an eyebrow.
"Still. The others have been around. Sam, Miguel, Tory, Demetri, Chris, Hawk…"
"I don't know what to tell you, man. I've been busy." Robby snapped, his tone harsher than intended, but proving pretty evidently that there was more to it than that. And Anthony, even with his younger age, knew exactly what it was about.
"I don't blame you, you know? For what happened to Kenny." Anthony told him. Robby slowly looked up to stare Anthony in the eye, shrugging.
"You should. I trained him. I brought him into Cobra Kai in the first place." Robby replied gruffly.
"You also gave him an out. Several times. You did all you could to bring him over to our side and he didn't want to. He stuck with his brother, his family, in Cobra Kai. Nothing more you could've done about that."
Robby went silent for a long time, before eventually speaking up.
"Is he still giving you a hard time at school?" Robby asked. Anthony shook his head.
"No, thankfully not. He just leaves me alone. I think he's too scared of what Miyagi-Do would do if he attacked me." Anthony replied. Robby nodded. It was that, or a certain Cobra Kai leader was keeping him in line. Robby sent a silent mental thank you to Marcos for that. With everything else going on, not having to worry about the constant threat of bullying to his friends was something that Robby greatly appreciated.
"That's good." Robby murmured. He still felt really guilty about what Kenny had become, about what he had created. About how much hurt his mentee had caused innocent people. It was by far one of his biggest regrets in his life, and he always felt like there was more he could've done, more he could do, but he didn't know what.
"Everyone misses you, you know?" Anthony remarked. Robby looked at him, confused.
"What?" Robby asked.
"You don't have to keep isolating yourself with just Sensei Chozen and Tory. The rest of Miyagi-Do misses having you around. My dad especially. The amount he always talks about you… for a while I thought he cared more about you than me!"
Robby chuckled and looked down again. He knew Anthony had a point. He had definitely isolated himself, at least a little, from the rest of the group. Apart from the bare minimum during group training, he never really spent that much time with anyone from the dojo but Tory. He spent most of his time alone, and a large reason for that was because he still didn't quite feel like he was fully a member of the dojo again. He still felt an immense guilt about what he himself had done to them in the past year wearing Cobra Kai colors, as well as the actions of his mentee.
"You're right. I'm sorry. I guess I have been kind of avoiding you guys." Robby murmured. "I'll try and do better."
At that moment, they started walking again, ending their break from the trek. And 15 minutes later, they finally arrived. It happened that the sensei whose obstacle they were at was none other than Mike Barnes. They were in a clearing, without thick layers of trees and foliage blocking their path, so Barnes spotted them immediately as they walked closer.
"Ah. Finally! Took you long enough." Barnes remarked. "I was starting to think that nobody was going to ever show up!"
"Does that mean we're the first team to arrive?" Anthony asked excitedly. Barnes shrugged.
"Don't get too excited. For all you know, I'm the last obstacle on the other teams' list." He replied.
"So where's the keyring?" Robby asked. "How do we do this?"
Barnes smirked and reached into his jacket pocket, taking out a single keyring and placing it on his finger, waggling it at them.
"Oh, God." Anthony muttered, the students already knowing what they were going to have to do. There was no chance Barnes was just going to give them the keyring. They would most definitely have to fight him for it. Robby sighed.
"Alright, Anthony. Let's do this." Robby said, beginning to move towards Barnes and Anthony following close behind. Barnes chuckled.
"You really thought it was that easy?" Barnes laughed. He then reached into his pockets once more and pulled out two blindfolds, throwing them to Robby and Anthony.
"Put these on." He instructed. "For this fight, to beat me, you're going to rely only on instinct. Sense where I am. Have eyes at the back of your heads. Communicate with each other without being able to see anything. And if you do all of that successfully… then MAYBE you stand a chance at taking the keyring from me."
Robby and Anthony had little choice but to put on the blind folds, before preparing for quite possibly the most difficult fight they had ever fought. It was hard enough to fight a sensei, even in a 2 on 1 situation. But add on the handicap of blindfolds… it was going to be damn near impossible, but the two boys were up for the challenge.
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"Okay, so obstacle 8 should be… just up ahead of us." Devon instructed as her and Tory pushed themselves through the forest, making great time as they hunted for the obstacle that would take them past the halfway line in this race. It was far from the first time the two had been a team so they were able to work extremely well together, playing to each other's strengths as they crushed obstacle after obstacle.
"Good. So we've already done Sensei Chozen and Sensei Larusso's obstacle. It's gonna be either Sensei Lawrence's or Sensei Barnes' now, right?" Tory asked.
"Yeah." Devon confirmed. "Great. The two senseis who will have no problem risking our lives with whatever drills they've come up with."
"Guess we just gotta be so good, that doesn't matter." Tory replied, winking at Devon cheerfully.
Devon smiled back and nodded, thoroughly shocked by this new Tory that she was getting to spend time with. They hadn't really had much time to spend together since school had restarted. Even during training, with Tory spending most of her time training with Chozen and Devon spending most of her time with Johnny, they didn't have that much of an overlap. The last time they had spent a long period of time together had been the summer, and it had been a completely different Tory that Devon had met then. That Tory acted like the weight of the world was resting on her shoulders. Like she woke up every day, expecting the worst to happen, because quite often it did. Tory was in a very bad place over the summer, but that was a stark contrast to where she was now. She was happier, healthier… she felt freer. Like her life wasn't a never-ending spiral, she wasn't doomed to live the same rough life over and over again. She had found meaning again in her life, and this was a culmination of all of the things that were finally going right for her now.
Tory and Devon made it pretty soon after to the obstacle, where Johnny was waiting for them. He wasn't in an open meadow like Barnes, but was instead deep within the trees of the forest, to the point where the students barely noticed him until they were right in front of him. He nodded at them when they arrived and chuckled loudly.
"Ooh, boy. Two midgets trying to complete the obstacle… this is going to be fun to watch." He remarked. Tory narrowed her eyes at him slightly.
"I'm taller than your son." Tory shot back calmly. "And also… what's going to be fun to watch? What are we doing?"
Johnny grinned widely at them, a mischievous look that told them that the other more sensible senseis had no idea that this was happening. They had a bad feeling that whatever training exercise Johnny had planned was going to be the roughest one so far.
"Kicking practice." He replied. "You have to kick your keyring off the branch of this tree."
Johnny pointed at the tree opposite him and Tory and Devon raised an eyebrow, taken aback. It seemed too easy.
"What's the catch, sensei?" Devon asked. Johnny shrugged.
"I don't know what you're talking about. No catch. Technically, all you need is 1 kick to get your keyring and leave." He replied.
"What are we kicking?" Tory asked, almost afraid to ask, a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach about this. Johnny's grin widened as he pointed directly upwards at one of the higher branches. They could see the keyring dangling at the edge of one of the branches, but it was what was directly underneath that really caught their eyes. On the branch directly beneath their keyring was unmistakably an active beehive, with a few bees swarming all around it.
At that moment, a shiver ran up their spines as they realized Johnny's drill. One miskick, just a few inches too low and they'd be planting their foot right through the beehive, angering the hundreds of bees within and becoming target number 1 and 2 of the entire swarm. Not only this, but the placement of the branch with the keychain was too high for one of them to kick it, even with a jump. They knew it would require teamwork to boost one of the students high enough to kick it, yet another thing that had the potential to go horribly wrong and cause a whole plethora of injuries.
"Come on. What are you waiting for?! Kick!" Johnny barked, although neither Tory nor Devon moved an inch.
"We're not doing this." Tory snapped. Johnny raised an eyebrow.
"That right? And why not?"
"Because it's crazy! It's fucking insane!" Tory exclaimed. Johnny chuckled.
"Bit hypocritical there, aren't we, princess?" Johnny remarked, causing Tory's face to darken considerably. "Besides, it's really not that difficult. Hawk managed to do it on his second try, without angering any of the bees."
"Well good for him then. But we're not doing it!" Tory spat. The fact that Hawk - the boy with the most athleticism and acrobatics in the entire dojo - was able to do it meant nothing. She knew that her and Devon were likely destined to fail this ridiculously difficult and dangerous obstacle, and she wasn't going to let Devon get hurt over it.
However, shockingly, when Devon spoke up next, it was clear that her mind was in a different place to Tory.
"Tory, stop. We got this." Devon said with surprise certainty in her voice. Tory turned to her.
"Devon, this is crazy." Tory muttered. "Neither of us can kick that high."
"So we help each other." Devon replied. "One of us boosts the other up there for the kick."
"No offense but I don't think you can boost me high enough to make it up there." Tory commented. Devon nodded.
"I know. So you boost me, I'll kick." Devon instructed. Tory looked at her, unsure.
"You're not doing that." Tory said, trying to protect her friend.
"Yeah? Watch me." Devon responded. "You just need to boost me up there."
"Devon, I'm not doing that." Tory shot back. "You're going to get yourself hurt. Or injured."
"Maybe. But we'll never know if we don't try." Devon responded. "Come on. We're doing this."
Tory stared long and hard at Devon, making sure she was dead serious about this, before eventually nodding.
"Alright. Let's do this."