CHAPTER 96

"What happened to your hands?"

The sudden voice snapped Marcos out of his daze as his head shot up. He was sitting in school that morning, alone at a desk in the corner of the library. Despite everything else that was going on in his life, Marcos still had responsibilities in school. He wanted to spend every minute he could, training to obliterate his enemies, which meant using every possible opportunity to get work done. This was one of those times: during lunch, when everyone else in the school was in the cafeteria or hanging out with friends, Marcos was in the library. But seemingly not alone, as when he looked up, he saw an eerily familiar blonde standing over him.

The hair at the back of his neck prickling with mistrust, Marcos was weary of the enemy standing less than a few paces away from him, clearly with a few words for him. But Marcos wasn't about to respond to her question, not even gracing her with eye contact as he looked back down, getting back to his work. The girl standing opposite him sighed.

"No need to tell me. I already know. It was Sensei Kim's stupid stone wall, wasn't it?" Tory remarked. Putting down his pencil and slowly looking back up at her, Marcos first looked at his own hands. They were an absolute state, battered to the very brink of serious harm, consisting of swollen, bruised and recently sealed bloody wounds. He sighed, finally making eye contact with the girl as she moved to sit opposite him in the otherwise empty West Valley High library.

"How'd you know?" Marcos murmured. Tory sighed, looking down at her own hands, thankful that her own scars from that night had eventually gone away.

"Been there, done that." She replied, grimacing at the memories. "Tell me… what was the punishment for? Why'd she make you do it?"

Marcos' eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"She didn't make me do anything. I chose to do it." Marcos replied. It was Tory's turn to be confused.

"You chose to do that shit? To destroy your hands doing something so useless? Are you crazy?" She snapped. Marcos raised an eyebrow.

"Crazy. Interesting word." He remarked pointedly. "Tell me… just for future reference, what's the best way to con a judge into not sentencing you to juvie? I might need it after we're through with your dojo."

Tory could tell exactly what Marcos was doing, trying to get under her skin, but that didn't do much to help her remain calm. She was still Tory Nichols after all. The rash impulsivity inside her might no longer be violent, but it was still very much there. She leaned forward slightly in her seat so that she was closer to Marcos, glaring daggers at him.

"Look, you listen up. Robby, Miguel and the others might be too nice and patient to say this to your face but I'm not, so here it is. We haven't forgotten what you did to us at the football field. We haven't forgotten any of the shit that your dojo has put us through in the past few years…"

"You mean the shit you put your dojo through. That All-Valley trophy in your house, what dojo did you win it? Oh yeah…" Marcos shot back. He really didn't give a shit anymore. Any humanity inside him had died, it had been beaten out of him, to the point where his only goal was to verbally or physically harm his enemy, without any kind of remorse.

"I made mistakes. Owned up to them. Apologized for them. Moved on. I'm in Miyagi-Do now, and I'm not going to let you hurt any of them. None of us are." Tory replied, kind of shocked at how faithful and loyal she sounded to the dojo that she hadn't even been at for 6 months.

"Oh yeah? And what are you going to do to stop me?" Marcos snarled, disdain dripping from his tone. "Last I checked, I've beaten every single one of your best fighters."

"And last I checked, Robby had you down and out in the canyon." Tory responded, smirking as she watched his face flash with darkness for a moment. Marcos chuckled.

"Ah yes. Fair play. He managed to beat me the night after I drank the entire Amazon River, and right after I had finished fighting Moskowitz. A big congratulations to him." Marcos replied. "Trust me, next time it won't be the same result."

"Yeah, we'll see about that." Tory snapped, beginning to rise from her seat and storm out of the library. Delighted at how mentally unsettled he had managed to get her in just a single conversation, Marcos couldn't help but laugh.

"We will, won't we?" Marcos commented. "Tell your boyfriend I'll be seeing him real soon."

Tory slowly turned back to face him and lowered herself back into the seat, her face filled with more anger than ever now.

"If you lay a hand on him, I swear…" Tory began to threaten him, but Marcos was not at all unnerved, his laughter increasing.

"Wow. Pretty severe reaction for a dojo with supposedly nothing to worry about." Marcos commented. Tory forced herself to calm down a little and save face, and she nodded.

"We don't have anything to worry about." She maintained. "You on the other hand… Robby might've managed to talk us all out of going to the cops the first time, but trust me, that kindness has ended. If you lay a hand on any of us, I swear you'll be in jail so fast that you'll spend the rest of your life regretting ever even so much as looking our way."

"Ooh, scary." Marcos remarked, his voice dripping with sarcasm, before breaking out into chuckles once more. "Sorry, I couldn't even fake it there. Forgive me if the threats to have me arrested from a violently aggressive juvenile delinquent and her boyfriend don't worry me in the slightest. I know, and I'm sure you do too, that trying to report me for something is only going to backfire horribly for you."

In that moment, Marcos didn't realize what he had become. Maybe if he had, he could've stopped himself and found a way out of his situation. He had become his father. Plain and simple. Life had kicked his father around to the point where he had lost any lingering humanity left in him, and now the exact same had happened to his son, even if he hadn't noticed yet.

"What are you going to do? Try to get us thrown in jail?" Tory snapped, and Marcos shook his head.

"No. You all deserve much, much worse than that." He growled menacingly. "Tell your boyfriend the next time we fight, because I'm sure there's going to be a next time, it's going to go very, very differently. You say I'm going to regret looking Miyagi-Do's way? Trust me when I say this, it's going to be the exact opposite. Diaz's back injury is going to seem like a light bruise compared to what I'm going to do to him."

"Sure you will." Tory muttered, trying to shrug off his comment, but some of his words still stuck. Shivers ran up and down Tory's spine as she heard the sincerity in Marcos' threats. He wasn't joking around. He wasn't saying this simply to trash talk. He meant every word of it. Marcos shrugged.

"Believe me. Don't believe me. Doesn't bother me either way." Marcos commented. "But for your sake, I hope you spent enough time with him in the recent past because after our fight, you're not going to get the chance to again. The next time he lays a finger on me, no matter when, no matter who's around, I swear to God I'm going to kill him…"

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That afternoon, Robby walked into the dojo for private training with Chozen and Tory, dragging his bag with him as he stepped inside. Almost 24 hours and he was still seething at his father for not only his lack of support, but the fact that he thought he would be able to forbid him from enlisting. He was a grown-ass man, a legal adult in 2 months! After 17 years out of his life, Johnny had no right to forbid him from doing anything now.

As Robby walked into the dojo, he saw that Chozen was already there, along with Tory. He set down his back, taking out something and then walking over to them. He hadn't told Chozen yet about his enlistment, but very quickly he realized that he didn't have to. Tory had already just told him.

"I hear you're going into the Army." Chozen said, an unreadable expression on his face. Robby groaned. Already he had his dad trying to push him away from the decision; he didn't need his sensei against him too. That was the last thing he wanted right now.

"Please, Sensei. Can we not have this argument right n-"

"Very honorable decision." Chozen suddenly interrupted him.

Robby let out a massive sigh of relief, beyond glad that he now had Chozen on his side, and wasn't going to have to get into a massive argument or confrontation right now. Part of him knew Chozen would be supportive of it. Chozen and Robby, in many ways, were cut from the same cloth. They possessed many similarities that no other Miyagi-Do did, which is why they related so well to each other, and they worked so well together. Chozen understood him in a way that, apart from Tory, nobody else in his life did.

"I have seen the impact a war can have. How much it had, even on someone as strong as Nariyoshi. You're sure about your decision?" Chozen asked him.

"I am." He replied. Chozen nodded.

"Good. I am proud of you. Fighting for your country is very honorable. Nariyoshi, if he was here, would have been too."

"Thank you, Sensei." Robby replied, before handing Chozen a sealed envelope. "Sam gave me this this morning at school. Apparently it came to the Larusso house a while ago but got mixed up with all of the mail. It's addressed to you."

Chozen couldn't help but smile as he immediately recognized the tidy scroll of the woman he was very much in love with, the person he was still exchanging love letters with, even though they were thousands of miles apart. Kumiko and Chozen had gotten together during Chozen's brief trip home in early December, and this was one of many letters and calls they had had with one another.

He opened the letter and began to read…

January 10th, 2020

My dearest Chozen,

I hope you are safe, and everything is going well in California. I expect by the time you've returned home to Okinawa in the summer, you'll have been transformed into a Los Angeles movie star!

I write to you with the greatest of news! It is Sato! He has been reborn! These past two weeks, I have seen a Sato that I have not seen for almost 20 years now. I cannot believe it. It is like he has been filled with new life inside him.

It started when some teenagers came to Okinawa, asking to learn Miyagi-Do to help protect themselves. They couldn't train in the dojo itself, so I helped convince Sato to teach them for that time. And Chozen I tell you, getting back in the dojo, finally teaching students again… these random strangers have revitalized his passion. A totally coincidental trip of two teenagers has come as a blessing from God, as it awoke something in Sato. He no longer remains at home all day, waiting for death to come to him. He dares to stand up and face it, challenge it every day. Now that these students he was teaching have left Okinawa and gone home, Sato has gone back to the Miyagi-Do dojo to help teach your students.

I haven't seen him this happy in decades. I just wish you were here to see it too, and share in the beauty of Sato's second act. I knew you would want to see him, see how incredibly fulfilled he seems, so without him knowing I managed to go to Sato's dojo and take a picture of him training the two strangers. I have sent it in this envelope along with this letter. Look how delighted he looks! Look how passionate!

That's all I have to say in this letter, my love. I wish you were here in Okinawa with all of us, but I am so proud of what you are doing for Daniel-san and his students.

All my love,

Kumiko

As Chozen read through all of this, a growing smile spreading from cheek to cheek, he pulled out the small printed photograph, eager to see his sensei and mentor in the midst of his rebirth. However, as he looked at the photograph, his eyes were immediately distracted from Sato and instead trained on the other two people in the photo, the two students Sato was training. Chozen could tell from the photo that Sato was teaching them the fundamentals of Miyagi-Do defense, and seeing the faces of the two students absorbing their knowledge, absorbing their secrets, his jaw dropped slack in shock.

"Sensei, are you okay?" Tory asked, bemused by his sudden visual reaction. Chozen slowly shook his head.

"This is not good." Chozen murmured. "I cannot believe this."

"What? What's going on, Sensei?" Robby asked, starting to get a little concerned. Chozen first handed his two students the written letter, and then when they were done reading that, he passed them the small photo. As the teenagers put two and two together, their faces paled. They realized what had happened, the bombshell that had just been dropped on them. Neither were able to speak for a while, their tongues tied with shock, the only thing they were able to get out was one single phrase.

"Oh. My. God."