CHAPTER 33

The next afternoon, Miguel rode home from school and when he walked into the house, he was greeted by an unwelcome sight: George and his yaya were both standing in the living room, facing him, solemn expressions on both of their faces. Miguel's face immediately filled with anger and he groaned in annoyance as he turned to the person he knew was behind this.

"Okay, what the hell?!" Miguel snapped at George. "You get my family involved in this argument? What the actual fuck is wrong with you?!"

"Miguel, we're worried about you." George stated, unfazed by Miguel's outburst. Miguel rolled his eyes.

"Jee, where have I heard that one before?" Miguel remarked sarcastically. "Look, for the millionth time, can you guys just butt out of my life?!"

"Butt out of your life? That's how you talk to your abuela?" Miguel's yaya, rosa, exclaimed. Miguel ignored her completely and stayed facing George.

"You had no right." Miguel growled at George. "You had no right to get my family involved."

"Miguel, believe it or not, there are people in this world who still care about you, despite how much of a dick you're being to them."

"So sue me." Miguel shot back, spreading his arms annoyingly. George glared daggers at his friend.

"Oh, my God! For 2 minutes, could you PLEASE just SHUT UP and listen!" George cried. "We are trying to HELP you for fuck sake! We, along with EVERYONE who knows you, is warning you that Cobra Kai has changed you, and not in a good way. You've become a bully. You've become a dick. And yesterday, you crossed a line! You're so fucking lucky you haven't been arrested in the past 24 hours, and I wouldn't be surprised if you get arrested in the near future for what you did. But on the off-chance that you don't, you NEED to change your attitude!"

"My attitude? What are you, my parent?" Miguel snarled.

"Look, Miguel, what you need to understand is…"

"No, what YOU BOTH need to understand is I'm not a fucking bully!" Miguel spat. George's eyes widened in disbelief.

"I'm sorry, what?!" George exclaimed in disbelief.

"I'm not stupid. I hear what everyone in the Valley, you guys included, is saying about me. I know I've been painted as the bully terrorising everyone. But I'm not the bully everyone's making me out to be. I don't start the fights I'm in. I'm just the only one strong enough to finish them. There's no one at my level in the Valley, so as a result I'm being vilified for it."

George raised an eyebrow, pretty shocked about what he was hearing from his friend. He knew Miguel's judgement was being clouded by Cobra Kai, but he couldn't believe the boy was acting so… dumb.

"So you're telling me what happened at the Applebees yesterday wasn't your fault?" George asked.

"Well I wasn't the one choosing to talk shit, was I?" Miguel argued. George sighed.

"Look, dude, you know me. I'm not one to discourage violence in any way. But there's a line, Miguel. There's a line that you just don't cross. And that line varies slightly in location depending on the situation but it's always there. You've gone so far past the line that you can hardly see the line anymore. You've lost the control you used to have in fights. You don't know anymore when to just turn around and walk away, knowing you've won the fight and not wanting to hurt your opponent unnecessarily. At that Applebees, first of all, there was no need for there to be a fight anyways, because who cares what the fuck Demetri thinks anyways? He's a whiny little white cunt who talks a lot purely to try and cover up the fact that he's a weak, ugly, unlovable son of a bitch who probably will go his whole life never having touched a girl. You had dominance over him in every single way. You could've just scared the panties off of him with your words and then left. There was no need for a fight."

"Come on, you know I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't going to let him get away with talking shit this past year without ever backing it up." Miguel spat.

"My point exactly. In this situation, the line would have been not physically confronting him. Because unlike him, you've proven your bite is even fiercer than your bark, so anything you said to him would scare the hell out of him. And even if, IF, you wandered a bit over the line and physically confronted him, fine. That's okay. It happens. Emotions get away from all of us sometimes. But no chance did you have to maul him that badly."

"Yeah, so things got away from me this one time. So what?"

"That's the problem. It isn't just one time, Miggy." Miguel's yaya chimed in. "This is happening more and more often, and we're worried that you're going to reach a point of no return."

"Point of no return?! Stop fucking talking to me like I've become a psycopath!" Miguel shouted, his anger burning a hole inside him as he exploded. "Whether you like it or not, this is me now! Sure I might have less patience and am not someone who's going to give everyone the benefit of the doubt anymore, but that's also what gives me my edge! What enables me to win every fight I take part in. And now, more than ever, I need that edge."

"Miggy, not everyone around you is fighting against you. Not everyone wants to hunt you down at all costs." Rosa whispered. "You can afford to relax a little."

"Can I?! Because last time that I ended up in a fucking coma!" Miguel yelled back. "Look, this is who I am! I like having that edge to me! And if you guys can't accept that about me… well you guys can just go to hell."

Miguel had had enough of this conversation. It was the same argument every week and it was getting tiresome. He stormed out of the house, leaving his devastated friend and grandmother behind…

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THUD! THUD! THUD!

That afternoon, Miguel had stormed straight to the fight club, where he spent the entirety of the afternoon and evening. When he arrived, he had found it fully deserted, other than one person: the person Miguel had fought on his day, Rodrigo. Although the man had been an asshole when Miguel had first met him, once Miguel had proven his toughness by his willingness to go into fight after fight and have his ass handed to him time and time again without giving up, Rodrigo had gained a lot of respect for him, and had stopped his prickly exterior. Though Miguel wouldn't consider him a friend, he also had a fair bit of respect for the other man, for both his fighting style and his resilience and determination.

The two spent most of the afternoon sparring each other in various different martial art disciplines. From the beginning, Rodrigo could tell that Miguel was extremely riled up and angry, more so than usual, and decided to question him about it as they were grapple sparring in the early evening.

"You alright, princess? You seem like someone took a shit in your bowl of cheerios." Rodrigo remarked, as he countered Miguel's takedown attempt and flipped him onto the ground, before helping him back up.

"Yeah, fine." Miguel grunted back. "Grandma's being a bitch."

"Woah!" Rodrigo cried, taken aback. "You gonna disrespect your family like that?!"

"You don't get it, man. You don't know what happened." Miguel grumbled.

"You wanna talk about it?" Rodrigo asked.

"Nope. What are we girlfriends or something?" Miguel snapped. Rodrigo shrugged and the two continued to wrestle spar. As they circled each other, Rodrigo continued to talk to Miguel.

"Hey, at least you have your family around. I guarantee whatever issues your family has can't be worse than what I went through. I mean my dad fucking shot my mom!"

Miguel's jaw dropped in disbelief, and he temporarily let down his guard, and Rodrigo used that to lunge at the teenager and slam him down to the ground. Miguel barely felt the heavy hit though, as he was still reeling from Rodrigo's revelation. He scrambled to his feet and faced the man.

"Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. What?" Miguel exclaimed.

"You heard me." Rodrigo murmured back.

"What… what happened?" Miguel stammered.

"What are we girlfriends or something?" Rodrigo commented, throwing back the exact same words Miguel had used moments earlier. But when he saw Miguel's curiosity increasing with every passing moment, he sighed and relented. "Fine. Long story short. My mom and dad got pregnant really young. When I was 8, my dad lost his job. He was working as a handyman and because he hadn't gone to college, he wasn't qualified enough for any steady job. My family had no money. Our lack of steady income made my dad extremely angry. He would drink. Hit me and her. Did that until I was about 16, and we had no way to stop him because we needed the little money he made, and we weren't physically strong enough. He got more and more aggressive as days went by. We thought he would stop at some point, draw the line you know? But he didn't. I realised that one day, he was going to go too far and kill us."

"So what did you do?" Miguel asked, intrigued.

"Starting going to clubs like these." Rodrigo replied. "Underground, under the radar. I learned how to fight. How to stand up for myself. I trained long and hard until I was 17, and I knew I was strong enough to fight him. But that day, I came home from the fight club only to see police swarming around my house, my dad in handcuffs, my mom lying dead on the ground, and the family gun on the floor beside her."

"Oh, my God." Miguel murmured, a realisation punching him in the gut like a brick. He had registered something… he was Rodrigo's dad. Everyone around him was telling him that he was becoming more and more aggressive, and they all talked about him reaching his breaking point eventually. Hell, Rodrigo even used the exact same words George did in terms of drawing the line. Maybe, just maybe, if everyone was telling him about the dark path he was heading on, maybe they were right. Maybe he needed to, not quit Cobra Kai like some pussies were telling him to do, but re-evaluate his personal rules of engagement when getting into fights. Maybe re-evaluate his decisions about when he deems an opponent defeated. Because he didn't want to end up hitting that breaking point because by the sounds of it, it wasn't pretty at all, and it would result in even the people he loved most getting hurt.

"Yeah, not great, is it? Every person who comes to this fight club is dealing with some serious shit. Everyone but you, princess. You have a family who love you. Friends. College. A whole life ahead of you. Don't waste it."

Miguel nodded.

"Look, man, I'm really sorry for what you went through." Miguel murmured. Rodrigo let out a low grunt and the conversation ended there, the two continuing their sparring for another hour until the clock struck 8 and Miguel knew he needed to get home. He walked over to his duffel bag and pulled out his phone, turning it on and seeing multiple messages on the lock screen but really only reading the top one. It was from George, and it read…

DUDE u need to come home NOW. EMERGENCY!

Miguel couldn't help but roll his eyes. His friend was always so overly dramatic. What was the problem now?

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An hour ago…

Johnny was sitting in his apartment, brainstorming how he was going to reach Miguel. Truly reach him and convince him to change his ways. He had one more shot, only one, and he knew that if he screwed it up and Miguel attacked Miyagi-Dos again, Daniel would be all over it and would have Miguel kicked out of the country before he could blink. Johnny couldn't let that happen so he NEEDED to have this be the perfect exchange with Miguel.

That's when he heard it.

He would've heard it from a mile away. A blood-curdling scream from the familiar apartment next door echoed through the compound and into Johnny's uninviting ears. His heart stopped. He had never in his life heard a scream so terrifying, and it was made even more petrifying by the fact that the woman releasing the sound was someone Johnny knew well, someone Johnny, after 3 months, still hadn't gotten over. He shot out of his chair and raced over to the apartment next door, practically busting the door open in his haste to get inside. When he rushed into the apartment, he saw Carmen standing in the living room, still dressed in her work clothes and holding her handbag, tears incessantly streaming down her face, and her face as white as a sheet with horror.

"Carmen! What's wrong?!" Johnny exclaimed. Carmen saw him and she practically collapsed against him, pulling him over to the other side of the living room. When she did, Johnny looked down and his face turned deathly pale to mirror Carmen's. That was when he saw it…

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After he finished his workout, Miguel quickly cycled home from the club to see what George had texted him about. The message had been sent an hour ago, but his argument with George and his yaya had been 4 hours ago, so George had presumably left his house then come back later and then had whatever 'emergency' he was talking about, if it was even an emergency. It was probably just him being overdramatic and trying to lure Miguel into another argument and confrontation.

Sure enough, Miguel walked into his apartment to see two people standing in the living room, ironically neither of the two other people who lived with him in the apartment. No, it wasn't Carmen or his yaya. But it was two people just as familiar. Miguel stepped inside the living room to see Johnny and George waiting for him, grave expressions on his face. Reading their expressions, Miguel sighed and glared at George.

"Really, George? Bringing my yaya into our argument failed this afternoon, so you bring this fucker in instead?" Miguel snapped. George, who was trembling slightly, shook his head.

"No, no. Miguel. It's…"

"No seriously! Who are you going to bring in next? My mom? Maybe track down my dad if you can find him."

"Miguel, it's not that." George murmured, his voice shaking so badly it actually caused Miguel to stop talking and raised an eyebrow.

"What's up then?" He asked. "And where's my mom and yaya? Normally they're home by now."

George and Johnny exchanged a grave look, that had Miguel's curiosity higher than ever.

"The hospital. Miguel…" Johnny murmured, taking in a deep breath and forcing himself not to break down at the sight of Miguel's face of sudden alarm. "Your grandma… she had a stroke…"

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Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

All Miguel could hear was the deafeningly loud noise coming from the clock in the waiting room of West Valley General Hospital. Seconds crawled by agonisingly slowly as his mind raced with worry about his yaya. Johnny had raced him and George over to the hospital in record speed, and the three of them had joined Carmen in the waiting room as doctors and surgeons performed emergency surgery on their dear friend/family member. They had no way of knowing what was going on. No way of knowing if Rosa was still in surgery. Hell, they didn't even know if she was still even alive.

Eventually, as the clock's minute hand dragged itself to 12 and its hour hand to 1, the operation room door swung open and the doctor stepped outside to face them. All of them - Carmen, Johnny, Miguel and George - shot up to their feet, desperate to hear the outcome of the surgery. But as Miguel looked at the doctor's face and saw the heartbreak etched across it, he knew the result even before the words left her mouth.

"I am really, really sorry. She didn't make it…"