CHAPTER 66

"Um… okay, let's start from the beginning." Miguel said. Him and Tory had left the cemetery and drove back to Tory's house, where they sat in the living room and talked. Tory had calmed down at this point but despite this, she wasn't trying to attack Miguel or showing any hostility towards Miyagi-Do to be honest. She was like the Tory Miguel had first met last year, not the Tory he had come to hate recently.

They hadn't said a word on the drive back to Tory's house as the two of them were extremely tense and nervous, Miguel dying to ask about a million questions, but deciding to wait until Tory had calmed down and they made it to her house first.

"Okay. So it all started about a week before the Valentine's Day dance." Tory began…

Training was about to begin in the Cobra Kai dojo, and Tory, Robby and Hawk were getting ready for class. They were sitting around in the corner of the room and Hawk was on his phone. As he looked at it, he laughed.

"Guys, look at this shit. Our main competition for the All-Valley and this is our competitor…"

Hawk passed the phone over to Robby and Tory and as they saw what was on Hawk's screen, they couldn't help but laugh slightly. Hawk was on Tiktok, and he had stumbled upon a tiktok made by Emily. In it, her and Miguel were doing a dumb titkok dance trend.

"Well this is awesome! If Miguel's seriously wasting all of his time doing this shit, no way he stands a chance against us in the tournament!" Tory exclaimed.

"He never stood a chance against us to begin with." Robby stated, almost lazily.

"Maybe so, but the fact is this new girlfriend of Miguel's is a godsend. With him wasting all of his time with her rather than training, there's no way he's winning the All-Valley!" Hawk stated.

"No way who's winning the All-Valley?" A voice behind them asked. They spun around to see Sensei Silver staring at them. As Tory turned towards her, her skin crawled slightly. Although she was extremely grateful for everything he had done for her (he had gotten her reinstated in West Valley High, he had helped out massively in her mom's medical bills, he had helped her with her rent a couple of times), there was something eerie about that man. Something about him sent shivers down Tory's spine.

"Miguel." Hawk said, handing Silver the phone. "Look what Miguel's doing during his free time. He's wasting so much time with his girlfriend that he isn't training for the tournament. He cares more about his girlfriend than he does about the tournament."

Silver's ears pricked at that moment in curiosity. He cared more about this girl than about the tournament? That was interesting. If he cared about this girl so much, then maybe him and Diaz Sr. were going about their plan for Miguel all wrong. They were planning to go after Miguel, but they were extremely unsure, because they knew if anything looked even minutely suspicious, Johnny and Miguel's family would be on them in a flash. However, this girl… this might solve a lot of their problems, he thought to himself…

"Hmmmm… you say he cares about her a lot?" Silver asked. Hawk nodded.

"Yeah, they're always with each other at school." Hawk stated.

"I've seen them in the canyon together or in the mall together a fair bit too." Robby added. Tory didn't add anything, slightly suspicious of the strange expression now on Silver's face.

"Interesting." Silver replied. "Very interesting…"

"Okay, that doesn't sound great, but that doesn't mean that he had anything to do with what happened that night." Miguel said quietly. He wanted nothing more than for Emily to be alive, but truth was, he was having trouble believing Tory's statement. Or at least he was reluctant to get his hopes up as he didn't know if he would be able to get back up after having his hopes crushed.

Tory took a deep shaky breath, forcing herself to remain calm and not break down and she shook his head.

"That's not all…"

It was the night of the Valentine's Day dance and Tory was angry. She was in her senior year of high school. Though she wasn't the most normal of teenage girls, she didn't want to miss things like these. She wanted to go to the dance but instead she was stuck working. She was lagging behind in rent payments so she needed to pull double shifts at the restaurant to earn some extra money. It was a long, arduous shift that didn't end until almost 1 in the morning, but the troubles didn't end there. It turned out Tory had forgotten her phone in the dojo after training that afternoon, so she was forced to cycle over to the dojo at the extremely late hour to collect it. Kreese had given her a spare key for whenever she wanted to train after hours, so getting into the dojo wouldn't be an issue for her. However, strangely, as she arrived, she realised that the door was unlocked. Hmmmm… who would be in the dojo right now? And even weirder, as she walked inside, she saw that the lights in the dojo were pitch-black. No one was training or anything. The senseis probably just forgot to lock the door behind them.

But as Tory walked further into the dojo, she saw the light on in Kreese's office and heard voices talking behind the closed door. Tory realised that it was just the 3 senseis talking so she began to look for her phone in the dojo, listening curiously to the senseis were saying. She heard them clink three glasses together before drinking.

"To Terry, for completing a successful mission." She heard Barnes say. "With her gone, no way he's competing in the tournament."

Her? Who were they talking about? And what mission? And who wasn't competing in the tournament.

"Remind me again, why did we go after her and not just go after him? Because for as long as he's still breathing, there's still a chance he competes in the tournament anyway?" Kreese asked.

Miguel. The name immediately came to Tory's mind. Someone Cobra Kai didn't want competing in the tournament and would do anything to stop him from doing so. From what Tory could gauge and piece together, they had done something abhorrent to someone Miguel cared about to try and stop him from competing in the tournament. But who? Miguel's mom?

"Come on, Kreese. You remember how strong young love is? If Betsy died a few months before the tournament, would you have competed?" Silver remarked. Kreese looked down for a few moments before nodding.

"Fair point." Kreese replied.

Tory's heart pounded against her chest. Her mouth ran dry as she realised… she remembered about Miguel's girlfriend and Silver's suspicious reaction to hearing about her. She remembered how Silver had been interested to know that Miguel cared more about her than himself. It all fitted together like pieces of a nightmarish puzzle. But no… Silver wouldn't do something to Emily, would he? He wouldn't kill someone!

"Besides…" Silver continued. "If we went after Miguel, if Johnny Lawrence and Daniel Larusso were even a tiny bit suspicious that it was foul play, we'd have an army of police on us in a heartbeat. Where she is completely unaffiliated with us, so we won't be suspected at all."

"Sure, but what if Miguel starts feeling better before the start of the tournament? It is like 4-5 months away." Barnes asked. Silver smirked.

"Well, don't worry about that, my good friend. I've got it covered. If Miguel starts to accept his girlfriend's loss, then we pull the ultimate reverse move and release the girl back into his life. She'll be so scarred from what my people are doing to her now that he'll be scarred enough himself to not even want to compete in the tournament anymore…"

"Oh, my God." Miguel murmured to himself, his eyes wide and his mouth gaping as Tory finished her story. His heart was in his mouth. He honestly couldn't believe what Tory was telling him. Emily was alive?

"Miguel, look, I know this is a lot to take in, and…"

"Are you lying to me?" Miguel asked her bluntly, looking her right in the eye, trying desperately to read the expression on her face. For all he knew, this could be Kreese's plan to mess with him and get in his head, and Tory was executing the plan for him.

"What… what, no! I'm not lying!" Tory exclaimed. Miguel looked at her, a stony expression on his face. He wasn't messing around. He was extremely wary.

"I'm going to ask you again. But this time, know that if I find out that you're lying to me, I will hunt you down and won't stop until you're lying in a grave beside Emily. So… are you lying to me?" Miguel asked, his quiet, aggressive tone extremely unnerving for Tory, but she remained calm. After all…

"Miguel, I swear to you, I am not lying. This really happened. Emily really is alive." Tory replied. Miguel slowly nodded, believing her. He was trembling at this point, and a stray tear rolled down his cheek. He was having trouble fully wrapping his mind around the fact that Emily was alive. The worst tragedy he had ever been through and maybe, just maybe, it wasn't true. Maybe he hadn't lost her.

"So she's instead in the hands of Silver and whatever crooks he had kidnap her? And I just sat around and let it happen without looking for her?!" Miguel exclaimed, starting to pace around the room, frantically.

"Miguel, calm down. There's literally nothing you could have done. You didn't know about her being alive until about a minute ago." Tory said. Miguel nodded, lapsing into silence for several moments before his eyes widened.

"You're right. I didn't know until now. But you… you knew since the day of the Valentine's Day dance. That was nearly 3 weeks ago! Why the fuck didn't you say anything sooner?!" Miguel shouted. Tory blushed furiously.

"I'm really sorry. I just… I just…" Tory stammered, struggling to find the words. Miguel scowled at her.

"You just what? Wanted to fuck with me?! Wanted me to waste precious time with Emily slowly dying every day she's captive in some twisted way to screw me over for what I did a year and a half ago?!"

"No, that's not it." Tory whispered, shaking her head.

"Then what, Tory?! What?! What was so important that it prevented you from telling me about Emily being alive?!" Miguel snapped.

"I'm just… I'm scared, okay?!" Tory shouted, before blushing and looking down, refusing to make eye contact with Miguel in shame. "I know that if Silver's willing to do what he did to a completely innocent girl, if he finds out I betrayed him and told you, he'd come after me and the people I love too."

Miguel listened to this and instantly softened as he realised what Tory was saying was perfectly valid. He took her hands in his and slowly, she looked up again and made eye contact with him.

"Tory, I'm really, really sorry. I didn't think about it like that." Miguel admitted. "Thank you SO much for telling me. For risking what you're risking to tell me."

"Of course I was going to tell you at some point, Miguel." Tory murmured. "Sure I've done some really, really, really shitty things in the past year, and I do have a lot of hatred towards Sam and most of Miyagi-Do. But something like this… I was never going to just stay quiet about it."

"Thank you. You're a good person, Tory." Miguel whispered. Tory smiled and nodded, the two closer together, just platonically not romantically of course, than they had been in a year and a half, since the night of the infamous party.

"So… what's the plan?"