CHAPTER 70

The next morning, as Miguel walked into Miyagi-Do, he noticed fuming faces from everyone around him. Last night, after Johnny had left Tory's house, he had met up with Daniel and the two had talked about what had happened in the dojo earlier. Obviously, Johnny hadn't told Daniel about what Miguel and Tory were actually doing, so Daniel was frothing at the mouth and had demanded that Miguel be kicked out of Miyagi-Do for what he was doing. However, Johnny had held firm and demanded that Miguel be allowed to stay. Daniel, whilst first flat-out refusing this, was eventually convinced by Johnny by emphasizing how much Miguel had been through in the past three weeks. So Daniel reluctantly agreed to let Miguel back in Miyagi-Do, but at the same time, he was NOT happy. He had lost all trust he had developed in Miguel, as he couldn't believe what Miguel was doing.

Also, while Daniel's anger towards Miguel might have waned ever so slightly after his argument with Johnny, the animosity from the other students didn't. They hated Tory just as much, if not more, than Daniel did, so the fact that Miguel was consorting with that girl and had been without their knowledge for an unknown amount of time was a massive betrayal to them. He had stabbed them all in the back as far as they were concerned, and absolutely none of them trusted him that he wasn't an undercover Cobra Kai.

So as Miguel walked into the dojo and felt furious looks all around him, he sighed. He wasn't happy about lying to them at all. Despite everything, they were still his friends, and he hated that they thought he was betraying them. The only thing that was keeping him going was the fact that he knew no matter how rough his situation was, Emily's, wherever she was, was infinitely worse. So Miguel accepted the death glares he was getting from every angle and just walked over to George to stretch and warm up in silence.

After a while, Daniel and Johnny walked into the dojo and called everyone outside. They followed the senseis into the backyard, and then into their cars, as they drove to the public park for training. They were confused. They weren't told anything about training off campus today, so they had no clue what they had planned for them.

"Alright, listen up!" Daniel called, snapping all of the students to attention. "We decided to move away from Karate for today, and decided for training we would play a different sport that requires just as much speed, agility and power. We are going to play…"

"Football!" Johnny shouted. "Greatest ball sport on Earth!"

"Which one? American football or real football?" Miguel asked. Johnny glared at him.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't just hear you calling soccer, the sport of only pussies and lesbians, the 'real soccer.'" He remarked, pulling out an American Football from his bag. "NO! We are going to play good old-fashioned, American Football."

Smiles flickered around the group. Though there was undeniably a lot of tension among them right now, they couldn't help but get excited for this training session. They had been working so hard in Karate specific training that taking a break from it for a day would undeniably be useful.

"Wait… is this tackle football?" Demetri asked, worriedly. "Because we don't have helmets, or pads, or mouth guards, or…"

"QUIET!" Johnny bellowed, effectively shutting up Demetri. "Of course we're playing tackle Football! Touch football is for nerds!"

"Look, you can tackle each other but use your heads, okay. Don't go smashing each other to the ground because at the end of the day, you're all still Miyagi-Dos." Daniel said.

"Most of us anyway." Demetri murmured under his breath, looking across at Miguel. Miguel heard him and ignored him, his ears completely blocking out the muttering and hate comments he was getting from his teammates. All he focused on was the game he was about to play.

"Alright, so what we decided is that Johnny and I will be quarterbacks. We'll make teams through a draft. We'll play from the lamppost at the far end of the park to the tree on the other side. Four downs to make a touchdown." Daniel explained. "If the other team intercepts the ball, it's a turnover. If you don't make a touchdown in the 4 downs, it's a turnover. We don't have field goal posts so we're not kicking field goals, so a touchdown is only going to be worth 1 point each."

"Alright, let's get started!" Johnny barked.

Johnny and Daniel then did Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who got first pick in drafting the teams. Johnny won, and everyone knew exactly who he was going to pick.

"Miguel." Johnny announced. Miguel smiled and walked over to Johnny. Johnny was one of very few friends he had left in the dojo so he was thankful he was on Johnny's side. Daniel had the next pick and like Johnny's, his pick could have been seen coming from a mile away.

"Sam." Daniel said. Samantha went to join her father, and then the two senseis began to draft the rest of their teams.

"George." Johnny picked.

"Chris!"

"Mitch!"

"Demetri!"

"Bert!"

"Nate!"

They finished drafting the rest of the teams and as the two sides stood opposite each other, something became glaringly obvious to them.

"Woooooow, guys. So this is basically Eagle-Fang vs. Miyagi-Do, right?" George remarked, looking at the teams. Sure enough, he was right. The order Daniel and Johnny had picked their players had left all of the original Miyagi-Dos on Daniel's team and all of the Eagle-Fangs on Johnny's. Especially during the rough times Miyagi-Do were in, it was recipe for disaster…

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After teams were sorted, Daniel and Johnny then flipped a coin to see who started in possession with the ball. Johnny came out on top again, winning and enabling Eagle-Fang to start. After their mildly successful punt return, they lined up for their first down, each Miyagi-Do lining up in front of an Eagle-Fang, preparing to defend from them. Miguel, who was low and preparing to sprint to receive the ball upon the snap, looked up to see Sam preparing to defend him. Her eyes with blazing in anger as he stared down at him, sending stabs of guilt into Miguel's chest. Out of all of the Miyagi-Dos, Sam had taken Miguel's betrayal by far the worst. She was the one haunted most by Tory, and to think that one of her best friends in the world was spending time with that monster sent a burning anger coursing through her blood. In addition, though she didn't want to admit it as the strong, independent woman that she was, it had stung extra given that her and Tory were both exes, and Miguel decided to go to Tory rather than her. It was like despite however maniacal and insane Tory was, Sam meant even less to Miguel than that.

Needless to say, Sam had a bone and a half to pick with Miguel as she lined up, preparing to tackle him if he got the ball. However, she wasn't about to wait that long. The inferno of rage still throbbing through her body, as soon as Johnny snapped the ball and play started, Sam charged at Miguel, completely illegally tackling him while he didn't have the ball. Miguel didn't have a chance to react, let alone defend himself, before he felt Sam go flying into him and slam him against the ground. Miguel landed roughly on his head and groaned in pain as he felt the back of his head bounce against the dirt. Looking up, he saw Sam standing over him and smirking cockily as he got to his feet.

"What the hell, Sam?" He grumbled. "You can't tackle someone if they don't even have the ball."

"Oops, my bad." She snarked, almost grinning at his pain.

"Look, just back off unless the person has the ball." Miguel said. Sam laughed.

"Back off? Someone salty he's just weak?" She remarked.

Miguel was about to respond with an insult but he stopped himself, remembering that Sam was entitled to every since ounce of her anger and more. Him and Sam had been on great terms lately. Ever since their failed date, their relationship had killed any lingering romantic tension from either side and had become 100% platonic, so they were truly able to enjoy each other's company. Until now. Until Miguel had started meeting with the girl who wanted to kill her.

So Miguel trudged back to the starting point and prepared to begin the next play without saying a word. He hoped this was the end of Sam's cheap play as frustration had begun to fester up inside him, but unfortunately he was mistaken. Almost as soon as Johnny snapped the ball for second down, Sam did exactly the same thing again, lunging at Miguel and tackling him before he could defend himself. So ahead Miguel crashed down in a heap, this time incensed in anger. His anger was clouding his better judgement. All he could think about were the two dirty tackles Sam had just thrown at him and the throbbing pain in the back of his skull. He was fed up and done with being bullied like this by her. He gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw.

"Fine. You wanna play this way? Let's play." He growled to himself.

He then walked over to Johnny, who was thoroughly entertained by the fact that twice in a row Miguel had been slammed down by a girl nearly 60 pounds lighter than him. Miguel scowled at him as Johnny teased him about it, and his eyes filled with dark determination.

"Look, sensei, just give me the ball. I'll run it." Miguel murmured confidently. Johnny nodded and as they snapped the ball for the third down, still relatively close to their starting point, Johnny then gave Miguel the ball and as Miguel felt the leather in his hands, he looked up and faced the opposing team. They were all charging towards him, most of them being held back by Eagle-Fang's respective blockers. However, there was one person who wasn't being blocked, and she was fast approaching. Miguel smirked and dug his feet into the hard-packed earth, preparing to run. He then charged, like a raging bull, right at Sam. They soon made it to each other and Miguel made no effort to avoid her, or slow down at all. Instead, he got low and went in full momentum, right into Sam, sending her flying through the air like she was light as a feather. She hovered in mid air for several moments, before coming crashing down and landing, unmoving, on the ground. Miguel stood over her and scowled down at her.

"I told you… to back off." Miguel growled. However, suddenly, he felt a crashing pain to the back of head once again, and felt himself swept off his feet and landing right beside Sam on the dirt. He quickly spun around and looked up to see Chris glaring at him, a livid look on his face. Miguel scrambled to his feet, ready for a fight, but before he could hit back, he watched as George came flying in, body-checking Chris so hard and sending him thumping to the ground.

Soon, everyone was involved in the fighting, and hits were flying in from all angles. However, strangely, unlike all of the two dojos' fights before, this one wasn't an even split in numbers. It seemed to be Miguel and George against everyone - those loyal to Miguel against those who thought he wasn't loyal to them. And even more strangely, Miguel and George were actually holding their own. It definitely helped that they were the two biggest guys in the group, and the two most competent fighters too, but they were still nearly overwhelmed by the 2 vs 8 fight they were a part of.

Miyagi-Do's main downfall was that they had taught George and Miguel exactly what to do in any fight that they were outnumbered in, in hopes that they could use it if ambushed by Cobra Kai. However, it turned out to shoot Miyagi-Do in the foot as George and Miguel immediately locked into their circle formation. They were a flurry of vicious kicks and punches, laying waste to the Miyagi-Dos until most of the Miyagi-Dos were lying in heaps on the ground. Daniel and Johnny were rooted to the spot in shock at this point, disbelieving that this could be happening, so they were little help in trying to stop the fighting. When they finally came to their senses, George had Demetri in a rear naked choke and was slowly squeezing the air out of the other boy's lungs, and Miguel and Sam were both exchanging heavy blows. Miguel had taken Sam to the ground, had pinned her limbs and had now begun to rain thudding punches at Sam's head, chest and stomach when Daniel and Johnny finally focussed in enough to step in, yanking the two pairs of pupils apart. What the HELL had just happened?!

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"Here."

Miguel looked up to see Johnny passing him an ice cold beer later that afternoon. While Miyagi-Do had all left with Daniel, Miguel and George had left with Johnny and had gone back to Johnny's place, where Johnny was treating Miguel and George's relatively minor injuries.

"Thanks." Miguel murmured, cracking it open and taking a sip. Johnny rolled his eyes.

"It was for your face, dumbass." He remarked, pointing at the black eye that was flowering on the side of Miguel's face. Miguel shrugged.

"Eh, if it helps, it helps. Doesn't matter how, does it?" Miguel remarked. George snickered.

"Wow, you too are like two birds." He commented at Johnny and Miguel.

"Okay, guys, I think we need to talk about what just happened." Johnny murmured, his face now serious. Miguel and George looked at each other nervously and nodded, however to their surprise, Johnny's face broke out into a huge grin. "You guys just beat up 8 people all by yourselves! You made Miyagi-Do look like absolute fools! Great job, guys!"

Miguel, however, didn't smile. Now that the adrenaline and anger had worn off, he felt slightly regretful for what he did. He remembered that he deserved all of their anger for sneaking around with Tory, and fighting them would only solidify their belief that he was a Cobra Kai.

Suddenly, Miguel was pulled out of his train of thought when he heard his phone ring. He picked it up and answered it.

"Hello?" He murmured.

"MIGUEL?!" A frantic voice he instantly recognised as Tory's greeted him.

"Hey, Tory, what's up?" He asked, slightly worriedly.

"You guys need to get to my place! NOW! I think I might have found Emily…"