CHAPTER 33

"So… Marcos, where did you grow up?" Carmen asked. The entire group had sat down at the dining room table, which they had extended to fit the massive party of 11 people: Daniel, Sam, Amanda, Anthony, Robby, Johnny, Miguel, Carmen, Miguel's yaya, Marcos and Sarah. Marcos and Sarah had taken one end of the table, with the Miyagi-Do teens taking the other, and the adults in the middle. At least if a fight broke out, there would be people to get between the teenagers before shit really did hit the fan. The tension at the table was still extremely high, and there was clearly no love lost between the factions. However, that didn't prevent Carmen and Amanda from trying to start a conversation, trying to get to know their guests.

"Brazil. Rio de Janeiro." He replied, taking a bite of the delicious feast Carmen, Amanda and Miguel's yaya had prepared.

"That's far away." Carmen remarked. "Have you been here in the U.S for long?"

Marcos chuckled and shook his head.

"Nah, I, uh… I just moved at the end of August, right before school started." He told her.

"Hm. Your English is really good for having just moved here." Carmen commented. "I remember when we moved up here, it took me years to properly learn the language."

The eyes of the teenagers flickered to one another uneasily as they remembered what had occurred at the school last month about this very topic. Under the table, Sarah rested a hand gently on his knee, squeezing it in a silent message for him to stay calm. He was extremely calm though. He knew this wasn't an insult like Hawk's, but instead just an innocent question.

"My mom was a primary school teacher back home. She made sure I learned English growing up."

"Wow. Taught you English, taught you how to cook… your mom seems like a really incredible lady." Daniel remarked, chiming into the conversation. Given the tension at the table, there wasn't any conversation that was happening other than the one going on between Marcos and Carmen. Of course, Daniel hadn't heard the brief words Marcos had mentioned earlier: 'my mom's not around and my dad works all day.' That's what he had told Amanda at the door. And sure enough, as Daniel spoke up, Marcos looked down for a moment.

"Yeah… she was." He replied quietly. It didn't take a genius to understand what Marcos was saying, and the table went silent for a moment. Marcos didn't allow it to last long though, as he didn't want any follow up questions on the topic. He hadn't even told Sarah how exactly his mom had died - all he had told her was that she had died when he was 13, and that was about it. So he definitely didn't want to get into that topic with the people who he knew would be his opponents for the coming months. He turned to Carmen.

"So you mentioned you moved up here too? Where'd you guys originally come from?" He asked.

"Ecuador." Carmen replied. "We moved up, my mom and I, when I was pregnant with Miguel."

"How come the move?" Marcos asked, curiously, eager to learn a little more about the boy who seemed like one of his main rivals in the Taikai.

"Don't tell him, please mom." Marcos heard Miguel speak up from the other end of the table in Spanish, looking at his mom with a pleading look in his eyes. Carmen silently nodded at her son, before turning back to Marcos.

"Better job opportunities." Carmen eventually told him. Marcos slowly nodded, but his curiosity was well-up now. He decided not to mention the fact that he had a very basic understanding of Spanish that had come with his fluency in Portuguese, so he understood the message that the teenager had said to his mother. Marcos was no stranger to tough upbringings and a less-than-ideal environment, so he couldn't help but wonder whether it was a similar situation that had brought Miguel's family from Ecuador too.

"I'm guessing then, if you only moved to the States this year, then you've been doing Martial Arts back in Brazil?" Johnny asked. Immediately, the mood of the meal changed. It became instantly more guarded, now that the topic had switched to the very reason they had been at each other's throats to begin with. Carmen internally sighed and glared at Johnny, having explicitly told everyone earlier to avoid the topic of Martial Arts at all costs, but it was too late now.

"Yeah, I was. I've been training for 10 years." Marcos replied. "Since I was like 7 or 8 years old."

"Did you train with a karate dojo in Rio?" Daniel asked. They were already on the topic of Martial Arts. Might as well lean into it now. Marcos shook his head.

"No, I actually only started Karate when I got here and met Sensei Kreese." Marcos replied. This was it. He was beginning to employ the strategies that Kreese had told him to use. Slip in the man's name every now and then, Kreese had told him, and it would inadvertently fill everyone's minds with a flash of anger.

"So what did you do beforehand? BJJ? Boxing? Wrestling?" Johnny asked. It almost felt like an interrogation at this point, but Marcos didn't mind. In fact, he was eager to let them know his experience, eager to put that extra doubt in the minds of the Miyagi-Dos before they picked a fight with him.

"A little bit of everything. BJJ. Capoeira. Bit of boxing." Marcos told him. "I never trained with a proper gym. We never had the money for that. So I just learned from anyone I could, anywhere I could. My dad taught me a bit. Some people in my neighborhood taught me. I also got a job cleaning at a BJJ gym, so I picked up a little bit from there by watching them train as I worked. I don't really have one Martial Art expertise. I just fight the way that feels natural to me."

As all of the Miyagi-Dos nodded, they thought deeply to themselves. All of them had remembered the exact moment where their personal horizons of karate had been instantaneously broadened, the day they began learning a different style. They had all felt it, the moment former Cobra Kais learned Miyagi-Do, or former Miyagi-Dos learned Cobra Kai or Eagle-Fang. They felt like their entire view of fighting had been completely changed, that their borders had now become limitless, and they were now unstoppable. But they realized that their transformation had just been learning two styles of the same Martial Art, while Marcos had been trained in multiple unique Martial Arts… so whatever flexibility they thought they had when fighting, Marcos was bound to have even more.

The rest of the meal had gone by without that much fuss. Amanda and Carmen had successfully managed to wrestle the conversation away from Karate again, so the group spent the rest of the time learning about each other. It was clear that things were still pretty testy between the two sides, so nobody was exactly eager to tell them about their full life story. But still… the fact that Cobra Kai's leaders and Miyagi-Do's leaders were sitting down to dinner together and weren't physically trying to beat each other into the ground was an improvement. Marcos described a little bit about what it was like to live in a favelas of Brazil, an experience unlike anything anyone else at the table had experienced before (even Carmen, who had come from the middle class in Ecuador). Sarah told them about her extremely contrasting upbringing in the infamous Bel Air neighborhood. And in turn, they learned a little bit about some of the Miyagi-Dos at the table. Sarah and Marcos got a brief recount about the events of 1984 between Johnny and Daniel, and later the events of the past couple of years, when the rest of the teenagers had gotten involved.

By the end of the meal, not a scrap of food was left uneaten on the table, and all of them sat back in their chairs, utterly stuffed from the delicious meal. They all thanked Carmen, Amanda and Miguel's yaya profusely for the incredible meal. It seemed like they had done it. They had successfully gotten through a night with the leaders of Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do, a night where there wasn't fighting or rivalry, but instead a little more understanding of what the opposing force was all about.

"Thank you so much for such an amazing meal." Sarah repeated, as the conversation eventually ran dry and the Cobra Kai couple eventually stood up, preparing to go home for the night.

"Yeah, thank you, again." Marcos added.

"Oh, please. It was nothing. You are both welcome here anytime you feel like a meal." Amanda replied, still doing her part in trying to extend the olive branch.

"I was just wondering, do you know where the bathroom is?" Marcos asked.

"Straight down the corridor. It's the last door on the left." Amanda replied, pointing at the hallway behind her. Marcos thanked her and walked in that direction, to the end of the corridor just like she said. However, just before he reached the bathroom door, he stopped at the room right before it. The door was partially open so he could see inside, and he couldn't help but freeze to admire it for a moment. There was no mistaking what it was. It was a karate dojo, a mini Martial Arts gym, but one like nothing he had seen before. It was a toned down version of the location Marcos had been to during his first morning with Cobra Kai, but the fact that this one was in the house where the Larussos lived made it even more shocking.

Before he could stop himself, Marcos stepped inside and looked around the room. It was the exact opposite to the Cobra Kai dojo in every conceivable way. Several banners adorned the wall, written in a traditional East Asian script. There were a variety of framed photos too, presumably of former senseis and leaders of the dojo. And at the far side of the home dojo, there was even a bo staff. That was one thing Marcos had never trained in: fighting with weapons. The closest he had come was with a foam pool noodle with friends at school, but not an actual Martial Arts weapon, and certainly not a bo staff. You needed to be part of a dojo to have access to mahogany weapons like this, something that Marcos certainly had been part of.

Suddenly, Marcos heard a voice from behind him.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

Marcos spun around to see Daniel Larusso walking into the home dojo, a faint smile on his face as he saw the boy. Little did Marcos know that he was wearing the exact same expression that Daniel Larusso had been wearing the moment he had stepped into Miyagi-Do for the first time, almost 40 years ago now.

"I, um… I'm sorry. I accidentally walked in here looking for the bathroom. I didn't mean to touch anything." Marcos stammered. Daniel chuckled.

"Don't apologize. Curiosity is the essence of human existence." He replied. "You want to try one of the bo staffs?"

"Wait… seriously?" Marcos asked, taken aback. The last thing he had expected from tonight would be training in the Miyagi-Do home dojo. Daniel nodded and Marcos picked up one of the staffs, handing the other to the middle-aged man. Carefully instructing the teenager, it wasn't long before Marcos had gotten the hang of the basic moves. The boy picked things up very quickly, Daniel thought to himself. There wasn't need for muscle memory or any of that, because it was almost like Marcos had fully absorbed the knowledge from the first moment it was taught to him. As they sparred with the staffs, Daniel spoke to Marcos.

"Hey, about what I asked at dinner about your mom… I'm sorry. I didn't know." Daniel said. Marcos' eyes glanced downwards once again, unable to make eye contact for a moment, before he eventually forced himself to look up and meet Mr. Larusso's kind eyes once again.

"It's alright. You didn't know." Marcos replied. Daniel nodded.

"I know how it feels though. Not having a parent around. My dad passed away too, when I was little." Daniel said.

"I'm sorry." Marcos murmured.

"Thank you. I mention it because I know first-hand how hard it can be." Daniel said. Marcos nodded, more out of courtesy than anything else.

With due respect, while he was sure that it can't have been fun to lose a parent like that, what Marcos had been through had been completely different to what Mr. Larusso had been through. Mr. Larusso hadn't heard a gunshot echo through the house. Mr. Larusso hadn't had to watch his mother lifelessly bleeding out on the bedroom floor, a gun in her limp right hand. Mr. Larusso hadn't seen his footprints stain crimson from the pool of blood on the ground as he turned around and tried to run out of the room. Mr. Larusso wasn't haunted by the memories of that day, every night since. Mr. Larusso wasn't constantly mentally burdened by thinking about the reason why his mom died, and realized the part he himself had played in her eventually pulling the trigger. All in all, very different situations, but Marcos wasn't going to bring any of that up. Instead, he merely nodded.

"I want you to know that no matter where you decide to train in the near future, if you ever need anything, even if it's just somebody to talk to, you are welcome to come around he…"

Before Daniel could finish his sentence, the quietness and tranquility of the Miyagi-Do home dojo was shattered by the sound of yelling coming from the living room. Marcos and Daniel dropped their staffs, glancing at each other nervously. What now?