CHAPTER 72
"John, John, John, what a pleasant surprise." Silver remarked as he raised the plastic phone to his ear and spoke to his former colleague, his former captain. Over half a century of history between these two men, all culminating in the ponytailed man in jail and Kreese heading the empire. "I've got to say, I wasn't expecting to see you here."
"Yeah, well, I didn't plan to be here." Kreese replied. That was true. Kreese wouldn't have shown up to the prison unless he knew that it was his very, very last resort. And it was. He was forced to reach out to his old co-sensei as he was honestly at a loss at how to proceed, given the recent developments that Kreese had found out about that morning.
"What can I do for you, Johnny?" Silver asked, thoroughly savoring the moment of the man coming crawling back to him. Kreese took a deep breath, unable to even look the man in the eye as he spoke up in reply.
"I came… to ask… for…" Kreese couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence, the words desperately trying to retreat back into his throat. "Advice."
"Is that right? You've come here to ask for my advice?" Silver chuckled loudly. "Ooh, things must be really bad then. What happened? Larusso being a thorn in your ass again?"
"Not Larusso. Chozen Toguchi." Kreese replied. Silver's face darkened considerably as he thought about the man who had been targeting him for that entire summer, trying to infiltrate his dojo and then later fighting him to the death at Silver's mansion. Well, Chozen was still alive, and that meant that Silver had lost, a loss he was still extremely bitter about. "I heard you had a couple of… run-ins with him in the past few months."
"I did." Silver muttered in reply, his mind being taken back to the summer and all of the encounters the two of them had had. "What about him?"
"He's still around. And now he's teaching Miyagi-Do." Kreese replied. "I saw the Miyagi-Do students in Coyote Creek, their champions. They were already really good. Apart from my champion, they were easily better than my entire dojo."
"Good thing you have your boy then." Silver said. Kreese shook his head.
"That's just it. Even he isn't able to beat what we're up against right now." Kreese informed Silver. "Toguchi's taken one of the Miyagi-Dos under his wing apparently. Taught him some the ancient Japanese moves."
"Who's he teaching?" Silver asked curiously.
"Robby Keene." Kreese replied. Silver slowly nodded.
"Ooh. Great fighter. Too emotional though. And from what I've heard, no match for skill with your champion in terms of ability." Silver commented.
"He wouldn't be normally. If not for Toguchi and his ancient karate. Keene and my champion fought last night and apparently Keene beat him with some pressure point paralysis crap. If Toguchi has taught him that, God knows what else he's taught him."
"I don't understand… why does this concern me?" Silver asked as he thoughtfully took all of this in.
"I've only recently gotten back to the Valley. You know Toguchi a lot better than I do. I wanted advice from you about what we can do to take Toguchi out and prevent him from teaching his students anything else."
Silver tutted and shook his head.
"John… John… John… you're thinking about this in entirely the wrong way." Silver remarked.
"Excuse me?" Kreese said, taken aback.
"You're talking about how to take out Toguchi. You shouldn't be trying to take out Toguchi. That's not what you need. Right now anyways."
"Why not?" Kreese asked, confused. Silver sighed.
"Right now, you might think Toguchi and Miyagi-Do have the advantage. But trust me, they don't. It's the exact opposite. They've just exposed to you their entire hand. And if you know their hand, you're able to counter it. All taking out Toguchi now would do is cause them to change their strategy to something else unknown."
"So what do you suggest then?" Kreese questioned him. Silver shrugged.
"They want to play dirty and pull that ancient chinese shit? Well two can play at that game. We teach our students the exact same." Silver replied.
"How?" Kreese asked. Silver smiled faintly.
"If my memory serves, I heard that Toguchi owns a dojo back in Okinawa. Stands to reason that if he's been in the Valley for as long as he has, there's someone else out there running it. Another sensei. That person is the key."
"And what? We try to rope them into coming to the Valley? To fight against other Miyagi-Do students?" Kreese remarked, disbelievingly. Silver shook his head and sighed.
"You never fail to amaze me with how small the scope of your mind is. I guess you were always the soldier, and I was always the businessman." Silver commented. "You're correct that no Miyagi-Do sensei in their right mind is going to come to the Valley to train our students. So why don't we send our students to them? I'd be more than happy to send your male and female champion out there for a week or two, even put them up in some nice accommodation and everything, and have them learn under Toguchi's dojo so they can learn the same techniques that Keene and the others are, so they can counter them."
Kreese couldn't believe what he was hearing from the man that supposedly loathed him so much.
"You would really be willing to pay for all of that?" Kreese asked, shocked. Silver shrugged.
"You can't take it with you. You might as well spend it before you go. And well… for me, that could be pretty soon."
Kreese was still reluctant, however, to accept the paycheck from Silver. He knew how slippery this slope was. He knew that Silver was getting out of prison around April-May sometime, so owing him something like this could severely jeopardize Cobra Kai when that time came around.
"Come on, John." Silver urged him, seeing the hesitance in the face of the other sensei. "You know I'm right. You know this is the only way. Alone, you don't have what it takes to stop them."
"That's not true." Kreese snapped. Silver raised an eyebrow.
"Really? So it wasn't this exact same voodoo bullshit that caused you to lose to Daniel Larusso a year ago? The exact same technique too?" Silver remarked. "It's been a whole year, John, and you still haven't figured out a way to counter it. You really want to take the risk that you'll be able to find a way before the Taikai?"
Kreese sat back in his chair slightly, deep in thought. Internally, he calculated all of the benefits and potential risks of this plan… sending both Marcos and Sarah to Okinawa for the last week or two of Christmas vacation. There were certainly many benefits to it. It was just the risk of it all backfiring spectacularly that worried Kreese. He was weary of all of the tricks Silver might have up his sleeve.
"Let me get one thing straight." Kreese eventually spoke up again. "If… if I agree to this, this is in no way me agreeing for you to return to the dojo once you get out of jail. This is just a one-off deal. I don't owe you anything. I won't have you around my champions, or any of my other students now or at any point in the future."
Silver nodded quickly.
"I respect that. And I agree to those terms." Silver replied. "Trust me, John. All I want is what's best for the dojo and for our students. I didn't spend so many years trying to get us into the Taikai, only to watch Miyagi-Do win it and cause us to lose everything we've worked so hard for."
Kreese thought about this for a long while longer, staring a hole into the pony-tailed Sensei, trying to gauge any malevolent intentions that the other man had. Since Silver's betrayal of him that got him sent to prison, Kreese knew that he needed to be extremely careful, but he couldn't smoke out any direct threats from this plan. At least not so many that they outweighed the obvious benefits.
For this reason, Kreese eventually nodded at the other man.
"Alright. You've got yourself a deal." Kreese replied, beginning to stand up. Silver smiled, rubbing his hands together.
"Excellent. My people will make the arrangements in the next few hours. They can be wheels up by tonight."
"Thank you." was the last thing Kreese said to Silver, before turning around and walking away. Once he was definitely gone, Silver's smile turned into a malevolent smirk. He had Kreese right where he wanted him. He was quietly confident. He knew that the closer he weaseled to Kreese, the more likely Kreese would be to relent and let him rejoin Cobra Kai and compete in the Taikai upon his release from prison. Because if there was one thing Kreese was, it was loyal. Blindingly loyal. He had been this way in Vietnam, unable to blow up a house where a fellow soldier was inside. And once again, just like back then, it was going to cost him…