CHAPTER 102

BANG! BANG!

The reaction was loud. It was immediate. As soon as Marcos fired off two shots from the gun, every single fight instantly came to an end, all of their heads whipping around to see who had fired the shot and at whom. It didn't take long for everyone's eyes to lock onto the small steel weapon in Marcos' hands, but their heads all turned away for a moment as they tried to see who Marcos had shot, if he had even shot anyone. It turned out that he hadn't, an intentional decision by the King Cobra to fire the gun directly upwards and away from anyone else, trying to scare everyone into stopping fighting but not actually harming anyone.

Not even for a moment had Marcos considered actually shooting someone. For starters, he had no idea how to shoot a gun, that fact not helped even more by the incessant pounding of his head. If he tried to shoot at Sam and Tory, he'd risk hitting Sarah, who was in the same spot as the two Miyagi-Dos. Not only that, but there was no way he was going to shoot anyone, even an enemy. Intimidation with the gunshots was enough to make them all forget about their respective fights anyways and fly into a panic.

"Shit! Shit! SHIT! That's a gun! Let's get out of here!" Demetri shouted, panicking, barely able to breath. Although nobody's life was actually in danger as there was no way Marcos was going to shoot any of them, the Miyagi-Dos weren't about to stick around to find out. Tory and Miguel ran over to Robby, supporting his weight over their shoulders, and they pulled him along as the entirety of Miyagi-Do turned on their heels and sprinted away, retreating from the canyon, quite literally running for their lives.

Cobra Kai did similarly. None of them acknowledged Marcos or what he had done, slowly gathering them to their feets, wincing at their aching bodies from their respective fights during the brawl, and they all began to leave as well. Soon, it was only Marcos and Sarah left under the pitch-black night sky, and once everyone else was out of earshot, Sarah spun around to face Marcos, her face filled with wrath.

"Are you okay?" Marcos asked as the pair dragged themselves to their feet, both still wounded after their respective brawl fights. Sarah temporarily forgot about her pain however, as she stormed over to Marcos and shoved him, slapping the gun out of his hands. The weapon fell harmlessly to the ground with a clank and rested there, the moonlight glinted off it.

"What the hell is wrong with you?! You brought a gun here?!" Sarah yelled, trying to catch her breath as she was still physically and mentally reeling from everything that had just happened.

"I… I… I thought…" Marcos couldn't find the words to respond. He had brought the gun for self-defense, just in case things got so dire that he needed it. Seeing Sarah being beaten down by the Miyagi-Dos had been enough for him to pull it out.

"Do you have any idea how stupid that was?!" Sarah yelled at him. "Miyagi-Do are definitely going to press charges now! Your life is going to get ruined!"

Realizing the gravity of what Sarah was saying, Marcos stumbled a few backwards. Not away from her. Away from… everything. Sarah's words impaled themselves deeply into Marcos' brain. He realized that she was right. If Miyagi-Do didn't have enough to go to the cops on them when it was just a two-sided fight, they certainly did now. Marcos had pulled a gun on them, enough to certainly get him deported, if not thrown in jail. In probably 24 hours from now, his life would be over. He had nothing left to live for, nothing left to lose.

Seeing the petrified look on Marcos' face, Sarah's expression softened a little bit.

"Look, go home. Get some sleep. We can go to the dojo tomorrow morning, talk to Kreese, see what he suggests we do next, okay?" Sarah suggested. "Do you want me to drive you home?"

His mind still spinning, Marcos slowly managed to shake his head.

"Thanks, but I'll… I'll walk." Marcos replied. Bending down, Marcos picked him the discarded gun, his hand trembling so violently that he immediately almost dropped it, but he managed to tuck it into the back of his pants once more, concealing it with his untucked shirt. He then turned on his heel and began to walk away from Sarah, began to walk home, breathing in fresh air for quite possibly the last night before he got locked in jail.

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It didn't take Marcos long to make it home that night. Or rather, it shouldn't have at least. His house was only a 20 minute walk away from the canyon, and yet it had ended up taking him close to an hour to arrive. For one, he still wasn't back to physically 100% after the long, drawn-out brawl with Robby that had just taken place that evening. And also, as beaten down as Marcos' body was, his mind was in an even worse state. He was severely distracted, his mind being dragged to all of the hopeless possibilities of what was coming next for him.

Eventually though, Marcos arrived home and as he slowly unlocked the door and walked inside, he found that the house was pitch black. It was almost midnight, so his father was already asleep. Or was he? As Marcos stepped further into the house, he noticed a single lamp in the corner of the living room flickering dimly, intermittently illuminating the armchair in the corner of the room. Marcos spotted a figure sitting in that chair, mostly concealed by a dark blanket, but it was the hand that clutched a glass of whiskey that told Marcos exactly who it was. Sure enough, as the man slowly rose to his feet and put the glass down, turning to face his son, his built 6'5 frame towering over the teenager.

"Hello, son." The man said, grinning strangely at him. Immediately, Marcos could sense that something was wrong. He just didn't know what though. "Where have you been?"

"A fight." Marcos replied gruffly. He didn't say anything more than that. His father didn't need nor deserve to know more. His father's smile widened slightly, Marcos' suspicion increasing further as he saw this, the man's face faintly lit up by the dim light of the tableside lamp.

"You win?" His father asked. As Marcos nodded, the man chuckled. "That's my boy."

"I'm going to bed." Marcos told him, moving past him and walking towards his bedroom. Just as he had one hand on the door handle, he heard his father's voice once more.

"Just one thing, real quick." His father called him. Marcos slowly turned around to face him, scowling daggers at the middle-aged, abusive asshole he was forced to call his father.

"What?" Marcos snapped.

"So I came home early from work today. The house was empty and locked. I don't know, I guess you already left or something. But when I walked into my room, I saw that someone had opened my safe and left it open."

Marcos forced a blank expression on his face as he heard this. He knew that his father would unleash hell on him if he found out that Marcos had taken his gun, the gun that right now was cold against Marcos' spine. He needed desperately to somehow lie his way out of this one.

"How much money went missing?" Marcos asked him. His father chuckled and shook his head.

"That's just it. Whoever opened the safe left all of the money. No cash missing at all. It's almost as if whoever broke in wasn't there to take money. Not to mention the fact that the safe wasn't busted at all, so the person obviously already knew the combination lock." Marcos' dad remarked. "That leaves just one person in this entire world… you got anything to tell me, son?"

Marcos' poker face remained at full-strength as he shook his head.

"No idea." Marcos replied, and he turned around to begin to walk away again, but his father's arm shot out like a snake, grasping his son's and preventing him from breaking free of his grip. Marcos was forced to turn to him once more, and he saw that the mirth on his father's face was quickly starting to fade.

"Don't test my patience, son." Marcos' father growled. "Two people in this entire world know the code for that safe… me, and you."

"Maybe you opened it this morning and you forgot." Marcos muttered. Anger flashed across his father's face for a moment, before it was disguised by loud, guffawing laughter coming from the older man.

"Right… that must be it. Sorry, I must have opened it this morning and just forgot about it." His father commented, his words dripping with sarcasm. "That does, however, beg the question of the whereabouts of a certain item that I'm certain was in the safe yesterday but for some reason, wasn't today."

"What item?" Marcos asked, and his father tutted.

"Come on, son. Don't lie. I raised you better than that." His father said.

"No. You didn't. You didn't do shit! Mom raised me better than that!" Marcos shot back, reaching into his pants and tossing the gun at his father, the man catching it easily. "You want this? Here! But don't you even pretend for a second that you've done anything more than show me the kind of monsters that are out there in this world! You've shown me exactly what NOT to do with my life. Maybe it's a good thing mom's not here right now, because if she was, I don't think that…"

Before Marcos could finish his sentence, his father roughly shoved him backwards, throwing his son against the back wall of the living room, the teenager's already bruised and banged up body protesting in agony as he made impact with it.

"Don't." His father snarled. "Don't you dare…"

"What are you going to do? You going to shoot me?" Marcos snapped, gesturing at the weapon that was now in his father's hands. His father looked down at it, almost forgetting for a moment that he had been holding it, before he tossed it aside, allowing it to clatter loudly against the wooden floor.

"Tempting." His father responded, before curling his hands into fists and beginning to prowl towards his son. "But what fun would that be?"