CHAPTER 38

It was a good training session, a great training session. It was incredible for Miguel to finally be back in karate. He hadn't really realised just how much he missed it until now. He was the first to participate in any drill they had to complete, and he went above and beyond in each one. He knew full well that despite beating them in the fight, the other students still didn't want him there, so he knew that he was going to have to make an effort to change that. Not that he cared about them as friends or anything. But if he wanted them to be loyal to him as a leader and wanted to be able to have some semblance of control over them if push came to shove with Miyagi-Do, he needed to show them that he was very much on their side. So he trained hard, helped others during training, and worked his ass off the entire session.

They trained for three hours that morning, before Silver brought the session to an end with some stretching and recovery. He had top of the line equipment, including state-of-the-art massage guns, ice baths and many other tools to make sure his athletes didn't get injured. After they had done their recovery, they then all packed up their stuff and prepared to leave the dojo. Miguel, after packing up his sports bag after a successful training session, took out his phone and saw that he had a few unread messages. One was from Johnny. One was from his mom. But there was a third message from someone Miguel hadn't expected to be hearing from… Moon.

Heard ur back in town. Throwing a party in the canyon tonight. You should come!

Miguel smiled to himself. It had been so long since he had been to a high school party. Hell, it had been since the prom, despite at that point, him thinking that this summer would be all about partying and spending one more great summer with his friends before they all graduated. And the thing was 24 hours ago, if he had gotten this invite, he would have rejected it in an instant. He wasn't in the mood to be seeing anyone from school, least of all at a party, but now it was different. It was strange. This sudden change in his life had put him in a much better place. He was no longer consumed with worry about his future, so could afford to enjoy the other parts of life a lot more. So he decided… yeah, you know what? I'm going to go. It could be a good thing to blow off some steam after everything he had been through in the recent past.

"Hey."

A voice caused Miguel's head to shoot up, and he looked up to see Kyler walking over to him. Miguel's face immediately knitted into a scowl as he stared at the asian boy, who unlike Miguel, was surprisingly not preparing for a physical altercation. As he watched Miguel's hands curl into fists, he raised his hands in surrender.

"What do you want?" Miguel snapped.

"Look, I know we had our issues, but we're both Cobra Kai now, so are we cool?" Kyler asked.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

Miguel felt himself roughly shoved out of the minimart in Reseda and onto the street, and then was quickly surrounded by 4 guys from Miguel's school. He had fucked up. BADLY. He had tried to say hi to them while they were trying to buy alcohol, and it tipped the shopkeeper off that they weren't over age yet.

"Look, dude… I… I didn't know you guys were trying to buy beer. I'm sorry!" Miguel stammered, his heart racing. It was pitch-black outside. They were alone, with no one but a few homeless people around them. Miguel was totally at their mercy and helpless to whatever beatdown they had planned.

A few seconds later, Miguel felt the sides of his sweatshirt grabbed by their leader, Kyler, and he got thrown heavily onto the ground. Miguel groaned in pain as he hit the ground in a heap, and he slowly rolled away, trying to escape the bullies' clutches. But he had no such luck, as when he stumbled to his feet, he was surrounded once more. However, they didn't attack him. They were intent on picking up the bag that Miguel had dropped as he had been tossed over by Kyler.

"Ooh, what have we got here?" Kyler remarked, grinning widely at Miguel, perfectly at ease despite the other guy's terror. He opened the bag and pulled out the bright pink Pepto bottle Miguel had bought for his yaya. "Hahaha. Someone has frickin' diarrhea."

"Hey, we should call him 'Rhea." One of Kyler's friends, Brucks, remarked.

"Come on, give it back dude. It's for my grandma." Miguel practically pleaded with Kyler to show him mercy. Because that was all he could. Scrawny, defenseless teenager that he was, he couldn't even take on Kyler, let alone his whole gang.

"Oh, it's for your grandma?" Kyler remarked, feigning sympathy as he opened the bottle. "Oh, I'm sorry man. Hey, you want it? Yeah, you can take that."

With that, Kyler pulled the cap off the bottle and poured all of the liquid contents of the bottle all over Miguel's head.

"Bitch." He smirked, as he tossed the empty bottle against Miguel and turned to walk away.

"Asshole." He growled quietly. He was done. He was sick and tired of this shit. Every day since he had arrived in Reseda, these guys had made his life miserable. They had bullied him from the moment he stepped inside the school gates, and he was over it. He was sick of being scared to leave his house, not feeling safe in his own school. But the worst part… there was literally nothing he could do about it.

Unfortunately for him, Kyler heard this quiet retort, and he slowly turned around again to face Miguel.

"What'd you say, 'Rhea?" He snarled.

"Um… uh… I didn't say anything…" Miguel spluttered, trying desperately to backpedal, but it was no use. In a flash, Kyler's hand had curled into a fist and before Miguel knew it, a vicious body punch had connected with his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. Miguel hit the deck just from that one punch, and as he lay on the ground, he was forced to listen to the group of guys giggling uproariously at his pain. As Miguel lay on the ground, he thought for a moment… imagine if he was stronger than any of these assholes? They wouldn't dare come near him. They'd be shitting themselves in fear, just like Miguel was whenever he saw them.

Miguel knew that he needed to get out of here NOW, as the boys looked to be in no mood done with him, so quickly rising to his feet, Miguel turned on his heel and tried to sprint away from the guys. However, he didn't get very far. He was almost fully away from them when he felt one of the bullies shove him from the back, sending him flying against the hood of some car. More laughing, more cheering, more whooping. It was a literal hell for Miguel, but one that was stopped a moment later, when an unfamiliar voice filled the air.

"HEY!"

Remembering all of the times Kyler had terrorized him two years ago, Miguel's eyes narrowed. Who the fuck was this guy to try and act nice with him now, just because he knew Miguel could and would whoop his ass in a heartbeat?! The latin teenager slowly rose to his feet and walked up to Kyler so the pair were just inches apart, staring each other in the eye. As they stood face to face, Miguel could have sworn he saw Kyler gulp in fear. How the tables had turned from that night two years ago. Miguel was now taller, stronger, much more muscular, and had a fierce look in his eye that showed Kyler that he could have Kyler's head through the dojo wall before Kyler would even have the chance to blink.

"No… no, we're not cool." Miguel slowly growled at him. "Not now. Not ever. So you stay out of my way, I'll stay out of yours. Deal?"

All Kyler could do was nod, practically trembling in fear, and he quickly turned on his heel and scurried out of the dojo. As soon as he was gone, Miguel couldn't help but let out a quiet chuckle and he rolled his eyes at how miniscule a threat his former bully had become. All it took was Miguel working his ass off to get to where he was today.

"Damn. What's your beef with Kyler?" A voice came from behind Miguel. He turned around to see Kenny also changing and getting ready to leave the dojo. Miguel hadn't spoken much to Kenny during training - the boy hardly talked - but as probably the second best fighter in the dojo, Miguel was keen to get to know him.

"Uh… him and his friends bullied the shit out of me at the beginning of sophomore year." Miguel replied. Kenny nodded, understandably, thinking about how the exact same had been happening to him up until very recently. But Miguel didn't seem like the kind of guy that anyone would want to bully. Fighting him had told Kenny that much.

"Oh wow. How'd you get him to stop?" Kenny asked. Miguel smiled faintly as he remembered that day in the cafeteria where things had finally gone his way against the gang of bullies.

"Joined Cobra Kai, got strong, then kicked his ass." Miguel replied, causing Kenny to smile.

"Yeah. I had the same problem with a bully recently." Kenny remarked. Miguel raised an eyebrow. This kid was getting bullied? How insanely strong were his class of middle school kids if he was the type to get bullied?

"Really? What's the bully's name?"

Kenny was about to tell Miguel the bully's name, but stopped himself just in time. He had remembered what Kyler had said earlier about Miguel dating the Miyagi-Do sensei, Daniel Larusso's, daughter. Well he knew that Anthony Larusso was Daniel Larusso's son, so that meant that the boy who had been bullying him and then he had subsequently beat up was Miguel's ex-girlfriend's brother.

"It's… it's not important." Kenny replied, slightly hesitantly. "Point is he thought he could mess with me, but I showed him that I wasn't someone to be messed with."

"Atta boy." Miguel smiled faintly, seeing many similarities in this kid with a younger version of himself. "You're a really good fighter, you know? Not just for your age, but in general."

"Thanks." Kenny nodded. "Didn't score a point on you though."

"Nah, come on, I've been training much, much longer than you and you still nearly did. That's an achievement." Miguel stated.

"Yeah, nearly. Not quite hit you though." Kenny said. Miguel shrugged.

"You see Kyler nearly land a hit on me? Or Piper? Or Stingray? Or any of the other students? No, they didn't. It was just you, man. You might be smaller than them, but you've managed to master your strengths to the point where you're already better than most of them. That's definitely something to be proud of if you ask me."

Kenny couldn't help but smile at the compliments he was getting from the leader of the dojo.

"Wow, um… thank you." He stammered. Miguel nodded at him and watched as Kenny took off his gi and then put on a clean t-shirt. Upon seeing the design on it, he had to laugh and smile.

"Dungeon Lord? Really?" He remarked, pointing to the logo on Kenny's shirt. As Kenny looked down and saw the shirt he had been bullied so much about, he blushed furiously.

"I, uh… I… it isn't mine… uh… my friend gave it to me, and uh…"

Miguel raised an eyebrow, not buying a second of Kenny's story. He himself had been bullied plenty of times for his nerdy hobbies, so many times had he done the exact same thing as Kenny and tried to hide them.

"That's a shame." Miguel remarked. "Because Dungeon Lord is unequivocally the best video game out there."

Kenny's jaw dropped.

"You play?" He asked, shocked. The badass leader of Cobra Kai played Dungeon Lord? Miguel shrugged.

"Are you kidding? I used to LOVE that game! I used to play it all the time!" He said. "It's a shame though. If you played Dungeon Lord too, I might have been tempted to get back into it and play with you, but I guess not."

Kenny couldn't help but be shocked at the invitation to play video games with the quiet, badass Cobra Kai champion who he had only ever seen in fights, and in fights and training, he had seemed the exact opposite kind of person as the type to play Dungeon Lord.

"Okay, the t-shirt might be mine. I might play the game on occasion." Kenny stated. Miguel laughed.

"You don't say?" He remarked, before falling into a more serious tone. "Hey, seriously, don't ever be ashamed of the things you enjoy. You're a Cobra Kai now. You're a badass. You want to play a Fantasy video game, then you hold your head high and play that video game with a smile on your face. Because if you don't… that's when people start to make fun of you for it. They pick at your insecurity about it and use it to mock you. And if what you went through is anything similar to what I went through with mine, I'm sure you don't want that."

Kenny shook his head.

"Nah, I don't." He responded, before smiling at the older boy. "Thanks, Miguel."

"Yeah, no problem." Miguel replied. Moments later, Kenny left the dojo, with Miguel the only person now still there. As he finished packing up his bag, he saw Silver walk out the office and smile as he saw him.

"Ah, Miguel, I'm glad you're still here. I was just wondering if you'd be able to quickly come back to my place with me. We can finish sorting out your contract if you've got time."

Miguel nodded and stood up, facing his sensei.

"Yeah, let's do it."