CHAPTER 57

Miguel lay there, not even moving an inch for what seemed like an eternity. He remained there, curled up in a foetal ball, slowly bringing himself down from the intense emotional episode he had had earlier. He didn't even know what had just happened to him to be honest. Well, he did. It had just never, ever happened to him before. But it had happened to someone else he knew… Sam. He had seen this before from her. Times that she had been triggered by circumstances (usually Tory) into these kinds of panic attacks. Where her entire body seemed to switch off, and her mind cut too. Miguel remembered that she kind of went into her own little world that only time could pull her out of, so time was what Miguel gave himself. He didn't go after Robby and Hawk. He didn't even open his phone to call anyone. He didn't move an inch, merely letting his hyperventilation slowly dissipate, like a tide. It took him a while - what felt like hours but was really just about 30 minutes - before Miguel finally managed to pull himself back to reality.

Immediately once he did, the words of Hawk and Robby earlier couldn't stop ringing through his ears.

"You think this is bad? You continue with Cobra Kai and dare to lay a hand on us or our friend… you're going to be in for a hell of a lot worse."

Rage boiled inside Miguel like never before. Who the fuck did Robby think he was?! That piece of shit stalked Miguel to Golf-n-Stuff, challenged him into a fight, but knew that he wouldn't be able to beat him in a fight so recruited the next best fighter in the Valley to help him?! What a bitch. What an absolute bitch. And to think they hated Cobra Kai for ambushes?! The irony in that was insane! Robby and Hawk had no right to act like such big men! He could and he would have beat the shit out of them had he not had a panic attack. He already had Robby down, and if he hadn't had the anxiety attack, he would've noticed Hawk come in and would've beaten him too. But those fucking pussies had to take advantage of him in a moment of weakness and had the audacity to act like they had any sort of power over him? They were going to regret it.

Miguel slowly pulled himself to his feet, ignoring the screaming pains that were running up and down his body. This wasn't the end of the feud with Hawk and Robby. That was for sure. He wasn't going to back down. They had messed with the wrong guy. Miguel pulled out his phone and his eyes widened slightly as he realised that he had a message from Kenny. He had completely forgotten about the guy during the whole fight and everything! Had Robby and Hawk gotten to him too?! He quickly opened the message and let out an audible sigh of relief when he saw that Kenny had only texted to let him know that he had decided to go home with Lia and her mom as they would be dropping him home. He was safe. Thank God. That meant that Robby and Hawk hadn't gotten to him. It also meant that Miguel wouldn't be interrupted when he did what he did next.

Dragging himself to his feet, Miguel slowly shuffled out of the bathroom and back through the park, walking towards the car park. He was gaining a lot of glances from shocked onlookers, and rightly so too. Miguel looked like an absolute state. Besides the fact that his shirt was untucked and partially torn, it was also graced by splotches of blood from wounds Miguel had received during the beatdown. His face was just as bruised and bloody too, as a small yet surprisingly deep cut had opened beside his right eye. Miguel had managed to stem the blood flow and wipe it up with his sleeve, but it still sort of contained a mark on his face. Not that Miguel even felt it though. The physical toll was starting to wear off now, so all he could feel bubbling inside him was a deadly combination of anger and humiliation.

Making it to his mom's car, Miguel lead-footed it out of the park and sped home at record speed, practically throwing it into the parking spot in the compound, coming mere inches from sending the car flying into the wall. After turning off the car, Miguel leapt out and stormed over to apartment number 2, banging roughly on the door.

"JOHNNY!" Miguel bellowed, knocking on the door in a very impolite manner. "Open the door! I know you're in there! Open the door!"

A couple of moments later, the door swung open and a pissed off, disgruntled looking Johnny opened the door.

"What the hell, Mi-" Johnny's voice trailed off and his jaw gaped in shock as he saw the physical state Miguel was in, his face a rainbow of blood and bruises and his shirt not much better. But Miguel wasn't in the mood to stick around for a chat. He quickly slipped past Johnny and stormed into the apartment, his head whipping around in fury.

"Hey, Robby! Where are you, you piece of shit?!" Miguel snarled, charging through every room of the house, kicking doors open and making sure Robby wasn't in the bedroom, the bathroom, and everywhere else. Johnny, quickly overcoming his shock, ran after Miguel.

"Hey, hey, hey, Miguel!" He yelled, grabbing Miguel by the shoulders and stopping the boy. "He's not here! He's not here. He's at his mom's place."

Miguel's eyes were knitted in a dark scowl as he looked at Johnny.

"I want his address. Now." Miguel murmured, in a low voice, dripping with menace. Johnny's eyes widened as he realised just what Miguel was intending to do, and he thanked the Gods that Robby wasn't staying at his place that night.

"W-w-what? No!" Johnny exclaimed. "Wait… Robby did this to you?"

Miguel took a deep breath, facing his former sensei, and he nodded, a grunt of affirmation all Johnny received from the teenager but enough to answer his question. Johnny was speechless in shock.

"W-what? What happened?" Johnny stammered. Miguel's scowl deepened.

"I'll tell you what fucking happened, Johnny. You remember that run-in Robby and I had the day before yesterday at the party? Well I guess Robby wanted to get back at me and get revenge for losing that fight."

"So he just came and beat you up in cold blood?!" Johnny exclaimed, finding it hard to wrap his head around. Miguel shook his head and scoffed.

"Like he could." Miguel remarked. "Your weak son couldn't beat me right now with one hand tied behind my back and he knows that. So instead he decides to recruit a helper… the new lead douche bag at Miyagi-Do… Hawk."

"Hawk? Wait… what? Hawk? Like your best friend Hawk?" Johnny stammered, struggling to keep up with all of this.

"No. My former best friend Hawk. Now the boy's just the next name on my list." Miguel replied, his voice deathly calm. "But that's besides the point. Yeah, Robby clearly enlisted Hawk's help in this fucking vendetta against me but that's not all. It's not like we happened to run into one another. They stalked me, Johnny. They fucking stalked me. They either followed me to the arcade or tracked me from there, but either way they stalked me."

The last sentence Miguel said, it wasn't anger dripping from his voice, but instead a combination of melancholy and a few traces of fear. Miguel had gone through the various stages of emotions over the past hour. It had started with the shock of his panic attack and what had happened. It then turned to a fiery anger. And now it had hit the last stage: grief.

"So this is what's going to happen now? I'm going to be fucking scared to even leave my house, knowing that at any moment I'm going to be attacked? That I'm going to have the shit beaten out of me, whether I'm at the dojo, at home, or in a fucking public bathroom? That I'm everyone's target from now on, and they're going to go out of their way to fucking go after me."

Tears began to roll down Miguel's cheeks as he expressed to not only Johnny, but also to himself the new reality that he was about to have to live in.

"Because if that's the case Johnny… I don't want to be a part of any of this, Johnny. I want to leave in the middle of the fucking night and never come back. It won't matter about you, or my family, or the baby you guys are having… Johnny, I remember what it was like to be in that wheelchair. I won't… I can't let it happen again. I can't go back to that place, Johnny, I can't…"

As Miguel mumbled this in a tone no louder than a whisper, tears fell faster down his cheeks. As Johnny noticed this, he quickly walked towards his broken student and pulled him into a tight hug. It was the exact same situation he had been in with Robby 2 months earlier. But there was a vast difference between the two. Miguel didn't find any comfort in his Sensei's embrace. Not anymore. Not after he had sided with him over the boy who had been nothing but loyal to him for 2 years. Miguel quickly pushed himself backwards and out of the hug, facing his sensei with his eyebrows knitted in a tight glare.

"No… no… get off me, okay?!" Miguel snapped quietly. "I can have your boy arrested, you know? He's already on probation and another incident, with the same victim no less… I mean stalking and assaulting… that's got to land him back in juvie, right?"

"Miguel…" Johnny murmured pleadingly.

"Or better yet… I'll start an online movement!" Miguel laughed. "Release my story to the world. People will hear about what has happened between us and they'll be on Robby in a heartbeat. Hell, if I'm lucky, they might even turn into a racially motivated situation, you know with the whole white guy beating up the latino angle to it. No chance in hell Robby ever recovers from something like that."

"Miguel… I will talk to Robby, okay? I will make sure he doesn't come after you again. I swear to you I will. But please, please, PLEASE, don't get him sent him back to juvie." Johnny begged. He knew how scarring that place had been for Robby, so the last he wanted was for Robby to be sent back there.

Miguel scowled at him for several moments before eventually nodding.

"I'm not going to the cops." Miguel eventually stated, causing Johnny to let out a huge sigh of relief. "You know, from what I hear, juvie's not exactly a picnic. You know, treated like a predator by the outside, a rabid dog by the guards, and prey by the other inmates. Robby doesn't deserve that."

Johnny's breath hitched in his throat for a moment. Wait… what? Miguel was actually saying that about Robby?! That sounded too good to be true. It was…

"He deserves worse." Miguel completed his sentence, looking his sensei right in the eye. "He deserves far worse than that. He needs to feel the same pain I felt when I was in a wheelchair for months. Needs to feel the same helplessness. The same weakness. And it's impossible for him to feel the exact way I did if some random inmate from juvie is doing the punching. No, it has to be me delivering that killer blow."

Johnny's blood once again ran cold as he heard the calm, quiet threats against Robby.

"Now I'm not going to go out like Rambo, hunting down Robby like a dog. At least not yet anyway." Miguel stated. "And quite frankly the only reason I'm hesitating now is because after everything you've done for me in the past 2 years, I owe you that much. I hate your son more than I thought it was physically possible to hate someone, but that doesn't mean I hate you. I haven't forgotten what you've done for me, done for my family, Johnny. Which is why I'm doing this one thing. As a favor to you."

Miguel and Johnny stood face to face again as Miguel uttered these words to the man he once considered to be a father to him.

"But make no mistake… if Robby lays a hand on me one more time, I'm going after him and I'm not going to stop until he's the one you're giving physical rehab to." Miguel said. "So you tell him to stay away from me. Not for my sake. But for his own."

With that, Miguel turned on heel and walked out of the apartment, leaving Johnny with his head in his hands. Johnny was in a hellish situation right now. Every night for 2 years, he had dreamed of patching things up with Robby. But now that it had happened, with Robby and Miguel's feud growing more and more toxic by the day, he was in serious risk of losing Miguel in the process. And he couldn't let that happen. He couldn't.

Meanwhile, Miguel walked into his apartment. Thankfully, his mom and yaya weren't awake, so he walked straight into his bedroom. He didn't go shower. He didn't go clean himself up of the blood and dirt that was on him from the fight. He merely collapsed onto his bed and sobbed into his pillow, the events of the evening catching up to him and rendering him an emotional wreck. How had everything gotten so fucked up?!