CHAPTER 125
The rest of the evening was beautiful. A combination of drinks, dancing and celebrating the union of the couple. However, like all great things, it eventually came to an end. Soon, the end of the night rolled around and it was time for everyone to go home. Johnny and Carmen headed for their honeymoon suite, from where they'd depart the next day for their week-long honeymoon.
During the week they would be gone, Johnny and Carmen entrusted their two sons to look after the apartments alone. They were the only two living in the apartments for a week so naturally, they ended up having two visitors staying there with them. The couples were able to live together for a week, Robby and Tory living in Johnny's place and Sam and Miguel living in Carmen's. Needless to say, none of them got that much sleep that week, despite the Taikai being right around the corner.
That meant that the night they knew Johnny and Carmen would be returning home, both Robby and Miguel were exhausted. Sleeping alone for the first time in a week, they were both thoroughly unprepared and annoyed by an airhorn waking them up at the crack of dawn the next morning.
BEEEEEEEEP! BEEEP! BEEEP! BEEEP!
"Waaaaaake up! Get up, Diaz! Now!" Johnny barked, clearly not feeling the same tiredness as Miguel, despite having just returned from his Hawaii honeymoon a few hours ago.
Johnny was definitely tired. It had been a week of non-stop incredible fun with Carmen, from the moment they woke up to the moment they finally fell asleep. However, he forced himself to hold back the exhaustion. Today was May 22nd. May 22nd. Including that day, in exactly 10 days, they'd be on a plane to Japan. It really was the final countdown, and given that Johnny hadn't been able to train his students for an entire week, he was eager to make up for lost time now. Even if that meant waking up his students at 5 o'clock in the morning.
At this ungodly hour of the morning, Miguel wasn't nearly as eager to begin the day as his sensei was. He groaned, trying to cover his head with a pillow to block out his sensei's loud yelling.
"Go away." Miguel grumbled.
"You have 3 seconds, Diaz, before I dump this glass of ice-water on you like I did Robby!" Johnny snapped. That certainly woke Miguel up, and forced him to drag himself out of bed and over to Johnny's car, where an even more exhausted looking Robby was waiting for them.
"Dad, I don't want to do this. I want to sleep." Robby murmured.
"Shut up." Johnny demanded, ignoring his son's protests. Neither Robby nor Miguel moved though, and Johnny sighed. "Listen to me and maybe I won't question why I found a bra in one of the living rooms when I arrived this morning. One that definitely wasn't there when I left."
Miguel's eyes flickered towards Robby, silently questioning which girlfriend had left it behind during their week without parents around. They didn't know whose it was, but they weren't intent on standing around to find out. They had little choice but to stand at attention opposite Johnny, agonizingly close and yet so far from the comfort of their beds.
"What are we doing, sensei? It's still pitch-black out here." Miguel groaned.
"We're training. 5 am… this is when champions are made. This is when the wimps of the world fall over and die."
"Yeah, well then we might be wimps, because I feel like I'm going to die." Robby muttered.
"QUIET!" Johnny bellowed, his familiar bark snapping both of his students awake, and also immediately shutting them up. "Now… we're not going to be training at the dojo today. We're going to be getting a bit of a change of scenery."
"Where are we going?" Robby asked.
"Desert." Johnny grunted in reply. Both Robby and Miguel winced and nodded, knowing full-well that whatever Johnny had planned definitely wasn't going to be easy, let alone adding the factor of a scorching, mid-summer desert.
They began to walk towards the car, but Johnny quickly stopped them.
"Nope. Not taking the car. Running."
"We're running all the way to the desert?!" Miguel exclaimed.
"No… you're running all the way to the desert. I'm taking the car." Johnny told them.
It's like 15 kilometers away!" Robby exclaimed. "It's like a 2 hour run away!"
"Guess you'd better get started then!" Johnny told them. "I'll be right behind you in the car. Have fun!"
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With that, Johnny got into his car and the boys had little choice but to begin running. It was an excruciatingly long run, especially as the sun began to rise and the heat began to beat down on the two boys. Of course, Johnny wasn't feeling a thing as he sipped on his drink and leisurely drove behind them, occasionally honking his horn to signal to them to hurry up, but to the boys the run lasted an eternity.
They started by running through the streets of L.A, but the further they got away from the city, the harder the run seemed to get. There were no buildings, no remnants of shade to block out the sunlight. As they ran up a mostly empty country road, slowly inching their way towards the desert where they'd be training, they could feel the sun sapping them of every ounce of energy.
Around half an hour into the run, Robby and Miguel came to another painful realization. Despite the boiling sun, despite how long they'd be running for, Johnny had no intention of even letting them stop for water. They'd be relying on whatever mettle they had inside them to power them during the journey, as their internal water levels very quickly plummeted as they sweat. They could feel their feet begin to feel like lead and their heads pound in pain as their minutes until arrival slowly inched nearer.
However, the race wasn't in any way Robby versus Miguel. It was Robby and Miguel versus exhaustion. It was looking more and more unclear whether they'd actually make it to their training location, or if exhaustion would hit them first. Sure enough, it turned out to be the latter, as Miguel was the first of the two boys to finally run out of energy and collapse onto the scalding asphalt.
Johnny watched all of this and slowly brought his car to a halt. Despite Robby's concerned expression as he stared at a fallen Miguel, Johnny didn't even exit his car. He remained seated there, tapping his leg nervously as he watched his student.
"Come on, Diaz." He murmured to himself. "Get up."
Johnny knew that Miguel had more left to give. He knew that Miguel would be able to push himself further, just enough for them to make it to the training location. He knew his student's abilities better than Miguel knew them himself. Which is why Johnny wasn't at all surprised as Miguel slowly dragged himself to his feet, Robby helping him up, and the two boys standing uneasily, as if both ready to pass out from dehydration and exhaustion.
Johnny couldn't help but smile as he watched both boys standing up again, determined looks on their faces. They glanced backwards at Johnny, who had parked a few yard away, and they tried to gesture to him for water, although their Sensei conveniently was looking away so didn't see or hear their pleas. Resigning to their fate, Robby and Miguel channeled any last strength within them to keep running…
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They made it! Pushed to the brink of exhaustion and muscle failure, but still! They had made it! Just as both boys were about to fall over and lose consciousness completely, heatstroke and exhaustion battled fiercely, trying to conquer them, but the teenagers refused to let it. Eventually, when they could finally see nothing but desert around them, Johnny finally brought the car to a halt, signaling that they had arrived at their destination.
If only the desert that they had made it to was made entirely of sand. Maybe it would've been less painful to collapse onto than the rocky terrain with only a thin layer of sand on top of it. Both Robby and Miguel fell to the ground, tiredness seeping through every inch of their bodies, and it was only when Johnny dangled bottles of water on top of their heads that they managed to find the strength to stand.
The bottles were both half liter bottles, and Johnny held them out to both boys, before pulling them away from the teenagers at the last moment.
"Hold on. Just one thing first." Johnny told them, and he then proceeded to open both bottles. As much as Robby and Miguel desired to swallow every drop of the heavenly liquid, Johnny had other ideas. In front of their very eyes, Johnny decided to pour out the vast majority of their water, leaving only a few sips in each.
Robby and Miguel both let out extremely unmanly whines as they watched the liquid drain into the greedy sand and promptly disappear, glaring daggers at Johnny.
"What the hell, dad?!" Robby snapped. Johnny threw the two bottles at them and sighed.
"The Taikai final… it's an all-out, UFC-style fight. You're going to be pushed to exhaustion during every round, and you won't have the luxury of chugging an entire bottle after each round. Not unless you want to throw up all over the mat. All you'll be able to have is a few sips. You need to train your bodies to make do with that little water. And that training starts now."
Annoying, Johnny was right, and both Robby and Miguel knew that. That didn't change the fact that right now though, they wanted nothing more in the world than water. The few sips they had been given by Johnny had teased them with the thought of more, so if anything they felt worse after drinking than before.
Not that Johnny particularly cared though. Now that they had finally arrived, it was time for actual training to begin. As they stood in the middle of the desert, Johnny proceeded to carve out a small circle in the sand, one about half the size of the sparring deck they were used to fighting in. Because the two boys knew that they were about to fight. They could feel it, and the smirk on Johnny's face only proved it. Fighting in this small sand ring… there would be nowhere to hide for either fighter.
After he was done making the ring, Johnny walked over to the teenagers.
"Diaz, get in the ring." Johnny instructed. Once Miguel did, Johnny then turned to his son and took off the black headband that seldom left the sensei's forehead.
"Hands behind your back." Johnny demanded, and as Robby began to question and protest the instruction, Johnny roughly yanked Robby's arms behind his back, and he tied his hands together with the headband.
With that, he then pushed Robby into the small ring to face Miguel, the hispanic teenager not facing the same handicap as Robby.
"So… the game's easy. You two spar for 5 minutes." Johnny told them. Both boys looked at Johnny, confused.
"We're fighting? But Robby's hands…" Miguel pointed out and Robby nodded, unable to do much else with his hands tied behind his back.
"He'll be fine. Fight him like you'd fight him normally." Johnny instructed Miguel. "After 5 minutes, you two will switch and Miguel will have his hands tied behind his back and Robby won't."
"How exactly is this fair? I can't block anything." Robby pointed out. Johnny nodded.
"Exactly." Johnny agreed. "You can't. Just like you probably won't be able to in the fifth round of a fight against the Oliveira kid."
"I'm not following?" Miguel asked.
"Robby knows. He fought him most recently. From what I've heard, the kid hits like a bulldozer." Johnny stated.
"He does. And he looks to have only gotten bigger since he got back." Robby added. Johnny nodded.
"Right. So during a 5 round fight, provided you're able to block all of his strikes, by the time the fifth round comes around, even if you haven't been knocked out, your arms are going to feel like jelly from all of the blocks. You're both used to fighting a basic 3 point fight that lasts no longer than a few minutes. Fighting a 25 minute fight… that's a whole new thing. You need to prepare for those final minutes where your entire body, especially your arms, will feel like absolute shit. That's where the fight will be won or lost."
"So I'm just supposed to stand here and get hit for 5 minutes?" Robby asked, not exactly loving the sound of it. Johnny shook his head.
"No. You can still fight. Or at least try to anyway. You won't have your hands to help you as by this point in the fight, he'll have beaten your arms numb. You can still try and kick, but yeah, you will end up taking a lot of hits. The whole point of the drill is that you do. That you can build enough strength to take all of the hits in the final round and not get knocked out. Understand?"
"Yes, sensei," both Robby and Miguel said, before turning towards one another and internally groaning. Even though Miguel had the ability to use his arms for this round, he knew that soon enough he would be in Robby's shoes. This was a wildly unorthodox and stupid drill, but hearing Johnny's rationale, they realized that it could actually come in useful. So they forced themselves to ignore any doubts or questions and bow to their opponent, before beginning to spar…