I was currently practicing by myself in the yard. I was really thinking about what Miguel had said to me. Even though we had been celebrating his ability to stand up on his own, there was still another issue. Him saying that I liked Yasmine really made me feel weird. I couldn't like a teenager like that. It felt wrong. Maybe it wasn't wrong. Maybe it was natural for me to be attracted to someone my age, even though I wasn't supposed to be this age. On top of that, I didn't even know if Yasmine liked me back, so it might not have even mattered if I liked her.
Suddenly Tory showed up.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"I brought her here." Kreese replied. Was I dreaming? I didn't think either of them knew where I lived, even though they probably could have looked it up.
"I am going to fuck you up so much. Everything that happened to Robby and Miguel, it's all your fault. You're the one who brought back karate." Tory responded. Now I was pretty sure that I was dreaming. She started to fight me. It may have been because it was a nightmare, but I was no match for her. She kicked me into the pool and I hit my head and fell unconscious.
At that point, I shot awake. Even as ruthless as Tory was, I didn't think that she would intentionally kill someone. It was probably a manifestation of my own insecurities. I already knew that what happened was my fault. I was trying to fix things for Miguel and I wanted to do whatever I could to fix things with Robby too. It would probably be better suited for when he got out of Juvie. I didn't know when that was going to be.
I had set up an obstacle course for Miguel to try to move through on his crutches. It was basically just a bunch of cones and some things that I had found around the house.
"Come on. Move it. Don't run into anything." I instructed. As I said that…he promptly tripped over a bike rack.
I would say that the training was working, even though his reflexes still weren't the best. The fact that he was recovering so quickly probably had to mean something. I didn't know how far off he was to doing karate, but I imagined that it wasn't too far off. After a few tries, he managed to catch the ball and carry it across the narrow board. I didn't want to overwork him at all, but I did manage to hug him once he finished. We even managed to walk all the way back to his apartment without him even using his crutches. Our final task would be shedding his inability and throwing both his crutches and his chair in the dumpster.
Of course, things weren't only exercise. He was also helping me with my homework. I knew that he would probably also be returning to school soon.
"So what's the quadratic equation?" He asked me.
"a times x squared plus b times x plus c equals 0.' I answered. "Do I really need to know this stuff? I don't think I ever used it in the real world."
"You might if you do a job other than just a handyman." He commented. "So have you considered what you'll do if you don't change back? Have you thought about college at all?"
"I never thought that I was smart enough to do anything with college and I didn't see the point of it." I admitted. "So do you think that I should just start my dojo?"
"I'm pretty sure that you have to be 18 in order to be a sensei." He replied. "Isn't this Miss Pierce going to teach you?"
"Us. She's going to teach us." I corrected. "Also don't worry about payments because I've got it covered. Though I don't know if we can use the Miyagi-Do name. LaRusso might want to use it. We need to come up with something badass."
"It sucks that Cobra Kai is such a badass name." He stated. It sucked more that Kreese took it from me…even if it was his originally.
"We could try spelling it with a K." I suggested.
"I don't think KKK is what we want to go for." Miguel commented.
"Yeah that would be a bad idea." I agreed. "But we need to figure out how many people are going to be training with us. The only people we have right now are Sarah and maybe Yasmine. We're going to need more guys."
"Well I can ask around at school." He suggested. "And we can probably talk to some of the guys from Miyagi-Do before. I'm sure Chris and Demetri will want to continue learning."
"Are you sure that they'll want to train with you?" I inquired.
"Why wouldn't they?" He asked in confusion.
"Well you were kind of their enemy." I pointed out. "I suppose you can try."
Later the two of us walked into the school with Miguel. There was a big sign welcoming him back. I supposed people knew who he was and they were just glad that he was alive. The round of applause was probably a bit much though. Plus he was getting high-fives from people I had never seen before. We walked into the hallway and suddenly Hawk came over and hugged him.
"El Serpiente." Hawk greeted. "You're back…what are you doing with her?"
"Jenny and I met when I was in the hospital." He explained. "What's the big deal?"
"The big deal is she's been hanging with those Miyagi-Dos." Hawk stated.
"You know I can hear you, right?" I questioned.
"Cobra Kai is crushing it. Maybe you can convince your new girlfriend to join." He suggested.
"I'm not his girlfriend." I argued.
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that." Miguel started. However, before he could say any more, the bell rang. "I'll talk to you about it at lunch."
From that point, we went upstairs and found Demetri and also Yasmine was right behind him.
"Hey." Yasmine greeted me.
"It's good to see you." Demetri replied. "You're really the comeback kid."
"I mean we don't need to make a big deal out of him coming back. He's not dead and that's great, but it's not anything major." Yasmine declared. I actually agreed with what she was saying. "Come on Jen, let's get to class."
She walked off and I couldn't help but stare at her a little as she did.
"Well I admire your game. You managed to get the hottest girl in school to fall for you." Demetri commented.
"What?" I asked in surprise.
"Did you not see how she blushed when you walked over?" Demetri responded. "Sure she may not be the most popular, but she likes you. I can't say that I'm not jealous."
"I should get to class…" I stammered before I walked off.
I had never had any issues with girls before, but things with Yasmine were different. I supposed in a lot of ways we were similar. We were both trying to make up for the mistakes we had made in our lives. I still didn't even know if I could date a high school student, despite the fact that I was also a high school student.
Once I was in the lunchroom, I bumped into an Asian guy when I was getting my lunch. I then recognized him as one of the guys who was picking on Miguel and that I had beaten up. Even worse he was wearing a Cobra Kai t-shirt.
"Well hey baby, I heard you like it rough." He remarked. "I'm really good at making it so a girl's pussy hurts."
"Somehow I doubt that." I commented.
"What did you say, Bitch?" He asked me.
"I said that I don't think you could keep up with me." I responded. "Not that I would give you a chance anyway."
"Maybe you shouldn't mess with me." He replied.
"Or maybe you shouldn't mess with me. Unless you want there to be another video of you getting your ass kicked all over the internet." I threatened.
"You should just walk away, Kyler." Yasmine replied. At that point, Kyler did what she said and left us. "I'm sorry. He used to be my friend."
"I guess what's important is the two of you aren't friends anymore." I told her. "Thanks for sticking up for me, even though I probably didn't need you to."
"Well I don't think your mom would be very happy if you got in trouble for fighting, even if he is probably one of the most punchable people here at school." She explained. "Speaking of punching, when are we going to learn karate?"
"I don't know. As soon as Julie says we can I guess." I stated.
Around last period, Sarah came up to me. I assumed that she wanted to talk to me about her mom.
"So I have some good news. My mom is willing to teach us today after school." She replied. "So how many people are we looking at?"
"I mean right now it's just you, me, Miguel and Yasmine." I answered.
"Good because she only got one male gi." She replied. "But I don't think we can compete with just four people."
"Miguel was trying to find some more guys." I explained. Then I realized something. "You two haven't met yet."
"You should go ask him if he got anyone because my mom will have to order more gis." She suggested.
After school, I went over to him.
"Hey, so did you have any success?" I questioned.
"No, Cobra Kai has just changed and Kreese is making them an army of assholes." He explained.
"Well we're just have to knock some sense into them then." I remarked. "I mean we can't do it here, but we can beat them somewhere else."
"Or we could just focus on beating them on the mat." He proposed. "Besides you probably need to learn how to fight Tory. She can't be with them here, but she could be if we fought somewhere else."
I knew that he was right. I didn't want to get into any fights. While I was used to striking first, I didn't want to do anything that would make my mom disappointed in me. Wait did I just think of Ali as my mom? I mean I supposed that she was. Also the important thing was learning a more defensive style of karate and part of defense was not starting fights. Maybe I could combine what I knew with some new techniques to be an even better fighter. I wanted to do this. I wanted to get my revenge on Kreese for everything that he had done to me.
I found Hawk with a bunch of the other guys from Cobra Kai.
"You know my dad would be so ashamed of you right now, He didn't teach you to be a bully." I remarked.
"Your dad didn't teach me anything." He argued.
"Yeah, we both know that's a fucking lie. I know that you used to be a scrawny loser. You were even afraid to talk to girls. Of course, now girls don't want to talk to you because you're too moving of a prick and you've lost all of your old friends." I told him. "I could kick your ass, but you'll probably just whine to a teacher about it. So you could try to learn karate with honor, or you could keep hanging out with a bunch of thugs. How does it feel to become just like the people you were trying to protect yourself from?"
It was then that I realized something. Hawk had turned into how Robby was before he started training with LaRusso. I hoped that I would be able to convince him to change. Robby may have hated me, but at least he wasn't hanging around with Cobra Kai.
After school, Yasmine came up to me.
"I'm so ready for this." She remarked.
"So can we talk about something?' I asked her,
"That depends on what we're talking about." She countered. Why was it so hard to ask a girl if she liked you or not. Also what would happen if everyone was wrong and she didn't like me like that.
"Thanks again for helping me out with Kyler." I remarked. I chickened out I didn't know why I couldn't do it, but I just couldn't do it.
"Well I really want to change and I don't just want to learn how to fight so I can be a punk, I want to be able to defend myself from anyone, even dumb jocks at parties. When I go to college, I want to be able to walk around campus without anything happening to me." She stated as she blushed again. "So…let's get going."
We ended up going to Sarah's and just as I thought, it was just the four of us. I also hoped that Julie would know what she was doing. I hoped that she knew how to teach us.
I figured the first thing that we needed to do was stretch while we waited. I knew that this was going to be interesting and I hoped that it would at least go well.
"Hello everyone, my name is Julie Pierce. I hope you'll cut me a little bit of slack because I've never taught anyone except for my daughter before. Now before we start, I got you something. She gave each of us a gi. They were blue and came with belts. Miguel and I had black belts, Sarah had a green one and Yasmine's was white.
"Why are the belts different colors?" Yasmine asked.
"They are meant to represent your skill level." Julie explained. "Since you're a beginner, yours is white. Sarah's is green because she hasn't earned her black belt yet. Miguel and Jenny's skills warrant them. Now put them on and take off your shoes. We'll be practicing indoors to start."
I went to the bathroom and put on the blue gi. I was different from what I was used to wearing. I couldn't help but wonder if it was going to be our official color or something. We would probably also need a name of some kind.
"So are we going to have any sort of name for our dojo?" Miguel asked.
"I still trying to figure it out." Julie answered. "Today we will not even be practicing any karate."
"Then what are we doing?" Yasmine inquired.
"We're going to start with a technique developed by Nariyoshi Miyagi. He didn't tell me why I was doing it, but I will tell you. This is to teach you muscle memory. And to do that you will be cleaning the floors." She explained. Was that really how the old man taught LaRusso all of his moves.
So Yasmine and I were working on one side and Miguel and Sarah would be working on the other side.
"I can't believe that I have to do this. I've never cleaned anything in my life." Yasmine groaned.
"I know it looks stupid, but if maybe should at least try it out." I suggested.
After we were done, we went outside. It was then that I realized that things had been escalated to much worse. I couldn't believe that they had come to us. They were standing on the sidekick in front of the house.
"Mom, you need to come see this." Sarah remarked. Julie came out and she saw what we saw: Kreese was there with Tory, Hawk, Kyler and the rest of Cobra Kai.
"Can I help you?" She asked.
"Yes. I just thought I would introduce myself. My name is John Kreese and these are my students. I hear that you're starting a dojo of your own and I was thinking that maybe we could have a little bit of an exhibition."
"I know who you are." Julie responded. "Mr. Miyagi told me about you and your long-haired friend. I'm not interested in doing anything with you."
I didn't know what long-haired friend she was talking about. I wondered if it was worth asking about that at all. What was important was that Kreese saw us as a threat. I supposed he had some reason to after LaRusso had managed to defeat me and several other members of Cobra Kai. There was no use underestimating anyone anymore.
"Well you have one of my former students here and the daughter of another of them." Kreese remarked. "No what you try to teach them, it will never be as good as what I can teach them. They have Cobra Kai blood in their veins."
I kind of wished that part wasn't true, even though it wasn't actually true. Even though Kreese was the closest thing to a father that I had ever had, that still wasn't saying much since he had just abandoned me.
"I think it's time for you to leave. This isn't just some building where you can come to freely. This is private property, my property and I want you to get off of it." Julie declared. "I know what you're teaching your kids and none of mine will have any part of it."
"Okay, I wanted to do things civilly, but if you're not interested in that, this isn't going to be the last that you see of us." Kreese replied. "I'm a little bit disappointed but I understand. You have a good day."
I looked at them as they all walked away. It seemed like he had bought an old school bus for them.
"So there may be very many of us, but we are going to take that fucker down." Julie declared. Sarah seemed to be surprised by it like she wasn't used to seeing her mother curse. "I will teach you all Miyagi-Do and all of you will be great fighters when I am through with you."
So Jenny, Miguel, Sarah and Yasmine are at an unnamed new dojo with Julie as the sensei, unaware that Daniel is preparing to get his own dojo back together. Jenny is also a bit afraid of moving things forward with Yasmine. She might need her wingman to help her. Please don't forget to review.