Trigger warning: the chapter below contains violence, a character death, and discussion of suicide/ self-harm. If any of this feels heavy for you, please pause and take care of yourself — If you or anyone reading is struggling with thoughts of self-harm, please seek immediate help from a trusted person or local emergency services.
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The city had changed. Nights were no longer places for laughter and stray lights — they were punctured by the sound of boots and the metallic echo of weapons. Cobra Kai moved like a tide, and tonight the tide went out into the streets.
Aisha walked beside Hawk and Tory, steps measured. Her hands smelled faintly of the gym bag she carried; the place where she'd learned to move, years ago, with Miguel and Hawk before anything got ruined. She had come back for them — for old friends — thinking she could remind them of softer things. She had not come back for war.
Hawk glanced at her twice — the memory of the old days flickered in the depth of his eyes. "You sure about this?" he asked, voice low.
Aisha forced a smile. "I'm sure. I don't want them to be alone." Her voice was light but the tremor at the edge betrayed her.
Tory snorted. "Cute reunion story, but let's focus. Tonight's patrol. We keep the corners clear."
They moved through alleys, through the neighborhoods that had once felt safe. Kenny and Kyler were at the front, laughing too loud, pushing a trash can like kids. Mitch carried a crowbar like a badge. Bert smoked and watched every doorway with hardened eyes.
Andrea walked apart from them, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her jacket. Robby trailed a step behind her, shoulders tight in a way that didn't show on his face.
They found the first group easily — a cluster of teenagers with stolen bikes and backpacks, standing under a flickering streetlight. Someone in the group spat at the passing Cobras.
"Trash," one of them muttered. "Wannabe gangs."
Kenny's grin went savage. "Not for long," he said, giddy.
The confrontation didn't take long. Words first, then the shove. Hawk moved like a viper, grabbing one kid and slamming him against the wall. Kyler took a swing. Bert's crowbar knocked a bike to the pavement. People who'd had nothing to do with any war watched from doorways, terrified.
Aisha stepped forward before it became worse. "This won't solve anything —" she tried.
From the shadows came another figure, bigger than the rest, eyes glassy with adrenaline. He swung a bottle and missed; Kyler's punch put him down. Mitch kicked the man's hand, sending the bottle skittering. Laughter, then silence. The losers lay curled up, the Cobras standing over them.
"Walk away," Robby barked. "Now."
The small crowd scattered, some limping, some bleeding, all shaken. Aisha watched the scene, stomach turning. "This isn't what I came back for," she whispered.
"You're naïve," Andrea said flatly. "Or you could be one of the useful ones."
Aisha's eyes flashed. "I'm not naïve. I know what I'm doing."
Kenny's live feed had been running; someone in the group boosted his signal and the moment spread into the dark. Someone at a corner store heard the commotion and called two friends — a different riot started elsewhere.
They walked on.
On the other side of town, Miguel had been with Sam all day, quieter than usual. He had promised her he'd be with her while she healed, and the promise dug into him like a splinter. He had not wanted the violence; he'd come back because he couldn't leave Sam alone. That loyalty had already cost him something — a piece of his trust in himself — and tonight it would cost even more.
When Miguel heard the shouting — a frantic, ragged sound that rose like a tide — he ran toward it. He didn't know the details, only that people were fighting, someone had been cornered. He pushed through the crowd and saw the Cobras: black gis, cold faces. He saw his friends. His chest tightened.
"Get back!" Miguel yelled as he tried to wedge himself between the Cobras and a group of terrified civilians. "This is getting out of hand!"
A man in a hoodie — not with the Cobras, not with the civilians — stepped forward from the swirling crowd. He had blood on his knuckles. He had nothing to lose. He looked at Miguel and, with a motion that felt like the final snap on a rope, he reached in hard.
Nobody saw it happen in slow motion. It was sudden, horrible — a glint of steel, a movement, Miguel falling to his knees, hands going to his side. He never had a weapon. He had only his hands and his heart.
"NO!" Sam screamed from the curb where she had been watching, held back by a medic and a couple volunteers. "MIGUEL!"
Time folded in on itself. Robby's voice cut through the chaos, high with something between panic and the old cold. "Who did that?!" he shouted, but the man was already gone — swallowed by the night.
People swarmed around Miguel. Blood soaked his shirt. Aisha dropped to her knees, tears already in her eyes. "Miguel!" she wailed. "Miguel, stay with us!"
Robby looked like a statue that had cracked. The coldness that had been a shield fell. For the first time the mask slipped and his hands shook. He cradled Miguel's head like a child.
Andrea reached him fast, two steps away from where Miguel lay, and for a moment the world narrowed to a sharp, burning point. "No," she said, voice low, but the word didn't contain enough power.
Sam was dragged forward through the crowd, hysterical. "Help him! Somebody—" She couldn't move past a mass of flailing arms and frantic faces.
"Call an ambulance!" someone shouted. "Get him to a hospital!"
They tried, they shouted, they begged, but the wound was deep and clean and fast. Miguel's eyes fluttered. He looked at Robby with a small, horrified light — the kind of trust that had once been the center of so much — and then he looked at Sam with the love that had kept him breathing for a while. He whispered something too soft to hear, maybe a name, maybe a promise.
Then he didn't move.
Silence fell like a physical thing. The city's hum — horns, music, nearby TV static — seemed a world away. Aisha covered her mouth, collapsing against a brick wall as if she might slide down it and never get up. Hawk was still, wide-eyed, the edges of his face wet where tears had started.
Robby's whole body doubled over. The last of his controlled bravado crumpled into ragged noise. He pressed his forehead to Miguel's, the same way he had pressed fists to pads a thousand times. "Miguel," he sobbed, swallowing something that was not victory and not honor, just unbearable loss. "No. No, no, no."
Andrea's eyes had gone glassy; the rage that had spun her into weapons and blood didn't know how to take the shape of this. She moved in a blur and then stood still, the motion collapsing into hysterical helplessness. A break in the armor showed everyone the cost of the war. Tory put a hand on Hawk's shoulder and didn't know how to steady him.
Kenny's phone clattered to the ground as if sound had weight. The live stream that had been a trophy of their dominance now showed a boy with blood on his chest and friends around him, shouting into nothing. No one could spin this into triumph.
Somewhere in the crowd, someone — a stranger with a heart — lit a cigarette and shook as if the flame itself had no rights in that place.
They got Miguel to the ambulance. They held him, they pressed, they begged. Sam's cries were a broken song. Aisha rode in the ambulance and pressed her forehead to Miguel's hand like a child holding a palm. Robby's arms were numb, then shaking. Andrea sat on the curb with her head between her knees and sobbed in a way that shook the air — explosive, raw.
At the hospital, medical staff rushed him through. Robby paced the corridor like a caged animal then ripped his hands across his face and dropped to his knees at the sliding glass doors when the doctors emerged. A doctor's mouth moved and then silence — the sort of silence that confirms the absolute.
"No," Robby said, a single small word that carried a tomb. He fell forward, hitting the floor hard and curling around nothing.
The Cobras were silent. The thing that had bound them together — their collective cold — had been hollowed by Miguel's death. He had been the one among them who had leaned toward the light and that made the loss more unbearable: they had won the tournament, but they had lost the one heart that might have kept them from turning fully into monsters.
Aisha's sobs wound into the night. Hawk's jaw worked, trying to produce rage but finding brokenness. Tory's usual contempt slid into stunned grief. Kenny went numb, then furious — not at the world, not for the first time, but inward — for the loss of the narrative he could sell.
Robby slipped away from the chaos and walked to the payphone down the corridor like a sleepwalker who could not accept the world had changed. He fumbled with quarters, voice hollow as he dialed a number he had not called in a long time: his father.
There was no sound at the other end of the line at first. Then Johnny's voice — tired, strained, half a world away — answered.
"Robs?" Johnny asked. "You okay?"
Robby's fingers shook, and the words came out like shards. "Dad. I — I can't do this anymore. I'm tired. I can't keep… I can't—" His voice fractured. "I don't want this life. I can't live with it. I can't stand what we've become. I—"(he stopped, breath hitching)
There was a pause, then Johnny's voice, raw and trying: "Hey. Hey. Slow down. Slow down, man. You sound—what happened?"
Robby pressed his forehead to the receiver as if he might squeeze the sound into the glass. He let out a laugh that had no humor. "Miguel's dead, Dad. Miguel's dead because of us. Because of—because of everything. I thought I was doing something. I thought… I thought we were family. I thought I could be a man. Now I just want it to stop. I'm tired of being the one who breaks people."
He swallowed. The line was small and the world had narrowed to a seam. "I don't know if I can go on. I don't know if it's worth it. I don't want to wake up in the morning knowing I was part of it."
Johnny's voice shook. "Robs—don't. Don't say that. Don't—"
"But I'm telling you," Robby whispered. "Because it's the truth. I don't want to be here. I can't keep being here. I'm—I feel like I'm done."
There was a long sick beat of silence. Robby could hear the hum of the payphone, the ordinary world existing on the other side of something enormous.
"Robby," Johnny said finally, voice breaking, "come home. Come out. Get out of there. Don't do anything—"
Robby's throat closed around the noise. He could not promise. He could not move. He had been a soldier of anger and now he was a soldier of grief. The phone shook in his hand as he mouthed a soundless no. He ended the call and dropped the receiver into the cradle with the kind of finality a small life has.
Back in the hospital, Amanda and Daniel had been told only half the truth at first — a nurse arriving with a solemn face, choosing her words until they broke like glass. The names, the faces — Anthony's death had already carved a fresh wound; Miguel's blood now marked the Valley the deepest scar.
Amanda went to the corridor and slid down the wall to the floor, phone forgotten, a small animal howling at the dark. Daniel stood, hands trembling, the outline of a father breaking again in his features. "No more," he whispered. "No more."
Sam, when the news reached her, sank into a chair and wept until she could no longer form words. Miguel's last image haunted her — his face turning up to the sky as if seeking an answer. Aisha knelt beside her, pressing her head to Sam's shoulder, letting her own grief open into the night.
The Valley turned.
Neighbors met in basements that night and spoke in low tones about what had happened. Guns once hidden were brought out and checked; bats were sharpened; flashlights were carried. The people who had been spectators now saw their children as perilous casualties in a war they had not chosen.
Chozen, who had accepted a bargain he now realized could not be contained by law or honor, sat in his small temple behind Daniel's dojo. He looked at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. He had mediated a deal to stop a war in name, and instead had stoked a furnace. The heat from his regret burned through his calm.
Kreese did not sleep. He watched the black waves of night move through the city and felt satisfaction like acid. Johnny walked the dojo alone, the victory at the tournament a cold thing in his hands that could not fill the hole inside. Even he did not know how to take it back.
The Cobras returned to their halls that night different — not triumphant but hollow. They had been soldiers and had seen the cost of soldiering. The small light of something better had been snuffed in Miguel's death; whether it could be relit was the question that hung above every heavy breath.