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"I didn't send anyone!"

Sure, they're going inside. Sure, they aren't threatening to have a dumb karate fight right next to Daniel's backyard pool anymore. It's something.

But that doesn't mean they can't bicker on their way inside, apparently, even as the two of them follow Amanda like sheep.

"Look, Louie is crazy. I don't have control over him." God knows what has control over that wild cousin. "If I had known--"

Daniel stops for a moment, his facial expression a bit more complicated, and then he shakes his head.

"I wouldn't just go around defiling your property." Something about his tone sounds like he means that. Which Johnny might not realise, but Pyrrha, a little more open to who Daniel is as a person, might recognize it.

Even as it veers right back into petty. "Unlike some people who decide to draw a dick on another person's billboard--"

Apparently that's enough to get Amanda to pipe up again, even though she doesn't look back at the other two as she speaks. "Daniel, you really need to stop having dick on the mind."

Whipped.

He's so whipped.

"Put a leash on him," Pyrrha growls, "Like the one she has on you." She winks. Johnny might accidentally wander in the direction she's going and say things that come out sounding sexual. Pyrrha? Pyrrha's doing it on purpose.

She lets herself get worked up—heavier breathing, clenching and releasing fists, getting closer to Daniel than he's usually comfortable with.

"You want me to defile your property?" she asks sarcastically, "You think a dick in your mouth is equivalent to setting my car on fire?" She steps even closer face to face. Her eyes drop to Daniel's mouth, stare for a good long moment, and return to his eyes. Casually, she makes sure Anthony isn't nearby.

"If you want your dick yanked raw that badly, how about you, me, and Amanda do some karate in your little dojo after breakfast," Pyrrha whispers, throwing her voice just far enough for Amanda to hear.

Daniel seems to go straight through an entire rollercaster of emotions at that statement. It's like he couldn't hide anything even if he tried to, since all emotions show up so clearly on his face. At first there's just confusion, but then it turns to surprise, and then outright shock.

Is he used to Johnny running his mouth at this point? Sure, since it seems to be all the other has done ever since they met each other again a while ago after decades. And he's sure used to the other being unnecessarily crude as well, but never in this sort of weird sexual angle.

"What?"

It's why he's still confused, even as he's looking more and more scandalized with each moment as well.

"That's-- leave my wife out of this!" Apparently that's the first thing Daniel's mind goes to in the middle of this embarrassing panic. His tan skin may even be flushing a little bit, because Daniel may be a grown adult, but certainly not one who's used to getting prepositioned by his former (let's be real, current) karate rival.

Amanda, on the other hand, seems entirely nonplussed by all of this. Maybe she realises this is just dumb guys trying to rile each other up, and it might also be why she just folds her arms across her chest as she turns back to the two men trailing after her, and lets out a sigh.

"Can you guys can it?" Yes, she's glancing at both of them now. "Just shut up entirely? For at least a minute? I don't think I need to remind you that there are children in this house."

Kids who don't need to hear this, thanks.

But while Daniel dutifully shuts up, unable to go against Amanda, he's definitely making that 'he started it' kind of expression at her. This is a man in his fifties.

But there's no way Daniel and Johnny - or even just someone pretending to be Johnny - don't immediately regress into being teenagers around each other. At all times.

Alas that staying in character means not justifying her/Johnny's actions (she can hear Anthony playing a video game loudly enough he's checked out and footsteps upstairs indicating Samantha's busy). Pyrrha settles for making a big show of zipping her lips and setting the key in her pocket. Another look at Daniel. See, friend? You could probably pull this off in Trench either to fascinating success or a karate fight turned... well, like the karate Pyrrha proposed for after breakfast.

It may be a memory, but Pyrrha's excited to see what food Amanda has on offer. Even Johnny wouldn't turn down free food like that. He could behave long enough to get breakfast, which, really boys, they need to think about what that means.

She settles for technically following the rules but somewhat juvenile. Silently, Pyrrha stays too close to Daniel. Once they reach where they're going, the kitchen or dining room or whatever, she bumps him hip to hip lightly (not enough it can be called a fight, but with the way Daniel's wound up, it's something... even flirting if he takes the time to think about it).

They're headed into the dining room, it seems - where thankfully breakfast has already been set out. And even more thankful is the fact that it's been set for three people. The kids must already have finished theirs in the time it took for Daniel and 'Johnny' to have their little spat outside.

Which is mostly a thankful thing because Daniel sure doesn't want to have them here while being forced to have breakfast with the guy who--

.. wait, did he just bump his hip?

(It's hardly even a bump. It's enough that it could be brushed off as accidental, but..

You know. It's Daniel. And someone he perceives as Johnny. Of course he's going to assume bad faith here.)

"What are you trying to do?!" He immediately snaps back, though he keeps his voice to a hushed whisper as Amanda grab some orange juice from the fridge for all of them. "Listen, I don't know what your game plan here is, but stop being so weird!"

Not that he thinks Johnny is off compared to the usual. No, Johnny is always weird, and that's the exact problem in Daniel "prim and proper" LaRusso's life.

Also, yes, he's definitely bumping 'Johnny's' hip in return for that action. This is kindergarten level behaviour.

Pyrrha rolls her eyes at the accusation. Because Johnny would. Because there's very little she/Johnny have done that Daniel hasn't. She's only making the subtext text, but that's talk Johnny wouldn't use, so she doesn't flabbergast Daniel with it. That'd be when things got real weird. This? This is the weird Daniel expects.

"Hey man," Pyrrha says, "I came here to do things man to man, you and me. You will always know where you stand with Johnny Lawrence." She thumbs toward herself. "Thought it'd be," Pyrrha punches, proper karate form and all, at the air pointedly toward no one.

She pauses, turning to face Daniel a moment before taking a seat to enjoy breakfast in the Amanda LaRusso household, so they're close, again. Simple movements able to shift the vibe. Except her back's to one of the chairs. If anyone's boxed in here, it's her. "Your wife's the one who told us to come have breakfast together," she says. There's nothing sleazy to the tone, but she glances over toward Amanda for a long moment, before turning back to Daniel. Unsaid that Johnny wouldn't mind adding her to a party. Implied, if Daniel takes that sexually, that he thinks of them—Johnny and Daniel—as something sexual. Pyrrha doubts Daniel's analysis machine is pumping on all cylinders, but she wonders if he feels that on some level, the sexual tension.

Sure, there's some analysis going on in Daniel's head. There always is, after all. He's a man too marked by past betrayal to not be overanalysing the intentions of people he isn't sure about - and Johnny belongs in that category, for now. It's still far too early into their reunion for him to realise that Johnny's intentions truly are just good at heart, though Daniel is not too far off from realising it.

Realising it right here though.. well, that's very unlikely. Instead Daniel just ends up squinting at the other as he moves to sit down as well. Squinting over scrambled eggs and orange juice, like it isn't the dumbest possible setting to create this sort of tension in.

"Yes, because she has no idea of everything that has transpired between us."

It's at that moment that Amanda calls out. Not quite having returned to the table herself, but apparently still within earshot enough to hear what the other two are discussing, and adding: "Oh, you told me all about the pretty blonde boy you beat at that tournament in high school."

Daniel's squint changes into an expression that straddles the border of pained and embarrassed, before he raises a finger and adds: "Okay, I don't remember ever calling him pretty."

Please, Amanda.

Why do you always have to add that part, huh.

He shakes his head, turning back to Jorrha, or Pyhnny, and continues with: "Point is-- you, me, us? No one is ever going to understand everything between us and everything that happened but you and me."

His tone doesn't make that sound like a good thing. Or not like a positive thing, anyway. Mostly because it's about karate trauma.

(And that's even aside from the irony that he's technically telling this to someone who isn't even the person Daniel thinks it is.)

The touch of skepticism on Pyrrha's face at pretty blonde boy isn't there for the same reason it would be Johnny's. She has no concerns with being called pretty, but whatever Daniel did or didn't say, Amanda picked up the same vibe Pyrrha has. That's two for two calling this shot. As Johnny, however, she goes with, "Handsome? Pillar of masculinity? Stunning? Unforgettable?"

She sits and takes a first bite of eggs before Amanda joins them. Manners, schmanners. "Then you should get me coming here," Pyrrha says, "What's between you and me, it'll always be you and me. Is it so much to expect you to torch my car yourself if it's going to happen?"

She raises one hand in recognition of the argument surely on the tip of Daniel's tongue. "Don't tell me that scaredy pants cousin of yours can outmaneuver you," Pyrrha says, "That'd be too sad. No way you've fallen that far." A compliment given in the worst way possible.

There's definitely some mental calculation here that's also showing up on Daniel's face. Maybe he's trying to figure out whether that was a compliment or not. He ends up leaning towards it probably being a compliment, given that it's coming from Johnny. That guy probably figures giving someone a genuine straightforward compliment makes him weak, or something.

Still, that's enough for Daniel to disregard it, rather than get petty about the way the compliment is worded. Especially when there's something more important to address here, like--

"I never asked for anything to happen to your car. I wouldn't have done it in the first place!" And Daniel means that. He's petty, sure. He did raise Johnny's rent, which also may not have been the nicest move. "Louie just heard me ranting about you, and he just--"

Daniel gestures with one hand, before giving up mid-sentence, letting the hand drop to the table.

(He still truly doesn't seem to have realised he's not talking to the real Johnny here either, so Pyrrha's clearly doing a stellar job.)

"I don't know, apparently he decided to take it to the next level or whatever. But it's not like I need to come to you to rant about you opening up Cobra Kai again, because you already know how I feel about that."

Edited 2022-10-16 19:56 (UTC)

Pyrrha eats the food with the fierce military efficiency that likely looks overdone and excessively masculine outside the context of a mess hall. Just eating isn't enough for Johnny Lawrence. Like everything else, the food must be struck first. She taps her fork, to an irritating ringing sound, against her plate.

"I bet you said something," Pyrrha says as Johnny, "not asking, something that was just fancy pansy ass words to you. It ran straight from his ears to his dick, the brain he thinks with, and he thought he'd be a hot shot taking out your fiercest rival with his biker backup boys. What passes as street cred in that fuzz between his brain."

It's meaner, a touch, than Pyrrha would her own be about Louie, but Johnny deserves some anger at the guy who destroyed his only means of transportation. The bike she came on stolen in turn from those same backup dancers.

"Because you're thinking of what Cobra Kai was, not what it could be," Pyrrha says, her tone on edge tinged with exhaustion, "I'm not Kreese. I want it to be what I wanted it to be for me. What it should've been."

Two things are going on that Daniel truly can't comment on here. The first of which being the other's description of Louie, which is.. perhaps not flattering, but also not inaccurate, to a point where Daniel can't even deny it. Sure, there's a part of it that hits against his familial pride, but it doesn't quite ignite his temper the way it usually would when Louie did do something incredibly stupid. Even Amanda doesn't speak up from where she's working on something in the kitchen, which tells Daniel even more about the fact that the other is entirely right here.

(The other thing is the way the other is just.. devouring that food.. but that's more something Daniel just doesn't want to comment on. It's too gross. Instead he's just giving A Look to show it's incredibly gross, no matter whether or not the other is actually looking at him. It's the dramatic Italian within Daniel.)

"And what should Cobra Kai have been, Johnny?" Daniel says it with a tone that also sounds tired on his end.

Because if this was Daniel from a much later time, the Daniel Pyrrha knows in Trench - then he may have been open to believing those words, having seen Johnny's growth. But this Daniel here is still much too early in their reunion to really put any stock in said words, especially when he hasn't seen anything to disprove them yet.

"Other than a breeding ground for bullies?"

Pyrrha takes one more exaggerated bite of food, the kind that promises she knows something of Daniel's opinion on it. How could she not? He doesn't need words when he can make faces like that. She smiles, afterward, washing it back and using that time like a restraint, a show of good faith that she's not leaping across the table punching Daniel in the face for the accusation. The worst way to argue Cobra Kai doesn't have to be bullies.

"A breeding ground for stopping bullies!" Pyrrha says emphatically. "Stopping guys like those bikers who think a fun time is torching some guy's car, some guy they don't even know. Cobra Kai's how I stopped them, and it's how kids can learn to stand up for themselves."

There's no details, no specifics, Pyrrha can pull on. She doubts Daniel would know them if she had them. She's judging Johnny off his attitude in Trench, the way he tries to protect his kids and teach them to fight back for themselves. That comes from somewhere, even if he's bad at communicating it.

Daniel glances away, letting out a laugh - though it doesn't sound genuine in any way. It sounds more bitter than anything, like there's so many old, cropped up feelings hidden right underneath the sound.

By the time he looks back over, it's obvious in his eyes as well. That same bitterness is right there, though this time it seems to be intermixed with some sort of hurt, though the latter is much more faint. Faint enough that the actual Johnny probably never would have picked up on it, but Pyrrha is a little smarter than that.

"Yeah, Cobra Kai sure did a lot of good to keep me from being bullied. You and your Cobra Kai friends were the ones beating me up on the daily back in high school, remember?!"

It's not something he really held against Johnny. Not for decades. He thought they were good after the tournament - that they moved on from all of that, especially now.

But with Johnny having returned, and having been a massive pain in Daniel's butt for months now.. Well, it sure feels like all that old stuff is being dragged right back up.

"Strike first, no mercy-- So just beat up the first kid you find and make his life a living hell! Cobra Kai's teachings are poison!"

It's clear that Daniel is getting a little too worked up here. Perhaps remembering even a little bit more from the past than just necessarily the antics of Johnny and his friends when it comes to Cobra Kai. But his worked up attitude is enough to finally bring Amanda out of the kitchen. Some genuine concern flashes in her eyes when she looks at Daniel, and when the man looks over at her, it's enough to make him look a little guilty, simmering down. Suddenly staring really intensely at his untouched breakfast.

"Listen, I see that there's.. a lot going on here." Clearly. Mildly. A very astute remark from Amanda. "But I doubt you're going to resolve anything by just shouting across the kitchen table."

Both of you. She's also definitely giving 'Johnny' over there a look after she says that.

Pyrrha hates that kind of shit. It's things like this, Daniel thirty or more years later still hurting. He hasn't healed from it, not entirely, not really. It's not merely a sore spot. It's a wound closed over that needs to be opened and cleaned out. It needs proper care and healing. Pretending you're over it doesn't do it. Pyrrha knows that too well. It's easy not to talk to people about problems, when they don't know about them or don't get how much they hurt. Daniel's a friendly warm guy. She bets most people consider it old news, something for stories and that's it.

She glances over at Amanda. "Ma'am," she says respectfully.

"Cobra Kai was bad," Pyrrha says softly, so softly you have to try to hear it. "It's all I have, and it's all I am, and it was bad. It can't stay bad. That can't be what it is because then that's what I am."

She pushes her chair loudly away from the table, folding her arms across her chest defensively. She even leans back, daring the chair to go out from under her. "I'm looking forward, not backward," she says for Johnny, "How about you?"

The words make so much sense for who Johnny is. Even if Pyrrha may not know everything about the blonde, might not have all the memories laid out before her, there's a very specific moment that Daniel thinks about when she says it's all I have, and it's all I am, and it was bad. Not even the memories of the Cobras chasing him on the daily after school, not them pulling off illegal moves at the tournament just to hurt him and make him lose, not any of Daniel's own bad Cobra Kai-related memories.

The moment he thinks of is him standing on that parking lot, and watching Johnny get strangled by Kreese. By his own mentor, his sensei. A moment that had soon gotten lost in the eventful trip to Okinawa afterwards, but one that still sticks out in Daniel's mind, even now, decades later. It gives him a lot of odd feelings, and none of them he's properly able to give names, not while things are still this awkward and tense with the other guy at all times.

Daniel breathes. He glances at Johnny, and then looks over at Amanda, but finds himself unable to hold either of their gazes. At least the latter doesn't look frustrated or judgemental about the situation right now as much as she just seems a little worried.

".. I guess we'll see at the tournament."

It's not a direct answer to the question, because it's messy, something Daniel doesn't want to dig into when there's too many open wounds left on his own soul.

But it's him attempting to compromise all the same, rather than arguing, or fully ignoring the question altogether.

"They invited me to come watch. I'll be able to see if your students are different." Whether Johnny taught them different.

It's a move toward peace, fragile and paper thin. The roots were there, even then, if they figured out how to talk to each other. Pyrrha doesn't know how Johnny's students fight here, what exactly he taught them, and where they've taken those teachings. Probably a mixed bag because Johnny's a bucket full of trauma, along with Daniel. What a mess. Like Chara pointed out, adults pass their trauma onto kids. They cannot help it, but the kids can still do better, be better, have less trauma...

Most people cannot rewind time. Even here, even this, doesn't change how the confrontation went for Johnny or Daniel.

If they stay here too long, it could collapse. Pyrrha lowers her chair back to the floor and runs a hand along her head. "We will," she agrees and sighs. "However I manage to get there." Even Johnny wouldn't maintain illusions of keeping the motorcycle.

Daniel is ready to roll his eyes at that statement, just annoyed at how determined Johnny is to continue to blame Daniel here for the car thing.

But before he can speak up, it's Amanda instead who starts.

"Daniel, why don't you take him over to the dealership and just let him have one of the cars?"

Daniel turns, staring at his wife like she suddenly went mad, though he does notice her mouthing the words 'trade in lot.'

.. he'd still kind of rather choke on his eggs here than hand Johnny any of the cars from the dealership, even if it's one of the cheap trade in lot cars, but there's a part of him that does realise maybe he had a tiny hand in things ending up this way, even if he never intended for it to happen. So Daniel sighs and gets up as well.

"Fine. Come on, I'll drive us there."

Pyrrha picks up her plate and scrapes the rest of the eggs into her mouth with her fork. Bless the Cohort for teaching her some truly atrocious skills. Anything to get every last calorie in their bodies. That done, she wipes her face off with a napkin and turns to look at Amanda.

"I hope Daniel knows how lucky he is to have you," she says. Respectfully.

Then she gets up, leaving the plate, fork, and cup at the table (sorry Amanda, just being Johnny about it) and rubs her hands together. "The sooner we get there, the sooner I'm out of your hair."

Unfortunately, the dream doesn't believe she needs to see the LaRusso dealership or more of the city. It dissolves and returns Pyrrha to Sanctuary. A quick glance around reveals no one. She shuts the book, and Duty goes to check in on the rest of his crew. Yuan is probably still around.

Stop assembling this bewildering cartography

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CW: nsfw language/innuendo

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cw: mention of strangulation in narration

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you can probably have the memory end soon to wrap it up! <3

that's a wrap