No Cop Situation | Lawrusso

No Cop Situation Chapter 5/11

NOTE: There is some non consensual touching in this chapter. It is mostly off screen, and barely described.

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It was the summer holidays, but even though his new found friends were constantly inviting him out to the beach, to hang out at their houses, or a bike ride to the woods, more often than not Johnny had to turn them down.

He told Bobby that his dad had made him take a summer job at his law firm as a way of keeping him out of trouble. Truth was Alan and Penny were constantly giving him shit about hanging out with the Cobra Kai gang.

"It's the summer break," Johnny complained. "I should be out there on the beach with them!"

"You're a cop, Johnny," Alan told him. "We don't get a summer break."

Johnny continued going to class at Cobra Kai, but none of the lessons had been as eventful as the first when he'd knocked his Sensei to the mat.

Johnny tried hard in class, always showing up on time and offering to stay behind late to help clean the mats.

Sometimes he was allowed to stay and help, but sometimes he was told to go home, as one of the other students needed to clean them to pay their penance for not trying hard enough in class.

Johnny set up a heavy bag back at the house, and spent hours kicking and punching it. His years of learning karate at the Police Cadets had served him well, but the aggression Kreese wanted them to show didn't come naturally to Johnny.

He tried to force it out, imaging that the bag was Sid and instead of being eight years old, Sid tried to punch him now. He imagined himself blocking the blow, then smashing his own fist into Sid's face, watching as his nose contorted and exploded with blood.

He imagined Sid howling in pain as blood gushed between his fingers, but inevitably as the scene carried on the only cries that Johnny could hear were his own and his Mother's, as she screamed, "What did you do, Sid?! WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?!"

Johnny cried out in frustration, hitting the bag one last time as tears welled in his eyes.

"You OK?" Penny asked from behind him.

"Shit," Johnny whispered to himself, wiping his eyes before he turned. "I didn't know you were watching."

"You're good at that," Penny said.

"Yeah," Johnny said. "Kreese wants me to be more aggressive. He's got this big Strike First. Strike Hard bullshit motto. He keeps telling me 'No mercy, Johnny!' but I don't think it's in me to be like that."

"It's called acting, Johnny," Penny said with a smile. "You don't have be like that. You just have to pretend that you are."

"It's so difficult," Johnny said. He put a hand on his own chest, as he said, "I feel like I have all this anger inside me, but I just got so used to pushing it down that when I try to feel it, there's nothing there except sadness."

"So use that sadness too," Penny replied. "Take what you can that's real in your life, and use it to make up the fake life."

Johnny spent hours reading the files of the victims again. He needed to find something that would get Kreese's attention, and it seemed like being a good student wasn't going to cut it. They were all young, with troubled home lives. Several of them were frequently in trouble at school for bullying weaker students.