[SEASON SIX: EPISODE FOUR]

Ethan stood strongly beside Robby and Sam in the Miyagi-Do dojo, as everyone lined up in rows of six. Johnny and Daniel paced around the students with a serious expression on their faces. Sensei stopped pacing and turned to face the students.

"The Sekai Taikai is coming. It's up to us to pick our six most badass fighters."

"And there are no easy decisions. We know you all wanna go to Barcelona." LaRusso added.

"Some of you think you're shoo-ins, that you're at the top of your game, that nothing or no one can stop you."

"Some of you think you're the underdogs, and you don't know if you have what it takes, and that you feel left out and left behind."

"But it's a level playing field. Anything can happen."

"Each and every one of you has a shot. So, as we make our evaluations, do your best."

"Now is not time to puss out." The blonde man said, walking past Bert and attempting a quick punch, which the boy blocked excellently.

"Even though we're competing against each other, we are still one dojo."

"And it's time to bring out the best in all of us."

"So, which of you has what it takes to be in our top six?"

Williams stepped onto the sparring desk with a determined look on his face. He spun around quickly, delivering a high kick in the air, followed by a series of rapid punches. His movements were so consistent and powerful, a testament to his training and dedication.

"Ais!"

The boy finished with confident fighting stance, one hand high above his face while the other extended in front of him. He was ready for whatever challenge lied ahead.

The students watched in silence, with the weight of the competition sinking in. The boy's display had inspired his fellow students to push themselves to their limits. The path to Barcelona was clear but it would take everything they had to earn those six spots.

At West Valley High School, as the bell rang, Ethan, Sam, Robby and Tory walked inside the building and down the hallway, discussing if any of them had a chance to be among the six fighters selected to represent Miyagi-Do at the Sekai Taikai.

"So, y'all still have any doubts that us four don't make it to the top six?"

"Maybe when hell freezes over." Nichols replied,  and everyone chuckled at her response.

"Let's hope there's not a tournament category for humanity."

"Oh, come on. We got two All Valley champs and two runner-ups." Keene reassured them as they walked down the hallway and passed the two Binary Brothers, who were also talking about who were gonna be in the top six selected fighters.

"I mean, you're a no-brainer. It's really only that sixth spot that's up for grabs."

"Yeah, and it's yours for the taking."

"I appreciate the support, but I ran a statistical analysis. And while there is an 18% chance you're right, the smart money is on Kenny." Demetri explained.

"I mean, he did beat you in that head-to-head. Uh, cheap shot notwithstanding."

"Okay, Payne's got power." Eli nodded in agreement.

"But so do you. Don't count yourself out, man."

"Hmm. I prefer to focus on something actually achievable. Getting into MIT. Early Action decisions come out any day now, you know."

"Yeah, I know." Hawk said, with an emotionless look on his face.

"Hey, man, come on. Have no fear. I may not have confidence about becoming a world karate champion, but I know that MIT cannot turn down the Binary Bros."

The two turned to the right, and walked into math class together.

Meanwhile, over at LaRusso Auto, Johnny was in Daniel's office as they discussed who should be in their top six fighters for the world tournament.

"Alright, we've put this off long enough. It's time we've had the talk."

"I agree. I want a 15% bump and control of the showroom music."

"You just got here. You're not getting a raise. I'm talking about the Sekai Taikai. We have to choose our top six." He said, handing him a paper with all the students who could be considered to be their top six fighters.

"Sam, Robby, Ethan, Hawk. I'd change the order, but yeah, I agree. Wait, your fifth is Demetri? The nerd's got reach, no way he's in before Tory."

"Tory's skills are undeniable, but is she balanced enough to commit to Miyagi-Do?"

"The girl's a beast. Miyagi himself would have ranked her even above you. The guy wasn't afraid to knock a few skulls around now and then. Mine included."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Anthony? Come on. Trying to make the Sekai Taikai a LaRusso family vacation?" Lawrence questioned.

"Okay, who would be your sixth be?" Daniel asked, sounding a little intrigued to see what his sixth fighter would be.

"Lee."

"Devon? You only want her because she's pure Eagle Fang."

"Why are you so obsessed with dojo history? I thought we were all Miyagi-Do, now."

"We are. Clearly, we have our own biases. We gotta figure out some way to get this settled. Uh, and before you say it, no, you and I are not fighting." LaRusso explained, clearly.

"What about the kids? Cutthroat, no-holds-barred Battle Royal. The last six standing go to Barcelona."

"Sure, that's all we need. Everyone showing up with black eyes and broken limbs. No, we need to find a fair solution. What we would we need is a karate expert who doesn't know the kids."

The blonde man nodded, and suddenly Daniel thought of someone who could help them in their situation with picking six fighters for the Sekai Taikai.

"I got a bad idea."

The next morning, at Miyagi-Do, all of the students lined up in rows of six as Johnny and Daniel stood in front of them. Since they needed help deciding on their top six fighters, they called up a former enemy to see if he could help them sort this out.

"Please welcome our guest for the weekend, Sensei Barnes."

"Isn't that guy at the Sliver house fight?"

"Silence!" Barnes shouted, making the group of kids pipe down.

"In order to keep things unbiased, we brought in Sensei Barnes to observe then select our top six."

"During my years as the Tournament Terror, all I wanted was to be in the Sekai Taikai. But I blew my chance. I am here to ensure that you maximize yours." Mike explained to them before stepping down off the sparring desk and stood in front the students.

"Everyone I know who has participated in this has horror stories. This thing is intense. Unpredictable."

"People have died. Move!"

He started walking down the second row of kids, then circled back up to the front.

"Who's ready for that?"

"Wait. Ready for the tournament or to die?" Demetri questioned, looking around, hoping to get an answer from someone.

"I will do to you what Sekai Taikai will do. I will surprise you with events. I will push you to your limits."

"And if any of you delicate flowers feel like going to your Sensei's and crying, don't. I've been given full authority for these eliminations."

"Selections. Let's keep this positive." Daniel interrupted. Barnes turned around, giving him a look.

"You came to me. The deal was my way or the highway."

"Get on the sparring desk." The man instructed, noticing none of the students even bothered to move.

"Now!"

All the kids stepped onto the sparring desk and waited for further instructions.

"To survive the first round, you will need to show me excellent and speed."

Ethan ran around with the other students, all of them trying to catch an elusive chicken that darted one way and the other. They all stumbled over in an attempt to catch it. The boy thought of an idea, walking slowly behind one and quickly grabbed it.

The kids stopped, staring at him in amazement. Barnes watched the whole thing happen with his arms crossed and nodded at the boy.

"Ugh!" Devon groaned in disbelief throwing her hands up in the air.

The exercise ended, and they all gathered around Mike for their next instructions.

Next was endurance. Lee, Mitch, and Kenny leaned up against the wooden fence, all in a sitting position. The challenge was simple but very intriguing; they had to maintained the position as long as they could.

A few seconds later, they each started falling down on the ground one by one, dropping their rocks in the process.

Williams and the rest of the dojo got back in rows of six as Barnes was preparing to announce the names of those who get to move on to the next round. He stood on the sparring desk, gazing at the students in front of him.

"Congratulations. You didn't die. Still half of you wouldn't last one match at the Sekai Taikai. To the twelve who might, join me up here when I call your name."

"Hawk." The man called out, and Eli walked onto the sparring desk and everyone clapped in applause.

"Robby. Ethan. Sam. Tory. Muscles."

The students looked at each other, confused and trying to figure who he was talking about.

"Yeah, you." He pointed at Mitch, whose his mouth dropped in excitement.

"I have a new nickname!" The boy smiled in agreement before walking up to the deck.

"Kenny. Nate. Chris. Demetri."

Barnes continued to call out the names before looking down at his notebook and mumbled to himself.

"Oh, right. Deven. And the last name. Anthony."

"Congratulations, top twelve. Meet me back here tomorrow for round two. To the rest of you, you're out. Better luck next time."

"You two." He said, turning his attention to Sam and Tory.

"Fierce. Keep it up. Ethan, good job. No one never catches the chicken."

The next day at Miyagi-Do, as the twelve who were selected to move on to the next round. Hawk was helping Ethan put red tape on his both forearms and kneecaps when Demetri walked over to them.

"Ready for the big day?"

"Oh, I was born ready. Just like MIT, you're not going to Barcelona without me." He patted his shoulder and walked away from the two. Williams noticed Eli had a this dried look on his face, and snapped his fingers to get the boy's attention.

"Dude, you good? Every time he mentions MIT, you go blank."

"I didn't apply."

"What? Why?"

"That frat party we went to made me realize I never even looked at any other schools. We picked MIT before all this karate stuff. I just wanna see if there's a better option."

"I get it. But I hear MIT is a pretty great school."

"I know. It's all Demetri can talk about. It's killing me." Hawk said in disbelief.

"Yeah, you should probably tell him."

"Top twelve, get ready." Barnes announced as the students lined up, facing each other.

"Today's challenge is a Battle Royale. The rules are simple. Protect your flags. Steal the others. Lose your flags, and you're out. The ones with the most flags at the end go to Barcelona. The rest of you will be judged on performance. You have two minutes."

"Ready?"

The kids bowed to each other before getting into a fighting stance.

"And fight!"

Chaos erupted as they all hoped off the sparring desk and ran away from each other.

Anthony chased after Mitch, grabbing a piece of red tape off his forehead before running off to find more.

Devon had Sam cornered as she struggled to catch even one red tape. Lee acted quickly and preformed a somersault backflip, trying to gain the upper hand. But the brunette grabbed a piece of red tape off her elbow and ran away.

"Coming for you, LaRusso!"

Kenny leaped off the sparring desk, and jumped off the balance beam, running to wherever Anthony was.

Chris got down on the ground, trying to grab the flag from Robby's legs, but unfortunately, he had the tape pulled off from both his forearms. Keene turned around, noticing Ethan was right behind him.

He lunged forward, aiming to grab the flag off his arm. Suddenly, Hawk jumped in between them, kicking Williams back. The two boys grabbed the red tape off both elbows of Eli's forearms, before running away.

"Shit!"

"Sorry, bro!"

As the challenge neared the end, Anthony acquired more flags, before turning around to notice Kenny standing right behind him.

"Underdogs always have a shot. Underdogs always have a shot."

Payne got on the ground and extended his leg out, followed by another kick, trying to trip LaRusso on the ground.

His opponent threw a barrage of punches, but all of them were blocked as Kenny threw him down on the ground.

"You thought you had a shot."

Anthony tried to land a hit by throwing some punches, to which were blocked again. He tried for a second time, but his enemy dodged it, grabbing the flag off his leg, and landed a straight uppercut to the boy's face. He groaned in pain, and fell off the wooden board, landing on his back on the ground.

"Time! That's it!"

"Anthony!" Daniel called out, running over to his son to make sure he was alright. He helped him off the ground and noticed he had a bloody nose.

"Are you okay?"

"If it isn't obvious, LaRusso, you're out. Nice hit, Kenny."

"Seriously? My son is bleeding here." Daniel said, looking at Mike with a questionable look on his face.

"Well, you better get used to it, Daniel, because the Sekai Taikai is gonna do a hell of a lot worse."

"What's your deal, man? It's like you're slipping back into Bad Boy Barnes." LaRusso walked Anthony inside Miyagi's house, helping him with his injury.

"Maybe that's a good thing, if I'd been my old self, maybe Silver wouldn't have burned my business to the ground."

"Let me see those flags."

They made their way over to him, holding up the number of flags each of them had collected. Ethan held up twelve flags before looking around to see how many flags his fellow students had acquired.

"All right, we've clearly got our top four. Tory. Robby. Ethan. Sam. You four are going to Barcelona." Barnes announced, glancing at the eight remaining competitors. Then he turned his attention over to Devon, Demetri, Kenny and Hawk.

"You bottom four are tied. I'll go back tonight and review my notes re-tally the scores. I'll announce the final two in the morning."

The next day, all the Miyagi-Do students arrived at Coyote Creek and waited for Mike to show up so they could see what he had in store for the last four competitors for their top six fighters. Barnes stepped onto a wooden picnic table and looked at the group in front of him.

"Good morning. At least for now. Gather around." He motioned them to come forward as they all approached him.

"Is everybody here?"

"Yeah, this is everyone." Daniel replied, nodding his head.

"Good. Last night, I reviewed my notes. Make sure the remaining four got a fair shake. I've decided it's too close to call. So.... You're all gonna get another opportunity to prove yourselves. Two flags wait deep in the forest. Whoever brings them back.... Wins."

"Wait. That's it?"

"What if two of us find a flag at the same time?" Demetri asked with a confused look on his face.

"You fight for it."

"Are there refs out there?"

"No, they're on their own."

"But how—"

"It can't get any more objective. Even Barnes isn't judging this one." Johnny interrupted him and nodded in approval.

"Winning is everything, plain and simple. Take ten minutes, stretch. Use the restroom. Call your mothers. When you get back, it's go time."

As Eli stepped out of the porta potty and took a sip of his water bottle, Demetri was sitting at the picnic table, looking down at his phone.

"Whoa. Dude, are you seeing this? MIT is completely revamping the robotics program. I mean, this is monumental. This is...." He paused and glanced up at his friend, noticing something was off about him.

"Wait. Are you not signed up for the RoboTeam email? The race for the RoboCup begins the moment we get on campus, Eli. We have to—"

"I didn't apply." Hawk blurted out.

"Whoa. What?"

"Look, I'm really sorry. I wanted to tell you sooner—"

"Sooner? We've wanted MIT ever since we were kids, babies, practically."

"I just want to keep my options open. After we went to that frat party, I—"

"Whoa. You wanna go to school with Kyler?" The tall boy questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"What? No, no. God, no." Eli said, shaking his head reassuringly.

"The party just made me realize there's a whole wide world out there. And I still might apply to MIT. Later."

"Okay, well, you do realize that your chances go down without Early Action, right? You get that?"

"I don't appreciate the condescension."

"And I don't appreciate you turning into a moron."

"At least I'm not an overbearing control freak. Your obsession with MIT is so freaking annoying." Hawk stated.

"Annoying. I'm.... Okay. All right. Well, I promise not to annoy you anymore. How about that?" Demteri patted his friend's shoulder before walking off.

"No—"

"No, it's fine. It's great."

Devon, Kenny, Eli, and Demteri all lined up in a running position at the starting point. The rest of the students gathered around them, and Barnes slowly raised his hand.

"Go!" Mike shouted, dropping his hand down, signaling them to run.

They all burst from the starting line, running along the dirt path. Payne and Hawk ran alongside each other, with the two others trailing right behind them. The path split into two, with Kenny taking the left path and the mohawk boy choosing the right. Moments later, Lee took the left path while Demetri chose the right road.

Eli came to a stop when he noticed a rock with a red flag attached to it. As he grabbed it, the flag was kicked out of his hands. He looked up and saw his Binary Brother standing in front of him.

"You chose my path?"

"I didn't even know you were gonna go down this path. Maybe if we had coordinated earlier." He exclaimed.

"Oh, wait. That wouldn't have mattered, would it?"

"Great. Now we're not going to Barcelona together either."

"Okay."

The two grabbed each end of the flag before Demetri seized his opponent's arm and twisted it back his back, holding him in an armlock.

"How do you like it, huh?"

Hawk acted quickly, preforming a backflip, and delivering a harshly kick to his friend, who groaned as he fell down on the ground.

"I'm sorry, man. I didn't mean to hit you that hard."

"It's fine. It's fine. I don't wanna go to Barcelona with you anyways."

"Come on, D, you don't mean that." Eli held his hand out, but what he didn't expect was getting kicked backwards. He rolled over a rock and landed on the floor flat on his face.

Demetri picked the flag up and took one last look at his friend before walking away.

The group waited patiently for the final two to return with the flag. A few minutes later, the tall boy walked up to them.

"Demetri." Daniel said, as everyone else turned their attention to the boy. He pulled the flag out of his pocket, holding it high in the air. Everyone started clapping in applause.

"I give you Miyagi-Do's Team Sekai Taikai." Mike stated as he began to call out the names of the selected six fighters.

"Ethan. Sam. Robby. Tory. And now, Devon. And Demetri."

They all stood next to Demetri as Barnes turned to Daniel. The two men bowed at each other, then he shook Johnny's hand before walking away.

"Good luck."

After finishing talking to Deven about making it to the six selected fighters for the Sekai Taikai, Lawrence stepped forward to LaRusso.

"Feeling good, Johnny?"

"Hell yeah." The blonde man nodded as Daniel pointed at Hawk, who sat on wooden picnic table with a sad expression on his face.

"Even with the collateral damage? You and I both know Hawk should be going."

"I heard about your fight with Barnes. You just had to Eagle Fang your way to what you wanted, huh?"

"You expect me to just sit back?" He retorted.

"Even with the Miyagi-Do patch on my back, I'm gonna fight for people I care about."

"Look where that's gonna us. Do you honestly believe we have our strongest team?"

"I think they can handle anything." Johnny answered truthfully.

"Let's hope you're right." Daniel stated before shaking his head in disbelief.

"Because we have no idea what we're up against."

PLEASE REMEMBER TO VOTE AND LEAVE AND FEEDBACK YOU GUYS HAVE :)

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BIT OF A WERID CHAPTER BUT ILL BE MAKING UP FOR IT IN THE NEXT ONE!!!

PEACE OUT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!!