Coyote Kai

Noah felt at home with his friends and fellow karate practitioners at the Coyote Kai dojo. They often hung out together after school and on weekends, sometimes playing soccer on the beach or hitting various parties around Reseda. Occasionally, they would meet up with girls, all popular and gorgeous, and go on group dates. It was the best life Noah could imagine for a sixteen-year-old Valley kid, and the rigors of martial arts training was a small price to pay for blissful inclusion.

He had been hand-selected to be a Coyote by the dojo's sensei, Brian, who had trained in the U.S. military before taking up the Japanese art of karate. Brian stressed to his students the importance of the three Coyote C's: confidence, courage, and cooperation. The Coyotes would often shout these traits at each other outside of karate class, jokingly while poolside or racing on their all-terrain vehicles, but also sometimes during intensely dramatic times that only teenagers seemed with which to engage. Noah believed in these qualities too, as their discipline lent a sharp and welcomed contrast to his life before he was a Coyote.

One day, while Brian was lecturing Noah and the others on the merits of courage and how Coyote Kai was not a pottery class, a skinny kid from school named Dylan and an old Asian man entered the dojo. Brian noticed the interruption and addressed it head on.

"Class, we have visitors. Hai!" he shouted, signaling the Coyotes to stand in formation before Brian in the hachiji dachi position, feet shoulder-length apart with toes pointed forward. Noah saw the look of awe on Dylan's face and felt a rush of pride, though the old man didn't seem impressed by their discipline in the least.

"I want talk you," the old man said to Brian. His broken English reminded Noah of the way Pat Morita spoke in the old Karate Kid movies. "Come ask leave boy alone."

The Pat Morita-looking man gestured to skinny Dylan, which caused Brian to turn to the class and smirk. Noah heard snickers around him from some of the other Coyotes. He felt like he was missing something. Noah had recently been away for a week on vacation with his family and hadn't heard anything about this Dylan kid picking fights while he was out of town.

"Shouldn't the boy take care of his own problems?" Brian asked, slowly pacing in front of his students.

"One to one problem, yes. Five to one problem, too much," the Pat Morita man answered.

Five to one? Noah thought. That seemed unfair, though he reminded himself that he didn't have all the facts. Maybe the Dylan kid owned a switchblade or a butterfly knife.

"Oh, you want better odds?" Brian asked. "Well, we can fix that! Do you feel up to a match, Mr. Goodhair?"

"Yes, sensei!" Billy Goodhair shouted with a ominous grin. Billy was one of Noah's best friends, but he seemed almost unrecognizable in the moment, voice dripping with menace and a smile so smug.

"No more fighting," the old man said. Billy's smile faded.

"This is a dojo, not a pottery class," Brian said, again underlining that the dojo had no affiliation with Janet's Pottery and Home Goods across the street. "You don't challenge my boys and simply leave, old man."

Okay, whoa, Noah thought. He felt that it was one thing to mentally note that the Asian man was old, but another thing to call him an old man. It probably just sounded meaner out loud than Brian intended it to, he reasoned with himself. He'll apologize here in a minute.

However, more snickering sounded from around the room and Noah began to fear that this response, even it was obviously just nervous laughter, could be mistaken for appreciation of Brian's cruelty.

"Too much advantage, this place," the man who looked almost exactly like Pat Morita said.

"Name a place," Brian fired back.

"Tournament." The man pointed to a large sign for the following month's Valley-Wide Karate Tournament, a sign that Noah had helped Brian put up on the wall. "Till then, leave boy alone to train."

Noah felt that this was a great solution, and really wanted to find out later what the Dylan kid had done while he was out of town. But then he saw Brian stewing in this final request, that they should leave Dylan alone while he trained. And then, even from across the room, Noah noticed a devilish gleam flash in Brian's eyes. The head Coyote positioned himself tall in front of Dylan and the old Asian man, sizing them up for the first time since they entered his lair.

"You're a pushy little bastard, aren't you?" Brian said. He nodded, as though deciding that the man was indeed a pushy little bastard. "Okay, nobody touches Pollyanna until the tournament. Understood?"

"Yes, sensei!" Noah found himself answering, along with the others. His knees were still locked in the hachiji dachi pose, but he could feel them weakening at the sound of Brian's venomous words. Noah had thought he had found a home, but the foundation was quickly appearing cracked and rotting in places. Brian flexed his tanned forearm as he pointed to Dylan.

"But if you don't show, it's open season on you," Brian paused for effect. "And you," he added, now pointing at the old man.

What the hell? Noah thought as his eyebrows furrowed. What exactly is being implied here?

Brian's threat lingered in the air as the old Asian man and Dylan wordlessly left the dojo. Noah thought of all the time he had put in at Coyote Kai, all the money his mother had spent to send him there after school every day. It all seemed so pointless now. He quickly glanced around and noted the pitch black Coyote Kai outfits they each wore, which had seemed so slick to him in the past, and the angry, scowling coyote painted on each of their backs. In that moment, their clothes suddenly appeared to him as they truly were: the unmistakable uniform of bad guys.

Brian marched around the front of the dojo with his thumbs tucked into his black belt and laughed like a true villain, head leaned into his chest and eyes narrowed forward. Most of the others echoed his laughter and several exchanged high-fives. Noah just looked blankly ahead, hoping to not betray himself as a sudden dissident. He would have to hide his feelings until he could get outside of the building and figure out some way that he could separate himself from Coyote Kai.

And at some point after that, he would need to take a long look at himself to understand how he could be so blind to all of the obvious warning signs of an evil dojo.