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"She's here?! God, I thought our kids would think that whatever we do as a date would be lame! Who would've guessed they'd be here too?!" Daniel exclaimed, dropping Johnny's hand as soon as he saw Sam and Miguel from a distance, enjoying one of the booths at Valley Fest.
"So it is a date?" Johnny teased. “I thought you said -”
"YES, you asshole, and she can't find out like this. Not after she had to overhear me and Amanda about the divorce. It has to be done right this time. We have to sit down and - oh, God, no," Daniel rambled, grabbing Johnny and ducking them both behind a carnival booth.
---
It took Johnny five tries to win a giant stuffed crane toy from the milk bottle toss game. Daniel had picked it out and forced Johnny to get it for him to hide behind whenever they spotted Sam and Miguel walking by.
"It's symbolic," Daniel had insisted. Johnny claimed he only agreed, even though it was only Daniel's dojo being represented, because there was no stuffed snake toy to be found anywhere at the carnival. The numerous stuffed eagles all over Valley Fest, specially made for the Fourth of July, did not include fangs.
"I hate it, LaRusso. This thing is ten times bigger than actual size," Johnny grumbled, struggling to lift the stuffed crane over the counter and hand it to Daniel.
Daniel carried the enormous stuffed crane with him throughout their date, strategically hiding behind it every time he spotted Sam and Miguel. But once the two teenagers entered the line for the completely enclosed Gravitron ride, Daniel breathed a sigh of relief and decided it was safe to set the crane down and drag it along for a little while.
"Hey, maybe now I could win you a -" Daniel began to say. Daniel, who only had eyes for Johnny, plowed into someone mid-sentence.
"What are you two doing here?" Johnny demanded belligerently when he recognized the people Daniel had run into as being two of their own students.
"Same thing you two are doing here, Sensei: we're on a date," Hawk said plainly. Only then did Johnny notice that Hawk and Demetri were holding hands. Johnny scoffed at the presumption. Why, the very nerve of that kid -
"Don't tell Yasmine," Demetri suddenly begged.
"She's here, too?" Daniel said, perplexed. "I thought I heard you kids saying Valley Fest was supposed to be lame."
"That was last year, Mr. L," Demetri clarified patiently. "And the year before that. Most kids our age who went were the ones who had to work the booths.” Gesturing towards himself with his free hand, he added, “Or, you know, had friends doing karate demonstrations. Or were in them. This year, Valley Fest is cool again. Everyone's here."
"Tell you what," Johnny suddenly interjected. Johnny, who had zero interest in the wildly fluctuating interests of teenagers and what they deemed to be cool or uncool, was struck with an idea. He pointed at the huge crane in Daniel's arms. "You two hang onto this while LaRus - Danie - Sensei LaRusso and I go get something to eat, then we won't tell Yasmine." Johnny had no idea who Yasmine was.
"Fine," grumbled Hawk, letting go of Demetri's hand to grab the crane. It required both hands, and once he had the crane, the spikes of his mohawk were no longer visible from the front.
“And don’t tell Sam or Miguel about us,” Daniel added as an afterthought.
“We already agreed on terms,” Hawk pointed out, his voice a touch muffled from behind the crane he was now hefting.
Daniel sighed heavily. “Fine, just, keep to yourselves until we relieve you of crane duty.”
Johnny didn’t feel like negotiating further. He said, "We'll meet you at the Inferno-Coaster in twenty minutes.”
“Carnival lines, Johnny,” Daniel pointed out.
“No, make that an hour. And DON'T BE LATE!" Johnny bellowed, his voice thundering over the sound of people screaming from a car on the Tilt-a-Whirl whooshing past him and Daniel. With that, Demetri and Hawk wandered off towards a row of carnival booths, both struggling to navigate with the added bulk of the crane.
“Oh, right,” Johnny muttered as he watched Demetri, with a considerable amount of effort, place the gigantic crane atop Hawk’s shoulders so that he could see in front of him.
“What?” Daniel asked.
Johnny was silent for a few moments as he watched the boys stagger off. “I guess that makes sense,” Johnny said finally. “Last year, right here at Valley Fest... I told Hawk that the flashiest way to show off his board-breaking stunt was to pull the hottest babe from the audience onto the stage and make them hold it.”
Daniel barked out a laugh. “Last year, right here at Valley Fest, I wouldn’t have said this. But, Johnny, you’re a good sensei. Those kids really listen to you, don’t they?”
---
Daniel and Johnny each picked out an assortment of various deep-fried foods as they debated their next move. They argued heatedly about who would beat who at the Test Your Strength game, but they approached it just as someone hammered it into oblivion, destroying it for forever and always. Johnny raised his eyebrows at Daniel, who looked just as bewildered. Johnny then said, “Beat you at the balloon darts thing instead?”
“Oh, you’re on.”
Johnny did indeed end up popping more balloons with darts, but Daniel beat him at a ring toss, and so it went back and forth, until they disrupted each other too much for either of them to win at the water gun horse race.
“She should have that instead of us, anyway,” Daniel conceded, as the little girl who won the race collected a stuffed animal, substantially smaller than Daniel’s crane, as a prize. Daniel was smiling, though. He was having a great time, and Johnny had to laugh as he thought to himself that Daniel was probably at his happiest when he really let that competitive streak fly. Especially against Johnny. He had to admit that, while they both carried bags of small prizes, Daniel had won a few more games than he had. Johnny wondered if he’d ruin Daniel’s good mood if he kissed him after eating so many disgusting deep-fried carnival foods.
Daniel eyed Johnny suspiciously as they walked towards the center stage of the carnival, where a swing band was playing for the crowd. “What are you smirking so much about?” he asked.
“Well, now I have to do it,” Johnny said to himself in response. Daniel looked alarmed for a moment before Johnny leaned in and kissed him firmly.
Johnny was surprised to find how little Daniel seemed to mind the whole fried foods situation.
When they broke apart, Johnny had a grin on his face. He admitted breathlessly, “You know, I was going to make some kind of rude comment about you not kissing on the first date. But, this doesn’t… something about this doesn’t really feel like a first date, does it?”
“Yeah. This,” Daniel said, pressing his lips to Johnny’s once more, “feels very belated.”
---
One hour after the crane hand-off, Demetri and Hawk stood waiting for their two teachers at the base of the rollercoaster, on which Hawk had lost his hold on the mammoth-sized crane toy. The two boys had watched helplessly as the crane, as nature apparently intended, flew gracefully through the air from the very zenith of the Inferno-Coaster before landing directly in the pool of the log ride. The children in the nearest log screamed.
Demetri finished the story with, "Eli and I can’t blame them. And then, by the time we got off the rollercoaster, the massive thing had soaked up so much water that they had to haul the bird crane out with a mechanical crane."
"So then what did you do?" Johnny said, entranced.
Hawk shrugged expansively. "We acted like we'd never seen that thing before in our lives.”
Johnny sighed. "That's what I would've done." He turned back to Daniel. "Sorry about your prize, LaRusso."
"Oh," Daniel said, waving a hand dismissively. "I couldn't have brought that thing home, anyway. Samantha would've caught on. Besides, it's all right. My real prize -"
"Bye," said Hawk.
"YEAH. Bye," echoed Demetri.
Hawk and Demetri bolted faster than a teenaged Daniel LaRusso running from skeletons.
“Johnny, I've been meaning to ask you something for awhile. Is it just me," Daniel mused, "or does he play a screeching hawk noise from his phone whenever he does anything…?”
“You’re not imagining it,” Johnny assured him. “That’s just a thing he does. Sometimes he gets the other kids to do it, too. You get used to it.”
“Huh,” Daniel said, shifting his bag of carnival prizes from one arm to another.
"Well, finally,” Johnny muttered, taking a furtive look around before wrapping an arm around Daniel's waist. “Another bit of privacy.”
"Dad?" came Sam's voice.
"Sensei?" said Miguel.
"We were about to go on the - they closed down the log ride, so we were just walking over here, and -" Sam stammered.
Miguel was scowling. The log ride was his favorite. "Sensei," he began cautiously. "Sam's just wondering if she did something wrong," he said to Johnny.
"Dad, why have you been avoiding me all night?" Sam blurted out. "You seem mad at me."
"I... " Daniel was hardly ever at a loss for words, but his brain suddenly shut down, and he followed up with nothing.
"He was going to surprise you, that's all," Johnny told Sam, unusually gently. "Was gonna sit you down, have a nice talk... about everything. And with a nice gift to break it to you. But someone threw it in the log ride, so, we're just going to have to go back to the booths to win you a new gift, and then we're all going to go sit down and have that talk. Yeah?"
Daniel flushed and looked at Johnny adoringly. "Yeah, Sam, if you’re okay with it. And Miguel can come, too. And, oh, Sam - remember Valley Fest, uh, I guess that would have been three years ago? We had fun, right? And then we all went to Applebee's after? You guys want to - for old time’s sa-"
"Sensei Lawrence can't go to Applebee's, Sensei LaRusso," Miguel cut in quickly. "But I'm sure we'd all love to go anywhere else," he added with a warm grin.