(A/N: A couple people asked me where this series went. Long story short, due to a technical error it was deleted. But I'm re-uploading it.)

For Johnny, there was no way around it: Hawk was a weird kid. And not weird in the way Miguel could sometimes be weird. Hawk was weird. He'd known the kid was odd when he first started taking classes in the dojo, back when he was still Lip. Johnny could tell it from the weird way he walked, the weird way his eyes never seemed able to keep focus, that weird thing he did with his hands, and the weird way the kid practically tripped over his tongue whenever he could actually get him to talk. It was bad enough that the kid's freaky lip was distracting and impossible not to notice, what with the ugly scar on it, but he had to be one of those "special" kids, too? That was just what he needed, Johnny had thought to himself. Did his insurance even cover him if something happened to a challenged kid in his dojo?

Sometimes Hawk struggled to understand Sensei Lawrence.

Johnny honestly had had no hope for Lip, and so he wasn't surprised in the slightest when the kid had walked out like a crybaby after he'd tried toughening him up a little. He didn't entirely regret the things he'd said to Hawk then; eh, maybe in hindsight Miguel was right, maybe he had been a little harsh. But the kid was a sissy, the type of nerd who'd probably been treated with kid-gloves his whole life by the adults around him. Someone needed to do him a favor and finally give him a big shove in the right direction, to get him to man up.

Sensei Lawrence had been absolutely brutal in his callout. All he'd wanted was for him to stop calling him Lip. The more Hawk thought about it, though, the more he realized that Sensei Lawrence had been right when he said sometimes people didn't always do what they were supposed to. Maybe his dressing down was the final wakeup call he'd needed for that to sink in. If he didn't want people to call him Lip, he had to give them a reason not to.

Pushing Hawk in the right direction had worked. You couldn't argue with results. He'd genuinely surprised Johnny when he came back to the dojo sporting a new mohawk and a renewed willingness to learn what he had to teach him. That was when Johnny could see that maybe the kid had a natural cobra in him, after all, like Diaz and Miss Robinson. He just needed to shed his geeky skin first. And Johnny could help him do that, he could mold this kid into a badass.

Hawk listened to all of his Sensei's advice, because it couldn't be denied that Sensei Lawrence was one of the coolest people around, certainly the coolest adult he knew. If he wanted to be badass, he had to learn from the best. Hawk understood just the mohawk alone wouldn't be enough to become badass, although it was a big step in the right direction. He had so many things about himself that needed overhauled too, and thankfully Sensei was there to point them out. He worked hard to stop being so clumsy and ungainly. He suppressed his quirky habits. He even got good about the eye thing with enough effort, even when Sensei was drilling him particularly hard. He hoped his Sensei noticed his hard work.

Still, even after flipping the script, sometimes Hawk's behavior still felt…off. Artificial, that was the word, like the kid was playing the lead in some awkward comedy. But Johnny could live with that. He couldn't be a wonder worker with every student who came into his dojo; although the work he had accomplished with the kid was nothing less than a miracle, at least Hawk wasn't a total nerd anymore. In fact, he was actually a pretty skilled martial artist, once he pushed himself past his initial awkwardness.

It was like sometimes Sensei expected Hawk to be some sort of mind-reader, to constantly anticipate what he wanted from him, whereas all Hawk wanted was some clarity. He hoped Sensei Lawrence wasn't one of those people who liked to play head games.

But then Hawk would go completely off the rails and freak out, totally out of nowhere. Johnny couldn't believe his student had acted the way he did at the All-Valley Tournament. One minute, Hawk was fighting against Robby, all normal, the next thing he'd flipped his shit and attacked his son when his back was turned, dislocating Robby's shoulder. What the hell was wrong with him? Was the kid one of those crazy ones? Or was he just dense?

Sensei Lawrence was like so many of his other teachers: they would say one thing, but mean something else entirely. When Sensei taught the class that when they stood up for themselves against people who made fun of them, it should be with their fists, what he actually meant was only sometimes. When he'd told Hawk to show Robby what he had at the Tournament, he hadn't really intended him to. Because Hawk had applied what he'd been instructed – he'd attacked Robby because he mocked his haircut, what did it matter if he attacked him from behind or in front – but Sensei had gotten upset and humiliated him in front of the class for it. It made Hawk feel stupid. He thought he'd understood Sensei, but clearly he'd missed something.

Clearly something had been lost on the kid, on Hawk and Miguel both. So Johnny had to correct the mistake. He couldn't let those kids start making the same mistakes he did at their age. At least when Miguel messed up, Johnny had a handle on when he was back on track. With Hawk, sometimes Johnny thought he understood him, only for the kid to say or do something outrageous again. He swore, Hawk had to be doing it on purpose.

Didn't his Sensei see that he was trying? Hawk was trying his hardest to be the badass his Sensei demanded he be. It required constant focus and all of his energy to keep up his identity as Hawk. It wasn't like he wanted Lip to ever peek back out, he honestly did everything he could to hide that side of himself at all costs. He took all of his failures that his Sensei pointed out and tried to contextualize them, so he wouldn't make the same mistakes again. Couldn't his Sensei see that?