AU Sammy LaRusso here.
Shipped and happily taken, in a relationship with
@AllValleyChampBio from Fandom.com:
"Everybody's got a sob story. Doesn't give you the right to be a bully."
―Samantha LaRusso to Miguel Diaz on Tory Nichols
Samantha "Sam" LaRusso is one of the main characters of Cobra Kai. She is the daughter of karate champion Daniel LaRusso and Amanda LaRusso.
She becomes the second student in the newly reopened Miyagi-Do Karate, and goes on to be of the best students. However, following the West Valley High School karate war and her fight with Tory Nichols, Sam struggles with PTSD and is left conflicted over martial arts. She is able to overcome her fear and rebuild her confidence. After gaining experience in Eagle Fang Karate from Johnny Lawrence, she manages to balance the two styles, making her an even better fighter. Her skills and association with Daniel and Miyagi-Do earn her the karate alias, Bonsai Badass.
Biography:
Samantha is the daughter of Daniel and Amanda LaRusso and the older sister of Anthony. At the age of 8, Sam was taught karate by her father, and was close to Mr. Miyagi. He described their relationship as the first time he felt like a Grandfather. As Sam got older, she lost interest in karate and quit. However, she retained her knowledge and skill.
Personality
"Maybe my right way is different than yours. Don't I get a choice?"
―Samantha LaRusso to Daniel LaRusso
Sam is a nice, polite and smart person. Despite hanging out with the popular crowd who are mean and nasty, Sam does not behave like them, showing she has her morals, and is able to maintain her true self. However joining the popular crowd does end their friendship with Aisha Robinson, though they are at the very least on speaking terms. After noticing her boyfriend Kyler bullying Miguel, Demetri and Eli she dumps Kyler, showing she is against bullying. After dumping Kyler, he ruins her reputation with her friends by making up lies about her, which causes her to lose her friends. Fortunately she develops a relationship with Miguel and even becomes friendly with Robby. She forms a friendship with Robby. Unfortunately a misunderstanding makes Miguel angry and accidentally hit Sam, causing her to dump him because she was holding Robby's hand. At the All Valley Tournament she seemingly makes up with Aisha after apologizing to her. She ultimately leaves the tournament after Miguel angrily tells her that he will hurt Robby, showing that she cares for Robby and fears Miguel then she knows that she made a mistake for starting the extended rivalry between.
At first she is heartbroken over her relationship with Miguel ending. However, after joining Miyagi-Do Karate where she spends time training and hanging out with Robby whom she develops feelings for, she seems to forget about Miguel. She tries to fix her friendship with Aisha, but the latter, who is angry at Daniel for insulting Cobra Kai in order to promote Miyagi-Do, takes her anger out on her, as well as has already befriended a new Cobra Kai student Tory. Believing that Tory has stolen her mom's wallet, she accuses her, but the latter denies without proofs. The two then get into a brief scuffle. Following this the two are rivals, though it's mostly on Tory's part as she frequently bullies and insults Sam. She and Robby eventually become a couple. However, she still has feelings for Miguel, and on the night before the first day of school a drunken Sam and Miguel share a kiss. Despite Miguel regretting the kiss as they are both in relationships, Tory, who is dating Miguel sees them kiss, but they are unaware that she caught them. It is the kiss that leads to the school brawl the following day.
After Miguel is rendered unconscious during the school brawl as a result of Robby kicking him off the railing Sam screams "Robby what did you do"? At the hospital Sam tearfully says she hopes Miguel's ok, showing she feels guilty about what happened. Sam even blames herself for the school fight. Her fight with Tory leaves Sam traumatized to the point that she freezes and has a look of fear on her face when Tory calls out her name, leading to her quitting karate. However, after getting encouragement from Daniel, she re-joins karate and eventually gets over her fear during her fight with Tory, allowing her to gain the upper hand over the latter. After Miguel is released from the hospital, the two rekindle their friendship. However, her relationship with Robby ends when he attacks Miguel for believing they had a thing going on. Shortly after the break up, she and Miguel rekindle their relationship.
In the fallout of the house fight and during the merge between the two dojos, Sam began to grow tired of the ideas her father placed on her as she was visibly uncomfortable when Daniel called her LaRusso 2.0 as well as when he jokes about her taking over the dealership in the future. While she was hesitant at first to train under sensei Johnny Lawrence due to his extreme methods, she started to follow Johnny's ideas after realizing that she didn't have to follow the same path her father followed. Unfortunately, Sam's Eagle Fang training also made her acquire a more impulsive nature about her problems, choosing to immediately attack anyone that threatened her instead of defusing the situation. Her new behavior was directly focused on Tory, whom already tried to kill her twice, leaving Sam to start instigating her at every chance she got, claiming that she was tired of the attacks she previously took from Tory. During the tournament Sam initially followed his father styles and ideas, but when the Miyagi-Do teachings proved to be useless as Cobra Kai had already learned them, she resorted to using the style that Johnny taught her by saying that she is the one that gets to decide which style should use. Sam eventually gets closure when her father finally accepts his ways and motivates her to use everything she learned to fight her own way. Despite this, she ends up losing the tournament to Tory which leaves her feeling very guilty.
Fighting Style:
"You don't have to worry about me, Dad. I can handle myself. I'm a LaRusso."
―Samantha LaRusso to Daniel LaRusso
Samantha trained in martial arts with her father as a child, and it is shown in season 1 that she has retained that knowledge when she fights off Kyler's advances and performs a takedown on Miguel.
After resuming her training in season 2, Sam shows that she's a quick, acrobatic, and elusive fighter with sound technique. Thanks to their tandem training she fights extremely well alongside Robby due to all the training the two shared, holding off several Cobra Kai students during the brawl at the mall with the wheel technique she and Robby practiced. During their training with Shochu-Geiko exercise, Sam was the only one that managed to attack Robby with success, she also managed to defend Robby's attacks during the Kangeiko variant by anticipating his strikes in the extreme cold. Sam had more trouble in her one on one fight with Tory during the school brawl, as she struggled with Tory's aggressive, however, Sam did barely managed to defeat her after a protracted fight.
During the arcade fight on Season 3, Sam is shown to easily defeat most of Cobra Kai's students, which include Mikey, Doug and Hawk, but she's unfortunately unable to keep fighting after Tory shows up as she started to froze do to her trauma from the school fight. Daniel later trains Sam with the bo staff in order to heal her trauma. After Tory broke into the LaRusso household with a bunch of Cobra Kai students to fight, Sam managed to keep up with most of her rivals but her PTSD briefly stopped her from taking on Tory once again. Fortunately, Sam quickly overcome her trauma and used a bo staff, which gives her a vital edge when Tory attacked her with nunchucks, defeating her once again.
During Daniel's and Johnny's brief alliance, Sam got to train under sensei Johnny Lawrence, who taught her a more offensive style of karate that diverged from the Miyagi-Do teaching she knew. Sam's Eagle Fang training made her add more aggressive moves to her repertoire, like the flying tornado kick, which she later used in the All Valley Tournament. During the fight in the prom after party, Sam strikes first against Tory and gains the upper hand, until Miguel stops her. When they fight again shortly after, Tory has the upper hand at first but then they appear to be even until Robby pushes Miguel and Sam into the pool. During the new skills competition at the All Valley Tournament, Sam shows her proficiency with Sai. In the quarterfinals of the all valley tournament, while initially losing to Piper, she regains her bearings and wins by using the Eagle Fang technique. In the finals, she combines both the Miyagi Do and Eagle Fang styles to put up a strong fight against Tory. While Sam does lose after a tough and close fight, that may be attributed to Terry Silver bribing the referee.
Due to her years of experience since childhood and her decision to combine styles from two different dojos, Sam is currently the strongest student at Miyagi-Do and one of the strongest among Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang.
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