WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 1

Strike with great precision and all of your power HERE for WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 2!

Chenmin Yu walked down the street towards his school, the plastic of his grocery bag rustling against his leg.  He paid it no heed, his mind lost in contemplating  the recent troubles that had  befallen his school.   Mild annoyances abounded.  There had been two instances where the windows of his school had been shattered in the night, likely by the thugs of the Toscani school.  Childish prank calls rang at nearly every hour of the day, disrupting practice and preventing actual business form being accomplished.  Mail had been stolen.  A banana had been forced into the tailpipe of Master Yu’s Econoline van, and the lacquered yin yang he had painted himself over thirty years ago had been defaced with hundreds of tiny key scratches.  And on top of all of that, his cherished koi had died the night before in the night.  

Master Yu wanted to laugh off the immature pranks at first, but in recent weeks the level of malevolence directed against the Yu-Ban school had increased alarmingly.  Another student had been assaulted over the weekend by the Toscani school, bringing the list up to an even ten.  Ever since the Toscani were dishonored by the revelation of their bribing the judge in their last contest, a blood feud had simmered quickly.  The bad blood ran strong between the two schools, to Master Yu’s chagrin.  His own students were young and hot-blooded, but their skills were nothing in the face of the treachery of the Toscani.  He had begged  them to remain calm in the face of their adversary’s childish behavior, but even kindly Master Wu had a limit.  That limit was found bobbing pungently at the top of the shallow pond in the back of the school this morning.

“Well, sometimes fish just die Uncle,” said his nephew that morning, as his uncle clenched his knotty fists in decidedly un-Zen like calm.  The small pond was sheltered by a small group of trees, planted when the school was new. 

“Sometimes.  But I would wager that if you were to taste that pond water, you would find it to be unusually salty.”

“…uhh how do you know how salty a koi pond usually tastes, Uncle?”  

Master Yu stared On Pui down, until the teens eyes found something very interesting on the base of a mulberry tree.  “Just go buy some more fish.”  

On Pui often stepped on Master Yu’s lines when he was trying to be sagelike.  It was irritating.

That morning, Master Yu buried the fish in the yard beneath the mulberry trees and tried to go about his day.  He ventured forth into the bright sun for a quick stop to the corner market for a few groceries for his small kitchen in the rear of the school.  A small bottle of iced tea, two cans of tuna, a bottle of soy sauce, a half gallon of milk.  This last item he bought with great reluctance.  Dairy products are commonly not consumed in Chinese culture.  But though he was in fine shape for a man in his late fifties, Master Yu had grown older.  He had come to fear the onset of osteoporosis as his middle age slowly meandered by.  His nephew had sold him on many benefits of Western training –running for conditioning, weight training and the like- but the past he had resisted the most was the diet.  Master Yu found milk to be cloying in his throat, the thick wetness not agreeing with his chi.  He doubted that it did anything for his muscles or bones, but had to admit that his nephew grew taller than he or his brother had ever been when they were On Pui’s age.  He had to accept that it may have been a direct result of the calcium and vitamin rich diet the boy had as a youth.  Not that he would ever admit to such a thing.

He pondered this thought idly as he turned down the alley to the back gate of his school, grateful for the momentary distraction from the troubles with the Toscani Tong.  Perhaps, I will have a full glass today, he thought.  Then grimly looking up at the hot sun, rethought it.  “It is too hot for milk,” he said aloud as his free hand fumbled in a pocket for his keys.

“Talking to yourself, old man?  That’s an early sign of…senility.” came a snide voice from behind him.  Master Yu sensed something, and tilted his head gingerly.  A black, ceramic blade thrummed as it planted itself into the fence at the back of the alley.  Whirling around, he crouched slightly into a defensive stance to find himself facing his enemies.

The Toscani Tong.

The Toscani Tong ‘grandmaster’ stood at the end of the alley, flanked on either side by two of his students.  With snakeskin vests atop their jet black gis and long, black hair pulled back into oily ponytails they stood, sneering and posturing in what they likely thought to be ‘cool’ poses.  To a man, all members were oddly pudgy and unnaturally tanned.  

Orange, even.  This upstart school had taken the underground kung fu scene by storm months back, leaving several lesser schools in shambles after of harassing their opponents to their wits end, and then dominating their harried opponents in fixed contests.  And now they had their sights on the Yu-Ban school.  In regulated competition, the Toscani Tong’s opponents would generally be so frustrated by the bullying tactics of the Toscani that the uncentered fighters would leap headlong into the fight, only to be cruelly defeated shortly thereafter.  

Their fighting style was unorthodox, primarily based on countering the attack of an opponent, followed by an array of brutal chops and punches.  They would not kick for whatever reason, although young On Pui’s theory was that they were simply 

unable to.  And for all their oily ‘cool’ and devious behaviors, even Master Yu had to admit that they had in fact a formidable fighting style.  

What he did not understand was why they had chosen to devote themselves so totally to Steven Seagal.