1/10/12

WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 2

Strike here, swiftly and without mercy to read WAY OF THE WET FIST: PART 1!


Strike here with great focus and energy to read WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 3!

“Out for a walk, old man?” sneered ‘Grandmaster’ Mason Ryback.  Who had been born Danny Lo some thirty years before as Master Yu remembered.  Upon the founding of his school Danny had taken it upon himself to rename based on his two second-favorite Seagal films, Hard to Kill and Under Siege.  “You’d better enjoy the sunlight while you can.  There’s not going to be too much sunlight in the nursing home.”  His four cronies guffawed loudly, then their laughter abruptly stopped short as they reassumed what they likely thought to be their ‘cool,’ intimidating glare.
“Danny, did you really just throw a knife at me?” Master Yu refused to indulge in this foolishness.  Why can’t kids today just shamelessly copy Bruce Lee like we did when we were younger? he wondered.

“YOU WILL CALL HIM MASTER RYBACK!” shrieked the chunkiest flunky to his left, face red.  He surged forward into the alley, only to be held back by Ryback’s outstretched arm.

“Hey!” he murmured.  “Play it cool,” he hoarsely whispered in what Master Yu supposed was supposed to be a Seagal-esque voice.  Ryback turned a glare onto Master Yu.  “That little stunt you pulled at the gym the other day...bad move.  The Toscani Tong” -so named after Danny Lo’s number one favorite Seagal movie Above the Law- “had a lot of money riding on that match.  That trick you pulled with the judges…not to cool.  Your nephew was supposed to lose.”

“Oh, so telling them that you paid off the referee wasn’t cool?  I’m terribly sorry that you feel this way.”  Master Yu was not actually sorry.  “Maybe you shouldn’t have paid him off in the parking lot.  Or maybe you could have at least gotten that idiot to leave his payoff in his car, instead of leaving it in his gym bag, and then leaving that right next to the judges table.”

Ryback’s air of cool started to slip, his nostrils flaring impressively.  “Maybe so.  Maybe so.  But you should have been smart enough to keep your stupid old mouth shut, old man.”
“Oh, please.  On Pui didn’t lose.  Your man hit him a full four seconds after he’d been kicked in the stomach.  We all counted.  Including the judges, who were then quite rightly wondering how the hell the referee had managed to call the point for your man.”  Master Yu felt himself getting angrier, although underneath his anger he was calculating the odds.  Five against one in a small alley was not good news.

“Shut up!  Shut your damn…old mouth!”  Ryback stepped forward, fixing the leopard-print belt that marked him ‘grandmaster.’  “The point is…you cost the Toscani Tong quite a…lot of money...to a number of…concerned individuals.”  
“Would you stop the dramatic pauses, Danny?  It’s ridiculous when Seagal talks like that, its worse when you do it too.”

More glares.  “We’re in deep.  In fact…we’re going to have to leave town for awhile.  But before we do…we figured we ought to leave just one more rival school…in pieces.  You may think you’re above the law…well you’re not above mine!”  
With that, Ryback made a curt gesture with his left hand, and his four men suddenly produced four black, ceramic blades identical to the one buried in the alley’s back wall.  Suddenly this was serious.  
The four men advanced swiftly.  Which for them was not very swift at all.  More of a fast walk.  They were somewhat pudgy.
Master Yu found himself literally with his back up against the wall.  In a regular fight, he was mostly confident that he would be able to fight his way out of the alley.  But with all four of his opponents armed (and now Ryback produced yet another blade) he found he did not like his chances.  A quick glance around the alley confirmed that it was entirely empty.  The knife was buried hilt-deep in the planks of the wall, and was no use.  Master Yu considered throwing his keys at the men, but thought it to be dishonorable.  He crouched down, his left hand out in invitation of their first strike, and his right hand...laden with the small bag of groceries.

He smiled.

Grandmaster Ryback tried to maintain the level of serene violence that he saw in his idol, Steven Seagal; but found it slipping.  After their disgrace before the Yu-Ban, he and his school were in thirty large to Fat Carl.  And Fat Carl was angry, and supposed to have mob ties.  And Ryback and his second-in-command Gino Taft (so named for the smash Seagal hits Out For Justice and On Deadly Ground) soon agreed that an angry fat man with numerous mob ties would be bad for the continued health of the school.  Their plan was to kill Master Yu, steal his van and whatever cash he had on hand , take a dump in his koi pond, and then flee to Fresno.

He tugged on his oily ponytail and grimaced in what he felt was a manly way at the old man in the back of the alley as his men advanced.  Master Yu was rifling through his groceries frantically.  “This is for my school.  Fuck you and die!”  Ryback felt good, paraphrasing the master like that.

Master Yu raised his cans of tuna first, and whipped them with great force directly into the two foremost Toscani men.  The impacts were brutal, sinking deeply into the considerable gut of second-in-command Gino Taft and striking another in the throat with a meaty thud.  As the two men toppled, Master Yu shattered the top of the small bottle of soy sauce against the ground and splashed it frantically into the faces of the other advancing men.  They clutched at their eyes and screamed piteously. “Aaaaaah! My eyes!"  "So salty!”

Master Yu allowed himself a small smile, and readied himself for the next wave of attacking jackasses. He hefted his primary weapon in his right fist: a half gallon of 1 percent milk.

Organic.  

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