WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 3

Strike here, swiftly and without mercy to read 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!

The four men paused in the alley, looking at the crouching Master Yu.  They were perhaps five feet away from him now; one down, another of their number winded badly (cardio was not a major precept of the Toscani) , most of them stinking of soy sauce.  Master Yu calmly leveled his outstretched left hand again, and carefully swung the plastic carton of milk in a circle around his right thumb.  He smiled larger, and made a ‘come on’ gesture.  

“GET HIM!” shouted Ryback, furiously pacing at the end of the alley.  “CUT HIM DOWN!”  And so they tried.

Luckily for Master Yu, they came at him one by one.    If they had been smart enough to recognize their strength in numbers, he would be dead.  Yet luckily for Master Yu, they were quite stupid. One by one they charged at him, black knives flickering wickedly in forward and backhand thrusts.

 
Master Yu remained calm, parrying their outreaching arms with the heavy half-gallon of milk, and then striking crisply with his left hand.  One by one they attacked; one by one they fell under his speedy fist and the heavy thud of the milk.  As he sent the four men flying into the back of the alley, he kept flicking glimpses to their end of the alley where Ryback lurked at the open end.  The ‘Grandmaster’ appeared unconcerned and stood nonchalantly flipping his knife over his fingers, until he cut himself a little.

Master Yu bobbed backwards to avoid a Toscani knife thrust and swept his left leg into a bent knee, leaving him off-balance.  Master Yu swung the half gallon of milk with tremendous force into the back of the Toscani man’s head.  The milk slammed into the man’s greasy hair and bounced back, a half gallon of liquid force knocking the man facedown into the concrete alley floor.  There was a sickening crack as his front teeth broke, and the man went down.  Master Yu allowed a frozen moment to contemplate his fallen opponent, and then was looking up and ready again.

It was Gino Taft, second in command of the Toscani Tong; and the recent recipient of a can of tuna (packed in water it was healthier than oil) to the gut.  He looked to be on shaky feet, but pulled himself upright to posture.  “You, fuck nuts!”  He growled, as he pointed his black knife blade towards the master.  Master Yu, rolled his eyes.

His knife strikes were short and precise, but Master Yu easily parried them with a few short swipes of his half gallon.  Taft feinted with his knife, and then led in with his right hand in a vicious chop that Master Yu easily spun past.  His spin ended with him standing behind Taft, where he then grabbed him by the shoulder and bent him over backwards over his left knee.  Gino Taft was not used to bending in such a manner (stretching also not a priority in their school) and yelped piteously before Master Yu brought the half gallon milk down in a cruel, swinging arc right into the center of Taft’s face.  Taft’s nose burst open in a spray of red, and Master Yu stood upright, toppling Taft onto the floor of the alley.  As Taft tried to get up, he was laid low by a short, sharp kick to the face from Master Yu and that was it for Taft.  

Master Yu turned again to where Ryback stood at the open end of the alley, his left hand again outstretched and his half gallon of milk again casually swinging on his right thumb.  What a tremendous weapon, he thought.  And I thought milk was no good for kung fu!

He sensed another man behind him, and whipped around in a circle, his half gallon of milk swinging wide.  The milk grazed the face of a third Toscani man with little injury, although it did back the man off for a second.  

Now Master Yu faced two men at once, in their haste to defeat the older man forgetting the one-at-a-time rule ingrained in them from such films as Marked For Death.  He swung his half gallon back and forth in a wide arc, doing his best to keep these two greasy-haired bastards at a safer distance.  They could do nothing but take ineffectual swipes at him, snatching their arms back from the angry sloshing of his weapon.  Ahh, that’s right.  They cannot kick.  thought Master Yu.  

Master Yu swung another gurgling strike at the man on his left, then abruptly stopped midswing and leapt forward with a kick to the head.  His foot struck the side of a greasy head, sending the man face first into the wall.  Yu then leapt straight up into the air and delivered a sharp kick with his left foot directly into the temple of the knife-wielding man left standing.  This man having been the recipient of the other can of tuna he’d let fly with at the battle’s beginning.  The kick was more than enough to put the man down for good.  Landing on the ground, Master Yu turned to swat away yet another knife strike from the last Toscani man before swinging the half gallon into that man’s soft midsection.  Such a durable weapon!  he thought.  What kind of plastic is this?

Then, Ryback made his move.  With his right hand, he sunk a fist into Master Yu’s kidney from behind, utilizing the most deadly weapon of the Toscani school: the cheap shot.  A poorly considered attack, the force of his blow accidentally sent the older man out of range of his next knife thrust.  Master Yu grunted, but rolled with the impact and came up on his feet in the same stance he’d maintained for the entire battle: left hand out and inviting, the half gallon of milk on his thumb; swinging slightly.  

“If your daddy knew how stupid you were, he’d trade you in for a pet monkey.” Ryback grimaced.  The quote from Fire Down Below went unnoticed by Master Yu, as his first conquest of the battle sprung up from where he had been quietly bleeding on the ground and lashed upwards with his blade directly at Master Yu’s back.

Master Yu was swift however, and managed to twist and avoid the man’s knife strike.  He brought the man down for good with a swift milk-elbow-milk combination to the face and throat.  Master Yu turned back to his last two opponents and assumed his stance again, only to be taken aback by a pair of grim and knowing grins.  

The doughy man had missed Master Yu entirely, but the knife strike had done its damage.  It had neatly sliced the bottom from the half gallon of milk on a diagonal, leaving Master Yu standing with an empty plastic carton.  
Ryback stood with his arms out, one knife at the ready.  His last crony -Austin Storm, so named after hit films Executive Decision and Hard to Kill- circled around, trying to get into Master Yu’s blind spot.  His greasy pony tail was askew, lank hair framing the puffiness about his face from where the half gallon had struck him.  Master Yu twisted and turned, trying to keep both men in his line of sight.  He dropped the diminished half-gallon to the alley floor, and tried to fight the feeling of panic that had set in.  “The fight’s not over yet, Danny.  I’m not scared of you and your bully boy.”

“Maybe you should be,” Ryback whispered; inwardly pleased that he could naturally quote Hard to Kill without it seeming too forced.  It of course went over Master Yu's head.  That was weird.  Why is he whispering?

Austin Storm giggled, and bent to pick up another knife from one of their fallen compatriots.  When Master Yu turned to kick at him, Ryback floated in and viciously punched the older man in the kidneys again.  Master Yu slumped heavily to the ground.

Ryback laughed, pointing his knife at a prone Master Yu.  “Now it’s over, old man.  You put up a good fight, but now it’s aaaaall over.  You’re done, and with you your school is done.  Get ready to-“ and then they heard a cry from the open end of the alley.  “UNCLE!”  

It was his nephew, On Pui racing down the alley with a pair of large plastic bags in either fist.  He had returned from the pet store with a large orange carp and a large white carp in bags filled with aquarium water.

Heavy bags of water.  

Austin lunged forward, but On Pui tucked and rolled and then was straight up with a knee to the chest of the pudgy Austin Storm.  He swung the bags wildly, hitting Austin in the side of the head one, two, three, four times in quick succession.  The water sloshed violently as the force of his strikes rattled his brain.  Austin thrust wildly about with his knives in either hand, but On Pui danced back on delicate feet, easily avoiding his opponent’s flustered attacks.  Then On Pui paused, and then whirled around in a circle before bringing both aquarium bags around in a three hundred and sixty degree arc to hammer the man into unconsciousness with his mighty bags of fish.

Ryback went for On Pui, hoping to blindside him from behind.  But On Pui heard him coming, and whirled about in a blur of white and orange fish, the bags from the pet store striking Ryback in the side of the head with tremendous force.  Ryback was staggered.  On Pui let out a terrific yelp and advanced on his weakened opponent, but Ryback was ready and socked him deep in the stomach.  On Pui fell back, windmilling his bagged fish to keep Ryback from advancing any further.  Ryback cringed, and turned to run.

Right into Master Yu’s left fist.

Rocked by the blow, Ryback stabbed out only to have his other hand slashed again by an edge of Master Yu’s diminished milk bottle.  The sharp plastic carved a furrow into Ryback’s right hand, the pain causing Ryback to drop the knife to the alley floor.  But Seagal never loses, he thought in a panic.  

Pained, a shouting Ryback chopped his left hand at Master Yu’s throat, but the master cagily whirled and spun and whipped his cut up half gallon up and across Ryback’s face.  A thin line slashed up the man’s face, splitting his eyelid open.  Ryback wailed in shock and fear, flailing about in a circle…

…right into a face full of white and orange fish, slamming into his face yet again.  The impact of the heavy bags of water and fish was the end of him, his short and greasy ponytail flipping in the air as he fell to the alley floor among his men.

The fight was over.

On Pui twitched with adrenaline, hopping from one downed man to another, satisfied by the dull groans and slow breathing of those unconscious.  “Uncle, are you all right?  Are you hurt?”

“No, On Pui.  I am unharmed, but somewhat winded.”  And he was.  He stood there, looking over the remains of the battle.  Noting the brown streaks of soy sauce on the alley floor and walls, the milk slowly curdling in the summer sun.  Looked down at the handle of his cut up half gallon of milk.

“I can’t believe these assholes.  What were they thinking?  Did they really think they could come and try and knife you to death in the alley to your school and get away with it?”  On Pui kept on hopping, nerves on edge.

Master Yu looked up from the remains of the half-gallon.  “I think I have discovered a new fighting style today.  And it appears that you have as well, On Pui.”  On Pui looked confused until his uncle pointed at the bags of koi.

“What?  Holy shit!  They’re still alive!”  And they were, the tails of the carp flickered as they moved about in their temporary homes still clutched in On Pui’s fists.  

“A fine omen.  I take that as a sign, a signal from the divine tha-”

“Man, I’m so glad I didn’t kill them.  I didn’t even think about it, I just saw they had knives on you and I-“

“On Pui, I fought and defeated three men with a half gallon of one percent milk.  You fought and defeated two men with two plastic bags filled with water.”

“…well, there were fish in there too.”

“Ssh!  I think we have discovered something.  Unarmed men, defeating multiple opponents with vessels filled with water.  This is something we need to study.  Something we can perfect, so that we can use these techniques against opponents less lowly than these of the Toscani school.”

“Yeah, never know when the Van Damme School is gonna attack.”  Master Yu frowned at his nephew.  “I don’t really see the sense in attacking people with gallons of milk or…is that soy sauce?  It smells like soy sauce.”

“The proof is laying all around you.  We have triumphed with this new approach to kung fu, this new…way of fighting.  We have innovated something here, and that is not to be taken lightly.”

“I don’t think a bag full of carp is tournament legal, Uncle.”

“…just go put the fish in the pond and call the police already.”

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.  

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.