An Average Morning

Suggested Music: DangerDoom - El Chupa Nibre (Occult Hymn Remix)

It was early. Too early. Mesa wasn't sure why he'd woken up. He slept on a mat on his floor (this wasn't necessarily a custom among the Grass-Spiders - while it was common in Lookshy, many of the Grass-Spiders had actual beds; Mesa was just too lazy to get one). Judging by the light pouring into his window, it was well before zenith - too early for Mesa. He grumbled and rolled over, pushing the sheets aside and lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. It was movement in his peripheral vision that caught his eye. He looked over to his right (Mesa's bed was against the wall, so looking left wouldn't have been a productive exercise) and saw a black boot, and upon turning his head fully, saw several more. All in all, he saw about a dozen black boots, which meant there were six people in his bedroom. Realizing this was something he probably couldn't put off dealing with, he was at least hoping to have some coffee first. Ignoring the figures standing in his room for a moment, he scanned his room for his coffee mug; he spotted it, but it was unfortunately sitting on a table on the other end of the room. All six of the intruders stood between he and it. That was awfully disappointing. Mesa sighed, getting to his feet with a groan and some effort. He surveyed the invaders more closely. They were all swathed from head-to-toe in black - Mesa made a mental note to tell these guys that their choice of camouflage was really poor for an invasion of range homes at the ass crack of dawn. Their faces were covered, unsurprisingly. The portion of cloth covering their mouths was white, which Mesa assumed had some significance, but pre-coffee Mesa had little inclination to ponder such mysteries. He finally addressed the attackers, several of whom already had weapons drawn, ranging from kusarigama to tantos.

"As much as I could see some of the people I hang around with using guys like you as a courier service, I'm guessing you all aren't here to deliver my mail."

Par for the course, none of them replied; the only semblance of a response that Mesa received was another one of the invaders drawing his weapon, another tanto. Mesa sighed, again gazing longingly to the coffee mug at the other end of the room. He cracked his neck to the left, then to the right, and shook his arms loose a few times.

"Alright, let's do this."

Eight-Legged Harvest Promenade wasn't an easy style to learn. The mindset it espoused was utterly contrary to most conventional fighting styles, but this might've been why Mesa, who had no prior experience as a trained combatant, was able to pick it up so quickly. Despite his notoriety for being lazy about training, Mesa had greatly improved his mastery of the style in a comparatively short time and was becoming a fierce combatant, as he was soon to demonstrate. As it often did for trained martial artists, time seemed to slow down as Mesa analyzed the positioning of his opponents. They stood loosely in a triangular 3-2-1 formation, with the lone man being closest to Mesa; Grass-Spiders were taught that enemies fighting in close quarters often did this inadvertently to maximize the number of the people who could strike at one time. As such, this was a canonical example of a training exercise for Grass-Spiders. No sweat. Think of the enemies as being positioned on a spider web, connected by strands of silk. Figure out which strands to tug to disable them all as quickly as possible. For Mesa, the three-man diagonal on the right side seemed a fairly natural starter. Mesa waited for the lone man in front to make the first move. The intruder lunged forward with a tanto, making a horizontal stab towards Mesa's neck - far too small of a target, Mesa judged. Mesa easily dodged the blow with a feint down and to the right, then set about traversing his web of opponents, like a spider traverses its web of prey. Already leaning rightward, Mesa wheeled all the way around counterclockwise and swung his left heel back around and far above his attacker's head. He brought it down with all his might, hitting the back of man's head with a brutal heel kick. Mesa was only getting started, however. He used the man's head as a springboard, flattening out his foot against the man's head and vaulting himself upwards, launching himself above the heads of his opponents (and only inches from his own ceiling) with a forward flip. He landed behind the triangle and at the end of the diagonal he'd established as his attack line. On the way down, Mesa considered attempting some sort of flying drop kick, but quickly reasoned with himself.

Okay, that was some pretty cool shit, but don't get cocky. Spiders win fights by holding onto their opponents, not by an insistence on disabling everyone with a flip-reverse-double-roundhouse kick.

As he descended from above the back-corner man, Mesa slipped his arm underneath the man's own. When Mesa's feet hit the ground, they were back-to-back, right arms locked. Mesa yanked the man around quickly, securing both of the intruder's arms with his right arm and pulling him to the side. Indeed, as though connected by a web to the man Mesa had pulled out of line, the rest of the triangle advanced forward in attempt to attack Mesa. Anticipating this, Mesa quickly yanked himself and the man he was clinching along with him back toward his attackers. Just before they were about to collide, Mesa began to roll left, and with a grunt, he tossed the man he held over his shoulder and into the three men comprising the smaller triangle to his left - although those three men weren't harmed by the impact, it held them off long enough for Mesa to address more pressing matters. Immediately, Mesa wheeled around to the man he'd intentionally left alone - this guy was the middle man in the diagonal he'd initially designated as his attacking line (the first guy was still on the ground, stunned by Mesa's kick to the back of the head, and the third man in the diagonal was the man who was just grappled and thrown by Mesa). Mesa narrowly dodged the bladed chain being swung in his direction, having to stoop well beneath it as he dashed into the man. That wasn't the approach he was hoping to make, and finding himself coming up a bit short on ideas, he lunged for the man's legs, aiming to tackle him. He did so, though the man managed to swing the bladed chain at Mesa again on their way down in attempt to ward him off. That was perfect. Mesa leaned heavily into the intruder he'd tackled, forcing the man's neck to the ground with his left forearm, letting the swung chain sail over both of them. At the same time, he raised his right arm and snatched the chain on its way back around, instantly redirecting it toward the four men to his right - having understood their relative positioning in the context of a spider web, Mesa didn't need to look to know where they were at. It caught the man he'd shoulder-thrown (who was decidedly in front of the men he'd been thrown into) in the chest cleanly. Mesa couldn't help himself as he spoke up, having heard the blade hit the man.

"Shit, nice."

Knowing he had to act quickly with the three remaining men to his right approaching quickly, he accepted that not all of his kills could be so elegant. He somersaulted forward with his left forearm still holding the man beneath him down, and as Mesa rolled over the man's neck, he shifted his grip and took the man's head with both hands. At the end of his somersault, he wheeled left, hands still firmly gripping the man's face - this snapped the intruder's neck. The three other attackers now only a few inches in front of him, all poised to launch attacks, Mesa rose to his feet quickly and steadied himself. He reaffirmed the formation of his enemies as insects caught in a spider's web, planning his next sequence of attacks. The men were once again aligned in a loose triangle, this time with two in front, one in back. He could cut the number of his opponents down to two if he could hang on to one guy while he fought off the other two. Mesa also hadn't forgotten the man he'd delivered at stunning blow to at the beginning of the fight. He did a low backflip, landing on the other side of the stunned man. He kicked the man's prone body into the air, sending it forward into the two men leading the charge against him with a second kick - as Mesa had hoped, he successfully parried their attack with the man's body. The stunned man groaned as the two tanto-like blades cut into him from above and below. At the same time, Mesa had leapt into the air - he landed on the airborne body of the man he'd tossed, just as it was being cut. Mesa had the acrobatic dexterity to place his foot neatly between the two locations being slashed. He again used the man as a springboard, launching off of him and flipping over the remaining three attackers. They remained a three-man triangle, although now the two-man row was behind a lone man, who presently lunged at Mesa's back, attacking with a low sweep of his kusarigama.