6 - Game Four

DETROIT______97
PHILADELPHIA_92 OT

Allen Iverson:
Minutes Played: 53 FGM-A: 14-24 3GM-A: 4-7 FTM-A 4-4 Rebounds: 5 Assists: 8 Personal Fouls: 2 Steals: 1 Turnovers: 3 Blocked Shots: 1 Points: 36

In Game Four Allen Iverson comes out like gangbusters and the first Quarter ends with the Sixers leading. Chauncey Billups returns the favour and the Pistons take the lead by the Half. At the end of the third Quarter, the Sixers have clawed their way back and then exceeded the score of the previous champeens by a single point. Allen Iverson has been lighting up the net all night. Having inherited some of his Father's abilities, Allen Iverson is able to look at time as though it were spread out within space. He uses this power and the end of the third Quarter to take an overview of the game, the Basket appears to him as a pack of matches and he himself takes on the likeness of a flame thrower, blazing along the surface of the hardwood, causing the varnish to bubble and igniting all 18 matchheads/baskets in the pack at once.

Unfortunately, upon using this ability, his monk-like focus is slightly disrupted and he begins to contemplate his recent conversation with his Father. It disturbs him to remember his father, Regalus Redwood, the true Fairy Red, admitting fear. What could be more ominous? Gradually, Allen Iverson become as shook as the halfway crooks in the legendary track by Mobb Deep. In the closing three minutes of the game Allen Iverson takes only one shot. Thanks to repeated daggerings by Rip Hamilton, the Pistons manage to score one point more than the Sixers in the final Quarter of regulation time. The game is tied.

OVERTIME:
Overtime is a strange and egnimatical concept. What property or substance could be over and above time itself? Usually this bizarre and paradoxical arena is one in which Allen Iverson shines, but he during the Over Time he continues to dwell on his father's hesitant admission. It is damaging to any man to see his father display weakness or cowardice, but when your father is also the undisputed ruler of the entirety of the Vague Areas, it is truly earth(andthoseareasbeyondearthaswell)- shattering. Allen Iverson misses a shot in the opening seconds of Over Time and then he misses again. He does not have a single field goal in the duration of Over Time.

Distraught!, he returns to his home and speaks to his father on the same intricately carved, seemingly unplugged telephone.

"Hello Father."
"Hello Number Three."
"How are things in the Vague Areas?"
"We are living in troubling times my son. Dark forces are gathering around the Fairie Brown and I fear that an invasion may be imminent. Do you know Richard 'The Ripper' Camel-tongue?"
"Yes, is he not the demon who always rides into battle wearing a clear mask, because no artist was capable of imagining and executing a visage as frightening as his real face?"
"Yes that is he. He has joined with the Fairie Brown."
"These are indeed dark tidings father."
"And Sssuh Benwalla, do you know of him as well my son?"
"I know him all too well. When we were children, our governess Helen used to frighten us with old wive's tales of a Great Giant who ate up castles as if they were walnuts and slept resting his head upon the largest mountains."
"Benwalla is such a man and he too has allied himself with the Fairie Brown."
"Say that it is not so, I had always taken those stories to be too fantastic to be true."
"And son, do you know the Arch-duke Chance Buildups?"
"Yes father, he is the King of Luck and has mastery over fortune itself does he not?"
"It is as you say; he accumulates great reserves of luck and then blesses himself and his allies with it as he sees fit. As he is now our enemy as well, I can be certain that luck will not be on our side in this coming combat."
"Is it imminent?"
"It is emminently imminent."
"I am very sorry father, but I must go, I am bound by commitments to this mortal plane. Many young men and women look up to me and I cherish each and every innocent heart. I have moved past the macabre and saturnine ways of my youth."
"I need you at my side my son. I worry that the Vague Areas will be lost."
A single tear rolls down the right cheek of Allen Iverson.
"I must go father, Game Five will be upon me shortly."

Allen Iverson hangs up the phone and crawls into bed. He sleeps uneasily and dreams of the illustrious blade which now hangs unused on the wall of his father's dining hall. The Answer is eight feet long, forged from a mixture of molten steel and moonlight, and quenched in the blood of the last living Shadow Ogre.