Chapter XV
Before them appeared every character that has so far appeared in this story, arranged by side. If they had appeared to give aid to Bari’s cause, they sat in a satin set of bleachers on one side of the court. Those who existed to hinder any of his purposes sat on the other side of the court, leering and bathed in fire, a fire which did not harm them, for it emanated from within them. It was the fire of their hatred for all that was Baritone Juicebox. The referee was an ibex-human hybrid, who really didn’t even care about basketball. In fact, he was only in this position because I required him to be so. His apathy towards the sport made him the most impartial referee one could find.
Arrayed in athletic monk robes were the four guardians of the mountain. Clothed in the same garb, but of a differing colour, were the clown, the two Baris and Arthur. The basketball Bari was the game ball. The rules were as such: whoever scored first would win. There were no time limits, nor were there fouls. All sorts of magic and mischief could be applied. This went far beyond the normal rules of standard basketball, but this was a magical place. A matter of life and death it was not. A matter of future and pride it was.
The ball was tossed, and the monks received it. Oh, how they could have won so quickly. Monk number one threw up a quick jump shot, and basketball Bari quivered as he flew through the crisp mountain air, fearing that he would go in and be the ultimate demise of his friends, and of the various incarnations of himself that were now competing for his future. He struck the rim, and rolled around it three times, in ever slower motion as it seemed like the shot would go in, but fell down into the hands of the clown, who took that rebound and passed it to Arthur, who hoped to make another miraculous shot in order to set his future path in the direction that he desired it to go, but also to help Bari, who had become his dearest friend. Despite his pure intentions, but maybe because he was distracted by the thoughts of how to best phrase his wish if the ball went in, the shot he threw up faltered. The process of both teams missing shots was repeated pretty often. In fact, I’m actually just going to skip to the end of the game. I just don’t have it in me to record the bulk of the match, which lasted a full week, without breaks. It set all sorts of records, but mostly for time played to points scored ratio. The bulk of that week consisted mostly of the teams’ running back and forth, each missing shots, due both to excellent defense, weariness, and an array of pranks that each team played on the other and distractions that they prepared.
The pranks and distractions were probably the most interesting part. In these, the monks had enlisted the help of Milenkoooooo, who had long been waiting for a chance to get back at Bari, and whose only strength was generally the playing of pranks. At the monks he shouted ideas which only they could hear. These included gluing the ball to Arthur’s hand when he went to shoot, but making the glue’s hold falter when one of the monk’s went to grab the ball and run down the court the opposite way; and conjuring winds and storms that took effect only when someone on Bari’s team shot the ball. One time they even got a thunder god to help, who made the thunder rumble so loudly that the sound waves pushed Bari back away from the hoop after another Bari had shot him. All sorts of mythological beasts they conjured, many of them who Bari had encountered earlier in his escapades. Oh, the Mantiwhore and the rhymaera helped, as did the trees of the ill-tempered enchanted forests.
On Bari’s side, the paper planes of the Paper Plains tried to help, carrying Bari on his way towards the hoop, but always being blocked. The moustache shouted encouragement while wearing his coaching outfit. The cloud porpoises conjured helping clouds to give helping hands and the Flarks flapped their shark wings to create positive breezes, but these were all effectively countered by the monks. Occasionally they’d be given banana peels to throw on the ground and make the monks slip when a surefire slam dunk seemed ready to occur. All this went on for a week.
Now, you know that the game is about to end. Place your bets accordingly. Do you think Bari and his cohorts will emerge victorious? Do you think all his trials will amount in the end to a win, from which everything he desired would be accomplished? Or maybe he’ll lose, but still learn a valuable moral lesson.
Tired and starving, neither sided cared much for moral lessons. The monks kind of wished they had stuck with the foul shot idea. If it hadn’t been for sheer stubbornness, either side would have given up and forfeited the game. They were practically crawling across the court by this point, tossing shots up haphazardly. Clouds of natural sources had filled the sky and snow was now falling in near-blizzard form. Any of them by now would have had trouble discerning whether or not the ball they shot had in fact went in the hoop. “Nothin’ but net” meant nothing. Nothing meant anything. Sheer desperation was all that led these players. That and pride. Though, a pride of lions could have eaten them and each one of the players would have viewed that as a fitting end, as a nice release from the suffering they were now enduring.
Alas! A lass! A lasso! Oh! A shot came ever-so-close. It was a shot that is normally named a slam dunk, and this is how it happened. With the last bit of strength left within him, monk number three leapt up. This was the last jump he would be capable of for months afterward, so much energy did it take. Upwards he leapt, above the defenders who now stood defenseless on the ground, and his arm moved forward, bring the ball closer and closer to entering the net. Bari quaked in his hands. How he did not want to go in that net, not from these hands! So hard did he slam that Bari flew back into the atmosphere, and remembered the first time he had fallen as a basketball, and hoped with all the might within him that he would not go in the hoop. As he reached the zenith of his flight, he was distracted by a passing flock of airplane birds, who have the bodies of airplanes and may carry passengers at times, but have wings of feather and bone, and flap them to move, and can reach massive sizes. They frightened him not, for they were merely migrating, not hunting, and he sat there in the air watching them, forgetting that he was supposed to fall down.
As he did this, another basketball that had once been human fell from the sky and landed in the net. This aroused a bit of celebration from the monks. Bari was brought back to reality by the sounds of cheering below him, and the weeping of his friends.
“What could have brought this on?” he thought as he once more fell. And as he fell he saw there was a basketball being hoisted up by the monks, and that basketball was soon knocked out of the monk’s hand by Bari falling down onto it. Turns out that basketball had falsely scored a point. It was the destiny of all humans that became basketballs at some point in their lifetimes.
A moment of mass confusion ensued. The monks realized that the ball they held was not Bari. In their weariness they couldn’t tell any basketballs apart from each other. Each one looked the same, as did even the most unique snowflakes which still fell. But now everyone on the court scrambled for the basketball with the moustache, and it was Arthur who picked it up with his good arm, and heaved it with all the desperation of someone who was trying to throw the world’s strongest atom bomb far enough away from him that the wind would not be able to carry the radiation upon its back close enough to effect the thrower. So hard did he throw Bari that from the opposite end of the court he hit the backboard, and bounced back to about the foul line of the side it had been thrown from, and was scooped up by monk number four. This monk lifted up his arms, and with a simple jump shot, ended the game. The net swished as Bari fell with horror through it. All was silent. All was still. It felt as if the universe had ceased to exist, that they were in the silence that existed before anything was created or in the quiet that had ensued once all had been destroyed. All Baris simultaneously sunk down in disappointment. Could all these travails have been in vain? I refuse to believe it! And so did they! But no plea could have been to any avail. The rules were set. The basket was scored. The game over, part of Baritone Juicebox would always remain a basketball. The four members of that team, along with basketball Bari, came together and embraced. The monks came over to console t
hem, but for such disappointment there was no consolation.
Was this all bad? Fortunately, the answer to that question is no. in all negatives, there is always, without fail, something positive to be found. I refuse to believe otherwise. This is why: part of Baritone Juicebox had always been sports. He was sports. He was a sports. A sports he was, and should remain. It was an essential part of his nature. This realization came rushing over him. He had to accept that part of him was destined to be a basketball, to be an embodiment of the sports he had always so admired. Otherwise he never would have become one in the first place. He had to have had it in him in order for it to happen in the first place. Perhaps deep in his soul, there had always been a basketball waiting to emerge from the shadows. Something like that should never be transfigured to human form. When his being split apart, the part of him that was sports merely manifested itself. Maybe it’d become a baseball or a football or a hockey puck, or maybe even a bowling ball. Even if it was a badminton birdie, that part of him was to remain representative of the nature of his soul which was sports, and sports is indeed an adjective, I will have you know. In fact, what became more important to him, having united with the other parts of himself in the sense of having met himself and being in one place, was uniting with them literally. He missed those guys, and all the times they had had. Those were some good days indeed. Surely, if they could just once again become one, the future would be pretty grand indeed. They had had some great adventures apart from each other, but those adventures had all been for the sake of reuniting, after which even more wondrous, magical adventures could be had. They’d all come quite a way from being the man that had tried to extinguish his life from the surface of the moon. Become one with himself he would. In fact, it wasn’t all that hard. There was a lesson that he had learned long ago. It circumvented all magic and mystical assistance. Sure, that had all led to some fun times, but if he wanted to become one with himself, there was only one actual way to do it. And that was to just do it. And do it he did. The three Baris were one, encaged in their original shell, with a moustache compounded from the two of the three that had had moustaches.
As for Arthur, he too had an epiphany: he couldn’t find the life he had wanted merely by winning a basketball game. Winning basketball games had never accomplished anything for him. He couldn’t get what he wanted merely from being granted wishes. Surely those could help, but in the end what was necessary was that he find what he truly wanted and strive to attain it. What mattered most was that he had finally found a real friend, and despite the loss of his family, he had somebody that would be there for him throughout all his trials. Him and Bari would be hereafter inseparable, and would surely share in many future adventures, as well as future relaxing days sipping chocolate milk while sitting on a front porch somewhere and singing songs of all they had done, as well as songs about chocolate milk and songs about the front porch, and about everything, and some about nothing. Point is, they would live out the lives they wanted. That had been their goal all the time, and it took all this to show them just how easy it would be.
Plus, he had choices. He had travelled the world, and he had made acquaintances all over its surface. Surely, he had no relatives left, but he had found a set of people and creatures that would all play those roles. In the wake of everything, he would find a new start. Should he decide, he would be welcome amongst the cloud porpoises, with the flarks, or even amongst the basketball monks of Mount Hockey, for they realized that his talents had developed to the point where they could be considered “up there” with theirs. The future was open, and he had time, abilities, friends, and purpose.
Baritone Juicebox, as well, would not return to his family, at least not yet. He had heard from a cloud porpoise after the game that they had been brought safely up to the clouds, and there were being allowed to live their lives amongst them, apart from the savage humans which ravaged the lands below. World War 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971 had taken its toll on all of civilization, but the humans that were willing to leave with the cloud porpoises and not just destroy the clouds were being welcomed amongst their ranks, with full accommodations and sweaters. Knowing that all was well, Bari wished to travel back through some of the lands he had seen, and some that he had not seen, this time in the form of a relaxing vacation. He would eat all the pizza he wanted, but as a treat, and not a necessity for survival. The lands they had travelled were mostly rural and unexplored, and he feared not the effects of World War 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971. He’d be far from the battlefields where the battles had raged so recently.
The monks had no arrogant feelings regarding the outcome of the game. It had been played well and played fairly, and that was all that they asked from their competitors. Though they had lost, they were deemed quite worthy to play them anytime, even if there was to be nothing at stake the next time. They knew that the future was bright for our protagonists, all of them, though not bright to the point of blinding. They’d live out some nice lives though, and do a bit of good in their allotted time.
Bari and Arthur were liberated from the past. Their adventures had brought them quite far from those days were they were hopelessly trudging about the planet. They’d look back fondly on all that had passed, but never would they be absorbed by it. Memories were not reality, they realized. They were nice to think about, but the best times were the ones that were happening and the ones that were yet to happen. Yeah, things were looking pretty good. They all had their temporary trial versions of immortality, and those expiration dates showed no signs of approaching. The monks retired back to their dens to rest. What should they do now? What could one do in the wake of such adventures? Should it be something comparable to the adventures? Something to show them up? Or should they just cool down and rest? The answer to that was pretty simple. Though elated, our protagonists were still exhausted, and thirsty. They’d go and get some chocolate milk,
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