It is a cold Sunday morning, and I enter the cozy coffee shop quickly, grateful for the rush of warmth that greets me as I open the door. Approaching the counter, I order my usual beverage while dutifully ignoring the flirtatious mannerisms of the counter girl. I remind myself, as I always do, that I will never again allow a woman access into my heart.
After receiving my drink, I place myself at a table primely located next to both a power outlet and the fireplace. I take my gaming laptop, repurposed for highlight creation, out of its bag and plug it in, then settle down for a productive morning of video editing.
Just as I set to work, I notice the man sitting at the table next to mine. When I arrived, his face had been obscured behind the Sunday paper, but now he has put it down and is staring straight at me. I smile politely, but I look at him, the face is familiar. Given my unsurpassed ability to remember faces, it doesn’t take me long to identify the man, but his presence here confuses me. Why would Jeff Green visit the same coffee shop as I?
Seeing that he’s been recognized, Jeff gets up from his seat and sits at my table instead. When he talks, there is only cheerfulness in his voice, although it is backed by a steely coldness which makes me uneasy. “Hi DownToBuck. How’s it going?”
“It’s going,” I say. “You must be interested in my services.” I can state that with certainty because there is no other possible reason why an NBA player would want to talk with me.
“No, no, nothing like that,” Jeff says dismissively. “I just wanted to chat.”
Alarms are going off in my head. Again, there is nothing that an NBA player would want to chat about with me unless it were somehow related to highlight videos. I try to remember the last time I made a Jeff Green video and realize that it has been quite a while. Mentally preparing for the worst, I begin to watch Jeff’s movements very closely. “Chat, huh?”
“Yeah,” Jeff confirms. “Just a chat. A chat about how I scored thirty points and you remained silent on the matter.” Jeff’s formerly cordial tone has disappeared and his determined gaze bores into mine.
“If I was somehow required to make a video of every performance worthy of my channel, I would never sleep,” I reply. “Thankfully, I am under no such obligations, despite what you and countless other players seem to believe.”
“Oh, but you are obligated. I will make sure of that,” Jeff responds. When he stands up suddenly and flips the table, causing my expensive laptop to crash to the ground, I am ready. However, I am mildly surprised when he tears off his coat and pants to reveal a full ninja outfit underneath. Seeing that my life is endangered, I unsheathe the katana that is hidden under my pants leg, the blade of which is made of Japanese steel folded a thousand times.
As employees retreat to the back and screaming patrons run towards the exits, Jeff and I prepare for battle. He pulls out a shuriken, or ninja star, from an unseen pocket and flings it at me with deadly precision. Luckily, I have trained my entire life for moments like these, and I expertly duck underneath the thrown blade and hear it stick in the wall behind me. While Jeff prepares another shuriken, I take advantage of his pause by running sideways on the wall and executing a flying jump-attack with my katana extended. Jeff uses his ninja powers of evasion to dodge my sword, but in doing so, drops his shuriken. I pick it up just as he gets out his plan B, a pair of nunchucks.
Now holding my katana with only one hand, I parry his swung attacks while readying his shuriken to use against him. Standing just two feet away, I throw, but he uses his nunchucks to deflect the ninja star back towards me. I bring up my katana to send it away through a window, which shatters with a loud crack, but in doing so, leave myself vulnerable to his weapon. I am hit in the head and fall to my knees, but when Jeff pauses to say some pointless gloating words, I lash out with my sword and slice both of his legs through his ninja suit.
He goes down and I get up. After hitting his head with the butt of my sword and splashing my still-hot drink in his eyes, causing him to scream out in agony, I drag him to the fireplace and toss him in. His ninja garb, while useful for hiding and sneaking, is not immune to flame, and Jeff is instantly ablaze like a human candle. He cannot see due to his scalded eyes, and his legs are injured as well, so it is all he can do to writhe on the ground like a worm as the flames consume him.
Soon, nothing but a husk remains of the man known as Jeff Green. I wince at the bump on my head as I calmly set the table upright and replace my laptop on it. There appears to be no harm done, as it shows the box score of the Grizzlies game as if nothing had happened. “You’ll have your highlights,” I murmur to myself, and then, suddenly finding the whole situation extremely funny, I begin to laugh.