M & M (23 May 2013)
The skies above Altador continue to rain down water upon the earth, but for fans of Yooyuball everything is bright and sunny. With the arrival of the last two teams today, the Colosseum now boasts a full complement of talent from around the globe, ranging from Magma players hailing from deep within Neopia to robots assembled in a futuristic space station high above the clouds. As the weather was still poor enough to prohibit any kind of on-field practice, most of the teams spent the day going over game film or discussing various YYB strategies until Moltara captain Aldric Beign initiated an impromptu Geos tournament. "We just got here, so there's really nothing for us to do until the crew finishes setting up," the Kougra commented later. "I like to play Geos in my spare time as a way of unwinding, so I'd brought along a set with me from Moltara. I wasn't really intending to play or anything, but I'd just finished setting it up for down the road when Valtonous Rea happened to walk by." The goalie for Faerieland, apparently a bit of a Geos enthusiast herself, challenged Aldric to a game to pass the time. Within a few minutes players from other teams, bored from the lack of action, began to drift into MT's locker room to watch the game. "It was really exciting," forward Tulah Kisner commented. "Both Aldric and Valtonous were in the lead numerous times, and no one knew who would win until the very end." Once the match had concluded, so many other players indicated a desire to try their hand at the game that various staffers were sent on a mad scramble to rustle up as many Geos sets as they could find. "Things kind of snowballed from there," Aldric Beign laughed. "Players began teaming up together to take on other players, so we instituted a scoring system to keep track of who had won the most games. I'm not going to say who wound up on top, but I will tell you that there are some surprisingly talented Geos players on the Yooyuball field."
The final team to arrive at the Colosseum was Team Meridell, and if they were looking to make an entrance they certainly did so, though perhaps not quite the entrance they were hoping for. Thanks to a break in the weather, most of the crowds had returned to the Colosseum in anticipation of the final team to arrive, but their enthusiasm turned to confusion when they saw a bus bearing Brightvale's logo roll up to the stadium. Once Meridell's players disembarked, it became evident that someone from Brightvale had somehow managed to paste their logo over MD's in the brief period of time the bus had been parked down at Altador's docks. The angry coach quickly set low-level staffers to removing the offending image, but the indignity to MD had yet to be fully uncovered. While part of the crew hastily scraped off the new paint, the rest of them began unloading the team gear. Much to their horror, every single piece of equipment in the bus had been painted either green or yellow, and their practice Yooyuballs had even been marked with the image of King Hagan's royal crest. "If that's how Brightvale wishes to conduct themselves in the Altador Cup, that's their business," defender Ilsa Ellits said of the prank, calmly. "However, there will be a time and place for us to repay them in full for this little scheme they have concocted."
Now that all eighteen teams are in the Colosseum, the countdown to Altador Cup VIII can finally begin in earnest. The souvenir stalls have been packed to the brim, and the slushie machines are running at full speed in anticipation of the eager fans set to flood into the Colosseum in less than 24 hours' time.