This is going to be a series of mini stories about the players of the Altador Cup. TNT gives a basic background for all the teams, and I thought it would be fun to expand on all of the characters. The only problem is that keeping all of the characters and their positions straight might be a bit confusing, since there are 16 teams of 5. I try to include the position and team of every character mentioned, but please tell me if it is still difficult to keep everyone straight. On with the story!

June 4th

To say expectations were high for the match would be an understatement. One would think that the biggest match in the first day would be the Krawk Island vs. Altador match; or the sure stomping that Shenkuu was sure to receive from last year's champions, the Haunted Woods.

But almost every fan of Yooyuball seemed to be concerned with only one match: Faerieland vs. Darigan Citadel.

Faerieland had been destroyed by Mystery Island last year in the first round, and Darigan had made it to the championship match, even after playing against some of the hardest teams in the league. It didn't take a genius to know who was the overwhelming favorite to win the upcoming match, and yet it was still possibly the most anticipated.

It boggled Valtonous Rea's mind. As she sat in her room, she pondered the situation. While she was glad that Faerieland had switched back to a 2-2 pattern, giving her more cover to work as goalie, she didn't see how it would help them against Darigan in the slightest. Provided Kakoni Worrill and Babolino, Faerieland's two forwards, could even get the ball away from Darigan's solid offense, and get past their star defensive players, they still had to deal with Reshar Collifey, Darigan's new goalkeeper.

Last year, Darigan's Achilles' heel had been Mungo Lifler, the previous goalie. He was quite possibly the only goalie in the circuit slower than Rea, but without her skill or craftiness. After what had been dubbed the "Lifler Maneuver", where he scored on his own goal, giving Haunted Woods the winning point, his days on the team were numbered. Now that he was gone, Darigan was going to be that much more difficult to beat, and they had already been pretty difficult to begin with.

Perhaps the match was so anticipated because of the contrast between the two teams. Darigan's dark colors and Faerieland's lighter theme were like night and day. Darigan seemed like a group of super bad asses who would literally eat anything who came in their way, and Faerieland was considered a group of heavenly angels. It was being hailed as a battle between light and dark, good and evil, all that jazz.

And it didn't help that Faerieland was an all female team.

Rea snorted. Some of the team members on both groups were far from what their team picture made them out to be. Delma, for example, had been arrested several times for tavern brawls and unruly behavior. At least she was reasonably easy to get along with. Unlike Kakoni Worrill, the team captain.

Rea regularly talked with Barit Jowes from Maraqua. A favorite topic of Barit's was how much he disliked "The Black Hole", AKA Elon Hughlis. As far as Rea could tell, the only things that Hughlis was guilty of were being a ball hog and an arrogant bastard.

Worrill, on the other hand, was the biggest bitch Rea had ever met. She treated her teammates like children half the time, and her personal slaves the other half. Worrill took every opportunity to remind the team of how she was the star player, and that she could have any one of them kicked off the team whenever she felt like it.

It was mostly talk, Worrill was a horrible player, and without the rest of the team to cover for her the team would be in deep trouble. Or maybe she actually believed in what she was saying, it was hard to tell between Worrill trying to be condescending and Worill being a moron.

The only reason she wasn't already off the team was because since she was team captain, the other four players all had to want her out. All four of the other team members hated her with a passion, but Elbin Towse was suspiciously nowhere to be found on the day of voting. Ignoring not only the protests of the other three players (and also a signed and notarized statement from Elbin that in the event of her absence she still wanted Worrill to be eaten by a humungous Slorg, or at least kicked of the team), she stayed on as captain for another year.

Elbin was found a few days later at Mystery Island. The Mystery Island team was investigated for the kidnapping, although no one really thought they did it. The investigation ended when the team announced in a press conference that they, "didn't have to kidnap anyone from Faerieland, they are already bad enough with their full team."

Rea also didn't exactly fit the Faerieland stereotype either, she had nearly gored the poor photographer who had suggested that she should carry a bright pink parasol in the team picture. They eventually settled on red ribbons around her ears, which were promptly stomped into the ground after the picture was taken.

But even though the members of team Faerieland didn't exactly fit the part they looked, surely Darigan was full the evil overlords they were made out to be, right?

Hardly. Rae had it on good authority that Tandrak Shaye sang in a church choir and volunteered at soup kitchens on weekends, as opposed to drowning Puppyblews as he once said in an interview. Not only that, but Layton Vickles, leader of Darigan, captain of the most evil group of five Neopets to exist, knit. Of course, the public could never know, if they found out it might hurt the image of the team.

Never mind that numerous pictures had been taken of Vickles buying knitting supplies, or that he and other members of the team would occasionally be seen wearing a woolen hat. Or even the notorious press conference where Vickles had suddenly shouted, "I knit and I am proud of it!" Of course the fans of Darigan were far too attached to their images of the players to let a little thing like definitive proof interfere.

So despite all of the pieces of evidence that said otherwise, Darigan was made to fit one stereotype and Faerieland the other.

Perhaps another factor that contributed to the sensation was, quite frankly, the kind of people who signed up for Darigan. A large percent of Darigan's supports had almost automatically decided to go with Darigan only because they were obviously the "dark and evil" team.

Immediately after picking Darigan and seeing that they were to be playing Faerieland in the first match, proceeded to make posts in multiple chat rooms and forums about how they were going to, quote, "beet them wusy faries." Debates started, following by arguments, followed by name calling, and the boards descended into a pit of illiteracy and idiocy. Business as usual.

Frankly, Rae was tired of it. Barring a miracle, Faerieland was going to lose to Darigan, and that was that. She didn't see the point of getting into a fight over it.

There was a knock on the door. "Oh, Valty!" called a high pitched and annoying voice.

Rae sighed. "I told you Kakoni, it's Valtonous,"

Worrill continued like she hadn't heard Rae, "Valty, we've got one more practice before the first game, don't you remember? We really need it, especially you. Your speed is just not up to snuff, remember that goal Volgoth scored early in the Cup last year?"

Rae remembered. Worrill had tripped over her feet and accidentally dropped the ball right into Volgath's hands, Rae had had absolutely no time to react before he powered the Yooyu in.

"Yes, I'm coming Kakoni," said Rae. "I just need to get my gear on."

"Well, hopefully you are faster at that then at goalkeeping, or the rest of the team will be waiting forever!"

Rae started choking the air, picturing Worrill gasping in pain before suffocating. It was fun to dream.

So that's the first chapter. I plan on making more of these, but I'm not sure if I'll have the time or the energy. If I do make more of these, I'll try and make it each one stand alone, but some plot lines that were only mentioned may be explored in later chapters. Also, I'm going to try and keep the stories in chronological order, but I might have an idea and go back to do it.

If there is any specific story you want to see in this series, leave the idea in a review and I'll see if I can get it in, I have a few more ideas for these, so any more would be welcome.

I'm also looking for a beta-reader to catch the mistakes I might miss when I go over this, and also for some general critique. If you would like to, please send me a PM.

Lastly, feedback would really be appriciated, please review if you have something to add to the story.

Thanks for reading :)