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Kreludor, Kreludor, Wherefore Art Thou, Kreludor?


by rosabellk

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My heart raced as I read the news: “Oh, boy, the Altador Cup is back! I can’t wait to join Kreludor again; this time we’re sure to win!” Quickly, I clicked over to the signup page, never suspecting that I lived in a world of dreams and naiveté that was about to be shattered like a Blue Draik Egg within the jaws of a hungry Kadoatie.

“Well, here’s the Haunted Woods, and there’s Maraqua. Oh, they added Shenkuu this year. And... hmm. Where’s Kreludor? This- this must be some terrible mistake! Can Kreludor really be gone? *sniffle* Noooooooooo!!!”

Alas, to my dismay, Kreludor is indeed not participating in the Altador Cup this year; instead, its former spot will be filled by Shenkuu, land of Pandaphants, reckless navigators, and elusive avatars. But I needed to know why. Why was the most amazing Yooyuball team in Neopia, nay, the entire galaxy, unable to compete this year? Unforeseen obstacles? A nefarious plot? Laziness? I had to know.

And so my grand quest began. Within a few days, an official explanation was released: due to an error with their training facility’s gravity, the team’s bone and muscle densities were too low to safely play on Neopia. Clearly, this account is as preposterous as the claims of a certain jelly-based world. Any schoolchild could tell you that even the most extreme gravity-based bone density loss on Kreludor would immediately be offset by the increased gamma radiation from the yellow sun of Neopia. So, with this the official statement proven fallacious, I had to rely on a journalist’s most accurate and foolproof source: the murky depths of his own mind. Following are the top fifty reasons for the Kreludan team’s absence that I could imagine, reasons deduced not from prosaic facts, but rather extracted from the crevasses and fjords of my own brain in a lengthy and painful process. Enjoy.

1. Gormball... Booorring!

Frumball... As if!

Yooyuball... Nah!

Wingoball... YEAH!!

2. Sure, Yooyuball is fun on Neopia, but it’s so much more fun in zero gravity!

3. Everyone knows that Kreludor would have won for sure this year, so, being the nice guys they are, they decided to stay home and give another team a chance.

4. Now that Kreludan Grundo Slippers are wearable, the team found it much more profitable to stay at home and start their own footwear business.

5. They were on their way to the stadium, but they got caught in an endless loop and couldn’t get back to the ship—erm, the moon.

6. The entire team was so startled by the redraws that they’ve been looking at themselves in the mirror ever since.

7. Who says they aren’t in this year’s cup? Just take a good look at Mirsha Grelinek and tell me she isn’t Derlyn Fonnet in disguise!

8. “Oh, so we were supposed to take a LEFT at the space station?”

9. The shouting of the crazed Techo fan deafened them, so they didn’t hear about this year’s cup.

10. Sloth is behind it. Ho hum, how terribly cliché.

11. The Happiness Faerie is behind it! Slightly less cliché!

12. The Tombola Man is behind it! How refreshingly original.

13. Asparagus is behind it. Now we’re back to cliché again.

14. Deciding they’d speak just in rhyme,

The team planned for quite a long time.

Their ambitions, however, were crushed

When they figured out that they couldn’t rhyme anything with their team color of orange.

15. You really expect them to travel all the way to Altador with the price of intergalactic atomic propulsion fluid this high?!

16. Deciding to pursue their first passion, the Kreludor team opted to sit out the Cup in order to produce Escape to Kreludor: The Musical! Starring Derlyn Fonnet as Cylara and Zenor Kevix as Gorix; featuring Vignacio as Dr. Sloth; written and directed by Qyldae Wegg; produced by Xila Kitae.

17. They finally guessed the combination to the Kreludan Mining Corp. and were never heard from again...

18. Well, Shenkuu is a better world than Kreludor anyway.

19. That last one was a complete lie, and we all know it. ;)

20. For some reason, the team was completely opposed to the round-robin format, insisting on the much less practical square-robin.

21. Due to a mix-up at the Kreludor morphing potion / soft drink bottling company, the entire team was transformed into baby Pteris, a pet notorious for its lack of Yooyuball skill.

22. Ever since the Bonju avatar was released, the entire team has been huddled around that infernal Blumaroo’s cauldron, throwing in random combinations of food.

23. “Well, Zenor found a thermal crater filled with water, so we’ve been soaking in an impromptu hot tub ever since. We would get out, but it’s just so warm and comfortable... aahhh...”

24. Reason number 24 has been intentionally left blank.

25. Their team was the first to volunteer to try the clockwork Yooyu, before all the, erm, “glitches” were worked out.

26. After a spiritual journey of enlightenment and self-discovery, the team had an epiphany, gave up Yooyuball, took up tie-dye, and began a collectivist potato farm in Meridell. Groovy, man.

27. .elbissopmi saw llabuyooY ,yas ot sseldeen ;sdrawkcab nettirw si gnihtyreve erehw noisnemid rorrim a ot deppilf saw maet eritne ehT

28. “Wait, signup forms were due on the THIRD of the Month of Storing?”

29. Due to an error at the printer’s, the team’s business cards listed them as licensed chimneysweeps instead of professional Yooyuball players. Not wanting to waste five hundred perfectly good business cards, they decided it would be easier to just switch professions.

30. That means somewhere there’s a group of chimneysweeps playing Yooyuball. Huh. That’s a funny mental image.

31. Gravity is currently 30% that of Neopia. Boing!

Breathable air is roughly 90% of normal quality.

Population density of Yooyuball-player-eating ogres is 86% of maximum.

32. They never got the news about last year’s prizes, so they’re still waiting... and waiting... and waiting...

33. How can you compete in the Altador Cup when your entire team is... underwater! Muahahaha!

34. That last reason made little to no sense.

35. They found better employment as intergalactic smugglers. Shiny!

36. *insert overused joke about Meepits here*

37. It’s scary how intimidating the Haunted Woods team can be when they feel threatened. I’ll just leave it at that...

38. Unfortunately, the team’s awesomeness-to-popularity ration got way too high.

39. They were eaten by enormous petpetpets after being stranded – wait, that’s the wrong story. Sorry.

40. They got stuck on a really hard crossword puzzle and have been trying to figure out 54-down for a year now.

41. They got stuck on a really hard crossword puzzle. Literally. Like, their paws are stuck to it, so they can’t move.

42. They forgot their towel. You shouldn’t go anywhere without your towel.

43. Purple and orange are SO last year! This year’s style is all about red and gold!

44. Because life is arbitrary and cruel. How depressing.

45. They’re still burning, crushing, soaking, and desiccating crazy ingredients on the orders of Sophie.

46. The goalie, Xila Kitae, couldn’t deal with the five-second goalie possession rule. “Those Yooyus are just so cute! I want to cuddle them the whole game!”

47. Two words: spontaneous combustion.

48. The new Darigan Yooyu is just too darn hard to score with!

49. The enormous supercomputer that TNT takes orders from blew a logic circuit.

50. *yawn* What? I just had the most awful dream: Kreludor wasn’t included in this year’s Altador Cup! Thank goodness it isn’t true!

There you have it: fifty possible reasons why Kreludor is not in this year’s Altador Cup, none of which are likely to be true! And so, as you enter into the Cup, I ask that you pause a moment to reflect on the awesomeness that was Kreludor. And as soon as you’re done with that, play ball!

 
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