Vonde and the Mutant Yooyu Conspiracy: Part One

At first, nobody noticed... except for Vonde Cayle, since he was the one who had to score with the cursed things. He was sure of it, the Mutant Yooyus were up to something. Why else was it that, whenever you were well on the way to scoring fifteen goals, they appeared. And they refused to go in the net. That couldn't be a coincidence. No, it must be... a conspiracy!

     He told about his findings to his team during one of their meetings.

     “There isn't much we can do about it," Leera said sagely. "Unless you've got the insane idea to try and spy on them to find out their plan."

     He really shouldn't have said that.

     The next day, Vonde arrived dressed up as a Yooyu (a regular one due to the colour resemblance).

     “I have a cunning plan! You won't be able to guess what!" Vonde proudly announced.

     “Vonde, you are insane! That's never going to work." Derbi gasped.

     Vonde pouted. "It's a great idea. Give me one reason why it wouldn't work."

     “You're too big for the suit. Your arms, legs and head are sticking out. Maybe if we used Lamelle..."

     “You can't use Lamelle for that! A Yooyu has LEGS. They'll be on to us in no time if we do."

     Derbi sighed. "Fine, you go then. Anything I can do to help out?"

     “Thanks, Derbi. You could distract Leera for me, so I can sneak into the center field Yooyuball vault."

     “That won't be that difficult. MI has the trainingfield before us. I'll just ask Bertie to talk to him." Derbi grinned.

     With Leera distracted, Vonde sneaked over to the hatch of the Yooyuball vault, opened it, and jumped inside. With feline grace, Vonde landed on the floor of the vault. When he looked up, he saw all Yooyu-eyes were on him...

     One of the Yooyus, an ice one, stepped forward and looked him in the eye. "Well, you're a strange looking Yooyu.”

     “Yeah!" a clockwork Yooyu yelled. "He looks like that stupid Wocky from LD!" and then it spontaneously exploded.

     “The LD Wocky is NOT stupid!" Vonde roared.

     “Ugh. Another crazy Vonde-fanatic, I see," a Darigan Yooyu replied "You should have taken a leaf out of Fred's book. His disguise looks good."

     “Fred?" Vonde frowned.

     “Yeah, Fred. He's standing over there." The Darigan Yooyu pointed to the far right corner.

     What Vonde saw next made his eyes open wide and his mouth fall open. He was absolutely gobsmacked...

     Lor Benneveldt, the Flotsam goalkeeper of MI was leaning against the wall while talking to a rather large group of Mutant Yooyus.

     At least, that's what he thought at first; it was only after picking up his jaw from the floor that he noticed Lor appeared to have a large zipper attached to his belly...

     and a removeable head...

     and a Mutant Yooyu inside of him.

     “Fred, I presume?"

     The Mutant Yooyu mob turned as if one and glared at Vonde as only Mutant Yooyus can. The leader (or Vonde guessed that was what he was) stepped forward and stared.

     “And who are you? You don't look all that familiar to me." The beady, red Yooyu-eyes became smaller and the stare intensified.

     “I'm Vonde! Eh... Derbi. I'm Vonderbi!" Vonde guessed Vonderbi's chances of getting out of this situation undetected were pretty slim and he closed his eyes awaiting his plot to be found out.

     “Vonderbi, eh," another Mutant started. "That's so cool!"

     Vonde opened his eyes again and stared at the speaker. The other Mutants did the same. The Mutant looked around and huffed. "It sounds like a monster name.”

     A Yooyu-arm smacked the Yooyu on the head and the speaker went back to the far end of the Yooyu-mob while rubbing its sore head and muttering about culture barbarians who don't know anything about important stuff.

     The leader turned back towards Vonde.

     “Okay, now that the interruption has gone..." An indignant cry was heard from the far side quickly followed by another smack. "Well, Vonderbi, my name is Kargemor, as you must know. It's good to see LD is also already infiltrated. I thought we had planned that take-over in a few days." Kargemor looked at his left arm and Vonde noticed it was covered with little yellow Post-Its, the top one written on in bold letters:

     THE ULTIMATE AND EXCLUSIVELY MUTANT YOOYU INCREDIBLY BRILLIANT PLAN TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD WITHOUT ANYBODY NOTICING!

     'Well, now,' Vonde thought to himself, 'I'm starting to believe I have an idea what it is these Yooyus want.'

     “Okay!" Kargemor continued after cross-checking some Post-Its. "I'll write you down for LD and let Arrana start with AL. That way we only need to repaint the Wocky-costume. Good thing we're ahead of schedule here, because James is still working on Dasher's replacement. How long do you think it'll take him to make a decent-looking Krawk? Somebody give me a pen!" Given a pen, Kargemor started scribbling away and ignored Vonde.

     'This is my chance; if they plan on taking over Neopia, I will be the only one able to stand in their way!' Knowing his duty and imagining the look on Leera's face when he shows his plan was succesful, Vonde turned to the Yooyu who thought Vonderbi sounded cool.

     “Hey there, so, what's your name?"

     The Yooyu stared, looked to his right, then his left, then stared at Vonde again.

     “You actually WANT to talk to me?" The Yooyu-eyes turned big and starry. "That's so NICE of you; the others seem to think I'm kind of strange." Vonde had to agree with them a little.

     “Well, then," the Yooyu began, "my name is Ghystern, and I was normally supposed to infiltrate MQ, but then I had to mention that I can't swim so they wouldn't let me. Then they wanted me to help James, but I accidentally set his costume on fire. Then Kargemor wanted me to buy more Post-Its, but I got hungry and used the neopoints to buy some cookies. Then I had to distribute drinks during meetings, but I spilled some on Kargemor's Post-Its. And now, I have to rewrite the entire plan, should anything happen to the original again.”

     After that word-sandstorm, Vonde had to think for a few minutes to take all of it in. A grin started to form on his lips.

     “So, Ghystern, you say you know the ENTIRE plan? Because I need a little refresher course.”

     Ghystern blinked and stared at Vonde, at his Yooyu costume, and at Vonde again.

     “You don't remember the plan?”

     Vonde sweatdropped; maybe he shouldn't have been so direct. Or maybe he should have given a plausible reason for him to ask about the plan like; Just checking to see if you remebered correctly. Yes, maybe he should say that!

     Ghystern opened his mouth before Vonde could come up with his brilliant new "get out of awkward situation" sentence. "So I'm not the only one forgetting the plot from time to time? We really are alike!”

     Vonde didn't know if he should see this as an insult or not.

     “Well, according to Kargemor, we as Mutant Yooyus band together to claim dominance over the whole of Neopia!" Vonde had the feeling a text was read to him and that Ghystern didn't really know what half the words (and definitely not the entire sentence) meant. "Therefore, a grand and infallible scheme has been created to ensure our goal shall be achieved. The first crucial step is to elect a Council and more important a Head-of-Council who will be in charge of creation and installment of both the plan and the New World Order (or NWO) which as of now shall be known as the New Mutant Yooyu World Order of Ingenious Brilliance to which All Neopia shall Bow (or NMYWOIBANB).

     The first act of the Head of Council and Council of NMYWOIBANB is to order the manufacturing and delegation of observation and recreation of behavior of certain players out of every team on Neopia known to participate in the competition known as the Altador Cup (or AC). After this is accomplished, the true brilliance of the plan comes into play. Namely we shall... And after this Neopia will have no ther choice but to accept their fate lies with the leaders of the Council. For it will be to late for them to do anything about it.”

     Vonde blinked. "I think I might have missed a bit, Ghystern. What exactly will be done after the costumes are made?"

     Ghystern shrugged. "Those were the only notes I had to copy. Kargemor did the others himself, said he could do a better job of it. And I didn't really listen the first time they explained everything. Difficult words they used and all.”

     Vonde felt the urge to strangle a certain Yooyu. He facepalmed instead.

     “Hey, Vonderbi, are you okay? What's wrong?”

     Vonde took a deep breath. What would Leera do in his situation? That's easy, Leera wouldn't even have gotten into the Yooyuball vault; the costume couldn't possibly fit him. So then, what would Derbi do? Derbi would stay calm, she always was. She would talk Ghystern into helping her. "Okay!" Ghystern jumped a couple of feet in the air out of surprise at Vonde's outburst. "Ghystern, we need to find out what's on those notes! We need to know the plan.”

     The poor Yooyu became pale instantly and stared at Vonde while stuttering, "Bu... bu... but, we can't. Kargemor won't... He won't... How?... Why?”

     Vonde grabbed Ghystern's shoulders and gave him a resolved look. "Do you remember what it was like, Ghystern, to end up in the goal and to hear the roar of the crowd as they cheered? To see the smile on the faces of the different scorers as they looked at you and to know it was because of you that they won that match? Don't you wan't to feel that again, Ghystern?”

     Vonde waited for the little Yooyu to speak. This was it. Either he had convinced him, or he would be handed over to the Council under the charge of mutiny.

     Ghystern looked... no, stared with wide open eyes and mouth at Vonde. Completely paralysed as it were. But when he was finally able to move again, it was not to agree with the moving speech Vonde just gave him.

     “Alert! We have a Yooyu planning to cause our downfall! Alert! Get Kargemor and the Council, we have a deceiver! Alert!”

     And that's when the pandemonium began.

     Mutant Yooyus started hissing and screaming. The other Yooyus, curious as to what was happening in the Mutant quarter, came towards them and were quickly evacuated by the guards Kargemor was giving instructions to, while keeping his rage-filled red Yooyu-eyes aimed at Vonde.

     With the other Yooyus out of the way, another guard-platoon rolled towards Vonde at high speed.

     'What am I doing just standing here? I am a star-Yooyuball-player of Lost Desert. I am Vonde Cayle!'

     Vonde slid into a ready stance and waited for the first Yooyu to reach him while watching them approach with slitted cat-pupils.

     One second before the first one would have made contact, Vonde jumped to the side in a successful evasive manoeuvre. And there he went, ducking and weaving in between the flying Yooyu-hoard, his tail swishing behind him. With Kargemor's furious yells were ringing in his ears, he stopped underneath the vault hatch.

     And noticed it was far too high to jump and the doors were closed. How did those Yooyus get to the field? Oh yeah, the huge claw-like machine had to be activated and would randomly pull a Yooyu out of the vault to bring it into play. It was normally activated on the field, but there should be a maintenance-panel down here somewhere as well.

     Vonde turned his attention away from the doors to look for the panel, and was drawn to the sight of a seething Kargemor with an insane grin plastered on his Yooyu-face.

     “If you won't be hit by the guards, Vonderbi, we shall imprison you by them!" he screamed. "Guards! Use the Special Yooyu Clutch formation! SYC him!”

     “It is no use, evil Mutant Yooyu. Your plan, whatever it is, will fail. For I am...”

     Vonde never got further than that, for the Mutant guard had formed a circle around him and quickly piled up, so he was caught in a semi-sphere prison made out of Mutant Yooyus. Kargemor's triumphant voice managed to penetrate the prison 'walls' with a last:

     “Your fate will be decided in the early morning, Vonderbi. Nothing and nobody can stop us! Mwuhahahaha!”

     “Now that is one evil Yooyu," Vonde remarked. "Even for a Mutant."

     None of the Yooyus listened; they were all turned with their backs to Vonde while forming his cell. He was truly alone amidst the masses. First he tried to escape the 'cell' by pushing against the Yooyus, but they were immovable and soon Vonde sat down with the plan to try again in the morning when his fate would be decided. How did they know when morning was anyway? There was no natural light inside the vault. Maybe it was a Yooyu thing.

     Vonde sighed. 'It could still be worse,' he thought to himself. 'Leera could find out about this. Now THAT would be bad.'

     And so our hero prepared himself for the morning.

To be continued...