You arch your eyebrows in surprise, or at least, you imagine you would if you had any. Out of all the available options, you did not expect people to choose desserts, but they did, so you set up the area and train the camera on it, and summon the people who you've chosen in.
***
"Hello and welcome to the first episode! We put the categories up for vote and a staggering 73% of you voted to follow the Desserts team in their adventures. So now it's time to meet the team!"
You set the nanobots under your control to find each of the individual members of the team.
"First up is the captain of the team, Aaron!"
The camera zooms in on a tall, geeky looking teenager sitting in class, taking notes.
"Next up are Carol and Zoe!"
The camera shows two average highschool girls chatting.
"Then there's Amanda!"
The camera shows a small girl, leaning back in her chair blowing bubbles with her gum.
"Next is Cassie."
A girl zoned out completely appears on screen, staring past the camera far into space.
"And last of all is Annie!"
The screen shows a girl who simultaneously looks like she should be a cheerleader, and looks embarrassed because of it.
The screen then shifts to an overall view of the classroom and in a flash of light, the six teens disappear.
***
"Welcome!" Your voice booms over the Space, immediately following flashes of light as teams arrive in their various sectors. "You all know what just happened, check your memories if you don't, so I'll give you time to get settled. From right now for the next five hours is the one and only grace period in this entire game. No one's allowed to leave their sector until the bell rings, indicating you can leave."
You zoom the camera in to the Dessert area where a very strange sight awaits the camera. The group is in a circle, sitting on a couch in a common room area made out of edible desserts. Leading off from the room, there's a kitchen, a bathroom, and 6 rooms, along with an entrance to the gingerbread house they're in. Outside the windows is a forest, a dense one at that, made of varying types of candy. The most prominent trees seem to be made of candy canes or rock candy.
Focusing on the group, the sight is even stranger, while Aaron looks the same, not a single one of the girls retained their original skin color, or their clothes for that matter.
To Aaron's left is Zoe, who seems now to be entirely constructed from a very dark chocolate.
To her left is Carol, who appears to be a pastry, with a chocolatey frosting in place of hair. Though her hair was never quite as long, the frosting flows all along her back, covering her rear. Those with knowledge of French confections might place her as an éclair
After her is Annie, who has one of the weirdest changes. Her entire body is green and translucent, letting light seep through, though she appears quite solid. One might identify her as a sucking candy if they so chose.
Then there's Cassie, who is quite clearly a marshmallow, and a fluffy one at that.
Lastly, there's Amanda, sitting to Aaron's right. Her skin bright, shiny red, speckled with dimples, tiny white specks within them. Her hair, always short, is now bright green and leafy. It's quite clear she's a strawberry.
And then there was Aaron, I did say there was no change, but that might not be the case, for his cheeks were bright red as he looks between his nude compatriots.
Amanda summed it up quite succinctly, "Well ****..." Looking around, she grabs Aaron and turns him around so he's facing the wall, rather easily it seems. "You; don't look." She stomps off to a room and slams the door. The rest of them look around uncomfortably and Cassie clears her throat, "Umm, maybe there's clothes in the rooms?" Doing his best not to turn around, Aaron replies, "Yea, you should check in there." Carol giggles at Aaron's clear discomfort and gets up, walking to a room and claiming it. They all follow pretty quickly, with Cassie closing her door last and saying, "You can look now Aaron."
Aaron heads to his room and the camera follows. It's a relatively simple room, there's a gumdrop bed with thin layers of frosting as sheets. A dresser clearly made of graham crackers, and a closet. Inside the closet is a grey jumpsuit with purple linings, which Aaron quickly changes into, following the instructions in his head, then heads back to the commons room. Amanda's already there, and the others trickle out. Their jumpsuits are all pure black, also with the purple lining.
Aaron decides to take charge at that point, clearly receiving instructions only he can hear. "Alright, we have five hours to shore up our defenses, I'm going to need to walk you all through them, as things could go badly if you don't know how to use them." Amanda though, interjects, "Alright, we can do that later, first, answers. Mine is what happens if we get hurt or something, some of us are pretty fragile now." Aaron glares at her, then sighs, "We really are short on time, but questions, alright, if you get hurt or, well, the instructions say eaten," he says with a pause," you'll regenerate. Any of the non-captain players won't feel pain, and will just respawn at their base if they'd normally die. Though they'll be out of it for a while, pretty much unable to move. If they wouldn't normally die from the injuries, they'll heal. How long it takes is proportional to how hurt you are." Annie starts to talk, "What about cap...." but Amanda interjects, "What can you change about us. The instructions I have say you'll have some amount of control, what can you do." Glancing at Annie, Aaron says, "I haven't checked yet, umm, lets see." Wisps of color start to flow from Amanda to Aaron as he concentrates, followed by Annie, then each person in turn. "On some of you I can't change much, on others I have more control. Let's see, on you I can make your stem grow, and actually grow a plant in reverse from you. On Annie the description says I can give her a stick, whatever that means." The wisps flare green and the connection between Annie and Aaron brightens momentarily. Annie's jumpsuit disappears in a flash of light and her legs begin to shrink. At the same time, a white pole extends from her crotch, away from her body. In less than three seconds, Annie's clearly a lollipop, something she reaffirms with a shriek. "Whoops," is Aaron's only reply as the changes reverse. "It looks like I can also control whether you have the jumpsuit on or not." Rolling her eyes, Amanda grumbles, "Lovely"... Oblivious, Aaron continues, "On Carol I can change the flavor of her frosting and, huh, that's weird, it says her filling." Carol's responds snappily, "What did you just learn. If you don't know what it does, don't touch it!" Aaron reluctantly agrees, and moves on to Zoe, "I can control the type of chocolate you are, and how bitter." He turns to Cassie last, "And it says here I can change how 'fluffy' you are." At that, her eyes light up, "Ooh, could you do that please, it's a bit hard to move like this." She lifts up an arm to demonstrate. The wisps turn bright white and flare again, streaming between them. Cassie's arm things to a more human proportion. "Thanks!" She says, clearly in a happier mood than before. "No problem", Aaron says distractedly. "It looks like the last thing I can affect about you guys is your size, there's a 'candy size' setting next to human size." Amanda arches her eyebrows, "Candy size? You're just making things up." Aaron looks slightly offended at that, then he smirks, "Actually, the instructions say I should use it on someone to make sure you guys listen, I wasn't going to, but if you don't mind. Anyone care one way or another?" Annie was quick to speak up, being an enemy of sorts with Amanda probably had something to do with that, and Cassie seemed to just want to see it. Amanda mostly kept up her cool demeanor, but looked a little nervous as she said, "Go ahead." The wisps appear again and flare red as Amanda quickly shrinks down to the size of a strawberry, her clothes disappearing. Carol leans down for a better look, making the small red teen stumble backwards, falling onto her rear. She reaches forward and picks her up, "She's so small!" Carol exclaims as everyone surrounds her to look at the terrified Amanda. "Tha... That's enough." Amanda stammered. Carol, ignoring her completely, reaches with her other hand to grab Amanda's leg, lifting her into the air with a screech as she becomes eye level. "I mean," Carol continues, "She looks so Juicy, and good enough to eat!" Carol then proceeds to start to lower Amanda into her mouth. Aaron decided to intervene there though, "That's enough Carol" He said, "We need everyone right now to secure the area, I'll let you guys fool around later." Carol lets out a fake sigh as she places Amanda, trembling, onto the ground before smirking, realizing she might actually be able to do that later. Amanda, for her part, regrows to her normal size and does her best not to look terrified, she doesn't do very well. "Anymore questions?" Aaron asks, "Alright good, we can head out now."
***
"And this is the jello area, it looks solid, like the other candy floors, but if you step into it, you'll get encased in jello which will immediately harden, so don't do that. For this one, you can't get the people out yourself so come find me if someone's stuck in here when you do your daily checks. As with the rest of them, if someone shows up while you're checking the traps, get yourself stuck, we'll come and find you later and they can't get you then." Aaron looks around, "I think that's the last of them." After showing the group all of the natural traps and defenses, along with setting up quite a few in strategic places, they didn't have much left to do but head back. Turning to walk back to the cottage, Zoe asks a question, "Aren't we going to try to get other people? That's how you win, isn't it?" A the rest of the group follows them, Aaron answers her, "Yea, that's the ultimate goal, but right now we don't have any offensive capabilities, none. We only have a defense, and most of that comes from traps. So I'm thinking we should wait until an event happens. Then we might be able to pick up something better." He might have continued, but at that moment a horn sounded and he glanced nervously backwards, "Come on guys, lets run back, they can come after you now."
***
Nothing happened during the night, they sat, tense, one of them on watch at all times, but no one came. The following morning, they checked the traps, but no one had arrived. Around the borders, there were footprints, but they didn't enter very far.
***
And with that, you cut the broadcast, nothing interesting was happening around the dessert faction, and you could keep it that way if need be. Meanwhile, you needed to plan for the first event, and for that, you wanted to run another survey, you drafted it up and sent it out to other people with these options: