THE GRAND SWITCH [ROUND 1: iGHETTO]

Suddenly, the contestants found themselves in a particularly stylish living room, immobile, sitting in a circle of wooden chairs, while five dapper-looking fellows lounged about in a couple of sofas in the center. One of them looked towards the shortest of them, who was quite nervous looking, and spoke.

“Reginald, why don’t you introduce your new contestants?”

Reginald jumped up sharply out of his seat at the voice and looked at the speaker with distain before finally focusing back on the circle surrounding him.

“Well, um. This here is Dylan Houle,” he said, pointing to a particularly muscular man. He’s a professional wrestler. He has wrestling-based powers and is probably insane. And stuff.”

Continuing, he pointed to a rather large reptile in the room. A very large chair had been found for the dragon, even if the did look quite uncomfortable.

“This is Grizzald. He’s a dragon, and he has to guard a treasure thing, too. So yeah. Those are my contestants. Now, um. Someone else introduce the other people.”

As Reginald sat back down, another stood up, continuing the introductions.

“Hello,” he said with a big smile. “My name Alexander. I’m the one who came up with the idea to do this! Anyway.”

He pointed towards a small toy ship as he spoke, saying, “This is ESS Pyreness and her crew. Well, actually, the Pyreness isn’t a ship, and it doesn’t have a crew. The whole thing is a TV show, so I stole a fully working model, along with their voiceacting crew! Isn’t that great?

“My other contestant-” he pointed towards a rather normal looking guy, as far as the contestants so far went. “Is Dole Flejer. He used to work as a magicians assistant, and he has a magical power that lets him throw back any attack directed towards him. It’s pretty cool.”

He gave the group another big smile before pointing to another one of The Literary Group, and saying, “Your turn, Leon.”

“Ugh,” Leon said, standing up. He was probably the least fashionable of the five, looking like he threw several mismatched classy outfits together. He walked up to a young, teenage girl and apathetically used his arms to point in her general direction.

“This is February Allen. She’s an average teenage girl, except she can change the weather with her emotions. How drab.”

Leon stumbled over to the other contestant. This time he didn’t even bother to point at him, he just kind of stood there, kind of looking at the contestant as he spoke.

“This is Todd Sherman. He has a club that can turn into wild animals. So he wields animals as weapons. A little more interesting than Mrs.-Month-for-a-name. Just barely.”

He started walking back to his seat. “Pauline, it’s your turn.”

Suddenly, Pauline jumped out of her seat excited, smiling at Leon, saying, “Ok!”

Half-walking, half-dancing over to one of the contestants, she happily pointed towards a glowing girl.

“This is Cassiopeiea! I just had to have her. She’s a star-turned human. She’s not great at fighting, but she can shoot energy out of her! Isn’t she precious?”

She walked over to another contestant and continued.

“And this is Corthi Karomanski! Isn’t Corthi just an adorable name!? Either way, he can’t control his body because its robotic! It makes him kill people. Every once in a while though, it gives him control! I think he wants to die. It’s soooo cuuute!”

Pauline sat back down, and then another stood up. He held a glass of wine, and was probably the classiest person in the room. After a short pause, he began to speak.

“Hello!” He said. “My name is Pierre, and I bet you’re wonder what that was all about.”

He clicked his tongue a few times, walking slowly with the circle, looking at each contestant directly.

Finally, he continued.

“Well, I regret to inform you, that you’ve been entered into a battle to the death. All of you will die, but one. I hope you were listening to those introductions.”

Pierre paused for effect.

“Anyway, there’s really only one item on the list: Where you will be fighting. Each time one or two of you die, we’ll be going to a new locale, so don’t worry if you don’t like where you are at first; if you can survive, you’ll go somewhere else. Anyway.”

He lifted his free hand, and snapped his fingers.

Suddenly, the arrangement of furniture was floating above the air, over two massive towers stretching several miles into the sky.

“Welcome to iGhetto. The most advanced lower-class residential containment zone in the world. Built by the fantastic Apple Corporation in conjunction with the World Council, if you live in a first-world country and you’re in the bottom 10% of earned income, you probably live here. Rife with gangs, drugs, and futuristic apple products, this place will certainly make for an… interesting round.”

Pierre snapped his fingers again. The contestants were scattered throughout the ghetto, and The Grand Switch had begun.