Well, *someone* has to do it.
If someone were inexplicably tasked with grouping all the several dozen contestants participating in the Battle for Battle for Dream Island- they'd be hard-pressed to find *any* configuration, any grouping of teams with a nice, non-two-digit size -that had *any* semblance of unity or cohesive. Everyone could be split into two categories. First, there were those that have had too *much* experience with the competition, thus no longer being able to trust anybody besides a number of people one could count on a hand, and holding any number of life-long, intense grudges that made them completely unable to look them in the eye, let alone work with them even though their life depended on it. Then there were those that had too *little* of a history with the Battle; those that may have tried to join in once upon a time, but were promptly stuck in a metal box for years on end for their efforts, all thanks to the unknown thoughts and opinions of some faceless voters up above, and so they basically had no idea whatsoever about the whole deal with Dream Island, why they're battling for it, and why they're now battling for the battle itself. Really, the fact that there was even a brand new Battle at all was a fluke; some mistake of the universe that only exists because it most likely only exists to give its inhabitants an eternity of pain.
For people like Needle, that seemed to be the *only* possible explanation.
And out of all the agglomerations of contestants throughout the several seasons of BFDI's history, there was most likely no better example of the complete and total ineptitude of everyone involved than Free Food.
Free Food. Even the name alone gives you a taste (no pun intended) on just how utterly dysfunctional the whole thing was. Nobody joined this team because they actually had any ties to anybody within. Well, besides *those* three, anyway. Yellow Face roped Bell and Foldy into this nonsense because he was a charismatic marketer that could sell anyone just about anything, even a useless, good-for-nothing scribble. Marker and Stapy then tagged along because they were friends with that folded-up piece of paper. Fries joined in because he felt some vague, twisted sense of admiration for how that Talker was able to just force people into his group. And Eraser only went aboard because of the aforementioned Free Food. It was a team that was basically picked at random, made out of a whole bunch of nobodies that *nobody* probably expected to ever band together in the name of... winning a BFDI, I guess. And the absolute worst part is that not a single one of them even knew the first thing about keeping a team together.
Yellow Face only knew how to sell a product; it did him well on putting the team together, but leading it from there was just completely out of his league. Foldy, Marker, and Stapy only ever really cared about each other, mostly playing games and tossing dirt whenever Four didn't force them to work with the rest of their team. Bell was too anxious and fearful to take charge in anything, and wasn't even able to defend herself and her precious string. Puffball was just about the closest they could get, but she focused just a *little* bit too much on herself for her to truly be leadership material. And Fries...
An untrained eye- basically anyone that wasn't Golf Ball -could see that foodstuff as being the *perfect* leader through all these trying times. He's already had a shot at it once or twice before back in the day, and there wasn't really any indication that this time was gonna be any different. But for some reason or whatever, Fries just... didn't feel like it. He could go on and on about how it's important that someone takes charge and leads their team to victory, stating that it makes all the difference and how friendship is valuable and so on and so forth, but the conversation would end up conveniently stopping the moment someone asks about why *he* doesn't have a go at it for himself. Sometimes he'd just say that they can't just rely on him all the time, that they very much needed the experience more than he did, but most of the time that line of thought would only be met with tense, awkward silence, followed by him immediately losing all interest in talking any further.
