2 sliders with triggers/variables and states. How to set initial state

I have a slide with two sliders. Each allow choosing from three characters (slider 1 has 3 - slider 2 has 3 different ones). So the sliders have Start 1 End 3,  Initial 1 Steps 2. The characters are distributed horizontally (each slider independently, they appear as two lines/areas one above the other, with three characters each in line), so the slider handle is on the first character on the left when timeline starts. 

Each character (x) has 2 states. Normal and Hover; the latter shows a cartoon bubble with "my name is x". When starting, the first character has no bubble as the slider has not been moved, and moving the slider is setting the state to Hover according to a cardinal number. Character 1 use =1 for setting Hover and ≠1 to go back to Normal state. Same for the other characters...2...3....then Slider 2 has the same triggers. 

When moving the sliders to it's character 2, the bubble shows. Then on moving the slider to character 3, it's bubble shows whilst the one for 2 disappear. Character 1 is not showing any bubble to start; this is cause I want to avoid biasing it (making it more prominent than others, subliminally). When returning to character 1 the bubble shows, but I fear that if someone is not moving the slider back to character 1, it will be biased negatively (and its name not seen). 

I thought of having a Step 0, a sort of initial position where the slider is parked, on the left of characters, to start with. But I also have to make sure that they choose 1 character in each slider. I cannot have them to leave it on Step 0 as I also need the choosen character in each slider to be saved as variable (var slider 1 plus var slider 2) when the user click submit (which I also not quite sure how to do....I am not there yet...I suppose two triggers associated to the same Submit button? Anyone knows?) 

Does anyone has an idea how the slider can be set so that ALL 3 steps are moved over at least once to allow continuing?

Thanks a lot

Andrea