The Disney Villainesses

Product testing is such a pain in the ass, you thought. This wasn't even supposed to be your job, you just unload from the truck or talk to customers, the Disney Store manager was meant to quality check all this crap! Yet here you were on a Friday night, half an hour after everyone else went home. That’s what you get for working for Disney, in fairness. The machine stops for no man's weekend plans.

The job itself wasn't even difficult, it was just so tedious! Four boxes of new product just landed and one set had been arranged for an in-store photoshoot, but now you had to go through each box and text the new line of Disney's Villainess dolls. Which on the one hand isn’t the worst thing, you did always love a good villain, but it just felt like such an afterthought -- the new AI interface in these things wasn’t even fully tested at GloboTech before Disney bought them out, so they delegated that to the store staff? Ridiculous. Whatever, as long as you did your logging, you could get out of here.

You pushed through the door to the photo studio, made up for the ads to be shot here, and found yourself walking through a small set that mirrored a typical Disney castle: pink carpet, two white walls, pink curtains, plush furniture, a big white bed, so on. Sitting by the set were two dollies, each carrying two large boxes. You cut the first one open and picked up the first doll: Maleficent from the original Sleeping Beauty. The figure was around 17 inches tall — pretty big for a doll, and the box had surprising weight to it, maybe five or seven pounds. You gingerly removed the tape on the box, took off the plastic case and set the doll on the table. Grabbing the instruction card, you saw that these new models were voice activated — 'TO ACTIVATE: ‘AWAKEN, MISTRESS OF EVIL’'

Shrugging, you read the command aloud. “Awaken, mistress of evil.”