Vanellope groaned as she lay back on the chair, Rapunzel stroking and restyling her hair.
"Rapunzel, I don't mean to sound ungrateful," the girl told her, "but – are there – other princesses here?"
"Here?" Belle looked up from her book.
Vanellope nodded.
"I mean – you guys are really cool. Don't get me wrong. But are there any other princesses on this site?"
The princesses started to look at each other, a little anxious.
"Well," Cinderella spoke after a brief silence, "there is another dressing room. But most of the visitors here don't tend to go there."
"No, I'll be fine," Vanellope tried smiling, "could somebody take me there?"
"And we're not the only princesses online," Jasmine reminded her, "there's – unmentionable princesses outside of the site."
After C3-PO had dared to take Vanellope to the other dressing room, the girl creaked open the door.
Inside of this room was a lot smaller than the main princesses' room. The walls were red instead of pink, there were fewer seats and couches and only a handful of cushions. There were a few adults, but about half of the princesses were around Vanellope's – physical – age. And, unless Vanellope had seen them differently, two of the princesses seemed to be a lioness and a fox.
"Hey?" she asked, rather scared.
The princesses all turned. One with a blue outfit and white hair pointed a spear at her, the lioness started to growl and a broom suddenly hovered in the air, as if it were going to strike.
"I'm a princess as well." Vanellope held her hands up. She hoped that these princesses weren't going to attack; one of the little girls, who had a similar complexion to Moana, looked positively feral.
"A princess?" the woman with white hair asked. "Rejected as well?"
"I'm – I'm from a video game," Vanellope murmured, "Sugar Rush. And Slaughter Race. It's complicated…"
"Video game?" one of the girls asked. She was wearing a baby blue nightgown and had brown hair in curls behind her head. "That seems a little vulgar."
"Wendy," the white-haired woman responded, "we do not judge. What is your name, little one?"
"Vanellope."
"I am Kidagagash," the woman stood tall and striding, "of Atlantis. These are my fellow rejects; Megara, Eilonwy, Melody, Maid Marian, Nala, Jane, Esmeralda, Alice, Lilo and Giselle."
"There's only ten of you." Vanellope raised her eyebrow.
Jane knelt down beside Vanellope, whispering, "Giselle is invisible. It's so we don't have to pay her actress royalties."
Vanellope sniggered. "So," she held her arms behind her, "what are your ladies' stories? Why aren't you in the main dressing room?"
This was answered with a series of groans.
"We're little girls!" Wendy sat down and held her chin on clenched fists. Alice soothingly stroked her shoulder as Lilo held a ragdoll to her cheek, caringly.
"My film was a flop," Eilonwy held her hands out and raised her eyebrow, "and I'm twelve."
"I'm nine." Vanellope counteracted.
"Apparently working with the God of the Dead leads people to call you a bad influence." Megara shook her head, her ponytail flying. "Oh, and nobody liked my film. I wasn't even the central character." She snarled. "My story would have been a lot better."
Jane sighed, pulling hair behind her ear. "Similar thing."
Kida nodded in sympathy, sitting beside Jane, her spear still upright and digging into the – threadbare – carpet.
"We're not human," Nala scoffed, lying down as Maid Marian went on her knees, "bigoted morons."
"I'm not even going to begin saying why." Esmeralda answered nonchalantly.
Melody stood upright, looking right at Vanellope with sadness and frustration. "My mom's an actual princess. How do you think I feel? My mom's an eternal sixteen-year-old while I slump in the second-class room."
"Be grateful you have a mom," Eilonwy snapped, as all but Wendy and Nala looked at Melody, "anyway, let's not mope now. Let's welcome our guest."
Vanellope soon sat with the little girls as they climbed around a couch.
"The game, Vanellope, that we're playing, is that you have to say the weirdest monster you've seen," Wendy held a pillow close, "mine was a crocodile with a clock in his stomach!"
"How did that get there?" Vanellope exclaimed.
"And a pirate with a hook for a hand," Wendy smiled, "who made me walk the ship's plank!"
Vanellope would normally have been interested, but the way the older girl was sniggering made her feel uncomfortable.
"A walking undead army," Eilonwy announced, "with a Skeleton King."
Again, that sounded cool to Vanellope, but the girl seemed a bit too happy.
"A wicked queen with playing cards as soldiers." Alice grinned.
"A shark who was a tiny fish and a magic octopus witch." Melody pointed her finger in the air.
"A dragon who was also a human boy." Lilo finished.
"Oh come on, Lilo," Wendy slapped her playfully, "you didn't have one of those."
"I did in my TV series," Lilo muttered, looking down at the ragdoll.
"Let's stick to the rules, Lilo," Wendy patted her on the back, "Vanellope, what's the weirdest thing you ever saw?"
"Cybug crazy king who was from a different game and altered me so that I didn't know I was princess."
There was a stunned silence as the girls blinked.
"Cool!" Lilo squealed.
As they carried on, Vanellope learnt a lot about these 'unimportant' princesses.
Nala, Melody, Eilonwy and Kida were real princesses; the others were just main characters who were female. Although Lilo was an Earth ambassador.
"The rule is that I can't bring Stitch in here anymore," Lilo lay back on a cushion pile, as Vanellope chewed noodles from a carton beside her, "he tore things up."
"Hey," Vanellope swallowed her noodles, "Ralph can't be in my game because he breaks stuff."
Lilo smiled for a fraction of a second, before she turned over.
"Vanellope, do you feel left out?"
Vanellope nodded, remembering Sugar Rush. "Even when they were told I was a princess, the other racers ignored me," she put the carton down and turned to Lilo, "and then Ralph broke my game and made them homeless.
Lilo sat up, looking at Vanellope with utmost sympathy, as if she understood exactly what the girl was talking about.
"Nobody even likes me anymore," Lilo sighed, squeezing the ragdoll, "everybody likes my dog."
"Your dog?" Vanellope asked, incredulously.
"Well, he's really an alien. But people prefer him and not me. So they ignore me again."
Vanellope pulled her legs up and held her knees. She didn't think that she could get miserable with happy girls like this, but apparently she was.
When she asked the other princesses about what they had been through, they seemed a lot less happy than Vanellope would have expected.
Wendy said that she too had a daughter, but didn't know where she was on this website, if at all. In her movie, her daughter had been kidnapped from their house, although luckily Wendy hadn't known until her girl had returned.
Kida had almost been stolen from her home by invaders, who almost accidently killed her people.
Nala had grown up in a tyranny and most of her people had starved.
Esmeralda was hesitant to tell Vanellope anything, but she relented and explained that she had spent her life being discriminated against and was almost burned to death by a crazed priest.
After she waved goodbye, Vanellope looked out down the corridor. C3-PO wasn't back yet and she didn't want to walk back by herself.
Instead, she chose to walk to the crowds of avatars, to do something other than think about kidnapping and starvation and burning to death.
Bumping into an avatar, she apologised, before she saw it comment on a quiz about the princesses.
"Hey, the rejected princesses have feelings as well," she argued with it, as those words oddly enough appeared next to said comment.
The avatar simply responded with, "At least they're actually Disney. The non-Disney princesses are much worse off."
"Non-Disney princesses?" Vanellope raised an eyebrow.
The avatar gave Vanellope a link – which she touched quickly because the stormtroopers were coming up, shouting about spam.
As Vanellope rushed about, she found herself approaching what appeared to be an outhouse door, nailed onto a wall. Gingerly, she knocked.
"What?" a young woman whined, opening the door. The woman, who was very small and thin, with a bright purple outfit and leggings, glared at Vanellope.
"What is it, Kayley?" a voice called from the back.
Kayley turned around, "Just some kid."
"Hi," Vanellope held a hand up, her heart pounding – if she had one, that is, "I – I'm a princess –"
"Disney sent you, did they?" Kayley sneered, "They keep sticking their noses in."
"Oh, no. I'm not Disney. I – I'm from a video game."
"Oh, like Daphne!" Kayley managed a smile, "Well, yeah, come on in."
This room was even smaller and darker than the other one. The walls were all wooden, without paint or wallpaper. A very dim light shone from above. A few women were around a table, playing a card game. A scantily-clad blonde woman lay in a hammock, smoking from a long, thin pipe with thin wisps of air billowing out. Two tiny women, only a few inches tall, were handing out cigarettes to everybody. The room stank of stale food, unwashed clothes and dog mess. Beer and coke cans littered the food. The nastily smell of vomit came from behind a golden chair, where a dopey red-haired woman was lying, also holding a long, thin pipe, as a dog chewed what Vanellope hoped were animal bones on the floor.
Kayley stubbed out a cigarette into a rather filthy goldfish bowl, before she asked, lying down on a sad-looking couch, "What's your name, sport?"
"Vanellope."
Kayley snorted. "Most of our names are ridiculous. You could fit right in."
Vanellope thought that she would rather be called a glitch again.
Then Vanellope's eyes fixed upon a very large, green woman watching a trashy television set. "Is that an ogre?"
"Hey, kid!" the ogre shouted, "If you're delivering pizza, Odette's paying!"
"I am not!" one of the card players cried. "Your studio makes more money than me."
Kayley pushed Vanellope aside a little and gabbled, "Look, the girls are a little – cross most of the time."
"How many of you are there?" Vanellope asked, stepping out of the way of one of the smaller princesses scampering over the floor.
"There's me," Kayley counted, "Odette, Oriana, Pea and Yum-Yum are playing cards, Thumbelina and Crysta are the tiny ones over there, Marina – the one in sailing gear – is there –"
Kayley pointed to a darker-toned woman with short hair sitting watching the rubbish programme.
"Along with Fiona, that's the ogre. Anastasia's the one on the fancy chair – she's the one whom everyone assumes is," Kayley lowered her voice, "Disney. Oh, and Holli Would is the one passed out from opium."
Pea belched, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.
Vanellope grimaced. "Well, that's great, ladies, but, err, I think I need to get back to my game."
"Goodbye." Kayley gave a small smile, but then Fiona threw a beer can at the open door.
"Oi! Shut that damn door! And get ready, Kayley; it's strip poker soon!"
Kayley rolled her eyes and shut the door, as Anastasia groaned. "No-one wants to see you naked, Dreamworks!"
Vanellope didn't know what strip poker was, but she didn't stick around to find out. When she arrived back at Oh My Disney, C3-PO ran over, waving his mechanical arms about like a marionette puppet being operated by someone having a seizure.
"Vanellope! I went looking for you."
"Oh, I just went offsite. I went to see princesses who aren't part of this corporation."
C3-PO squealed horribly. "Walt, Lucas and Spielberg! What did they do? You don't have any viruses, do you?"
Vanellope shook her head. "I wouldn't have gotten inside, would I?" Then she asked, her stomach in knots – if she had one, "Wh-Why are the other Disney princesses suffering? I mean, Melody's mom is in the main dressing room. And Lilo's been abandoned twice."
"It's how our rules work," C3-PO stroked her head, "let's get you back to Slaughter Race."