“When you place an ad in Villain magazine, you're given a special phone number. Anyone who's interested calls the number and gives details of their job offer on the voice mail. For a small fee you can screen the calls and decide which jobs you want to take.”

“You have three messages,” said the cold voice on the phone.
When the first message started, a nasal voice stuttered, “Uuuuuhm...yes. Yes, hello. I read your ad and I hope...I hope that you're really as good as you describe yourself. It's important. Well, you probably won't think it's important, maybe even ridiculous, but I'm used to it. Y'know, a lot of people think my collecting habits are a tad strange, but as a matter of fact it--”
Beep.
The message stopped abruptly. Callers had just a few seconds to leave their messages—barely enough time to leave a name, phone number, and brief description of the job offer, but this caller had rambled on far too long.
Shego muttered, “Well, you yapped forever and missed the boat. Too bad, so sad.” She went right on to the next message.
To her surprise it was the same man as in the previous message.
“Uhm, yes, it's me again. I...talked a little too long in my last message, but I thought I'd better tell you what this is all about. Even though some people tried to talk me out of this. But when I think about it...I should...tell...you...no, yes. I'll tell you what it's about. So you have to...no, wait. Better not. Or...oh well, I'll go ahead and tell you. Do you know these...cuddly pets? They call them Cudd--”
Beep.
Just when Shego shook her head and asked herself if the third message would be from the same strange man, the question answered itself when she pressed the play button.
“He...hello; me again. This time I'll make it short. You gotta steal something for me. My number is 555-0313.”

“You might be surprised to hear I accepted this job. Not because I had to, just because it was my first one! I must have been kinda sentimental at the moment, otherwise I'd have just ignored it. After I called back, I met my first client. A rather odd man named Dave.”

Dave's apartment was in—to put it nicely—a pretty shabby building. When Shego saw it from the outside, she asked herself if she shouldn't just ditch this assignment and just go home to wait for her next call. In the end she reconsidered, seeing as she wanted to establish a good reputation early for other prospective employers.
She entered the place and knocked on the door of apartment 7G.
“Yes?” Dave's nasal voice answered a few seconds later from the other side of the door.
“I'm looking for Dave.”
“Who?”
“Dave!”
“Dave is not here, man!”
Shego ignited one of her hands and prepared to turn the door into kindling, but then she remembered what Dave told her on the phone. She sighed.
“Webe tabalkebed obon thebe phobone.“
“Abare youbou subure?”
“Yes. Uhm, bes. Yebes. Oh, let me in.”
For a long while there was the clicking and clanking of several locks and door chains. Finally, Dave opened the door a crack and peeped outside.
“May I come in now, or do I have to...? Oh, whatever.” Impatient, Shego kicked the door in violently. That the noise of a thumping sound echoed in the halls when the door hit Dave's head, didn't matter to her. Shego was sure that the sound came from his head and not the door.
“So, you want me to do a crime for you?” she asked as she muscled her way into the apartment.
Dave rubbed his forehead. “Oww. I'm gonna have a goose egg on my noggin for life. Why are you so rude?”
“Can you handle the truth?”
“Actually, no.”
“I don't like you. And that's the truth.”
Dave looked as though he were about to cry over Shego's remark, but he stood silent, pondering over the way Shego examined his glass case filled with plushie dolls. “Would you...like something to drink?”
“No. Tell me what you want from me, pay me my commission, and let me get to work and outta here. These ugly critters in the case creep me out. And I don't wanna get started on you.”
Suddenly, Dave's personality changed completely. He pushed Shego away from the glass case so hard, she stumbled to the floor. “They are not ugly critters!” he shouted, red-faced. “They're precious collectors' items! How can such a sharp-looking woman like you be so ignorant? Insult me, insult my mother, insult my religion or anything else about me, but if you insult the Cuddle Buddies, you're really asking for it!”
Unfazed, Shego got up and dusted off her outfit. She then hoisted Dave under his arms and hung him from his pullover straps on a coat hook on the wall. Then she sat down on a dusty armchair, facing him. “You want me to steal more of those ugly things, right?”
“They are CUDDLE BUDDIES!” yelled Dave. “But yeah, that pretty much sums up your assignment.”
While he struggled to get off the coat hook, Shego leaned back, crossed her legs and took one more look at the vitrine.
“So you've got money to hire a professional thief, but not enough to go to the nearest toy store and buy a few silly Cuddle Buddies?”
“They're not silly! They're collectors' items! Do you have any idea how much some of them are worth? My last dime goes to those Cuddle Buddies! Do you think I like living in this sinkhole? It's only because I sold a Gold Star Pandaroo that I was able to come up with the money to hire you!”
“You got that much from selling just one of those things? I must admit, that's kinda impressive.”
“You see? And now I need you to break into the house of the man who bought it and steal it back, along with his Flamingoat doll. There are only ten Flamingoats in existence! If I got my hands on one I would become King of the Cuddlers! So, if you'd let me down from this hook, I'll tell you all the details.”

“He didn't tell me any real details. He just told me that the man who owned the Flamingoat was the craziest of all Cuddle Buddy collectors, and Dave said that those two Cuddle Buddies were under tighter security than even the British Crown Jewels. At the time, I didn't believe a single word of it. Those stupid dolls, highly guarded? Yeah, right. I was sure I was dealing with just another wacko plushie collector.”

The night was dark, chilly, and foggy in the little conservative suburb to which Shego was directed. She approached with ninja-like stealth towards the unassuming-looking row house where the two ugly critters were supposed to reside.
After she scanned the neighborhood for a few seconds, Shego surmised that this would be an easy job.
She suddenly changed her opinion when a stray dog dared to put on paw on the lawn and the dog was immediately flung airborne by a catapult hidden in the grass.
Shego scampered up the nearest utility pole, quick as lightning.
“Okay, maybe this gig won't bore me to death after all.”
From there she jumped on a tree in the front yard, which she used as a springboard to the roof. After the nearly soundless landing, she froze there motionless for half a minute. When she made sure nobody saw or heard her, she continued her work and crept up to an open attic window.
“Rather careless,” she thought silently.
In case there were any invisible beams, she checked the window using the “spray technique“ often seen on TV. She also looked for old-fashioned trip wires or similar things. To her surprise the window appeared to be completely unsecured.

“I learned an important lesson in that night: collectors of plushies, especially the owners of really expensive dolls, NEVER leave anything unsecured.”

When Shego had barely set foot on the floor, a trap door opened under her. She tumbled, frightened, down a long slide.

“I just now realized that I'd spent a good part of my lifetime on slides hidden under trap doors.”

To her astonishment, she landed in the very room she was seeking. All around her sat dozens of Cuddle Buddies. Each one of them had its own mahogany pedestal and secured behind a thick glass panel.
“Now, that was easy,“ she mumbled sarcastically, and stood up.
But the instant she was on her legs again, another trap door opened under her, and she landed with a loud splash in a huge pool. There was no time for her to get her bearings, for in a split second a half dozen crocodiles swam towards her.

“To this day I have no clear memory of how I got away from the crocodiles. I was in such panic that my instincts just took over. I only remember darkness and way too many teeth around me. I think I was underwater for quite a while, too. But maybe for only a few seconds. When I came to, I just climbed out of the water, turned around and saw the crocodiles on the other side and how they tried to put as much space as possible between themselves and me. Anyway. Crocodiles? Not my cup of tea.”

Drenched and battered, Shego stumbled out of the room through a not-too-well-hidden door, and climbed one flight upstairs. On her way to the room with the Cuddle Buddies, she came across a box on the wall labeled “Security System.” With a glowing fist, she slashed it as she passed by. The flying sparks indicated the security system was disabled.
When she reached the room she was looking for, Shego grabbed the two plushies, took a deep breath, and sprinted out of the house. When she made it outside, she kept running and didn't stop until she reached Dave's apartment.

“So, that was it. My first assignment as a hired villain. At least I was well paid. But in the next issue of Villain magazine, I changed my ad. The addition was: 'Not accepting assignments from plushie collectors of any kind.' Are either of you hungry? I'm calling room service again.”