Behind a Smile

C8 - Progress, roadblocks and endings

Trigger warnings for this chapter:

Food is mentioned multiple times throughout the chapter
Funeral so like death, stages of grief, confrontation of your own mortality
Robbery with unspecified weapon

TW: Food - till end of chapter

Pepper was in for another busy day. She started working at 6:30 AM and would not have a moment where no one was watching her until lunch, and that was if no one tried to schedule a business lunch meeting that day. She imagined the odds of that happening would be high.

The first meeting on the calendar was the meeting with the legal team. Pepper never looked forward to meetings with the legal team. No mistakes could be made because although there were plenty of good ones, they still needed some of the relentless lawyers that would take any chance they could to exploit a misstep.

Arriving in the meeting room she relaxed slightly seeing that there were only about ten lawyers there, instead of the entire team on-duty like last time. To be fair, that time it was necessary, but this time they didn't need for everyone to be there and Pepper was very relieved about that.

She sat down at one head of the table, the head of the department already sitting at the other head. A young, stressed member of the legal team hurried inside quickly, folders with documents overflowing. Some of the others chuckled at the display, Pepper just stood up to pick up the papers that had fallen down while opening the door. She received a small nod in response to it, though they were blushing heavily.

After she sat back down, the head of the department spoke up. "Welcome, Miss Potts. We called this meeting with you to update you about the developments regarding the new foundation. The people present each represent a location where progress has been made. If you have any questions please let them finish their sentence and after that feel free to interject them." She paused to allow Pepper to speak, who just nodded and allowed the head to continue. "Alright then, I'm going to call on you, introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and the building you are representing, then give the update about the progress that has been made." Everyone nodded their head. "Elias, you start."

A young man with slicked-back hair and a carefully trimmed beard cleared his throat. "My name is Elias, Elias Hawthorne. My pronouns are he/him and I represent the shelter closest to the tower, the one just at the corner of the street when you walk out of the front door." He fanned out the stack of papers in front of him before grabbing the one he was looking for. He handed it to the person next to him and indicated that it should be handed down to Pepper.

When she finally saw what it was, some pictures of the building's exterior and interior, she nodded and looked back up to Elias who continued talking. "As you can see, the building has already been furnished, with room for the future employees to personalize it more. It is ready to be occupied, with the place for around 40 beds, 5 of which are for employees on the night shift. The kitchen has been stocked with equipment and long-lasting food." He started handing over some more papers. "We are still working on making it so CPS can't remove children from there to bring them back to their parents. These papers show some of the requirements and the dates we expect to meet them."

This went on for a while. When Elias was done, everyone continued with their update, most of them were in the same stage as Elias' shelter was, but some were still in negotiations to be able to legally be allowed to shelter the kids there.

It didn't get interesting for Pepper until the one who hastily stumbled into the meeting dropping papers left and right started speaking. "Good morning Miss Potts. My name is TJ Fox, my pronouns are they/them. I will be representing the shelter located close to the Midtown School of Science and Technology. Besides the shelter being completely ready for use, with the exception of the staff not being assigned yet, we also accomplished a line of communication with the school. In case people at the shelter need to change schools, we are able to get them to make an exception about the entrance exam only being able to be taken once a semester. In this case, if the student can provide sufficient marks from their previous school, they will allow the entrance exam to be taken specifically for this individual." TJ took a deep breath to slow down before continuing. "In exchange, their humanitarian classes are able to visit our shelter if we can help them with a project. The school is also willing to donate any leftovers from the lunch so they don't need to be thrown away. I have provided you with the list of the other agreements we made with the school to make a symbiotic relationship possible. I'm sorry for arriving late, I accidentally selected the wrong printer and just got off the phone with the representative of the school so I was going to be cutting it close either way."