Setting aside the apparent visual excitement plastered all over Jennifer, I grew increasingly more agitated the longer we were forced to wait. Around 10 minutes later, the Receptionist finally came over with a cup of tea for my slave and instead of the same for me…I received….a box of apple juice.
I’ll admit, it took quite a bit of restraint on my part not to lash out and eviscerate the woman immediately, and honestly, the idea of throwing caution to the wind nearly won out, but in the end, I settled for huffing loudly.
Now, I know I’m technically five years old, but not being afforded the same respect as Jennifer, who was below me in status in my eyes, ticked me off to no end, still after a few deep breaths, I calmed my thoughts, took the juice box, and not so gently STABBED THE FUCK OUT OF IT WITH THE STRAW, before angrily sipping away at it like a pissed off gremlin.
While doing so, I went ahead and activated my telepathy to scan the Receptionist’s mind in an attempt to figure out why our wait was so long. I soon discovered the annoying political reason behind it.
Apparently, although I had scheduled the meeting ahead of time, using Jennifer as a proxy, the upper management of the publishing company was…Less than receptive to the notion.
To them, who had a more hands-off approach to dealing with the authors, leaving that primarily to the agents on their payroll, the fact that we’d called for an all-hands meeting was viewed unfavorably in their haughty eyes.
To them, the going ons of authors were nothing but a means to acquire more books to publish and sell, which, in a sense, was a skewed point of view.
Then again, this is how it always was when it came to things like the entertainment industry. The higher up on the food chain, the less involved in smaller projects you tended to be; however, in the case of Henry Potter, none of them viewed it as anything other than one of the many new titles they were about to release; thus they didn’t put any heavy thoughts on it as a whole.
Going through the documents, I noticed that it was only slated to be picked up as a three-book series, so I could already tell the bigwigs had zero plans for it to continue on and become the juggernaut it was meant to be.
Let alone the publishing of books 4-7; there weren’t any intentions or plans to further branch off into merchandise or films; thus, none of those options were included in the contract, opening the door for me to do as I pleased to some extent.
Keeping that in mind, I scanned through what the Receptionist knew, and although the bulk of her thoughts contained office space gossip, there was quite a bit more about what was happening on the higher floors of the publishing company.
For one, they were taking their time gathering, considering us to be at the bottom of the totem pole and not worth their time, so they figured it was better to play the "Wait and See" game; basically, they were trying to see how long we would sit here before losing our tempers and storming out of the building.
The Receptionist, Samantha, had even been told to cater to us for as long as possible, bringing us snacks and drinks and even going so far as having small talk or idle chatter to keep us slightly entertained while we waited.
Then there was the issue with the legal department, which, unlike the annoying upper management people, was extremely busy. Pulling the lawyers away from their tasks always proved to be challenging, yet the two managers had approved the meeting under the assumption that something had been found in the contract and needed to be amended.
Gathering all this information, I felt a bit helpless. While I could easily make my way up the building all stealth-like and use coercion on everyone to get them into the meeting in a timely manner, it was a bit too tedious for me.
Maybe if I was older, like, say, a teenager, I could pull it off since blending into crowds was one of my specialties; however, walking around a populated office building as a child would definitely draw more than a few strange looks until eventually security got ahold of me or something to look for my "parents."
Infiltration and espionage were always higher up in my skillset, but that was mainly due to my ability to hide in plain sight; without that little detail, it all goes out the window. Even if I could speed run my way to the executives, the best case scenario I could come up with involved me using Coersion like a fiend, firing it off on anyone I came in contact with.
This task would leave me mentally drained, as, from what I could tell, at least six of them were coming to the meeting.
Six Upper Management, two lawyers, and Jennifer’s talent agent using Coersion on nine people was already going to be a tall order on me and my stock of potions, but if I brute forced my way up the building, that number would inflate as I’d need to continuously throw people off my trail, burning precious PC in the process.
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Polishing off my apple juice, I crushed the box in my right hand and looked up at Samantha with fake watery eyes as if I were about to throw a fit, making the young woman with caked-on makeup dash off to get me another.
’This is going to be quite the task; luckily, I planned for such a scenario; between the paperwork I’ve generated, along with what I had Jennifer sign, all I need to do is filter my script to her and make her parrot my words.’ I thought while watching the young woman swaying her hips as she hurried off to fetch me another drink.