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If you asked Hank as to what exactly the Dinner Crew was, he would have said that it was a collection of friends and acquaintances that got together and made sure no one was facing life hungry and alone. They were not, as his sisters and mother joked, a supernatural mafia of which he was the head. Sure, they had cracked a few skulls and broken a few knees in their mutual defense. They may have also been responsible for several actual mob bosses being mixed into the foundations of what was now a local youth center. But on the whole they weren't a criminal organization. They didn't smuggle weapons (unless demonic artifacts counted as weapons), extort local businesses (well, except that one bakery with the "No Preters" sign out front), engage in gang wars over turf (that incident with the pro-nat street gang was self defense), deal illegal drugs (technically Yggdrasil wasn't illegal), or generally terrorize the peace-loving citizens of Portland (as far as Hank was concerned, his paternal grandparents didn't count.)
The Dinner Crew was not a mafia. But good luck trying to convince everyone else of that.
---
It was actually one of the selkies who suggested it first. Why not apply to make the Dinner Crew a registered charity? That way they could apply for various tax-exemptions and grants, and help take some of the financial burden off Hank and Vivi's shoulders. A surprising number of the Dinner Crew were actually lawyers specializing in one aspect of supernatural law or another, and when Hank ran the idea by them they seemed to think it was a good idea. They had even volunteered to help him fill out the paperwork, and had already drummed up a list of potential grants as long as Hank's arm. Lucy Ann had even managed to gain him the service of a firm of vampire lawyers, who had over a thousand years of legal experience of one kind or another behind them. For some reason they seemed very eager to get him as a client. (It never once crossed his mind that the leader of the Portland Supernatural Mafia would presumably need the services of a good lawyer, and that they hoped to secured his exclusive, and presumably lucrative, patronage.)
With, what was essentially a full legal team behind them, Hank and the Dinner Crew had made record time in filling out the various forms and gathering the needed documentation. Then it was all left to the mercy of the collective bureaucracy of the United States. This was where the firm of vampire lawyers really came in handy. Centuries of living under The Masquerade had given them plenty of experience with influencing governments without anyone realizing they were doing anything. Things when smoothly, right up until a blockage at the municipal level sent everything screeching to a halt. On it's own, it wasn't a major problem. The bulk of the charity application could go through without it. But several of the grants and exemptions they had applied for needed access to certain municipal records, and some even needed direct approval through Portland City Hall.
The vampire lawyers made several discreet probes into the Portland Municipal Offices, and as far as they could tell the paperwork simply wasn't going through. Either the files had gotten misplaced at the bottom of an inbox, or someone in the office was deliberately stonewalling them. The best thing to do, the lawyers advised Hank, was for him to go down to City Hall and inquire about his application. If it was merely a misfile, than simply asking about it should be enough to get everything moving again, without any additional fuss, expense, or bad press. If that didn't work, and someone was deliberately sabotaging their application, than the lawyers could break out the metaphorical "big guns." (And if those didn't work, one of the senior members of the firm advised Hank, he could always break out the literal big guns.)
---
It was problematic taking a troll onto Portland's public transit system. Despite the fact that Toby was one of the smaller examples of his kind, he was still over two tons of sentient granite. Issues of seating aside, pubic buses were simply not built to carry that much weight. The bus was moving, sure. But Hank suspected that if another troll got on, or any other being of similar dimensions, then they start having serious problems. Under normal circumstances Hank wouldn't have bothered to bring Toby along for such a simply errand. Especially when they had to use public transit because Vivi had the car.
But, both Vivi and Lucy Ann (and the rest of the Dinner Crew inner circle for that matter) had insisted that Hank never go anywhere without bringing Toby with him. While Hank was certain Toby had much better things to do than follow him around, after what happened last month, he didn't bother to protest.
What had happened was that on his way to the store for a late-night ice-cream run, a black van had pulled up beside him, and two large men in the employ of a California mob boss had dragged him inside. Thankfully he had managed to escape without any harm coming to him, or anyone he cared about. But over five hundred people in downtown Portland had witnessed him repeatedly slam that mob boss's head in the door of his own limo. In light of that little incident, having Toby act as his bodyguard was only reasonable, if a bit frustrating.
Thankfully, their journey to City Hall went uneventfully, if not a tad slower than usual. Hank did not miss the look of relief in the bus driver's face when they got off, nor the great groan the bus gave when Toby stepped onto the sidewalk. Thankfully there was no line up at the reception counter, and Hank was able to walk right up to the front desk. When he asked about his application, the receptionist had smiled at him and told him to take a seat on the bench and she'd call around to inquire.
What Hank didn't realize, was that as soon as he was out of earshot the receptionist had dialed an extension with shaky fingers.
"He's here!" she hissed into the phone.
---
Janet was just sitting down to her computer, when her boss, Helen, stormed up to her desk looking kind of pale.
"You were supposed to have the Pines file done today. Where is it?"
"I'm still working on it," Janet answered, leaning back in her chair. "I'll probably have it finished by the end of the week."
"The!?" Helen choked on the rest of her sentence, before a strange kind of desperate calm settled over her features. "You haven't even started on it, have you?"
"No," Janet admitted, taking a sip of her coffee.
"Why?"
"What the hell," Janet thought, "Might as go all the way."
"Have you actually seen these applications," she said at last. "The man is applying to register his goddamn mafia as a charity! I don't know what the man is up to, but I've got a dozen applications from people who actually need the help more than he does. Besides, it's not like he's going show up here asking about his charity application."
A strange look passed across Helen's face. "Oh really?" She place both hands on Janet's desk and leaned forward until she was almost in the other woman's face. "Because I just got a call from the front desk, saying that Don Pines is in the lobby right now waiting for an update on his application." She leaned forward even more until they were practically eye-to-eye. "And he brought a troll with him."
---
Imminent death did strange things to the human psyche. News that Don Pines was waiting in the lobby, and was probably going to have them all killed when found out his application had been stonewalled, had thrown the entire office into a frenzy. Currently a large mob was gathered in the break-room debating on whether or not they should simply kill Janet right now and send a significant piece of her anatomy to Don Pines in the hope of appeasing him, or whether they should instead publicly burn her in the courtyard outside where the Don could have the privilege of watching.
It took Helen near a quarter of an hour to calm them all down. It took a bit longer to get Mark to step away from the paper cutter, and Alice to put down the print toner and the lighter.
"The way I see it," she announced, "We have only one option. One REASONABLE option!" she added just as Mark opened his mouth to speak. "And that is to get that application done as fast as possible, before Don Pines realizes something is wrong. If we all work together, we should be able to at least get enough of it processed so that he doesn't have any reason to kill us."
"But he's applied for nearly every grant out there!" Jackson called out from the crowd. "It's going to take hours to process it all, no matter how fast we work. Don Pines is not going to sit in the waiting room for hours waiting for us to be done!"
"We'll stall him," Helen declared. "I've got some favors I can cash in. That should buy us a few hours at least. Now let's get going! We have no time to waste!" She clapped her hands to emphasis the point, and everyone immediately scrambled for their desks. Taking a deep, calming breath, Helen reached for her phone and dialed a number. "John? This is Helen. You know that favor you owe me?"
---
This was supposed to be a quick errand. Drop by City Hall, check in about the application, go home. Instead, Hank had barely been waiting fifteen minutes, when someone had approached him asking if he would like a tour of City Hall. Being kind of curious, he had said yes. It had been a good tour, but the guide had gone over every minute bit of the building's history, leading to the complete tour to take a whole hour.
Then it seemed like every municipal official suddenly needed to see him for one reason or another. He had already been in and out of the City Sanitation Office, the City Parks Office, the Office of City Services, the Office of Archives and Records, and the City Transit Office. It wouldn't have been half as bad if he could have used the elevator. But not even the service lifts had been built to support anything as large or as heavy as Toby. As it was, he found himself going up and down more stairs than he cared to count. There was also the fact that as unexpected as these invitations were, they were nonetheless opportunities to bring some of the issues his friends on the Dinner Crew experienced, to the attention of people who at least had the power to potentially deal with them. The results were mixed. The City Sanitation officer had largely brushed him off, but the Parks and the Transit office had seemed to give his suggestions some serious consideration.
He's just leaving the City Planning Office when a nervous looking intern walked up to him and told him the Mayor wanted to speak to him.
---
Hank Pines was nothing like the Mayor of Portland had expected. Admittedly, he had essentially been expecting The Godfather with red hair, not the tall young man wearing jeans and flannel. The troll however, was exactly what he expected. Well, maybe not a troll exactly, but certainly a large, intimidating bodyguard-slash-henchmen. One who was currently eyeing the various fragile items on his shelves with unnerving interest.
The Mayor squashed a mental reminder that he would also be rather fragile if he found himself caught between those large stone fists.
In truth, he had expected this entire meeting to be nothing more than a tense exchange laced with subtle threats. Instead Hank Pines had turned out the be a friendly and likable person, and one who was certainly passionate about the well-being of the supernatural community in Portland.
Now, while not many people were aware of it, the pro-nat movement had been loosing support for years. As the shock of the Transcendence had worn off, and the weird had become normal, the pro-nats were finding less and less people who sympathized with their beliefs. While there were still some issues that would probably never go away completely, and there would always be some hardline radicals who would never change their views, the pro-nat movement simply didn't have the same strength and fire it did when the appearance of the supernatural was sudden, strange, and frightening beyond belief. At the same time, the supernatural community in Portland was on the rise. It was to the point that supernatural creatures, and supernaturally gifted humans, could no longer be thought of as a minority in the city.
That also meant, that as a publicly elected official, he didn't have a ghost of a chance of getting re-elected unless he could convince the supernatural community that he at least was trying to look out for their interests. And, mob boss or not, Hank Pines was still the closest thing to a spokesperson the supernatural community had.
In one hour, he had learned more about what actually mattered to the supernaturals than all the polls and surveys the Municipal Government had put out. Even more surprising, he had found he actually enjoyed talking with Hank Pines. Of course, he probably couldn't be too open about that, lest it came back to bite him when the election rolled around. Still...
"Mr Pines, I has been a honor talking to you. I hope we can meet again to discuss how things in the city can be improved." He got up from his chair, holding out his hand for Hank to shake.
Something in his knee popped, pain exploded through his leg, and the Mayor of Portland crashed to the ground.
---
Out of all the office staff, Marie had been the one chosen to do the lunch run. With death looming over everyone's head, no one was even dreaming about taking time to eat. But everyone also needed something to calm them down enough so that they could still at least write legibly. Tension was high in the office. Ahmed had already snapped under the pressure and was now huddled under his desk, praying that his death would be quick.
Marie however was optimistic as she hurried back to City Hall with the bags of takeout. They were nearly done all the applications. A week's work in four hours. At the very least, she was confident that they had enough done that Don Pines probably wouldn't kill them all.
Then she saw the ambulance parked outside City Hall.
Then she saw the mayor be wheeled out on a stretcher with a brace around one of his knees.
Then she saw Don Pines himself, talking to one of the paramedics, the huge bulk of his troll bodyguard being as clear and identifier as anything.
"I don't know what happened!" Don Pines was saying to the paramedic. "He went to stand up, but them he screamed and collapsed on the floor. When I asked him what was wrong, he just kept saying that his knee was broken."
Marie froze. That couldn't mean. It couldn't be. Not here. Not now, where there are over a hundred potential witnesses in the building. The security cameras...
She watched with numb horror as the Mayor was loaded into the back of the ambulance, the doors closed, and the vehicle drove away.
"I really hope everything goes alright for him," she heard Don Pines say to his bodyguard. "Would be a shame if something happened to his other knee as well."
Because both their backs were turned, neither Hank nor Toby saw Marie bolt for the elevators. Within five minutes, half of Portland had heard the news that Don Pines had broken one of the Mayor's knees, and was threatening to break the other one as well.
---
Hank was tired. He had been at City Hall for six hours now. First meeting all the officials, then meeting the mayor, then watching the mayor throw out his knee, and then be interrogated by a young police officer who seemed convinced Hank had something to do with it. The officer had kept questioning Hank, right up until Toby had broken his momentum by loudly cracking his knuckles. (Creating a sound reminiscent of a small rock slide.) Whereupon Hank had reminded the officer that there was no evidence a crime had taken place, merely a medical accident, therefor the police had no grounds to continue questioning him.
He hadn't even gotten a chance to check back on the application.
"Come on Toby, let's head home," he sighed. He'd have to come back tomorrow to check. Hopefully it wouldn't be as eventful.
"DON PINES!"
Hank let out a long tired breath, and turned around to see Helen, from the municipal offices, frantically running towards him. She was a mess. Her hair had half come out of its bun, her glasses were askew, and quiet frankly, she looked like she had just walked out of a warzone.
"Don Pines," she gasped, coming to a stop in front of him and waving a sheaf of papers in his face. "Good news... your application... has been approved... so have your grants... please don't kill us."