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They were finishing up – literally, maybe a minute or so from stepping in the elevators to end this hellish trip, when ‘hellish’ became hell.
Peter’s luck was to blame, probably.
“…enjoyed your tour. At the entrance, each of you will get a small – “
Whatever SI had in store as free souvenirs died out in a loud ‘bleeep’ that had everyone collectively flinch.
The lights blinked and dimmed, catching attention of anyone who didn’t get the message yet.
“Please, remain calm,” said FRIDAY. Which was useless, because no one he could see was anything akin to ‘calm’. “The city is under attack from an unidentified threat. According to the law, no one is to leave the safety. Please, stay where you are, the threat is being taken care of. The building is in a lockdown for the time being.”
There the message looped and one by one people broke out of stillness, replacing silent dread with loud panic by the end of the repeat. The tour guide tried, in vain, calming the teenagers. Peter barely noticed it, along with the terrified prattling and wide-eyed faces.
Right. The new law. In hopes of lowering casualties while the Avengers work, the new Accords included an alarm that immediately alerted all the public spaces, phones and accessible buildings about the threat. He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket as the warning blare shot, and with his hearing, he could faintly hear the signal blasting on the streets. Which meant one thing.
Superheroes were needed in the city, pronto.
“Please, I need your attention, now,” Peter snapped back into reality as the noise slowly fell at the panic creeping into their guide’s voice. He took a deep breath, his palms still up. “Your passes expire in ten minutes. I-I’m not really sure what’ll happen once they do. I won’t be able to even get you to the elevators. Or toilets,” he scratched his arm nervously, for the first time letting the professional poise slip.
“Can’t you do something about it?” said Mr. Harrington after a pause.
“Not from here,” the guide frowned helplessly. “I can only do something from the computers at the reception. But we’re in a lockdown, the lifts are blocked.”
“That’s stupid!” muttered Able.
“Safety measures,” the guide answered, most likely automatically. “Well, apparently no one thought about that. It’s a new law, to be fair,” he rushed at the looks he got.
“Is there no protocol to… unblock the elevators? There’s an AI, shouldn’t it recognize an emergency situation?” said MJ, her voice level as always.
“I’m not authorized.”
The group groaned at that.
“Wait!” Peter balked at Ned shouting straight in his ear. “Peter, can’t you ask FRIDAY – “
At that, most people rolled their eyes, more groans came up, with multiple voices telling Ned to shut up.
“Ned, this is enough,” cut him off Mr. Harrington.
“Now is really not the time,” someone added, annoyed.
A plan started formulating in Peter’s head.
“Just don’t know when to let it go, do you?” snarled Flash. “God, Leeds, how are you in this school – “
“Fri, open the elevator,” ignoring the distressed crowd, Peter headed swiftly to the lift.
“The building is in lockdown, that includes the elevators,” the AI said, seemingly unbothered by the panic among the humans.
“Peter,” wow, had Mr. Harrington ever sound that exasperated? “Please, it’s not – “
“Code 'Santa's Coming To Town'. Override the protocol,” heart hammering in his chest, he stood in front of the door. That would look dumb if it didn’t work, right? Yes, it’d definitely make him look dumb.
The door slid open.
“Protocol overridden. Peter, Boss says not to leave the building.”
A few people had actually gasped out loud. Most stood and gaped at him. Mr. Harrington froze mid-sentence. The guide appeared the least shocked, but the most perturbed by that turn of event. Flash’s face was priceless – Peter would have to suck it up to FRIDAY and get the recording on his drive somehow.
Only Ned, bless his soul, grinned proudly as if Peter had just defeated single-handedly an army of aliens, instead of opening an elevator.
“Get in!” he ushered them with a gesture. Some dashed at that, like the door would close any second, others slowly walked through their shock. A couple remained planted, still, until someone didn’t push them. Peter tried very hard not to lose it. “How could we leave in a lockdown, anyway?” he questioned FRIDAY.
“Boss meant you explicitly.”
Interesting.
“C’mon! The passes are gonna expire in a moment,” he sighed, watching Mr. Harrington drag Flash.
“Dude,” his friend halted in front of him.
“So, you mean, he said I can’t leave more than the others?” he asked FRIDAY, signaling Ned to get in the elevator, stepping in right behind him.
“He told me to tell you specifically not to leave,” the door slid closed. “I doubt he worries about anyone else leaving with the lockdown,” the AI added helpfully.
Yup, the snark was definitely rubbing off on her.
“Right. Uh, the ground floor, thanks,” he bit his lip, distractingly. “So… does that mean I can leave?”
A weird sound escaped his physics teacher, Mrs. Jenson, in protest.
“He said you – “
“Yeah, I got that. He said no. But if I asked you to let me leave – “
“According to the law – “
“Yes, I know. But, if I tried to leave, you wouldn’t be able to stop me?”
“Parker,” the teacher butted in, her voice tense. “No one can leave. You’re not going anywhere. There’s nothing you can – “
“FRIDAY?”
“You’re authorized to override my commands in case of emergency,” she said, at least.
Another round of gasps and a couple of quiet ‘wow’s. Peter wished he could appreciate it fully and enjoy the satisfaction.
Maybe he could print Flash’s face… oh, that’s right, that’s perfect. He’d love to have a photo of that face, the moment everything clicked in and it really hit him. That realization.
Not now, Peter.
They reached the ground floor. He hesitated getting out.
That level was full. Truly stuffed. Through the entrance, civilians kept coming from the street, the alarms still blaring, most likely. They had to squeeze in the space between the doors and the scanners. The other side had more space, way more space, but no one could be let in without a badge.
Suddenly, a thought struck him.
“Peter? You coming?”
“Fri?” under watchful eyes, he slowly exited the lift. With a glance at the crowd near the reception desk and security points, he stepped away from that, and headed for where he knew was Tony’s personal lift. “Is anyone else in a similar situation? That their passes can expire while they can’t come down?”
“Where are you going?” said the tour, hesitant about stopping him.
Probably didn’t think the ‘not authorized’ would fly by Peter.
He’d be right.
“Yes,” FRIDAY answered before Peter could. “There’s a business tour on the fifty-fifth floor, two guests in the cafeteria, one guest in the intern – “
“Okay, a lot of people, thanks,” he interrupted, sensing a long list coming.
“One pass has already expired. Once the alarm is turned off, I’ll be forced to eject the intruder.”
“Damn,” he sighed. Doubtful it's be harmful but "eject" didn't sound so hot to him.
Everyone stopped with him (and he worked on continually ignoring the group that at some point must’ve deemed him as the Person Who Knows What They’re Doing – they were somewhat wrong). He knew the doors were there, even if it looked like a wall at the moment. “Can you do something about it now?”
A pause.
“Boss would probably deactivate pass authorization in the nearest elevator.”
Aw, she was the best.
“Yeah, do that, and tell that person what to do,” he glanced at the anxious tour guide.
“Safety protocols prevent me from disabling badge scanning,” she said in a tone he started to recognize as ‘I say what I have to but don’t listen to me’.
“Override it.”
“Protocol overridden. Do you want me to bring down the other guests with passes nearing expiration?”
He had to smile at that.
“You do that, Fri. You’re the best,” he told the ceiling, then turned to the guide.
“You’re welcome, Peter. First group is on their way.”
“Right – thanks – uh, hey, sorry?” the guide nodded, listening. “Can you wait for everyone and take them all to the reception?”
“Peter, you’re not going anywhere,” one of his teachers butted in again.
Despite the initial reaction, even his classmates stared at him like he was slightly crazy every time he insinuated leaving.
“Yeah, I’ll – I’ll take care of the passes,” the guide eyed both him and Mr. Harrington.
“Right, so – “
A hand slipped around his elbow.
“Dude,” Ned lowered his voice, tugging him a bit away. No one stepped closer, but no one pretended they weren’t observing. “You don’t know what they’re dealing with! And where! And wouldn’t it be suspicious if you left and Spider-Man showed up?” for once, his friend remembered to keep his voice down. Probably hyperaware of all the stares.
“I’ve got to do something!” Peter whispered back. “They might need help! Wait – FRIDAY,” he said at normal volume. “Mr. Stark’s dealing with the threat right?”
“He is.”
“Who else is there?” he tried to tug his elbow away from Ned’s grasp, but Ned kept shaking his arm.
“Colonel Rhodes is twenty-five minutes out, flying from Washington. I cannot localize anyone else at the moment.”
A murmur broke through the group.
“Where are the Avengers?” frowned Cindy.
“So, he has no backup?” Peter looked his friend straight in eye.
The arm shaking halted.
“Peter, you’re not backup!” Mr. Harrington sounded near hysteric, and, jeez, wasn’t that déjà vu? “You’re fifteen, we’re just civilians – “
“What’s the threat, FRIDAY?” he threw Ned a look as he tightened his hold, sensing Peter was about to move away.
What was he staring at?
“The information is classified, Peter,” she said in that voice.
“Can you send it on my phone?”
He followed Ned’s line of vision. Instead of a vocal confirmation, vibrations in his pocket told him all he needed to know.
But he paused.
MJ had that calculative stare and a very unimpressed expression. Something flickered on her face as his gaze landed on her. An eyebrow raised. She was definitely trying to communicate something to him.
A nutbrain could figure that one out – and Peter had plenty of brains, thank you very much. He glanced at the group, a group of highly intelligent people from a school for geniuses, and he searched his suddenly not-so-smart brain for a believable excuse.
To busy himself, and gain some time, he pulled out his phone and unlocked it.
“What are you going to do?” said one of his classmates, and for the first time, he took note of the suspicion in her voice.
“There’s always something you can do,” he said casually, totally dying from anxiety on the inside.
Abort, abort, abort. Mission abort!
What could he do?
...what could he do?
Not Spider-Man. Not the Avenger in training, but Peter, Peter Parker.
What could Peter do?
All these thoughts flew out the window when he read the data FRIDAY sent to his phone.
“Ned!” he gasped. “Ned, that’s the fishbowl guy! Oh my Go – Mr. Stark,” his eyes snapped up to find his friend’s, the phone almost falling out of his hand. He went a bit lightheaded and realized he stopped breathing. “I have to go,” he breathed out.
Before he moved, a wave of protests and questions fell over him, and Mr. Harrington immediately jogged over to him, a hand reaching out at ready to grab and stop him.
Peter put his hands up in a calming gesture, contradicting his spazming heart and the nervous bubble growing in his chest.
“This is superhero business,” the teacher grasped Peter’s arm and dragged him a bit closer to the group. His frowning eyes were glued to the teen, as if he could snap his fingers and disappear. “I don’t care how close you are with – with Iron Man… You stay here. It’s not a, an intern job…”
“Sir, you don’t understand,” despite allowing the man to lead him back to his class, Peter held his gaze evenly, only his voice betraying his urgency. “This – this guy he’s fighting, he’s got this fog – it’s a chemical and I’ve been working on a gas that would – um, this gas causes electronics to malfunction and go dead, and Mr. Stark – the Iron Man suit is mostly electronics. Do you understand?”
Everyone went silent, and even Mr. Harrington hesitated.
“But you can’t do anything, Peter…”
“I can!” he slipped out of the grasp, stepping back discreetly. “I’ve been working on a chemical to neutralize it, and I’ve got it! It works, it’s upstairs, I just have to get it there, so Mr. Stark can finally take this dude down – “
“How do you know it works?” interrupted Abe.
“We’re skipping the part that he was working on a supervillian’s… stuff?” Cindy looked around their classmates, most of them thoroughly confused. “Yeah?”
“I – uh, I –“ stuttered Peter, the gazes on him heavy and too curious for his liking. “It’s classified, but – “
“Just tell them about Spider-Man!” shouted Ned.
Peter swore his heart stopped.
“Ned!”
“I told you he knows Spider-Man!” Ned gestured wildly. Peter’s eyebrows scrunched together. “He came to Peter about this – “
“Am I dreaming?” someone muttered.
“It’s a nightmare,” said Flash in disbelieve.
“Ned, it’s – it’s classified,” Peter hoped his fake offence secretly conveyed the gratitude towards his Guy In The Chair. “But, uh, yeah. I – Spidey wanted to deal with him on his own, he asked me for – you know. And the last time w-when they fought,” yup, he totally didn’t almost say ‘we’. Smooth, Peter, smooth. “My gas worked, just – uh, civilians got in the way. But I can call him!” excitement bubbled in his stomach. Yes, yes, yes. Very smooth, Peter. “I’ll call him there, give the gas, and together with Mr. Stark, they’ll deal with this dude quick. But – I have to go. Both of their suits are…” he waved a hand vaguely.
“Give someone else this… gas,” said Mr. Harrington. “I can’t let you go there. Tell… Jesus, what a day – tell Spider-Man to come and get it.”
“I’ll – I’ll tell him that,” that would be the most green light he’d get. And he’d take it. “But only I can access the penthouse, so...” he trailed off, already trudging backwards to the private elevator.
The last he saw of his classmates, was evenly distributed looks of shock, confusion, awe or excitement (he could relate to that one). Ned was grinning happily and MJ still looked unimpressed. He was pretty sure she knew anyway.
“Shall I inform the Boss?” asked FRIDAY as the lift started up.
Instantly, the amusement washed off. He squared his shoulders and took a deep breath.
“Yeah. If you can still reach him.”
She couldn’t.
Peter tried not to let it get to him too much, alas, his erratic heartbeat drowned out almost the entire world. The only thing left in his tunnel vision was the anti-fog spray (yeah, he could see how rubbish it sounded, stop judging) and ‘save Mr. Stark’.
Turned out, he really had to appreciate his mentor more.
It was Tony Stark, after all, so maybe Peter shouldn’t be surprised to see him fighting out of the armor and holding his own.
“Kid!” Tony barely spared him a glance before he was dodging a blow again. His left side of the face was smeared with blood and his body was too tensed to be totally fine, but overall, he was fine. “Took you long enough. How’s your trip?”
“I hate field trips.”
Tony laughed as Spider-Man webbed into the scene.
“You don’t learn, do you, Bug-Boy?” said the villain Peter had baptized “fishbowl-guy”.
Instantly, the moment Peter got near, Karen went offline. This time prepared, he had instructed her to leave the suit on a manual setting, so he didn’t go blind like the first… two… okay, three - times. Whatever. He had a spidey sense, not a crystal ball.
“You are under arrest!” barked Spider-Man in a deep voice. “Under the Fashion Police. It’s a five hundred dollars fine for wearing fishbowls in the City of New York.”
He heard Tony die in the background at his comment, as he himself promptly blew up the spray can with a make-shift bomb he had grabbed from the lab.
The fog fizzled and thickened, then in a blink, dispensed.
To Peter’s surprise, the fog inside the fishbowl (because he refused to call it anything else) disappeared, too, leaving him to face the villain of the month at last.
Hopefully. It was the first Friday of the month. There better not be any more weird psycho magicians this month – the limit had been reached.
Under the mask, Peter’s mouth fell opened.
“Wow, I’m not surprised you’re a villain with that face,” he blurted out.
The already ugly, deeply etched scowl deepened, the villain clearly looking around for a way out.
“It’s like the frown on my mask,” the thrusters wheezing, Iron Man popped up right next to Spider-Man. “Only… it’s the real deal.”
“Man, I get all the talk about ‘inner beauty’ now.”
“And people say I have a glare.”
Maybe they shouldn’t get that distracted while the guy was still free to escape, but it was hard to resist and they had no supervision. Before they knew it, the fishy dude (new nickname, and accurate in more ways than one) tried to leg it – obviously.
He turned only to face the War Machine.
In Colonel Rhodes’ robotic hand was a magical trap – or rather whatever was left of it – and his armor nearly changed colors with the amount of dirt it encountered. The faceplate lifted.
“Do you know how many traps I went through on the way here?” Rhodey furiously interrupted Tony and Peter’s on-going quip match.
Aaand there was the supervision.
“Spider-Man!” called out Tony and Peter changed his course, swinging on a web towards the nearest wall to stick to it. “We’ll clean up here. Call it a day.”
The teenager hesitated, turning to lean his back against the surface.
“You’ll be okay here?” he said.
The prospect of going back to the Tower didn’t sound so good.
Iron Man blasted another trap to pieces, then shot towards him. The faceplate revealed Tony’s still slightly bloody face as he hoovered in front of Peter.
“You go back. Let’s leave Rhodey to deal with the rest, we got an ETA on Falcon, Vision and Wanda a couple minutes ago. They’ll be fine. Meet you at the entrance?” he lowered his voice for only Peter to hear.
Relieved, the teen nodded.
“Thanks.”
With a last reassuring chin-bop, the faceplate shut closed and Iron Man returned to the street. Spider-Man, however, went straight for a trusted dumpster near the Tower.
God bless the alarm. No one could leave the safety until the Avengers called the danger off.
Still, staring up at the windows suspiciously, Peter changed out of the suit and walked back as carefully as he could.
“You look like you took a one,” informed him Tony as he landed. The armor retreated without him stopping his stalk towards the teen.
“I did. And, ditto. I’d get that checked,” he pointed to a dried blood trail from Tony’s temple.
“Was just going to.”
Without pausing, the man put a hand on Peter’s shoulder, turned him around and steered towards the door. As if sensing the teenager’s reluctance, he kept the arm around the boy, half-embracing him, half-dragging towards the incoming catastrophe.
“I’ll excuse you because I’m awesome like that. Honestly, I need to get some credit for all the times I save your dorky ass,” said Tony, squeezing the teenager to his side shortly.
A couple months ago, Peter would have stumbled and attempted to cover it up in fear Tony would've stopped doing his weird affectionate side-squeeze, but at this point, he balanced himself automatically.
“I said Spider-Man – well, Ned really – he started about Spider-Man, that he came to me with the fog and I said I'd call him, but I really didn’t know what to say, I just knew you’d need help because FRIDAY sent me info on my phone, and I knew the fishy dude put out the electronics, so your armor – “
“Hey, hey, hey, okay, James Bond. Good cover, worthy of a spy, now let me handle the rest,” they paused at the door. Through the glass, Peter could see hundreds and hundreds of civilians pressed tightly like sardines in the lobby, and their faces as they realized it’s Tony Stark standing in front of them. It seriously stressed him out. “Short and sweet – what exactly did you say?”
“Short and sweet,” repeated Peter, dragging his gaze back to his unperturbed mentor. “Uh, I – okay. Spider-Man wanted to deal with the dude on his own, so he came to me to make something for this fog, and I did – which I did – and it worked the last time, just the fishy dude escaped, so I said I’ll contact Spider-Man to give him the spray, because it was up in the penthouse and only I could get it…”
“Okay, I think I have the picture,” interrupted Tony, straightening and clasping a hand again on Peter’s shoulder. “Jesus, we need to work on your condensing skills.”
“Condensing… what? It’s a thing?” he scrunched his nose.
The trek to Peter's class took surprisingly short. Peter was used to squeezing through crowds but Tony just breezed straight across, like there were no people around. And then he breezed through his talk to the teachers, and then the questions from the confused but very much excited teenagers.
"Got a field trip of a lifetime, didn't you?" said Tony before another question piped up. "Well, that's my speciality. 'Insert whatever experience' of a lifetime. My company's taking after me in that, apparently... So! That's all, I'm done here. Sorry for the inconvenience. I'll make sure to pass the message on to the crazy villains, they're so rude it's ridiculous. You good, bud?" he directed the last part at Peter still sticking near him.
Though, honestly, sometimes it was hard to tell if Tony was talking to someone or just entertaining himself.
"I'm good," the teen smiled nervously. "See you later?"
"Yup," he popped the 'p', rocking on the balls of his feet. "See ya. Don't piss off superheroes, kids," he threw over his shoulder. "Never ends well for those folks."
With that odd closing statement, Tony Stark retreated, leaving either not impressed or completely awed stares in his wake.
"So…" dragged out Abe after a long, thoughtful pause. He turned to Peter and most teenagers followed his suit. Peter squirmed with an embarrassed smile. "You really work here, huh? What's Spider-Man like?"
Ned's grin widened.