Chapter 4

The R&D labs ran over several floors of Stark Industries, but Emma had taken them to one of the higher level areas where the more interesting projects, including ones that came from Tony Stark himself often landed. Clearly she had been instructed to go all out and try to really impress the kids.

The group shuffled out of the elevator and were led through to a clear area of the lab where they had a good view of several of the work stations. There were areas of intense quiet where people were focussing on small details of their project and other areas of loud, slightly panicked voices where people were obviously trying to meet deadlines or were worried about things not working correctly.

"So as you can see, we have several different approaches in here. Some of our workers are very quiet and can get lost in their work for days at a time, while others here can be quite loud and try to work on numerous projects at once! We don't mind different approaches, so long as it provides results. You'll often find that those with close deadlines cycle between the two modes, while our interns are the panicking ones and our more experienced scientists are the quiet ones, although there are always exceptions to the rules!" Emma rattled on about the different people in the lab and what types of projects might be sent into this specific lab.

Meanwhile, Peter was looking around the room to see if any of the projects looked familiar to him. He spotted one on a workbench to his right and pointed it out to Ned. "That was one of mine," he said, indicating the glowing projection detailing a type of drone.

"Dude that looks awesome! Do you think we can get closer? Why did you send it down here- we could've worked on it together," Ned replied excitedly.

"Sorry Ned, they just wanted a plain surveillance drone and it seemed a bit boring and time consuming, I'll call you over to help when something a bit more high-tech comes along. Besides, that made it to my workshop at the same time that my suit was trashed by that bad guy last month, do you remember? So that was more important!" The last part about his suit was whispered into Ned's ear so that the class wouldn't overhear.

Just then the frazzled looking intern that was working at that bench looked up and spotted Peter. He stood up and ran to Peter with a shout, shocking several members of the class. "Peter you've got to help me! I've never programmed a recon drone before, please show me how to do it! And those little extras that you added onto the design spec, like the air flaps to help with balance and stability, I don't understand how you'd get them to work. I don't know why they put me on this project Peter, it's too complicated and my deadline is in two days! I can't lose this job dude."

"Hey, take it easy Charlie! They put you on this project because you're one of the most promising interns we have. I'm sure you're just stressed and if we look through it you'll get it. You deserve to be here and you will meet that deadline with time to spare, I promise!"

Charlie's panicking seemed to set off a chain reaction and before Peter could move to take a look at the project once more, several people (interns and scientists alike) looked up and called to Peter to help solve their problems.

"Peter! I need you to look at this equation for me, I can't get it to balance out!"
"Peter I think I welded this to the wrong piece, what have I made?"

"Help me, Peter"
"Can you help me test this?"

"I think I got the chemistry wrong here Peter, take a look would you?"

They all yelled over the top of each other and Peter could hardly make out every request, even with his enhanced hearing. He put his hands up in a placating manner and nodded to them in acknowledgement before starting to move over to Charlie.

It was only as he turned to walk to Charlie's table that Peter realised that the whole class and Mr Harrington were staring at him as if he were some type of alien life form. He started to go red in embarrassment and looked at the floor. Luckily before anyone could say anything, Emma spoke up. "How long has it been since you were last down here Peter? You know you can't leave for too long or they all go crazy without you!" She joked, smiling fondly at him.

"It's been like, three days max!" He muttered defensively, causing her to laugh.

"You start making the rounds. Go help them and stop disturbing my tour!"

"I'm sorry Emma," he replied. She smiled again before shooing him away towards Charlie's work station.

He was making his way over there when Mr Harrington called to him. "Mr Parker where do you think you are going?"

"To help them?" Peter answered confused, surely he couldn't have missed the exchange with Emma?

"What do you think you are going to be able to do that they can't?" Peter just looked at him in shock. "I don't know what is going on here or how you've managed to get them to act like they know you, but you will stay with this tour group and actually try to learn something for a change! Now stop disturbing our tour guide and listen."

Harley looked at Mr Harrington in disbelief. It was obvious that Peter knew these people and that they genuinely needed his help. He didn't understand why the teacher had seemed to single Peter out to be a dick to, but he wasn't impressed.

However, before he could say anything, Emma once again stepped in, lovely woman that she was. "Sir, I don't see what the problem is. There is no point in Peter being on this tour anyway, since he works here. It certainly won't disturb me if he goes off to help the others, in fact it will make the room even more productive. I dare say Mr Stark might even fire me if I prevented Peter from helping, productivity and profits and whatnot." She said all this with a smile on her face but a challenge in her eye that said she didn't appreciate Peter being spoken to that way either. Mr Harrington simply nodded and Peter finally moved off to help Charlie, but as he passed he heard Flash whisper to his friends that Peter had obviously paid off Emma and the others in the room to make them act like he was important. He had no idea how or when Flash thought he had become so rich! (He was now, thanks to Tony, but no-one else knew that.)

While Peter was off tinkering with the model on Charlie's desk, Harley stayed with Ned and MJ, wanting to talk to them about Peter. "Does no-one believe him about being here?" he asked.

"Well nobody knows about him living here obviously," Ned said, glancing around to check that no-one was in hearing range of their conversation.

"Yeah, I get that, he didn't want people to know, in case it made life difficult for him at school, but it looks like it already is! They don't even believe him about the internship?"

"No, only us," MJ answered. "But then that's what comes of not being a popular kid. Society is so stupid. What, just because people believe that they can get something off of Flash, money, popularity, whatever, they just automatically believe anything he says. So when he said Peter was lying about his internship, the whole class decided to go along with it, even Mr Harrington."

"I can't believe Peter never said anything to any of us! How long has this been going on?" Harley asked, rather angrily, although it was aimed at the class and in particular the teacher, not at Peter or his friends.

"Wait really? He never said anything? It's been going on since the start of high school. If I were him I totally would've set the Avengers on Flash's tail" Ned replied.

"Of course Peter never said anything, Ned. He does his whole, 'just because I'm different now doesn't mean I can act differently because no-one knows my secret identity' thing. He wouldn't tell the Avengers because he didn't know them before so he wouldn't want them going after anyone on his behalf. And you know they'd go in guns blazing, you've seen how protective they all are of him!"

At this she looked over to Harley and said, "You should've seen the interrogation I went through when they thought I was his girlfriend! Although that wasn't as good as the looks on all their faces when I told them they were wrong and I was a lesbian. I got some great sketches out of it though. Hilarious!" Harley laughed alongside her and said that he needed to see those drawings later.

MJ agreed and then turned back to Ned.

"Anyway, you know what Peter's like, he likes to think that if they are all picking on him they won't pick on anyone else and he thinks it's better that it's him because apparently his powers protect him from mental pain as well as physical." The sarcasm was clear in her voice at the end, although her face was also fond.

"He's always got to be the hero huh?" Harley asked softly. "Even when he is supposed to be in school and just being normal for a while." He looked around for Peter then, spotting him at a workstation more towards the back of the room. He was clearly making his way through the line of people who needed his help.

Throughout the friends' exchange, the rest of the class had been ushered around to several different desks to see what people were working on, including Charlie's, who now seemed much calmer as he happily explained what he was working on and how Peter had just helped him.

Then the class moved onto another workstation, this time the one where Peter was currently chatting with the scientist who worked there (Larry), discussing the various aspects needed to make the project functional. When the class settled round, the scientist started explaining what the project was (a medical robot) and its applications.

He then went on to ask the class if any of them had a base knowledge in and of the areas that would need to come together in order for the robot to work. Flash inevitably tried to show off by talking about the "obvious" type of coding that would need to be used, at which point the scientist invited him to try writing out a small portion of the code using Friday. Once that had been done, Larry invited the class to try to spot any errors in Flash's code. Nobody could, so he turned to Peter, who merely sighed and got to work correcting all of Flash's mistakes, wiping the smug look off of Flash's face. When he finished he paused, looked toward Larry, who nodded at him, and then said, "Oh and one last mistake." He made a motion to delete the entire piece of code that had been written out. Flash looked livid. "It's the wrong type of code!"

Ned, MJ and Harley all smiled at Peter, proud of him for showing his intellect instead of shying away from it, and also showing up Flash in the process.

"What would you know about it Parker?" Flash sneered.

At that, Larry pulled up a much longer piece of code and showed it to the class. "As you can see, this is the correct code for our Medibot. With Mr Thomson's code it would only have a limited number of searches and responses, which would not be adequate for what we are trying to achieve. The whole point of our bot is that he can identify any illness or injury from symptoms and by scanning every known medical journal and paper, as well as be able to at least advise on treatment, if not administer it himself."

"It is very impressive. So this is your code?" Mr Harrington asked the scientist.

"I understand code well enough to work with it like this, but you'll find that most of us down here have multiple specialties so that we can work more closely with a project and be more likely to complete it ourselves, rather than having to bounce each project around to numerous people. It means that progress is less likely to be lost or projects forgotten about if it is just one person focusing on it rather than bouncing it around from one lab to another.

"Unfortunately though, I can't take the credit. This beautiful piece of coding here was done by Peter. It is likely to be adapted to other projects in the future though, because it is truly innovative stuff and its approval comes from Mr Stark himself." Larry said, pride evident in his voice. Peter stood there blushing at the praise, half expecting Flash or Mr Harrington to try to dispute his intelligence once again.

After that, their time in the R&D lab was running out, so everyone was given another ten minutes to look around at any other projects that had caught their eye and were told to meet back at the elevator afterwards.

Peter spoke to a few more scientists and interns quickly before moving off to find his friends.

Unfortunately for Harley, Flash had decided to join him at the table where Charlie was. "I don't know why you turned up with that loser, but now that you're here you'd be better off sticking with me, handsome," Flash said.

"I'll pass, thanks." Harley replied, shooting a look at Charlie before moving away. That didn't stop Flash from following him.

"Don't be like that, we could ditch this tour and go have some fun!"

"Double pass." Harley turned his back and walked over to Peter and their friends, leaving Flash frowning before he too moved off towards his own friends.