AN: so I pulled the sample questions you'll see directly off a website with sample questions. I didn't come up with them on my own and don't claim them as mine
OOOOOOOOOO
They didn't get stools. They didn't get anything. Turned out the hatch that Varsto had noticed wasn't an access hatch or anything like that; it simply housed the miniature AC/heating unit that kept the elevator car from getting too hot or cold, depending on the season.
Which meant that they weren't going to be able to try and get themselves out that way – no big deal, really, since most of them weren't going to fit, anyway. All of them had had varying reactions to that news, and King had been the first to take a seat on the floor of the elevator, seating himself in a corner and bringing his knees up, slightly. He didn't have a problem getting down and he was sure as shit not going to stand for however long it was going to take to get the doors open, he told them.
Once the first one sat down, the rest pretty much followed. It was common sense, after all, and even mobsters had common sense enough to not want to stand for who knew how long. Peter sank to the floor, easily, and pulled out his phone. The older men watched as he started sending out messages to his friends with the practiced ease of someone who spends plenty of time with their technology. One of the younger bodyguards did the same – at least he pulled his phone out and started looking at it – but the rest of the occupants in the elevator where watching Peter.
"What are you doing, kid?" one of them asked.
Peter didn't even look up. He knew it had been the one named Ray, just from the slight accent that the man had.
"Sending a text to my girlfriend."
"Yeah? Is she upstairs waiting for you?"
He shook his head, but Alec had already warned him that they didn't need to know too much about Shuri. It wasn't new for him to be vague when it came to discussing her with others, though, because of who she was.
"No. She lives out of town."
"If you're not a dance kid what are you doing in the convention?" Varsto asked, curiously.
It was definitely more interesting than watching his guy playing candy crush, or whatever it was he was playing.
Now Peter did look up.
"I'm competing in the academic decathlon."
"What the hell is that?" Ray asked, looking up as well.
"It's a scholastic competition," Peter explained. "For high school kids. Three honor students, three scholastic students and three varsity students on each team. We answer trivia questions and compete against other high schools."
"Which one are you?"
"I'm one of the honor students."
"You're a brainiac?" Varsto asked.
Peter shrugged, modestly.
"A little, yeah."
"What kind of questions do they ask?" king asked him, curiously.
He wasn't going to ignore Peter Parker, deciding that that would look suspicious and a little out of character for him.
"Every kind," Peter replied. "Science, math, literature, geography… all kinds."
"Tough questions?" the bodyguard named Tony asked.
"Pretty tough, yeah."
"Like what?" King's own man asked. "Give us an example."
"Really?"
Varsto wasn't the only one to shrug.
"Why not? We're not going anywhere, right?"
The boy nodded, and opened his study notebook, finding the first question.
"A rectangular field represented with dimensions (2x-3) and (x^2 +1), what's the area function of the field?"
There was a slightly stunned silence in the elevator.
"That's really what it says?" Joel King asked.
"Yeah." Peter smiled, a little less nervous, now, looking at the expressions on their faces – and not just King's. "It's just a practice question, but it's a fair representation of what we get asked."
"What's the answer?" Tony asked.
"2x^3 - 3x^2 + 2x – 3."
"Jesus." Varsto scowled. "You're kidding me…"
"No."
"You're one of them beautiful mind kids?"
"No. Nothing like that. I'm just pretty smart."
"Ask another one," Varsto said. "They can't all be that hard."
Gauntlet thrown, Peter looked back down at the notebook that was in his lap.
"This one is easier," he said. "The style of art Rococo is characterized by this."
OOOOOOOOO
"He's still in the elevator?" Flash asked, looking pleased more than anything.
Not so much because Peter had missed what was an excellent lunch and was probably going to miss the next round, but because it was a bit exciting, and that wasn't a word that was bandied about too much during an academic decathlon event. Even one that had international teams competing.
Harriman nodded.
"You're going to have to substitute for him in the next round."
"I can do that. No problem." There was just the slightest of hesitations. "He's alright, though, right?"
"He's fine." Their teacher tried to look reassuring when he addressed the entire team. "They're getting some kind of electrician to come down and fix the elevator. Then they'll get him out."
"How long?" Abe asked.
"No ETA."
"What's Peter supposed to do if he needs to go to the bathroom?" Betty asked, curiously.
"No clue. Hopefully he won't be there that long."
"What-"
"Guys, I don't know much more than you do. Mr. Stark knows what's going on, and I suppose if it comes down to being an emergency, he'll come down and extract him some other way."
"As Ironman, you mean?"
"I'm not sure."
"He wouldn't need to come down as Ironman," Ned said, rolling his eyes. "It's Tony Stark. I'm pretty sure he can fix an elevator."
There were murmurs of agreement from the others, but Harriman didn't give them time to continue that conversation. They needed to be focused on the next round, after all.
"Come on, you guys. Let's go get ready."
OOOOOOOOOO
Tony looked up from his display when Pepper walked into his office. She'd had a meeting that she'd needed to attend, but his schedule was fairly clear, so he'd been able to stay close to the feed from the elevator, so he could keep an eye on things as well as he could without going down to the convention center and blowing the thing free.
"How's it going?" she asked, walking over to stand behind his desk and look over his shoulder. She saw that all of them were now sitting on the floor of the elevator, and the men were all looking at Peter. "What are they doing?" she asked, curiously.
"He's proving to them that he's smarter than anyone in that building," Stark told her, smirking, despite the audience his son had with him.
"What?"
"One of them asked him what he was doing at the convention center and when Peter told them, they asked for a sample question – which none of them had any idea how to answer. Now they're pestering him for more questions…"
"Why?"
"To prove they're not idiots, I guess."
He knew that Joel King had a college education (he'd checked him out long before, when he'd been a perceived danger to Peter) so the man wasn't an idiot. He'd been curious enough to have FRIDAY run the rest of them, as well, and found that three of them (Varsto and one of his men, as well as King's bodyguard) also had college degrees. Ironically, one of them had a criminal justice degree.
She was intrigued in spite of herself, and she watched as Peter asked a ridiculously complicated question. And was shocked when one of the men in the elevator with him hazarded a guess that wasn't right – but wasn't too wrong.
"How long until they get them out?"
"Romanoff said that the electrician is there, now."
"And…?"
"And they need to figure out what the problem is before they can fix it."
"How long?"
"No idea, Pep." He caught her hand. "He's fine, though. They're not doing anything dumb…"
"And if they do?"
"Then we get him out of there and worry about them knowing who he is, later."
