Field Trips, Infinity Stones and oh mY GOD IS THAT SPIDER-MAN?

Chapter 4: interesting encounters and idiots (spoiler: Flash is the idiot)

"See Peter, that was fine." Karen said through the small black ear piece that Peter was still wearing.

"I know." Peter sighed quietly so that the other students couldn't hear him. Majority of them were gaping at him and Peter couldn't help feeling just a little bit insulted. Had they all seriously thought he was a janitor at Stark Industries? Really? Peter tried not to let it get him down as he removed his ear piece and returned it to its case.

"I'm going to choose to ignore the fact that you tried to get through with an explosive in your backpack or something -" MJ said to Peter who spluttered in response, "and focus on the fact that you must have pretty high clearance to be let through without it being an issue." She didn't sound surprised perse, more curious.

"Yeah I guess..." Peter said once he had regained his composure. "I had to work on some stuff for Mr. Stark and some of the labs needed specific clearance." It wasn't a lie.

"Damn Parker." She said nodding appreciatively. Peter's heart did a little flip flop and he cleared his throat in surprise. Before he could address the odd feeling, Flash felt the need to contribute to their conversation.

"Do you actually believe his bullshit, Michelle?" Flash asked indignantly.

"You just saw him use a clearance higher than you'd ever hope to get and you're saying that you don't?" MJ fired back and it seemed Flash was a little stumped at that one.

"It's probably fake." Flash grumbled.

"I think you will find that our AI system is far to advanced to allow for fake badges to be used." Abigail said, turning her back on the group and leading them off down the hallway towards the elevator.

"He literally heard Friday talking to you and he still thinks that you don't work here?" Ned asked having made it through the detector safely. Together, Ned, MJ and Peter followed the rest of the tour group down the narrow corridor.

"Seems so." Peter said grumpily. It was difficult sometimes, not being able to take credit for the feats he achieved as Spider-Man, but over the last few years that had ceased to really matter. Having Flash and some of the other students not believe Peter for doing work he was actually open about was pretty frustrating. What on earth would they think if he told them he was Spider-Man?

"Can't you just show them your clearance badge to prove it to them? Or if we like bump into one of the Avengers you can be all like 'hey Hawkeye how you doin?'" Ned asked trying to imitate Peter's voice and, in the process, making it several octaves deeper than it needed to be.

"Sure thing Ned. If we bump into the Avengers, which we won't, I'll be sure to do that cause that's totally cool." Peter joked bumping his shoulder against Ned's fondly. There was absolutely no way Peter would even dream of approaching Clint Barton that casually, the archer was super intimidating.

"The first part of our tour will be conducted on level five." Abigail said bringing the group to a stop outside the elevators. "This level is home to several of our intern labs, including lab 3a which is our first stop for today. 3a is where majority of initial planning takes place, you'll be able to see where our interns are creating their ideas and beginning their models. After this we will proceed onto lab 4c which is where they begin trialling prototypes. There are some interesting projects in the works at the moment and if you're lucky you'll be able to see some of them being tested."

Peter was beginning to feel excited. It had been a while since he had last been to SI and by the rest of the worlds timeline it had been even longer. Back when Peter had first started visiting Stark Industries, Mr. Stark had placed him in Lab 3a to shadow some of the interns and learn how things worked at SI before he was allowed to progress onto developing his own projects. In the two years since then Peter had predominantly been working on Spider-Man tech alongside a few projects involving search and rescue tech that Mr. Stark had assigned to him.