Superfamily One Shots

Short Staffed pt. 1

**A/N: Just a one-shot inspired by my some of my favorite tropes: field trips and Peter being sassy when he's on the clock. Anyways, enjoyyyyy!**

Peter spun in his desk chair, waiting for his dad to get back. The teen had been waiting for a while now, and it was starting to really get to him. Peter hated being bored, more than anything else.

"FRIDAY?" The AI sprang to life, greeting the young man enthusiastically. "Where's Dad?"

"Mr. Stark appears to be in a meeting currently. Would you like me to send him a message via his bluetooth headset?"

"Yes, please. Ask him when he will be done, and why he decided to let me skip school today to work on the suit if he was going to be in meetings all day."

There was a few minutes of silence as Peter waited for his father's reply.

Just as he was about to give up and pull out his phone to play a game, FRIDAY sparked back to life. "Mr. Stark would like to remind you that he hadn't planned on having meetings, and that Ms. Potts has changed his schedule unexpectedly. He says not to touch the suit without him, but to head down to the intern lab and see if anyone needs help."

Peter knew why his father didn't want him working on the suit alone. Last time Peter had worked on his superhero costume without Tony supervising him, he'd disabled nearly every "safety" protocol the billionaire had created, including the automatic communication between Karen and FRIDAY if Peter sustained injuries.

The teen sighed. His father would for sure know if he worked on the suit without him, so instead, Peter decided to take Tony's advice and head down to the intern labs to see what he could do there.

Peter bounced down the hall, flapping the arms of his sweater, an old MIT sweatshirt his dad had let him borrow. The ride down to the labs was quick, and Peter hummed to himself as he waited.

When he stepped out onto the floor, he was stunned into silence. There were interns running all over the lab, each on working on as many as 3 projects at once. There were 2 interns typing at computers furiously, while glancing over their backs at 3 other interns frantically putting out a fire. One intern had fallen to her knees, trying to gather up spilled papers on the floor while still typing an email on her StarkPad in her left hand. 2 young men were trading places at a lab table rapidly, each one taking turns mixing chemicals and recording the results.

"Woah, what's going on down here?" At the sound of the Big Boss's son, everyone froze, bringing their eyes up to the teen's shocked face.

"Mr. Stark, uhm, we're- we're a little short staffed and, oh, this is embarrassing, I mean-"

"Okay, a few things. It's Peter, not Mr. Stark. That's my dad, literally. Also, just how short staffed are you exactly?"

"We have, uhm," the head intern stalled, closing her eyes and mentally counting for a second. "We have 12 people out on this floor, 7 out on the floor below, and 5 out in Ms. Potts's office. Everyone who had the chicken Parmesan yesterday got food poisoning. "

Peter nodded. "Okay, here's what we are going to do. First of all, we're going to push all non-essential projects back. Since the new StarkPhone is going to be released next month, I want that to be the priority today, bump everything else back. We want 4 people looking over the StarkPhone, so get those positions filled, then move on to the next upcoming project. That's the... uh..."

"The new prosthetic," the intern supplied.

"Yeah. That has, what, 3 more tests to go through, then final design and human testing? Send that downstairs to design, put 7 people on it." Peter continued to reorganize the lab, making his way through each and every upcoming project. He knocked 4 of the projects off the schedule all together, saying they had "at least 6 more months" and that "it's not that important right now". When he was done, the head intern had tears in her eyes.