Welcome to How to Trap a Spider. :3 I wrote this back after seeing The Amazing Spider-man 2. Just a small thing to note. TASM 2 has not happened yet as of this story.

Summary: In which Peter Parker gets hired by Stark Industries, on accident.

Peter wasn't sure how exactly it happened, only that one minute he had been walking past Stark Industries and the next thing he knew he found himself ushered into a nice little office on the 37th floor. Sitting behind the desk was a woman with white hair (she looked too young to have that much white hair, was that her natural hair color?) and sharp blue eyes.

"Name?" she demanded.

"Peter Parker," Peter promptly answered. "Excuse me, but-"

"I don't have a Peter Parker on my list," the woman interrupted as she flipped through a stack of papers. She shook her head and fixed her stare back at Peter. "Nevermind, I'm desperate at this point. How old are you Mr. Parker?"

"18," Peter hesitantly replied. "Look-"

"Have you graduated from high school?"

"Yes, but-"

"Which one?" Peter let out a frustrated sound. He hated being ignored like this. The woman had her head down, staring at the paper where she appeared to be writing down his answers.

"Midtown Science High School," Peter snapped.

The woman's head snapped upwards, surprised coloring her features. Peter mentally scowled at that expression. He knew he didn't look like much, looked more like a high school dropout these days. It wasn't like he and Aunt May could afford his college expenses at this time. Getting a job (which was more of a pay-by-the-photo) at the Bugle had been the best he could have gotten with no experience and he needed to help Aunt May with the bills.

To Peter's surprise, the woman's expression took on a more calculating look. He wasn't given a chance to analyze it before his spidey sense twinged and he ducked. 'Thud!'

Peter's eyes widened as he stared at the pen that was now buried in the wall behind where he had been sitting. That would have seriously hurt if it had hit him! "Hey now!" he protested. "What was-whoa!"

The woman leapt at him, over her desk. Peter dodged to the left, narrowly missing getting kicked. He rolled around behind the desk as a stapler came flying at him. A stapler! What is with people who work in big research buildings? Tony Stark was awesome, but clearly his employees were crazy! This was starting to look no better than Oscorp! Or was this karma's way of trying to be punch-tual. Okay, that pun was a little weak.

Peter spotted the tape on the desk and grabbed it. As the woman came charging at him again, he caught her arm in the tape and pulled. Her balance was quickly lost and Peter kept up the momentum and taped her hand to the chair. With a swipe at her ankle, she fell to the ground and Peter grabbed the stapler from the ground and stapled the woman's pants legs together so she wouldn't be able to chase after him.

"Not bad," the woman remarked. "You're hired."

Peter halted his dash towards the door to give a bewildered look at the woman. She looked mildly impressed and... and... and where did that knife come from?! With a quick slash, she had freed herself from the tape and was cutting her pants free from the staples. "I liked these pants," he heard her mumble.

"Excuse me?!" Peter asked. He couldn't stop the slight shrill from entering his voice. But if this is what it was like to work for a major corporation, science awesome and hero worshiping of Tony Stark be damned, Peter was very happy to continue working as an underpaid photographer for The Bugle.

The woman's red lips twitched into a smile. "Congratulations, you're hired. Good reflexes to dodge my attempts to attack you. Also, you have a quick wit to use the tape and a stapler against me and the common sense to flee to get as far away as possible from a potential enemy. Needless to say you've done better than all the other candidates this morning."

"You mean you attacked everyone?" Peter gaped. Who the hell was this woman? "Wait, what do you mean I'm hired? For what exactly? Look, I have no idea what's going on. I just got pulled off the street."

The subtle shaking of the woman's shoulders told him she was silently laughing at him. "I take it no one told you. Not that I can blame them. You've been hired as the front lobby secretary for Stark Industries." She pulled out a folder and handed it to Peter. "Here's a copy of your contract if you wish to sign it. It covers all the benefits, your salary, vacation and work hours, the works."

Peter hesitantly took the folder. On one hand, he should be running out the doors, because this woman was clearly crazy. Who randomly attacked people like that? Peter had to suppress his urge to use his webshooters or to jump to the ceiling. He wasn't in uniform; that wasn't what normal people could do. On the other hand, this sounded like a stable job.

"I don't have any experience," Peter hedged on.

The woman rolled her eyes. "I don't care. We'll teach you everything."

Well, that was good to know. Peter skimmed over the contract. His eyes bulged at the salary. That was enough to not only help with the bills, but would let Aunt May keep regular hours instead of pulling double shifts. He could easily pay for college on that salary. "This is what you pay for a secretary?!" he exclaimed. What on earth do they pay scientists?!

"The truth is, the front lobby secretary position is one of the highest paid positions in the entire company," the woman explained. "It pays more than the average scientist in R&D. But it has a high turnover rate because no one lasts more than a month before quitting. If you make it past six months you get a pay raise."

A pay raise?! "Why is there a high turnover rate?" Peter blurted out.

"Article Three, page six, the first paragraph," the woman mentioned offhandedly. She had started to clean up her office from their little fight.

Peter flipped to that section. 'Job Duties include but not limited to: answering phone calls, accepting deliveries, customer service, taking messages and dealing with minor criminals.'

"Dealing with minor criminals?" Peter asked. He could, given his abilities, but that wasn't how he wanted people to find out he was Spider-man.

The woman shrugged. "This is Stark Industries. Combine that with Mr. Stark, Iron Man and the Avengers themselves who live on the top floors of this building, it is no surprise that criminals flock here. See only the stupid criminals try the front door. The supervillains just go to the top of the tower. We do have evacuation drills for when that happens and you still get paid for the full day. Any criminals who do come through the lobby, an alert goes out to someone with the proper training to take care of them. Until then it is a situation that most people find highly stressful and most don't cope. By the way we do offer therapy and it's mandatory for certain job positions which include the front lobby secretary position."

The Avengers. Peter had nearly forgotten that this building also served as their home. He had seen them many times when he was out on patrol, but never gotten too close. Peter wasn't sure what to make of them, they were adults that would most likely try to stop him or worse, turn him into a science experiment to figure out how he got his powers. He didn't think they would do that, being superheroes and all but you never really knew. This could be a bad idea to be so close to them. His secret could slip out by accident.

But the kid inside of him that hero worshipped them, looked to them as examples of the good he could do as Spider-man was nearly giddy at the idea.

"What happen to the last secretary?" Peter asked, delaying his answer even though he already knew what it would be.

"There was an accident that resulted in the lobby being destroyed, which is no longer a new thing. It gets destroyed often. It's the first time she's been seriously hurt since she was hired, over a decade ago. She's a bit miffed by that. It'll be a couple months before she can return to work, assuming she wants to. In the mean time we are desperately in need of a front lobby secretary."

"And how often to these 'minor criminals' come to Stark Industries?"

"There's an average of two every week."

Peter blinked. Two a week? And the last secretary had been doing this for over a decade? "And she only got hurt in the last one?" he asked.

"Normally her very capable husband takes care of the criminals. This last incident was a bombing, which she would have been protected from by a force field designed by Mr. Stark if only she was a less noble self sacrificing idiot. The both of them."

The last part had been muttered under the woman's breath, but Peter's enhanced hearing had picked it up. He wondered what exactly happened. There had been tons of news about Stark Industries lately with the terrorist attacks. Peter couldn't recall if there had been something specific about the Tower itself. He got a distinct feeling though that the woman in front of him was probably a good friend with the secretary he was replacing.

"So her husband is like a bodyguard? Is he going to be watching over me too?" That might be troublesome if he needed to leave in a hurry as Spider-man.

The woman's eyebrow rose. "No, he's a janitor here. He just drops everything he's working on and goes to his wife's rescue every time something happens. Given his track record in that he has succeeded every single time, he is one of the very competent people that get called when a criminal show up in the lobby. He also plays hide and go seek against Agent Barton, make of that what you will."

"Beware the Almighty Janitor?" Peter asked, mostly as a joke to himself.

To his amazement the woman made a half strangled sound and promptly buried her face in her hands. "Mr. Parker," she said after a beat of silence. "If you ever run into a man called Richard O'Callaghan or Red please leave the room, fast."

"Is he the janitor?" Peter asked.

"No, just… no."

"Okay," Peter said. "I like to give it a shot." What harm could it be? He wouldn't be able to go on patrol as often, but it was a stable job that offered plenty of money. With a flourish of a pen, he signed the contract.

The woman smiled. "Excellent. Ah, I never introduced myself did I? I am Seika Usuyuki, the head of Accounting. Please call me Seika. It's a pleasure to meet you Mr. Parker."

"Head of Accounting?" Why was the head of Accounting doing the interviews?

"We don't have an HR department to take care of this and anyone else with authority, such as Ms. Potts or Mr. Stark, do not have the time," Seika said. She accepted the contract back from Peter.

"Ah, another high turnover job?" Peter asked. If the front lobby was as stressful as Seika was making it, then Human Resources was bound to be equally stressful.

"Yes," Seika said with a heavy sigh. "You'll start tomorrow unless you have some free time today. We are out of survival manuals at the moment, but I can give this to you." She handed over a box.

Survival manuals? Why on earth would he be given a survival manual? What was in the box? Peter opened the box and stared down at its contents. "A nerf gun?" he asked. His original theory about everyone being crazy at Stark Industries was starting to look correct.

Seika merely smiled.

"Welcome to Stark Industries, Mr. Parker."

This is tentatively complete... in that I don't have another chapter and while I have an idea of what I want to do, I don't know if I'll ever finish it. I suppose we shall see. When I don't know when it'll be posted, the last in the How to Survive being an SI Employee universe (unless the new marvel movies inspire otherwise) shall be Chaos at SI. That will be the catch all out all leftover bits. Oh and the prequels I have planned. :3 Thank you so much for sticking with me so far. I hope you continue to read as I press forward. Have a Happy New Year!