Author's Note: Moving along. I own nothing.

6. Under A Certain Light

Piper arrived at the lab level and was directed into one of the small booths along the wall. There were seven of them, each had the capability to block out light, sound, smells or any number of other things on command. They were big enough for a small lab table and at least four people. The door opened to her and she was greeted by a dimly lit room that held only Dr. Connors and Glen Stacy. Abe was across the room running a few formulas. Piper smiled at the two and stepped into the booth. Dr. Connors grinned up at her he was leaning over near a terrarium. Glen had a small UV light in his hands, like the kind CSI's used to find blood splatter.

"Ah Miss Parker." Piper rolled her eyes.

"It's still Piper Doc. You called?" The doctor beckoned her over and smiled. At first glance the terrarium was empty but on closer inspection Piper spotted several medium sized spiders. She raised an eyebrow.

"We're experimenting with spiders now doc?" The doctor heard the real question under her words, 'Do we want another Oscorp incident?'. He shook his head slightly.

"No I'm teaching, besides spiders have almost nothing to do with my research, since their systems are so different to humans." Piper nodded.

"Alright teach away doctor." The doctor nodded and began to explain different intricacies of spider's and their variations between different species. Piper honestly thought she knew why Doc Connors had called her down here, she was less well versed in her 'spider breatharian', as Thor called them, than she should be. Oh she knew everything Oscorp had known about the spider that bit her but not too much about other species. He finished his first half of the speech and Piper leaned forwards next to him, across the table from Glen who was still holding the UV light in his hand.

"So what's the UV light for?" Doctor Connors smiled.

"JARVIS, would you be so kind as to hit the lights?" The AI complied plunging the room into darkness. The UV light was flicked on and Piper laughed as the spiders in the terrarium began to softly glow. Doc Connors nodded at her reaction.

"Some spiders are bioluminescent. Fascinating isn't it?" Piper nodded but Glen wasn't paying attention to him anymore. His eyes were fixed on Piper's hand on the desk. Her fingernails were bright purple, glowing in the dark. But the glow didn't stop there. A soft purple glow toned the skin of her hand, shot through with swirls of bright yellow, almost… almost like the pattern on the back of a spider. His eyes flicked up to her face and he blinked in surprise as he saw two eerie green orbs shining back at him. His eyes flicked back to her hand and this time Piper noticed and stuffed her hand back in her pocket. She smiled, white teeth glinting in the UV light. Glen didn't point the light right at her but some of the light caught her face as she turned away. The purple glow was there too.

"It is fascinating! I gotta go though doc, one of my projects is almost done. Gotta make sure it comes out ok." With that she practically bolted from the room. Glen stared after her for a moment until Dr. Connors had JARVIS hit the lights again. The doctor frowned after her.

"That was a little odd." Glen nodded as Dr. Connors directed him on how to feed the specimens. When they were done in what everyone called the Spider Room Glen sat down at his workstation and pulled up the search browser. He looked over his shoulder before he began to type. His question was simple.

'Can human beings have eyeshine?' He skimmed a few articles until he came across the answer he was looking for.

"Eyeshine occurs when light enters the eye passes through the rods and cones of the retina, strikes a special membrane behind the retina and is reflected back through the eye to the light source. This special mirrorlike membrane is called tapetum and is not present in the human eye." Glen read it fast, muttering along with the words of the article. "Several types of night hunting animals possess this unique attribute. Different animals have different colors of eyeshine. Many fish can exhibit white eyeshine. Some mammals such as horses exhibit blue eyeshine. Others like cats and dogs exhibit red eyeshine." Glen frowned. He backed up to the search function and typed in a new question.

'Animals with green eyeshine'. He skimmed through the results, coming upon no animals with that color of eyeshine. He was about to give up in frustration when a small article to the bottom of the page caught his eye. It was about how to find different animals at night with nothing but a flashlight, and how to recognize what animal you were looking at.

"Using a flashlight, you can easily find many nocturnal animals, though you must be behind the light as eyeshine is difficult to see if you aren't in the right position. The simplest animal to find at night is a spider. Find a grassy area and stand about fifteen to twenty feet away. Sweep your light across the grass. If you see any bright points of green light, that's your light reflecting off the eyes of a spider. Many have often described the eyeshine of a spider as eerie, but much brighter than one would expect." Glen stared at the computer blinking at the results in front of him. That couldn't be right.

Piper was panicking slightly when she made it back to her room. She had no idea why her hand had been glowing under the UV light. She slammed her door and shuddered for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and pulled up the file she'd stolen from Oscorp's systems years ago when she was first bitten. She'd always felt kinda bad about taking the file but she justified it to herself by reminding herself that she was doing research that could potentially save her life. She skimmed the notes and found nothing about UV lights. She double checked that her door was closed and stepped over to the full length mirror next to her closet.

"JARVIS, kill the lights in my room for me would you?" The AI did as she asked. For a moment she stood in complete darkness. Her windows only let in light when she wanted them to and no one could see in through any of the windows of Stark Tower. Despite his reputation Tony liked his private life to stay as private as possible. Piper took a deep breath.

"Turn on the UV lights J." She'd never asked her dad why he had lights of every spectrum throughout the tower. She'd never really cared and in the lab levels it made sense. The UV lights came up and Piper nearly screamed as she stared at herself in the mirror. Her skin was a soft purple glowing under the lights. Spirals of iridescent yellow were scattered across her skin. She blinked at her reflection. She pulled off her shirt and stared. Every inch of her skin was different, new patterns swirling in the purple. She looked down at her hands. Her fingernails were bright purple, no yellow there. The pads of her fingers were almost entirely yellow. It diffused down her palms back into the swirling untraceable pattern that littered the rest of her skin. She heard the door open behind her and whirled. Ava stood in the doorway blinking at her.

"That's different…" Piper pulled her shirt in front of herself and demanded JARVIS return the lights to normal. He did as she asked and the two girls stared at each other for a minute. Ava spoke first.

"So… I'm guessing that wasn't body paint." Piper shook her head. Ava tilted hers to the side.

"Then why were you purple?" Piper bit her lip.

"Well." She couldn't hold back she was freaking out. "Doctor Connors was showing Glen around some of the spaces in the lab and one of the scientists is studying spiders, like sleep cycles and stuff. Hell if I know why. But Doc Connors called me down to see it cause its actually really interesting stuff. Apparently some spiders are Bioluminescent under UV lighting. And then I looked down at my hand and it was purple and I think Glen saw it too but I'm not sure! Oh my god I'm a freak! I can't ever go to night bowling!" Ava slapped a hand over Piper's mouth.

"First of all if you ever call yourself a freak again I'm gonna slap you. You aren't a freak. So what, you're different. I think it's pretty badass. Second of all, night bowling, that's where your mind went? Not clubs that use UV lights?" She removed her hand from her friends mouth. Piper blinked at her.

"I've never been a club person." Ava nodded conceding the point.

"I'm pretty sure if you wanted to go night bowling your dad would find a way. Also who's Glen?" Before Piper could answer their coms clicked to life.

"We got a tipoff, there's a gonna be a jewelry heist on a party boat! It just left dock. Suit up?" Piper nodded at the sound of Luke's voice.

"Yeah suit up. Tiger and I will meet you there." The girls split up to change. Piper went to snag her costume from her lab and found a new one laying in its place. It had the same look up close as the fabric on her dress that was laced with metal. She pulled it on and took a second to admire the slight shimmer of the new suit before she popped open a window and leapt up the building to where she'd stashed her bike. White Tiger was waiting for her in a nearly indistinguishable costume to her original one, but Piper spotted the slight shimmer to the fabric that told her that her dad had upgrader her suit too. They hopped on the bike and took off across the city towards the river.