Marvel: A Tale of Shadows

Ethan looked up at the Baxter Building noticing a clear sign where damage was repaired. It seems the news about three different attacks on the building within the last month were true.

He walked into the lavish lobby just as a blonde bombshell had arrived and was looking around. When she noticed him she smiled and walked up to him.

"Ethan Hilt?" She offered her hand to shake as she spoke his name like a question.

"Yes, ma'am. You are just as beautiful and lovely as the rumors Susan Storm." Ethan countered putting on his most seductive smile.

Susan smiled back, "come on, I will show you around the lab for the day. Then we can get to work on your first project." She led the way to the elevator.

As they went up she handed him a file. It had an ID tag, official documents, and information on the first project he would be working on. He smiled as he hooked the tag to his ESU sweater.

"Do you have any other interesting Interns or just me?" Ethan asked with a smirk as he caught Susan smiling at him for a moment.

"Umm… yes we have three other interns and we have begun employing two additional scientists." She frowned as she seemed to think of something. "I will say you are not our youngest employee or even intern, that title belongs to Cindy Moon."

"Cindy Moon." Ethan whistles, "yeah she is super smart for someone that should still be in high school." Ethan remarked.

"Yes, a very promising young girl. Then there are the new employees, Alyssa Moy who has been working as a scientist at NASA. Another is Samuel Sterns, who is supposedly a remarkable chemist on loan from the military. The other interns and last employee are much more normal, with nothing remarkable which is actually a good thing." Susan explained as they arrived at the level. He could hear the contempt in her voice when she talked about Alyssa Moy though.

"I assume this level is locked unless you have a visitor's pass or an ID tag for the elevator?" Ethan asked as they walked past a secretary desk where a young woman was talking to a person he could only assume was Johnny Storm, Susan's twin brother.

"Correct, our security is not that tight but it is tight enough to keep out anyone that does not belong. That is my brother, attempting to sleep with a secretary once again. I assume you can handle him but please do help the other interns, who are all women. I worry he will do something stupid." Susan requested as they walked past them into a hallway but with a doorway in front of them.

"I will do my best."

"Thank you, to the right and left are the female and male dorms for employees and interns. But you said you would not need one so there is not one for you. There are three bathrooms, one on each side of the hallway, the third is inside the lab near the windows." They walked into the lab.

"Noted. Female dorms are to the left when we enter." His snarky statement got a giggle out of Susan.

Inside the room were only two people. Off to one side was The Thing in his rocky glory sitting in the kitchen making a monster sized stew. "That is Ben Grimm in the kitchen." The other person who was currently stretching himself halfway across the room was working on typing on a computer while his head was observing something through a microscope. "The other one is Reed Richards, my finance." Once again she pressed the word fiance like it left a bad taste in her mouth.

"Okay, but I do not see any others." Ethan left the statement hanging in the air as an unasked question as she led him to a desk.

"That is because they will be arriving throughout the week. The others are all out of the state and are making arrangements to arrive. Miss Moon is the only one in the state but she is finishing her internship with Oscorp today and will be joining us tomorrow." She explained as they arrived at one of four generic desks set off to the side of the room.

"Very well, I figure I am going to be here more often then the others since I am just completing the knowledge testing for my courses." Ethan explained as he picked up the file that was sitting on his new desk.

Inside was what his current workload would consist of. "Active Camouflage?" He looked over at Susan to see her sigh with an exasperation. "I am guessing this is part of one of your military contracts?"

"Yes… it appears I made a mistake by letting Reed pick out the research projects for the interns. If you need any help you just have to ask." She then turned to look at what the other files said on the other interns desks. "Or you can just focus on writing a paper on the topic or something."

"Actually I do need your help. Can you turn invisible?" Ethan asked, hoping he might get an over-thought response from her. Which he did.

She sighed and turned to him, "look I get me and the others might seem like freakshow with cool tricks. But to us it is our everyday lives and that is not what you meant…" She stopped speaking as she noticed he was holding up the file and tapping the word camouflage.

"I want to see how your power works in order to develop camouflage technology. By the way, it does denote a manner in which they want it. Do they want paint? Armor plating? A blanket? Body armor? External projection?" He asked as he looked over the very little he had. Which consisted of researching Active Camouflage. But all it had was a vague description of how Susan used her ability, but not how it worked.

He really could not tell if it was inaccurate on purpose or if Doctor Richards was not really paying attention when he wrote it up. He is betting on the latter rather than the former.

"I believe I can. Just write up what type of test you want to conduct. How you want to measure results and anything else that needs to be known beforehand." She answered after gathering herself. "Actually I think your task is the hardest out of all the interns. The others are only vague as well but doable with help."

"If I am being completely honest I could probably easily do this. But I figured I might as well make a record just in case they want theory testing." Ethan explained as he sat at the desk and quickly started typing, setting up the computer for his use. Quickly coming up with three different experiments to better understand how Susan's powers work.

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Gwen was looking around her father's files while she was bored. She had nothing better to do so she figured she might as well look through the newly appointed Police Captain's cold case files. The newest one looked interesting especially since it was labeled with a single word, 'Spider'.

She pulled the box into her room and started looking over the case file. It was not about spider-man like she initially thought it was. It was a murder and self-defense case that occurred at Oscorp. Initially it started out like any other case but the investigators gave up on it when it was discovered the main perpetrator and one of the victims both had something in their neck. The thing in the victims necks both had spider DNA at its base.

So they asked the one survivor of the attack and the only one to know about why the attack happened. Apparently he did not disclose anything because of an NDA he signed but they were able to track and find a hidden facility in New Jersey where experimental spiders were contained for a time.

The last note was that the case was handed over to Shield at their request. But the survivors name, Ethan Hilt, seemed very familiar. Wasn't that the name of the person that got shot during the student lab robbery?

As she sat there studying her father's notes she failed to notice a small spider sneaking up the chair she was sitting upon. Its white body moved quietly up her chair onto her clothes. Then as it slowly moved up to her neck it bit down.

"Ow!" Gwen quickly slapped the back of her neck, stunning the spider before it got up and scurried out of sight.

"Gwen, dinner time!" Her father called from the kitchen. Gwen looked around for what bit her. But the spider in question was already moving up to the web that was in the corner of the room.

Gwen frowned and walked out of her room into the dinning room. Where her mother was already seated with her medical equipment sitting off to the side, giving a steady chime to indicate it was still working. Gwen smiled and sat next to her.

Her mother had started to suffer from a disease halfway through the last semester. When they discovered it was cancer her parents immediately dived into options without trying to tell their daughter. Which is when they started acting secretly as they searched for options.

Soon after she began undergoing some type of treatment, but they wouldn't tell her anything about it. Eventually she learned it was an experimental treatment from Oscorp. Which she only found even stranger.

"Sweetie, school is about to start soon. It will be your senior year, do you know where you will go afterwards?" Her mother asked. She seemed more lively today, which was rare.

"Yes, I plan to stay here and go to ESU, there are plenty of local scholarship opportunities. After getting a bit of experience I will leave the state to pursue specific fields of interest." Gwen explained, avoiding the fact that she would stay nearby for a year after her schooling because she was worried about her mother.

"Are there any interesting experiments or inventions that you are going to dive into this semester?" Her mother changed the subject quickly before Gwen's father could jump in with a remark.

"Not particularly, we switched gears to technology that would allow us to test the environment for pollution. It will give me some time to practice my drumming again, it has been awhile since I really got an opportunity to play." Gwen answered.

"Very well, I heard they are having issues removing the technology from that Rhino thug. So keep that in mind, did you hear about the prison they are making off the coast of New York?" George Stacy asked as he received a glare from his wife.

Gwen flinched and nodded, "yeah, it is supposed to be state of the art. I heard it will be the first non-Shield facility that will hold enhanced and altered persons." Gwen nodded in response, "I also noticed there was a new art exhibition, we could go as a family."

"That sounds splendid, let's do it." Gwen's mother jumped in with agreement before her husband could disagree.