Wake up. Crushing. Wake up. Constricting. WAKE UP! Squeezing.

Peter jolted awake despite his body acting like it was made of lead. It didn't help that his bed was lumpy and the scaly sheets were bound tightly against him. Maybe he should start stretching after hard fights from now on? He needed to research what would work on a kid with superpowers.

And then it clicked. 'Why do my sheets feel like snakeskin?'

It was then that he finally opened his eyes. The ceiling was not the familiar shade he always woke up to, nor was the sunlight supposed to shine in from that direction. "This isn't my room," he muttered. He tried to sit up and then became aware of several more details.

'So that's why I was feeling snakeskin.' His thoughts were distant as he eyed the tire-sized snake limb that was coiled around him from feet to chest. It was the first thing he noticed, with the second being how they slowly constricted tighter and tighter with each movement he made. Peter couldn't say he was in danger of being crushed, not when the thought of a snake this size could swallow him whole like a bite sized candy bar.

However, there was another detail that did not quite fit in with the snake in the room: The sensation of arms wrapped around him and breathing on his neck. 'Okay, Peter,' he thought, 'There's someone in the bed with you and the giant snake. Maybe it's their pet who really wanted to cuddle? Snakes would seek out the nearest source of warmth. Except I'm the only one in the coils as far as I can tell.' Peter took a deep breath to center himself. 'Why am I here? What is my life? Is this going to be a normal thing for me from now on?'

Ultimately, the existential crisis could wait until after his escape. Shoving the thoughts aside, Peter screwed up the courage to face his potential would-be captor or co-victim. It was… a girl?

Peter closed his eyes and opened them again. Yep. Still there. A ginger haired girl in a loose shirt cuddled up to him and sleeping as if there wasn't a giant snake in the room about to have breakfast. 'I bet it's her pet. She's gonna feed me to it. It's always the nice ones, isn't it?' Peter comiserated. 'Wait, maybe she'll let me go if I ask nicely?'

"Psst! Hey! Pssst! Wake up!" Peter hissed out.

The girl grumbled and blinked her eyes open. When she locked her slitted eyes on Peter, she blushed fiercely and jerked away. As she did so, the coils around Peter tightened until he could barely move without much effort. "EEK! Who are you?! How did you get into my room?! Why are you in bed with me?!"

"I don't… know!" Peter gasped out. "I just… woke up… here! I'm Peter Parker!"

The coils paused as the girl peered at him and then their surroundings. "Hold on… this isn't my room."

"Good to know," Peter said wryly. "But there's a bigger problem here."

The girl tilted her head. "What's that?"

Was this girl oblivious? "Oh you know, the giant snake that's about to crush and eat me! Can you help get this thing off me? It's really heavy." Somehow, despite his reasonable plea, the girl chose to take offense to him.

"Are you calling me fat?!" The girl jabbed a finger into his cheek and the coils tightened once more. "I'll have you know that I've been dieting and exercising, thank you very much! So what if I had those extra potato chips last night? It was a cheat day!" Whatever words Peter had to retort were, almost literally, strangled to death as the girl rose up to tower over him. She went up and up and up and up.

'Oh. That's where the snake is.'

He wasn't paying any more attention to her current ranting on yoga as he tried to figure out where human girl ended and the snake tail began under that baggy shirt. As per his usual luck, the girl noticed where his attention laid and promptly freaked out. "H-Hey! Where are you looking, creep?!"

Peter shook his head. "No no no! I wasn't trying to creep on you, I was just-" But she screeched and Peter's world suddenly spun like a top. Next thing he knew, he faceplanted into the wall, stuck in place by his powers, and the door had slammed open and shut. "Great going, Peter. Way to make a winning first impression," Peter muttered, rolling his eyes. He picked himself off the wall and hopped to the floor. He found his backpack and a change of clothes for him by the bed, along with a note to meet in the dining room for breakfast.

Breakfast. The one (hopefully) normal thing about this day so far.

Peter still didn't know where he was, but he wouldn't figure it out just staying put. He walked out of the room into the hall and wandered around until he was standing at the top of a staircase in the foyer. The stairs, much like the halls, were wide enough for about six people to walk abreast. Which overall meant that this house, no mansion, had to be large enough to take up most of a small Manhattan block. And yet, the decorations were sparse and spread out enough to show that the place was lived in.

Motion caught Peter's eye when he reached the bottom of the stairs. He looked to see a cyan colored blob ('Is that slime?' Peter thought) with a green-tipped antennae of sorts scoot across the floor like a gelatin Roomba. When it was a couple feet away, it stopped and bounced in place, its 'antenna' perking straight up like an exclamation point. It then tilted back as if looking up at him with two eye-like dots on its surface.

"Uhh, hi?" Peter waved a hand.

"!" The slime 'waved' back with its antenna.

Peter blinked. "Can… Can you understand me?"

It jiggled in a nod-like manner.

'Just roll with it, Pete.' Holding up the note, Peter asked, "Do you know where the dining room is?"

It wiggled and waved its antenna as if to say "Yup! Follow me!" before it zoomed off like an air hockey puck. Peter followed it down the halls until it raced headlong into a door and wriggled under the crack like water. Unable to follow that way, Peter chose to simply open the door instead.

"Well well, look who finally woke up." A petite girl with tan skin and pale white hair grinned between bites of cereal. Her hair was longer than her body, wrapped around her chair, but the only article of clothing she seemed to be wearing was a shirt four sizes too big. Something about her voice seemed familiar to Peter, but he couldn't place it.

"Doppel, be nice," a kind, female voice chastised. Peter turned to look at the lady, only to find he had to crane his neck far back to meet her eyes. The frilly pink apron she wore could have been a curtain originally from how it draped over her massive form. She could have looked like the Hulk's tanned cousin if it weren't for the long, sharp horn growing out of her head. "He had a rough night last night. Here, eat up while it's fresh." She pushed a plate loaded with eggs and hashbrowns into his hands.

The warmth of the food seeped through the plate while the comfortable scents trickled into Peter's nose, awakening a deep hunger within. His stomach rumbled its demands and took control, shuffling him off to the table. In one moment, he took a bite and the next thing he knew the plate was polished off along with a cup of orange juice he vaguely recalled being handed from the blue blob. Peter looked up to meet the curious and concerned gazes of the tall woman, Doppel, and the blob.

"Wha- BUUURP!" Peter winced and clapped a hand over his mouth.

Doppel cackled with delight, almost falling out of her chair. "I think he likes your cooking, Tio!"

The large woman, Tio, shot her companion a frown. "Must you put it like that, Doppel?"

"Sorry!" Peter apologized. He took a deep breath and the questions were let loose into the wild. "What's going on? Where am I? Why was there a half-snake lady sleeping with me? How did I get here? Why are you so big?" Peter gasped as last night's memory finally clicked in place. "Wait! Where's Mina?! Is she okay? What happened to her? I saw her get shot and then I pulled her arm off by accident!"

Behind you. Safe.

A chitinous hand placed itself gently on Peter's shoulder. "I wouldn't worry too much. Zombina has walked away from worse injuries. Quite literally, in fact." The hand and familiar voice came around the table along with a now audible click-click-click-click skitter of many legs crossing the floor. First came the woman and then came the not so itsty-bitsy spider.

It was something that could have come out of a horror movie. Like the snake-lady from before, her "upper half" resembled a woman from the hips up but below that was a spider the size of a small car. Her hips attached where the head of a spider would have been and a long white skull was stretched across her thorax. Except for her eyes, she could have looked perfectly human. The woman's face had two jewel red pupilless eyes surrounded with six smaller ones in symmetrical pattern.

However, the most surprising thing about her was the connection that Peter felt across his Tingle. And from the look of slight surprise on her face, the spider woman sensed it too.

Friend. Kin. Ally. Safety.

"Hello Peter," she said. "It's nice to finally meet you face to face."

The voice from the phone call felt like a lifetime ago. "Rachel?"

The corner of her lips twisted up. "A psuedonym, I'm afraid. One needs a 'human' name when conducting human business. Allow me to introduce myself." She gestured to herself with a slight bow. "I am Rachnera Arachnera, and welcome to my humble home."

"Uh-huh. I am Peter Parker and I am so confused right now."

Rachnera grinned. "Then allow me to enlighten you. After I've had my meal, of course."

"I see you met Miia this morning," Rache- Rachnera said as she sipped her tea. "You'll have to forgive her. Being part snake, she tends to seek out sources of warmth when she's sleepy. You just happened to be in the room on the way to hers." Her long legs were curled under the massive, raised leather Ottoman she lounged on with the casual yet deadly regality of a mob boss. If it weren't for Peter's senses picking up calm, reassuring vibes Rachnera exuded, he would have felt he was being lured into a figurative web.

She and Peter relocated to the parlor room after breakfast. The others had gone off to do other household tasks. Suu, the gelatin roomba (or blue slime as he was told) happily zipped away to wipe away any remaining dust in the mansion. The giantess (corrected to ogre), Tio, finished cooking and cleaning in the kitchen and went to work in the garden. Doppel gave a shark-like grin as she shapeshifted into 'Gina', complete with business suit, and sashayed out the door like a hunter on the prowl.

Peter rubbed his head. "I didn't give the best first impression of myself either," he said. "I hope she doesn't hold that against me." His eyes flicked around from the room to Rachnera to the furniture and back again. His brain was little better. 'Is it rude to stare only at two of her eyes? How rich is she really? How does her body not collapse on itself from the square-cube law? Does she spin webs or go ambush hunting? How much does she eat to make her webs?'

"I'll have a talk with her afterwards after I finish with Zombina." The self-satisfied smile on her face curled in a peculiar manner that Peter suddenly decided he was better off not knowing where Mi- Zombina was. "Now, while I wanted to ease you into this new life, it seems we both have more than a few little secrets to share, hmm?" She placed her tea cup on the side table and leaned forward on her… legs? Mandibles? "While I'm curious as to your abilities, let's satisfy your curiosity first, shall we?"

"Where do I even start?" Peter let out a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. "Uncle Ben. How did you know him? You said he helped you before."

"He did, but he wasn't the only one." Rachnera put a hand to her chin. "Hmm, tell me, how much do you know of your birth parents?"

Peter's eyes widened "I… don't know much. Uncle Ben told me they passed away in a car wreck when I was young. Dad was a pilot and Mom was a nurse."

"Knowing Benjamin, he was likely sworn to secrecy due to the classified nature of it, but I am not bound by such promises. Your parents were actually government agents during the Cold War. They worked to prevent another war from occurring through spying, smuggling, and sabotage." Rachnera smiled. "In fact, I was one of their missions."

"Really?" Peter shifted forward on his seat.

"Not officially, but yes." Rachnera leaned back as she waded into her memories. "At the time I was a prisoner of an enemy research facility. I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say, I was not receiving the five star treatment." She rubbed her arm absently. "Your parents broke in to investigate a 'special weapons program' but instead found me and the other prisoners. They took one look at us and didn't even hesitate to break us out and reduce the facility to rubble. Your mother worked to heal our wounded while your father questioned us on any other facilities.

"We were suspicious at first that they were going to simply take us to another cage on friendly lines, but they didn't. Instead they asked where each of us lived and worked to smuggle all of us back home. One of us eavesdropped on him as he called in his report to his officers, but not a single word of our existence was mentioned. Our kind grew up believing that humans would either fear or exploit us. It was good to know that not all humans were our enemies.

"However, when it was my time to return home, there were a few complications and we had to flee back to the States instead. That was when I met your Uncle Ben. He helped acquire the paperwork I would need to immigrate as a 'textile merchant' refugee. Just like your father, there was no hesitation to help a monster like me."

"You're not a monster," Peter blurted out.

Rachnera put on an amused, knowing look. "I hold no illusions as to what instinctual response I elicit from people. Would you really have stayed so calm upon seeing me if you didn't have our little connection?"

Peter said nothing, finding the carving work in the furniture far more interesting at the moment. Eventually he mumbled out a small "...Sorry."

"You're forgiven," Rachnera said. "As I was saying, both your father and your uncle did their best to help me settle into the States, providing me with any assistance I needed to operate my new business. Eventually, I became quite successful and tried to repay my debts but those two would not have it unless I shoved it into your mother's hands. And then the rest was history." She took another sip of her tea.

"Whoa," was all Peter could say. He couldn't find any fault of Uncle Ben for maintaining discretion, not when such secrets were bigger than himself. If anything, his respect for Uncle Ben only grew. And the same for his parents despite how little he knew of them. To help without hesitation, regardless of appearance, race, or species. It was everything he should strive for.

"My turn. Tell me, how did you acquire these arachnid abilities?" Rachnera asked with burning curiosity.

Peter explained the story as best he could. He was on a field trip to a research facility, a spider bit him on the hand, and the next thing he knew he wasn't the scrawny little nerd anymore. Rachnera prodded him with questions about his powers and probed for little demonstrations. Though it had long since been his turn to ask questions, Peter felt a nice catharsis in being able to show off a bit to someone who could understand him. In fact, he was finally able to get a few answers of his own.

"I also have this weird extra sense that lets me know when danger is coming," Peter said as he crawled across the ceiling using his hands. "I started to call it my 'Peter Tingle'."

"Excuse me? The 'Peter Tingle'?" Rachnera said from a corner of the ceiling. She sounded both amused and mildly offended. "That is a horrid name. Call it your Spider Sense, if you must. It would be far more accurate than that moniker."

"Spider Sense?" Peter repeated it a few times. "Alright that does sound a lot better. Do you know what it does?"

"Hardly a clue." Rachnera stroked her chin. "But if it is a 'danger sense' as you say, then I suspect it compensates for the lack of six extra eyes. We can practice training in it with Zombina using paintball guns."

Peter froze halfway into reaching for his next handhold as his train of thought ran into a wall. "Training? For what? I'm just a high school student, not some crime fighting vigilante," he said with a forced chuckle.

All eight of Rachnera's eyes pierced through him. "I'm sorry, I must've mistaken you for the other teenage vigilante swinging around Manhattan stopping petty crimes and catching vehicles with artificial webbing." If sarcasm were a ball, Rachnera just beaned Peter with a bright red dodgeball.

"Oh… you heard about that." Peter idly wondered if having four times as many eyes made the 'I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed' look four times as powerful. It sure felt like it.

"Zombina is far more perceptive than she looks, and quite proficient at feigning sleep. She thought you were becoming a delinquent until Doppel started following you." While Peter was smacking his forehead, Rachnera walked up the wall and along the ceiling until she was 'towering' over him. Her expression turned to seriousness as she folded her arms across her chest. "If you're anything like your Uncle Ben, I think I know why you're doing this, and the evidence only corroborates it. However, I'd still like to hear it from you."

Peter flipped around until he was sitting on the ceiling, turning the world upside down. He sighed and said, "Before Uncle Ben died…I was just me. Just a twiggy kid who read books and built computers out of spare parts for cash. And then I got these powers. At first I thought I could finally play football, but because I didn't then I shouldn't now. It was too different. People would notice."

"And you can't exactly tell anyone about this, could you?"

"Not even Uncle Ben knew." Peter's chest grew tight as he began to remember that night once more. "And that's what got him killed. I tried to…" Tears welled up in his eyes. "I saw a flyer for a wrestling match. Quick money. Something to help save on finances. I was cheated out of my winnings and when a man with a gun came to rob the place, I let him go. After that, I found Uncle Ben laying on the sidewalk with a bullet in his chest and the car missing."

Peter choked back a sob. "Before I went to that event, Uncle Ben told me: 'with great power comes great responsibility'. I didn't understand it at the time, but now… When I can do what I do, and then the bad things happen? They happen because of me."

"Oh, Peter." Rachnera leaned 'down' and pulled Peter in for a hug. It was soft and warm for someone covered in chitin. Her clawed fingers were as gentle as a spider's touch as she combed them through his hair. "You couldn't have known what would happen. Don't blame yourself for that. I'm sorry it took such a harsh lesson to learn, but I'm sure your uncle would be proud of you for doing the right thing."

She held him like that for several minutes in mourning silence. It was only thanks to Peter's sense of gravity that he noticed her carry him down from the ceiling. Rachnera set Peter back down in his chair before settling back into her own.

"You've taken on a big responsibility, Peter," Rachnera said. "Vigilante work on top of being a model genius student? It can't be easy."

Peter shrugged. "I'm making it work. Homework isn't too hard." After all that talking, he didn't get the sense that she wouldn't support his endeavor.

"So you say, but you're among friends. You don't have to shoulder this burden alone. I'm serious when I said I would have Zombina help you with your senses."

"You don't have to-" Peter waved his hands dismissively. He still felt like an extra burden on a home with many mouths to feed.

However, Rachnera was quick to shut him down. "Yes, I do, Peter. Powers or not, you've already stepped into our world, the world of Liminals. We have been living in humanity's shadow for over a millennia now, and not everyone would welcome a human's presence. If you're to be living here, you'll need to be trained in our methods, manners, and bestiary knowledge. Sooner or later, you'll find something in our shadows that might take you for a chew toy if you aren't prepared to handle it. Do you understand?"

"Does this training include how to say 'Sorry I called you fat, but you were crushing me' to half-snake girls?" Peter joked.

Rachnera stared at him.

"Uh, I mean, yes, ma'am."

Rachnera nodded. "Good. And yes, that will be included. After we introduce you to all the other girls in the house."

"Other girls?" Peter asked after he fully processed her words. 'A teenage boy who lived with his uncle suddenly moving into a mansion full of older women,' he thought. A mix of hysteria and dread filled him as his body twitched with echoes of the crushing sensation from the morning. 'Sure. What could possibly go wrong?'

A/N: As promised, the other chapter I held onto in hopes that I could maintain a backlog. We finally meet the big spider herself! I hope this adequately answers a lot of your questions about the relationships going forward. Next chapter we'll meet some of the other girls living with Peter and then we might move on with some plot.

Thank you for your patience. Please know that I haven't forgotten about my other stories, but I only have so much attention to spare for them at a time. Between work picking up and being thrust into ownership of an RP server, the amount keeps diminishing by the day. It doesn't help that I have another silly crossover idea in the pipeline (one chapter done and another half done; Want 2-3 done before I start posting it).

I'm just a sucker for unusual but workable crossover ideas.

Anyways, please leave a comment and stay tuned! I'll do my best to keep writing even when things get tough!