Summary: Bitten by a genetically-modified Nephila clavipes, boy genius and Star Wars nerd Peter Parker becomes New York's newest golden orb-weaving, friendly neighbourhood protector.

The Orb Weaver
Book One
Chapter One - Origins, Part 1

Present day, 11:39 PM, Manhattan,
New York City, New York

Working for the mysterious the Kingpin had its privileges. Even if the three of them were at rock bottom when it came to the actual hierarchy in the mob - they had, in their past decade of service, not once seen this Kingpin and frankly, they doubted such a guy even existed - it still meant they were undisturbed in their allotted territory. Freddy and his pals practically ruled this block, and although the majority of their criminal earnings went to the higher ups, they got a happy cut out of it all. Plus, the greatest thing was that this was no Hell's Kitchen; so, unlike his more unfortunate associates, Freddy didn't need to worry about a certain blind costumed freak. People like Stark on the other hand were too high up there to care about small fry like him.

In short, Freddy had the good life. His pals did too by extension.

He was one of three in his group still sober after the rave tonight, and so the trio of thugs had decided to add a little cherry on top of their cake. Que pretty lady walking home alone at night, and this day couldn't get any better.

"Somebody, please, he-mmugh!" the young woman's screams were silenced by the cloth tied around her mouth as a gag, as she was forcibly dragged deeper into the dark alley.

"Don't worry darlin', we're just wanna play a little!" Freddy cackled with his knife extended, his companion smirking beside him as the third held the sobbing, gagged woman in a tight grip. Freddy reached out with his free hand, intending to grab the woman's cheeks, when he felt it brush across something invisible, and, within a moment, a shining, golden thread seemed to fade in and then out of view.

"What the...?"

As Freddy glanced at his hand, he noticed the sticky, yellowish, thin threads that had gotten caught between his fingers. His eyes followed the threads, so thin they were almost invisible and yet they seemed to sparkle gold in the dim lighting of the alley. He quickly realized that they were stuck across not just his hand, but his entire forearm, lying loosely across his chest and, in fact, dangling over his legs too. It seemed that a giant mess of yellowish threads had covered him almost entirely, and now that he could actually see the entire thing through squinted eyes, it occurred to him that the sticky threads were arranged in an array, a pattern, one that looked like...

A gigantic, golden spider web.

Both he and his companion had walked into its lax strands, which were too thin for them to see properly, and it had entangled itself all over them. Now, even though our unfriendly neighbourhood thugs weren't the brightest bulbs in the alley, Freddy at least knew that spiders didn't normally spin webs this big.

"How...?"

Thwip!

"WAA!"

The golden strands that had fallen over them suddenly tightened, and both Freddy and his buddy were jerked up into the sky, trapped in the giant web like flies.

The third one screamed as he saw his fellows get so frighteningly apprehended, and let go of the woman, who understandably ran away from the whole scene screaming and crying. The last thing he saw, however, was the black-gloved palm that found itself on placed his face, before he felt the placed fingers prick painfully over his entire visage and searing pain shot through his head down his spine and through each and every limb, before he began convulsing and fogging at the mouth and unconsciousness enshrouded everything in pain-filled darkness.

A short while later, the police arrived, sirens blazing. Captain George Stacy got out of his car to see, to his wide-eyed shock and the shock of his three fellow officers, the three unconscious men - one with a swollen, reddened face and fog coming out of his mouth - wrapped in cocoons of shining yellow silk, stuck to a gigantic golden orb web bridging the two buildings that formed the alley. They were all hanging thirty feet off the ground, with their mouths webbed shut.

"I told ya, didn't I, Cap? The rumours are true," Officer Carter whistled, before placing a cigarette in his mouth.

Captain George Stacy only vaguely registered what his fellow officer said, too dumbfounded by the whole scene. He noticed a small note, stuck to the web at his eye level, and numbly walked forward to pluck it out of the web. It refused to budge, stuck, and for fear of tearing it, the Captain let it remain where it was and slowly read aloud what had been written on it so that his fellow officers could hear.

"'When you look at the dark side, careful you must be, for the dark side looks back,' - Master Yoda..."

All four officers were stunned to seemingly perpetual stillness. A cricket could be heard chirping, and an audible breeze blew a tumbleweed down the alley.

Then, after the longest time, some movement occurred:

Officer Carter's cigarette fell out of his mouth.

8:05 AM
One month ago, Oscorp Tower
Conference Room, Sub-Level Three

"I want results, Warren, and I want them last year!"

Norman Osborn's enraged voice echoed through the entire sub-level, and Dr. Miles Warren trembled at his boss' rant as he sat around a table in front of the suit-clad man alongside his fellow scientists, Dr. Curtis Conners and Dr. Ashley Kafka. The only other person there was a young man with dark, messy hair and a stubby beard, apparently in his late twenties, in a guard uniform who stood by the entrance to the Conference Room.

"B-But, sir," Miles began. "The serum is not yet ready to proceed to the level of human testin-"

"As Conners has already supplied, the results from the spider trial have come back extraordinary," Norman interrupted sharply, his glare piercing through Conners, the one-armed scientist flinching involuntarily in response and earning a smirk from Norman. "Am I right, Conners?"

Curtis took a deep breath and, with a wave, signalled at the small glass chamber that had been placed in the middle of the table, the inside of which was adorned with a visible shining yellowish web, a large yellow-and-black spider, a golden silk orb-weaver, visibly jumping from one wall of the chamber to another.

"Sir, the Nephila strain we tested it on is already genetically-modified to include spliced genes from both Salticidae and Lycosidae families. It was a laboratory-bred polyhybrid, sir, based on Mary Fitzpatrick-Parker's earlier work on RNA interference," Conners began clarifying. "Yes, it is true that before the application of the Virideserum, none of the spiderlings survived beyond their first molts. When raised on the serum, the spiderling developed into an adult, the most amazing 'super spider' ever seen: it was still an orb-weaver, but with all of its own natural skills enhanced. Beyond that, it possesses the extraordinary eyesight and jumping abilities of jumping spiders and the robustness and agility of wolf spiders. If I've ever seen a scientific breakthrough in my life, this is the one!"

"Then we move on to the next stage," Norman glanced pointedly at Warren, and at that point Curtis wiped the accumulating sweat on his brow with a tissue paper. "Human testing."

"Impossible, sir!" Ashley Kafka spoke up for the first time. "There are a million regulations to consider sir; mammal testing and primate testing invariably precede human testing, we'll never be able to legally justify it."

Norman smirked evilly, clasping his fingers together as he leaned back on his seat. "Let me tell you something, Kafka, all of you," Norman's smirk was replaced by a serious expression. "You can't try to recreate the Super Soldier Serum without taking risks. Erskine took a risk, Rogers took a risk... countless failures that history has forgotten preceded the momentous success that history celebrates - the birth of the Super Soldier, of Captain America. Let me tell you this right now that we, and by that I mean me, I, and my company will never amount to anything unless we throw caution to the wind!"

All three of the scientists in the room glanced at each other at that, visibly and great perturbed. Turning back to face Norman, Curtis attempted to speak.

"Sir, Erskine and Rogers were in the middle of a war! You can't be serious, there are countless safety consid-"

"YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT I'M SEROUS, CONNERS!"

Norman slammed his hand on the desk.

The shout and the sound of Norman's hand hitting the desk made the guard decide to pace inside Conference Hall to check if everything was alright. "Sir?" the young man inquired.

Norman glanced at his security officer, before being hit with an epiphany. "Yeah, you," he pointed at the guard suddenly, to the puzzlement of the scientists in the room. "What's your name, son?"

"Dillon, sir. Maxwell Dillon."

"Dillon, what do you say to not only having a million dollars transferred to your account tomorrow morning, but becoming the next Captain America?"

Dramatic pause.

"... What, sir?"

One hour later: 9:15 AM
Robotics Hall, Science Exhibit
Oscorp Tower, Second Floor

"I can't believe you actually have free access to this place, Harry!" Peter Parker, a brown-haired and blue-eyed, shorter-than-average and rather scrawny teenager bedecked in a white sweater, dark jeans and black trainers, wiped the dust off his large glasses with his shirt before putting them back on, already wide eyes appearing magnified further. Not too dissimilar to a kid in a candy shop, the fifteen-year-old gawked at all the exhibits displayed around him.

The students of Midtown High were on a rare field trip to Oscorp. The company had arranged a science exhibit for the high schoolers, intending to show the next generation the latest advances in medicine, physics and robotics - three of many departments Oscorp Industries specialized in.

"Well, at least one of us is having fun," Harry Osborn, Peter's slightly taller but similarly aged reddish-brown-haired companion, deadpanned.

While Peter Parker and Harold Osborn both came from families vastly different in socioeconomic statuses - Peter's aunt and uncle had always struggled to make ends meet, whereas Harry's dad was probably the single wealthiest man in New York after Tony Stark himself - they had still been the best of friends since Elementary School.

While Peter was a prodigy gifted in all subjects scientific, and Harry was the exact opposite of that, what they had truly bonded over at the dawn of their friendship was their mutual love of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and the Millennium Falcon. Not to mention the fact that Harry was a bit socially awkward - Peter's simplicity and lack of any expectations from Harry had also been a catalyst in their friendship.

The third of their childhood trio of besties had been a certain 'Eugene', who had long since outgrown his two geeky playfellows and their Star Wars and Star Trek obsessions and actually turned into their biggest bully once he had found fame through school football, and earned his place in the Popular Club.

Of course, no one ever outgrew Star Wars, Peter and Harry knew that quite well. So even though they had no evidence to incriminate him, they still knew that Eugene remained a Star Wars closet nerd.

Still, neither Harry nor Peter had ever quite forgiven Eugene for his betrayal, and Eugene, more famous now as 'Flash' Thompson, also hadn't graced his childhood friendship with a two even with so much as a passing mention in years.

"I'm serious, dude," Peter gave Harry a look, glancing up from inspecting a computer terminal connected to an electron microscope. "I mean come on, if my dad owned something like Oscorp I wouldn't even dream of leaving this place!"

"It gets boring after the first fifty test tubes," Harry retorted, placing his hands in his pocket, uninterested.

"I don't know, Harry, I have to agree with Pete on this, this is a fascinating place..." a female voice interrupted their banter.

"Thank you, Cindy, at least one of us appreciates the gamut of the human intellect," Peter smiled at the girl, Cindy, who was inspecting what appeared to a prototype of strange harness with four, large, metallic arms that were featured in the exhibit as the future of medical prosthetics.

Cindy Moon, a very pretty hazel-eyed Asian girl with shoulder length black hair, had been Eugene's replacement. Born to Korean-American father and a Korean mother, in, believe it or not, Seoul, Cindy had moved to New York with her father after her mother's death. She had joined Peter's class in the seventh grade, around the same time Eugene decided to ditch them and become Flash.

"Only you could agree with him, Cin," Harry scoffed.

It was true: if anyone could outclass the Amazing Peter Parker in scientific knowledge, it was Cindy Moon.

Reason being that while Peter was naturally gifted of mind, Cindy was an exceptional hard worker - a "Book-o-phage", as Harry had dubbed her. Cindy's mother had been a scientist and professor when the Moons were in Seoul, and her untimely death had inoculated within Cindy the passion and motivation to strive and live up to her legacy. Thus, she sought knowledge wherever she could find it.

Her scientific aptitude was thus akin to Peter's, and her foreigner status made her an alien quite like Harry (who was considered an outcast simply for being a socially awkward son of a billionaire). Add to that the fact that the girls from 'the Popular Squad', led by Liz Allan, Gwen Stacy and Sally Avril, considered Cindy to be the plague since Elementary School - "what kinda girl chooses books over looks?!" - and had immediately resorted to making Cindy their very own punching bag.

From malicious pranks such pulling her hair to stealing her shoes, to openly bullying her, the Popular Girls had made Cindy's Elementary and High School years as difficult as Peter's and Harry's had been made by Flash and his goons.

Needless to say, Cindy had fit into their trio of outcasts quite well.

"Come on, lovebirds, the conductor's moving on ahead," Harry motioned with his head and promptly began walking over into the next hall.

Cindy blushed beet red at the 'lovebird' comment, glancing awkwardly at Peter. The boy was too focused on the schematics of a particle accelerator that were on display, however, and although he heard Harry's comment, Peter didn't actually take it seriously. Knowing he did not do so made Cindy feel both relief and a sense of shattered hope simultaneously... if that was even possible.

'Stop being stupid,' she said to herself for what only she knew to be the millionth time. 'It's not like that between us, we're childhood friends and that would be so... awkward,' and yet, despite knowing that, she found herself staring at Peter's turned back longingly. Cindy saw beyond the funny glasses, the scrawny physique and the nerdy habits; the boy was a jewel, more good-natured and caring than many people she knew, reliable and dependable. Not to mention, although she loved Harry as a friend too, Peter was the only one Cindy felt she could really talk to about the things that really mattered to her. He understood.

"Come on, Peter," she said softly, before turning around and beginning to walk out of the hall, her emotions now frustratingly haywire.

"Yeah, I'll be right there, just let me take a few pictures," Peter pulled out the Sony DSLR that Harry had gotten him for his birthday last year, after learning Peter enjoyed taking pictures from his cell phone as a hobby.

"Be careful, don't get separated," Cindy admonished, before going on ahead to join the rest of the class.

"I'll be right there..." Peter mumbled, largely to himself, too focused on his camera as he snapped a few photos of the exhibits.

Satisfied, the boy turned around to leave, before snapping his head towards his right. He thought he had seen something there out of the corner of his eye, and squinting he found himself witnessing a rather strange sight.

Something was moving rapidly behind a glass panel inside a door at the end of the hallway.

"What the..."

Peter walked towards the door and, with his sleeve, cleaned the fog from the glass to see clearly what it was that appeared to be moving behind it.

"A spider?"

It was apparently a rather large spider; about as big as Peter's thumb. He identified the genus with a simple glance, it was a Nephila, or an orb-weaver spider. What was strange was, that although Peter knew these spiders to normally be gentle, the black-and-yellow orb-weaver seemed to actually be struggling against the glass panel in the door, bumping against it repeatedly, almost as if it were in pain and wanted to escape.

"I'll get ya outta there, just don't bite me," Peter said as, out of pure kindheartedness, he placed his hand on the door and tried to figure out a way to open it. While he was afraid of getting bitten by a rabid spider, he reasoned in his mind that Nephila bites weren't exactly harmful to humans.

Meanwhile, Oscorp Tower
Experimental Facility, Sub-Level Three

"Are you sure this safe, Mister Osborn?" the guard, Max Dillon, asked as he lay on a stretcher and that a few scientists tightened the straps.

"Absolutely, son," Norman's voice cooed with false reassurance through the speakers, as he stood on the other side of a glass wall along with Ashley Kafka and Miles Warren. Curt, having fundamentally disagreed with all this, had excused himself from Norman Osborn's presence and resigned from working any longer at the company. Norman could care less; he did not deem cowards like Conners worthy of working by his side in his quest to achieve greatness. They would only slow him down at the end.

"We're ready to inoculate the Viridiserum, Mister Osborn," Miles spoke up, hesitant.

"Sir, if this is truly safe, why are we standing safely behind bullet-proof glass while the procedure takes place while letting one of Octavius' prototypes administer the serum?" Ashley Kafka asked, mistrust lacing her voice.

"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst," Norman responded emotionlessly, and suddenly Ashley realized with wide eyes and a palpitating heart that she should have left with Curtis when she had the chance.

This man was insane.

"Well, do it," Norman issued the command, and Miles reluctantly traced his finger across a touchscreen pad in his hand.

A giant, robotic tentacle-like contraption, moving sluggishly, lowered itself from the ceiling, a green serum inside a needled syringe at its end. Exposed electrical wires surrounded the robotic tentacle - it obviously lacked a layer of insulation, having been assembled in haste on Osborn's orders, who was too excited at this point to give a damn about any safety considerations whatsoever.

Seeing the monstrous robotic appendage with the really long needle, Maxwell suddenly began to have second thoughts.

"Uh... Mister Osborn, sir, you never said anything about... sharps..." he managed to get out.

"What, did you expect to be spoon-fed the serum?" the disgust was palpable in Norman's voice. "No matter, soon you'll become something more, something extraordinary, and then we won't have to worry about something as petty as Trypanophobia."

"No, Mister Osborn, please, I-"

"Do it, now, Warren, or you're fired!" Norman yelled at Miles on the other side of the glass, who closed his eyes, took a deep breath and pressed the button.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

The ear-piercing scream echoed throughout the entire sub-level as he needle was plunged by the robotic arm into Maxwell's neck. Both Miles Warren and Ashley Kafka, along with the other, lesser-ranking scientists in the facility, all watched on in horror, hearts plunging because of the throat-tearing scream.

The green liquid burned hotter inside Max's neck than anything he had ever experienced, and the burning pain quickly travelled to encompass his entire body. It was searing and excruciating, and while screaming and struggling against his binders, Maxwell's hand got loose and touched one of the exposed wires in the metallic arm.

There was a gigantic electrical spark and suddenly an explosion that shook the entire Oscorp Tower and caused Norman and his scientists to stumble, some to even fall down. The electrical grid of the entire Tower had obviously been disrupted due to the back-current from the electrical explosion, as the lights blinked on and off before momentarily dying, and after a five second gap the building shifted to back up power.

Same time
Medicine Hall, Science Exhibit
Oscorp Tower, Second Floor

"What's going on?!" Gwen Stacy shouted, suddenly, as the lights blinked on and off before everything suddenly went dark.

"What the heck, Osborn?!" Flash Thompson's voice echoed in the darkness. "Did your Pops forget to pay the electricity bill?!"

While a few of his goons snickered loudly in darkness, much to Harry's annoyance, the Son of Norman Osborn anxiously bobbed his head right and left in the darkness. "Man, this looks like that scene from Rogue One just before Vader ignites his red lightsaber in the darkness..."

Cindy smacked her head with her palm. "Seriously, Harry, you and Pet-!"

Of course, that was when the back-up power came on, and most of the students breathed in sighs of relief.

Except Cindy, who was looking around, worried.

"Harry, where's Peter?"

Same time
Robotics Hall, Science Exhibit
Oscorp Tower, Second Floor

Peter continued to attempt to push against the door, attempting to release the anxious spider stuck in the room on the other end of the door. Realising the door was not going to budge, Peter placed a hand on his chin, contemplating on how to get the spiders out of the room.

He grinned, before speaking in a strange accent. "'Well, I suppose I could hotwire this thing.'"

Suddenly, the electricity of the entire building scrambled and, when the black out occurred, the door's controls had probably malfunctioned themselves and swooshed open.

"Well, that solves that problem," Peter mumbled to himself, as turned on his cell phone's flashlight to navigate in the darkness and stepped across the door into the room on the other side. Meanwhile, the orb weaver he had been trying to rescue, who, unlike the myopic Peter, could see well in the darkness, silently and gracefully slid itself onto Peter's back and ending up finding its way inside Peter's backpack through a slightly open zip.

"Now, where'd that spid-"

The back-up power blinked on, and it was then that Peter realised that the room he had walked into was not a room, but an elevator.

The door swooshed shut again, leaving Peter trapped inside the elevator.

"Hey!" the boy rapidly smacked his hand against the shut door multiple times. "Hey, open up, let me out!"

After two minutes of trying that, to no avail, a pit of dread settled in Peter's stomach. Looking at the elevator's control panel, which, strangely, lacked any labels whatsoever, the boy genius did the only logically coherent thing anyone with half a brain could've done in that situation:

He pressed a button.

'Going down, Sub Level 3' were the words uttered by a computerised, feminine voice before Peter felt the elevator begin its decent. When it finally reached its destination, the door swooshed open again, and Peter found himself walking down a dimly lit hallway.

'Okay, creepy vibes,' he thought to himself, as he slowly stalked down the hallway, before seeing light coming off from the other hand. Naturally, Peter began to gravitate towards that light, thinking of locating one of Harry's father's men and informing them that he had gotten lost. They would probably get him back with the rest of the class.

'Man, this creepy place looks like an Imperial Prison,' he thought warily, and almost as if to add substance to his thoughts, his hair stood on end when he suddenly heard a screeching, feminine scream coming straight from the lit room. '

Oh, shi-!' Peter quickly hid behind the open door, glancing with a single scared and widened blue eye inside. He was afraid of what he would find there, but, to his alarm, he saw what appeared to be Harry's father, alongside a few other people dressed as scientists.

Dr. Ashley Kafka was the one who had screamed, tears flowing out of her eyes at the horrific crime she had assisted Norman in committed.

"Shut up, woman!" Norman bellowed, but his even his voice fell on deaf ears for once as the lady began to sob, only to be held in a soothing embrace by Miles Warren. Peter watched the whole scene from his hidden position fearfully. While he had only met him once or twice, he had never expected Harry's father to be such a hardhearted figure with his co-workers.

Unbenownst to our nerdy protagonist, in the stretcher where Maxwell Dillon the guard had been moments prior, now remained nothing except the scorched remains of a security uniform.

"W-What have you done?!" Ashley choked out at Norman, who merely growled darkly.

"It appears we may need to learn a little more from the Spider Project," Norman growled to himself, a hand resting on his chin as he ignored the shocked scientists around him, his mind to focused on salvaging this situation. While he was just as shocked at the rest of them about what had happened to Dillon - even he could not have expected the man would get vaporised - he, at least, needed to remain pragmatic about all this and focus on the more pressing issue: the super soldier serum he was trying to reproduce. "We may need to add a genetic enhancer, based on Mary Fitzpatrick-Parker's formulas, to the Virideserum to help stabilise human cells to bear the enhancement procedure... if the spiders could do it, then it should be possible to extrapolate their physiological parameters to human scale..."

While both Ashley and Miles were horrified that the death, no, the vaporisation of a man had absolutely no effect on Osborn's conscious, Peter from his hidden position was more focused on the name 'Mary Fitzpatrick-Parker'.

'Mary Fitzpatrick-Parker? My mother?' Peter knew his mother had been a scientist, but he had never heard of any involvement of hers with Oscorp, so what did she have to do with all this... this, top secret horrific experimental stuff that had the other female scientist in such a miserable state. 'What's Harry's Dad trying to do down here, make Frankenstein?!"

Unfortunately, as Peter stepped back in shock, his foot struck something metallic and the resultant clang alerted Norman and everyone else to the extra presence among their midst.

"Who's there?!" Norman shouted, but by then Peter had already turned around and bolted, running away from the place as fast as he could, the darkness preventing anyone from recognising him.

Norman growled at the suspected attempt at corporate espionage, quickly removing his phone from his coat pocket and speed-dialling his security chief.

"Yes Mister Osborn?" a thick, Southern accented voice answered on the other end.

"Schultz, there's someone in Sub-Level 3, moving fast," Norman supplied.

"Heh, you should've listened to me when I asked you to allow us to place video cameras on that sub-level, Mister Osborn, but you refused. Now, I can't visualise the person directly but through the building's motion sensors I can see a moving target on that level running downstairs to Sub-Level 4: Waste Treatment... yep, entering the pipes."

Norman smirked evilly. What he was about to do was hard, but spies did not deserve mercy, and perhaps this should send a strong message to his corporate rivals. "Seal the pipes. Flush him or her out."

"... As you wish, Mister Osborn."

"Man, this whole place needs a freakin' deodorant!"

Peter said, pinching his nose with his hand as he tried to find his way out through the giant waste pipes which he was now inside. His heart thundered against his chest from all that running. Peter hated running; he was physically unfit, and the slightest effort always took its toll on him, plus it reminded him too much of all the crap he had to take from Flash at school.

He remembered his friends. Man, Cindy had told him not to wander off, how stupid had he been, over a stupid spider too-

Suddenly, Peter stopped, as he heard the sound of gushing water coming up behind him. It didn't take long for his genius mind to figure out that meant when one was inside a conduit pipe.

Eyes as wide as dinner plates behind his glasses, Peter Parker turned around just in time to see the last sight he would ever see as nerdy, geeky, Peter Parker.

The gigantic torrent of murky waste water that enveloped him in moments.

As his bones get crushed under the pressure, he felt the water enter his mouth and through his nose, costing him the ability to speak. He felt his breathing painfully slow down, and the last thing Peter Parker thought about before his world became dark was the grief that would be on Uncle Ben and Aunt May's faces when they would find out about his demise, grief that no child could ever wish to bring upon his loving caretakers.

The spider that had gotten inside his backpack was, too, flushed out by the water, but moments before its own inevitable demise, the spider - who had become greatly intelligent as a result of the Virideserum it had been bred on - somehow instinctively knew that the only way for it to survive now was to live on as a legacy. Through this human, this innocent and kindhearted one who had tried to free it without ulterior motive, the spider would live as another.

And thus, a mere moment before the water level rose to envelop Peter and the orb weaver and flush them both into the river to their deaths, the black and yellow spider spun a web-line that attached to Peter and zipped itself towards him. The moment it landed, it bit down, its fangs plunging into Peter's neck.

Only the body of an unconscious, brown-haired boy, taller and more well-toned than Peter Parker could have ever dreamed of becoming, washed up on the shore. The spider was nowhere to be found, its fragile body having been crushed due to the water pressure. Peter Parker in a sense had perished with it, both Peter and the spider having been dead for hours now.

And yet in another sense, they had both survived...

... him as the One, and it as the Other.

To be continued.