He was used to the shaking of the ground by now. The blasted earthquakes seemed to come near daily, and usually twice a day at least. However long it was he'd been in that god forsaken place already, it seemed on too many days that the whole place barely ceased it's trembling and shifting at all. But this was so far from the usual earthquakes that he so knew to wrack the place. Now, the ground cracked open somewhere up ahead and small mounds of dirt and sand and plant matter churned up from the growing turmoil below.

The churning of the ground was strangely localized at least. And Ben reflected - as he stumbled backward, clumsily grabbing for a pillar attached to a structure somewhere high above for balance - that least that was something to be glad of. He grabbed quickly for his gun, slung over one shoulder with a worn strap. And adjusted it as quickly as he could in his hands, before the next burst of motion underground made him stumble again. And this time he crashed against the pillar, feeling a painful jolt though his body, as his lower back took the full force of the impact.

"For God's sake, man," someone exclaimed, close beside him. And a firm hand yanked him forward, away from the pillar, holding his arm just a second longer until Ben managed to balance himself. "Stay on your clumsy feet. Are you trying to die today!"

Ben said nothing, because he knew very well it wasn't a question. He just stood still, instead, allowing the young man – another nameless face in a seeming endless sea of still unnamed people – to shove the gun tighter into his hands. From the look in the fellow's dull blue eyes, he clearly dared to hope only that the newcomer wouldn't accidentally shoot himself in the foot. The ground shook again, far harder then ever before. Clumps of dirt rose up dangerously close now. And Ben gripped the gun tightly, almost worried the vibrations coursing through his body from the ground under his feet, would cause his hands to misfire the weapon.

'Ellie..' the word was silent, said only in his own head, as he looked around frantically through the tight packed group of 'his' people 'Where is Ellie?'

"Here goes nothing, guys and gals!" Someone called out, standing close to Ben's other side. And he recognized the voice of the small tribe's decided leader, before the large man nudged him with an elbow to the shoulder, almost cheerfully.

"Try not to let the flashes blind ya, eh boy," the large man muttered reddish hair falling into his face as he laughed somehow in that strange moment. And before Ben could even question what he'd meant by 'flashes' the leader laughed again loudly. "You'll see, boy. Just.. try not to loose track of this thing. Typical rookie mistake that is."

It all broke into utter chaos in the next second. And for a second too long, Ben could only stand gasping his shock, at the thing that broke free of the ground, to stand massive and towered above the group, while gun fire instantly broke out.

"My... God..." he muttered, surely just loudly enough to be heard at all. Because the thing he was looking at – the dark and hunching figure, snapping sharp and snarling teeth in front of him, with it's claws clearly so ready to rip any one of 'his' tribemates to pieces... and all while its tail waved dangerously from one side to the other flinging wicked sharpened spines – it was far bigger still than the stories he'd been told over cooking fires had ever managed to imply.

And there, a good ways away, and closer than many of them, to one, if not both of the razor sharp claws, was Ellie. He'd recognized her quickly by her pale blond hair, still scruffy as it grew longer over the past weeks. She stood, now armed with a shotgun of her own. And though her eyes were wide with her obvious shock and horror of the whole situation, she was already firing surprisingly near perfectly between fast reloads.

'"Ellie!" Ben screamed out loud, yelling across the gathered crowd. Good lord, what what she doing. She didn't need to be involved in any of this madness. "You get the hell out of here!"

His heart dropped, and he forced back his frustration, when she only glared defiance at him, standing her stubborn ground in the middle of reloading.

"Fire!" the tribe leader – Jessie.. his name came to Ben at the strangest of moments – hollered, over the sound of guns already firing steadily. "Keep on firing. Best case we kill her... but at the least we send her runnin'!"

"What ya waitin for, Boy?" Jessie barked, somehow still laughing even now as he elbowed Ben again, while barely braking his own constant firing. "Shoot!"

"Hey, stupid," another voice – this one higher and loud... taunting and laughing – exclaimed over the noise.

Ben looked around, first confused and then utterly disbelieving when he understood that she – a tiny redheaded girl, her clothes muddied somehow from the fight, and jumping up and down with arms waving – was actually fully daring to taunt the... creature.

She held a firing weapon of her own. Hers seemed to be one that had been rapid firing with barely a need to reload a chamber somehow. But now she instead stood, leaning again it with the end of it's barrel in the dirt, while she prepared to throw whatever it was she held in her hand.

"Three! Two! One!" the fearless girl screamed over the still steady gunfire. And in a second more there was light all around them all, blindingly bright and forcing Ben to blink, then close his eyes in pain.

Unable to be sure what he was firing at, while his eyes swam with colored blobs of light, he paused in his shooting until his vision returned to him again. But as soon as it had – and it took only seconds, though those second seemed to drag – he took aim once more. And as he did so, his eyes found Ellie again in the tight packed group. She was okay – or at least he could force himself to assume so anyway. Her own eyes were blinking painfully – clearly she was half way blinded for the moment by the flashing too. But she was on her feet and in the fight all the same. Ben only wished again she'd run...

Another bright flash followed quickly behind the first. And then another after that. But this time he was ready for them both – he'd learned fast to listen to the fearless girl's fast warning countdowns. And somewhere in the back of his awareness, he understood now exactly why she was so loudly yelling out numbers at all.

Aim – shoot – eyes shut... flash! Aim – shoot again. He was learning. And he was certainly trying just as hard as anyone, surely. But the laughter of the tribe... it still sounded – though somewhat muted now – in their voices as they spoke to each other, screaming commands, and yelling warnings. Yes there was certainly fear – uncertainty that came with any great danger. But still.. they were so very experienced and they knew so well what they were doing in the moment, that it was almost as much a game to them, than it was true danger. They'd done this ten... twenty times before. And it made Ben shudder inwardly, to know this was far from a new, or an unheard of situation.

There was another flash. And the gunfire had by now become just a constant endless noise, echoing through the huge cavern. Ben's arms ached from the weight of his gun – far heavier than any he'd used in some other life he could just barely remember. And it was much harder to fire too – he felt like he was barely getting the hang of continuous firing... he still he did the best he could because he could do little else. Another countdown – yet another flash... and a bellowing roar filled the cavern. Not the first time the creature they fought had roared like that... but it felt far louder now. And Ben shuddered from the horrible sound. It had made the blood in his body drop to his feet the first time he'd heard it.

Somewhere, among the noise of bellowing roars and shouted commands and firing guns, somebody screamed. Ben looked around fast for the source of that sound, because his mind told him somehow, through a muted haze, that it was important. That scream – it was most certainly a human sound. A female voice. And one filled with a sudden, and absolute terror. But it stopped almost as soon as it had started. Ben looked around quickly, forcing his vision to pick out only one shape, one flash of motion at a time, in the still growing chaos.

He watched someone slip in slick mud, churned up from under the ground. And he saw – to his dismay – someone flung into the air. And he registered only in shocked passing, that it was someone small framed and bloodied. But he simply couldn't pick out who it was that had screamed so horribly.. and in his mind that's what mattered then. Not the redheaded girl, as he'd first assumed. She was standing exactly were she'd been before, her hand holding whatever it was that she was continuously throwing to create her flash-bang attacks. And though she was now suddenly shaken visibly, she was otherwise unharmed.

"She is... retreating underground," someone's voice said, somewhere nearby. Some man in a now torn up shirt. And he waved his gun – presumably still loaded - around a little while he frowned.

"Gone to her borrow to lick her wounds no doubt," said Jessie. And he walked up quickly to stand beside his still unnamed tribesman, and pointed his gun barrel to a fleeing dirt track, as it raced away from them. He shrugged then, and added in a confidant tone, "we got 'er good though I think. It's a fair chance she'll just die down there."

"Welcome to the aberrant ark, Boy," the tribe leader exclaimed, turning his attention to Ben in under a second. And he smacked him hard across the backs of his shoulders, laughing again – though shakily now. "You really are one of us around here now! Yeah. Always a terrifying thing... one's first reaper encounter. But good god, you look like you're about to hit the floor or somethin'"

"I'm fine," Ben answered, realizing only after he'd spoken out loud that Jessie was right. Suddenly he fought hard just to stay on his feet.

"Everyone looks look crap, when they're nearly dead from terror after their first reaper sighting up close," the red haired girl said behind them. And she laughed too, shaking her head as she hopped easily over a small pile of blue glowing crystals in her path. "But man, you really look like garbage!"

"I had no idea they were nearly that big," Ben said, because he simply knew better than to tell the mouthy red head to piss off, instead. "I've seen the still images from the surface of this place. And it's hard to believe they're really that.."

"They're not," the girl answered. And perhaps she wasn't so terrible after all, because she quickly tossed a water jar to Ben, urgently motioning him to drink from it, while she went on explaining with another strangely lighthearted laugh. "Those up there... Yeah, just an endless supply of angry young males for a well trained drake to hunt for sport. Wait 'til you see the surface of the world for yourself... It's amazing, and terrifying, and..." She would have surely chattered on. But Jessie stopped her with a hand lightly rested on her shoulder from behind.

"Boy's gotta learn to shoot much faster first, Katie." He laughed again, and shook his head. "Not to mention manage to stop himself from looking like he's about to soil himself in fright!"

Ben found himself glaring again, now fighting a growing urge to tell the tribe leader to piss off, right along with that still irritating girl. And he might just have done it too. But the look on the face of some young man – who came hurrying up behind the three of them while they talked, his clothing dirty with the same mud that covered the whole lot of them – made him stop near dead.

This man frowned, dead serious among the strangely lighthearted and causal mood all around them. And he fidgeted uncertainly with his fingertips, while shifting his weight from one foot to the other slowly. The look on his face, drained of color and near expressionless, made Ben appear calm by comparison. And Jessie, clearly having noticed this at once, turned to him, his own face asking silent questions.

"We have... we have got a..." the man stammered. His voice shook as much as his hands were now. And he hopped from foot to foot faster. "We have a... a... situation."

The leader's face fell at once. And the light and laughing mood of anyone clearly in earshot, was gone at once.

"Define... situation," he muttered, seriously.

"One of those new arrivals," the shaken young man said, gasping for breath a little between his frantic words. "The... the little pale haired girl.. she's..."

He said no more, instead running off again the way he'd come, his explanation half finished. But it didn't matter. The tribe leader was already running after him, with the girl – Katie – close behind him.

'Ellie!' Ben's mind screamed. But he couldn't even manage to gasp out that single word, while he fought to force himself to move. His limbs were frozen though, his body refusing to respond to commands, as rapid fire realizations whiled through his awareness. The scream – that horrible and blood curdling, near inhuman shriek that had been impossible not to have heard... some person – a small and fragile one – flung into the air as the scream was cut short so abruptly. He recalled a flash of pale blond hair visible somehow among the dirty grime that covered the flung body.

"No.. no!" He managed to mumble, he voice just barely returning. He had to be wrong. He had to be overthinking in his panic. It couldn't have been Ellie that had screamed like that... but then.. why had she not come to chattered with him among the others that already had? Finally, with every bit of will he had, he made his feet move. And quickly he was running fast, to follow the others.

For the second time that awful day, the blood in his body seemed to drain into his feet, when he reached the still unmoving figure that lay awkwardly discarded, her body crumpled on the rocky ground. He recognized her instantly, despite every bit of his denial, and the blood that soaked her clothing.. her hands... and even streaked over her hair and face. It covered the ground too – a spreading pool of red around her. And Ben, barely educated beyond the bare basics, still had the common sense to understand that amount of blood-loss rarely ended well.

"Ellie.." he mumbled. And with his heart pounding in his ears, he watched the tribe leader for a moment, kneeling beside the still and silent body, and daring to wonder why it was he was so clearly bothering to even look for any sign of life now - which he certainly was indeed doing. "She is... dead..?"

Was it a question, he was asking the other fellow? Or the statement of a certain fact? Ben wasn't sure himself even as he said it. Still, he was both shocked and disbelieving when the large framed tribe leader shook his head just a little, still not looking up.

"Nah' she's not dead," Jessie muttered. And he fumbled without looking, toward the simple radio in his back pocket, his hand finally managing to find and grab it. He shook his head slowly, his face falling despite the unlikely decent news. "She mighta' been better off it she was..."

"You've never said that about any of the others," Katie exclaimed in obvious protest. And Jessie only shook his head again.

"Any others have always had a choice in this. This new arrival... this.. unfortunate girl... this.. this is.. bad..."

"So..." Katie said, so clearly thinking quickly. "We're not that far from the hazard zone, where we are right now. I say, we carry her down to radioactive element and leave her just a moment on the ground. If she's survives this... she'll never need to know..."

"She's nearly dead as it is," Jessie countered, far too bluntly. "And you're suggesting we surely kill her entirely from radiation exposure... she'd never survive for even a minute given her current condition."

"You said yourself she might be better off..." Katie didn't finish her statement. But she certainly didn't need to either.

Ben, had been standing, his feet frozen to the spot again just as if his boots were were coated in lead. And his mind had been slow, though and awareness tumbling through it as he observed them all – and everything around him – as an outsider in his own body. But he fought for control again in that instant, questioning the passing of time while the others appeared to simply debate and argue instead of doing anything truly useful. But he understood all the same that it was was only seconds that were passing – and all the while, both of the arguing parties had been busy on the ground doing... clearly whatever they could even if not much. Fighting off his horrifying disassociation, Ben dropped to the ground beside the others, looking from one of them to the other, but mostly at Ellie. She wasn't dead at all. He saw that now so clearly, in the slow confused, and barely conscious blinking of her eyes. Finally he saw further confirmation, in the weak uncoordinated and barely obvious struggles of her arms as she tried to move.

"She's gotta decide for herself what to do now," Jessie said, mumbling his words as he looked up the winding path that led back to their permanent base structures, far out of sight from their current positions. "It's a toss up either way, whether she lives or dies. And she's got a right to know that... Right now she's barely conscious, and certainly can't begin to to make that call." He was silent for a second, appearing to think, before he spoke again, decisively. We've gotta get her out of here. And I think it should be safe enough to move her..."

The tribe leader was so obviously cautious as he moved to stand, talking Ellie with him supported in his clearly well more than strong enough arms. And seemingly just barely aware enough to be confused, the nearly dead young lady managed then to mumble something that didn't even begin to sound like words. She struggled again too, to move... probably struggling now to free herself.

"you're alright there, girl," he said. His voice was far quieter and slower than usual. "Don't move. Just let me lift ya.."

"Wait.. you can't mean she..." Ben's thoughts were still a blur. And he fought to control his shaking as full understanding dawned on him, however slowly.

He recalled hearing stories from the camp, that never ceased to make him shake his head with disbelief, while he'd laughed it off and voiced his denial – though on so many levels he knew it was never just 'scare the newcomers' tales at all.

"No, no no!," he mumbled. Balancing badly enough on his knees as it was, he felt his balance fail entirely as he fell to the ground in a clumsy heap, before immediately making himself sit up, then stand, shaking hard. "Not her..."

My notes/ firstly, just a simple but certainly sincere thanks for reading. And I look forward to any feedback.. positive or negative. This is only the first chapter of something that should be at least a few chapters long. I have a growing story line plotted. Don't worry. This would be a silly place to leave you hanging.

Secondly, I am certainly an Ark player.. and I know how to write. But I've never written anything for Ark. I've wanted to try for a while though. And this story is the result of running with a couple of ideas that wouldn't leave me be. So let's so how this one goes.

I realize most people in the Ark community either like aberration, or tend to absolutely hate it. I personally find it to such an interesting map. And I was always surprised to see no one really writing Ark fanfiction for that one. I'm taking on the challenge of giving it a try, in hopes of bringing it to life in a way that's about as 'lifelike' and less video game, as one would think possible for such a place.

Also, I'm not sure yet what direction I want to go in yet, in terms of content rating. Do I keep it tame, for the sake of a 'T' rating, playing it safe while still writing what I want to write. Or... do I venture in mature territory, with less concern for language and all that, plus the chance of at least one full on horror level scene. Again, open to opinions.