Hi, again! SmarmySmirk here. Just to let you know, I am thinking of making a sort of trilogy, where Calvin and Hobbes go from ARK: Survival Evolved to ARK: Scorched Earth to ARK: Aberration. I don't know if I'll actually get that far, but I will do my best!

Also, in this story, Calvin can't use his specimen implant to level up his stats. Instead, he'll actually have to work out and practice to get better and stronger.

Please Review and Enjoy!

Amongst the many trees and bushes that lined the beach, it wasn't too difficult to find what was certainly one of the most common creatures around. The Dodo. Plump, overly curious, and flightless, these Raphus Cucullatus weren't really much of a threat to anything bigger than themselves. They never fought back when attacked, instead opting to run and hide in a thorny bush.

They were extremely passive, and didn't seem to understand a threat when they saw one. Of course, giant, carnivorous animals never really attacked them, as they would make nothing more than a small crumb on their large, everyday meal.

Their extinction now made sense to Calvin as he stalked a small waddle of them, all feeding on a small berry bush stocked with… not red, but faded indigo berries. They resembled blueberries in their look, which he never really liked as much as raspberries.

He blinked to refocus his attention. He was getting distracted from his goal.

Stalking forward, he did his best to employ the lesson that Hobbes had taught him. With immense care, he slowly lifted up his left foot before making sure to touch down with the outer edge before rolling the rest of his sole down onto the forest floor. Keeping his weight evenly distributed, he picked his target, and, raising his hatchet in anticipation, accidentally took another step.

"Snap!" A twig broke under his toes, making all of the dodos look up.

Aw, shoot, Calvin thought, and leaped out of the brush at his prey, which quickly scattered in a flurry of fluttering wings and frightened jumps, all of them running in different directions to confuse him.

Picking a target, he speared out an arm, and, lunging, brought the bird down onto the forest ground with his weight. Aiming for the neck, he brought down his hatchet and-

"Thunk!"

The bird was dead, its head freed from its body. Looking up, Calvin went to kill a second dodo, and looked around to discover that they had all already escaped. One was still visible, waddling away before promptly disappearing in a thorny thicket.

Calvin lowered his hatchet. Apparently, these birds were better at running away than he thought. They probably had a lot of practice. Sighing, he picked up the one that he had killed and turned to walk back to the beach. It looked like they would eat just one dodo instead of two toni-

He stopped, surprised at seeing Hobbes sitting a few feet away from him.

"Whoa!" he exclaimed, jumping back in reaction. "Hobbes, what are you…" He trailed off, for in the tiger's jaws was a second dead dodo. As they looked at each other, one with mirth and the other with confusion, Hobbes dropped the bird and nodded at the one in Calvin's left arm.

"Nice stalking, there," Hobbes told him, grinning, "but you might want to work more on finesse."

"Where did you come from?" Calvin asked. "I thought you were at the beach!"

"Well, actually, I was secretly following you all the way to the dodos, just in case you messed up… which you did."

"Well, I'm learning," Calvin muttered. "You just wait, and soon I'll hunt small creatures better than you ever could!"

"Whoa, there, tiger," Hobbes joked. "I don't know about soon. After all, this hunter's got a decade of experience hunting you under his belt."

"I'm not a small creature!" Calvin exclaimed, and began to tromp off, back towards the beach.

"Well, aren't you gonna thank me?" Hobbes called after him. "I'm the one teaching you how to hunt!"

Calvin said nothing; he just continued to make his way back to the safety of the open beach.

Chuckling, Hobbes began to follow his best friend. Sometimes, Calvin just couldn't take it when he was outsnarked… which happened a lot.

"Hey, Calvin."

"Yeah?" Calvin asked as he and Hobbes walked along the beach, still heading for the nearest beacon in the sky... one of a few currently visible, and blue in coloration.

After killing the dodos, he had taken some handmade twine and had used it to string both of the birds together. Now, he was carrying both of the rather heavy sources of nutrition by draping the twine over his back and shoulders, one dodo attached to each end and both bumping along his ribs from time to time.

"What do you think happened?" the tiger asked.

"Specifics, please?"

"Sorry. I mean, how did we get here? Where even is here?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," Calvin shrugged. "...Maybe it was aliens, who for some reason dropped us off on a planet which just happens to contain dinosaurs. Maybe they themselves were planted here by ancient, sentient, spacefaring beings 65 million years ago."

"...That's way more than not having, 'the slightest idea,'' Hobbes pointed out after a few seconds. "So, what, you think Galaxoid and Nebular visited, you got on their nerves, and they dropped us off here?"

"Nah. Why would they come back?" Calvin dismissed the notion. "It's been almost ten years since their last visit, and besides, I already gave them Earth. What more would those aliens want?"

"Maybe they figured out that you aren't actually the Supreme Potentate of Earth," Hobbes suggested.

"But how could they know?" Calvin argued. "I mean, I told them, and they were stupid enough to take me at my word."

"True that," Hobbes giggled. "If I were an alien, I would have checked to make sure that I was actually talking to the real ruler of Earth. But maybe they came to their senses and realized that they should check up on that."

"Well, I don't remember them abducting us, do you? (By the way, it's your turn to carry these dodos)."

"...well, yeah…" Hobbes stopped and thought about it as Calvin draped the twine over his back. "The last thing that I remember is sitting in our treehouse."

"Same here," Calvin nodded. "But, maybe something's missing from my memory."

"Sounds like some sort of plot for a movie," Hobbes chuckled.

They continued walking for a few minutes, neither one of them saying anything to the other. The day wasn't particularly sunny; in fact, a thin but large spread of clouds had obscured most of the sun, casting a gray tone on the beach.

"Y'know, maybe we're in the afterlife," Hobbes suddenly suggested.

"...What?!" Calvin scoffed. "I dunno. I thought the afterlife was a world where you could do anything you wanted. Where there was nothing to tie you down from doing fun stuff, or no one to give you homework, where you could explore to your heart's content."

"Well, maybe the afterlife is different from what you- or anyone thought. Maybe it's a bit of land surrounded by water in a strange and mysterious prehistoric world filled with death lizards and… hey, do you think that we're on an island?"

"Well, I'd need to walk the entire circumference of this place to make sure, but it sure seems like an island," Calvin shrugged. "Say, what did you imagine the afterlife to be like?"

"A pristine wilderness," Hobbes immediately answered. "Earth, but unspoiled and covered with nothing but beauty as far as the eye can see."

"So, basically, a world without any people to mess it all up?" Calvin grinned.

"Yeah," Hobbes nodded. "Of course, you'd come by to visit every now and then, or maybe you could even stay with me as we explored that world."

"That sure sounds fun," Calvin grinned.

For the next hour, the two best friends continued their trek towards the beacon, passing the time by pondering questions and finding strange creatures on the beach, such as a small group of animals that looked like a pug and a lizard combined, with canines sticking out on each side of their mouths.

Even more interesting was when a large lizard twice the height of a Komodo dragon walked out of the trees. It was a brownish-orange creature, with a rather bulky appearance and a short, thick head that looked a bit funny to Calvin. When it first appeared, it immediately noticed Calvin and Hobbes, and took a step toward them. The two friends, wary from their lesson with the Megalodon, were on edge, and Hobbes snarled to warn it away. Surprisingly, the lizard had stumbled as it frantically turned tail and ran from them as fast as it could.

Pteranodons flew majestically in the sky, several of them even diving into the water offshore and emerging with fish in their long, hard beaks. While entranced by their flight, Calvin and Hobbes remembered to keep a close eye on them, in case one swooped in low and carried off Calvin.

"See?" Hobbes had told him. "Because you're small prey, those Pteranodons might fly down and try to eat you!"

"I am not small prey!"

Eventually, the clouds broke to reveal the shimmering sun, which was about to head into the late afternoon hours when the clambered over a small ridge. They hadn't paid much attention to how far away the beam of blue light was, engrossed in their current argument over what Calvin should sew.

"...I'm telling you, Calvin, you gotta make something to protect your soft, tender feet! I'm surprised that you've managed to last this long without walking in pain," Hobbes was saying.

"Well, you aren't wearing anything, and you're doing fine," Calvin countered.

"That's because I've gone my whole life without wearing shoes," Hobbes told him. "My feet are hard and already protected from the twigs and the rocks."

"All the more reason I should go barefoot! It'll toughen up my own feet."

"Uh, maybe don't do it with a trial by fire," Hobbes advised. "And besides, why do you need pants? They're not as important as footwear right now."

"Well, call it common social etiquette speaking, but I feel uncomfortable without anything on besides this pair of gray underwear."

"Where's the six-year-old Calvin who used to go around nude, not caring at all?" Hobbes asked.

"But I'm fifteen now," Calvin said. "I've changed a bit."

"Mhm. Oh, well," Hobbes wistfully sighed. "As my dear ol' dad used to say, "Humans, like White-Faced Monkeys, are..."

Both of them stopped talking as they looked ahead. Off a ways from the beach, in the trees not far off from where they stood was the beacon of light, a faint humming sounding from it. In the middle of that tall column of light, something… a shape, descended gracefully into the forest.

"Hobbes, we made it!" Calvin grinned. "C'mon!"

Both of them carefully made their way down the steep hill, wary but excited at the same time. Through the twisted, dark-leaved trees they went, their minds focused on but one thing. The thing that could help out with their current predicament; the light. They kept walking through the ferns and the grass, until they came to a bright clearing… a perfect circle in the forest. A large, wide area of grass around the place was blackish-gray, singed to a crisp by the descending heat of the glowing orb which was moments away from touching the ground.

Suddenly, a flash lit up the shadows of the forest in a blue splendor, causing both of them to squint. When the light dissipated, in front of them floated a bizarre sight.

A capsule, made of disconnected black metal pieces and glowing blue light, radiating out of the seams, hovered in the air just a few inches above the ground. The beam of azure light that reached into the sky had shrunk in diameter, allowing for a better view of the strange, rhomboid prism. Pulsating, it sat there, several smaller shards of the ebon metal whirling round the main body, attached by seemingly nothing.

Slightly frightened, the two of them scootched behind a large rock, and peeked out at the pod with similar expressions of astonishment and disbelief.

"Calvin…" Hobbes whispered. "What is that thing?"

"I dunno," Calvin shrugged, and scrutinized the strange, alien device. For a few minutes, both of them sat there, watching and waiting for any sort of irregular movement.

Finally, Hobbes asked, "What should we do?"

"...Well, it doesn't look like it's doing anything…" Calvin mumbled. "Let's try to establish contact with it."

"Do you think that there's someone in there?" Hobbes asked. "Like, an Alien?"

"Maybe," Calvin shrugged. "But we've dealt with 'em before. It could also be an A.I of some sort."

Walking out of cover, he began to slowly advance towards the strange, spinning prism, which was two times as high as himself. A couple feet away from it, he stopped and yelled, "Hey! Whoever's in there, show yourself!"

Nothing happened.

"Y'know, we're lost explorers in this world, and we don't know how we got here! So, if you're the responsible party for our current conundrum, come out here so that I can exchange a word or two with you!" He emphasized his demand with a show of grinding his fist into his palm.

Behind the rock, Hobbes facepalmed at the untactful diplomacy attempt in front of him. Suddenly, a thought struck him.

He turned his head to take a look at the implant on Calvin's wrist, which, as he suspected, looked incredibly similar in its design to the spinning, floating thing in front of him. Plus, it was pulsating with green light like never before.

"Hey, Calvin!" he yelled.

Calvin turned, and Hobbes gestured to his wrist as best as he could which earned him a confused look. Sighing, he tapped twice on it, and suddenly Calvin seemed to understand. He opened up his implant, and watched as the hologram screens came up in front of him.

For a second, Calvin looked at it, trying to find something new that hadn't popped up before when he noticed it; a rough, simplified drawing that resembled the large object in front of him. He tapped on it with unparalleled excitement, which quickly vanished when he saw the words appear in front of him on a new screen.

Supply crate: "Loot!"

Time left: 1:56.

(Must be Experience Level 25 or higher to access Supply Crate)

For almost a whole minute, he stared at it, trying to figure out just what that meant. They had traveled for hours along the beach, trying to get here to find a clue as to where they were and how they could get back… and it was a Supply Crate?

"Well?" Hobbes' voice came from behind him, having decided to approach closer, out from behind the rock. "What did you find? Is there someone inside?"

"No…" Calvin mumbled under the noise of the pod's incessant humming. "There's no one here."

"...What?"

"Look!" He shoved the hologram into the tiger's face. "'Must be Experience Level 25 or higher to access!'"

"Wait, what's a supply crate?!" Hobbes asked loudly over the pod's rapidly increasing buzzing sound. "And what's an Experience level again?"

"I'm at level three right now! That means that this whole trek was for-" Calvin began, when suddenly, the Supply Crate began vibrating, waves of glowing, translucent blue light floating off of the main body in ripples. The pieces of strange metal floating around the prism sped up, and suddenly, with a quick flash, the entire thing dissolved into thin air in front of their eyes.

For a whole 'nother minute, Calvin was completely, unwaveringly silent. Then, with a deep breath, he exclaimed, "Are you kidding me?!"

"Calvin," Hobbes asked, "what's wrong?"

"This! This whole, stupid walk!" Calvin growled. "We go all the way over here to find out what this strange thing is, and if it's a way back home, and what does it do? It gives me false excitement, tells me that I can't open it, and then disappears in front of me!"

"Well, okay, but at least we know that it's a Supply Crate," Hobbes broke in, anxious over Calvin's foul mood. "That means that, if we can find one that you can access, we can get free supplies!"

Calvin stopped his rambling, still frustrated and disappointed. "Well, maybe. But right now, I'm done with this place. This whole thing was a complete waste of time, and there is nothing to gain from coming here."

Turning, Calvin began walking back the way that they had come, muttering, "Let's go."

Suddenly, as Hobbes began to follow, a piercing sound shattered Calvin's foul mood, striking through his and Hobbes' hearts with an ominous and desperate feeling that shook them out of their stupor.

Not far off, someone screamed.

:D