After trudging through more desert than I really ever wanted to see in Scorched Earth, arriving on the cold, dark, and damp aberration arc was a surprisingly pleasant experience. Sure, it was mucky and wet, but after spending so much time amid hot sand that was exceedingly difficult to get out of your shoes, this was nothing.

"So, we're in the land of the glowing plants?" asked Vivian, slowly getting her barings.

"Yep. This heaven for you?"

She did like the glowing trees I'd gotten for her birthday.

"No. But it's up there."

XXXXX

A quick explanation on the Aberrant ARK: Sometime in the past, the survivors had figured out that each ARK had its own overseer. The survivors on the Aberrant ARK had tried to attack said Overseer with Nukes. It worked way too well - the Overseer was destroyed, but this also threw the ARK's climate systems out of whack, resulting in a world who's surface was now being bombarded by insane amounts of radiation. To survive, everything had been forced underground, which resulted in some spectacular variants of creatures you could find in other ARKs, supplemented by unique species found only on this ARK, like the Karkinos and the Basilisk.

Oh, and some human had accidentally gotten his mind loaded up into the Overseer's computers and taken its place. Now he was giant flesh monster and the main villain of ARK. Go figure.

For the moment, I wasn't totally concerned with what I had to deal with here, though. Right now, I needed to check back with Fide.

XXXXX

"WHO THE FUCK MAKES SUITS CALLED VALKYRIES?!"

Wow, Fide sounded angry.

"Um, Fide, how are things progressing?"

"Slowly, sir."

"How so?"

My subordinate took in a deep breath before responding. "The drones have continued their assault on our strongholds, and are now being backed up by both larger vessels and strangely maneuverable humanoid machines. At the moment, I know not the origins of these machines, or how they are managing to even scratch the paint on our equipment, much less destroy our machines. But I will find out how, and I will make them bleed."

I had no idea my subordinate could sound this scary. It was both unnerving and impressive. "I see. Carry on."

XXXXX

With my check in completed (and another mystery that needed solving), it was time to begin with taking over this ARK. And that meant setting up camp (already done) and taming local fauna - the latter of which would be especially important.

When the Aberrant ARK came into being, two new types of dangerous creatures showed up - the Seekers and the Reapers. The Reapers were the equivalent of the Xenomorph in this universe - they even had chestbursters to make their lifecycles even more disgusting. And if that wasn't bad enough, they often were served by small armies of chupacabra-like creatures called nameless.

Fortunately, these creatures had their own version of kryptonite - an energy source known as charge. Expose them to charge light, and the Nameless and Reapers would grow far more fragile. as they would lose their potent regenerative powers when facing this energy. For this reason, creatures at the base of Aberration's food web had the ability to produce charge light, allowing them to repel their predators without having too many other hindersome genetic mutations. From sheep to bugs to lizards to owls and things that defied categorization, these creatures were lifesavers...most of the time.

As it turned out, there was one variety of creature on Aberration that was attracted to charge energy. That would be the Seekers - winged flying squids that looked like something out of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. These creatures traveled in packs toward wherever the largest source of charge was and use it to strengthen themselves. This created a sort of balancing act on Aberration - collect enough charge to repel reapers and ravagers, but not so much that it would lure a seeker or five into your home. That probably held true for this universe as well.

Fact was, though, that we were a large community. So we'd need a lout of charge to defend ourselves against Nameless and Reaper incursions. Thus, we'd set about collecting every charge producing creature we could and started domesticating them all, hoping to amass enough charge so that we could defend against incursions until Rockwell was no longer a threat.

We soon found ourselves with a massive heard of glowing animals, all unsure of the fates that were awaiting them. Breeding programs were set up to feed their numbers, so that they would not be depleted so easily, allowing us a chance to siphon off some charge into ranged methods of dispatching our quarry.

We had to fight off a lot of seekers while we were doing this. At least they all tasted good.

All the while, I looked around the world, wondering what the next challenge we would face was to be.

Also, was it just me, or were we being watched?

XXXXX

Hidden within the cave network, the creatures watched as the new arrivals had begun gathering up the charge beasts, trying to puzzle out why he had intruded on their people's lands. Most looked human but some weren't. Yet they all seemed to get along.

Hopefully, the creatures could join them - trying to watch over their backs for so long was not helpful. Especially given the nature of this ARK - it's twisted biosphere produced abominations that sought to kill and consume everything else in existence until the one known as Rockwell reigned supreme over all. The other survivors had opposed him, but they had long since vanished.

Would these ones be able to fill in the old ones' shoes?

XXXXX

AN: Sorry for the late update, but I had a really exhausting last few weeks (my grandfather passed away and I got stomahc flu the next day during my graduation party. So please don't needle me about when I will update my other stories next - I will do so when I am ready.

Also, Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!