The three natives crossed the rope bridge one at a time, the young man hauling a bag over his shoulder. As they came across, I instinctively reached out to shake Toando's hand, not thinking that he might not recognize the gesture. Thankfully, he did, or at least a form of it, as he grasped my forearm in a warrior's shake.

  "Greetings, Connor, it is good to see you are well," Toando said, giving my arm a single shake before releasing me. "I see you have more people?"

  "Yes, this is Carlos. He hadn't arrived by the time we met you," I explained, gesturing to my newest soldier. "You have a new member as well…"

  "Ah, yes, I suppose he wasn't with me the day we met," He agreed, gesturing to the younger man, who had put down his heavy-looking pack. "This is my son. He has yet to earn his true name, so call him Tallneck."

  Part of me wanted to get straight to the point, but my curiosity got the best of me.

  "Tallneck?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

  "Yes, he is the tallest boy of his age group," He explained, using an easily recognizable "proud parent" voice. "The name seemed appropriate until he could manage to earn his own."

  "How would he earn his name?" I asked, before apologizing. "Sorry, I am curious about your customs. I realized too late last time we met that we didn't even ask your tribes name."

  "We understand your curiosity, we find ourselves wondering many things as well. We are the Oakanrest," Toando explained, Yalna nodding proudly beside him. "And when Tallneck comes of age later this year, he will, through a feat of bravery or craft, earn the right to choose his name. It is our people's coming-of-age tradition."

  "I hope to earn the right to take my grandfather's name," Tallneck said. "He was a hunter, like my father, like I hope to be. And he used the same weapons I prefer."

  Tallneck's voice was a bit younger than I expected, and between that and his father explaining he was tall for his generation, I mentally adjusted his age in my head. As he explained that he used the same weapon as his grandfather, he touched something on his back, as well as a contraption on his hip. The weapon on his back, at glance, looked like a, but I wasn't sure what the weapon on his hip was. It kind of looked like a, but slightly less complicated.

  "I see, that is fascinating," I said truthfully, surprising myself a bit. "I look forward to learning more about the Oakanrest in the future."

  "Do your people have a name?" Tallneck asked, glancing at his dad after he spoke, looking for his approval. After Toando nodded, Tallneck smiled.

  For a moment, I panicked, not knowing what I should say. Didn't want to lie as, depending on how things went, we could end up spending a lot of time with the Oakanrest people. On the other hand, not having a name was weird for a group that, according to what we had already told them, was quite large, just from another location. After all of that rushed through my brain, I forced myself to speak up.

  "I believe the Wasteland Company will do for now," I finally responded. "We haven't had a chance to come up with a name for our new location yet."

  "Wasteland Company?" Yalna repeated, cutting it as a question. "That name is strange."

  "Maybe, but you can't expect two different groups, separated as they are, to name things the same way," I pointed out, before shaking my head and redirecting the conversation. "I'm sorry, I would love to talk more about our names, but unfortunately, we were waiting here for a reason. We were hoping you might be able to help us."

  "Well… there is no harm in hearing what you need," Toando responded diplomatically, glancing at Yalna.

  "Thank you," I said with a nod. "Well, my team and I have been tasked with hunting a sawtooth. Do you know of any close by? Preferably as small a group as possible, and somewhere with favorable terrain."

  When I mentioned the sawtooth, Yalna's hand swung out and grabbed Toando's arm. I thought she was going to yell at me, but when I asked my questions, she calmed slightly, realizing I wasn't asking her hunting partner to help with the hunting part.

  "A sawtooth? You have chosen dangerous prey," he said after a pause. "If you had asked for help with that hunt, I would have had to decline. Advice about hunting one of them, however? I can do that."

  Yalna coughed, causing Toando to freeze up for a moment. His son looked amused, a smirk forming on his face that he tried to hide by looking away.

  "For a fair trade," the older man added, Yalna nodding at the addendum.

  "Of course," I responded, wincing a bit as I considered what I could offer, which was very little. "Though, in all honesty, trade will be difficult for the moment. All of our resources are rather… focused at the moment."

  "...A favour then?" He suggested. "One fair favor, as you define it."

  "... Agreeable, as long as it's not violence against another tribe or peoples," I said with a nod. "I would prefer not to get involved in inter-tribe conflicts."

  "Other than a few traveling raider tribes, we are at peace with our neighbors," He assured us. "I would not ask something like that."

  "Then we have a deal," I said with a smile, reaching out and shaking his forearm. I then gestured to a stump nearby, a place for him to sit.

  The three settled in, sitting down as we retook our seats. Toando explained that sawtooths usually patrolled in groups of up to three, walking around areas where zoomorphs are consistently hunted in large groups, even past the arrival of scrappers. Their only purpose is to protect these other zoomorphs, however, how proactive they are with that task depends on local hunter activity. They may follow along with herds, accompanied by watchers as they stand guard. They may also hunt people actively, ambushing groups off roads, even attacking small settlement groups.

  "Your best bet is along the far side of Titan's Eye, the lake at the end of this river," he eventually said, gesturing downstream. "Last I knew, there is a patrolling pair about a thirty-minute walk along the shore, starting on the other side of the river."

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "A pair… How tightly do the pair patrol together?" I asked with a wince, not really excited about the concept of fighting of these bastards.

  "Enough that if you are lucky, you can catch one of them without the other noticing," the experienced hunter explained. "Their patrol is wide, about half of the lake, but they meander and pace, looking for humans to kill, so you can catch up to them quickly."

  "Do you have any advice for killing them?" Joseph asked. "We've collected some blaze to make a trap…"

  "A good idea," Toando agreed with a smile. "The less you have to face them head-on, the better. Even better, their weakness is fire and intense heat. You have stumbled into a solid plan."

  "That's… reassuring," I admitted, sitting a little easier. "What do you think the best way to lure them into a trap would be?"

  "The best way would be to predict their path and lay traps in their way," he explained. "This is the best way to hunt many dangerous metal beasts. When done right, they won't even have time to realize they are being hunted."

  "And the alternative?"

  "Leading them to a trap with bait," He continued, sounding less enthused by the concept. "Some, like scrappers, can be led with metal corpses, but most… must be either chased into them or led into them. The sawtooth must be led."

  "And… can a person outrun a Sawtooth?"

  "Yes, most hunters could lead them a short distance into a trap," He responded, though he didn't seem to love the idea. "I wouldn't give this job to anyone without runner experience, however. One wrong step and it would be their last."

  "So it's not perfect, but we can make it work," Carlos pointed out, looking towards me. "Sounds like it's our best option, Sir."

  "It sounds like it's of our options," I responded, still not sold. "We will go home today, and hunt them tomorrow. If we see an opportunity, we will take it, whether it's trapping their path or leading them into one. But I also reserve the right to do neither if it looks too dangerous."

  Joseph and Carlos both nodded before I focused back on Toando, who seemed to approve of my words. I nodded before asking a few more questions about sawtooths, such as more about their weaknesses, and the area we would hopefully be able to find them in. Toando was confident that our blaze would do significant damage to the large, dangerous zoomorph, and he was hopeful that our weapons would be able to finish them off if necessary. Apparently, if we are capable of taking down chargers and striders, then with some more accurate shots, we should be able to take down the sawtooth, as long as we knocked or burned some of its armor off.

  After he answered all of our questions, we shook hands again before finally saying our goodbyes… before realizing that we were following the same path. We walked all the way down the river with the other three, awkwardly wondering when exactly we would separate. Eventually, we did, following the path that led through the forest to the connection point, while Toando, Yalna, and Tallneck all continued to follow the river.

  When we arrived back at the connection point, we spent a few minutes hiding the blaze canisters, eventually finding a small little nook along some rusted steel beams and a thick plate from the building wreck that stood around the connection tunnel. We covered it as best we could before heading back through the dark tunnel, back to the HQ. By the time we did, the sun was starting to set, with two, maybe three hours of light left.

  We made our way to the main hall, quickly checking in the quest, accepting the reward for a job we probably would have ended up doing anyway. A single ham radio was placed on the front desk of the main hall, in working order but not exactly useful. We didn't know who to talk to, and we were currently doing our best to noticed, which ran counter to blabbing in the open air.

  I'm sure eventually it would come in real handy, especially if we managed to get some personal radios working, but for now, it was just a desk ornament that Maxwell promised to scan through in his free time, trolling for interesting signals. Being able to listen in to local radio chatter could be useful, if we managed to find any. Of course, no one really knew how to use the radio either, so his first job would be figuring that out.

  After sitting down to have an early dinner, stale, plain, and barely edible that it was, we spent some time figuring out the best way to build our IEDs. After a bit of planning and some testing using old fire extinguishers from nearby buildings as stand-ins for the blaze canisters, we had our design. We would have to put them together on the other side, but we were confident that the design would work. Basically, by cutting the arm off of one of our BDUs, we could create a cloth loop that we could use to securely fasten the grenade between the blaze tanks, without trapping the grenade spoon from flicking off.

  I would have killed for some proper tools and materials, but then again, we wouldn't be able to bring them over anyway, so I guess I would really kill for some decent tools, materials, and the ability to bring more things back and forth.

  The next morning, we attempted to get over to the Horizon world as quickly as possible, but were waylaid at first by our new quests. I had assumed they would be nothing interesting, more hunting, gathering, or exploration quests, but their rewards ended up being pretty enticing. One was an addition to the HQ in the form of a large reinforced storage room. TO unlock that, we would have to earn, through selling or scaving, our first three thousand caps. From what I could see, that was an easy one to achieve. All we had to do was hold on to the quest until we had three thousand caps, activate it, and, according to what was on the label, immediately complete it. Depending on how tough a "reinforced" room was, I might end up clearing some of the storage out and making a panic room of sorts, in case Maxwell and any other non-combatants we picked up along the way, get into trouble while we were gone.

  The second mission was something we would be doing once we completed the sawtooth kill quest. By hunting three deer in the Horizon world, the quality of our rations would go up. The quest noted that it would not suddenly shift to gourmet food, but they would have a noticeable flavor, which was better than what we had at the moment.

  It would be unfortunate to kill three deer and not eat them, but getting a bump in food quality was well worth it. The quest required that we bring the carcasses back, so at least we wouldn't be leaving them out to rot.

  "Clearly, those are pretty high on our to-do list, but we have an important mission already," I pointed out, both of my soldiers nodding. "Let's focus on one major mission at a time."

  We quickly prepared our gear and made our way into the Horizon world, leaving Maxwell to his own devices once again. As soon as we were in the refreshing, green world, we started building our bombs. We collected seven canisters in total, but to keep things even and ensure our traps were designed the same, we decided to leave one canister off. Cutting off one of the arms of Joseph's and my own BDU, we created a pocket for our grenades and a latch for the pin, before connecting everything together. We obviously left the trap unset, so they couldn't go off as we walked, before storing them in our packs and heading out.

  It only took about half an hour to get to the river, then another hour to get to the hunter bridge. I would have liked to just swim across, but between our sensitive payload and the speed of the river, it just wasn't worth it. Still, it added a huge chunk of time to our trek to our target.

  Or at least where we hoped to find our target.

  We followed the river all the way down to the lake, stopping at the shore to look across. There, just as I remembered it, was the massive, still heavily damaged, its head blown to pieces, and its long tentacles curling and diving into the water.

  "Holy hell," Carlos said, his eyes wide under his helmet. "That's one big machine."

  "Big enough that it's hard to judge its scale," Joseph added. "I would hate to go against one of those. Even with a whole armored battalion."

  "Well, according to the second game, the main characters does it with a bow and arrow," I said, staring out at the massive machine, until I realized both of my soldiers were staring at me in disbelief. "What? I mean, she had a slingshot, too."

  I walked past them both, leaving them stunned for a good thirty seconds before they turned and began following, staying close as we walked around the shore. I knew that there were potentially dangerous things living in the water, so we stayed pretty high up along the shore, where it was a little safer.