The Grand Confederacy were not savages. They had running water and electricity, organised cities and missile launchers, trade routes and alliances. With all that in mind however, sometimes the old ways were important. Here, in what had been Hiawatha National Forest, a young man, face smeared with camouflaging warpaint, prowled. The farms and fisheries around the waterways here had come under attack, and not by the typical young mirelurks or even raiders. No: a far more fearsome threat had been plaguing these people.

There was a reason why deathclaws rarely came up into the Grand Confederacy's territory. Part of it was temperatures: snow fell on the ground here in the winter, and the naked reptiles that they were, deathclaws would avoid the cold temperatures if at all possible, but another part of it was that their niche had already been occupied by a very different species. [i]Dogmen.[/i] Wakon Lefebre didn't pretend to know how they had come about, only that they had, and that they were now a very lethal part of life. Bipedal, some eight feet tall when fully grown, and looking exactly like what some pre-war books about 'werewolves' had described, dogmen were the apex predators of the region. Had the suspicion been that a pack had moved in, Wakon would not be here on his own, but all signs pointed to a lone male, having left his pack to try to find new territory for himself.

An excellent proving ground for the young warrior.

He had been stalking the beast for four days now, narrowing the location where it lived down, bit by bit. Every night-time raid, every slaughtered radstag or muffalo had provided him another piece of the puzzle, another clue as to where the beast was living. Today, he struck. It had to be to[i]day[/i] too: Dogmen were nocturnal creatures, and every night ran the risk of the tables being turned on Wakon. He wasn't sure if the beast had cottoned on to his presence yet, but he didn't intend on giving it a chance. For fighting the creature, some might have considered him underprepared. Across his back set a quiver of javelins, tightly-packed to keep them from rattling about, whilst in his hands was a home-made Brush Gun. Cottage gun making was a tried and tested role within the Confederacy, and although he knew the gun would fire straight and true, he only had one shot of .30-06 before needing to spend around several seconds to reload, a luxury the wounded Dogman would be unlikely to give him.

At last, he approached the beast's probable hide. A small cave, well-concealed by foliage, and close to a stream where the beast could drink and clean its fur after a hunt. There was precious little birdsong and not a hair from anything larger. The time at the moment was just past one in the afternoon, but dogmen were not heavy sleepers. He had to work quickly. Damp wood, piled high and with dry kindling added, would serve to drive the dogman from his cave. Lighting the fire, Wakon leapt across the stream and sighted the entrance of the cave as smoke began to build, then billow out from his quick construction. Within a minute, he could hear the dogman's snarls and growls. Moderating his breathing, he braced his brush gun, finger curling on the trigger. 

Then, in a snarling fury of teeth and fur, the dogman burst free from the cave, ripping at the foliage and snapping through the smoke. Wakon forced himself to concentrate- to focus, and squeezed the trigger firmly. There was a faint pop and a small jerk from the gun, but that was hardly what a brush gun firing was supposed to sound or feel like. He squeezed it again, and didn't hear the click of a hammer hitting a primer. A squib. Shit.

He broke the barrel open and drew out the clearing rod in one smooth motion. As he did, the dogman had left the smoke and was now staring at the fire, processing what it saw. Then, furious, it lifted up a dinner-plate sized paw and stomped it down onto the smoking pile. It repeated the process over and over, until the smoke no longer rose from its remains, then looked around suspiciously. Dogmen were smart enough to know fires didn't just happen, and he was hardly well-hidden here, so Wakon needed to move quickly. He had removed the squib already, and now, dropping the ejector rod rather than fumbling about to make it neat, slid in a new round.

The dogman had spotted him. It snarled once more and dropped to all fours, an explosive energy building within its body as it prepared to sprint over and crush this new nuisance. Wakon snapped the rifle shut and rested it once more on the log he had chosen, even as the dogman burst into a sprint, barrelling towards the hunter. As it came to the river it leaped over it, and just as it reached the apex of its height, Wakon fired. There was no misfire now, the gun bucked hard in his arms and the barrel spat smoke, the young man rolling to one side immediately. The dogman crashed down where he had been positioned, blood splattering across the dirt, and turned towards him, howling in pain and anger.

Wakon drew out the first of his javelins, taking a loose standing stance. The dogman pulled itself up to its feet, and as it did so, he hurled the javelin forward. The beast dodged it, shifting out of the way with surprising grace for something so large, then began to approach again, slower and more cautiously. It had taken a wound, but it knew that this was not a fight it could afford to retreat from. Another javelin bounced harmlessly off the creature's thick hide, and now it was too close to throw another. With a bestial scream of his own, Wakon drew his third javelin and hurled himself forward, sliding underneath the dogman's initial swipes and thrusting hard, impaling his spear deep between the creature's ribs and backing off to draw himself another. Three left.

The dogman whimpered in pain, ripping out the javelin with ease, but Wakon had no intention of allowing him time to rest. Moving around the creature, forcing it to turn on its bad side, he jabbed in again and again, keeping clear of its lethal claws whilst nicking it just enough to slow it down each time. At last, the great beast could no longer put up a fight and slumped down. The man could claim his victory.

Surely, Bonfire Base now awaited him.