Our valiant hero, Captain Scruffy, surveyed the landscape before him. He could see the remains of Sanctuary Hills in the foreground, somewhat untouched by the nuclear blasts but suffering from over 200 years of ruin and decay. After that, a broken down truck stop. Nearby that, the tower signaling the entrance to the nearby city of Concord. He could see in the fog the steeple of a church in Concord, and beyond that he could barely make out a few of Boston's highest skyscrapers. Captain Scruffy was surprised that they had the architectural integrity to last this long. Or at least he would have been, if he were paying attention. He was busy messing with the game settings.

He turned the difficulty mode to 'Very Easy,' so that he would never seriously be challenged by combat. Besides, reloading a save and having to play the last couple of minutes of the game over was a pain he wanted to avoid. He changed his HUD and Pip-Boy display to hot pink, for style. And in the Audio settings, he turned the radio all the way up. He planned to blast Diamond City Radio (whatever that was) through his wrist during his entire rise to glory.

Ah yes, his rise to glory. Captain Scruffy had one mission in the Commonwealth. Complete domination and control. He hoped that there was a main quest line that would allow him to rule everything just like there was in New Vegas. But how? He figured that he wasn't going to take Boston doing side quests. So he knew he'd have to swallow his pride and go try to find his son.

"I would be better off without that twerp anyway," he muttered under his breath although nobody was listening. But if finding Shaun was the key to becoming the king of the Commonwealth, then so be it. The first place to look was Sanctuary Hills.

Our hero hard jogged forward off the vault elevator platform, heading straight to his old neighborhood. He ran off a 20 foot cliff face like some sort of majestic mountain ram and followed his quest marker through Sanctuary until he bumped into Codsworth. The robot was unassumingly tending the garden in front of what used to be Scruffy's house.

"Codsworth. My old nemesis. Why did you have to survive? In my new kingdom I'm going to have you scrapped for parts."

"As I live and breathe... It's... it's really you!" exclaimed Codsworth in his detestable accent. Scruffy was so fed-up that he skipped through the entire conversation. His character and the robot talked about Nora's death and Shaun's recent kidnapping. Then Codsworth offered to search the neighborhood with Scruffy.

"Yeah, as if we'd find him here. I'm probably going to have to spend half this game looking for him, meet a bunch of fun, off the wall characters, and shoot a lot of people in the face before I get to him," came Captain Scruffy's reply. Codsworth stared at him blankly. Captain Scruffy sighed.

"All right. Lead the way."

What followed was a delightful romp around the neighborhood that ended in six bludgeoned bloatflies, and no Shaun. How surprising.

"They're… they're really gone, aren't they?" asked Codsworth, somewhat sheepishly. Captain Scruffy decided to give the circle button a try.

"Happy? That whole thing was a waste of time."

"I only wanted to help sir," said Codsworth, completely crestfallen, "M-maybe you could try Concord? I've seen people in that area, and they're only slightly heavily armed."

The robot's sad reply made Captain Scruffy feel bad about himself. It was actually his first recorded instance of remorse. The robot was still going to be executed though.

Concord, eh? It was a solid lead. Scruffy knew how the game worked, though. He would be handed a one lead after another on a railroad of uncanny detective work until he found the person he was looking for. And then his choices would open up some. It was like the other Fallout games, after all. The only question was how many leads it would take and how many people needed to be shot in the face before real choices presented themselves.

Our hero spent a few minutes looting Sanctuary and finding a few things of value. He boosted his Strength with a book called You're Special! He grabbed a couple of fragmentation grenades out of a trash can. He also walked away with a solid amount of Pre-War money. All the while, old world hits were playing through his radio, being jockeyed by one of the most awkward sounding, insufferable DJ's ever. Scruffy hoped there was something he could do to improve his favorite radio station, but that was going to have to be a side objective. He set out toward Concord going the way of the Red Rocket Truck Stop. Along the way, he found a tire iron sticking out of a dead scavenger.

"Yes!" he shouted, doing a small victory dance and taking a couple practice swings. He admired the animation and imagined people's faces being on the receiving end. After about five more minutes of daydreaming, he continued onward.

An object marker popped up in front of him, telling him to 'Greet the Dog.' He was in front of the Red Rocket Truck stop, halfway to the township of Concord.

"Dogmeat? Already? Hey, mutt! I work alone!"

At this, Captain Scruffy kept jogging toward his object marker. He smashed a couple of bloodbugs along the way, leveling up in the process. Our hero exclaimed in joy and took a perk that would allow him to do more damage with his tire iron. He hadn't even met real action yet, but now he was more ready. His objective marker led him to the main street of Concord. At the end of the street was a man dressed like a revolutionary war reenactor. He was firing laser blasts into raiders who besieged the museum and shouting for help. Though he sounded helpless, he was doing a mighty fine job of turning all of the raiders to ash.

"Hey! Save some for me!"

Scruffy sprinted forward, coming up behind a Raider with a pool cue and waylaying him with the tire iron. His head exploded into red paste. For the first time since the beginning of the game, Captain Scruffy began to feel alive again. He sprinted up to three other Raiders and dominated them with his tire iron before sprinting into the museum where the minuteman-looking fella promised there would be more. He was already level three. It took him exactly 59 seconds to sprint through the museum and slaughter every Raider in there with his tire iron. The last one put up a short struggle because he had a pool cue and could block Scruffy's advances. But our hero just kept swinging. This tire iron, once used to remove lug nuts from wheels of cars, was being effectively repurposed to smash heads in. And it was Scruffy's only true friend.

Before catching up with the laser blasting history nerd, he looted the whole museum top to bottom, Fusion Core and all. He ditched his cheesy looking Vault Suit for a Harness, discovering that despite having the face of a 65 year old, he had the body of a 25 year old. That explained why he could jog everywhere, no problem. After leveling up and taking a perk that allowed him to craft melee weapon mods, Scruffy visited with his new friends.

"Man, I don't know who you are, but your timing's impeccable. Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen."

"Hello Preston Garvey Commonwealth Minutemen, I'm already bored of you," replied Captain Scruffy. He was displeased to find out that there was no dialogue option to demand the location of his son Shaun at gunpoint. Lame. He would have to help these people out and then ask. He skipped through the dialogue, ascertaining from the revolution-dressed weirdo and his hillbilly repairman sidekick that there were bad people outside that needed to be un-alived, and a super suit on top of the building. And the Fusion Core (which Scruffy had grabbed only because it was shiny and therefore must be important) was the key to unlocking it. He took it all in and sprinted out of the room, passing a crazy looking couple and an even crazier looking woman, and picking up a Perception bobblehead.

On the roof, Captain Scruffy entered the Power Armor just as "Anything Goes" began to play on his radio. The game was already easy enough for him, and now he was nearly invincible and had his strength turned all the way up to 11. He grabbed the minigun but quickly put it in his pocket and withdrew the tire iron. It was all he would need (or so he thought).

Scruffy jumped off the building and tore through the ranks of Raiders. Well, I guess they only have one rank, which is Raider, but that's not what's important. What's important is that our hero racked up five more kills before being interrupted by a hideous animal scream. A deathclaw had joined the fray. Most adventurers would have turned tail and ran, but our intrepid protagonist pulled out his minigun, fired away, and jogged backwards until the Deathclaw lay dead. He was proud of himself. He looted the body so he could sell the Deathclaw Hand and Deathclaw Meat later. He noted that the creature's body was glitching so that he looked like its butt was shaking. Scruffy observed it and laughed before deciding to catch up with Preston Garvey Commonwealth Minutemen and the gang inside the Museum of Freedom. It took him a while, however, because he paused to teabag every Raider body in the city.

"That was a pretty amazing display. I'm just glad you're on our side."

"Stop kidding yourself. You're nothing to me," Captain Scruffy said. He had decided to give the circle button another chance. This time, it was a very accurate portrayal of his true feelings. None of the others had done any of the work and had given him no rewards.

Then Preston Garvey Commonwealth Minutemen gave him 100 caps and 50 Fusion Cells. That was a little better. He continued skipping dialogue.

Preston Garvey invited him to go help them establish a home in Sanctuary, to which Scruffy heartily refused. The crazy old lady told him to look in Diamond City for his son, supplying him a quest marker. Finally, another lead! He ignored the settlers' conversation and jogged in his power armor out of the museum and began down the road to Diamond City. A sonorous track about lost love played through his Pip-Boy, and our hero was one step closer to complete Commonwealth domination. He tried his best maniacal laughter, but it sounded a bit like a preteen giggle. He would have to work on that.

Author's Note: If you review this story, I guarantee that I will look at my notification of the review, smile and mouth the word "yes," and then read it and reply to you. Just sayin'.