Quick shoutout to my three followers, Foxsoulredux, Kaled1004, and Leytra Incorporated. I'm having as much fun writing this as you are reading this.
Captain Scruffy pressed the circle button to open his Pip-Boy menu, pressed the right trigger a couple of times to get to the map, put his cursor over 'Diamond City,' and pressed the X button. He was instantly whisked to the city's entrance. Well, sort of instantly. The game estimated how much time it would take to get there and advanced the time accordingly. But from Scruffy's perspective, all it took was a loading screen.
The last time he was at Diamond City he had been violently run out of it for stealing things. He wondered if the undeserved hostility would continue. It did not. The Diamond City Security didn't even give him a first glance, even though now he had a giant mutant with a sledgehammer following him. Nobody mentioned Strong at all. Maybe they were too afraid. Scruffy frolicked to the Valentine Detective Agency, intent on finding the bastard who took his son. And punch him. Hard.
After a reunion with Ellie, Valentine had our hero sit in a crappy chair.
"When you're trying to find someone who's gone missing, the devil is in the details. Tell me everything you can, no matter how… painful it might be."
"Well, given that everyone keeps talking about the Institute and all of that, it's gotta be them. It's totally them, right? I'm the best detective ever," Scruffy boasted, before selecting the dialogue option that would describe his kidnappers. Then he described his son. Nick Valentine thought for a moment and then offered that it could be the Gunners, Super Mutants, Raiders, or The Institute that took Shaun.
"Again, it's totally the Institute. Sigh. So you think this Institute is responsible?"
"Well, they're the boogeyman of the Commonwealth. Something goes wrong, everyone blames them. Easy to see why. Those early model synths of theirs strip whole towns for parts, killing everyone in their way. Then you got the-"
Scruffy skipped the monologue. And then reminded Nick that they're here to find Shaun, not talk about robots. Nick asked what the kidnappers looked like.
"One of them came right up to me. Bald, scar across his left eye."
"Wait. It couldn't be… You didn't hear the name 'Kellogg,' at all, did you?"
"Oh yeah, I heard their names, their home addresses, and where their diary keys are hidden!" shot back Scruffy. He was proud of the sarcastic dialogue choices that were common in Fallout 4.
"All right all right, calm down. Hmm... It's way too big of a coincidence. Ellie, what notes do we have about the Kellogg case?" Nick asked. It was then that Scruffy noticed his assistant standing over Nick's shoulder with a clipboard, like a substitute teacher taking roll.
"The description matches. Bald head. Scar. Reputation for dangerous mercenary work, but no one knows who his employer is."
Nick asked if Kellogg had a house here in town and also did he not have a kid with him.
"Yeah, that's right. The House was in the abandoned West Stands. The boy with him was around ten years old."
"Hmm," said Scruffy, "The plot thickens." He stated that it had to be Shaun, somehow. Maybe kids hit adolescence early in post-apocalyptic America. Nick offered for the both of them to go check out Kellogg's house in the stands. Captain Scruffy whistled and said 'Here boy!' to get Strong to follow them. The game was on.
A couple of failed lockpicking attempts and a Geneva bribe later, they were in.
Scruffy wasn't sure what they were looking for. He decided to look up this quest on a wiki in order to figure out what to do. Thanks to that he pressed a hidden button behind the desk on the first floor, which opened Mr. Kellogg's secret mercenary closet. Life was easy when you could look things up on the internet whenever you got stuck.
Scruffy looted everything of value and then picked up Kellogg's box of cigars. Then Nick used his high frequency whistle to summon Dogmeat to the front door.
(Author's Note: I've played through this mission a good nine times, and I never understood why Dogmeat magically teleports to the front door of Kellogg's house. But this time, since I totally ignored Dogmeat, Nick called him in with a whistle. He still got to the door rather fast for being summoned halfway across the Commonwealth, but the more you know, right?)
Captain Scruffy took a look at the dog and realized that it was the same exact one that he ignored earlier.
"You've got to be freakin' kidding me! I thought I left you at the Truck Stop for good, and now I have to spend the next fifteen minutes staring at your butt while you run around the wasteland. Awesome."
Scruffy showed the dog the cigar. They left Nick behind in Diamond City while the dog ran out of the front gates, trailed by our hero and Strong. Scruffy took a detour, however, into the marketplace. He sold all of the guns and ammo from Park Street Station and made a small fortune. He bought some upgraded armor and a new Sledgehammer for Strong that he could upgrade when the time came. Then he ran out of Diamond City into the great unknown.
And so they went, tracking the mercenary that kidnapped Shaun. Scruffy knew that this Kellogg man was the key to him ruling the Commonwealth. He would punch him in the face until he stopped moving and then he knew that the game would give him the next lead toward Shaun. And total Commonwealth domination.
But from a gameplay perspective he spent the next fifteen minutes staring at Dogmeat's rear end, showing him cigars, and punching wildlife. You have to start somewhere.
At last they made it to Fort Hagen. Scruffy ditched the mutt and ducked into the entrance below the parking garage, while Strong angrily dispatched a Bloatfly.
Once inside Scruffy sprinted up three flights of stairs and punched the nearest Synth in the face. Then he punched the next nearest synth in the face. Then the next one. He did this about 20 times until he was standing in a heap of robot parts and fusion cells. Oh, and I guess he punched some turrets, too, judging by the 5.56 rounds he found in his inventory later on.
He took the elevator downstairs and began punching his way through the corridors. Synths, for all of the bad hype they had received, made excellent punching bags.
"I'll wear your guts around my neck!" exclaimed Strong to a random Synth. Scruffy decided against informing the mutant that Synths did not, in fact, have guts. The mutant was pretty pissed already because our hero had picked a couple of locks, apparently taboo in the Super Mutant world.
Further and further they went, into the command center.
"Huh. Never expected you to come knocking on my door. Gave you 50/50 odds of making it to Diamond City. After that? Figured the Commonwealth would chew you up like jerky," rattled Kellogg's voice over the loudspeakers.
In the first hallway a Synth charged Scruffy. He blocked the swipe of a shock baton and deftly punched the Synth in the face. He ran down the hallway dodging blue laser shots and exacting death to the robots.
"How about this for a manual override!" he yelled while sending the rebar tips of his power fist into a Synth's mainframe.
Kellogg gave him a chance to leave over the intercom. Scruffy wasn't afraid of Kellogg. Sure, he may have more hitpoints than the average baddy, but Scruffy had the power of friendship on his side. He knew with Strong on his side, he couldn't fail.
His health bar was staying full, too. Every few sections he would find a random bed and sleep in it for an hour to restore his health all the way. This would be completely unacceptable in the real world where you would be found by the enemy Synths and get shot within the span of a few minutes, but in the world of Fallout it was A-OK.
Scruffy got up, stretched, yawned, and got back to the slaughter. Along the way he found a password to get into Fort Hagen's armory. And inside the armory, a Fat Man. Scruffy could hardly conceal his joy.
"That will come in handy later," he said, tucking the six foot long nuclear catapult into his back pocket.
After a couple of turrets, they had made it to Kellogg. He decided to stand his Synths down so him and Scruffy could talk. Scruffy hard jogged into the room, after taking Med-X and Psycho. Once Scruffy was in, the lights came on, and Kellogg began to stroll forward, flanked by Synths.
"And there he is. The most resilient man in the Com-"
He didn't get to finish, because Scruffy pulled the Fat Man out of his back pocket and fired away.
The Mini Nuke was flung from its launcher at the rate of an MLB change-up. It only took half a second to fly straight into Kellogg's groin. The man died instantly, whether due to the explosion or to the metal ordinance destroying his crotch region who can say?
Scruffy looted the body, leaving the corpse in his underwear. On a nearby terminal, he found a lead. Shaun had been delivered to the Institute, and Kellogg was being tasked with tracking down a renegade. Interesting. Scruffy would have to discuss his findings with his detective colleague. Scruffy paused to take a moment and punch Kellogg's dead body a few times. Then he went up to the roof and saw the Prydwen flying in.
"So the Brotherhood enters the party. The plot thickens."
Scruffy fast-travelled to Diamond City.