"I swear Bethesda sucks on Todd Howard's dry ass balls." John's voice cut through the stale air of the common rooms of the hobby shop, rough and unrestrained, bouncing off peeling linoleum walls and scratched furniture like a hammer against steel. The building smelled of damp carpet, cheap cleaning chemicals, and the faint, persistent tang of old sweat — a lingering trace of the lives of those who had passed through, as broken and wandering as he was now. The television in the corner hummed weakly, a static-laced broadcast running over faded commercials for snacks, new roleplaying table top games and post-apocalypse movies. Around him, a handful of other residents lounged in mismatched chairs, eyes glazed in a combination of boredom and the tacit understanding that this was a man who could not be ignored. They had heard him rant before. Many had learned to look away.
"Fallout was better back when Black isle studio had the IP. Bethesda brings nothing but bland quests, broken dialogue, and soulless NPCs. Fallout used to be a world! A living world! Before these normies got in there and ruined it. RUINED IT I SAY!" He gestured wildly, knocking over a mug that clattered across the cracked tile floor. John's boots scraped against the linoleum as he leaned over a chipped table. "And Todd Howard — the man's a fraud, a charlatan! He's destroying everything I loved! I also blame him for that dumbass TV show as well. New Vegas was a return to form, a slap in the face to Howard's incompetence and now that bastard plans to ruin New Vegas with his fanfiction of a TV show."
"John…" a thin voice from the corner — someone named Danny, quiet, scraggly hair falling into his eyes — attempted to interject, his words subdued, careful. "It's just a game, man. Calm down."
"Just a game?" John laughed, harsh and bitter, a sound that scraped like gravel in an empty pipe. "Just a game? This is my life! My childhood! My everything! The more I grow older, the more everything I love turns to shit. This.. This... isn't right!"
The words caught in his throat, swallowed by the suffocating humidity of the room, the lingering odor of failure and lost potential was not just from the series he loved. The world around him was dying, everything was falling apart and John had no control over it. He kicked the table in frustration, sending papers fluttering to the floor. Old fan theories, dice, character sheets, scraps of journals full of detailed Fallout maps — they scattered like fallen leaves. John threw a hand skyward. "Just a game? You don't get it! They've taken my childhood, my passion, and replaced it with… with corporate mediocrity! Every quest is a rinse-and-repeat! Every settlement bugged to hell! And Todd Howard that insufferable twat can't do anything right!"
John froze then, as a chill worked down his spine, a big greater and more terrible than any other focused down upon him. The roof of the old hobby shop was torn off by an unseen force, revealing the cloudy sky above, allowing an unholy wind to enter in as the disgruntled fan paused mid rant. From the clouds, a hollow note hummed through the gaps, leaves skittered like pale ghosts across the opening gap of the gaming building. A golden light slashed through the sky, sudden and blinding. Clouds split with a violent, organic energy, a vertical column of radiance illuminating the world as it tilted on its axis. John blinked, shielding his eyes with a jerky hand motion, and the others squinted against the brilliance, muttering curses and awe in the same breath.
"What the…" Danny's voice fell to a whisper.
The light pulsed, alive with power and inevitability. And then — the head appeared. It was enormous, larger than any man could possibly be, larger than a plane, almost the size of a moon, suspended in the glowing storm like a divine sentinel. Features sharp, familiar, almost grotesque in their perfection: a wide forehead framed by brown hair, eyes glimmering amber in the sunlight, a nose curved just so, a mouth twisted in that enigmatic half-smile.
It was Todd Howard, or the universe's sense of him rendered monstrous and sublime. Every nerve in John's body screamed at the incongruity, a mixture of awe, terror, and disbelief. The golden illumination made the lines of Howard's face sharp enough to cut, and somehow, the eyes — impossibly alive — seemed to drill into the very marrow of John's being.
"It just works! The games are perfectly fine! The Fallout series is doing Fantastic! Fuck you, you ungrateful ingrate!" The voice thundered, omnipresent, reverberating in the air and in the skulls of those present. It was not a voice a man could ignore; it carried the weight of inevitability, judgment, and lightning. The storm responded, crackling with divine resonance.
Lightning erupted from those amber eyes, coiling and snapping, a raw jagged scream of electricity. John barely had time to flinch before it struck him head first before going down his chest, then his stomach, and finally ending upon his legs all within the span of a second. A violent symphony of agony as an electrocution of divine levels inflicted down upon him. His hands flailed, fingers clawing at nothing, eyes wide and sightless. The world bent and fractured; his screams dissolved into silence. Asphalt, puddles, gray sky — all blurred, twisted, and vanished into nothing. The person that was John was no more, and as the gaze of the great and terrifying Todd Howard focused upon the other peons within the hobby shop, Danny responded.
"I think Bethesda is doing a wonderful job, it-it-it just works… and the TV show is amazing, no plot holes… and the retcons are just divine. 10/10… please don't smite me." Danny looked up upon the wrathful god of Bethesda and squeaked out a voice of approval. Hearing it Todd Howard smiled a radiant expression of joy that ended the cloudy day, revealing beautiful sunlight and a rainbow as the god head faded from sight, the roof of the hobby shop was restored, sealing the traumatized geeks within their sacred space of fandom and wonder. The only sign of the divine vengeance of angry unknowably being was the pile of Ash that use to be John the angry fallout fan. His life in this world was over, and so ended his complaints.