Making my way to the Castle from Goodneighbour, which means walking through the more heavily populated ruins. After a lucky find of a half suit of T-60 armour, which I put McCready in, I start to hear guns and lasers, along with the sounds of a Vertibird that has yet to crash and explode in a hilarious fireball.

Following the noise, I come across a Brotherhood squad mixing it up with a pack of raiders. As my list of mods includes a 'all new spawns level to me instead of region' mod and a 'no weapon spawns are level locked' one, the fight is getting very loud. Gatling lasers, grenades and molotovs, there's at least two Raiders in power armour, fun times. Shrugging at the thought of all the loot, and only a short walk back to Goodneighbour to sell it all, I go and join in the fight.

At which point, I hear the familiar 'beep beep beep' of a Super Mutant Suicider. One of the Brotherhood Knights promptly takes a nuke to the face, while a collection of other green-skinned freaks start pouring out of a building like Saturday night in Skyway City. I kill one of the Raiders heavies, steal his minigun and ammo and throw it to McCready, then start throwing grenades and going for crit headshots with Righteous Authority whenever I can.

As I drop into VATS again, I realize I'm not targeting a raider or a mutant. I didn't see them arrive, but now there's a Gunner squad in the middle of the fight, and one of their Vertibirds is buzzing around above, trading shots with the Brotherhoods bird. Shockingly, neither of them has fallen out of the sky yet.

Somehow, the Brotherhood on the ground are still more or less alive, likely due to the Gunners seeming to mostly be going after the Mutants. I debate the value of just leaving them all to sort it out themselves. I mean, what stake do I really have in this fight? They're all assholes and I'm only here to loot the bodies.

Which is when the Minutemen Overhaul mod I installed decides to add its two cents, and a heavily armed and well levelled squad of militiamen appear down the street and open fire. The Gunner vertibird eats a rocket or two, and decides to follow in the tradition of all vertibirds in this game and divebomb whatever poor bastard failed their luck roll. Which isn't me for a change, so that's nice.

Given I'm their general, I take a stimpack and dive back into the fight, firing at whatever moves, using VATS as often as I can... which is when I spot the blue-white of Institute lasers. Yes, apparently the Synths decided to get in on the action.

Raiders (Who I think are all dead at this point), Mutants, Gunners, Synths, Brotherhood, Minutemen, and me. Being nice and assuming the last three are sorta all on the same side (Or we're at least not shooting at the Brotherhood, yet, although if I get another 'I don't have time to talk to you Civilian' after this fight is one, that's up for debate), we're looking at a five way firefight. I'm not entirely sure how the game hasn't crashed to Desktop yet, because I'm pretty sure this situation qualifies as 'outside average expectations'. It's possible, but I can't be sure, that I saw a few ghouls somewhere in the middle the fight. I'm honestly expecting a Sentry Bot or Deathclaw to appear, just to make the day complete.

Then I use VATS again. And I target a new arrival, who is in the process of jumping at my face. A Radroach. A GOD DAMN RADROACH. I give him credit for ambition, but what the hell?! He gets turned to ash, and I dive back into the fight.

Eventually, it's over. The Brotherhood Vertibird had, naturally, exploded at some point, and only one Knight was left alive. I found a pair of Minutemen still alive, barely, and McCready was standing next to me. That was it. That ruined city street was the scene of more destruction than anything the Commonwealth had seen since the Quincy Massacre. Saving the game, I turned to start looting.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter