"..A nuclear Winter.. That would be better than this heat.." Neo grumbled as she removed most of her clothes that weren't her pants, boots and leotard with a sigh.
Though she discovered one thing that came with her. It was new and incredibly fluffy. Pulling it off her shoulders, she saw a plush of what looked like that small Goddess she just met.
"Hi! I forgot to introduce myself, hehehe... I am Tearwyn!" The small plushie introduced herself with a wave of her hand.
"....I'm keeping you forever now. Well, nice to officially make your acquaintance. I'm Neo, the Drip Queen. Prankster extraordinaire and fader of reincarnators" Neo proclaimed while putting Plushwyn on her now bare shoulders.
"What is drip?" Tearwyn released a few giggles and asked.
"Clothing. Stylish clothing. No.. Clothing so stylish it kills the morale of your enemies" Neo explained while walking under the shadey entrance of the prospector saloon, where an old man was watching her seemingly talk to herself.
"Oh, I see! Like the clothes big sister Lilith has, and Artoria!" Plushwyn made some connection Neo didn't get.
"I don't have drip do I?" Tearwyn looks down at her own clothes and frowns.
"Not yet but you're with me, so you will. Hmm... a tiny little yukata maybe? Or tiny dark shrine maiden clothes.." Neo hummed before bringing her thoughts back to what she said before.
"Wait Artoria.. You mean like Pendragon?" Neo asked, ignoring the concerned look on the old man's face.
"Like this?" Tearywn snapped her fingers and donned the suggested dress Neo mentioned.
"And yes, that's the one! She's my sister, and she's on her way to ascension! She's been SUUUPER hard at work helping me with Light Gods invasions" Tearwyn explained as Neo slowly nodded her head, taking all the information in yet still impressed at the ability to just create clothes with a snap of her finger.
"In fact, you had just missed her by a few hours when you suddenly entered this world" Tearwyn explained while enjoying the ride on Neo's shoulders.
"Sounds like she treats you well. Good.. The clothing trick though? Amazing. Now why don't you fill me in on this 'Light God' stuff? I've fought cringey reincarnators but this seems a little different" Neo asked while stepping inside the bar, swiping caps that weren't physically on someone else secretly and buying a sarsaparilla from the flabbergasted bartender named Trudy.
"You don't know? How interesting, you have a system... Well, I am part of the 'Dark God' Faction. I am also a newer Goddess, so that makes me relatively weak in the grand scheme of things..." Tearwyn's ears and tails droop down as she talks.
"So the Light Gods want all the universes I control to add to their own power base. Divine Law prevents actual God vs God fighting for the most part, so they instead send Reincarnators that have been corrupted by the Light. They also try and spread said corruption. It's super annoying!" Tearwyn huffs while crossing her arms.
"Wait what the hell is 'Light corruption'? Are people forced to go to Church? Oh my god.. Do they get forced into becoming Mormons or Scientologists or something?" Neo asked with a shiver and sat in a free booth as Trudy raised her brow in interest at the topic.
"Haha, no silly. It's so much worse!" Tearwyn then gestured to everyone around them.
"Every single person here is corrupted by the Light! They are slowly being rewritten down to the core of their soul to be Agents of the Light" Tearwyn casually explained, making Neo cough up some sarsaparilla.
"Rewritten...? What, like they die? Or get enslaved by mind control?" Neo asked, getting a little tense when she heard Sunny Smiles in the other room shout something.
"Oh praise the Courier.. My shootin' skill's improved tenfold" Neo's brow twitched at her words.
~'Praise the courier...?' What the fuck~ Neo scowled as if she ate a raw lemon.
"Your first guess is the one that is mostly right. Who they are slowly gets changed so they are followers of the Gods of Light. You can think of it as Soul Control instead of Mind. But it's permanent, and you can only stop it a few ways and that is only if you catch it soon enough" Tearwyn giggled a bit, and gently pat Neo's head as she explained.
"Let's take you for example! If you became corrupted, you'd slowly start to despise me, and anything Dark Related. And you wouldn't even notice the change. It'd be like you were like that since the moment your soul was created" Tearwyn explained while Neo's brow furrowed.
"Eventually, everything about who you were. Your likes, dislikes. Who you consider family. Totally, and completely, will be Light aligned" Tearwyn casually explained while the horror in Neo grew.
"If your friends, lovers, or even family have ANY dark traits in them, you'd either seek to Corrupt them too if you were able, or call a champion to do it for you. Or failing that, you'd kill them because you'd be disgusted by their very being" And that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Neo said nothing as she got up and dumped the bottle in the trashcan before taking a good look at all the people in the bar. They looked and felt different, now that she really paid attention. She then decided on what she felt was the right course of action.
-Five minutes later-
Neo was walking down the road, a fully engulfed in flames Goodsprings behind her as she whistled. It hadn't actually taken five minutes to do that, as most of that time was simply used to rob the general goods store and take Doc Mitchel's Pip Boy. The final minute was spent running around Goodsprings and killing every last person who had their souls changed and imprisoned by the light, as she lacked any other way to reverse it.
"That was fun to watch! You got some good items from your looting?" Tearwyn asked as Neo shrugged.
"Well there's the Pip-Boy. It's this world's version of a smart phone but.. worse? But better in some aspects. Thanks for telling me about this 'corruption' business. I hate that their freedom was so casually taken by this 'holier than thou' piece of garbage. But on the bright side, I know he could only go two ways. North, to get stung to death by cazadores. Or East, to meet more people" Neo mused as they walked by some Powder Gangers that looked like they wanted to rob and kill her.
They were dead once they got within five feet of her, falling to neat bloody pieces as Neo kept walking and talking.
"Hopefully they didn't go corrupting everyone or I'll have to nuke the entirety of Vegas" Neo sighed, thinking of the amount of work that'd require.
"From what I see, they try to get 'main people' they think are important. Or someone they like. This reincarnator has been here for a while though..." Tearwyn put a finger against her chin in thought and said.
"It's my failure for not being able to find them for so long. Like I said before, I am young and new to all of this still. Only a few thousand years old" Tearwyn's tails and ears drooped as she sulked.
"It's one of the reasons I am working up the courage to ask Big Sister Lilith to let Artoria spread her Black Water, as she calls it, in all my worlds" Tearwyn sighed and explained.
"Now now. We're doing it now, aren't we? Besides, if you did it a millenia ago, I wouldn't have been able to come out to help and screw around. Given that they've been here a while, I say we should clear every town we come across, mercy kill the corrupted people and find the 'protagonist' and kill him and whatever faction they aligned with" Neo stated as she pat the plush on the head.
"You give good head pats! Not as good as Artoria, but still really good!" Tearwyn perked up and giggles while pushing her head into Neo's palm a bit.
"That sounds like a challenge. I can cook for your affection too, you know? But enough about me, we're reaching Primm now" Neo and Plushwyn both noticed the decently sized (for the wasteland) town that consisted of a few small houses, a large hotel, a casino and a Mojave Express courier office. Though it looked like it was under NCR control, as a few soldiers were patrolling the streets.
"You've been here before? I don't really like these kinds of worlds. Waste lands are boring..." Tearwyn asked, hearing a chuckle from Neo.
"I know this place like the back of my hand. It's interesting, not in the sense of power scaling but the people who live in it and the factions vying for control. See, these soldiers? They belong to a democratic republic that wants to bring America back. Called the NCR. You know.. The America that helped end the world. On the other hand, there's a bunch of misogynistic dudes dressed as Romans but with sports gear and machetes that listen to this old guy with stupid ideals. They're called The Legion. The 'protagonist' we're gonna kill chose the NCR, it looks like. Idiot doesn't even realize the true evil of the NCR..." Plushwyn heard Neo lament at the end.
"I see..." Tearwyn nose scrunches up a bit in disgust.
"Explains the heavy Light presence here. It would be so much easier if Divine Law didn't prevent me from just washing them all away" Tearwyn looked around and explained as both her and Neo passed the NCR checkpoint into the town that Neo paid with fifteen caps.
"I am only allowed to be here because of you, by the way. Normally we can't even send an illusion or anything. We need a foreign element in the universe to act. It's dumb, and I don't get why it's like that!" Neo hummed in response.
"Because what fun is there if every God and Goddess were descending down? Worlds get destroyed, plots ruined and nothing but violence ever happens for a looooooong time. Bet those gods trying to steal your territory would have loved to go down there themselves and start converting people to the 'light'" Neo explained while marking the NCR troopers and a few civilians for mercy killing.
"Oh... that's true. While I enjoy the good slaughter as much as anyone, I don't want to do it all the time. I'd rather spend time with my sister, Artoria!" Tearwyn happily exclaimed as Neo nodded, making her way through the casino.
Tearwyn humms in thought before saying. "I guess that is why Divine Law prevents us from corrupting our own universes with the Light or Dark ourselves"
"So that means Artoria's corruption is a loophole! Hehe, I knew she was awesome! Another point of Artoria!" Tearwyn clapped excitedly and said.
"Yeah. Just a shame so many Gods just seem to use these poor, deluded fools like that. Not you, of course. It seems like you really cherish her. The way family should be" Neo chuckled after hearing her pride.
"Of course! Big sister Lilith, and Sister Artoria were the only ones who wanted to help me! Everyone else abandoned me..." Neo was silent for a moment after that and pulled Plushwyn off her shoulders before hugging her.
"I understand.. Really, I do. I felt the same way. Maybe it sounds awfully mushy but I was abandoned too. Maybe not physically but.. Now, we're in a better place. A way better place. And I'd be happy to officially befriend you and add to that little circle of people you have now" Neo grinned while rubbing her hand along her head.
"I would love to be your friend, Neo!" Tearwyn cheered excitedly and grabbed Neo's face and hugged her head with all she had, covering her face with her plush body.
"And since we're friends now, I can give this to you now, and not have to wait till you finish helping me. I just know you'll love it!" While still hugging Neo's face, Tearwyn snapped her little fingers as a system notification rang.
[Skill unlocked! Unlimited Dripssability]