“Do you want to hear a scary story?” said Soft Sounds, wiggling her bottom against Lyra’s belly. The soft cheeks felt good, firm and rounded, but Lyra was too tired for another round.

“No,” mumbled Lyra, half-asleep, her new friend’s sweet and sour taste still on her lips. Like a lot of shy ponies Lyra had known, once you earned Soft Sound’s trust you couldn’t shut her up.

“This happened years before I came here, back when Rarity first took power. But it really happened — my best friend’s sister’s dentist had a client who saw everything. We used to have a really good brain surgeon. A big, cheerful earth pony stallion named Tidy Stitches. Everycreature liked him. He used to dress as a clown at foals’ birthday parties. But then unicorns started disappearing. One at a time, every month or two. It’s not like it’s unusual for ponies to just vanish around here, so it took Rarity’s guards a while to even notice that something was wrong.”

Lyra suddenly felt more awake. “I have a bad feeling about where this is headed.”

“After a while, ponies started noticing a bad smell hanging around in Tidy’s neighborhood. But with so many ponies packed so close together, they couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from. Somepony hired Paper Heart to look for one of the missing unicorns, and he found out he’d last been seen with Tidy Stitches. But nopony wanted to believe that Tidy was the killer because he was such a nice pony.

“Then one night a unicorn with half his forehead hanging off wandered out of Tidy Stitches’ office. He kept babbling, but it was, like, word salad. When ponies got closer, they saw it wasn’t just his forehead: his skull was open and his brain was just sitting right out there for everypony to see! They say it looked kind of like wobbly gray and red jelly.”

Lyra made a soft gagging noise.

“Anyway, the guards busted into Tidy’s office. He was already gone, but they found a secret basement full of horrible experiments. Dead unicorns with their heads cut open. And a few who weren’t quite dead yet. In the middle of it all, there was this… horn hat. Like a steel cap with a real unicorn’s horn all the way down to the root soldered to it. And it had wires going into a living Earth pony’s brain. It looked like Tidy had been trying to find a way to turn earth ponies into unicorns!”

Lyra groaned. “That’s absurd. It’s just an urban legend.”

“Um, yeah? Of course, it is,” said Soft Sounds. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

“Did they ever catch him?”

“No. They say he shot a guard, sneaked out an old staff exit, and disappeared into the wasteland, never to be seen again.”

Lyra let go of Soft Sounds and rolled over to face away from her. The room was tiny and the bed was small, so this left her with her snout pressed up against plasterboard. She closed her eyes and tried to go to sleep. Her mind wouldn’t stay still. Was this Tidy Stitches connected to the Ponysmith somehow? They both liked to kidnap unicorns. No, of course they weren’t connected, because Tidy Stitches wasn’t real. Ponysmith just liked to use unicorns as magic shock troops; there wasn’t anything mysterious about that.

But how did he make them fight for him? From Crispy’s story, it sounded like the Ponysmith’s unicorns staged mass suicide attacks. Either they were exceedingly worked up about his cause, or he had some other way of controlling them.

Ugh! So many questions! So many problems! Why didn’t Rarity just make everything okay? She was an alicorn. Why didn’t she just fix everything?

Fix everything exactly the way Celestia and Twilight had. Right. Maybe ‘waiting for alicorns to fix everything’ was a poor strategy. A bad direction for society to go in. It had been tried and found wanting.

Speaking of Rarity, tho… “Sounds?”

“Yes?” The other mare wiggled her butt against Lyra’s. Ah, to be young, tireless, and endlessly horny again. Lyra ignored the gesture; it was a fine butt, but she needed at least a little sleep tonight.

“What was Rarity doing in Buckstone?” said Lyra. “It’s not one of her usual haunts.”

“She hasn’t said. I think It’s because there was a secret Ministry of Image hub in the Buckstone Public Library. Everypony knows she was hiding proscribed materials in secret storage sites, but now she can’t get into them for some reason. I heard a rumor she sent her best soldier to try to break into the library, and they never came back.”

“Huh,” said Lyra. Another silly urban legend. Rarity had probably just been in town for a fashion show or a bookstore opening or something. Why was she asking Soft Sounds questions instead of going to sleep? She closed her eyes, took slow deep breaths, and the next thing she knew the sun was shining through the window directly into her eyes, and Soft Sounds’ alarm clock was beeping in her ears.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Burrburrary 25th, EoH 47

Vindaloo left a message at the Minutemares’ flophouse that she was going to Absolutely Everything to trade their scrap, so Lyra went there to meet up with her.

Absolutely Everything was a big warehouse up on massive metal struts that dominated the outfield stands. Grim looking griffon mercenaries stood guard at the doors and the corners of the building. As Lyra approached, a griffon laden with packages in mesh bags launched themselves off of the roof, escorted by three armed thestrals.

This was a hell of an establishment. Whoever ran it must be a rich, a big wheel, a major player in the wasteland.

There was a general store on the ground level, but Vindaloo wasn’t there, so Lyra climbed up the two-story ramp to the warehouse.

One of those griffon mercenaries stopped her at the open warehouse door. “Whadda ya want,” she growled, caressing her submachinegun like it was a beloved pet.

“I’m here to meet Vindaloo?” said Lyra cautiously. She craned her neck to look around the griffon’s shoulder. The inside of the warehouse reminded her of the Amarezon station in Everhoof. Shelves, boxes, carts, conveyors. Creatures in reflective vests packing, sorting, pulling carts. In fact, she noticed some of the equipment had time-worn Amarezon logos on it.

“You ain’t got an appointment,” sneered the griffon. “Nocreature gets in without an appointment.”

Lyra sighed. “Well, I guess I can just wait out outside until… Ahhhhh!”

A gray pegasus ghoul zoomed out from the inside of the warehouse and rammed into Lyra, knocking her onto her back. Lyra’s mouth fumbled for her pistol as the horrifying-skull faced creature reared up over her to attack!

“Wow! Lyra Heartstring! As I live and breathe! I thought I’d never see you again!” said the ghoul, a wide grin splitting her gnarled face in half.

Lyra took in the ghoul’s tufts of gray fur and feathers and the amber eyes that wouldn’t look in the same direction at once. “Ditzy? Is that you?”

Ditzy Doo nodded so hard her skull rattled. “Yep! The same! Older! Uglier! Richer! But the same!” Feathers drifted down around them as Ditzy helped Lyra to her hooves.

“What happened to you?” said Lyra.

“Well, I was still working in the warehouse when the megaspells fell. Everypony but me died, but I apparently just got a near-lethal dose of radiation? At first, I felt super depressed. I just wanted to lay down and die. So I tried to! But after three days of not eating or drinking or peeing, I still felt fine!

“So I said to myself, ‘Ditzy,’ I said, ‘Sure, your life has taken a turn for the worse. Sure, you’re uglier than a dragon’s asshole now. Sure, it’s literally the end of the world. But you’re also the sole survivor in an Amarezon warehouse. I bet the boxes here are just bursting with useful and/or expensive crap! I bet you could make a lot of money using and/or selling that stuff!” She waved a diseased-looking hoof around, gesturing at the warehouse. “Thus, my empire began! What have you been up to?”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

“Good news, Minutemare!” said Ditzy, dramatically flinging open the door of the meeting room. “My old pal Lyra just earned you a twenty percent ‘I knew them back when’ discount!”

“Okay, it’s great that you know each other somehow, but that still leaves us owing you…” Vindaloo picked up a pencil in her mouth and made some marks on a scratch paper. “Over twenty thousand caps.”

Ditzy pulled out a stool and sat down across the table from Vindaloo “These things you want aren’t cheap. Farming equipment? Hydroponics equipment? Seeds? Ammo? Especially the 5mm and the .50 caliber. That stuff’s gonna set you back.”

“What about a water chip?” said Vindaloo.

Ditzy shook her head. “You’re not gonna find one. No hecking way. MMAS only made a few hundred, and StableTec bought up most of those. If anypony did have a water chip, they’d be insane to part with it for any amount of money.”

“Really?” said Lyra.

“What are they gonna do, stop drinking?” said Ditzy. “Vindaloo: I’d dig a well if I were you. A very deep one.”

Vindaloo sighed and threw her head back. “Fine. How much does well-digging equipment cost?”

“I’ve got a pretty good drill rig I could let go for twelve hundred,” said Ditzy.

Vindaloo gritted her teeth around her pencil and made more marks on her paper. “We can’t afford this.”

Ditzy raised her hooves in a shrug. “You’re gonna have to make cuts. Hard choices. That’s what the wasteland’s like.”

Vindaloo spat out her pencil and rubbed her temples. “Fine. Let me think about what we can do without.”

Lyra sat on a stool by the door, hind knees together, forehooves in her lap, feeling awkward and useless. Managing money was not her strong suit; Beanpole had kept track of their bills. She looked at Vindaloo, sweating over her shopping list, and thought about Paneer starving to death in a besieged vault. She took a deep breath. “Ditzy. You’ve already been really generous. But pony lives depend on these supplies. Is there anything else you can do?”

Ditzy bit her lower lip with chipped and crooked teeth. She rubbed her face, then got up to pace back and forth in front of the whiteboard that filled the back wall of the room. “I’ve got a business to run here. Workers to pay. And I’m cutting it pretty close to cost with the discount I already gave you. I don’t think there’s anything else I can do. Unless…” A wild light came into her eyes. She whipped around to face Lyra and Vindaloo so fast that for a second Lyra thought she’d gone feral. “I’ve got it! Okay, listen. What do ponies need to survive?”

“Um… food? Water? Shelter?” said Vindaloo, leaning away from Ditzy’s maddened grin.

“And once they have those things, what do they need?” said Ditzy.

“Friendship? Purpose? Something to believe in?” said Lyra.

Ditzy slammed both forehooves on the table, making it jump. Vindaloo’s pencil rolled over the edge. “Wrong! They need merch! Cute merch!”

Vindaloo and Lyra stared at Ditzy in confusion and dismay.

Ditzy’s withered and half-plucked wings flapped her over to the whiteboard. She took a dry erase marker in her mouth and began to sketch a map of the Buck Bay neighborhood. “Most sources of merch in the region have been mined out,” said Ditzy around the base of her marker. But there’s one that’s still untouched.” She drew a large X in the middle of her map. “The Horse Topic on Neighburry street. If you can go in there and bring out everything you can carry… heck, you bring me enough of it, I’ll give you everything on your list and pay you.”

Vindaloo’s eyes narrowed. “Great. So why hasn’t this Horse Topic been looted?”

Ditzy flapped back over to her stool. “Oh, just because of the decade-long stalemate between the super alicorns and the Ponysmith’s troops. They’re both besieging the library, and the metaphoric trenches spread out at least that far.”

“Just super alicorns and hordes of suicidal unicorns,” said Vindaloo. “Not a big deal.”

“Well you don’t have to fight them,” said Ditzy. “Just stay out of their way. Take a small team, maybe? If you’re limited in what you can carry, then go for the top sellers. Ministry mare merch is evergreen. Twilight’s still big. Rarity’s popular around here. There are enough Dashites in town that Rainbow Dash stuff might be worth picking up, too.”

Vindaloo looked sideways at Lyra. “I see what draws you two together. This plan is insane.”

“Thank you!” said Ditzy with apparent sincerity. “That’s super kind of you! But will you do it?”

Vindaloo stared into space for a while, tapping her chin. “I think we might be able to pull this off. I’ve reconnected with a bunch of veteran Minutemares. Do you have any maps of the area?”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

After the meeting ended it was almost noon. Ditzy took Lyra down to Pitcher Square, bought her noodles for lunch, and took her to the spa. The sisters who ran it took a long, chin-stroking look at the state of their hooves, held a frantic, whispered conversation, and hurried them along to a private room where they stood them in a fetlock-deep bath and implemented emergency procedures.

“I don’t do this too often, because sometimes bits of me come off,” said Ditzy. “But darn does it feel good. I have to get back to work soon, so I’m just here for the ponypedi, but you’re getting both barrels.”

Lyra blinked. “Um, I don’t know if I can afford that.”

Ditzy laughed. “You don’t have to. It’s on my bit.”

Lyra cringed as one of the spa sisters dug around under the edge of her hoof wall with an awl, pulling our rock after rock. Literal rocks! How had she even been walking? “No, Ditzy. You don’t have to. I’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t. We just reconnected and I’m already sending you to your death. It’s the least I can do.”

“Well thank you.”

“But wait! There’s more,” said Ditzy with a grin. “After that, you’re going to go to Fillie’s basement and tell them to put you on my tab. No more wandering around in that dorky stable suit. Get yourself something with some protection. And a helmet! Head protection is so important!”

“You’re too generous,” said Lyra. “Seriously, I mean we were work friends, but just work friends. What did I do to deserve this?”

Ditzy groaned as her spa sister hit a good spot. “Yeah, there’s something lodged in there good. Don’t stop. Anyway, Lyra: living in Rarity’s city rubs off on you after a while. Plus — okay, we weren’t close, but I still liked you. And you remind me there was a world before the wasteland. A better world, you know? It’s too easy to forget.”

“Oh. Okay. That makes sense, I guess?”

“Plus I don’t know how much you’ll be in town, but we could always be better friends. You can never have too many, right?”

Lyra grinned. “Yeah. That’d be nice.”

“Anyway, you’ll need to get done with all that by three o’clock, because I scheduled a doctor to look at your horn.”

Lyra cringed. “Erk! How much does that even cost?”

“Nothing! Rarity pays for everycreature’s medical care. Once you’re done with that, head down to Artillery’s Gunshop and pick out something nice.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

“Join the Minutemares! Get a free gun! Help forge an empire!” Paneer stood on top of a stack of boxes, waving her flipper excitedly. A line of Minutemare applicants stretched down the block and around the corner; apparently Triple Diamond City citizens found something really attractive about the organization.

“Not an empire, mon lapin. We discussed this.” said BON-80n, hovering behind an improvised desk with a stack of papers.

Paneer stomped a hind hoof. “Fine. Help forge a community!”

“I don’t know, it doesn’t have the same ring to it,” said Lyra, stepping up to BON-80n’s desk.

“Would you like to sign up?” said BON-80n, offering her a flier. The flier featured a photograph of a curvy green mare in a stable 93 jumpsuit.

“Bon Bon!” said Paneer, hooves dancing in irritation, “That’s Lyra!”

BON-80n’s chassis lights blinked on and off. All three eye stalks converged on Lyra. “Oh! Mon soleil! I am sorry, your new hair and clothes defeated my facial recognition algorithm!”

Lyra grinned. “Do you like it?” The spa ponies had found her mane, tail, and coat so full of knots and snarls that they’d decided it best to go short. She wore her mane in a spiky stripe, and her coat was cut so short it buzzed when she ran her hoof across it. She’d picked up a bunch of new things at Fillie’s Basement — most notably a very warm bomber jacket reinforced with ballistic pads and ceramic plates and a nice yellow dress that preserved her modesty in a more subtle and mysterious way than her jumpsuit had. The blocky silhouette of her EPU army helmet somewhat undermined her fashion-forward ‘post-apocalyptic lipstick lesbian’ look, but Ditzy had been right. Head protection was so important. She didn’t want to wind up like poor Trail Mix.

“You look totally badass!” said Paneer.

“Thanks! And check this out!” She levitated the flier out of BON-80n’s tentacle. It felt like she was lifting it with wet noodles, but she was lifting it, and it didn’t hurt.

“Whoa! Your magic’s back!” said Paneer, forming something that might be generously considered a hand with her magic. “High five!”

Lyra slapped a flickering and tentative hand against Paneer’s awkward star-like blob. She’d come a long way under Lyra’s teaching.

“So why am I on your fliers?” said Lyra. “I’m not even a Minutemare. I’m just a civilian contractor!”

BON-80n’s chassis lights glowed a suspicious shade of pink. “Vindaloo and I chose you because… well… you are one of the more… expansive, and… well-rounded personalities in the group, and…”

Lyra narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“It’s because you’re fat,” said Paneer.

“I’ve gone down three sizes since I woke up,” said Lyra.

“Nope,” said Paneer. “You’re still fat.”

“You know I wasn’t considered fat where I was from,” said Lyra. At least by nearly middle-aged housewife standards.

“Obesity is a highly desirable trait in the wasteland. It suggests to potential applicants that our organization has… how do you say…” BON-80n waved her tentacles evocatively.

“Lots of food,” said Paneer.

Lyra put the paper down on BON-80n’s desk extremely firmly. “Ugh. Okay. Fine. Whatever. I’m going to go buy some guns.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Lyra considered herself a worldly and open-minded mare, and more importantly, not one to judge others by their appearance. Plus, she’d seen shit over the past month. Violent, ugly shit.

So she was ashamed that Artillery’s appearance shocked her.

“Be right with you, ma’am,” said his first head, looking up from the work table in the back of his shop.

“Ah! don’t mind waiting,” she said, turning her expression of shock into a hopefully convincing approximation of a first-person pronoun.

“Enk euo,” slurred Artillery’s other head.

Lyra turned her attention to the weapons hung on the walls of the Quonset hut that housed the shop. Rifles, pistols, grenades, and submachine guns in models ranging from the jury-rigged to the familiar to the futuristic. Artillery offered more exotic options as well — biteswords, boopball bats mode out of aircraft metal or enhanced with spikes, Zebraican kpinga, a small pistol with a pepperbox muzzle that she suspected was a flechette gun, and another odd, blocky device that if Lyra didn’t know any better she’d say was some sort of directed energy weapon.

“Catch!” said Artillery. Lyra saw a flicker of movement in the left hemisphere of her vision. She instinctively dived for cover behind a display case; a round metal apple rolled across the floor and wobbled to a stop next to her.

“Seventh customer,” said Artillery.

“Oh. Right. Like on the radio.” Lyra scooped up the incendiary grenade and popped it into her saddlebags.

Artillery clapped two of his three forehooves together. “Allow us to introduce ourselves! I am Artillery,” he pointed at his first head, “And this is my brother Caisson! Say ‘hi’, Caisson!”

“Nica meechu,” slurred Caisson.

“Hi! Ditzy sent me?” Lyra smiled and waved as calmly at Caisson as she could. While Artillery was a perfectly normal, even handsome young earth pony, probably about Soft Sounds’ age, Caisson’s face and unicorn horn slumped to one side as though partially melted.

Artillery grinned. “Oh! Yes! She mentioned you! You’re gonna be going up against super alicorns and the Ponysmith’s troops, and you need something that’ll keep you safe.”

“Yep,” said Lyra.”I’d prefer to avoiding fighting them, but my luck with avoiding fighting hasn’t been good so far.”

“Well, that’s easy,” said Artillery. Caisson’s horn glowed, and a rectangular box slightly smaller than a half-gallon carton of milk floated over. “This is a StealthBuck. Single-use unless you can find a way to recharge the battery. But it’ll make you near-invisible for fifteen minutes exactly.”

“Wow. Okay,” said Lyra. “How much?”

“I owe Ditzy a couple of solids, so it’s yours. So, what do you like for weapons?”

Lyra unholstered her .38 and her 10mm and levitated them over to him grip first. “I’m not crazy about the .38, but the 10mm has worked well for me.”

Caisson took the .38 and chucked it towards the back of the shop. “Sthupith gun.”

Artillery whistled as he took the 10mm in his forehooves. “But this tho. Filly Arms N99. This is a classic. Well cared for, too.”

“Thanks,” Lyra. “I just cleaned it; I dropped it in a puddle of radioactive mud a couple of days ago.”

“Well, we’ll see if we can vroom this up for you a bit. If you don’t mind?”

“Not at all. Can I watch?”

Artillery and Caisson pranced off towards their work table, set aside the sniper rifle they’d been working on, and started to pull Lyra’s pistol apart. Artillery worked with tools in his mouth and Caisson holding several more in his magic.

“Yeah, you’ve been taking good care of this, but some of these parts are just worn out.”

“I got it off a raider,” said Lyra.

“Darn raiders,” said Artillery around the base of his screwdriver. “You’re lucky it’s in as good shape as it is. But these N99s are fairly common, so I’ve got plenty of spare parts. Then… let’s see. What can we do with this? How about an extended magazine… tactical sight… let’s extend the barrel a little… Hey, you’re a unicorn, you don’t need the mouth grip. You want me to take that off?”

Lyra hesitated. If she burned out her magic again… well. She wasn’t going to burn out her magic again if she could help it. She didn’t think she could do anything besides basic levitation any time soon anyway. “Yeah. Do it.”

“You want a suppressor? Honestly, I wouldn’t if I were you. A gun’s loud no matter what you do.”

“No. I’m worried it’ll fuck up my draw. But can you add any kind of recoil compensation?” With her telekinesis not what it used to be, she could use a little less kick.

“I absolutely can!”

Watching them work was educational, even beautiful. They worked with care, precision, and coordination, and when they were done, Lyra’s 10mm was barely recognizable. “Here you go.”

She lifted the pistol and rotated it in midair — a smooth, gleaming gunmetal lozenge of death. “Can I try it out?”

“Sure!” said Artillery, wiping the oil off his tools with a rag. “There’s a range out back. But before you do, let me give you something to replace the .38.” He opened up a locked, rummaged around, and pulled out a small triangular holster. Caisson drew the pistol — a unicorn-optimized flechette pistol like the one she’d seen on the wall earlier.

“It has single shot or burst. It can take a bunch of different types of ammo, and you can load up to three types per magazine. I’ve got poison, tranquilizer, and dart rounds. The first two are useful — one hit on bare hide will take out anything smaller than a yak, though it’ll take a few seconds for it to take effect. The dart rounds won’t do much on single-shot, but on burst fire, they’ll turn most creatures’ heads into mushy goo.”

“Yipe,” said Lyra.

“Here, put the fuzzy side of the holster on your bare coat somewhere.”

Lyra unzipped her jacket and put the holster against her chest. It stayed there, and it took a non-trivial amount of force to pull it off. “Wow. That’s useful. Magic?”

“Nope! Van der Paws forces! Tiny fractal cilia all over that sucker. So it won’t turn up on ‘detect magic’ scans. And the weapon is plastic and ceramic, so metal detectors won’t see it either. Highly concealable!”

Lyra gulped. It was upsetting to know there were such weapons in the world. “Were these things mass-produced? Because that seems like a terrible idea.”

Artillery smiled. “Ministry of Awesome. They’re super rare.”

“How much does this cost?”

“Not your problem. Let’s hit the range and you can tell me if either gun needs any adjusting!”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

She had one last errand for the day. Paper Heart was missing. Okay. But the neon ‘open’ sign over his door was on, so she knocked.

“Come in,” said a stallion’s voice.

Paper heart’s office was dark and cluttered, lit by a single bare bulb hanging from a ceiling fan. A relatively unchipped hiveling sat behind a desk, going over a ledger. “If you have a missing creature case to report, fill out a form.” The nameplate on his desk said ‘Grinding Gears’.

“I thought Paper Heart was missing?” said Lyra.

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Noboty gets themselves beat up and kidnapped as much as Paper Heart does. But sooner or later he’ll be back, with another chip out of his carapace and another story to tell.”

Lyra looked at Gears sidelong. “Aren’t you concerned?”

“Nope.” He reached in a desk drawer and pulled out a small device that looked like the unacknowledged love child of a spark plug and a vacuum tube. “I make him back up his soul chip every time he goes out on a case. Honestly, he could use a new chassis.” He put the chip back in its drawer and went back to his ledgers. “Not that we can afford one.”

“Well, I want to hire him, and I can’t wait. Where was he last seen?”

“Last time I heard, he was headed for the Combat Zone,” said Gears, entering some figures on an old fashioned adding machine.

Lyra scowled. “That doesn’t narrow it down.”

Gear laughed. “What, are you new around here?”

“Yes.”

He let out a long, soulful sigh — an impressive feat for someboty who didn’t have any lungs. “The Combat Zone is a casino and battle ‘sports’ arena inside of Stable 114 at Park Street Station.”

She blinked. “There’s a casino inside of a stable?”

He sighed again.

“Okay, okay, so there’s a casino in a stable. How do I get in?”

Gears closed his ledger and stood up. “Show up at the door looking like you have caps. Try not to let Swan smash you on the trip over.”

“Swan? Who’s Swan?”

He put on a fedora and a jacket and headed for the door. “I’m not a tour guide, and we’re closed.”

Lyra stood outside Paper Heart’s office. A chilly wind blew down the darkening narrow street, carrying flecks of icy rain on the edge of snow. But Lyra’s heart felt light — she might soon see her son again! It would still be a hard road. She’d need to find Paper Heart. But she was sure he’d be able to tell her what to do.

And she was sure that when she found Bean, everything would be okay.

Level Up
New Perk: Cleans Up Nice. +1 Charisma when wearing anything but a stable suit or raider armor. You gain new dialogue options.

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