A pleasant scent to you may be offensive, or even dangerous to others. Please be careful about how much perfume you wear. -- The New Guy
Personal hygiene is, in the Galactic Alliance, personal. The most many expect is to keep the self-generated pathogens to oneself. That said, there are many who equate hygiene with the simulation of hygiene. Makeup, scents, wigs, flashy clothing, anything and everything but actually keeping clean.
Most of those methods are harmless. Except in the cases of the over-scenters.
It's an easy mistake to make. Use an artificial scent to mask a natural one, grow 'nose-blind' to the artificial scent, and then use more to personal acceptance. The end result is a personal miasma that will, at minimum, offend anyone in the same room. One over-scenter did more than that.
The crew aboard the Growler Maroon made their Ships' Human stay inside hir livesuit when ze was not in hir sealed habitat. This was because Human Orz was an extreme over-scenter.
When the raiders came, they managed to hack and lock Human Orz's livesuit. Then they made the mistake of showing off.
"Your Human is helpless," the raider captain bragged. "They use their suits to augment themselves, as you will surely see!" She removed Orz's helmet, possibly expecting to show them all how small their Human was inside hir suit.
The captured crew were safe inside their own livesuits. The raiders were not.
They were hit, full in the face, with Orz's favourite scent, Frangipani Cyclone.
There were very few survivors.
[Photo by Colin Watts on Unsplash]
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