In some ways, Maxima is doing Sydney a disservice by humoring her antics. Sydney’s going to be in for a big fucking shock if she ever gets seconded to a JSOC unit for an operation, and she tries to razz the JSOC Commander about his dating habits.

The poor discipline of Arc-SWAT in general also probably means Maxima winds up wearing the silly hat at the DoD X-Mas party and everyone razzes her about being a big ‘ol softie. As long as she gets results from her people, she doesn’t care.

One thing I think I’ve been a little negligent about with the comic is spending so much time with the female characters that any male potential romantic interests haven’t gotten enough screen time for us to really see why they’d even be in the running. Honestly, I think the male with the most development in the comic at this point is Deus. So this page started off as a longer bit with Hiro doing something properly heroic during this bridge kerfuffle, while Maxima looks on thinking “Alright, alright, definitely a contender. Gonna have to figure out how to get him promoted.” But I didn’t want to get sidetracked for the, I don’t know, 4 to 6 pages that would have taken to properly play out, so I just compressed it into this quick field flirt.

Honestly, not wanting to derail the story is what happens to all these asides I have planned for the guys, so the next story arc may straight up include a few guy’s day arcs or something.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like!