I did start writing the actual smash cut page to see what “the bad guys” are up to, but as I was working on it I realized I wasn’t quite sure where it was going, so I decided to do this scene while I gave the other one some more thought. Don’t worry, this won’t be nearly as long as the Parfait girls night one… he said, tempting fate with a fresh from the oven, slightly gooey chocolate chip cookie.

Dabbler made some minor adjustments to Max’s choker. Primarily, as they had “discussed,” her skin now feels less “weirdly slippery,” which extends the choker’s capabilities way beyond its original capabilities, which… may have consequences at some point. Although Dabbler did remove that extremely low level “Charm Person Aura” she’d added, so the overall power consumption is only a bit higher than it used to be. Max’s skin is normally a little bit less frictiony due to the fact that she doesn’t really have any skin texture to speak of. Well, it’s there, but it exists at a much smaller scale than what you’d expect to see on human skin. The other factor is that her personal, cellular level force-field that reinforces her body far past what would otherwise be impossible with even very advanced material science, is always on. Even if she lowers her shield to really enjoy a hot shower for example, it’s still there.

The other thing Dabbler did to it is to make it hide her fairly distinctive eyebrow horns. (The little notches at the top of the arch of her brow.) As far as her pointed ears go, Dabbler would have to replace the choker with something a lot more sophisticated.

Oh, and if you guys haven’t seen Tacoma FD, I recommend it. I think it’s on Netflix and Hulu in the US. It’s helmed by two of the Broken Lizard guys, and is kinda basically more Super Troopers, but with way less drug use. The premise being firefighters in one of the US’s rainier cities don’t always have a whole lot to do so they keep themselves entertained. To be clear, it’s not must see TV, but I found it amusing enough to recommend. And if you have seen it, then you might recognize the fire station here, and also two of the guys at the table, even though I kind of tweaked their appearances from the show a bit. Though I realized after I colored the one guy that he kind of looks like Sydney’s dad, but, oh well.

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To cover some stuff that’s been brought up in the comments on the previous few pages, some people are assuming that Maxima has been acting as both cop and judge, as well as, I suppose, jailer. I haven’t shown any of the legal proceedings that happen to criminals in the Grrl-verse, partially because I would be hilariously inept at representing actual legal happenings, partially because I can’t even imagine how many pages it would take to scratch the surface, and partially because I don’t think I could make much of it funny and/or entertaining.

So the quick rundown of the legal fate of super criminals in the U.S. is basically 1) They go to jail, which is hugely expensive. Many of the accommodations need to be customized for the occupant, and the complexity of including things like exercise time in the yard means it’s almost unavoidable to tie up a not insignificant portion of a very limited population of supers with guarding other supers. So the other option is 2) Reform/rehabilitation. Maxima is a proponent of this. Basically, putting a valuable resource to work is better than sticking it in a cell to cost the taxpayers a load of money, especially when there’s little to no effort to prevent recidivism.

Lapha will get an actual trial at some point, and it will be a fucking mess, starting with “not a U.S. Citizen and/or not a human being and/or Earth is still hammering out treaties with space governments and/or does the U.S. recognize magends as sapient beings with rights” etc., etc. Lapha already has a ton of insider information that she shouldn’t, so there’s no harm at this point trying to integrate her with the team while all that shit is being sorted out, especially since Dabbler is the only person on Earth (with a work visa) who knows how to keep a being like Lapha from jumping on to the President’s head and doing something regrettable.

So, Lapha committed a bunch of crimes and has access to some pretty high-level top secret information. Namely, that Sydney’s orbs are Nth tech. Granted, she blurted that out to a crowd of aliens and demons that are probably spreading that tidbit all over Space Reddit or whatever is in vogue at the moment, but a secret getting out doesn’t automatically declassify something, nor does it excuse the crime of putting that information into the wild. Giving her the option of jail or work release is not slavery, as some of the more hyperbolic commenters suggested. Criminals get punished in literally every society ever, and being given a choice is more than most criminals get.

The new vote incentive is up!

Every so often I get the urge to try and draw Maxima all properly shiny, and this… isn’t my favorite attempt if I’m honest. I’ve been sitting on this for a little while doing little tweaks, and decided to finally publish it cause I’m already behind on these. The next one will (almost definitely) resume the trend of including a little mini comic to extend the scene a bit.

As usual, Patreon has some outfit variations as well as sans flagrante.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.