“Love”

An artist’s depiction of part of the Rebel Exclusion Zone, where our cherished waifs (and the occasional Loyalist gunship) engage those rebels who still have enough serotonin left to fight.

The Loyalist government doesn’t want pictures of this area to exist (even finagling for this sketch was difficult), due to the belief that they will hurt the already tanking war effort. With more Heavenly precincts falling to depression, Creator Abandonment Syndrome, and general malaise, Agrarian military aid has been increased significantly.

Shown here is the infamous “One Winged Angel squad,” a combat unit that also assists with Loyalist extrajudicial killings in terminal CAS-affected population centers. Boasting “more angels killed than Bayonetta,” OWA squad is probably one of the scariest groups of soldiers I’ve ever encountered. None of them were older than 14.

The Seren Method practitioner in the pink helmet was the commanding officer, and though I’m not really here to preach about things like “setting integrity”—our deadbeat God certainly never gave a damn about it in her worldbuilding—I will say that the League of Seren Extrasensatives have one of the most “colorful” personal belief apparatuses I’ve ever seen. I get that they’re fanatics and charlatans. I get that they follow a cult leader. I get that they think they can read minds and detect latent feelings (something that even God seems to have trouble with). What I’ll never get is their enthusiasm for it all, for their lives. This pink-clad teenage girl constantly bent my ear about matters of “psychic potential,” in a way that felt like a child a little too old for imaginary friends telling you about their elaborate tea parties with Mr. and Mrs. Soandso. It was weirdly uplifting, sort of?

That ordinance exploding in the background looks a little like a heart, and that’s cute, but there wasn’t a lot to love about any of these miniature gunthugs. I constantly felt on edge in their presence, and had none of the urges to “be the adult in the room” that I have while ferrying little killers around in the Green Zone.