"Oh, Sable, Sable..."  ...but now, she wants to take her pants off.  Or possibly Sable's pants off.  And, that little voice in the back of her head that most often reminds her of appointments chimes in, she made a commitment to herself (even if it came a bit later than it should have, to be honest) that she wasn't going to do that today.  "Fuck, Sable, I - I think this might be so good that we need to stop doing it."

Sable groans in response, but pulls away from Momo's breasts.

"Wise girl," she murmurs, before capturing her lips in a fierce kiss. When she pulls away, she continues, "We could quite easily get carried away."

Then she stands, giving Momo an admiring look while she reaches out a hand to help her to her feet.

Momo definitely has a very wistfully dejected look on her face as she stops, too.  (And gets both back in her costume and to her feet, gladly accepting Sable's help.)

"...I'm so glad I had the presence of mind left to commit to not taking my - or anyone's - pants off once I noticed that I had rather gotten out of my right mind.  But wisdom...  I don't know if you should credit me that.  It...  I should have seen that coming, surely, and I didn't.  I should have wondered about whether the Company might meddle with those responses, even if I've no way of knowing if they did."

She smiles softly, hugging Momo gently. "It's a pretty unprecedented situation we're in. The fact that we're as on top of it as we are is already doing better than a lot of people would. Do you wanna see if the Opposition has any information about what meddling was done, if any?"

"...Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

Out comes the phone.

Hello, Opposition and Representatives Thereof — oh, by the way, is it the same Handler talking with us each time, and if so do you have a name or pronouns you'd like us to use for you?

We have another question for you: will you please list any meddling that was done to Momo's — or our& — personality, impulses, inclinations, or mind in general, by either the Opposition or the Company?

Then she offers the phone to Momo to check over the message and hit send if she doesn't have any changes she wants.

Momo hits the Send button.

Operational details, such as your handler's identity or identities, are kept on a need-to-know basis; nonetheless, I am authorized to reveal that nongendered English pronouns, or -san, will not offend.

The Company has not meddled with your sapience, outside of the obvious Binding. We intervened to nudge the semi-randomized selection in favor of maximizing interpersonal compatibility. However, it is possible that the Company has intervened on a basal level, in the sense of physically sensitizing bodies to certain stimuli - both because they want their contractors to feel... *Satisfied* with what they do with their victims, even if they have no idea what they're doing, and because of certain entities they work with that hold the maximization of sensory experience as a terminal value.

"Huh."

So they might've increased either or both of our physical sensitivity? Interesting. Thank you, Handler-san. —Sable & Co.

They might have, yes.  I could find out if they did; it's rare enough for this to come up that that information isn't usually included in the brief, but I do have access.  I'm glad I was able to provide this information.

"...I don't think that I like that I was right that they would have done that.

"That doesn't change anything about anything, in practice, because - well, I don't know how we'd fix it, if they had done something, for one - but...  I still don't like that."

"Yeah, I'm with you there. We even endorse being more physically sensitive — our nerves in our old body were a bit glitchy, oversensitized in some ways and undersensitized in others, so this sort of holistic repair and increase is an improvement for us — but it might've been nice to be consulted."

"Doesn't seem like something they'd do here, asking people if they want things.  I almost wonder if the only reason they let there be a catalogue is that it's less slavery-like if you aren't buying people."

Sable nods, frowning. "That and they probably like the idea of damning Contractors by our own choices, getting more buy-in to their overall system and perspective by making us choose how we participate in it."

"Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised."

"...At this point... I had been thinking to suggest that we might spar, but with that black hole of sexual attraction lurking, perhaps it's best if we stick to non-contact activities.  That said, even people with superstrength and super-reflexes can benefit from training them, and you have, as I understand it, reflexes entrained that we do not yet know the depth of.  Certainly you've had no trouble precisely modulating your strength, compared to Kiyuko's first few months."

"That seems like a good idea. It's nicely foundational, helps test the basics, and it can easily be built from," she agrees with a nod. Then she grins. "I can control myself in close-contact activities, though."

"I'm sure you can, and I'm sure I could as well - but I'd rather avoid the temptation in the first place, while it's this fresh.  We can spar tomorrow."

(And it doesn't help that there's a part of her hindbrain that refuses to not read what Sable just said as if it was meant flirtatiously.)

"So.  Show me how you'd throw a punch."

Sable starts forming a fist deliberately, thumb outside of her grip, then pauses and shakes her head. She loosens her hand out, then just leans directly into instinct, not thinking about how to throw a punch, just asking her body to do it.

Her fist snaps out into a clean punch, hips twisting a bit with the motion.

"Good, good.  Now keep going."

She snaps out another couple jabs, then a hook, gradually adding more variation as she goes.

She pays close attention.  ...No, she's too busy analyzing the Pirates' - inherited? - form to be horny about it.  Shush, hypothetical observer.

Then she kicks another training dummy over the edge.

Shit lunge!

She dashes to the edge in a flash, catching the dummy with a capture web and sticking its web-line to the ground in a smooth motion, then bounding back up to resume shadow-boxing. There will absolutely be times when they need to balance saving people with fighting thugs who want to stop that, so she needs to be able to get back into the fight smoothly.

"Now how would you fight someone significantly larger than you?"

"Treat them like a springboard," she replies, leaping up into a high kick aimed at the chin of a nine-foot-tall person, continuing back into a flip before jumping forward into a high drop kick. "Can't fully practice those without a target or a partner, because doing those motions feels like there's something missing, like where I'd be bouncing off of them, reducing my airtime, getting back to a floor or wall or ceiling so I can keep bouncing like a ping-pong ball."