#also in the second one simon was pondering how he's gonna break the news to his wife you heard it here first

[yesloulou]

"What started as a testing day in RB19 turned into a full F1 season return. Who’s ready for Daniel's first race back in Hungary?" | via @ redbullracing

In addition❤️

[ariadnelives]

Chapter 29 -- The Hypocritical Oath

[Missed earlier chapters? Go catch up here! Otherwise, welcome back! Oh, and make sure to join our discord server! Chapter can also be found @ ao3”]

Several minutes earlier, Pilar and Sasha had just severed every wire they could see coming out of the transmitter, causing some truly abrasive alarms to ring through the facility.

Elsewhere in the facility, there were several dozen fanatically devoted men with guns that had, up to this point, been occupied by the Whiptails. When the alarms sounded, they retreated immediately to seek out the cause of the alarm. Due to their fanatical devotion to Dr. Simon’s cause, to them, protecting Dr. Simon’s escape route was more important to them than their own lives, so they believed that many of them would likely be killed in the attempt to retreat. They were fine with this, so long as at least some of them made it to the transmitter to stop whatever sabotage had been inflicted upon it.

What they did not expect was that Spacebreather, by herself, was far more dangerous than the rest of the Whiptails put together. The majority of the Whiptails had been carefully trained to use only non-lethal force, while Spacebreather was more than willing to kill when necessary, and absolutely overqualified to do so for a person her age. They failed to understand that the men attempting to retreat would be the most likely to live another day, while the men attempting to stop Pilar had likely signed their own death warrant.

Inside the transmitter room, Sasha and Pilar were preparing to fight their way out. Both of them had the same job in this fight: keep the other alive. Sasha kept Pilar alive by immediately patching up any wounds she might receive, and Pilar kept Sasha alive by seriously injuring anyone who attempted to hurt Sasha before they managed to do so.

This was how they had functioned whenever they fought side by side in their pirate careers. This was the first time they’d ever been forced to break this mold.

Approximately 8 seconds after they’d cut the wire, as they prepared to descend from the platform, three dozen armed men stormed into the room. Pilar, having prepared for this possibility, flipped backwards over the ledge and, on the way to the ground, drew two short knives from the strap on her thigh.

She landed on top of one of the men, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. She ensured that the two knives landed directly in the top of two other goons’ skulls. Both of these men were carrying automatic weapons, both of which were in Pilar’s hands by the time her feet touched the ground. She was skilled at avoiding gunfire, having had a lot of practice. Her movements almost looked like a ballet, and none of the projectiles managed to touch her, yet.

She fired six shots from each of her weapons. Twelve headshots in less than a second, a new personal best for her. For a moment, she pondered that she would have to add a tally mark for each of these men to the tattoo on her arm, and hoped she never had so many tally marks that she ran out of space for them.

One of the goons took this moment as an opportunity to throw a plasma grenade in Pilar’s direction. It, unfortunately, would not prove to be the opportunity he expected it to be, as Pilar was fast enough to hit the grenade back at him with the barrel of her rifle. This was unfortunate for this particular henchman for obvious reasons, but since he was wearing a bandolier of other explosives across his chest, it was also unfortunate for the eight henchmen standing closest to him, as all the explosives detonated at once, bringing a quick end to nine more functionally identical henchmen.

“Pilar, catch!” Sasha called down from the ledge. Both sisters were hoping she wouldn’t have to leave her relatively safe cover in order to treat an injury. Both sisters would consequently shortly be disappointed.

Pilar instinctively reached a hand out to catch whatever Sasha had thrown without looking, a skill they’d developed over years of unexpectedly throwing things at each other for kicks. She caught something heavy and apparently made of metal, wrapped in leather.

“Is this…” Pilar asked, ducking behind a pillar to unsheath it, “Where did you find a machete?”

“It was on one of the guards we knocked out on the way in!”

They were only unconscious, but they had no intention of moving them out of the chamber before the failsafe went off, which by Pilar’s best guess was about three minutes and thirty seconds away, so she made a mental note to add two more tally marks to her tattoo.

“Why did he have a machete?” Pilar called back.

“I’m not his mom!” Sasha replied from the balcony, “I don’t really have any more information on that than you do!”

This was a satisfactory answer to Pilar. “Thanks, sis!” Pilar said, unsheathing the large blade and rustling in her pocket until she found a small, round object which she threw to the ground where it exploded with a snap, creating a dense cloud of thick, gray, pungent smoke. Before it cleared, she lunged towards the crowd of remaining henchmen and managed to cut eight throats in only two strokes.

Eight more tally marks.

She then managed to run three of them through with the machete before the smoke fully cleared.

Pilar quickly tried to count her kills, to see how many hostiles were remaining with her visibility impaired. She got through the following thought process in less than a second:

We took out two on the way in then there were thirty-six oh my god have I killed thirty-six people today no there were more I killed some of the guards on the surface this shouldn’t be this easy for me stay focused, thirty-eight hostiles total, two killed on the way in, three more on landing, twelve headshots, that’s seventeen total, then nine more with the grenades, that’s twenty-six, eight slit throats, thirty-four, skewered three more, so that’s thirty-sev—-

It was at this point that one of the rounds fired blindly by the lone remaining henchman managed to find its place, by pure random chance, in Spacebreather’s right shoulder.

“PILAR!” Sasha screamed, and bounded out from behind cover. Sasha had never been a particularly violent person, but when she saw Pilar go down from behind cover, her entire field of vision flashed red and when she came to a second later, she was holding a knife in her left hand, which was wet and warm. She opened her eyes and saw the knife in her hand was also embedded deep in the last henchman’s throat. Her hand was soaked with blood. She had no idea where she’d gotten the knife; she certainly didn’t have it on the balcony. There was an open wound on her right arm where a bullet had grazed her on the way down. This was the first person Sasha ever killed.

She didn’t have time to be traumatized yet, so she resolved to do that later and rushed to her sister’s side.

“You…” Pilar whimpered, “did you just… kill a guy?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t there,” Sasha said calmly, “let’s focus on getting you out of here alive, okay?”

“S-serum,” Pilar sputtered.

“It’s not gonna work on this,” Sasha replied as calmly as her impending panic attack would allow, “not until we get that bullet out of you.”

‘Wh—” Pilar started.

“What kind of asshole uses a physical bullet in this day and age? Good question, I have no idea. Thankfully he has a knife in his throat now,” Sasha tried to keep pressure on the wound and get Pilar over her shoulder. “Come on, we just gotta get you out of here and I can dig that bullet out and then pump you full of serum.”

“Leave me,” Pilar gasped.

“Out of the question,” Sasha replied. “You’ve survived worse than this.”

“Two minutes,” Pilar coughed up blood. “No use in us both dying.”

Sasha looked her sister directly in the eyes as severely as she could. “Don’t be a drama queen,” she said, looking to Pilar as much like their father as she’d seen since the day they lost him, “I just got you back, and I’m not leaving you here.”

“No,” Pilar cried, “no, I won’t have you die because of me, just live your life, keep going strong, keep whatever it is that’s—”

Sasha didn’t need to glance at the clock to know there were only about 45 seconds left. “We don’t have time to argue. As your next of kin, I’m authorizing your doctor to make this decision on your behalf. You’re not allowed to die, so, I’m sorry. This is going to hurt.”

“It already—” Pilar was cut off mid-sentence by Sasha throwing her over her shoulder fireman-style with a roughness that was not by any stretch of the imagination medically advisable, but at this point Sasha felt having a living sister with treatable injuries was better than having a dead sister with only one injury.

They escaped the room approximately fifteen seconds before the failsafe went off, destroying the transmitter completely and wiping away any evidence of the thirty-eight henchmen who’d died attempting to kill them. Sasha and Pilar watched the blue glow eradicate everything in the room, just to be sure their task had been successful, and then they hobbled their way down to the room where they knew Ariadne and Sweettalk to be. Sasha held Pilar’s sidearm in her right hand. She was naturally left-handed, but her left arm was currently supporting someone who was surprisingly heavy for her thin frame.

Pilar noticed the gash on Sasha’s upper arm. “You’re hurt.”

“Just think of it as my first, and hopefully only, tally-mark.”

Pilar’s heart dropped. “You killed a guy,” she said sadly.

“You’re welcome, Sasha, for saving my life,” Sasha smirked sarcastically.

“Isn’t that, like, against the Hypocritical oath?”

“Heh,” Sasha replied.

“What?”

“It’s the Hippocratic oath.”

“Whatever oath,” Pilar groaned.

“‘First, do no harm,’” Sasha pondered, “I don’t remember taking any oath.”

Pilar laughed, which was painful. “What kind of crappy medical school did you go to?”

“Homeschooled,” Sasha laughed, “I said I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up and my sister’s nerdy girlfriend stole me a bunch of medical supplies and textbooks the next day.”

“She sounds hot,” Spacebreather chuckled as lightly as she could without disturbing the bullet lodged in her shoulder, “think you could introduce me?”

“She’s just down the hall,” Sasha could see the door from here, “just get down the hall… of course, you can’t just learn from textbook. My idiot big sister kept getting herself hurt so I had a lot of hands-on practice.”

They both laughed, and it had been a long time since they had really genuinely laughed together like this. It would have been a perfect moment had it not quickly devolved into a coughing fit from Pilar.

“You always took good care of me,” Pilar’s speech was sounding somewhat slurred.

“Hey, stay with me! Just a little bit longer,” Sasha said, “I’ve still gotta take care of you for a long time, okay? I gotta introduce you to that nerd I was telling you about.”

“I love her,” Pilar muttered, “I don’t tell her that enough.”

“Shut up,” Sasha said, “you tell her all the time You have a shirt that says ‘I love my girlfriend’ on it.”

Pilar groaned. “Half the people on the crew have that shirt.”

“Well, there’s a lot of love on our crew,” Sasha explained, “and if you can get like… 50 more feet, the girls we love are right through that door and you can tell her you love her all you want.”

“I’m gonna kiss her,” Pilar muttered.

“You’d better,” Sasha said, “she’ll kill me if she doesn’t get to kiss you again.”

“She’s an amazing kisser,” Pilar slurred.

“That’s really none of my business,” Sasha started.

“I’m proud of you,” Pilar was barely intelligible. “You… she’s really good for you… she really is…”

“Sweettalk?”

“Mgrmph,” Pilar agreed.

“I always thought you didn’t really like her.”

“I didn’t,” Pilar sounded drowsy. It was clear that even with the serum, she was going to need a blood transfusion, “because she was… cocky… smooth-talking… arrogant… I never would’ve gotten to know her if you two didn’t…”

“Stay with me, sis, we’re so close.”

“Now I could… we could be friends… I was wrong about her… She wasn’t… she…”

“She’ll be glad to hear you say that,” Sasha tried to pick up the pace a little, “but she’ll never believe me, so you’d better stay with me long enough to tell her yourself. Remember, you are not allowed to die.”

“Tell me…”

“What do you want to know?” Sasha asked, focusing only on the door.

“Tell me what… you love… why do you love her…”

“She’s smart,” Sasha said, “way too smart, and so fun.”

“Keep going…”

“And yes, she’s an amazing kisser,” Sasha said.

Pilar coughed again. “No… not that… something real…”

Sasha considered this “She’s thoughtful, she’s always getting me little gifts. This robe… well, you’re gonna see it in a few minutes… She’s deep, but she doesn’t like people to know that. And when we’re alone… she’s so sweet that I know she’ll never leave me, even when everyone else is convinced that she betrayed us to the cops to save her own skin, I know she’ll come back for me because…”

Pilar was fading fast. “Because…?”

“Because we can’t live without each other. With all both of us have been through, for me to meet the love of my life so young? I know God put us together for a reason.”

“Don’t let Ariadne hear you say that…”

“Ariadne is the only atheist I know who’s met two different gods,” Sasha rolled her eyes, “you landed the most stubborn girl in the universe.”

“God, I love her so much…”

They were perhaps ten feet from the door now, and Sasha seemed determined to keep talking so that Pilar could focus on her voice and stay conscious. “And I guess I’m not a very good Catholic, I’m pretty sure I just broke the first commandment saying that. And, uh, number five, back there in the, uh… wow, I am gonna need to do a lot of rosaries.”

Pilar chuckled without adding anything to this.

“What’s so funny?” Sasha asked.

“We’re pirates…”

“Yes, we’re pirates. Good memory.”

“No, we… I mean, number seven.”

“Thou shalt not steal? Yeah, I guess we do kinda break that one pretty often,” Sasha said with a great deal of guilt, something all too common amongst those raised Catholic, “I think we’re still good people, though.”

“You are,” Pilar mumbled. “Ariadne too. Sweettalk. Not me… I’m going to hell for sure.”

“I’m pretty sure God will let a few broken commandments go if we were doing it to save hungry and abused children, that’s… kinda his whole deal,” Sasha dropped the sidearm to the ground and struggled to open the door single-handed, “plus, you do a great job with number four.”

They entered the room as Ariadne, Sweettalk, and the Triplets were coming out of the virtual interface. With as much urgency as she could muster, Sasha called to them: “I need your help, she’s been shot!”

“You always have to prove me wrong!” Ariadne rushed over and immediately took Pilar onto her own shoulder so Sasha could get to work on digging the bullet out, “you are not allowed to die.”

“You two have been spending too much time together” Pilar sputtered.

Sasha took out a strip of black fabric and lay it over Pilar’s wound. The fabric swirled and shimmered silver and gold for a moment before the silver parts settled into the shape of the ribcage beneath the skin, and the gold settled into the shape of a bullet, lodged between two ribs, near the heart.

“Is that … the robe I got you?” Sweettalk asked. “You dork, I thought you were kidding about the medical applications of it!”

“Gimme your knife,” Sasha demanded, and Sweettalk complied immediately.

Two minutes later, with the help of their loved ones, the bullet was out. Another minute later, Pilar had taken a dose of the serum and the bullet wound had healed completely.

[thesportssoundoff]

“I know undercards don’t matter. You don’t need to drive the point home so hard.” UFC 234 From Australia Preview

WHEW boy! Let's talk about this right quick. Let's begin with the positives of this card which are readily apparent. The two big middleweight fights at the top of the bill are pretty damn good. Even IF we assume that Israel Adesanya vs Anderson Silva is nothing more than a high level MMA human sacrifice, the mere presence of Anderson Silva makes this must see appointment television. Silva vs Adesanya will at least be memorable and the middleweight title fight is probably the best fight to showcase the transition from old and clunky to young and vibrant. Robert Whittaker and Kelvin Gastelum both represent some truly positive things ranging from the benefits of cutting less weight to the rise of young and athletic in a division run by a bunch of Muks.  The bad news is that the rest of this card ranges from "It's intriguing but not quite worth the spot it has" to "How could anybody care about this?" Some of these fights in all fairness are solid well put together contests pitting two solid fighters with similar records/places in the division----but most of these fights would have a hard time being considered appropriate main card ESPN+ fights. They want you to pay for the privilege of seeing Montana De La Rosa and Nadia Kassem. Remember that folks. Let's chit chat about it.

Fights: 12

Debuts: Marcos Rosa, Callan Potter and Raulian Pavia

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 2 (Ryan SPANN OUT, Sam Alvey IN vs Jim Crute/Alex Gorgees OUT, Callan Potter IN vs Jalin Turner)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 5 (Israel Adesanya, Anderson Silva, Kelvin Gastelum, Robert Whittaker and Lando Vannata)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC: 2 (Wulliji Buren, Teruto Ishihara)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC: 6 (Robert Whittaker, Israel Adesanya, Kelvin Gastelum, Ricky Simon, Dong Hyun Ma, Rani Yahya)

Main Card Record Since Jan 1st 2017 (in the UFC): 23-5

Kelvin Gastelum- 2-1 (1) Robert Whittaker- 3-0 Anderson Silva- 1-0 Israel Adesanya- 4-0 Ricky Simon- 2-0 Rani Yahya- 3-1 Montana De La Rosa- 2-0 Nadia Kassem- 1-0 Jim Crute- 1-0 Sam Alvey- 4-3

Fights By Weight Class (yearly number here):

Lightweight- 3 (7) Bantamweight- 3 (4) Middlewieght- 2 (3) Flyweight- 1 (4) Women’s Flyweight- 1 (4) Light Heavyweight- 1 (3) Featherweight- 1 (3)

Welterweight- (4) Heavyweight- (2) Women’s Strawweight- (1)

2019’s Records We Keepin Track Of:

Debuting Fighters (2-7): Callan Potter, Raulian Pavia, Marcos Rosa

Short Notice Fighters (1-2):  Callan Potter, Sam Alvey

Second Fight (5-1):  Nadia Kassem, Jim Crute, Devonte Smith, Kai Kara France, Jonathan Martinez, Jalin Turner

Cage Corrosion (Fighters who have not fought within a year of the date of the fight) (3-0):

Undefeated Fighters (1-6): Nadia Kassem, Israel Adesanya, Jim Crute

Fighters with at least four fights in the UFC with 0 wins over competition still in the organization: Dong Hyun Ma

Weight Class Jumpers (Fighters competing outside of the weight class of their last fight even if they’re returning BACK to their “normal weight class”) (3-3): Nadia Kassem, Jalin Turner

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- "What is this PPV gonna draw?" is going to be a pretty complicated discussion when you factor in all of the usual elements at play. For starters, the top two fights could not be anymore appealing. Four well known proven middleweights who have headlined enough events (be it on free TV, PPV etc) to at least have some cache with fans. Gastelum, Whittaker, Silva and Adesanya all have highlight reel worthy performances to make for a hell of a sizzle reel. Both fights have compelling enough stories to get people excited. We know fans don't necessarily care about undercards as much as you'd think so the complete ass-ness of the undercard is not entirely worthy of discussing.The counterpoint is that this card as a whole is very weak, it's an international PPV (which fans seem to not necessarily associate with quality) and historically speaking Robert Whittaker and Kelvin Gastelum have been anti-draws on PPV, Silva is the big star who hasn't been relied upon to move PPVs for a long time AND Israel Adesanya has struggled to draw free viewers to TVs let alone paying ones. There's also the fact that if there's a purchasing decision to be made, I imagine fans would rather splurge on UFC 235 than this card. The very loaded UFC 225 card with CM Punk, Holm, Andrei Arlovski, Tai Tuiavasa, Whittaker/Romero and Covington/RDA did around 250K buys which is pretty blegh. So what's this one do? I feel like 200K is the bottom line and anything over what 225 did should be a success.

2- Of the ten fighters on this main card, only four of them have ever appeared on a PPV main card before. Remove the co-main and main event and half of the fighters on the main card last appeared on the Fight Pass prelims or FS1(2) prelims to the main card. Only Jim Crute and Sam Alvey appeared on main cards last. This is a very thin main card.

3- The key challenge in figuring out the co-main event is whether Whittaker's body can hold up over what figures to once again be another grueling 25 minute fight. Gastelum has only been rocked once (a big counter hook vs Rick Story after mentally checking out for a bit) and so he figures to be there for as long as the fight lasts. Gastelum hits hard for a dude going up to 185 lbs and  when he gets going, he drowns people under a consistent offensive workrate. Like against Romero, Whittaker is going to be the fighter who has the technical advantages and he's the sort of fighter who can remain elusive while also being offensive and consistently pressuring. The problem is that Whittaker has broken hands, torn ACLs and been rocked consistently in his last two fights, both violent as all get out wars with Yoel Romero. That's nearly an hrs worth of fighting with Yoel Romero which physically and systematically destroys most normal people. At some point Whittaker is going to break down and I'm left wondering if Gastelum is going to be the lucky beneficiary to Romero's hard work.

4- So how likely it is that Adesanya vs Anderson Silva turns into one of those overly respectful deals where it's fifteen minutes of staring with an occasional flurry? Would Adesanya carry Silva out of respect?

5- Nadia Kassem is rather interesting and while her vs Montana De La Rosa is not in any way shape or form a main card PPV fight, it IS an interesting one. De La Rosa is a TUF contender turned solid flyweight who seems to have bouts of mental blockage at inopportune times BUT also packs good skills on the feet and in the grappling department. Kassem is really powerful, a big 125er (let's not forget she weighed 120 lbs in her strawweight debut) and comes from a market that the UFC visits 3-4 times a year with one PPV a year. She could be 2-3 wins away from us talking about her vs Valentina Shevchenko.

6- How many fights off of this show will you remember ONCE you remove the main and co-main event?

7- Kelvin Gastelum has managed to make things work pretty well with a basic 1-2 combination punctuated by a leg kick or two when he has to. He's a crisp boxer but people forget he's also a pretty damn good wrestler as well. I wonder if he tries to bring that back into the fold against Robert Whittaker just to shake things up over the course of the fight.

8- I wonder if Kai Kara France vs Raulian Pavia is exempt from Fight Of The Night honors on principle alone given that they're going to be gutting the division.

9- It's tough to remember it now but we started 2017 believing Lando Vannata could become one of the bigger future stars of the sport. At the very least, fresh off a highlight reel KO over Makdessi and with a FOTN vs Tony Ferguson in his backpocket, we figured he'd be a key factor in the division. Since that point? Lando is 0-2-2 with two draws that could theoretically have been losses. Vannata is a really fun fighter to watch but one who seems to fold under pressure and one who seems neither strong enough to wrestle successfully or complete enough to do the middle of the road stuff to make his high end flashy offense work. He flirted with free agency but the UFC brought him back. He gets a guy who rumor has it was signed primarily based off of his friendship with Anderson Silva. This is a gimme.

10- It's probably not going to be UFC quality but Shane Young vs Austin Arnett should be at the very least somewhat fun. I hope?

11- Rani Yahya finally gets his PPV debut after being in the UFC since the original WEC merger. Bless him.

12- Jim Crute, who is a very hittable guy, taking on Sam Alvey, who hits very hard, is a very risky way to give your Australian LHW prospect wunderkind some PPV exposure.