Children’s Play Grounds

Tigerfish

It was always dicey, dealing with the mermaids of the delta.

They were quick, with fast hands and faster smiles. Plenty of good men died by just getting too close, and they encouraged it.

Tiger scales were a warning, to anyone who knew to look for them. Even the crocodiles gave them wide berth.

Once in a while they fought.

Javan saw that once. Saw the brown water and the papyrus rattle as two predators fought, one with scales like armor and the other with knife and tooth and claw.

There was so much blood, he would never have known who won, except for the flash of gold scales and tiger stripes.

She was hurt. So hurt that she might have died, and yet he dared to bandage her, cautious because she could kill him any moment, but unable to leave her there, dying in the shallow water.

There was a giant, bloody tooth in her hand. He didn’t try to touch it. 

“Why?”

He jumped and pulled his gun before he even quite knew what he was doing. The mermaid bared long, pointed teeth at him and hissed, tensing like she was about to bolt, or slash at him with her lethal claws.

For a long minute, they waited. She was fast. Probably fast enough to kill him, but not before he shot her at least once. 

“Peace,” she said at last, and pointedly retracted her claws. Javan watched her. It could be a trap, and he hoped it wasn’t. Sure, the mermaids tended to be maneaters, and this one probably did exactly that, but he didn’t actually like killing anything. “I will do you no harm on this day, Arab.”

“I’m not an Arab,” Javan winced, but he did put his gun away. “I’m Armenian. Are you going to claw me if I patch you up?”

“Patch up?” she cocked her head and considered him. Her dark skin glittered with water droplets and her eyes were gold. “What is ‘patch up’?”

Right. No clothes. The concept of patching was probably unfamiliar.

“Bandage,” Javan nodded towards her still bleeding arm. “This is a bad place to be bleeding.”

She mulled that over, and seemed very aware of her long, golden tail that was half-submerged in the water. A trail of thick blood followed the current downstream.

“Very well,” she decided after a while. “Until we part ways, and unless it is in defense, I will not harm you.”

That was… pretty complete all things considered. Javan decided he would take it. “Gotcha. Okay, hold still.”

She did, and he dared to get closer so he could wash and bandage her bleeding hide. As soon as everything was clean, he held up a bottle of liquid bandage. “This will sting, but it will help.”

Again, she considered, and nodded her approval. He had to work quickly, but it didn’t take long to get her as whole as he could manage.

“Why help me?” she asked after a while, and waited until he finished with a bite down her arm to haul herself out onto the sparse grass nearby. “We kill your kind.”

“Yeah, I know,” Javan admitted, and prudently got out of range. He didn’t think she was going to change her mind about him, but it was never good to be close to the water, mermaid or no mermaid. “Your lot make mine real nervous. We keep losing guys down by the river.”

Not like they could do anything about it. They weren’t even supposed to be in this part of Africa, but there was something to be said for hiring mercenaries, and one of the local diamond barons needed some extra muscle.

“So why risk it?’ she persisted, and kicked her tail to spray water over herself. “Between me, and the crocodiles, I would think you would leave me.”

“I’ve seen a lot of death in the last couple weeks,” Javen said, and found a seat on a fallen log nearby. It was surprisingly bug-free, and he settled himself, interested in talking as long as he could. “I might be good at killing, but I try not to if I can help it.”

She hummed thoughtfully and rolled her crocodile tooth between her long fingers. Now that he looked, he realized she had a whole necklace of them.

“You helped me without asking anything in return,” she said quietly, and raised her bandaged arm. “Except that I not harm you while you did it, which is no proper repayment. Take this.”

She tossed him the tooth and Javan caught it reflexively. It filled his palm. The crocodile itself must have been absolutely huge.

“Wear it as a necklace,” she ordered him, and flashed him a smile that was pretty, and full of fangs. “And remember the name, Zamara.”

Before he could reply, she flipped and vanished into the murky water.

He looked down at the tooth in his hands and then at the dark water.

“Thanks,” he said to the empty air, and dug for some string.

He didn’t know what the tooth meant, but who was he to refuse a gift from a mermaid?

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Idea about the new halo game

The photo of chief does not really look like a dudes leg

It looks more like a girls I know it isn’t much but could it be a new female Spartan it could also be Cortana in spartan armor not Likely but any thing could happen. The face that the also don’t show the number of that spartan but show chief at the end number and all makes me think that it could just be a female lead protagonist spartan.

Any thoughts or criticism welcome

Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn’t just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it’s because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles, tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they don’t really understand. Endlessly frustrating if you have to fight them, because they can pull an effectively unlimited number of bullshit space-magic countermeasures out of their arses - but they’re as likely as not to give themselves a lethal five-dimensional wedgie in the process. All those rampant holograms and warp core malfunctions and accidentally-traveling-back-in-time incidents? That doesn’t actually happen to anyone else; it’s literally just Federation vessels that go off the rails like that. And they do so on a fairly regular basis.

So, I haven’t been posting consistently for the past couple of weeks because I’ve been ripping and tearing through the hordes of hell in Bethesda’s new DOOM game, oh and what a fucking game it is!! There are few experiences as emotionally exhilarating as when you are violently blasting through fucking droves of demons while the game serenades you with glorious heavy metal. If you haven’t, please play it!

Recently, I beat the game, and I bought a cute DoomGuy POP Vinyl to add to the toy collection. Please enjoy some of the best doom game tidbits I found on Tumblr. Some of it’s pretty funny!

Doom slayer only thinks in heavy or death metal right? So if he is happy does he think in classical music or like pop.

Godzilla is the king not because the other kaiju agree with him, but because no one has any fucking clue of what he's saying, but he's saying it with such conviction that no one dares question him.

The implications are just funny as hell. Like he could just be groaning that his feet hurt but everyone else thinks he's about to do an execution. Or trying to give a compliment yet others think he's about to slit their throat.

Godzilla: Listen Rodan, I'm disappointed but I understand why you did what you did. It was merely the nature of self preservation and survival. Nothing cowardly about that.

Rodan, who doesn't speak japanese and thinks Godzilla is threatening him:

Enri, praying: It’s me again

Enri: I need someone to save my village... someone who won’t run away

Enri: Maybe send me an angel!

Enri: The nicest angel you have.

Momonga, striding through a black portal, gripping the heart of an enemy soldier, reanimating the corpse to go kill more soldiers, and offering Enri a vial of blood to drink: :) hi