TS C2: Contacted!

Taking Sides

-Chapter 2: Contacted!-


There was a bright flash, accompanied with a loud ‘bang!’, both somehow reminding me of a what I imagined a nuclear explosion would look like. Most of us were blinded momentarily, and took a while to recover, with enough curses being uttered to appal even the commanders.

Then, came a loud and pretentious sounding voice, which bellowed “I am Draco the brown! Fear me, for I return to reclaim my lands!”

By then, I had recovered enough of my vision to see that the creature was indeed a dragon, with a maw filled with sharp and vicious-looking teeth, deep, black eyes that seemed to absorb you into a bottomless abyss. His scales were indeed brown, and he had a mottled yellow underside. His wings laid folded on his back, mostly obscured from my sight, as was his tail. He must have glided out of the wormhole thing, and presently stood in the middle of the parade square, eyeballing all the buildings with disdain. I was quite sure that he hadn’t noticed us, for he failed to comment on the huge group of armed men hiding behind the building… Either that, or he simply didn't see us as a threat, which meant that one side would be in big trouble soon enough. I hoped that the case was the former.

Out of nowhere, I saw Captain Wee walk out, also dressed in skeletal battle order, but he carried no weapon. He seemed to say something to the dragon, and received a scornful snort in return. He seemed to add more, and the dragon seemed to get angry…

“You claim that these lands are mine no more, but you show me no proof! You say that you can defend it, but I see no troops! Begone, human, and let me restore this place to its proper natural state!” He then loosed a jet of flame into the air and roared.


Captain Wee took a few steps back, but seemed somewhat unperturbed. He turned in our direction and shouted, “You want to see the army? Very good. BRAVO! CHARGE!”

Everyone had obviously been briefed before, as they immediately got up and charged, screaming random war cries. Picking up on it, and not wanting to be trampled, I charged too, rifle in hand. The tension was released, but as I could see from most of the people around, fear prevailed instead. Yet, I found myself strangely calm, as I followed the flow, shouting too…

The entire show received another scornful snort. “That is your army? What a joke. You people aren’t even holding blades! Those clubs of yours won’t even scratch my scales. Now begone!”

Captain Wee seemed surprised at this reaction, and stood there speechless for a moment. The dragon took this as a moment of acceptance, and told us once again to ‘begone’.

However, the captain would have none of it. He reached over and tapped me on the shoulder. “Fire warning shot. Aim, don’t hit anyone.”

I nodded and loaded my weapon. I cocked it, took aim, and fired a shot what barely missed the dragon’s eye. Meanwhile, Captain Wee added, “Oh, these are far from being clubs. We progressed beyond those centuries ago. These can down a man hundreds of metres away. What makes you think it can’t down you?”

The dragon said nothing, for he was too busy staring down his snout at the smoking muzzle of my rifle.

The whole lot of us waited to see his reaction with baited breath. He would either back off, or reach over and swipe the whole lot of us into the nearby wall with one of the huge, clawed forelegs of his. What the captain had done was not to show our power, but instead, even the odds…

Captain Wee continued, “But, we don’t want to fight. If you and your people are willing to coexist with us, there will be no reason to point weapons at each other. So, will you stand down?”

“Are you asking me to surrender?!” The dragon snarled, angry again.

“No. I’m asking you not to start a fight, possibly a war.” The captain replied coolly. I marvelled at how he managed to keep his head, while everyone else was hugging onto their rifles, of all things, to keep from wetting themselves. It must have been something they taught him during his training. Either that, or he had something else up his sleeve, possibly the rest of the army.

The dragon seemed to pause to think about it for a while, then nodded. “I see your reasoning, human. Very well, I will ‘stand down’ as you speak.” He didn’t seem too pleased about it, but his tone was no longer confrontational, and he had stopped showing his teeth…

The tension in the air instantly dissipated, and everyone started cheering, while Draco watched, bemused. Captain Wee tried to coax him to move elsewhere, but was brushed off. “No, this place will be fine. It is sunny and warm. Good for a dragon like me. If my size impedes your activities, I will just shrink myself down.”

At the word ‘shrink’, practically everyone, including me, turned to stare at him. What he was proposing was simply impossible. It went against everything set down in the laws of physics…

Yet, before our eyes, the dragon uttered a few words, and literally began to shrink, and he stopped when he was around the size of a large horse, but stayed lying smack in the middle of the parade square. His voice seemed to have shrunk too, as he shouted over, “Better?”

“Much better.” Captain Wee shouted over, before letting himself slump limply against a nearby wall, and heaving a sigh of relief, somewhat oblivious that the dragon had just shrunk down, literally. Seeing how pale he was, I brought my bottle over and offered him some water. He drank gratefully, thanking me and adding that I had gotten off a nice shot. Maintaining a cool façade had taken a toll on him. He had had nothing up his sleeve. Only us…

I just nodded and went back to the standby vehicle with the rest of my team. As I walked, I felt my phone vibrate, and I took it out to see that it had started booting up. At the same time, I heard the vehicle engine turn over once...twice, then sputter to life. We all clambered into the vehicle and drove it to the store rooms, where we began to unload the stores, remarking that it was good that the vehicle could start, for we didn’t want to have to unload everything and carry it all across the parade square...

Seemingly curious, Draco strolled over and settled down nearby, watching with mild interest while we brought everything back into the rooms before locking up…

Eventually, he seemed to come to a decision, sauntered over, and began to nose over the vehicle curiously, pausing at the bonnet and exhaust areas. Of course, we were all too busy to really say anything, and he seeming to understand that we were doing our jobs, he left us well alone.

After a while, I decided to take a break and went to have a drink of water from the more or less permanent water point, which simply consisted of a campro full of iced water along with a bag full of clean cups. As usual, I took a cup and filled it, then went to sit on the small ledge where the building ended and the parade square began. I sat there and drank, while flicking through my facebook newsfeed.

I only realised a moment later that Draco had somehow snuck his way behind me and was looking over my shoulder at the phone. I had only been alerted to his presence when I felt his warm breath blow against my left cheek. I had turned to see what it was, and nearly jumped when I came face to snout with the dragon, dropping my phone for the umpteenth time as I did so…

Naturally, my first reaction was, “What the fuck?! How’d you appear there?”

Draco snorted. “I walked.”

The pointed response left us in an awkward silence for a while before I went back to using the phone. Draco remarked that it was an interesting trinket. He asked me what magic I used to get it to work.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Magic? No, no such thing… Not until a few minutes ago when you broke the laws of physics. This is technology. It’s just very advanced so that it appears magical. No magic here, though. Only electricity.”

He stared at me dumbfounded for a while, then replied, puzzled, “What? No magic? Have all of you lost touch with the arcane arts?”

I scratched my head absentmindedly and shrugged, finding myself strangely unaffected. “Looks like it. Everything here is technology. No magic at all.”

The dragon stared at me, bewildered for a while, before my loud orchestral ringtone broke the silence, making him warble in surprise, while I simply picked up the call with a “Yeah, what?”. The caller ID had shown that it was Sergeant Chester that was calling.

While I had been talking, they had gone back to the bunk, and I had apparently been gone for quite a while. He had called to ask me to go back to the bunk for a debriefing. I complied and got up, and headed off after bidding a hasty farewell to the dragon, who still seemed to be enthralled by the phone and the fact that I was in a call.

I hurried down to the bunk, where the team and one of the operations staff was waiting. The debrief itself was quite short, for the mission had been cancelled halfway, but we were told that the spill had been cleaned up and the place returned to normalcy by the civil defence people. Basically, we had been turned back simply because our help was no longer needed.

We were then told to resume our normal standby duties, and that we had already missed lunch. Some packed food had been arranged, but since we had returned so late, everything was already cold and generally tasted horrible. The packed food ended up in the bin, and all of us ended up having cup noodles for lunch instead.

It then occurred to me to look up the news to see how things had turned out around the world. A look around the various news websites showed a mixed reaction to the entrance of the dragons. Some nations declared outright war within minutes, while others made peace. However, a vast majority had already begun fighting, or were on the way to war. Singapore had been one of the handful at most that had managed not to start shooting…