Taking Sides

Chapter 3: Tensions

-Chapter 3: Tensions-

The rest of the day went mostly uneventfully, with the only other highlight being a heated argument between Captain Wee and Draco about the merits of using a proper toilet above digging a hole in the field behind the camp. On top of that, the rumour that floated around during dinner was that pretty much all the meat in the camp had gone down Draco's throat in a bid to sate his ridiculous appetite. As a result, our dinner ended up being vegetables, rice and tofu. Not very filling to say the least, especially since the vegetables were spicy, and I didn't take spicy food. I ended up having five pieces of tofu and some rice, much to the amusement of the canteen lady.

The night was whiled away watching movies and sleeping...

The next day, once we handed over the standby duties to the next team, then returned to our bunks to wash up, I ended up lying on the bed again. During the course of the previous day, a handful of other smaller dragons had also come through the portal in the parade square, and promptly emptied the newly refilled meat stores, much to the annoyance of the population of the camp at large.

I checked around the news sites again, and found that there were rising tensions in even the nations at peace, with friction between humans in general and the dragons, who would generally walk around as if they owned the place, and helped themselves to everything without remorse.

Even locally, several businesses had already filed complaints, while online, the number of hate posts were climbing. It had only been one day and people were already unhappy with the newcomers. The government was trying to avoid a disaster, and was presently holding things together barely... The army had been told to stay on high alert, and to help the police keep the peace, for riots had already broken out overseas.

Regardless of the efforts of the government, the complaints and hate posts kept coming in, and the atmosphere went from the normal boring to tension again. People were expecting war, in fact, some actually wanted it... I wasn't surprised, though, because there would always be a handful who wanted war with anything and everything, but the only difference this time was that more and more people wanted it... There were even a few who posted saying that they would gladly go back to the army to fight these dragons...

On top of that, the reservist troops had been recalled, and they were presently in one of the other blocks in the camp compound, being issued their equipment.

This was all done under the pretence of being routine trainings, and such. However, judging from the fact that some of the reservists turned up in their work clothes or uniform, along with the fact that most of them sped in just on time, I reckoned that there was something more going on.

The country wasn't doing random routine drills and training. Singapore was preparing to mobilise the army. ie, The nation was preparing for war.

It wasn't hard to see, really. There was a palpable tension in the air, while the reservist troops, who would usually be a jolly bunch were quiet and whispering amongst themselves, while casting sideways glances at the portal. The dragons had eventually gone off, probably having better things to do than to stick around in the camp. Yet, suspicious glances were frequently directed towards the portal, along with the rifles of two recently assigned permanent sentries...

The news from around the world wasn't very promising either. Another country would go to war every hour or so, and the nations at peace were dwindling fast... In fact, at least two nations declared war while the platoon went to lunch.

By evening, the only nation at peace was Singapore...

However, when we were called down to the auditorium for some sort of briefing by Captain Wee, something told me that it was about to change. The various local news agencies had already been nationalised and taken over by the government. They wasted no time in broadcasting the locations of known portals, and telling all civilians to evacuate to a few designated areas...