“I’ve wondered if it was really worth all of this hell. Was it really worth the suffering and anguish we’ve lived through just for one man’s greed?” The scientist pondered this thought, alone in the shallow living quarters he’d been calling his room for the past several months.

His name was Dozara Inara, one of the top scientists on planet Valin, and one of the last members of the former royal bloodline of the Inara family. His great grandfather was the last known prince before the dissolution of the royal houses in favor of the current High Council.

Dozara knew a great deal of his family’s long-standing history, the most prominent piece of that history being the creation of alliances between his family and the other royal houses. These alliances sparked a Golden Age of peace that has lasted for millennia. He sat there wondering where he and his compatriots would wind up knowing they’d be leaving Valin in search of a new home to escape the conflict that had risen up between the Separatists Army and the forces of the High Council of Valin.

He and his head lab consultant Ichigo Izayoi had been ordered by the High Council to seek shelter in a special underground launch base until preparations had been made to deploy a long range shuttle to transport them to the nearest habitable planet.

----

As the hours ticked by in the launch bay the final safety checks had gone through and the two of them had received their final briefings before boarding. “Dad, when will we be leaving?” asked Dozara’s eight year old son Takaru.

Dozara smiled brightly “Any minute now.” as he tried to calm Takaru, easing him up the entrance ramp. He thought to himself (“Makes me think back to Shayla back on the day of her first deployment after basic training. I’m hoping that this ordeal doesn’t sour him the way the war ravaged her. She would have been the perfect mother for him. Caring, considerate, a beautiful personality and amazingly energetic.”) He thought to himself as they started loading cargo onto the ship.

(“Sadly he’s all I have to remember her by. The war was far from being kind to her. It shattered her mind, by the time she’d come back from her second tour she was extremely unstable. While she was on active leave I coerced her into conceiving him and while it seemed to ease her down somewhat in the time after Takaru was born, but as time wore on it became to much for her and she committed suicide. The doctors said it was a combination of post combat shell shock and postpartum depression.” he let out a sigh and looked at Ichigo as they made their way to their shared quarters while Takaru was being led into the Hibernation bay in preparation to be put into Active Stasis.

“Dozara, I can tell you’re thinking about her again. I know Shayla meant a lot to you, just as Harold meant a lot to me. but the past year of being shuffled around between different safe houses has taught me that while it's perfectly fine to hold onto the memories of one's past. It's also a good thing to let things go, if you let yourself get hung up on the past for too long you’ll never move onto the future.” Ichigo said smiling as she shrugged off her lab coat letting it fall to the floor.

She smiled a bit and chuckled as she noticed Dozara’s forlorn expression perk up at the sight of her current outfit. While it was a standard office casual lab uniform he could tell she’d made some slight alterations to it. Most notably the hem of the skirt was well above her thigh, a reasonable estimate of two inches or so by Dozara’s observation.

“Ichigo, I assume this is your way of saying you’re letting your obligations to Harold go.” as he noticed a slight wince in her face. She shook her head and smiled as she rubbed her stomach as she walked over to the bed on the far side of the room.

“No, not exactly, I do have one last obligation to Harold. Before he left for his last deployment, we conceived a baby. She's about 5 months along. My original thought was to give her his family name since she will be his daughter but given the circumstances it would likely be better to either grant her my maiden name or give her yours seeing as we’ll be pretty much starting out as a new family in whatever world we find out there. I’m estimating that if I leave the chrono field dampener systems disabled in the bay where she’ll be in stasis she should age up to match T.K by the time we arrive, give or take depending on how far we have to go to find a habitable world.” she said, smirking a bit.