[center][img=http://baku-panda.org/images/UDC_lzcard.png][/center] [b]| KRYPTONIAN COLONIAL SHIP MATRIX |[/b] The behemoth traversed the space between stars with all the majesty and power as had borne it across dimensions both within this galaxy and without for more than a decade. It's passage was marked with neither sound nor fanfare, but merely a steady procession of those in search of a place to call [b]home[/b]. Once upon a time, they had been conquerers. In a different period, architects. Then philosophers, who had pled with their government to extract themselves from colonial wars spurned by passions of earlier times. Many of the survivors, those few who had escaped the destruction of the planet Krypton, had served in the Daxamite War. The last act of defiance from the last of the colony worlds that Krypton had still laid some claim toward. And then, on the eve of an interstellar peace, the unthinkable had occurred. Not without warning, but those who would have warned were silenced. Not without reason, but those who would speak up against the rape of the natural world were imprisoned. Not without blood, but those who had engineered the massacre of thousands of innocent inhabitants slept now soundly aboard the ship of their escape. But it was their ship. And this was their people, their home, even if they had nothing else. Such were the words that his father taught him. The boy knew nothing of Krypton. It was a place of myth and legend to him, the setting of many bedtime stories, and folklore discussed across the dinner table of times now long past. The child had been born aboard the ship, after it had sailed from the remains of the planet. He was about two cycles older than any other child aboard, the first of what was hailed as the next generation. The new Kryptonians. In truth, it all meant very little to him now. The young boy woke, though he wasn't certain just what had stirred him. He was tucked away in an antechamber of his parent's chambers. His bed recessed into the wall as a small bunk. A white furred canine shared the bed with him, the boy hugging his arms around the sleeping animal as he lay there in the daze between sleep and wakefulness, until it at last registered why he was awake. Pushing himself up on his arms, the brown-haired child slid out of the bed and made his way to the bathroom. The boy had no concept of the ship's chronometer, he merely knew that he was still sleepy. Had he the maturity or foresight to have inspected the time, he'd have found it the middle of the night as the ship counted time. In either event, which was of little consequence to the boy so long as he could go back to sleep, the boy did not return to his own bed. Instead, he wandered into the private chamber shared by the two god-like individuals who were responsible for all good things -- such as breakfast and birthdays -- and much wrath, such as spankings. Into the den of these deities, who were known in this celestial pantheon as the god [b]Dad[/b] and the goddess [b]Mom[/b], the boy crawled up on the bed that the two shared, moving on all fours to occupy the space between where the two lay. And there, in the valley of the shadow of parents, the child nestled down to go back to sleep. The white furred canine lumbered inside of the bedroom a minute after, circling at the foot of the bed three times before settling down. With a snort, the pup sneezed and then set its muzzle atop its forepaws as it yawned and dozed off as well. ---- The squeals of playing children were like a thousand battlecries echoing off the metal corridors of the contained starship. As an internal airlock opened to permit passage through the ship, the brown-haired son of Zod was at the head of a troop of boys rampaging through the ship like barbarians in the frenzy. The white furred canine was looking haggard for the effort at keeping up with the energy level of the children, as they ran from one of the ship to the next in endless games that had few rules and even less sense to them. They were playing soldiers and Daxamites, with Lor-Zod as the captain of the soldier team. Because he was a Zod. Zod's were soldiers. Like his dad, who was the captain of the ship. All the girls were Daxamites by default, because they were girls. This made them bad guys no matter what the game was. The boys didn't play with the girls, of course, but when they came across girls it was understood that girls were always [b]it[/b]. Coming around a corner, the young Kryptonian led a charge to ambush a group of Daxamites. They didn't have weapons of course, not real ones anyway. But with pieces of scrap, the boys fashioned their imagination into an arsenal beyond belief. With sound effects and loud squealing, the boys romped through the ship until they arrived at a chamber with a large viewing dome toward the bottom of the starship. It was a place they often went, because it was far from where most of the adults worked, and the view of the stars was unlike anything imaginable. As the boys ran into the room, however, they quickly forgot the game that they were playing. Instead, one by one, they slowly moved to step up to the edge that peered down into the vastness of space. And, there, reflected in the glass was something truly amazing. A planet orbited beneath the ship.