Mi Ran shook her head. Her thoughts were wandering around again, she needed to concentrate. Concentrate on the nearly empty, except for her two Tatara body guards, throne room.
"Min Su... I am bored... Isn't there something I can do except simply sitting here?", Mi Ran moaned.
A blue scaled Tatara, her bodyguard Pyo Min Su, flew closer and bowed a little. 

"I am very sorry, Mi Ran-mama. I don't know myself why today is such an empty day. But sadly I cannot allow you to leave yet, mama. But I can shorten the audience time to end in about half an hour, if you wish, but we need to go through the formalities."
Mi Ran sighed tapping her fingers onto the wood of the throne. "I know, I know... proceed, please. I don't want to sit here for two more hours..."

Pyo Min Su bowed before she dashed behind a desk whirling out a pen and activating the digital panel.
For now, Mi Ran just devoted herself to staring into the sky visible through the open gate a few hundred meters ahead of her until her stare was interrupted by a Nyali hastily flying in. "Gongjumama, gongjumama! Princess, princess! Urgent message!"
Surprised and a little shocked Mi Ran sprang up from the throne. "What is it, jeonlyeong? Tell me."
"Jeoha, we have just gotten news from Home... Earth has fallen..."

When Admiral Tae Yu Na received the news, she was sitting in the captain's cabin on her ship, the [i]Seoul[/i], the lead ship of the [i]Seoul[/i]-class Dreadnought, of which currently four others are finished, and flagship of the First Fleet, caring for her red scales, especially on her tail. Naturally, as a Tatara, she was very proud of her scales as her sign of beauty and strength and had to care for them routinely.

When the message arrived, she didn't flinch, she didn't stop her cleaning for one second and just motioned for her first officer to leave.
As soon as the door had closed, she balled her scaled hand into a fist and slammed it onto her bedstand.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit!"

She paused for a second to angrily pull out a splinter of plastic out between the scales of her hand and breathed in and out steadily to calm herself down. A little flame passed through her mouth unconsciously. This was a political disaster for the Cheonsang Kingdom. It meant the renewal of diplomatic relations with the dominion, it meant, war was inching closer and closer.
Even though some hardliners in the military wanted to seriously try out the new equipment in actual war, but even those would not dare to try to use them offensively against the dominion.

No matter what, her people needed her now. She couldn't even begin to imagine how it would feel for the humans in her crew. Gingerly, she straightened her uniform, folded her wings in and left her room to head to the bridge.

"Captain on the bridge!", her first officer called out. Yu Na nodded and moved to her self to her chair, but before she sat down, she turned to her two thirds human bridge crew. "I'm sorry... the next couple of hours will be painful as we await an official statement of the royal family. The months following that will be even harsher, I myself know, we can't let ourselves be intimidated... but a display of might like the one the dominion just showed us, is not easily counterable." A heavy pause. 

"As sad as it makes me to think about it, but we might need to give up what our ancestors managed to regain two hundred years ago and retreat, once again, into the safety of The Sisters or even further."
A lonesome tear rolled down her cheek staining the lovely red scales that adorned them with a deeper colour than usual.

After a long, meaningful pause, one human started humming a familiar tune to everybody on the ship and soon, the entire bridge crew joined in the folk song.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkM_LXUCMeA[/youtube]

Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo...
Arirang gogaero neomeoganda.
Nareul beorigo gasineun nimeun
Simnido motgaseo balbbyeongnanda.

Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo...
Crossing over Arirang Pass.
The one who abandoned me
Shall not walk even 4 kilometers before their feet hurt