Arthur buckled his helmet securely and pulled his gloves on. He then looked himself over in the mirror to make sure he was completely ready. After all, very important meetings didn't come everyday and he definitely wanted to look as spiffy as possible.
As he walked to the door, Arthur threw a quick glance at the son he had taken 'under his wing'. Meta was playing happily but, on seeing Arthur leave, he crawled up and latched himself on the knight's foot.
"Oh, great." Arthur face-palmed. "Meta, what is it now!"
The blue toddler started to giggle. "Wants to come too!"
"Not now, you have to stay here." the golden knight struggled to gently pull Meta off of him.
Two big tears started to fill the child's eyes. He wasn't particularly being a brat. The poor youngster just hated being left alone. His only playmate was down with a cold and Meta felt lonely.
"I'm here to rescue you!" Athena walked in with a hug grin over her face."There's only one way to reason with a toddler."she grabbed a handful of sweets from a nearby jar and held them out."Meta, candy!"
The baby looked back and forth at the outstretched paw of candy and his adoptive father. Finally, he reached at the candy and fell over himself.
"See, works every time!" she exclaimed triumphantly.
Arthur frowned, hoping the child would stop needing and accepting bribes. It was certain that Meta had a terrible sweet tooth and a bad habit of always eating anything he could get his greedy paws on.
"Take good care of him 'till I'm back!" the knight said and dashed down the hall to his meeting.
"Noted," Athena mumbled. At first she did a very commendable job at babysitting. After a while though, her short attention span got the better of her and she was too distracted to see Meta devour the whole candy jar.
~Meanwhile~
Arthur walked to his seat and sat down, silently. He was a bit embarrassed as he was rather late. The knight glanced up at the audience. Across from him sat Sir Falspar, who blew him a raspberry. Dragato sat besides the naughty green knight and rolled his eyes. Nonsurat sat in a corner with a troubled expression on his face. Galacta Knight was staring at nothing in particular but had a sinister glow in his red eyes. There were a couple others that Arthur didn't recognize but looked equally as important.
The general stood up. His keen eyes mentally counted all the knights present. "Good, now that we're all here, let's begin." The elderly knight unrolled some thick scrolls and opened a small booklet. "Here we have Sir Arthur's discovery from one of the enemy factories. It seems we've recovered these plans just in time. If they were left in the enemy's hands, it could have caused serious damage. We have deciphered enough of this script to find out that it contains the means to build an entirely new weapon. An artificial life form capable of copying all kinds of abilities. Before I commission our scientists create this weapon we must be sure that it's a good idea. Thoughts?"
"I think we should go through with it! After all, we need all the firepower we can get!" exclaimed Falspar.
"It's sounds too risky. It is from Nightmare and we don't know if it would backfire on us." muttered Nonsurat.
"How dangerous could it be? We need to be at least a little daring if we want to win this blasted war." Dragato spoke up.
"We must use any means we can to defeat Nightmare. We must make this weapon!" agreed Galacta Knight.
The other two knights there voted on canceling the project. The votes were tied, three to three. Arthur thought hard. His opinion was the deciding vote. All the knight's there had very good points. This new weapon would either win them the war or cause greater destruction.
The golden knight glanced at the plans. Shown there was a picture of the final result. It looked just like Meta, only pink. The enemy probably designed it that way to cause confusion.
Finally Arthur spoke up: "Let's make it."
"Is that you're final answer?" the general questioned. At a nod from Arthur, the elderly knight proclaimed the meeting adjourned.
"Looks like those plans that I found were very important after all…"Arthur said to Dragato as they walked down the halls together. "I sure hope I made the right decision there. It would be bad if a calamity happened because of my vote."
"I'm sure it's going to work out just fine." Dragato assured.
"Say, I was wondering, maybe on our free time, we could go fight the enemy together. It would probably help a lot."
"That sounds fine. Our own sort of group, huh. What do we call ourselves?"
"How about…Guardian Soldiers!"
"Sounds good to me. See you later!" Dragato said and went to his dorm.
Arthur's smile faded as he walked up to his own room. Even through the thick door, he could hear Meta crying and sobbing. On entering, he saw Athena doing everything she could to make the toddler quiet down.
"What's the matter?" Arthur asked.
"I don't know!" she replied franticly. "I did everything I could but he just won't stop crying!"
Arthur sighed and placed the screaming child on his lap. But even Arthur's comforting presence wouldn't quiet Meta down.
"Are you sure you were watching him the whole time?" Arthur asked.
"Yes…Well, most of the time." the lavender female replied sheepishly.
Arthur rolled his eyes and continued to shush Meta. Little did neither of the adults know that Meta was suffering from a stomach ache, the cause of too much candy.