Arthur's POV:

The arrival of the starship of new recruits at the base I was sent to was met with little ceremony. None of us were really bothered, everyone was out busy becoming heroes, after all.

Upon the first time we were called out to battle, I was stunned to be informed that since I was a lieutenant general, I received special 'privileges' and was therefore not required to fight. Well, so what if I wasn't 'required?' I wanted to go earn some glory too, so I went.

It was not at all what I was expecting.

I won't go into detail, but just know that for someone who was still a bit of a young boy at heart, who thought he was heading into some great adventure, it was a rude awakening. It was terrible. It was horrible. And it is something that I will never remember fondly.

Rather than boring you with details about battle after battle, I will skip to one of the 'good' parts.

I am sure that you have heard about Meta Knight and his quest to find Galaxia, and the very sad loss of Corporal Garlude along the way. I knew about Garlude's... 'situation,' and had tried to persuade her to go home to her family, but she had refused. It wasn't often that you found someone fighting for such pure intentions, and it was awe-inspiring to see that a mother's love would even give her the strength to part from her child in order to protect her and try to give her a safe Galaxy to live in, so I let her stay. Had I known that she was not going to come back from the mission to obtain the star sword, I would have chosen someone else. But, what's past is past.

In the First Star Warriors' War, no one believed in Galaxia. Everyone knew that it was just a myth, just a story made up by a few Star Warriors sitting around some campfire. But there was one legend that we put more stock in: The Legend of the Lake of Light and Darkness.

According to the legend, there was a magical lake that contained no water but was rather filled with pure Star-Light in one half and concentrated Darkness on the other. The two sides did not mix with each other at all, but were completely and totally separated straight down the exact center of the perfectly round lake. The rumor that had grown alongside the legend claimed that if one was to find this lake, (or technically, if he was chosen by the lake for him to find it. the lake could move wherever it wished, and only appeared to those whom it chose,) he had two options. Well, three technically, but the third one no one would have ever thought to consider.

That third option would have been to turn and leave without another thought about the lake, but no one would choose that when offered the first two choices. The one who was blessed (or cursed, it depended on how you looked at it) enough to find this lake was to draw his sword, and then choose which side of the lake to dip it into.

If dipped in the Light side, the sword would become a slightly weaker form of star sword known as a celestial sword, an instrument of Light and purity used more for rescue and guidance than for harm. Nowhere near as great as that sword of myth, Galaxia, but still very strong and mighty. A star sword is the best weapon any Star Warrior can carry, in the opinion of the majority and myself, anyway. But in addition to receiving an 'upgraded' sword, the warrior would also receive a set of armor that reflected their true soul, just as I thought my wings reflected my soul.

If dipped in the Dark side, however, the sword would become a terrible weapon made of a substance stronger and sharper than even Galaxia itself. But the warrior would be given a set of armor that would not reflect their soul, but would make them appear to be a shining hero. But the one who chose power and strength over purity and justice would be cursed to a miserable life filled with naught but the desire of power and glory, and eventually, a miserable end in which all power and glory they had scraped together for themselves in life would be lost.

According to another legend, Solar had been one of the few to find this lake. He, of course, dipped his sword in the Light side, yielding the celestial sword dubbed (by him) Solaris. But his armor, which reflected his soul, was supposedly so bright, pure, shining, and brilliant that he had locked it up where it could not burn a mere mortal's eyes. (I can tell you now that this was not the case, but I'm sure you had already figured that out for yourself.)

Well, as the Star Power and fate would have it, I ran into this lake completely by accident on one of my missions. A young Princess from Planet Pipi had been kidnapped by a monster, and I had volunteered to go looking for her. (This Princess was actually the grandmother of today's Princess Rona.) But the planet the monster had taken her to was the Flame Planet, a dangerous place filled with volcanoes and fire, one of the most dismal and awful places in the Galaxy, although the cuisine is rumored to be enjoyable. I cannot answer to this myself, however.

During a particularly large volcanic eruption, I was separated from the group I was with and knocked unconscious. When I awoke, there in front of me was the Lake of Light and Darkness.

For a long moment, all I could do was stare. The lake was huge, easily a mile wide, and perfectly round. One half was so bright, pure, gorgeous. All around it bloomed shining and glowing yellow and white roses, the likes of which I had never seen before and have never seen elsewhere ever since. The other half, however, was dead, black, sick. Around its half of the bank bloomed (for lack of a better verb) black and brown dead roses, all wilted, all rotting, all disgusting.

Suddenly, though, I realized the situation I had just been put into. Drawing my sword Excalibur, I looked down at it and then back up at the lake. Should I dip it in one side, or should I just leave, I wondered. I knew that what I wanted to dip it in was the Light side, but some evil growl inside me said that I should not. Who knew what sort of armor I would be given, if it was a reflection of my soul? If my wings gave any sign, then I would probably receive some Dark, evil sort of armor. I should just dip it in the Dark and say that I had dipped it in the Light. I wouldn't use it for evil, only for good. Both the armor and the sword would appear Light, so why not?

Slowly, I walked toward the Dark side. No one would ever know. Besides, wouldn't it be nice to be strong, stronger even than my father? I could show everyone what a fraud he was, how I was the true warrior between the two of us.

Closer and closer to the Darkness went the point of my blade. No more than a second before it would have touched the surface, a whisper formed in my heart and then exploded into a pure sensation which ran through me, freezing me in some trance.

A voice like a lion's roar commanded, Arthur, no! The voice was powerful. It wasn't angry, per say, but very, very firm. It was the sort of voice that a father would use to tell his beloved child to stay away from a fire, for example. Some children would reply, 'But the flames are so pretty. You don't know anything, they cannot hurt me.' But I was not that sort of a child. I was the sort of child that listened and pulled away from that which could harm him, no matter how beautiful and tempting it appeared.

As soon as it had came, the sensation vanished, leaving me feeling exhausted. Whatever had just happened, it was more than my mortal body had been prepared to experience. I was frozen for another second, but then I turned, and without even the slightest hesitation, I plunged my sword straight into...

the Light side.

Yes, even in my original intention to use the Dark side, I had stayed right along the center of the lake. The place where I was originally going to submerse my sword was only inches from the side of goodness and purity, so all I had had to do was turn just the tiniest bit.

After a long moment, I felt something somewhat heavy appear on me in addition to the golden Dimension Cape which I still wore all the time as my only armor. Still terrified to look at it, I instead first pulled my sword out of the Light and looked at it, turning away from the lake so I could see it past the glowing ambience.

It was beautiful, made of gold and silver with a ruby on the hilt. I had always been fond of the sword, but now it was something truly remarkable. Something told me that this sword's name was Caelestis, even though I had never heard the term before. Caelestis, the celestial sword. I was honored to wield it.

Finally, I took a deep breath and decided to face the music. Turning back to the lake, I was astonished to find that the whole thing had turned into crystal clear water, all signs of the roses and the Light and the Darkness gone. But I was even more astonished to see what my armor looked like.

Whereas something told me it would not be as dark and evil as I was dreading, I was still only expecting it to be mediocre or average in appearance. But rather, it was made of pure gold, (with the exception of the silver mask,) shining and brilliant. But what I found the most amazing about it was the shape the set made all together: that of a star. In my soul, I was a star.

A wide grin spread over my face. I had had nothing to dread after all. It made sense, actually, in a way. After all, if what a person fears most is that they are dark in soul, how dark can their soul actually be?

After a moment, another volcano erupted, reminding me of where I was. Within an hour or so, I found the rest of my group, and together we rescued the young Princess and defeated the monster. And oh, what a tale to tell had I on the way home. The others had wanted to know what had happened and where I had gotten the armor as soon as we all found each other, but I told them that they had to wait until we had rescued the Princess. But once I actually told them, they were all as awed and joyous as I was.

Several years passed. I became a highly respected member of the army, considered by many to be second to Solar himself, assumed by all to be being polished to be Solar's successor, but I never made a fuss over myself. In fact, I think that even though I enjoyed being a leader and guiding the others, I would have rather been someone lower-ranking if only because people wouldn't have treated me like something more than that which I really was.

Decades went by, and I was eventually moved to the Star Warrior Academy, where I became a trainer of new warriors. I was still called out to battle or to go on some of the more dangerous missions fairly often. I met a new lieutenant general named Nonsurat, and he and I became good friends. He was one of the soldiers eventually taken in battle, sadly. The Nonsurat you are familiar with is his grandson.

About the time I turned eighty, I received some terrible news. The base that Guinevere had been sent to all those years before had been attacked and thoroughly destroyed. There had only been a very few survivors, and all of them were being brought to the Academy.

I waited anxiously to hear if Guinevere was one of the ones who had survived. She and I had kept a steady stream of handwritten letters going over the years, and I had received her last one only a couple of days before the attack had happened. Thinking that it might be the last that I would ever hear from her filled me with sorrow. I knew that it was selfish of me to want her to be all right if it meant that someone else wasn't, but I couldn't help myself. I just wanted her to be safe.

Thankfully, she was. But she had been injured in the attack, and had been made blind. She has never been able to see since then, but I have been her eyes whenever I can, telling her in great detail how everything around her appears.

She was exceedingly glad to see me, and I her. Not much time passed before we decided to be married, even though many people frowned upon romance during that war because some thought a great devotion to another Star Warrior showed a disloyalty to the Star Warrior army. This was a notion that thankfully passed (for the most part) before the second war.

Now that I had her with me once more, I was bound and determined not to lose her ever again. So when Solar tried to send her off again, blind as she was, I stood up to him for the first time. Needless to say, there was a lot of shouting involved. We actually even had a duel over it, which I have a feeling would have ended a lot differently than it did if I had not been the victor. As it was, Solar was bested for the first time in his life. In exchange for my not telling anyone he had been beaten, he agreed to let Guinevere stay at the Academy.

Although we had always had a mutual dislike for each other, Solar and I, after our duel it grew into borderline hatred on my side and pure hatred on his. We never agreed on anything, and only barely maintained a façade of cold politeness whenever we were forced to speak to or acknowledge each other. This, of course, happened quite often, seeing as how we lived and worked on the same space station.

Guinevere became a teacher herself and trained many new recruits in the academic subjects, for the Star Warrior Academy was meant to be a place of learning first, and a headquarters of the army second.

Time passed, and I noticed that Solar seemed to slowly become a darker and darker version of his already arrogant and smug self. No one else noticed, which I found strange. I later found out that they were all under his spell, and since I had always been inclined to dislike him, I was able to resist its effects.

But as it was, I was one day (nearly a hundred years after Guinevere and I were married) sent in to his office to take a message to him. Rather than finding the sunshine-yellow-caped yellow Star Warrior that I was used to seeing there, I found no one. He had vanished.

Frowning, I went over to his desk and shuffled through some of the papers on top. Why on earth would he have left with no warning? Even if he was one to shove off his duties on someone else whenever a chance presented itself, he at least got everything done. It was unlike him to be absent. Oh, many would say, he was probably just off fighting. That's what you would expect from a general, but I don't think I ever saw him use that sword of his for anything but waving it around at people when he wanted to be paid attention to, so I knew that he wasn't out fighting. He hadn't ever been before, not to my knowledge.

As it was, I noticed a suspicious fancy-looking paper sticking out a bit from a stack of war orders and other things. Carefully, I pulled it out, making sure to mark where it had come from so I could put it back when I was done. As soon as I saw what it said at the top, however, I threw it as far from myself as I could. Seeing as how it was just a piece of paper, it only floated a few feet from me, then landed with a quiet swish on the carpet.

It was a receipt from Nightmare Enterprises.

Cautiously, I drew my sword (when you're dealing with Nightmare, even a piece of paper might be dangerous) and stepped over to it, then bent down to read it.

It read, 'In return for Services Rendered, listed below, the following Payment is required. Services Rendered: Immortality for one Star Warrior. Payment agreed to by both parties: Star World. The below Signed agree to this Payment, which will be collected at NME's leisure:' Thereafter followed Nightmare's overly flourish-y signature, with my father's signature in his nearly-identical handwriting just below.

It took me a moment to process what this meant, but the instant I realized, I grabbed it back up and stared at it horror, hoping against all hopes that I had read it wrong. But sadly, I hadn't.

My father, the head general of the whole Star Warrior army, had sold his own home planet in exchange for immortality. How could have he? He was just as much of a monster as Nightmare if he could betray his whole planet, countless innocent lives, in exchange for only his own petty gain! Immortality... he was going to live for eight hundred years already! What could he possibly want with immortality?!

Just then, the door flew open. Caught red-handed snooping in the head general's office, just one of many offenses punishable by death that was luckily never committed, I dropped the receipt like it was a snake again and spun around, coming face-to-face with the traitor of all Star Warrior-kind himself.

Seeming disinterested, he looked down at the paper and then up at me. "Ah, Arty, Arty... It seems that ye have finally found the proof ye have so long wished to find that I am not what I at first glance appear to be."

Growling at him, I answered, "You sold a planet so you could be immortal, and yet people respect you. How can you live with yourself?"

Chuckling pleasantly, he shook his head and picked the receipt up, tucking it very neatly back into its place in his pristine pile of papers. "Oh, I don't lose any sleep over it, I assure thee. If ye will notice the date, this is actually old news, little Arty. This transaction took place months ago. He hasn't collected yet, but I'm sure he will when the time comes. As it is, I am leaving to become his assistant. The war is nearly over, dear boy."

The way he said 'dear boy' was nothing like the way he said 'my dear' in his smooth, charming tone he used when speaking to females. Rather, it sounded more like the way one would say 'disgusting pig.'

"What do you mean, the war is nearly over? We are in the middle of a war! Neither side is in the lead at the moment, how can you say that the war is nearly over?" I crossed my arms and demanded, eyes narrowed.

Shaking his head, he laughed again in a faux-friendly way and assured me, "Oh, ye shall see very soon, dear boy. Actually, you know what, I will tell thee, if only for the fun it will bring to see thy pathetic horror. The final battle is taking place this very evening. I am going to lead the troops into battle, only to seem to be taken by the 'enemy.' But I will be 'taken' in such a way that Nightmare will seem to be destroyed. I will hailed as a tragic hero, and Nightmare will soon be forgotten.

"But in reality, I am to become Nightmare's right-hand man, although no one will ever know that I am there. They will not know that he is there, either, for a couple of centuries. I am going to 'serve' him until the day eventually comes when the Warrior of the Stars destroys him, as we all know he is one day going to. Until that time comes, I will be slowly winning his monsters over to my side with promises of power and glory. And when Nightmare is gone, he will be replaced by myself. All of the Galaxy will know and fear the name of General Solar."

"How can you tell me all this?" I scoffed, turning to leave. "I'm just going to tell everyone, after all. All will know the name of Solar, indeed, but it will not be feared. It will be detested, it will be spat upon, it will be used as an insult, because all will know that belonged to a sniveling, cowardly traitor."

He chuckled again, but it was darker this time. "Ah, little Arty. Shining, just, brave little Arty. How little ye understand."

Turning around again, I prepared to answer him with "I understand plenty," but was met with a Dark spell.

All knew that Solar was a sorcerer, but only of the Light kind. I suppose it made sense that he was now a Dark magician, but it still was the last straw for me.

"How can you do this, Father?" I shouted out in distress as the spell surrounded me. "Betray first your family, and then your whole kind! What is wrong with you?"

"Oh, nothing is wrong with me, dear boy. Something is very, very right with me," he replied with a quiet, dark chuckle. "Someday, ye will take the same position that I now hold. And then we will see if ye can resist the siren's calls of power and greatness any better than I have. I somehow doubt it."

"I will do better than you have, I swear it!" I disagreed firmly, trying and failing to get away from the spell.

"While ye are here anyway, would ye like to see what the armor of my soul actually looks like?" he asked in a joking manner. Walking over to a cabinet, he opened it to reveal the same ragged, rusty, evil armor I had thought I would receive, but hadn't. "I thought I was going to get something more along the lines of what ye got. Trust me, if I knew I was going to get this old thing, I would've just gone the Dark route. Ah well, a few lies and everything was covered up. I suppose ye could say my career has been all downhill from there. Or uphill, depending on how ye look at it."

"What is this spell doing to me?" I demanded angrily, unable to care less about his stupid armor. The spell did not seem to be harming me in any manner, only following me wherever I ran to try to get away from it.

Outright evilly laughing now, he told me, "Oh, not much, dear boy. It is only cursing you. You will never be able to tell anyone the true outcome of this war or any other, or they will be cursed. Even if the news is spread by those under you, such as by your lovely wife or your most loyal soldiers, the receiver of the information will be cursed with a curse that will drive them to madness."

"No," I gasped as he left the room, laughing the whole way, ceasing his laughter as soon as he opened the door and grinning suavely at some passing nurse before going out to join the battle. I fought alongside him that night for the only time in my life.

As soon as it was over, everyone started mourning Solar while also rejoicing at the end of the war. I wanted to scream out, He's a traitor! It's far from over! Do not just go home and relax so quickly! But, thanks to Solar, I could not.

That spell was quite possibly the worst thing he could have done to me. Now I knew the truth, but I would never be able to share it with anyone. This curse indeed did carry over into the Second Star Warriors' War. Not being able to warn anyone of Solar's betrayal was bad enough, but the second half was worse than the first. At the end of the Second Star Warriors' War, Meta Knight was left thinking he was all alone, the last of his kind. How I wanted to tell him that he wasn't, that I and the others were still out there, but I could not. And neither could any of the others, or he would be cursed. It was a terrible thing to do to one who was like a son to me, but it had to be done.

"How then," you ask, "Were you able to tell him that day when you fought Nightmare?" The answer is simple: the spell finally wore off. No spell is able to last forever, and finally enough time passed that its effects ceased to have any hold on me.

Yet its effects had lasted more than long enough to bring me plenty of misery, which is what Solar had intended it to do. Even Guinevere pointed out that Solar couldn't be all that bad if he had sacrificed himself in order to end the war, and I was doomed to have to agree with her.

But yet, there was some Light left in this Dark mess. I was unable to tell anyone of Solar's treachery or of the true outcome of the war, but there was nothing preventing me from saying that Nightmare was really still out there. Solar hadn't cursed me out of sharing the truth about that. Of course, I was seen as someone crazy. At first no one listened because Solar had taken care of Nightmare and he must've been the Warrior of the Stars. If you listened to his made-up story, it was believable. One who shone so bright could have easily been the Warrior of the Stars, if his shining had actually been the truth. But as time went on, even Solar passed into antiquity and was forgotten. A good thing, too.

And so, rather than resting like everyone else was doing, I continued to train myself in the arts of the sword and being a good leader. And when the time came nearly two hundred years later, I went looking for Nathan, Daniel, and Forest, three boys that I met at some point by random chance and learned more about, coming to ask them to join my cause when they were older. These, of course, became Nonsurat, Dragato, and Falspar.

And what about Meta Knight? you ask. Did you only ask him to join you because he was able to best your other protégés? No, actually. I first met him when I ran into Nathan for the first time, when Nathan was attempting to rob a restaurant in River Village and young Meta Knight stood up to him. And when he got older, I went looking for him just as had with the other three.

That actually turned out to be quite an adventure in itself...

To be continued.