Just a Boy
Since the age of three the boy, Jason Grace, has always been seen as just a boy. He had little to no chores to do that made the other older boys green with envy.
"Why can't Jason do a little bit more?" Brutus complained one night during dinner. Brutus was at the age of thirteen with a stature of a 10-year-old, but his attitude certainly made up for it.
"What do you expect the boy to do?" Michael asked amused. Michael was of the age of 10, but he was wise for his age and the elders predicted that he would become the next praetor.
"To at least make his own bed!" Brutus shouted. Everyone in the Dining Pavilion turned to Brutus and gave him odd expressions. He muttered his "apologies" and looked down on his plate of spaghetti and meatballs.
"I've seen him try to make his bed," Michael defended. He knew that in the Legion everyone was for themself, but Jason could barely speak so he couldn't fend for himself.
Jason sat quietly at the edge of his table as he ate his food. He liked Michael and wished to be like him when he grew up. He tried imitating Michael as he ate, but it was no use because he had tomato sauce peppered across his white face.
"What do you expect, Brutus? Do you expect him to dig trenches at his age? What the Pluto did you do when you were three?"
"It's different." Brutus drank his tea. He pointed his cup at Jason as he said, "The boy is in the Legion, and he's technically getting a free pass for not doing anything while he's here. Plus, he's the son of Jupiter—"
"And you expect the boy to lead an army at his age?" Emily laughed at him. Emily was the same age as Michael, and she had blonde hair, pale skin, and mossy green eyes.
Brutus narrowed his beady black eyes as his sclera began to turn red from how angered he was becoming. "Don't insult me, Emily, because I don't appreciate it."
"Then lay off the kid," Michael tightly said.
"The boy will soon have to look after himself," Brutus tried to reason.
"He's the son of Jupiter. Don't you think it's obvious that the kid will have a more messed up life than we do now? You what Lupa said, 'The boy is strong and I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up leading you.' Lupa has been in this business long enough to know when someone can whip butt, and I'm sure the kid will whip your butt someday," Michael said, looking at Jason.
"I would so pay to see that," said Emily.
"I doubt it." Brutus huffed.
At the age of 5, Jason Grace was assigned small tasks to complete. His tasks could've begun when he turned 6, but he insisted on taking responsibilities because he didn't want to be viewed as the "baby" boy of the Fifth Cohort anymore, also add in the entire Legion; plus, he didn't want to be called a "probatio" anymore.
It was at the crack of dawn when Jason woke up and made his bed. It took him two years of practice to make his bed perfectly, and he can finally say that he was proud of it.
"Hey there, squirt," Michael greeted him as he entered the Cohort.
"Hi," Jason said as he gave a grin that revealed his left front teeth that was missing.
"Ready for your first day of work? First, I want you to bring hay to the horses. Easy?"
"Okay." Jason gathered a pile of hay from the back and went to stables which was behind the Fifth Cohort. Being in the worst cohort had its disadvantages and that meant smelling horse poop almost everyday.
There was a pegasi that captured his attention since his arrival at camp. The pegasi was named Scipio that was a female that had a peanut butter coat. The pegasi was a baby, but it was a stubborn baby that refused to be petted by anyone. Once Jason tried petting her when he was 4, the pegasi nearly bit his hand off, but she didn't have teeth at the time so that wouldn't have had happened.
He stopped in front of the light wood stable and saw that Scipio was looking at something from inside her stable. Jason looked around and saw a red bucket that he grabbed and turned upside down and got on it. He leaned his head forward and saw a boy about his age with curly black hair that attempted to feed sugar cubes to Scipio from the palm of his hand.
"She almost bit my hand once," Jason said. The boy jumped and his blue eyes looked at Jason's.
"She's a girl?" the boy asked, confused.
"That's what the other told me," Jason confessed. He didn't knew the difference with female and male animals , but he remembered that Emily told him once that the pretty animals were males and the females were the ugly ones; for a time being, Jason referred as Scipio as a male, but Michael corrected him.
"I thought she was a guy because she's pretty," the boy confessed.
"But she's a girl, and she doesn't like to be touched."
"Does she have cooties?" Both of the boys cringed of the thought of Scipio having cooties.
"What's your name?" Jason asked.
"Dakota. What's your name?" Dakota asked him.
"Jason. Why are you here?"
"Mikey told me to come and give hay to Scipio."
Jason's blue eyes brightened as he said, "Me too. Let's give her hay." He got down the bucket and threw the hay over the small door and to Scipio.
"Cool," Dakota said. He grabbed a package of sugar cube and grabbed one and ate it. "Want one?" he offered. Jason nodded, and Dakota gave him sugar cubes. Jason climbed to the other side and sat next to Dakota as they continued eating sugar cubes, talking, and watching Scipio eat hay. Finally, Dakota knelt next to Scipio and offered her sugar cubes once more, and she ate him from his hand. Jason did the same thing as Dakota, and Scipio did the same thing.
They kept feeding Scipio sugar cube after sugar cube until they ran out. "What now?"
"Wanna go eat?" Jason offered.
"Sure," Dakota agreed. They both got up and opened the door of Scipio's stable, but they forgot to close to the door.
The boys went to the Dining Pavilion where everyone sat at their tables as they joked around and ate. Jason and Dakota sat at the Fifth Cohort's which had a purple cloth draped over the table and a golden cornucopia on the center.
"I see you met Dakota," Michael said.
"Yup," Jason said as he sat down with Dakota sitting across from him.
"Which Cohort does he belong in?" Brutus asked as he looked at Dakota in disgust.
"He just came in today while I was out guarding," Michael answered.
"He's such a cute baby," Emily cooed which caused Dakota to blush.
"Then why is he sitting with us?" Brutus asked.
"He's my friend," Jason defended.
"But he isn't claimed," Brutus said.
"That's about to change," Emily as she got up and grabbed Dakota's hand. "Can I have your attention please?" Emily said but was rudely ignored. "Shut up for once!" Everyone piped down and turned their attention to Emily. "Today we have a probabtio and his name is Dakota. It's likely that the boy is a pure blood because Michael and I spotted him playing with with plants; and he had a note with him from Lupa that said that he's a strong-willed boy with average fighting skills for his age, but he has work to be done. Will any Cohort like to claim him?" Emily's mossy green eyes scanned the room as no one dared to raise their hands, but they rather stared at Dakota.
Jason gave a pleading look at Michael who was already looking at him. Michael was the only one in the Fifth Cohort that can claim Dakota because he was the Senior Centurion of the cohort. "Is he a good friend to you, squirt?" Jason nodded. "The Fifth Cohort accepts Dakota into the cohort."
Emily nodded and patted Dakota's back as she said, "Welcome to your new home and your new best friend, Jason." Dakota smiled and sat with Jason.
"Best friend?" Michael asked.
"Jason is gonna have it tough, why not have someone endure it with him?" She looked over at Jason and Dakota and saw them chatting like there was no tomorrow.
"You can tell straight off the bat. Dakota is gonna be the goofball while Jason's gonna be the one holding it together."
"Don't underestimate Kota," Emily said.
"Hey," Brutus interrupted Jason and Dakota.
"Yeah?" Dakota asked.
"Have you ever tried wine?" Brutus asked. Emily quickly reacted by grabbing a piece of bread and throwing it at Brutus' dark brown hair.
"Don't you dare give them that. You don't even have that?"
Brutus narrowed his eyes, "I have my sources."
"Then I'm telling Nick," Michael threatened. Nick was the praetor and he was a scary dude that even Brutus was afraid of him.
"At least let them taste Kool-Aid."
"Fine," they both agreed.
Brutus gave them a glass of water to each and poured in red powder that was unknown to both of the boys. They took their cups and smelled it. Jason gave Dakota a worried look to which Dakota just shrugged; they drank their cups and almost immediately felt jumpy.
"More," Dakota said as he snatched the container of Kool-Aid powder from Brutus and dumped nearly the whole powder into his cup.
"Hey, I was told that something is wrong with Scipio," Emily said.
"What do you mean?" Michael asked.
"Scipio looked uncomfortable and hyper for a while and now she looks supposedly sad."
"That sounds like a sugar high," Brutus said. "Did you two have something to do with it?" he asked harshly.
Dakota and Jason looked at each other and decided to keep their mouths shut.
"Do you honestly think that those two boys can push the heavy door of the stable?" Emily asked.
"They feed the horse didn't they?"
"It's a pegasi and her name is Scipio," Michael corrected.
"They're just boys, and I don't think they would do that while they fed the horse. The only thing that Jason and Dakota were assigned was to feed Scipio with hay and that was all."
"I have my eye on you twerps," Brutus muttered under his breathes so that Jason and Dakota were the only ones that heard.
The thing that they didn't knew was that someone left the door open from the stable and Scipio ran away.
"Just another day of the boring Camp Jupiter life," a ten-year-old Dakota said in a fake cheerful voice.
"Like always," Jason said. The boys walked to the Field of Mars to begin a normal day as a camper, that meant digging trenches.
"At least we can mess around while we're out it."
"If we don't get caught."
"Amen." Dakota took out his bottle of blue Kool-Aid and took a sip; he couldn't get enough of Kool-Aid since the day Brutus introduced it.
They grabbed their shovels and dug.
After they dug trenches for two hours, the boys headed to the opposite side of the Field of Mars where training was held.
From a distance, Jason saw Brutus fighting against a boy Jason's age. Brutus swung his sword wildly as the boy deflected each swing.
"At least try," Brutus cooed. He twisted his tip of his sword to the boy's hilt and disarmed him. The boy slowly began to back away with his armor making noise with every step he took. Brutus followed the boy and raised his sword.
Jason frantically looked around and saw that no one payed attention to the Brutus and the boy. On instinct, he pulled out Ivlivs and flipped it where it turned to a double-tipped sword, and he deflected the attack with the sword as Brutus brought down his sword.
Brutus was purely surprised that Jason intervened, but his mood soon turned into anger. He brought his sword down onto Jason's and watched as Jason tried to push back his sword up.
Dakota watched shocked as he didn't know what to do. "We have to help him," he frantically told the boy.
"What should we do?" the boy asked.
"Give me your armor," Dakota said.
The boy complied as he said, "You smack him in the back of the head as I serve as a distraction."
Dakota realized that he liked the kid already. He stood behind Brutus and waited for the signal from the boy.
Brutus moved the tip of his sword across of Jason's shirt that left a tear.
"Yo, Brute-Brute," the boy said.
Brutus looked at the boy and saw that he pulled his pants down and was left in his Batman underwear and began shaking his butt. "You can't touch this!" the boy screamed.
"What?" Brutus asked bewildered. Dakota came from behind and whacked him in the back that caused him to be unconscious.
"Cool, you knocked him out," the boy said.
"Do you have any idea how mad he'll be when he wakes up?" Jason hissed.
"What's your name?" Dakota ignored him and asked the boy.
"Bobby. You?" Bobby asked.
"Dakota and that is Jason," Dakota said as he pointed at Jason.
"What happened?" Larry asked as he jogged to Brutus' unconscious body.
"He got so mad that he passed out," Bobby lied.
"Nice one, bro," Dakota muttered.
"It was Dakota that knocked me out!" Brutus yelled. He was taken to the Infirmary Room, and Michael asked him what happened, and he started saying that it was Dakota that knocked him out by hitting him in the back of the skull.
"I didn't knew you hit him that hard," Jason said as he peered into the Infirmary Room.
Brutus laid on a twin sized bed with mint green covers. Michael sat with Emily at their own corner of the bed.
"Dakota wouldn't do that. He's just a boy and doesn't have the strength to do that," Emily said.
"But he did!" Brutus said.
"So your admitting that Dakota is strong?" Michael asked.
"I wouldn't have been knocked out if I wasn't distracted with fighting Grace and with that Bob who shook his rear end."
"Was Jason whipping your butt?" asked Emily.
"No."
"He's just boy so lay off him," said Michael.
"Winning," a twelve-year-old Bobby said as he disarmed Dakota.
"Not fair!" exclaimed Dakota.
"Grace, me and you," Bobby said as he pointed his sword at him.
He got out his coin and flipped it to be turned into a sword. "Don't be whining about it," he warned.
Bobby was the first that lunged, and Jason easily deflected it as their sword continually clashed against one another.
"Who's that girl?" Dakota asked.
Jason quickly turned to see who Dakota was talking about, but when he turned, Bobby smacked Jason with the side of his sword that caused Jason to fall down to the floor. Jason saw the girl and didn't noticed when Bobby knocked him to the floor.
The girl stood next to Gwen, and the girl had raven black hair tied into a braid, olive skin with a white Greek goddess where the bottom of the dress was slightly ripped and dirty.
"Wow," Jason said with his head positioned sideway as he looked at the girl.
"Hey, Jace," Gwen said as approached Jason and Bobby. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," Jason said as he pushed Bobby off of him. He looked at the girl and saw that her eyes were an obsidian. She briefly looked at him and turned her head from disgust.
"Who are you, my lady?" Bobby wiggled his eyebrows.
The girl glared at him but said nothing.
"Do you remember the Baths I told you about earlier?" Gwen asked. The girl nodded and headed off.
"What's wrong with her?" Dakota asked.
"She doesn't seem to be fond of guys for some reason." She shrugged.
"Oh," Jason said as he looked at the girl as she walked away.
"Does my baby boy have a crush?" Bobby teased.
"Shut up," he murmured. "What's her name?"
"Reyna."
Reyna, he thought.
"You bet he's gonna try to grab her attention?" Dakota asked.
"He's just a boy and he hasn't entered his teen years yet," Gwen said.
Jason hated those words, He's just a boy.
It was a couple of minutes past midnight as Jason walked to the stables and he saw two figure. He came closer and saw the Reyna petting something— Scipio.
"Scipio," Jason said as he walked closer to Scipio, and she instantly backed away. "Hi," he said to Reyna.
She narrowed her eyes and ignored him.
"Your name is Reyna right?" he asked but was still ignored.
Reyna didn't say a word as she petted Scipio.
"Are you alright?" he asked as he approached Reyna and was about to touch her arm, but she quickly back away and glared at him.
"Get away from me, stupid boy," she said.
"Stupid boy?" Jason asked confused.
"Yes, you're just a boy," she said as she walked away.
Jason sighed.
"Jason, I have to talk to you," Michael told 14-year-old Jason as they walked into Michael's office.
"About?" asked Jason.
"I'm going on a quest for a while, and if anything happens, I want you to be praetor."
"I can't—"
"I don't expect you step up immediately. I want you to step up when you feel the time is right."
His thumped faster in his chest. "Mike, I can't do that."
"I've seen you kick butt during Roman War Game."
"But I'm seen as just boy."
"That's not what Reyna is seeing."
Jason looked at Michael as he felt his cheeks going beet red. "I don't want to talk about it."
Michael laughed.
Reyna and Jason looked up at the night sky as they laid on floor the day before they were to fight against Krios at Mount Othrys.
"Are you okay?" Jason asked. He tried to reach for her hand, but Reyna casually brought her hand together over her stomach.
"Yes," she answered.
"You lie very badly," Jason answered as he moved closer to her as Reyna attempted to move away. "You changed since the day you talked to that Southern bell a few days ago." A week ago, Jason and Reyna went off to a quest to gather Imperial Gold to be used for the battle they were to fight tomorrow. "What happened?" he asked as he rolled to his stomach, and he touched her cheekbone with his index finger.
"Nothing," she insisted. "I should go back and get some sleep." She got up from the grass. "Good night, Jason." She walked away.
He knew that she hated being questioned but he couldn't help it. To others, he was just a boy who was very curios; in reality, Jason was just a girl who was trying to figure out what was wrong with a girl that he probably loved.
"You ready, Grace?" Brutus asked as he entered the Fifth Cohort.
"I think so." He breathed out a sigh.
"I don't get why you got the job from Lupa to lead!" Brutus exclaimed.
Jason ignored him as he began heading out the door, but Brutus pushed him.
"What's your problem?" asked Jason.
"Me and you, outside. I wanna see if you still suck at sword fighting, but I don't want Dakota knocking me out."
"I wouldn't be so cocky if I were you."
"Why?"
"Because I'm a good sword fighter." Jason flipped his coin and turned to a sword. Brutus took out his spear and was the first to swing.
He concentrated on Brutus' movements as he got his muscles to move into a rhythm to deflect every swing Brutus made. Throughout the year, Jason constantly trained and strategy as well. He examined Brutus and saw through his defense that he was unprotected at his left shoulder. Jason took a step back with his left foot, when their weapons met, and quickly turned and pushed the tip of his double-edge sword towards his left shoulder that slightly pierced his skin as he kicked Brutus' stomach with his left foot that knocked Brutus' body to the floor.
Brutus lifted his head up and looked at Jason to then laugh. He shook his head as he got up.
Jason's blue eyes drifted to the tip of his sword where he saw a small amount of blood on it. He looked at Brutus' left shoulder and saw the pierced flesh that he made.
"You ain't that bad, Jason," commented Brutus on Jason's fighting skills.
"Thanks?" It was rare when Brutus called him by his first, but he enjoyed it in a weird way.
"But I'll still see you as a boy."
"I'll see you as an oversized kid in an 25-year-old body."
"Thank the gods that I retired the Legion," Brutus murmured. "Mike would be proud."
Jason stopped and thought of Michael. He was friend, a counselor, and a father figure at times.
"I hope he is." He breathed out a heavy sigh as he looked up at the blue sky that was quickly becoming gray.
They won. Jason had successfully co-leaded the entire Legion and some of the soldier from New Rome. They all gathered around one another as they hugged each other as Jason was with his friends as they congratulated him. He was no longer a probatio.
"We whipped some major butt," Bobby said as he pulled Jason into a man-hug.
"Jason kicked some butt. Did you see him as he fought against Krios?" Dakota asked.
"He did great," Gwen said.
"Look!" Bobby said and pointed to Jason's right as he saw Emily and Brutus kissing. Jason remembered the how much of a big crush Emily had on Michael and how much he liked her, but he was presumed dead, which caused Emily to cry rivers of tears; he was glad that she decided to move on.
"You did great," Reyna quietly said as she walked next to him.
"Thank you," Jason said as he looked into her obsidian eyes.
Reyna did something that Jason didn't expected from her. She took a step closer and went on her toes as she intended to plant a kiss on the corner of his lip, but Jason slightly moved his head that caused their lips to touch that lasted a few second. He felt his toes curl after Reyna was the first to back away.
"Dang!" Bobby exclaimed.
"I don't think your a boy anymore," Reyna said.
"Then?" Jason asked, smiling like an idiot.
"You're an idiot," she said.
Jason woke up at the crack of dawn to begin his first day of work. His first day of work was to do paperwork because he was now co-praetor of the Legion with Reyna. He dressed and slowly walked to his office where he saw Reyna already getting a head start own paperwork.
"Hey," he greeted as he closed the door behind him.
"Hello," she said without looking up. He felt that Reyna has tried avoiding him ever since they shared the kiss at Mount Orthyrs; he didn't want to push it so he kept quiet.
He grabbed a chair and sat next to her as he read through the documents that Reyna approved to be signed. His hand was on the dark wood table as he felt a warm small hand on his which caused his lips to curl. He moved his fingers so there was more space between them, and Reyna slipped her fingers between the space he left.
He came a long way to the point that he already was in. He just hoped that things stayed the same way. He was still considered a boy to others.
Jason was a boy that didn't knew what was going to happen next.
Did you like it? Yes? No? How was the fighting scene with Brutus and Jason? Review.