Born to Battle

“Why are we here again?” Riff Lorton asked his friend Tony Wyzek. “We’re here because they have a new Greek and Roman exhibit that I want to see,” Tony replied. “Why are you so interested in their stuff, anyway?” Riff asked him. “I don’t know. I’ve just always liked it. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Tony replied, irritated. “Whoa. Calm down. I didn’t say there was,” Riff said, in an attempt to pacify her friend. His best friend stood very tall and muscular, but not bulky, with dark brown, almost black, hair and brown eyes. He got them from his father, who’d abandoned his family when Tony was a baby. They’d also discovered that Tony was dyslexic and had ADHD. Tony explained that he’d been diagnosed with the ADHD since he was a little kid and they’d discovered the dyslexia when he entered kindergarten. Tony also had a twin sister named Antonia that had the same problems. The two of them were identical other than the subtle differences that boys and girls have.

Then one day his class had taken a field trip to the museum, where Tony was immediately drawn to the Ancient Greek exhibit. He’d been enjoying looking at the designs depicted on everything in it, wondering what each thing represented, until he discovered that the Ancient Greek lettering on everything was as clear to him as English would be to most people. He didn’t know what to make of that, and neither did her friends when he told them. “How can you read ancient Greek? No one can read that stuff! I certainly can’t,” Riff told Tony. “Hey, I don’t know why I can read that stuff. It doesn’t make sense to me either, okay? I’ve never been able to read ANYTHING without having trouble before, but suddenly I can read this? It doesn’t make any sense!” Tony said, frustrated. The next several days were spent trying to figure out why he could read ancient Greek. Then one day, things went downhill for Tony and they all discovered who Tony really was.

Tony and the boys were walking down the street in front of Doc’s store one night when suddenly three feathered creatures with the heads of a woman and the bodies of birds flew from a nearby roof and landed in front of them. “What the heck is that?!” Baby John asked, clearly terrified. “I think that’s what’s called a harpy. According to the myths, they’re very nasty and vicious creatures, very dangerous. I think we’d better get out of here NOW!” Tony cried, running full speed in the opposite direction of the harpy. The strange thing was, even when they split up, the harpy chased Tony instead of following them. “What do you want with me? I never did anything to you!” Tony shouted to the pursuing creature. “I could smell your scent a mile away, boy. Even if you don’t know what you are, I do, and that’s reason enough for you to die!” the harpy screeched.

Just then, one of the tour guides from before, a young guy named Aaron, raced up to the boys. “Tony, here, catch!” Aaron called, tossing him something that looked like a pen. “Click it, Tony!” Aaron shouted, upon seeing her confused look. Not stopping to wonder how Aaron knew her name, Tony clicked the pen. Immediately it became a sword, much to their surprise! When the harpy charged again, Tony held her off with the sword. Just then, Antonia, charged into the battle. She had been walking nearby and seen the commotion, so she had found a piece of pipe or something somewhere and was using it with great skill. Just then, however, Aaron threw Antonia a similar pen/sword to her brother’s. Toni immediately discarded her piece of pipe in favor of the sword and rushed into the battle with a wicked gleam in her eyes. The twins split up, confusing the harpy, who seemed unable to decide which twin to attack.

Finally the twins came together and managed to finish her off with their swords and she disintegrated. They were curious as to why she’d come after Tony and why she’d hesitated when attacking them after they split up. It quickly became clear that both of them were being targeted for some reason. The Jets just stared in mute astonishment at the twins standing there, swords in hand. It was Riff who finally broke the silence. “What the heck?! What just happened here?!” he exclaimed. “I have no idea,” Tony said, not understanding what had happened either. “Explanations later. Right now we need to get you and your sister out of here,” Aaron said quickly. “Whoa! we’re not going anywhere with you! We don’t even know you!” Tony said, unnerved. “Look, I’ve been assigned to protect you and others like you, and I’m telling you we need to get you to your home so you can pack and we can get you both safely to the Camp,” Aaron said. Tony started to ask more questions, but Aaron cut him off.

They headed out for Tony’s house and when they got there, Aaron told Tony’s mother, Linda, what had happened. Linda immediately raced to the bedroom to start packing suitcases for the twins, ignoring their questions, promising to explain on the way to the Camp. Linda was a former naval officer who had retired after discovering she was pregnant with the twins. En route to the Camp, the twins learned that Linda had met their father on the battlefield once when she was serving overseas. She hadn’t known who he was, but she had known one thing, that she was very attracted to him. He had a strange aura about him that drew her to him. One thing had led to another, and before they knew it, she was pregnant. Nine months later, Tony and Antonia had been born and for awhile things were wonderful. But then one day he’d had to leave. Linda hadn’t even found out his name, but she kept saying he was “dazzling”. Tony thought he heard Aaron mutter something like, “They’re always dazzling”, but he wasn’t sure, so he kept quiet. He didn’t understand and probably never would, but he tried to not be sullen about it.

Once they arrived, they ran into a fight between a minotaur and a young boy. “Run Percy!” the woman who was with the kid screamed. “Not without you, Mom!” the kid cried, determined not to leave his mother behind. “Go!” his mother cried, and finally the boy, Percy, ran toward the campground Tony could now see in the distance. “Go with Percy, Tony,” Linda told her son. “I can’t enter Camp Half-Blood. Only you can. It’s a place where you’ll be safe, okay?” Tony was reluctant to leave his mother, but he finally did as he was told. He grabbed his stuff and ran toward the camp. Once he got over there, he felt himself pass through a barrier, but the minotaur that was chasing him hit it and couldn’t get through. He was safe, finally.

“Welcome young demigods. I know you, Percy Jackson, but I don’t know your friend. Who are you, young one?” a voice asked from behind Tony and Percy. “Mr. Brunner!” Percy cried, running to him immediately. Tony, on the other hand, didn’t know quite what to make of the creature who stood before him. From the waist upwards, he was a man, but below the waist, he had the body of a large white horse! “Holy crap, a centaur! I’ve heard of them, but I never dreamed they existed! I’m Tony Wyzek,” Tony told the centaur. “Hello Tony. You may have gathered from Percy’s greeting that I am called Mr. Brunner. However, that is only in the human world. Here I am called Chiron. Do you know who your god parent is, young Tony?” Chiron (Tony noticed he pronounced it as CHI-ron) asked him. “No, I don’t. All I know is that Mom says she met him on a battlefield somewhere,” Tony replied. “Well, hopefully she will claim you before too long,” Chiron said. Then Percy introduced Tony to Grover Underwood, who was the satyr who’d first told Percy he was a demigod.

They began to walk toward the cabins where a girl with long blond hair and blue eyes who had a Yankees baseball cap tucked in her pocket waited for them. “Hi. I’m Annabeth Chase. So I heard you’re Percy and you’re Tony. Okay, you’re both in the Hermes cabin. That’s where all the unclaimed kids go. Whether they stay in there for good or not depends on whether their god parent claims them,” Annabeth explained as she led them over to it. Tony and Toni were also given a choice of personal weapons from the camp stash, out of which Tony chose a small dagger that he nicknamed Eníkēsa, which meant “conquer” and Toni chose a spear that she nicknamed pólemos, which was Greek for “war”. Percy already had a sword named Riptide given him by Chiron.

It was more than a month at camp before Tony and Antonia were claimed by their father. Apparently their dad felt that they had to prove themselves or something before he claimed them. Why would that be the case, Tony wondered. Why would he have to prove himself to his father? He and Antonia had already proven to be two of the toughest warriors at Camp. They won at Capture the Flag and refused to give up until the situation was beyond hopeless. Surely they were worthy of their father by now. They went to the campfire that night and everything was normal until suddenly a blood-red haze surrounded Tony and his sister, and a spear and shield hologram appeared above their heads. At first, the whole Camp was confused, until they realized that the hologram indicated the parentage of both twins. “And so the parentage is determined. Hail Tony and Antonia Wyzek, twin children of Ares, God of War!” Chiron declared before the whole camp. The very next day, the twins moved into the ugly red Cabin Five, home of the demigod children of Ares. He refused to take part in the initiation ceremony for Ares cabin, however, because he thought it was demeaning since it involved dunking new campers’ heads in the camp toilets.

Gradually, Tony got absorbed in the activities of Camp Half-Blood. He had Ancient Greek, taught by Annabeth, archery, metal forging, sword practice, and many other incredible activities around the camp. He got to play Capture The Flag once, teaming up with the other Ares kids, as well as the Athena kids on the Red Team. They put up a heck of a fight, but were still beaten by the Blues. It was after the game that they discovered something really interesting. During the weeks he’d been at camp, Tony had been told about a prophecy that concerned a child of one of “The Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades)” who would bring about either the glory or downfall of Olympus. Just then Annabeth told Percy to get in the water of the lake, and when he did, he suddenly seemed to grow stronger and to the astonishment of all the campers, a symbol appeared over his head: a three pronged trident. This meant that Percy was a son of Poseidon, officially making him the possible child of the prophecy.

The next day, Percy’s things were moved to the Poseidon cabin, which he had all to himself. Tony mostly hung out with his sister and his other half-siblings, including Clarisse LaRue, Mark and Sherman, but he also hung out with other campers too, particularly the Aphrodite girls. Possibly this was because of how often Ares was involved with Aphrodite. However, Haphaestus was still Aphrodite’s husband, so the Aphrodite girls and boys were more often seen with Haphaestus kids instead. Case in point, Silena Beauregard and Charles Beckendorf were boyfriend and girlfriend. Clarisse was very tough and she dunked some of the weaker campers’ heads in the toilet frequently. She knew how to use a sword, despised the Apollo campers because they thought they were better than the Ares campers due to the fact that they could use ranged weapons like bows and arrows. Tony personally didn’t think any cabin was better than another in general, but he did concede that each cabin had certain qualities another didn’t in battle. He definitely did have to admire Clarisse’s guts, though. She was a formidable opponent if you had to fight her and a great ally if she was on your side. He definitely hoped he wouldn’t have to fight her in a real battle to the death.

Tony and his sister soon discovered they had certain demigod powers due to being children of Ares. They had enhanced strength, swiftness, and combat skills. They were naturals at using every weapon known to man, and expert war strategists. They could even curse their opponents’ weapons (a power Tony had once inadvertently used against Bernardo Nunez, when he’d turned the knife he’d been about to stab Tony with to rubber instead). This last power Tony at least thought was extremely useful.

One evening, life at Camp Half-Blood was rocked with the dramatic appearance of Hades. That was when the campers found out that Zeus’s master lightning bolt had gone missing and Percy was the prime suspect due to being Poseidon’s son. In order to prove his innocence, he had to go on a quest to find the bolt and return it by the summer solstice in ten days or there would be dire consequences. Annabeth and Grover volunteered to go along with Percy to help him retrieve it, but Tony voted to stay behind this time because he had no desire to go on a quest that involved lightning or Hades. After the quest concluded, Tony learned that Ares was involved in the Bolt’s theft, not directly (he hadn’t stolen the Bolt himself, since it was forbidden for the gods to steal each others’ powers), but he had looked the other way upon finding the real thief (Luke Castellan, son of Hermes) due to the thrilling idea proposed of a war between the gods. Luke had told Ares that all he had to do was hide the Bolt for awhile and the war would start, which it had, between Zeus and Poseidon, with the different gods taking sides.

Upon confronting Luke later on, Percy was the first to realize that Luke was working for Cronus, the Titan Lord. Finally Percy had managed to vanquish Luke with his demigod powers and he, Grover, and Annabeth had all returned to Camp Half-Blood, where they found forms to fill out so the camp director, Mr. D. (aka Dionysus) would know who was staying at camp year-round. Tony and Percy chose to return home and Percy got to go to a new school and get rid of his smelly stepfather, Gabe Ugliano. Tony lived a very different life after that as well. He had a new sword from Chiron that he frequently used to battle the mythological monsters and other creatures that came into his life, while balancing time with his non-demigod friends, school, and camp too. He made a name for himself as a hero and left behind a legacy that would last a lifetime.