Polarized

Overcharge

Cayto reaches his breaking point
WARNING: he's kind of unlikeable in this chapter

“ALSHFJSLAGDKDSH GOD HELP ME PLEASE I WANT TO DIE—” 

“Uh, Cayto? What’s the matter? You’ve been banging your head against the wall and screaming into your pillow for the past fifteen minutes. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“GET OUT OF MY ROOM, ORION.” 

Orion sighed and shut the door behind him. “Alright, I won’t bother you any more.”

Cayto hugged his knees to his chest, faced the bedroom wall, and groaned as the most detailed flashbacks of the trashcan incident played through his mind, on repeat, in all of their agonizing glory. Why did this have to happen to him, out of all people? Why did he have to be in that specific spot out of all places, at that moment in time out of all times, and why did Ivan and Alexis, out of all people, have to be the ones to witness him dig through the trash like some sort of street animal, get a major insecurity of his pointed out by a preschooler, and hear him scream in the most embarrassing way possible? Cayto hated this. He wanted to disappear. He wrapped himself in a blanket and prayed for the void to swallow him whole. 

Yup. I’m pathetic. There’s no hiding it anymore, Cayto admitted to himself. And everybody else on this island thinks so, too.

***

“Wow, you really are pathetic,” a female voice taunted Cayto as he coughed up a mouthful of dust and looked up at his opponent. From his place on the ground, where Cayto now sat after the earth mage threw him off balance with a particularly large earth pillar, she appeared to tower over him. 

“What did you say?” Cayto demanded as he pushed himself to his feet. 

Hazel laughed, and as if with no effort at all, sent a boulder flying in his direction. Only a second later did he register it in his field of view, stumbling aside to avoid its impact. “Oh, I just meant that you’re a lot less threatening than you look,” she remarked. “You see, you try to give off this vibe of being all tough and intimidating when in reality, you’re about as dangerous as a teddy bear. Since you’re someone with a particularly strong aura-type, I was expecting a bit more of a… challenge from you, so to speak. It’s just— come on, a lightning aura? All that power wasted on what? If you weren’t such a wimp, then perhaps you could inflict some real damage on me, but no, you’re too afraid to make a move.”

Cayto flinched as Hazel sent another onslaught of rocks and dirt at him while he staggered his way towards the center of the ring. It wasn't that he wanted to be right there, in the danger zone, but it was what he had to do to win the game. Currently, he and Alexis were engaged in a 2v1 match with Hazel— one beginner and one intermediate student against one advanced— as part of a combined-group exercise. Whoever drove all of their opponents out of the ring two times first won the game, and to say that Alexis and Cayto were losing was an understatement. No, they were getting their asses handed to them, on a silver platter, by a girl who was smaller than them both. Cayto and Alexis had already taken one strike each, so it would take only one more defeat for either of them to be eliminated. Meanwhile, neither of them were able to lay a hand on Hazel. 

Normally, Cayto wouldn’t have cared how well he did on the training sessions. He only attended them because Alexis forced him too, after all. But as much as Cayto opposed these training sessions, and wrong as he believed it was for him to use his aura unnecessarily, he also disliked Hazel even more, and not just because she was an aura-mage. She also irritated him simply because she was too damn arrogant about her skills, and Cayto thought she could afford to be brought down a notch. And what better way was there to do that without going against his principles by winning the game without using his aura? The look on her face would be priceless— Hazel, who looked down on beginners, defeated by a beginner who didn’t even use his aura. Additionally, Cayto would be proving that he wasn’t pathetic, and that he was better than these curse-bearers. He wasn’t like the rest of the student mages, who summoned auras just because they could. Unlike them, he understood the seriousness of aura-curses. Unlike them, he actually was able to control himself, and had a chance to succeed in life.