Midsummer's eve (A Cyan x Blixer fanfic)

Midsummer's eve part 8

Cyan was playing with Archie, when a knock came at the door. Strange. Cube and his siblings had just been here, so who could it be? He walked over to answer it.

On the other side of the door was a dark red circle. He had a smile that you could never tell if it was sincere or sinister, and a long ponytail. He had suspenders on over a white short-sleeved top that made him look casual, but straight to business.

"Cherry!" the hero exclaimed. "You're back!"
"Sure am! I heard about your new wolf-ness from Cube! You look so fluffy. Can i pet?" he reached out his hand.
"Sure! I trust you." Cyan replied, getting a pat on the head.
"How you doing, old pal? I heard you took down an evil king while i was gone!" he grinned.
"W-well, yeah! But he's not all that evil anymore!" He said. Blixer walked in the room.
"Who's this? I don't think i know him." Blixer asked, eyeing the red man.
"My name is Cherry, pleasure to meet you! You must be that person who took over paradise a while ago, yeah?" He walked in and offered his hand to shake.
"Um, yeah.. My name is Blixer. How do you know each other??" the corruption king queried.
"We were childhood friends! He had to move out a year ago, to a bigger community because he was looking for fame and fortune! Did you find what you were looking for, Cherr?" Cyan beamed.
"More or less." Cherry chuckled.

Blixer studied the hero's old friend, and started to dislike him. He smelled like cherry flavored medicine and cigarettes, and he monochrome red. It wasn't all that common to wear red clothes if you were also completely red. Same goes with any color. Most people wore other colors that went with a theme.

There was even a red cherry pin on his suspenders, but the leaves were red, too. It looked like it just shouldn't be that color. Just like the corruption. The more he thought about it, the more he disliked the guy.

After an uncomfortable amount of time, Cherry left to go find the hotel. Cyan was clearly happy to see his old friend, but appeared confused. Blixer noticed this.
"What's wrong?" Blixer asked the hero.
"Oh, it's not much. It's just, Cherry usually wears green with his red ensemble, so it kind of surprised me to see him go monochrome. I could've sworn his eyes were green, too. It kinda sounds like..." his face went pale. "You don't think there's another corruption do you?"
"...I hope not. That would be nearly impossible considering Trinity's still missing, and the triangles don't work any more. Unless they found some alternative power source..." The former king silently pleaded that it wasn't, for Cyan's sake.

Later that day, Cherry invited them to a café to catch up on things. Cyan reluctantly had to leave Archie with Cube though. It was a very small, warm place with lots of plants in the large window sills, and smelled like cinnamon rolls. The three of them sat in somewhat comfortable silence around a circular table. Eventually, Cyan broke the silence.
"So how's it been, Cherry?"

There was a pause before he said anything, then he replied "Well, it's a long story. I'll start around the time I left. I went to a city near the Mesa called St. Bergenstein, where I attended college at the university. I made a few friends there, and we majored in industrial magic. For a few months after we tried setting up our own little inventions shop, and almost actually succeeded! It fell apart, however, along with our friendship. So I decided to take it another direction, and moved to the country with a distant cousin, and we managed a little corner store for a while.

"He picked up a girl, and her family moved into what was essentially his business at that point. That was when I met Selene. She was a pretty blue hexagon in her early twenties, and a decent reporter. We were news partners for a while, I drove her crew around the countryside, and I got to be up behind police tape sometimes. By that time I'd saved up enough to buy a house in the mountains, own a campsite. But I decided to come down and visit you first, since it's been quite a while! Halfway down the road, however, I ran into something that changed my life. Something quite literally out of this world. And I don't mean aliens." He grinned, his smile veering towards being unsettling.

"You found corruption." Blixer finished his sentence for him. Earning a quiet chuckle.
"Bingo."

Cyan's heart lurched, and his ears flattened. That was why he felt off? No, he always acted like this- that's what made the fact even more unsettling. How long had this corruption had him? Where did it come from? Who started it?
As if Cherry read his mind, he continued "It's really quite odd, a corruption from an alternate reality. It can even corrupt guardians. I'm not here to cause any trouble now, at least not yet. I'll leave that to the commander to decide. I'll let you know, however, that if some shapes had it their way, you'd all be corrupted by now." His smile dropped at the last statement, and looked them in their eyes.

The room was silent, besides a few other conversations in the background. Cherry excused himself, tipped the waitress and walked out, leaving Cyan and Blixer with conflicting feelings. They watched him walk out of the building and into the street, and he looked back at them briefly before walking out of sight.