Author's Note:

I really, really, REALLY want to apologize for this upload taking 5 days. Its a combination of being rather busy in life lately, my hesitation towards writing certain parts of this chapter because I didn't want to screw up continuity or write Out-of-character moments, and an overall lack of focus towards writing this story in general over the first two days. Yeah, I didn't actually begin writing this chapter until like three days ago, mainly due to the fact that I wasn't even in range of a computer for a good while. I'm terribly sorry for the lateness of this chapter, and I promise things will be more fluent as far as uploads go once I get back to Part 4.

Driad II: Contemplation

The living flower dully rose out of the pipe on the western end of Toad Town, his eyelids partially closed as a melancholy set of emotions hung high in his mind. He stepped down onto the ground, his vine arms curling backwards as he stood still for a few moments and took a look around town. The Toads that composed the entire population of this humble town walked about, taking care of their everyday business as only they were capable of doing with only a couple of them taking a moment to turn towards and wave at Driad without so much as an adverse reaction in regards to his slightly rotted demeanor. With his current attitude, the living flower felt no reason to wave back to anyone who gave him a good natured greeting, and he began to go along his way without so much as a word slipping between his lips.

As Driad went across down at a lethargic pace, he took the time to glance at the sights that he hadn't gazed at for the last couple of months just so he can familiarize himself with any possible changes since he was most recently here. The first place that the living flower took notice of was a small blue abode that was sealed off with wooden boards and designated with a "Construction Zone" warning label on all sides. Said house used to be a dojo owned by a crimson garbed Toad known only as "The Master" by those in this town. Sadly, it wasn't very long ago that "The Master" was confirmed to have died of old age at Star Haven, and though it wasn't believed by most those who received the news it was said by the Star Spirits that his body had been flung into the cosmos themselves, never to be seen again.

But as Driad looked towards the building, he thought nothing of the Toad who once owned the place, but rather he viewed the place with all the colors replaced with a foggy grayscale tint as he watched the one called Alex Whiter meet him on his way out of the dojo a year and few months back. The living flower remembers how cheerful he felt that day, and how all of his happiness was crushed within a few instances only hours later…Such grief and emotional pain thumping against the walls of his chest cause Driad to close his eyelids and shake his head as he looked away from the dojo and quickly dashed forward to escape the painful memories of his past. He ran for five seconds until he reached the center of town, and the citizens simply looked at him as though he was in a hurry instead of assuming that there was something wrong with him.

Once the living flower stops himself, he leans his head forward and plants his right vine against the nearest solid object for support as he catches his breath. He exerted more effort than one could imagine, especially considering how out of shape he was from a lack of movement these last two months. But after a few moments of focusing and regaining his ability to breathe normally, Driad slowly lifts his head up to see just what he is leaning against, and his eyes instantly widen in shock upon noticing that he is next to the golden statue of Alex Whiter that had been erected to honor his sacrifice against his evil doppelganger almost too long ago… "No…No…" Driad mutters in agony, for he cannot stop the memories that rush inside of his head once more for as long as he stares at the statue.

He tries to close his eyelids while turning his head away and planting his vines against the sides, but everything he tries to suppress merely appears in full at the backside of his eyelids, albeit rather blurred thanks to the struggle Driad has in an attempt to black out these painful images. "Just get out of my head…Just get out of my head!" The living flower yells out within the depths of his mind to no avail, and as he continues to fight back against his memories he opens his eyelids and with a panicked look on his face he glances around the area and finds that he has drawn the attention of the Toads. As happy laughter remembered from his time with Mewmaster echoes and dies down inside of his head at a slow pace, he turns his head around and finds himself disturbed by everyone's silence.

But amidst this silence, one Toad speaks out to him from the southwest side of his body. "Oy…Crayzee Dayzee…" Driad turns towards this voice as everyone slowly resumes their regular activities with only a few mentions made towards the living flower's strange behavior. The Toad in question is a gritty, badly dressed man with a sludge covered, saggy beard and a rotting cap on top of his head. His eyes can barely be seen through his dirty face, but what is clear and visible is the wooden sign he carries around with the words "The Apocalypse will come in time…" painted in red sloppily across the board. "Do you believe in the end times?" The Toad inquires towards Driad, his words having nothing to do with the emotional breakdown the living flower just had at first mention. With a panicked look fading from his eyes, Driad shakes his head twice in a rather slow manner, to which the gritty Toad replies with a muddy grin "How can you not believe that?"

"Our planet has been forsaken…Twice now has a God disappeared from our world, and our so called divine protectors refuse to communicate with us anymore…'Tis only a matter of time before our world comes to an end, until Ragnarok claims our very souls…" By the end of the Toad's rambling, Driad merely rolls his eyes and chooses to pay no more attention to the words of a deluded, dirty Toad as he turns his body and begins to walk away, only for the Toad to continue on without caring about his listener's lack of interest "Oh well, who gives a damn about those gods anyway…Those arrogant fools were nothing but trouble for the lot of us." With those fool heartedly chosen words, Driad pauses in place and his eyes widen briefly in anger as he slowly turns his head and continues to hear the Toad out.

"Hehehe…Think about it for a moment? Why do you think we mortals are warned time and time again about pursuing greater power? When you become a god, the first thing that is lost within the vast influx of power is your sense of justice…When you become more powerful than those around you, all you want to do is seek out and fight even stronger opponents…You don't care where their allegiance lies so long as you satiate your boredom…And what else would happen to disappear into the mists of the cosmos but your own humanity…After all, why should any god give an inkling of a shit towards even a single mortal when its impossible to relate to us anymore…In the end, gods are uncaring, arrogant beings who would never put others before them-"

Having heard enough from the Toad, Driad grits his teeth and quickly turns around to rush at the man with his right arm forming into the shape of a leaf blade, while his left vine wraps itself around the Toad's neck and hoists him into the air with the tip of his sword aimed at the center of the man's face. As the Toad finds his air circulation slowly being cut off by the tightening grip of Driad's arm, the living flower heaths in and out through his mouth while looking at the man with frenzied eyes before stating out of absolute fury towards the Toad "How dare you even speak about them as though you knew who they were and what they were like! Say another word about them and I'll cleave that head of yours right off!"

In the face of the Crayzee Dayzee's bold threat, the Toad merely laughs in a boastful tone as he looks down past the living flower and takes note of the crowd of his kin gasping in disbelief and fear at the violent actions that Driad was taking against him. "Hehehe…Y-You think you have any power over me, follower of the gods? You may not be a god yourself, but you are much stronger than any other 'mortal' on this world simply because of the blessing of the Star Spirits…And look where you are now, depriving yourself of what little humanity you had just to assault a man whose words you could have easily ignored…So go ahead and kill me just because I mocked your wretched masters, but if you do then what will happen to you next, hmm?" With his eyebrows raised in confidence as he gives Driad a plaque covered smile, the Crayzee Dayzee arches his eyebrows calmly and glares into the eyes of the Toad to intimidate him into thinking that his words would have no effect on him…

…Only to, in the end, loosen his grip on the Toad's neck and retract his sword rather reluctantly while he let out a tired sigh and with a light gesture he threw the man against the ground back first and turned away, his heavy eyes glaring into the disapproving expression on many Toads' faces as he turns to the right and slowly walks away without saying another word. The Toad, raising himself back onto his feet with a smile still on his face, begins laughing in a rather chilling tone as he picks up his sign and lumbers over behind the shade of a nearby tree, where with a slam of his pole against the ground beside himself he sheds his disguise and returns his staff back into its distorted, rattling skull topped form. "One down…Four to go…" He says in a mischievous tone of voice…

But this mysterious being is not the subject of our focus at the moment…We will return to his antics another day, but for now we shall return to where Driad is at as he scampers across the roads of Toad Town to find sanctity in E. Gadd's lab before he is hunted down for his assault on that grimy "Toad". At least, that's what paranoia was leading the Crayzee Dayzee to believe as he ran farther away from the center of town. He made a sharp turn to the right after a certain point and saw the steel covered building where E. Gadd took residence in when he wanted to work, and with only a quick glance back at the murmuring citizens Driad hurried down the stairs to find and hopefully know comfort at the hands of the stout old man.

In his haste though the Crayzee Dayzee failed to notice how misplaced his feet were as they moved back and forth across the steps, and a mistimed lowering of his right vine caused him to step down on empty air and his entire body fell forward in turn. He tumbled down the remaining half of stairs below and with his vision becoming dizzy from the forced whirling of the world around him, Driad cries out in pain as his head slams against the cold floor at the bottom of the steps and he rolls a few more feet before he crashes into the legs of a nearby table and knocks it over by complete accident, and despite the crashing of many glass beakers Driad is finally stopped as he is laid against his backside with his vision once again blurred by the lights above.

Naturally, all this commotion grabs the attention of this building's scientific occupant, who gently places one flask down into a holed segment of glass after a moment of flinching before he turns around and pops his glasses off with a nudge from his left hand. "Hmmm?" The wrinkled man named E. Gadd murmured to himself as he quickly looked towards the being responsible for the slight mess made to his lab and was surprised to discover that it was Driad. Having known the Crayzee Dayzee for his naivety instead of this display of clumsiness, the professor starts compiling a list of questions inside of his head while extending a hand out towards his friend and asking him "Are you all right there Driad?"

At first the inquiry is jumbled inside of Driad's ears, causing the Crayzee Dayzee to in turn mumble out a bewildered "H-Huh?" to which the stout scientist ends up repeating the question until Driad recovers and looks up at the professor's swirl-y glasses obscured face and says "P-Professor E. Gadd…" Lifting his head up to see just where he landed, Driad's face quickly becomes red with embarrassment and panic as he notices the mess he accidentally made and as he clambers to his feet he shakes his head and vine arms and apologizes profusely to the professor "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!" But the man merely takes it all in good favor and does his signature laugh to ease Driad's tension. "Its quite alright Driad…Though I am rather glad you struck the table that had all of the empty beakers…"

Gesturing with his right hand towards the easing Driad, E. Gadd's expression a mite more serious as he looks into the Crayzee Dayzee's black eyes and notices a rather dismal emotion coming from his expression, so seeing as he was at the moment acting as the concerned party, the professor asked his silent friend "What is on your mind, child?" Flinching momentarily as his gaze moves from the floor to E. Gadd's face, Driad quickly averts his gaze as he realizes how unsurprising it was that the professor quickly determined that something was wrong with him. After asking if E. Gadd had a lot of time on his hands to hear him out with the professor nodding in response, Driad began to talk about his current issues for a good ten minutes while E. Gadd stood and listened to try and comprehend all that was being said.

At the end of it, the professor makes a single comment that was only somewhat related to the matter at first "Well, that does explain why I hadn't seen you around lately…But still…" E. Gadd taps his fingers against the bottom of his chin and hums to himself for a few seconds before saying to Driad "So you are still depressed over Mew's disappearance and Alex's suicide, yet you keep painfully remembering them no matter where you go?" The Crayzee Dayzee nods his head to confirm to the professor that his short summary was accurate, and with a gesture of his right vine the living flower puts on a melancholy expression and asks E. Gadd "So what do you think I should do?" The professor quickly pinpointed just how emotionally drained Driad was from his current tone of voice, and to his best of knowledge the Crayzee Dayzee was looking to him as a last resort to solve his distress.

But alas, there was one major problem with Driad's thought process. With a shake of his head and a click of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, E. Gadd says to the living flower "Unfortunately, I didn't earn a Ph.D in Psychology, Driad…There's not much I can really do in the way of giving you a motivational speech that will snap you out of your depression…" The professor really loathed himself for having to be honest towards the Crayzee Dayzee after he went through the trouble of coming to find him, and as E. Gadd watches Driad hang his head and looking absolutely devastated the professor knew he simply couldn't let the conversation end right then and there.

With a nudge of his glasses to click them back into place, E. Gadd flicks his right fingers upward in front of his body to grab Driad's attention, and as the living flower raises his head back up to look at the professor with a disheartened glaze in his eyes E. Gadd said to him "Though if I can provide even an iota of assistance towards you, I would suggest heading out someplace secluded that has absolutely no relation to any of the memories you had with either Mew or Alex…Right now, this entire town is a field of poison for your mind, and I'm actually quite shocked that here of all places hasn't thrown you into madness…" With the Professor's well-thought out idea, Driad frowns slightly and says to him "Believe me, I'm trying really, REALLY hard to ignore the images flashing before my eyes…"

"…That's understandable Driad, and I'm really sorry you are experiencing all of this…You've gone through enough problems in your life since you regained your memories, and this is just another predicament that fate has left you to solve on your own…I know you will be fine though, just don't give up on yourself, alright?" "I won't professor…And thank you for helping in what little way you could…" With a somewhat lightened heart, Driad turned to his side and waved goodbye to E. Gadd as he headed back up the stairs, leaving the professor to start cleaning up the mess that was made behind him. The old man kneeled down and as he shuffled his hands across the shattered glass he made his way towards a picture frame that was cracked by the impact with the ground.

Lifting the frame up, E. Gadd's eyebrows slant as he takes note of the dusty picture that depicted himself alongside the rest of the planet's heroes, including the star herald Geno and the Elemental Overlord Alex Whiter, celebrating their victory against the one called Joe Dark a long time ago. Releasing a melancholy sigh, the professor says quietly to himself "If one of you were around right now…Perhaps then Driad would find some form of relief amidst his turmoil…" Wishing things were back to the way they were before despite how unheard his wishes would end up being, E. Gadd places the picture frame gently off to the side and vows to fix it later once he had cleaned the table and glass off of the floor.

Back with Driad, we find the melancholy flower wandering past the outskirts of Toad Town with his eyes staying focused on the grasslands instead of ever looking back towards the memories he had. He wanders far beyond the edge of town to find a place to collect his thoughts, and eventually he notices that he is climbing the side of a mountain. It wasn't exactly a conscious decision, since the Crayzee Dayzee's mind has become rather aloof in his thoughts. But seeing as he didn't recognize the place set before his eyes, he continues on his way and eventually makes it to the top, where he finds a cliff that is hanging out from the side over a large ravine that contains a gushing river and walks until he is six feet away from the edge. He looks out and sees nothing but the vast Desert Land and the southern edge of Grass Land beyond the other side of the ravine.

Feeling that this is the best place for him to gather his wits once more as he stands still and lets the cold mountain breeze brush against his flowery face, Driad closes his eyelids and sniffs the air in. But this simple little act manages to stir up another memory within the living flower's head, as he is reminded of the day where he learned the truth about his past and was subsequently told by Alex that he shouldn't think of himself as evil just because he used to be an outer guardian. "…Another painful memory…" The Crayzee Dayzee mutters out in depressed annoyance as he opens his eyelids and looks towards the sky, where the memories then continue to flow into him until he grimaces and looks down towards the desert.

But then the memories change from one to another, and now Driad remembers the time where he wandered through the deserts north of Moleville with Alex and the others by his side. The Crayzee Dayzee turns his head to the grasslands swiftly, but more memories flow into him without end. Not even out here, where his eyes gazed upon areas that he never traversed before with either Alex or Mew, was the living flower safe from the memories of the time he spent with them once before. This grim truth was spoken through Driad's lips as he slanted his eyebrows upward in sadness "I can't escape these memories, can I? I see them at home, in town, the environments…And even the very air itself…No matter where I go in this world, these memories will always be around, waiting to emerge and poison my mind…"

Driad raises his vine arms in front of his face and watches as they tremble involuntarily, murmuring to himself "How can I even function anymore when every waking second I'll be forced to endure these memories?" Curling his vines inward to stop the shaking, the Crayzee Dayzee lifts his head up slightly and frowns while looking over the edge of the cliff to checking out the violent rapids down below. His heart began to beat hard at a rather slow pace, the intensity of said beats increasing with each passing second as he inches closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. He sees a few rough, jagged spikes protruding out of the top of the water, and without so much as hesitation weighing him down the living flower began to contemplate something that he has never thought of before…Suicide.

"What better liberator is there than death?" Driad says with absolute certainty that what he was about to do is the right course of action. He was a being broken by the many lives he has seen be lost, and what was hurting him the most now was the memories of the two who provided him with the most happiness simply by existing before him with each passing day. But now they were both gone, and though there was a grave amount of uncertainty regarding Mew's whereabouts Driad was not a fool…Both him and Alex Whiter are dead, forever lost to the calming realm where the angels sing the last chorus for all who enter. "…Perhaps…Perhaps I'll be able to join you two…Its better that I end my life now…I'm too unstable to live anymore, and I'm pretty certain no one will care if I die here and now…They'll just forget me like they did everyone else…"

As Driad says what he believes to be his last words on this planet, he closes his eyelids and prepares to let gravity drag him down into the ravine and end his life without so much as a struggle. With his vine arms stretched out gently on both sides, the living flower was prepared to lean forward when a familiar voice calls out to him from above in the form of a resounding echo "That's not true Driad, that will never, ever be true…" Recognizing the voice with such familiarity that his eyelids open wide in utter disbelief when he realizes that its not something he was hearing in his memories, and with a swift turn of his body the Crayzee Dayzee watches as a beam of starry light thrusts itself down through the sky and lands on the ground a few feet away from him.

Descending from this beam of light as only a barely visible hologram at first is the wooden doll with the blue cloak that many known by the name of Geno. In a few more seconds, the star herald's body will manifest into a physical form through which he will be able to interact with the mortal world for the first time in what felt like an eternity to him. As Driad watches on, his eyes awe-struck while at the same time on the verge of joyous tears, he keeps his head pointed towards Geno's body until he lands on the ground and the beam of light dissipates into nothingness, at which point the Crayzee Dayzee finds himself at a complete loss for words. To compensate for that, the star herald creaks his wooden eyelids open and says in a comforting tone "Hey buddy, its been a while, hasn't it?"

Next Time: A New Path