>>5390086>>5390131>>5390134>>5390309Good! They're already splitting up, all the more reason for you to focus on Cindy and Benny.
"V-V-Vlad?" The stammering boy raises his arms to gesture a hug, but quickly undoes his motions, remembering how the last time you met went.
"I was not expecting to see you here, boy."
"She's been fixed, Vlad! She's really been fixed! She was having a hard time remembering Rosy Rose's tale, but she always sang it to me before I went to sleep. I remember plenty of it, now she can finally travel around the world to do her songs with me!" Benny was so happy, his speech impediment seemed to have disappeared entirely, how did he improve so fast?
Cindy gives her brother an empty smile and a kiss on the forehead, not wanting to tell him of her true condition.
"I thought you would be uniting with the Falcons?"
"Griffith is so busy, the time where he took me from Ilos was pretty much the only meaningful interaction I had with him... He doesn't seem like a bad guy... But I'm scared of what some of the people in his army can do... It's like they're about to turn on each other at any moment..."
"I can't believe I let you into that dangerous place by yourself, Benny! Why would you do that?"
"It's true! Sonia and Mule were the ones who led me here, and they have liberated Midland people from Kushan rulership! S-Some of them want to fight for justice as much as Vlad."
"Then why did you leave? You could have just brought Cindy into the Band."
"I-I-I don't feel safe there anymore..." Benny shivers, stammering once more. "G-G-Grunbeld was there to save me before, but now that he's dead... I-I-t will happen again."
"Good people can be led by ill-intended leaders." Casca speaks up. "If not all in Griffith's New Band are apostles, chances are they are seeing him as just as much as a miraculous combatant of evil as he was previously..."
"Th-There are good apostles, too! Grunbeld and the girl with the scythe were not evil... So why did you take their lives, Vlad? I thought good people were meant to unite under their same c-cause! They were just like you and me!"
Benny tears up, afraid of the aftereffects of the rift caused by Grunbeld's death in the enemy army. Moreover, he genuinely seems saddened that his once heroic mentor had struck down someone he deemed a protector of the weak.
