You know, I love to work with my chemicals and gases when they’re at their freshest.  That’s when they truly sing, it’s when they’re at their most potent.  Because all things, as they age or are experimented on well, they lose that vim, that vigor which made them what they once were. 

They become less than what they once were.  They lose their power and they’re no longer effective… 

It’s like taking the hammer away from a blacksmith, the thread away from a seamstress, or dare I say taking the guitar away from a mariachi? 

Right, EMM?  Or can we call you El Mariachi Muerte without any music, without the guitar, without purpose, without that mission?  Who are you?  Do we just call Bob the ex-music man?  

Because, without any of your former trappings, what are you?  Who are you?  What threat do you possess in the face of Arcadia’s greatest chemist? 

 Before you had at least some power to laude over me.  You had a tune to sing, a piece of music to potentially put me in my place, but now… 

You’re an inert gas, ineffective, and inoffensive.  You’re a seat warmer at your own concert, Mr. Music Man.  Because I doubt you remember the notes, let alone the lyrics to your little ditty by this point… 

And this week it doesn’t matter, you’ll breathe it all in, and in that moment, it’ll dawn on you just how human you are when all you can do is choke on the smoke.  Just like you did when confronted with Dr. Death, when El Dragon Caido revealed himself as the one supreme Mariachi, you fell.  You couldn’t save Vida, you couldn’t resurrect the Mariachi in her name, and you won’t be able to stand in the presence of the Chemist.  As the only thing you’re good at anymore is choking. 

You’re a gas whose potency is quickly fading.  A man whose usefulness has already ended before it’s even begun.  You got your moment in the sun, and all it did was cause your star to fade.  You had your chance to accomplish everything you set out for, but all you did was wither and die.  Which brings us to now, and now my Mariachi, you have nothing left, no potency, no ability, no mission, and you haven’t just lost the song, you’ve lost the plot. 

Which brings you to my doorstep, Muerte, you can call me your reckoning, your final realization that even with your Mariachi Guitar, you never were my equal.  You were always an inert gas capable of nothing outside of impudently setting goals you’d never achieve, placing benchmarks you could never live up to… 

And when it all ends and you’re staring up at me wondering if this is the moment the sword of Damocles falls upon your head.  You’ll realize the only music you’ll ever make again is the sound of fucking silence.  That all that’s left for you is the hollow emptiness of your own mortality.