[We open on a wooden cart with two red curtains pulled across.]

[They suddenly thrust open and a puppet that looks like Jackson Cade ambles out onto the stage.]

“Quick, charge!”

[The sound of people running and charging into battle can be heard.]

[Gunshots.]

[Screams.]

[The curtain goes across with Cade running out of frame and off the stage. Moments later, the curtain opens revealing Jackson led on the floor, missing a leg.]

“But I had all the power… I had the control…”

[He coughs and splutters.]

“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

[The curtain goes across again.]

[Felix now appears from behind the cart with the figure of Jackson Cade as a puppet in his hands.]

“When you see yourself as the one pulling the strings of chaos and order, as a leader, you can be fooled into a false sense of security. You can believe that your power is unbreakable, and the idea of losing it to be untenable.”

[Felix shakes his head.]

“You think of yourself a puppetmaster, Jackson. The leader of the Seekers; of the Uprising. But your authority isn’t built on respect, it is built on manipulation and fear. For every person under your charge is simply afraid of what might happen should they not be.”

[Foley puts the puppet down on the cart and reveals another; Grimskull.]

“Grimskull believes himself to be a puppetmaster of pain and salvation, forcing others to suffer his twisted ideology. Every sermon is another that flatters to deceive, controlling people with lies.”

[He puts that puppet down next to Cade and picks up the last one; Muerte.]

“And El Mariachi Muerte, who tells stories through his songs of folklore, serenading the fallen. He believes himself a puppetmaster of the afterlife, controlling people with his music.”

[Foley puts that one down too.]

“The problem with power is that it doesn’t come from control. True power comes from knowing when to let go. My strength comes from resilience and creativity. My strength comes from living through the worst pain of my life—betrayal, loss, and violence at the hands of someone I trusted. My strength comes from knowing that the stories sung in song have an ending predetermined by deceit and I’m the one who writes the ending to my song.”

[Felix lowers his head.]

“True power, true strength, true control, it comes in knowing when to let go. It comes in knowing when to cut the strings…

I know to cut the strings.

I know when.

And in an Arcadia full of puppetmasters, that makes me the most dangerous of them all.”