[Nero sits across the cage — the piercing white glow of his eyes locked on El Mariachi Muerte.]

You know, EMM… I used to think silence was peace. After years of static — of orders barking through earpieces, of data streams screaming across my desk — I thought silence meant freedom.

But then I heard you.

I saw the way you carried that guitar like it was a weapon. A prayer. A promise.

Every note you played bent reality. Life and death danced to your rhythm.

You didn’t just speak power — you sang it.

[A tense silence fills the air]

It’s strange, isn’t it? The sound the world makes when your purpose dies. You used to walk into a room and make mere mortals tremble, yet now you sit in a cage — fingers twitching for strings that aren’t there — searching for a song that won’t come.

I recognise that silence... It’s the same silence that came for me when I served Zeus.

[Nero runs his fingers across the bars, producing a low, metallic chord.]

You think this cage is your prison? That these bars keep your music out? Truth is, your cage was built long before we were captured. It was made of expectation; of devotion to a melody that no man was ever meant to command.

You were never free. You were a servant — not to Zeus — but to the sound itself. And when it left you, you didn’t just lose your gift.

You lost you.

[He taps the bars rhythmically — each clang echoing like a heartbeat.]

Every chord you struck was a heartbeat stopping; a soul set free. But even then, I could see it in your eyes. That flicker of doubt.

That whisper which asked what would happen once the music stopped?

[Nero strikes the bars resonantly.]

You knew it was coming. Every sacred sound carries its echo, and every echo dies in time — just like my days inside Arcadia’s control rooms. Screens upon screens. Signals screaming in chorus. Every heartbeat mapped. Every secret stored… I thought I was the one pulling the strings. But I wasn’t. I was the instrument. My melody was obedience —  my song, oppression — and when I broke free, I thought I’d find silence.

[Clang.]

But freedom isn’t quiet. It hums. It breathes. It’s messy.

Off-key.

Alive.

[A subtle tilt of the head.]

Maybe that’s what you’ve forgotten, hermano. You keep chasing that old tune — the perfect rhythm of death and devotion — but maybe your freedom isn’t in finding it again. Maybe it’s in learning to live without it.

Your second verse.

Your chance to start anew.

[Nero presses his ear against the cage.]

Every cage sings if you listen close enough, Muerte. The metal hums, the air vibrates… Even despair has its rhythm — you just have to hear it differently now.

[The glow in his eyes intensifies.]

You don’t need the guitar. You don’t need the old song.

You just need to hear yourself again.

[He leans in — voice cutting like a blade.]

Because you’re not the Mariachi of Death anymore…

[Nero drives his fist into the bars — the impact reverberating like thunder.]

You’re just the man who lived past the final note.