Father
"If you stare into the abyss long enough… you learn to count the demons by name."
[Scene 1 – Exterior, Night – New York City, Financial District]
Wide angle panel. Towering skyscrapers cast long shadows over golden-lit streets. Luxury cars glide through quiet alleys. The world above sleeps. The world below is just waking up.
Narration Box:
At thirteen, most kids were still chasing goals in a video game.
I was reading profit sheets, leveraging stocks, and memorizing backdoor hedge fund codes.
Panel Cut – Interior of a sleek black sedan.
The inside smells of leather and legacy. I sit beside my father. A man not carved by time, but by pressure.
Close-up – My father, Berret Bentley.
Short black hair—slicked back, yet a touch unruly.
Jawline like it was sculpted in war.
Eyes that had seen fire and made deals with it.
He adjusts his cufflinks as if preparing for battle.
Speech Bubble (Berret):
"Son. Tonight, we go to the other side of this world."
"Beyond the numbers. Beyond the silk suits and fake smiles."
"I need you to see the truth. What lives behind the veil."
[Scene 2 – Elevator Shaft – Descending]
Panel shows me and my father standing in an ultra-modern elevator. No buttons. Only a keycard reader. He slides a card. The floor number changes from "L" to "B8."
Each floor that descends, the lights get dimmer. The air gets colder.
Narration Box:
I thought I understood corruption.
I'd seen what greed could buy.
But nothing prepared me for what it cost.
[Scene 3 – Sub-Level 8 – The Cage]
Full splash panel. A large, brutal chamber carved in concrete and steel. Spotlights flicker overhead like dying stars. Thick shadows cling to the corners.
In the center—
A steel cage, dented and rusted from years of war. Blood stains old and new mark the ground like battle scars.
Around it—a ring of the elite: billionaires, sheikhs, fallen politicians, cartel kings, and ex-generals.
Chants echo. Roars rise. Money flies like confetti.
Panel Sequence:
Panel 1: A man screams as his nose is shattered by a spinning backfist.
Panel 2: Another figure lies unconscious, face caved in, blood dripping onto the cage's steel grates.
Panel 3: A man in a white coat collects bids from the crowd—not in cash, but in company shares, land deeds, and military contracts.
Narration Box:
It wasn't just a fight.
It was currency.
One punch could move oil across borders.
One knockout could shift entire nations.
[Scene 4 – Viewing Deck – High-Class Floor Level]
Father places a hand on my shoulder. I don't flinch. I watch. I listen. I memorize.
Speech Bubble (Father):
"This is the oldest trade in the world, Ballemy.
Violence... packaged in suits, sold with champagne."
Speech Bubble (Father):
"No boardroom or backdoor deal means a damn thing… unless it's enforced with fear."
Panel Cut – Me staring at a digital screen above the cage, listing bets and outcomes like a Wall Street board.
Narration Box:
This wasn't the secret of the world's elite.
This was the engine.
[Scene 5 – Memory Montage]
Four split panels overlaying the darkness:
Panel 1: A young version of me curled up on a couch, reading Batman: Court of Owls.
Panel 2: Watching the Punisher series, where justice came through bullets, not courts.
Panel 3: The moment I realized this world wasn't fiction.
Panel 4: Me in a mirror. Eyes not wide with innocence—focused, calculating.
Narration Box:
I was reborn in this world with memories of another.
But knowledge doesn't prepare you for impact.
Narration Box:
I used to believe fate was a thread.
That being reborn meant I'd just play a better game.
But I was wrong. This wasn't a game. This was the board.
[Scene 6 – Interior, Bidding Lounge – Later That Night]
A sleek room filled with cigar smoke and red velvet walls. Half-naked fighters tend to wounds. Doctors patch up champions. Some scream. Others sign contracts with broken fingers.
My father speaks with a man in a jade suit—head of a biotech firm. A woman in gold heels trades info on global logistics routes. All while a man behind them bleeds into a silver bucket.
Speech Bubble (Father):
"You wanted to know the true market, son?"
"This... is it. Not Nasdaq. Not Forex.
But the one paid in sweat. And ended in silence."
Close-up – Me staring at a fighter's hands. Knuckles cracked. Bones swollen.
Narration Box:
And I understood something terrifying.
In this world… your value is equal to your pain threshold.
[Final Scene – Rooftop – Late Night, After the Party]
I stand on the rooftop alone. Looking out at the glittering skyline. Wind brushes my hair.
I pull out a small notebook from my blazer. On it: schematics, strategies, names. I scribble a phrase underlined twice:
"If blood is currency… then I will become the richest killer in history."
CLOSE-UP – My reflection in the glass. My eyes—not scared. Not excited. Just... resolved.
Narration Box (Final):
My name is Ballemy Bentley.
Son of the man who built the black empire.
He taught me numbers.
But pain… pain will be my signature.
Mother
"If Father showed me how the world breaks people…
Mother taught me how to reshape it."
[Scene 1 – Interior, Underground Lab – Night]
Wide Panel: The lab stretches beneath a lonely villa in the Mexican highlands. Steel, glass, and glowing screens clash with the rustic adobe walls above.
Dim fluorescent lights hum. Machines beep in irregular patterns. Vats of glowing liquids line the back wall like eerie tombs of potential.
Center panel: My mother stands before a long console. Her silhouette framed by monitors filled with genetic data.
Tall. Graceful. Raven-black hair tied into a functional ponytail. White lab coat flowing like a cape. Green eyes like precision lasers.
A woman forged not from comfort, but from intellect and resistance.
Narration Box:
Most men feared her not because of her name…
But because her genius couldn't be bought.
And what can't be bought… is hunted.
[Scene 2 – The Side Bench – Me, Aged 8]
Tight panel – My fingers tap across a tablet. Onscreen, strands of double helix DNA curl and shift. My own simulation running.
Speech Bubble (Me):
"The crocodilian muscle fiber fused with mantis shrimp acceleration gives an output spike—
But the cortical brain signals go into overload by second 3. Neural burnout."
Speech Bubble (Mother – off panel):
"So… what would you do?"
I glance up. She's watching me—not as a mother, but as a fellow mind.
Speech Bubble (Me):
"Split it. Use the secondary nervous system of the Komodo lizard. That isolates the brain when limb movement spikes."
Speech Bubble (Mother – smiling):
"You really are a monster."
Narration Box:
She didn't mean it as an insult.
In our world, being called a monster was a compliment.
[Scene 3 – Gene Library – Later That Night]
Multiple vertical panels showing the animal DNA samples I acquired—thanks to my father's underworld connections:
Cheetah: muscle-twitch acceleration
Owl: near-silent aerial rotation
Shark: regenerating cells
Mantis Shrimp: kinetic strike pressure
Wolf: superior smell and night processing
Rattlesnake: infrared heat mapping
Komodo Dragon: dual nervous response system
Narration Box:
With Father's power and Mother's brilliance, I had access to what no other child in the world could touch.
And I wasn't going to waste it.
[Scene 4 – Fusion Attempt #001 - Live Simulation Room]
Panel – The chamber is sealed. Tubes and biometric monitors wrap around a test drone—humanoid, breathing, and grown from engineered cells.
Speech Bubble (Mother – on comms):
"Ready when you are. Code lock engaged. Biometrics green."
I inject the first unstable serum. My own design.
Narration Box:
It was elegant. Horrifying. A biological tempest disguised as a clear liquid.
I called it… Origin. The first of its kind.
Suddenly—
Panel 1: The figure convulses.
Panel 2: Screams echo. Muscles expand, burst, then reform.
Panel 3: Blood hits the chamber walls—then silence. Flatline.
Red alert flashes. Monitors die.
I watch, motionless. My mother… sighs. Calmly.
Speech Bubble (Mother):
"Still no neural stability."
"Too much energy. Not enough adaptation."
"You know what this means."
Speech Bubble (Me):
"…It only works… on the living."
"If the body accepts it before dying… then it lives stronger.
But if it waits until too late… the system crashes."
Narration Box:
I was 8 years old… and I had built a serum that could remake evolution itself.
But only for those who survived the transformation.
[Scene 5 – Secondary Workshop – Metallurgy Lab]
Scene transitions to another hidden chamber. This one echoing with the sound of hammer against steel.
I stand over a table, sketching out alloy formulas. Beside me: crushed samples of metal, data on kinetic force, heat absorption, and vibrational stress.
Narration Box:
While Mother taught me to reforge biology…
I began teaching myself to enhance the armor around it.
Speech Bubble (Me – whispering):
"What if I increase molecular density… without raising atomic weight?"
I input the data. The screen glows. A new formula appears:
Steel-X: tensile strength 4.3x standard titanium.
Ballistic tolerance: .50 caliber confirmed.
Reactive dampening: 64%.
Panels show:
A bullet slamming into the armor. No dent. Just spark.
An explosion—shaking the lab—but the suit remains.
My eyes, glowing with realization.
Speech Bubble (Me):
"From pistols to snipers, it'll hold.
Even some grenades. RPGs maybe… but not tank shells. Not heavy missiles."
Speech Bubble (Mother – entering quietly):
"That's still… beyond 99% of all human-grade threats."
Speech Bubble (Me):
"Good. Then we're ahead."
[Scene 6 – Exterior, Villa Balcony – Midnight]
I sit on the edge of the rooftop, overlooking the desert. The stars above are silent. The world below… sleeping.
In my hand—two vials.
One labeled ORIGIN.
The other—EVO-X. My second prototype. Still unstable.
Narration Box:
I wasn't trying to play God.
I was trying to replace Him.
Footsteps behind me. Mother. She sits beside me. Not as a mentor. But as… the last guardian of what innocence I have left.
Speech Bubble (Mother):
"You know what comes next, don't you?"
Speech Bubble (Me):
"If I can stabilize the serum in my own bloodline…
Then I'll be the first."
"The proof of concept."
"The monster… that works."
[Final Splash Panel – Ballemy's Shadow Over the Lab]
I walk down the corridor. Behind me—rows of glowing chambers, armor prototypes, gene tanks, weapon blueprints.
Narration Box:
They called me a child prodigy.
But I was never a child.
Just a project… with a soul.
And now the project was waking up.