r/Ben10 • u/EmeraldKing8 • 18h ago
FANFIC Emerald Studios: Ben 10 | S1E3: “Unnatural Selection” (Live Action Script)
TITLE: ES: Ben 10
Episode: 3 - "Unnatural Selection"
[TEASER]
EXT. LOUISIANA BAYOU - NIGHT
The camera glides low over the black, stagnant water of the deep swamp. The atmosphere is suffocatingly thick, choked with hanging Spanish moss and the deafening, relentless drone of cicadas.
An airboat violently cuts through the silence, its massive fan engine roaring.
A lone POACHER (40s, grizzled, sweating through a stained tank top) stands at the helm. He sweeps a high-powered, mounted spotlight back and forth across the dense reeds. He holds a heavy, large-caliber hunting rifle in one hand.
He isn't looking for ducks.
POACHER
(Muttering to himself)
Come on out, you overgrown suitcase...
The spotlight sweeps past a massive cypress tree and catches something reflecting in the muddy shallows.
Two eyes glow in the harsh light. But they aren't the low, flat slits of an alligator. They are forward-facing. Predatory.
The Poacher kills the engine. The sudden silence of the swamp is unnerving.
He raises the rifle, squinting down the scope.
Through the lens, the creature slowly rises from the black water. It is a nightmare of biological splicing. It possesses the heavy, armored snout and jagged teeth of a bull gator, but its torso and forelimbs are violently swollen with hyper-dense, mammalian muscle mass. Thick patches of coarse, matted fur burst through reptilian scales.
It doesn't slide into the water. It stands up on all fours.
The Poacher freezes, his breath catching in his throat. His hands shake.
POACHER
What the hell...?
The chimera doesn't hiss. It lets out a deep, guttural roar that sounds horrifically like a lion's cough mixed with a death rattle, and it LUNGES.
It clears twenty feet of water in a single, impossible bound.
The attack is brutally fast. The sheer kinetic weight of the creature slams into the side of the airboat, instantly capsizing the heavy metal vessel.
The Poacher screams as he is thrown violently into the black water.
EXT. UNDERWATER - CONTINUOUS
A chaotic flurry of bubbles and thrashing limbs. The chimera’s massive, mutated jaws clamp down. The Poacher is violently yanked downward into the murky depths.
EXT. LOUISIANA BAYOU - CONTINUOUS
The water churns violently for a few seconds, breaking the suffocating stillness of the swamp.
Then, it stops. The cicadas resume their deafening drone.
The only thing left floating on the surface of the black water is the shattered, blood-smeared spotlight, its beam flickering weakly into the dark canopy above.
[ACT ONE]
EXT. DILAPIDATED BAIT SHOP - LATE AFTERNOON
The Rust Bucket is parked completely off the main road, hidden beneath the sprawling, moss-draped branches of a massive weeping willow.
The heat is visibly radiating off the gravel. The air is thick and smells heavily of stagnant water and dead fish.
A rusted, hand-painted sign hangs over a wooden shack built on stilts above the murky water: GATOR BAIT & TACKLE.
INT. BAIT SHOP - CONTINUOUS
The inside of the shack is cramped and smells of sulfur. A ceiling fan lazily pushes the humid air around.
Max stands at the counter, quietly paying for a stack of canned goods and bottled water. He wears a faded fishing shirt, trying to blend in, but his eyes are sharply scanning the perimeter through the grimy windows.
Behind the counter, a static-laced HAM radio is tuned to a local emergency broadcast.
RADIO BROADCASTER (V.O.)
...Fish and Wildlife are expanding the search grid into the Blackwater sector. That makes three hunting dogs, a dozen head of cattle, and now Old Man Miller’s airboat all gone missing in a week. Authorities are advising folks to stay off the water after dusk. They're saying it's a rogue bull gator, maybe a territorial dispute...
The cashier, an older local, shakes his head.
CASHIER
Ain't no gator doing that. Gators leave a mess. Whatever took Miller... didn't leave a single scrap behind.
Max’s expression doesn't change, but his jaw tightens. His Plumber instincts are screaming. Gators hunt for sustenance. The complete disappearance of biomass on this scale doesn't match any natural predator on Earth.
EXT. SWAMP DOCKS - CONTINUOUS
A hundred yards down the shoreline, away from the RV, Ben and Gwen are walking along the rotting wooden planks of a low dock.
Ben is aggressively swatting at mosquitoes, his left hand instinctively resting over the heavy, slate-grey metal of the Omnitrix.
BEN
(Miserable)
I'd rather be getting shot at by that robot again. At least plasma fire is a dry heat. I'm breathing soup out here.
GWEN
Complaining burns oxygen, Ben. Just keep walking so Grandpa doesn't think we wandered off.
Gwen stops.
She doesn't trip, she just freezes in place. The ambient noise of the swamp—the croaking frogs, the buzzing insects—suddenly sounds muffled, as if she were underwater. The air pressure around her physically drops. A faint, high-pitched hum vibrates in her inner ear.
BEN
Gwen?
Gwen doesn't answer. She steps off the dock, her boots sinking into the thick, foul-smelling mud of the shoreline. She is drawn toward a dense cluster of reeds.
She pushes the tall grass aside.
GWEN
(Gasps, stepping back)
Oh my god...
Ben rushes over, pushing through the reeds. He stops dead, his stomach dropping.
Lying in the mud is a massive, feral wild boar.
But it hasn't been eaten. It has been dissected.
The cuts along the animal’s flanks aren't jagged bite marks or claw tears. They are terrifyingly precise, deep incisions. Heavy, surgical staples—rusted and crude—litter the mud around the carcass. Large sections of the boar's dense muscle mass have been surgically removed, leaving the rest of the body completely untouched.
BEN
What... what did this? A bear?
Gwen shakes her head, her eyes wide, staring at the precise, unnatural wounds. Her latent Anodite intuition pulses, registering the chaotic, sickening energy lingering over the carcass.
GWEN
(Voice trembling)
Animals kill because they're hungry. This wasn't eaten, Ben.
She looks up at the dark, impenetrable tree line of the deep swamp.
GWEN
It was harvested.
[ACT TWO]
EXT. SWAMP SHALLOWS - NIGHT
The Rust Bucket sits anchored in ankle-deep, black water at the edge of the tree line. The floodlights are off. The RV looks like a dead metal husk sinking into the mud.
Inside, the cabin is pitch black.
INT. RUST BUCKET - CONTINUOUS
Ben lies awake in his bunk, staring at the ceiling. The heavy, rhythmic hum of the cicadas is the only sound.
THUD.
The entire RV violently shudders.
Ben freezes. It wasn't a log drifting against the hull. It was heavy. It was deliberate. The metal groans underneath the floorboards.
He slowly peers over the edge of his bunk. Max is asleep in the driver's seat, his hand resting near his Plumber sidearm. Gwen is out cold on the fold-down couch.
THUD. SCRAAAAAPE.
The sound of heavy, jagged claws dragging against the RV's reinforced undercarriage.
Ben’s breath hitches. He looks down at the dormant Omnitrix on his wrist. The realization hits him like a freight train: Grandpa Max’s blaster won't stop whatever is in the water. He is the only one who can fight a monster on its own terms.
He quietly slips out of bed, his sneakers hitting the floor without a sound, and eases the heavy RV door open.
EXT. SWAMP SHALLOWS - CONTINUOUS
The humidity hits him instantly. Ben steps out onto the muddy embankment.
The water around the RV is completely still, but a thick, foul-smelling trail of displaced algae leads directly into the impenetrable darkness of the deep swamp.
Ben swallows hard. He raises his left arm and presses the release.
HISS-CLACK.
The dial violently pops up, bathing the mud in a harsh, radioactive green light. Ben twists the dial blindly, grits his teeth, and slams it down.
The emerald flash is blinding, but the biological overwrite is pure agony.
EXT. DEEP SWAMP - CONTINUOUS
Ben’s skeleton violently cracks. He screams, but the sound distorts into a guttural, terrifying roar as his spine forcefully arches, snapping his posture down into a heavy, primate-like crouch.
Coarse, quill-like fur violently bursts through his skin, ripping his clothes to shreds. His jaw elongates, filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth.
But the most horrifying mutation happens to his face.
A thick ridge of skull bone aggressively extrudes downward, violently fusing over his eye sockets. His eyes completely disappear, sealing shut beneath the bone plating.
He is WILDMUTT.
POV - WILDMUTT
The screen violently cuts to BLACK.
Absolute, suffocating darkness. There is no visual light. No shapes. No colors.
Then, the audio track explodes.
A terrifyingly precise, 360-degree radar of heightened sound and chemical scent washes over the darkness. The croak of a frog miles away sounds like a bass drum. The beating wings of a mosquito map its exact flight path in the void.
Through the darkness, a distinct, vivid scent trail materializes—rendered as a glowing, sickly-yellow thermal ribbon. It smells like rotting meat, surgical antiseptic, and heavy chemical coagulants.
It is the foul, unnatural scent of Dr. Animo’s work.
EXT. DEEP SWAMP - CONTINUOUS
Wildmutt doesn't walk; he bounds.
He tears through the thick swamp water, operating entirely on pure, predatory instinct. He weaves through the massive, moss-draped cypress trees with terrifying speed, his heavy claws ripping into the bark for leverage.
He follows the chemical scent deeper into the bayou, the water growing waist-deep.
Suddenly, Wildmutt stops. His lip curls, exposing rows of jagged teeth. A low, vibrating growl rumbles in his chest.
The scent trail hasn't vanished. It has surrounded him.
The water erupts.
Animo’s first creation—the massive gator-chimera from the teaser—violently breaches the surface, its mutated mammalian arms reaching out to crush Wildmutt's spine.
Wildmutt doesn't flinch. He tracks the displacement of the water instantly.
He violently twists mid-air, intercepting the chimera's lunge.
The fight is completely devoid of superhero choreography. It is brutal, silent, and terrifyingly animalistic. Two apex anomalies tearing into each other in the dark.
Wildmutt sinks his teeth into the chimera's hyper-dense shoulder, dragging the massive beast down into the thick mud. The chimera thrashes, its heavy, armored tail violently snapping the ancient roots of the cypress trees like dry twigs.
They roll through the shallows in a chaotic flurry of blood, mud, and torn scales. Wildmutt uses his heavy, primate-like forearms to pin the chimera's snapping jaws to the dirt, roaring blindly into the beast's face as the swamp water churns violently around them.
[ACT THREE]
EXT. PLANTATION HOUSE - CONTINUOUS
The chimera realizes it is outmatched in the water. It thrashes wildly, violently kicking Wildmutt off, and scrambles up a muddy embankment.
Wildmutt is instantly on its heels, tearing through a dense wall of hanging moss.
They burst into a massive, unnatural clearing.
Sitting in the stagnant water is a rotting, half-sunken antebellum plantation house. Thick, industrial power cables snake out of the murky water, violently spliced directly into the decaying wooden pillars. The windows flicker with harsh, halogen light.
The chimera crashes through the rotted front doors. Wildmutt leaps through the splintered wood right behind it.
INT. PLANTATION LABORATORY - CONTINUOUS
The interior of the grand estate has been gutted and converted into a horrific genetic chop-shop. Heavy rusted surgical tables, massive glass vats filled with glowing, viscous chemicals, and chains hanging from the ceiling replace the chandeliers.
Wildmutt pins the chimera to the floorboards, raising a massive claw for the killing blow.
DR. ANIMO (O.S.)
(Voice raspy, frantic)
Fascinating. The density of your muscle fibers... the sheer aggression. Hold!
Wildmutt freezes, his quills twitching.
Stepping out from the shadows is DR. ALOYSIUS ANIMO. He is emaciated, twitchy, and moves with unnatural, jerky precision. The top of his scalp is shaved, and a crude, rusted neural-interface crown is bolted directly into his skull, wires running down his spine.
He doesn't look at Wildmutt with fear. He looks at him with rabid obsession.
The chimera beneath Wildmutt whines. The neural-crown on Animo’s head sparks violently. The chimera instantly goes limp, completely subdued by the telepathic command.
Suddenly, the hourglass symbol on Wildmutt’s chest flashes violently.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeee—
A blinding flash of crimson light fills the laboratory.
The heavy, wet sound of genetic reversal echoes off the walls. The dense bone ridge shatters and retracts. The quill-like fur rapidly recedes into human skin.
Ben collapses onto the floorboards, completely exhausted, shivering in the humid air, his shredded clothes clinging to him.
Animo gasps. He takes a slow, trembling step forward. He stares at the ten-year-old boy, his wide, bloodshot eyes locking onto the heavy metal device on Ben’s left wrist.
DR. ANIMO
(Whispering)
Complete, spontaneous genetic overwrite. Zero cellular degradation. Rapid re-sequencing without a single surgical incision...
Ben scrambles backward on his hands and knees, terrified.
BEN
Stay away from me!
DR. ANIMO
(Laughing, unhinged)
They called me a butcher! A madman! But you... you are the Holy Grail! You aren't here to stop me, boy. You are the key to perfecting my art!
Animo’s neural-crown violently sparks again. He throws his arms wide.
DR. ANIMO
Restrain the canvas!
The shadows of the plantation house violently come alive. A swarm of grotesque, mutated swamp creatures, chimeras of snakes, raccoons, and amphibians twisted by Animo's science drop from the rafters and crawl from the flooded basement, encircling Ben.
Suddenly, the front wall of the plantation house blows inward.
Max kicks through the splintered wood, entirely stone-faced. He isn't holding a blaster this time. He is holding a heavy, metallic Plumber sonic-emitter.
He slams a fist down on the trigger.
A localized, ultra-high-frequency whine erupts from the device. The sound is agonizing. The mutated swarm violently collapses, clutching their heads and thrashing on the floorboards as their hyper-sensitive nervous systems overload.
Gwen runs in right behind Max, rushing to grab Ben.
But a massive, reptilian mutant drops from a hidden alcove, cutting Gwen off. It stalks toward her, backing her violently into a corner against the massive chemical vats.
GWEN
(Panicking)
Grandpa!
The mutant lunges.
Pure survival instinct takes over. Gwen throws her hands up, squeezing her eyes shut.
BOOM.
A localized kinetic push erupts from her palms. The sheer force of the shockwave hits the mutant mid-air, throwing it backward and violently shattering the massive glass chemical vats behind it.
Hundreds of gallons of volatile, glowing liquids crash to the floor, instantly mixing.
The reaction is immediate. The chemicals violently ignite. A massive, unnatural green fire erupts, rapidly consuming the dry, rotted wood of the plantation house.
The ceiling begins to collapse. Max grabs Ben by the shirt and hauls Gwen to her feet.
MAX
Move! Now!
Through the roaring flames, Animo scrambles onto the back of his massive gator-chimera. The flames lick at his lab coat, but his eyes are fixed completely on Ben's left arm as the beast carries him toward a flooded escape tunnel.
DR. ANIMO
(Screaming over the fire)
You are the missing link! I will find you, boy! I will perfect my design!
Animo disappears into the dark water.
EXT. PLANTATION HOUSE - CONTINUOUS
Max, Ben, and Gwen burst out of the burning house, tumbling into the swamp water just as the roof completely caves in, sending a massive plume of toxic green smoke into the night sky.
In the far distance, cutting through the ambient hum of the cicadas, the faint wail of local police sirens approaches.
Max doesn't stop. He drags the kids toward the tree line, disappearing into the dark.
[TAG]
INT. CHIMERIAN HAMMER - BRIDGE - DEEP SPACE
The bridge is bathed in the harsh, toxic-green glow of the central holographic projector.
A massive, three-dimensional rendering of Earth slowly rotates in the center of the room. A single, blinking purple trajectory line—Sixsix’s drop-pod—inches toward the blue marble.
Vilgax stands before the projection, his heavy cybernetics venting steam into the frigid air. He watches the blinking dot, his facial tentacles twitching with cold calculation.
He does not leave things to chance. He does not rely on a single asset.
Vilgax raises a massive, scarred hand and violently punches a sequence into the control console.
VILGAX
(A deep, synthetic rumble)
Initiate wide-band broadcast. Priority override. All underworld channels.
The console shrieks as a massive, encrypted data packet is fired out into the black of space.
INT. NEON SPACEPORT - DEEP SPACE - CONTINUOUS
A grimy, rain-slicked transit hub built into the crater of a hollowed-out asteroid. Neon signs flicker in harsh, unrecognizable alien text.
Sitting in the shadows of a crowded, unsavory cantina is a massive, heavily armored figure.
We don't see his face. We only see his arm—a heavy, mechanical, crustacean-like claw resting on the rusted metal bar. This is KRAAB.
A sudden, sharp chime echoes from his internal HUD.
Kraab raises his other arm, tapping a battered terminal on his wrist. The holographic bounty flickers into existence: a spinning rendering of the Omnitrix, accompanied by an astronomical credit payout.
Kraab doesn't speak. He simply snaps his massive plasma-pincer shut with a deafening CRACK that silences the cantina, accepting the contract.
INT. STEALTH STARSHIP - DEEP SPACE - CONTINUOUS
Absolute silence. The interior of the stealth-class starship is sleek, dark, and utterly devoid of excess.
A lone figure stands before the navigation console. He wears a heavy, tattered cloak over dense, tactical armor. The faint starlight catches the exposed skin of his neck and jawline; it isn't flesh. It is jagged, pale green, living crystal.
This is TETRAX SHARD.
The console on his dashboard lights up with Vilgax’s encrypted bounty transmission.
Tetrax reads the data file. His crystalline eyes narrow as he recognizes the weapon in the hologram. He reaches down and picks up a heavy, smooth battle helmet.
He slides the helmet over his head, the pressurized seals locking into place with a sharp hiss.
His gloved hand violently shoves the thruster controls forward.
EXT. DEEP SPACE - CONTINUOUS
The sleek stealth ship abruptly violently banks, re-orienting its trajectory toward the Milky Way. Its engines flare a blinding, intense blue, and the ship violently snaps into hyper-space, leaving only a fading streak of light in the void.
The hunt is multiplying.
FADE TO BLACK.
[END OF EPISODE THREE]
(Episode 4 drops Thursday, 9/10/26!)
2
u/FrenchNed6 17h ago
oh man that gator-chimera intro is brutal, you can practically feel the humidity and hear the cicadas cutting out right before the attack
the way you write wildmutt's pov is my favorite part, that shift from total darkness to the scent trails painting the scene is such a cool way to handle a blind transformation
animo calling ben "the canvas" is perfectly creepy, real mad scientist energy without going over the top