Splatoon Manga: NightRoad

Chapter 1: Nightmare

⭐️Chapter 1: Nightmare

Running.

From what?

Something was chasing him.

Big, open mouth.

Sharp teeth.

He was so close to the exit....

He made one last effort, sprinting...

The creature chomped down on his tentacles, and flung him into the air.

It opened its mouth.

Rider awoke with a start, cold sweat dripping down his body.

Same nightmare, again and again...

What did it mean?

He'd told the gang about it, and they did believe it was a threat, after the whole...Skyling thing. But when he asked the other squidbeak, nothing came up. He looked at the clock.

3 AM.

Ugh.

Rider didn't want to go back to sleep, however. He didn't want to re-enter the nightmare.

No matter how much he drifted off....

He wouldn't sleep.

"Morning, Rideeeeee....oh dear."

The next morning, the 8 squidbeak had met at a cafe for breakfast. Rider was still tired. Hachi had went to say hello, but spotted the dark bags under his eyes, which grew darker and baggier every day.

"Another nightmare?" Hachi asked.

"Mmmhmmmmm....." Rider mumbled, grumpy.

"Same one?" Prince asked, concerned.

"Mmmhmmm..."

Rider really just needed some sleep.

"Have any of you guys had nightmares?" Prince asked the rest of the table, receiving varying "no"s .

"It's strange...I wonder why it's only Rider...." Nana said, taking a spoonful of yogurt, "Do you think it had to do with the whole...'hexing' thing?"

"I doubt it."

The table turned to look at Rider.

"The shape....that chases me....it's not like that. It's...shadowy....dark....red eyes....doesn't have that....'dragon shape' if you know what I mean..." he didn't like to think about it.

"But what could this possibly mean?" Gloves asked to nobody in particular.

"Maaaaybe it's a new evil force that knows Rider is our leader and is coming to attack us!" Goggles said, eating a blueberry muffin with a smile.

While at first the idea seemed ridiculous, the team had been through weirder, and so the idea seemed possible.

"Maybe we should investigate it tonight?" Flip suggested, having finished her food already.

"Yeah, maybe we should set up cameras around Rider's house to see if something appears" Gloves said, smiling as if he was ready to go through with said plan.

"I don't want my privacy invaded thanks" Rider grumbled.

"But what if it's something serious?" Gloves asked, dropping the smile.

"Okay, do we even have enough money for cameras?" Rider sighed, frustrated.

"Darn."

"Yeah. Thought so." He was so close to just...falling asleep on the table.

"Oh come on! There has to be something!" Goggles whined.

"Maybe we should just...wait for more." Rider was done today.

"Emperor, you've been kinda quiet..." Hachi turned to the sun yellow inkling.

"It just...doesn't make sense to me. I'm going to need more time if we're going to figure this out. Don't worry. I'm confident we'll win in the end." He smiled.

"I sure hope so..." Prince mumbled.

"In the meantime let's play some turf war!" Flip said, standing up from her seat.

"I agree. Let's get our minds off this for a bit." Nana added, also standing up.

They wound up Turfing for a pretty long time.

They had some Crusty Sean's for lunch, then headed to Octo Canyon to inform Callie and Marie of the nightmares. They said they had no clue what it was, but would do their best to research it. Despite all that was being done, Rider still couldn't help but feel uneasy. Why him? Was anyone else hiding something? Millions of questions swarmed him, but he couldn't answer now...

Everyone else offered to Turf more in order to train for any upcoming threat. Rider took it, because what else could they do?

"I know, that was pretty cool!"

Goggles and Gloves were walking home late at night. They were going to stay at Gloves' house to stay up and keep watch for anything suspicious. The rest of the group had split to their own homes, but promised to watch for suspicious activity.

"Maybe we could do a thing where we swap weapons!" Goggles said.

"Oh yeah, that would be really cool!" Gloves replied, wondering how the others would handle using dualies and snickering to himself.

Clang.

"What was that?"

They quickly stopped, and looked around. It sounded metal, so there were two possibilities. A metal drainage pipe, or a trash can. The only metal trash can they saw was one in a dead end alleyway. No pipes nearby. Nobody would be able to run into the trash can in the alley unless they approached it from the front.

"Anybody there?"

Silence.

Slowly, the two approached the trash can.

They waited for something to happen.

...

"Guess it was nothing?"

And then they saw it.

A shadow passed through the left wall of the alleyway and hit the right, but instead of colliding with the wall, it went right through it.

"Uh oh."