Splatoon Manga: CybeRun

Chapter 7: Portal Problems

⚙️Chapter 7: Portal Problems

"Uh...I don't think we're in inkopolis..." Gloves said nervously.

The squidbeak were about to crawl out of the machine, but weren't sure if it was safe or not. They could all clearly see the exit door from where they were, and saw the machines and technology. Rider turned around to face Goggles.

"Whatever you did, UNDO IT NOW AND GET US OUT OF HERE!" he snarled.

Goggles pressed the red button again, but nothing happened.

"I...I don't think the machine works anymore..." he said worriedly.

Flip sighed at the thought of this. All of them had families, and now they might never see them again because of their exam. Honestly, the Idol 4 really needed to check the safety of things before sending the group on missions. Flip was just hoping they were just...unaware of what the machine was, giving them the benefit of the doubt. For now, the squidbeak needed to solve this themselves.

"We're going to need help," she muttered.

Emperor scoffed in an irritated tone.

"Obviously."

"Well yeah, no duh!" Gloves shouted.

"But where do we even start? Can we trust anyone here?" Rider asked.

"I don't know..." Prince said quietly, though he was scanning the place for anyone who could help.

While the squidbeak expressed their concern to each other, Hachi looked at the machine. Perhaps something had broken or fallen off? Maybe something overheated, or this thing had an amount of time you needed to wait before using it again? Suddenly, he spotted it.

"Ah, I see why we cannot go back!" he said simply.

"Why is that?" Emperor asked, turning around to look at the machine.

"To time travel, the machine ran on a large yellow crystal here," Hachi explained as he pointed at a large, pentagon-shaped space in the metal. "It must have used up the last of its power during our trip here, and now to get back, we need to find a gemstone just like it to power the machine!"

"Is that our exam then? Return home now that we've fixed the machine?" Rider asked.

Hachi sighed.

"I guess it is."

"But where do we even start? This place is HUGE!" Goggles exclaimed.

"Well, maybe we can start by asking a few people if they know where to find crystals like those! Who knows, maybe they're really common around here!" Gloves suggested.

"I see, I never really thought about the rarity of those..." Hachi replied.

"We should also find someone we can rely on to help navigate us through this place!" Nana said. "The more help we can get, the better!"

"I agree!" Flip added, since Nana was her friend and she was willing to support her.

Rider was about to take a step forward to walk to the city, but stopped.

"Wait, we should make sure that everything we have functions first. Check your pins, make sure your gear's abilities still work, all that."

Prince perked up, having heard Rider first.

"Oh, right!"

He summoned his enperry dualies just fine, and they worked like they usually did. Nothing wrong with the ink, and dodge rolls still worked. Emperor noticed his brother practicing, and pulled out his dualies too. They worked fine, sub weapon and all. Soon enough, everyone had summoned their turf weapons and tested them.

There was nothing wrong with them, in fact the special weapons still worked good too! The squidbeak was set, and put away their weapons after checking their clothing. They did one more role call just to make sure, but were surprised to find Flip was gone. Looking around, they saw a trail of magenta ink leading into a small town off to the side of the city. Figuring it could've been her, they followed.

Flip on the other hand, still felt like the odd one out in the group. She'd left to make sure her charger worked, since the others didn't know she was using it yet. It worked fine, she just needed to improve with her aim. Her roller worked fine too, and she was about to return to the squidbeak when she saw them coming up over the hill she'd went over. She decided to swim up to them via her ink path to spare them from walking down all this way.

"Why are you all the way over here?" Gloves asked.

"Oh, I uh...saw the town and wanted to investigate!" Flip lied, hoping the others wouldn't question her too hard for it.

"And you didn't think about maybe...telling us there was a town first?" Rider asked, a little annoyed.

"You didn't tell the king of all people where you were going?" Emperor added. "Well at least you left a road to follow..."

"Brother..." Prince said quietly.

"Wh-hey, how was I supposed to know you guys wanted to see it?" Flip asked.

"Anything in this strange new world is worth investigating," Hachi replied, "Especially since we do not know our way around this terrain."

"Okay, well now that we're all here and my weapons work fine, should we go ahead and investigate it?" Flip said.

"Sure. Whatever," Rider growled.

It was clear to the squidbeak that tensions were rising between the two, and if they let it go any further, it could escalate into a full on fight. Quickly, they split up to try and calm them down.

"Flip, do not get upset. We will get this sorted out soon enough," Nana said calmly.

"Yeah! We don't have time to argue when we could be adventuring right now!" Goggles exclaimed.

Flip was still glaring at Rider, but she could feel the adrenaline levels within her slowly lower.

"We'll check out the thing, like you suggested," Gloves said.

"Alright, alright, I'm calm..." Flip sighed.

The other three had calmed down Rider in no time, and the squidbeak were able to regroup. Both halves joined with each other and Rider began to walk ahead to lead the group. He started to walk past Flip, but stopped. It seemed like he was about to say something, but he instead remained quiet without uttering a word to her. Rider sighed as he walked away from Flip.

"Let's get going, everyone."