Breathing in Fear Part 1

Breathing in Fear is a two parter in the first season of The Adventures of Red Ryder. It marks the debut appearance of Nightmare.

Part 1
While relaxing at home, David sees a news report about a famous scientist called Dr. Jacob Crow who had recently been in a plane crash and had apparently died in the crash, David was sad about this as Jacob was a close friend of David's father.

While scouting the city, Red Ryder recieves a message from the commissioner about something weird going on at Rollins Asylum and Ryder heads to the Asylum, when he arrives, Francis told him about several of the inmates acting scared of everything they look at. Ryder searches the asylum but finds nothing, he starts interviewing his scariest enemies, first Golem, then Clockwork, but neither of them prove to be any help, then, the officers wheel in Ryder's very first enemy, Vance Roland on a dolly, who says that he may be of some assisstance, but in exchange, he requests a cell transfer and his collection of thumbs returned, at first, Francis tries to decline Vance's offer, but Ryder accepts Roland's terms, Roland says that he has noticed a peculiar man walking around on the 5th floor at night.

Ryder heads to the 5th floor and notices several inmates behind a pane of glass, one of them jumps out at Ryder, when Francis hands Ryder a file on all the inmates that have been affected in the same order they were affected, Ryder realises that they were all targeted based on their initials in alphabetical order (AA, AB, AC, AD, AE etc.) and realises that the next target for the man is a robber called Dash Elliot, but that night, the culprit targets a serial rapist called Daniel Eddie. Ryder returns to the 5th floor and notices a shadow across a hallway and starts to follow it. While following the shadow, Ryder finds Francis sitting in the hallway, dead.

Ryder continues to follow the shadow until he reaches a morgue, he keeps on hearing voices saying to get out, when Ryder leaves the morgue, he finds himself in the same morgue, the only difference is that there are 3 body bags on the tables, Ryder walks up to the first body bag and opens it up, revealing the corpse of his father. Ryder opens the second body bag, revealing the corpse of his mother, Ryder then opens the 3rd and final body bag, revealing a creepy, skinny man wearing brown, tattered clothes and a gas mask with a Freddy Krueger glove. The creepy figure's eyes start to glow and nearly blind Ryder, when Ryder regains his composure, he notices one of the walls of the morgue is missing and in it's place is a collection of floors and walls flying in the sky, in the centre of it is the same creepy figure who is now 50 feet tall and spinning, Ryder notices some type of stage light at the end and goes along the path, making sure not to be spotted, when he reaches the end, he aims the light at the figure and the bright light appears to cause the figure to explode like a vampire.

When Ryder has defeated the figure, he finds himself back in the morgue with the creepy figure laying face down on the floor, when the figure gets back to their feet, Ryder asks who they are, to which they reply, "I am what every human fears when they sleep, I am the terror of Ambrose City, I am your worst nightmare, I AM NIGHTMARE" before throwing a smoke bomb at Ryder before escaping.

Ryder tries to search for Nightmare, but finds he has escaped, when walking through the hallways, Ryder spots the body he saw earlier, and discovers that it wasn't the commissioner, it was someone else, the other dimension, the second morgue, the corpses and the fake commissioner were all illusions created by Nightmare.

Part 2
Red Ryder still hasn't found where Nightmare is hiding, but instead finds several canisters labeled 'Terror Toxin' and realised that was how Nightmare created his illusions, so he destroys the canisters, when he walks away, he walks through a door and finds himself in a hospital room, he walked to the end and saw his father standing next to a bed, when Ryder looked in a mirror, he realised that he had been turned into his childhood self, he approaches the hospital bed and notices that the person on it is actually his mother, dying from cancer. Ryder ran away from the memory of his mother's death, but he then finds himself standing on a road, where he sees a car that had just crashed, when he looks inside he sees the person that was driving the car was his father.

Ryder realised that Nightmare had forced him to relive the tragedy of his parents death, when Ryder turned around, he found himself in a cemetary, standing infront of his parent's gravestones, when their arms start to burst out of the graves, Ryder starts to run and found himself once again in Nightmare's other world. Ryder is once again able to defeat Nightmare, but this time, when Nightmare is defeated, Ryder wakes up in the Rollins Asylum Clock Tower.

Ryder later encountered Nightmare in a different kind of nightmare, this time, Ryder is able to break free of Nightmare's tricks and tackle him to the ground, and is able to remove his mask, revealing him to be Dr. Jacob Crow, who had faked his death to continue his work on human fear, Jacob then uses another smoke bomb and causes Ryder to find himself once again in Nightmare's world, and Nightmare forces him to fight an army of skeletons (Later revealed to be an illusion), before Ryder uses 3 stage lights to defeat Nightmare once and for all, however, Nightmare escapes and rushes to the underground area of the Asylum and threatens that if Ryder continue, Nightmare will drop his supply of Terror Toxin into the city's water supply, before Ryder can do anything, Nightmare is knocket out by Ripjaw, who police keep underground due to his strong bite, to Ryder's suprise, Ripjaw doesn't attack Ryder, saying that 'Now is not the right time' and leaving, Ryder is then able to have Crow arrested.

Trivia

 * This is based on the Scarecrow Boss Battles in Batman: Arkham City
 * In part 1, the latest person affected by the Terror Toxin was Damien Derek (Ripjaw), but in the next episode, Ripjaw appeared in person and said that Nighmare only attempted to infect him.
 * In part 1, Nightmare puffs smoke in Ryder's face to blind him, but Ryder would have been wearing his glasses and mask at the time, so he would have been unaffected.