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"That's not what happened at all!"
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Night of the Nindroids is a Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu book that was released in 2014. It is the ninth volume of the Ninjago graphic novel series.
Official description[]
Unlike his fellow Masters of Spinjitzu, Zane is not human. In fact, technically he’s very similar to the Nindroids—the ninjas’ newest enemies! So what will happen when Zane, feeling alone and apart from his teammates, is invited to join the Nindroids? Will Zane betray his friends? Also featuring an all-new Green Ninja story![1]
Summary[]
Main story - Night of the Nindroids[]
Kai, Zane, and Jay are sitting around a campfire, telling jokes. However, due to Zane's status as a Nindroid, he does not understand the humour. After a short discussion about the Nindroids, Jay remarks that if Zane goes rogue, the whole world would have to watch out.
The next night, Zane is patrolling Ninjago City when he encouters a group of Nindroids. The Overlord gives Zane an offer. If Zane captures the other three Ninja and hands them over, he will make Zane human by transferring his consciousness into a Ninja's body. However, Zane declines, escaping the Nindroids and returning to camp.
In the morning, Zane tries to tell Cole about the Overlord's offer. However, Cole blows him off, and Zane begins to consider the Overlord's offer. He watches as Kai gets bruised from a fall, Jay tells jokes, and Cole worries about the Nindroids, saddened that they have experiences he can never have. Eventually, he makes up his mind, and decides to accept the Overlord's offer.
Zane meets with the Overlord the next night. He officially accepts the deal, picking Kai's body to be transferred into. He also requires that Nya be sent away during the operation, and that she not be harmed.
After Nya leaves, Zane begins his plan. He tells Cole that the Overlord is planning to restore power to the city, and that they need a strike force to counteract it, so they leave for a construction field together.
Once there, Zane springs a trap on Cole; he collapses the building on top of him, trapping him between metal rods. Cole attempts to escape using Spinjitzu, but hits his head on a bar above, and, while Cole is disoriented, Zane collapses another section of the building, throwing Cole to the ground.
Zane attempts to grab Cole, but he blasts him with Earth and gets back up. To keep control of the fight, Zane runs into another building, and Cole uses Spinjitzu to jump up the elevator shaft, onto the roof where Zane is waiting. Running into the building, Zane triggers a small electrical charge, causing Cole to spin out of control and allowing Zane to capture him.
Outside the building, a Nindroid is watching the fight. However, just as it ends, Nya knocks it to the ground, defeating it.
The next morning, Lloyd approaches Zane and informs him that his father wants to go on a retreat with him. Zane convinces Lloyd to accept, reasoning that having Lloyd and Garmadon away from the area will assist in his plan to capture the Ninja. Lloyd decides to go, and Zane leaves to find Jay.
When Zane finds Jay, he is asked if he knows where Cole and Nya have gone. Zane replies that he overheard them talking about going to the funhouse at Mega Monster Amusement Park, and Jay gets angry that they have gone on a date. Jay leaves for the Amusement Park, threatening that if they are on a date, there's going to be a fight.
Walking through the funhouse, Jay gets scared by a model of Frakjaw, rubber models of Bytar, Chokun, Acidicus, Lizaru, and Skales, and stone models of Stone Warriors and Stone Scouts, before arriving at a display of the Ninja. Admiring the wax models, he almost gets captured by Zane from behind, but realizes that something is wrong when he notices the melted Zane model on the floor. He refuses to go peacefully, so Zane attacks him.
Zane kicks Jay into a curtain, but Jay recovers using Spinjitzu. He tackles Zane, throwing him into a pile of boxes and standing above him, all while using Spinjitzu. Jay states that he's going to fix whatever's wrong with Zane's programming, but Zane says not to compare him to Jay's gadgets and that nothing is wrong with him. Then, Zane releases sonic waves from his hand, disorienting Jay and causing him to collapse from his Spinjitzu.
Zane is just about finished tying up Jay, when a shuriken lands in the wall right next to his face. He looks over and sees Kai, who states that he noticed Zane and Jay leaving and was suspicious, so he followed them. Kai attacks Zane, but Zane retreats to a merry-go-round, quickly activating it and switching it to the maximum speed. The two Ninja fight on the merry-go-round, eventually ending up on the roof.
The intensity of the fighting causes the merry-go-round to tip over sideways and begin rolling. Hanging onto the roof, Zane and Kai roll out of the Amusement Park and down a mountain. They manage to jump off, landing in a lake. However, Zane is the only one left standing, capturing Kai and completing his end of the agreement with the Overlord.
The three Ninja wake up in the Ninjago City steel plant, surrounded by Nindroids. While the Overlord gloats over his victory, the Ninja reveal that Zane had already informed them of the deal, and they were only pretending to be captured so that they could get close to the Overlord. They escape their chains, taking out some of the Nindroids and going to stand next to Zane.
However, just as their triumphant speech finishes, three cages fall from the ceiling and trap Kai, Cole, and Jay. Zane reveals that he had actually double-crossed the Ninja, and only pretended to work with them to make his job easier. Zane demands that the Overlord transfer his mind into Kai's body, and a Nindroid flips a switch, revealing a complicated machine with space for two bodies.
Zane begins inspecting the machine, to verify that it will work as it's supposed to. While he's looking over it, he gets interested in a button and presses it, triggering a laser that sends the Nindroids running for cover. Zane reveals that he had actually triple-crossed the Overlord, and was in fact working with the Ninja, though they weren't aware of it.
The Ninja celebrate that Zane isn't a traitor, however Kai points out that he's still out there alone while they're all trapped. All of a sudden, Nya bursts through the window, redirecting the laser to destroy the cages and let the Ninja out. The Ninja and the Nindroids begin fighting, causing havoc within the steel plant.
During the fighting, a Nindroid manages to tip over a massive bucket of molten steel, right above Cole's head. However, Nya is able to jump in just in time, pushing Cole out of the way and saving them both. Jay gets jealous that they're so close, and Zane begins talking to the Overlord, stating that had he accepted the Overlord's offer, he would have been far from human. He says that while he may be a machine, he is a machine with friends, and he will not turn against them no matter what.
The Nindroids flee, and after an order from Cole, Kai stops following them. Now that the fighting is over, Jay asks Nya where she's been, and why she was able to swoop in at just the right moment. Nya reveals that because of Zane's feigned annoyance when assigning her mission, she was able to identify and decode a hidden message he had left her, telling her to stay close by him, in hiding and while telling no one. She had been following Zane the entire time, defeating any Nindroid she could find.
The Overlord begins threatening them again, and Zane destroys the speaker, telling him to be quiet. The Ninja leave the steel plant, with Kai remarking that he would not want to explain what happened to the Mega Monster Amusement Park workers, and they return to camp.
Side story - Father and Son Day[]
After Zane convinced Lloyd to accept his father's idea of a father-son retreat, Garmadon and his son go visit a mountain. While Garmadon wants to meditate and prepare for the battle against the Nindroids, Lloyd wants to do father-son activities, as he couldn't when he was a child, and Garmadon finally agrees.
They begin with baseball. However, the score stays a complete 0-0, as it is virtually impossible to bat a ball past someone using Spinjitzu. They give up on baseball, and decide to try something else.
They switch to fishing, but find that it is significantly too easy, finding a pile of more than 15 fish in thirty minutes. They give up on that as well, and decide to try a new activity.
The next thing they try is catch. Lloyd throws the ball at Garmadon, but it is thrown with such force that it passes by Garmadon and through several trees. They abandon this as well, and try a different activity.
Finally, they try to have a simple father-son chat. Lloyd asks what Garmadon wanted to do when he grew up, to which Garmadon replies that he wanted to be a world conqueror. Garmadon's greatest childhood fear, similarly, was to only conquer part of the world. Lloyd gets mad and remarks that this is the reason he never brought Garmadon to career day at school, and Garmadon states that they are not like other families. They're the Green Ninja and a Ex-Master Villain, and they just aren't the same as most people. In the end, they make up, and Garmadon invites Lloyd to roast marshmallows in a great place he knows about, somewhere in the Underworld.
Appearances[]
Characters[]
- Kai
- Zane
- Jay
- Nindroid Warriors
- Digital Overlord (voice)
- Cole
- Nya
- Lloyd
- Garmadon
- Frakjaw (model)
- Bytar (model)
- Chokun (model)
- Acidicus (model)
- Lizaru (model)
- Skales (model)
- Stone Warriors (model)
- Stone Scouts (model)
- Wu (mentioned)
Trivia[]
- In the series, the ninja decided to split up the same night when they reunited with Garmadon and were attacked by the nindroids. In the book, it happened days after this event. As such, the book is considered non-canon.
- Lloyd throwing a ball through a tree trunk is referenced in his Rebooted character description, which states, "Lloyd sometimes misses being just a normal boy, but when you’re the golden ninja, it’s hard to just go out and play catch with Dad (you wind up throwing the ball straight through tree trunks)."[2]
Errors[]
- On page 27, Jay says that he hadn't been in Mega Monster Amusement Park since the time when Nya fought the Serpentine as Samurai X. A note in the moves says that this is a references so the events of Kingdom of the Snakes. However, this never happened in the novel, it is an event from the series.
- Another detail that diverges the novel from canon is the ninja's gi. The novel shows the ninja in their kimono garbs which they used only prior to the events of Rebooted in which the book takes place.
- The original print of the graphic novel had the ninja in their Season 2 suits (including Zane, despite the cover).
- Papercutz later reprinted the graphic novel with the ninja in their Rebooted gi.
- The original print of the graphic novel had the ninja in their Season 2 suits (including Zane, despite the cover).
