Ninjago Oneshots

Guessing The Plot Of Ninjago: United

Author's Note: this prediction is based off a few tweets, some set leaks, and two trailers. It is far, far too specific to be at all accurate, so I suppose "Florida Man fabricates a complete plot out of what little is known currently about Ninjago: United" would be a more accurate title, but it's less fun. So, basically, don't read this and expect actual predictions I think are 100% correct, since I'm really just building my own story out of the few pieces we've been given.

So it's been a year or so since the events of Crystallized, and the ninja are doing fairly well for themselves. There's still crime, still trouble, but it's nothing they can't handle. Then, something in the energy of the universe begins to shift. Master Wu calls Lloyd to help him. He says he worries about something called "coalescence," which is basically the Ninjago equivalent of the Big Crunch. He doesn't explain it fully, but tells Lloyd to remember his lineage. Suddenly, these rifts start appearing around Ninjago, first small, then big. Dragons start rapidly migrating through the realms, acting all wild and crazy. One of the rifts goes to Cloud Kingdom, where the ninja decide to go to gather some more info.

Enter Arin. He's a young writer of fate living in Cloud Kingdom, assigned to write menial happenings like people tripping or losing their socks. He doesn't hate his job, but he wishes he could write his own fate. Anyway, he sees the ninja asking the writers about coalescence, and the writers explain, rather coolly, that coalescence is caused by a shortage of aether, which is caused by the imbalance of good and evil energy that came as a result of destroying the Overlord. Aether is the stuff that lines each realm and makes up the space between them, so a shortage of the stuff would naturally cause them to collide. The ninja know that kind of problem is a little out of their pay grade, but they're stubborn as hell, so they insist that there must be something they can do. The writers simply say that fate is what it is.

The ninja try coming up with some kind of plan, and Arin decides that it's about time he did something for himself. He tells the team about a realm he's written about before, called the Realm of Wisdom where a swamp of supposedly infinite wisdom resides. They're willing to try anything, and that sounds mighty promising, so they tell him to go ahead and write them there. Arin, a bit embarrassed, explains that the writers of fate don't actually choose fate themselves, they just document what comes to them, which makes it happen. However, if he tries writing something that didn't come to him from fate, it doesn't work. He demonstrates this by attempting to write them into the Realm of Wisdom, to which the ink simply fades.

By this point the Cloud Kingdom writers have noticed one of their writers is missing. They're chased out of the kingdom, Arin following. Luckily, with all the rifts and such, they're able to find the Realm of Wisdom, popping into Ninjago to see that things have gotten worse. The Realm of Wisdom… Does not look like it. It seems the "swamp of infinite wisdom" is a literal swamp, inhabited by frog people who speak in weird riddles. They decide not to judge a book by its cover, however, and, after becoming acquainted with their peculiar culture, they ask one of the frogmen how to stop coalescence from happening. He tells them he will answer their question for a price. It's fairly simple, he just wants the ninja to collect him a baker's dozen of flies for him down at the Marsh of No Return. They ask him why it's called that, and he tells them that question comes with its own price.

So they go to the Marsh of No Return, very quickly learning why it's called that. It is a pit so deep, that they would never be able to get down there and back without it taking forever. Plus, there doesn't even seem to be any flies around. That is, until there very suddenly are flies around, and they're very big and angry. The ninja get, like, one or two, but the swarm leaves before they can get more, and the realm starts falling apart, so they really don't have time to wait. They go back with what they have and ask the frogman if there's anything else they can do. The frogman says yes. On queue, a strange man on a motorcycle falls in from one of the rifts. The frogman asks them to get rid of him.