Let me just say, I don't ever want to go to space again.

Out of everything that I've done, this is one of the weirdest. It's one of those things that can't even believe I did. It feels so out of place given everything else that happened. It wasn't that long, but it was so sudden, confusing, and weird that I can barely even take what happened seriously now. And there's really one reason for that:

It was entirely pointless.

The only reason we went to space was to chase the Nindroids that were going after the Golden Weapons. However, as all of you know, the Nindroids did get the weapons and take them back to make the armor for the Golden Master. But when they did that, they weren't using the rocket. In fact, the rocket was basically destroyed when they did. They, using a net, flew the weapons all the way from the comet, back to Ninjago. The entire reason we went there was literally pointless.

Now, this means that the Nindroids have strong enough jets and armor to survive reentry. If they can survive that, and they were able to do so tugging the Golden Weapons in a metal net, what was the point of the rocket? The Nindorids had enough fuel in them to do that, so why didn't the Nindroids just take off from Ninjago and do it that way?

Even if the Nindroids couldn't have made it out of the atmosphere, why didn't they just build boosters onto themselves and use those to get out, then just flew there? They could have just made the equivalent of a jetpack for all of them, had one of them carry a net, and gotten there that way. Even if they did build the rocket, why would they not just use the rocket to get out, and then jetpacked their way there? I mean, yes, it was rough getting onto the comet, but they were able to survive leaving it, so they clearly could withstand that weird field behind the comet.

On top of all of that, the only reason we even knew what they were doing was because they were building a rocket. If they'd just built jetpacks, or even just something like a slingshot and given the Nindroids extra fuel to get back, we'd never have known. I mean, I'm not saying that I would have wanted them to, but just from a villain's perspective why give us the chance to see what you're building?

And okay, okay. Let's say that they absolutely needed the rocket. Let's say that they were just planning on using it to get back and the jets themselves were just a backup plan. Why did they have spacesuits on the spaceship? The Nindroids were machines, built like Zane. Zane was able to survive going out into space and not immediately break from the change in pressure (I think it was pressure that was the issue at least). So, why did they have spacesuits that had air in them, almost like they were planning on us coming along? And on top of that, why was there air being supplied to an area of the ship that was going to be detached anyways? What was the point of that? The Nindroids didn't need to breathe. It was almost like the entire spaceship was built for the sole purpose of us following them, and it makes no sense!

I mean, I guess I shouldn't be complaining that we were given what we needed to in order to, you know, survive, but it's those little things that make it seem like the Digilord was trying to sabotage his own plans. If we had jumped on the ship and then had no air, we'd be dead and his entire plan would have just succeeded, right there.

So, we'd just gotten onto the spaceship, and Jay was already floating around and having the time of his life. At the time, I was terrified of not having gravity around me anymore to keep me anchored. After I saw that Ninjago was now literally a planet away, the fact that I'd just decided to jump onto a literal spaceship occured to me. So, while I was in a state of panic, the others were starting to freak out too. Jay, meanwhile, was acting like he was Fritz Donnagan and launching himself around at a whim.

Zane logged into a computer on the ship and found out that the area of the ship we were in, a supplemental booster I think, was about to be detached. That's when my dad, Wu and Pixel got ahold of us. They read the schematics of the ship and found out about the extra spacesuits. Given that we couldn't go out into space other than the way we came in, we were forced to send Zane outside into space.

Here's the thing about space: you don't realize how terrifying it really is until you're actually out there. When you look around and realize there's nothing, literally nothing, for you to grab onto, it's horrifying. If we drifted away from the spaceship at just the wrong angle, we would forever drift in space until we ran out of air and died. When we first watched Zane fly out the ship and barely manage to get ahold of the ship, I realized that we were out of our element. If Zane didn't catch himself, he could have been lost forever. That feeling alone is… it's the thing that you feel in your nightmares. It didn't help that my dad was saying exactly what we were all thinking on the other end.

Zane, of course, managed to get us the spacesuits right before the booster detached. There was enough air inside each of them for what we were doing, which looking back on it I thought would have been an issue. I mean, all the space movies always emphasize how much oxygen you have, but for some reason the suits had just enough for us and was hardly an issue at all.

Our plan was initially to simply crash our way into the main cockpit and then forcibly turn the ship around. I don't know if that's how spaceships work, but we were taking each chance we got. Somehow, the Nindroids heard us and sent out their forces to the ship. Because of this, I got into my first ever, and only ever, space shootout.

Movies don't really sell the fact that there aren't any forces in space. We were being held onto the ship because we were holding onto the ship. There was no artificial gravity holding us onto it. Just one hit from the Nindroids would have sent us flying off the ship. Each step you took out there felt weird, since you're normally used to feeling the ground pushing back up on you when you do. Out there, however, there wasn't anything for you to press back against like that. If you even jumped, you'd go flying off.

Cole learned that the hard way. While Jay had stolen a blaster and was shooting them up like some sort of video game, I was using my Green Power to form a shield and slowly make my way forward. Cole tried to use Spinjitzu, and in doing so was sent flying away from the ship. Zane explained to me that Spinjitzu produces rotational force, and when you stop rotating, that rotational force is converted into a normal force. If you spin around and stop, you'll stumble forward, that sort of thing. Normally, there's air resistance to stop you, but there was no air in space. So, when Cole stopped using it, the force caused him to go flying away from the ship.

Jay grabbed an external cable on the ship and went after him. Watching Cole float away, however, was nerve wracking. I wasn't able to do anything since I was still taking on blaster fire (something I haven't had ever again), and so I was forced to leave it to Jay. I guess it's a good thing Jay was so reckless that he was willing to do something as crazy as jump off a spaceship with only a cable to bring him back, since otherwise there wouldn't have been a Cole to bring back with us.

To try to shake us off, Cryptor drove the spaceship into the tail of the comet, which as it turns out is filled with debris. Most of the Nindroids were either knocked off and away into space, or retreated the second we entered into the tail. There wasn't anywhere to take cover on, and so we ended up clinging onto each other as the ship went down. During this, Pythor and the Nindroids all attacked Borg Tower and forced my dad and the others to retreat with the equipment to keep in contact with us. Just like Borg, we lost the tower, retook the tower, and then had it taken away from us all over again. That's why the Golden Master was in Ninjago City that day.

Somehow, we were all knocked out and woke up on the surface of the comet and not flung out into space. Zane said we were lucky the impact also didn't break our spacesuits too, which I guess he was right. When we did, however, the Nindroids had already left in rovers to go and retrieve the weapons. They left one behind, so we crammed into that to go after them.

When we arrived, we saw them inside a small cavern I guess the weapons blasted into the comet when they landed. The weapons were now this massive ball of golden metal, and we watched one of the Nindroids touch it and vaporize. Since it had the power of all four (eight?) Golden Weapons inside of it, we were warned not to touch it. I know that it vaporized Samukai when he held all four, and my dad specifically had to absorb evil in the Realm of Madness just to be able to hold all four at once.

I'm not sure why it vaporized a robot, though. It didn't vaporize the ground that it was buried in, or the net that they wrapped around it, and they had to have melted them down in a forge that didn't vaporize. If the Nindroids were just machines, did that mean the Golden Weapons would vaporize anything that had a mind? I guess programming is sort of like a mind. But, I'm not sure why they would take out something that was just running on pure code and didn't have a mind of its own. Then again the Nindroid touched it against Cryptor's orders, which means the Nindroids probably had AI. Does that mean anything with AI would get vaporized too?

Anyways, while we were watching all of that happen, we started seeing these green beetles crawling over us. What was weird was that we could feel them crawling on us through the suits. Then, one of them bite Zane. We started hearing Nya through the comms, but it was fuzzy at first. We figured out just before us that they ate metal. Given that our spacesuits had metal in them, and Zane was made of metal, we panicked. Us panicking caused the rest of the swarm to start flying towards us, and we gave away our position as we tried to shoo them away.

While we were dealing with them, Cryptor put the weapons in the metal net and then loaded up the rovers. While we were starting to panic realizing that these beetles could actually kill us by rupturing our suits, I remembered Wu giving us some of his cryptic advice: if you can't change your circumstances, change yourself. For some reason, as I was being eaten by spacebugs, I remembered what happened with the Starteeth, and figured out we could weaponize the bugs against the Nindroids.

We hopped back in the rover and began our first space chase (another first and only for me). We brought the bugs with us, so as we got closer to the Nindroids, the bugs started attacking them too and disorienting them. Something that hurt you could also hurt your enemy. So we used them to help attack the Nindroids. During the chase, we managed to get ahold of the key to the rocket from Cryptor. Our plan had been to load the gold onto the ship and then take off ourselves, making it ours. There's not too much to say about the actual chase itself; it was basically like any other chase that we've had on, well, here.

However, when we got back to the spaceship, we saw something that took all the wind out of our sails: the bugs had gotten to the ship first and basically ate their way through it. Just look at the broken engines and the opened cockpit, and we realized that it wasn't going to be able to take us home. What we'd hoped would be a simple step had just been stopped, and we were going to be trapped on the comet.

That was when Cryptor and the remaining Nindroids all took hold of the net and used their jets to fly back to Ninjago. In truth, that was just the icing on the failure cake. We watched them fly way without us. If they'd been trapped there with us, it would have at least meant we fulfilled part of our mission, and that would at least mean we succeeded in stopping them. But no, we had to stand there and watch them literally fly away and leave us there, stranded.

We were only on that comet for another few hours, but it felt much longer. We had enough air to last us for awhile, but Jay confirmed that the bugs had gotten to everything on the inside of the ship, including the spare air. We were trapped there. Since the bugs were still there, however, we weren't given too much time to mull over the fact we'd never get home again. We were too busy making sure that we were forced to meet an early demise by those weird mutant bugs Jay kept calling 'glowies.'

The entire time that we'd been in space, starting from when I'd given up my Golden Power, my dad had been questioning my decisions. He told me after everything he felt responsible for what happened to me, and wanted to make sure I was safe. When he thought what I was doing was a mistake, he lashed out against it out of his own guilt. The thing is, I think that's what I would have done myself if this same thing had happened to one of my friends. While Wu had been passively giving us advice, my dad had been angry and trying his hardest to guide us. Hearing the two of them talking to us was perhaps the biggest sign of the difference between them as teachers.

While we were stuck there, the Digilord forced together the Golden Weapons to officially become the Golden Master. As if to mock the mech that had done barely anything at all, he made his own Golden Mech. With the power of the weapons, he was able to create a full solid form just for himself. We learned this through Borg who, after the weapons had been melted down, was released from the Golden Master's control. He specifically said at the time that he wanted Borg to watch Ninjago City fall, which seems right for the Overlord.

As we were starting to resign ourselves to our fate, I apologized to my dad for my decisions. I told him that if I still had my Golden Power, I could have flown us off this comet. If I hadn't split it up, and just listened to him, we wouldn't be in this mess. I expected him to come at me and reprimand me… but instead, he told me that he was sorry. He apologized for not trusting in me, and that I needed only to trust myself now.

That's when I realized that we could get off that comet. Together, we came up with an, all things considered, last ditch effort plan. Using what we still had left of the spaceship, we cobbled together what was basically a big can with an engine attached to it. Using Zane's computing systems, Kai's fire to weld the parts and my power to keep it together, we were able to create something to just barely get us off the comet.

I swear one of us must have insane luck, because it actually worked. We managed to get enough thrust to get home, and Zane guided us all the way towards Ninjago by using his heart (or half of it, he'd given half to Pixel at some point) as a power source. While we were flying, however, he told us that he was starting to reach critical mass. When that happened, he would explode. We had just entered the atmosphere, so we realized now, we had air. And by having air, we were able to use our elemental shields to fly back down to the surface, where Pixel sent our repaired vehicles out to catch us. Again, all things considered, that plan shouldn't have worked. I'm glad it did, but it would be like trying to build a diving board out of two sticks and a car door. It was a confusing and awkward way to end off a confusing and awkward trip to space.

My dad and Wu showed up in Nya's car, and together we all made our way towards Ninjago City. By the time we got there, however, the city had been turned into one massive fortress. Zane said it was just like when they were in the Digiverse. If that was what it was like inside the Digiverse, I don't know how they managed to reboot him in the first place. Still, we'd been driven in and out of Ninjago City multiple times, and now the Golden Master was behind those walls of buildings.

The Golden Master had taken my power and used it to turn himself into the ultimate evil. We'd done everything we could to prevent this, and failed. Now, we had to do something to stop him. He'd always been stuck inside some other body or place, but now he was free and open to do whatever he wanted. I'd beat him once, and I'd do it again. My dad and Wu were going to fight together again, and we were going to take out the Overlord in this new form of his once, and for all. I would never have thought, though, that it wouldn't be me that would land the finishing blow.

Lloyd panted as he leaned against his sword. He'd spent the last hour drilling Spinjitzu with Zane, and after that hour, he'd managed to land several blunt strikes on Zane. It was nothing compared to the number of blunt arrows that had grazed him, but he'd been making progress. Still, it'd been an hour of navigating the arena specifically shaped for making Spinjitzu difficult to use on, and by now he wasn't sure he had the energy to use it again.

"Perhaps we should rest now?" Zane asked, not winded in the slightest.

"Yeah… yeah a break would be nice…" Lloyd gasped for air, "Sometimes I wish… I was a robot… whew, I wouldn't feel so tired after all that training!"

"Being tired means that you have successfully pushed yourself to a point where you can grow and strengthen yourself," Zane informed him, "By contrast, my body will always operate at the same level as the day I built it. Being able to grow and develop is a wonderful thing."

"Still!" Lloyd slowly walked out of the arena to snag some water, "I mean, you can keep going forever if you wanted to!"

"That is indeed true, in a sense," Zane admitted, "But that infers that I am not bested by an opponent."

Zane replaced his bow on his back, walking over to reset the training arena back to normal. The two had completed another chapter and took the chance to train together again. Zane had noted that Lloyd seemed far more emotionally balanced when he trained after recording, and thus Zane had insisted that they make this a regular routine.

"So… you're really okay with doing the next chapter, right?" Lloyd turned, "I know you said you were already but I just, I worry. I mean, you'll hear me talking about your… you know, when you became the Titanium Ninja."

"You mean when I died," Zane stated with a small nod, "I do not skirt around that subject, Lloyd. I made the decision to sacrifice myself. I do not regret my actions that day, and thus I have made peace with the fact that I did indeed die. It was only by chance that I had my spirit uploaded into Borg Tower. If that did not happen, I would still be content with my life to that point. I protected you all, and that was all I wanted. If my friends live on, I am happy."

"I see," Lloyd paused, "Do you mind if I mention that in the next chapter?"

"Of course," Zane smiled, "I have had to do far less editing of your anecdotes as time has gone on, after all. You have seemed to find your pacing with this story."

"I know how I wanna approach it now is all," Lloyd shrugged, "I'm gonna keep at the training for a little bit, you want to join?"

"I offered to clean the upper deck of the Bounty," Zane shook his head, "I wish you luck in your training though, Lloyd."

"Thanks, Zane," Lloyd smiled, "For, you know… everything."

"There is no need to thank me… but I appreciate that, Lloyd," Zane affirmed, "Do not push yourself too hard."

"I won't, I won't," Lloyd nodded, turning his attention back to the training room, "I know my limits now."

"Good," Zane acknowledged, "Then I am off."

Zane left Lloyd behind, who set up a general obstacle course training preset for himself. With sword sheathed, he waited for Zane to fully exit the room before he threw himself into it, soaring through the obstacles as he let his worries be replaced by a calm determination.

Author's Note:

Sorry for this being later than normal! I wanted to briefly remind everyone that Enter the Ninjaverse has begun updating once again. Thank you for reading, as always, and please feel free to leave a comment/review!