Nimona

The first pages of the chapter illustrate Nimona in the form of an old lady, secretly leaving a modified apple in a greengrocer’s shop. In a flashback to a week earlier, Blackheart engineers nonlethal poisonous apples in his lab. His plan is to create panic in the city. He hopes the people will become suspicious that the reports about the Institution’s use of toxic jaderoot may be true.

The narrative resumes with Nimona coming home after dispatching the apples throughout the city. While waiting for the poison to take effect, Blackheart suggests they go rob a bank: “[H]ow would you feel about robbing a bank?” (59). Nimona enthusiastically agrees. They enter the bank with Blackheart wearing a hooded cloak and Nimona in the form of a burly man. Nimona shapeshifts to fight off the guards that attempt to stop them while Blackheart opens the vault with a laser gun. He then asks her to keep the civilians away so he can blow the wall for their escape. Outside the bank, Goldenloin and the guards are about to go in, but Nimona in dragon form comes out to scare them away. Goldenloin understands that she is a distraction, but he arrives just as Blackheart blows the wall open.