Lee Reyes plays Hiro, Master Tetsu's (Pat Morita)'s grandnephew, who is the last of the true ninja. His granduncle sends him to apprentice under Joe Kastle, (David Bradley), who is the American Ninja, to gain experience. Hiro cares only for his Game Gear and has little interest in the ways of the ninja. Joe in addition to being the American Ninja also owns a boat. In order to meet the American Ninja, Lisa (Anne Dupont) "varnishes" his boat when in fact she was asked to "tarnish" it. While having dinner Lisa is kidnapped by Viper (James Lew) and a host of multi-colored ninjas, and so the American Ninja and Hiro sneak onto a plane to Venezuela to save her. It is revealed that Lisa is the daughter of a scientist, under the employ of Glock (Clement von Franckenstein), who is being forced to develop a nerve gas for a Latin American despot. Ninja fighting ensues. Before the American Ninja and Hiro can rescue Lisa and her father from "Viper", the mysterious ninja that appears and reappears with a puff of smoke, the American Ninja must reawaken the ancient ninja tradition within Hiro with a 5 minute training montage. Viper is defeated in a climactic airplane battle scene, and Joe returns to Los Angeles to kiss Lisa on the bow of his boat.

Cecil Gaines was a sharecropper's son who grew up in the 1920s as a domestic servant for the white family who casually destroyed his. Eventually striking out on his own, Cecil becomes a hotel valet of such efficiency and discreteness in the 1950s that he becomes a butler in the White House itself. There, Cecil would serve numerous US Presidents over the decades as a passive witness of history with the American Civil Rights Movement gaining momentum even as his family has troubles of its own. As his wife, Gloria, struggles with her addictions and his defiant eldest son, Louis, strives for a just world, Cecil must decide whether he should take action in his own way.

The executive Beth Emhoff returns from a business trip to Hong Kong with a stop over at the Chicago airport, where she has sex with her former lover. Beth feels ill but she believes that the problem is jet leg. She travels back home to Minneapolis and spreads the virus to her son Clark and her husband Mitch. When Beth and Clark die, Mitch goes in quarantine where the doctors realize that he is immune to the mysterious virus. Meanwhile in Hong Kong, London and in a small province, people have the same disease. The American CDC and the World Health Organization give their best effort researching the virus that is spreading in a geometric progression. The outbreak is threatening the worldwide population of annihilation, unless a vaccine is well-succeeded. The scientists begin a fight against time.