On September 20, 2006, I'll be starting my eighteenth Ross and Mike story. However, this story will be making several references to the previous 17 stories. Since I'm the only one who knows the plot to the other 17, I think it'd be best if I filled you in on the plots to them. If you're going to read The End of Time when it debuts next month (that's the name of my next Ross and Mike story) I'd strongly recommend reading this first so you'll understand what everyone's talking about. After the summaries of these 17 stories is a sneak preview of The End of Time.
Ross Takes a
Stand (Late September 2001)
In the story that started as a
school assignment, Ross Hamilton moves away from his home in Kansas
with his parents and moves to a New England town. His first day
there, he makes friends with a kid named Mike. Ross also makes
enemies with the school bully, Big Bad Bob.
Ross visits Mike's house the very first weekend they meet, and Mike sees how athletic Ross is. Ross explains in Kansas he had to run to his bus stop because his mom had to go to work early, and he also had to swim a lot to beat the heat. Seeing how athletic Ross is gives the two an idea…
On Monday, Ross challenges Big Bad Bob to an athletic competition in a best of two-out-of-three event. If Ross wins, Big Bad Bob has to give up his bullying ways. If Big Bad Bob wins, he can knock Ross's lights out. Ross wins, and after getting humiliated by an 11 year old, Mike officially changes Big Bad Bob's name to "Big Sad Sobber".
Lost in Ancient
Egypt (Mid-October 2001)
On a class field trip about two
weeks after Ross's victory over Big Sad Sobber, Ross and Mike stray
from the group when they go to a history museum. They look inside a
mummy casket, only to be warped back to the time of the ancient
Egyptians. They explore one of the pyramids until they stumble upon a
tomb raider who pushes them through a trap door and into a room full
of deadly traps. The two barely survive and escape, then push the
tomb raider into the trap door where he becomes less unfortunate.
Ross and Mike then find a casket he was robbing, and the casket turns
out to be the portal that takes them back to their time.
Trapped on Planet
Zoda (Late November 2001)
Ross and Mike go on a vacation
together to Florida. While at a water park, Ross spots the Kennedy
Space Center at the top of a water slide and wants nothing more than
to see it. His dad later takes him and Mike to see it. But Mike gets
a little too curious and accidentally launches Ross and himself into
outer space.
Upon getting into outer space, Ross and Mike are soon taken hostage by a hostile alien named Zozu, who takes them to his home planet of Zoda. There, Zoda shows the kids a laser he plans to use to destroy Earth and then eliminate the two kids afterwards. Ross and Mike manage to escape from Zozu and stop him from destroying Earth and are able to return home.
Ross Inside Mike
(Early December 2001)
Mike catches a serious disease, and Ross
manages to shrink himself to microscopic size and go inside Mike's
body to try and stop the disease. Ross discovers the cause of the
problems is a germ named Pox who is planning on going around to
Mike's important nerve cells and killing them off one by one. In a
desperate battle to beat the doctors before they can find the
disease, Ross and Pox duke it out. Ross wins and is able to save Mike
from needing more examination.
Return of Big Sad
Sobber (Mid-January 2002)
Desperate for revenge after
getting humiliated by Ross earlier on in the year, Big Sad Sobber
returns, this time, plotting to get Ross into trouble with the
school's principal, Mr. Dozzom. Big Sad Sobber convinces Ross to
spray paint Mr. Dozzom's house, but his plan backfires when Ross is
able to make it look like Big Sad Sobber was responsible. It goes
well until Mr. Dozzom carefully examines the can of spray paint used
and finds Ross's finger prints on it.
Beast of Burden
(Mid-March 2002)
Ross gets busted for spray painting Mr.
Dozzom's house and is suspended from school. Ross is angry to learn
that shortly after he gets suspended his class going on a trip to an
amusement park. Ross sneaks his way onto the trip, but he and Mike
end up getting stuck on a Ferris Wheel not long after the park closes
and are left behind by their class.
As the two try to get out of the carnival, they find they're not alone in there. They see there's a giant monster lurking around in the carnival, but Ross and Mike are able to fight him off.
Soon afterwards, Ross starts getting anonymous threatening letters by someone who knows his full name. (Ross Davison McKane) Ross and Mike trace the letters and find that they're being mailed by the monster who they encountered at the theme park. The monster calls himself Baron and is ready for revenge after getting beat. He uses a special move that allows him to fire a yellow ray from his hand and make whatever it comes into contact with turn to gold. When Ross is screaming in terror when he sees the ray coming towards him, the ray hits his gums and only turns his gums golden. Ross gets the power to fire the golden ray and uses it to defeat Baron.
Kid with the Golden Gums (Mid-April 2002)
When Ross's suspension from school is over, he finds that there's a new kid named Mory in class. Knowing that it's never easy to be the new kid, Ross tries to make friends with Mory. Mike and Ross become good friends with him in no time.
Ross then hears about a sweepstakes to a park called EVILLE and puts his name on a postcard and sends it in, only to find he lost the postcard when he got to the post office. But when the drawing takes place, Ross's name is mysteriously pulled, even though he didn't get his postcard in.
Ross takes Mike and Mory to EVILLE where they are created by a professor who prefers to go by the name Jim. Everything goes fine until Jim becomes very hostile to them and reveals that he is Baron's creator and his bent on revenge on Ross for destroying his creation.
The trip turns its ugliest when Jim is threatening to end Mory's life by holding a gun to his head. Ross and Mike try a daring maneuver: attempting to blow up the EVILLE park with charges in Jim's lab while trying to save Mory. They succeed in defeating Jim and escape, but Mory is still trapped inside when the place blows up. Ross feels guilty, knowing that if he had just set the charges for six minutes instead of three, Mory might have made it out.
Once Friends, Now Enemies (Mid-May 2002)
Ross and Mike try to get on with their lives after the loss of Mory at EVILLE. Ross gets himself a talking pet frog to take his mind off of it, but it only gets worse when the frog (quite originally named "Frog") finds that disturbing messages and voices are coming from Ross's computer.
The voice turns out to be none other than Mory, who has taken control of a satellite weapon and is using it to get revenge on Ross. (Mory blames Ross setting the timers too soon caused the building at EVILLE to blow up with him in it, therefore giving him several face scars and burns) Ross and Mory, once friends and now enemies, end up fighting each other on top of the satellite until Mory loses and plummets to the ground below.
Forever is
Yesterday (Mid-June 2002)
Ross starts getting weird dreams
with a mysterious figure in it. Ross sleeps over Mike's house
towards the end of the school year. It's then when Ross finds that
the figure in his dreams is Mory, who is far from dead.
Ross and Mike and Mory soon end up in a virtual reality game that takes them through time and back to the Jurassic Period where Ross and Mory will settle things once and for all. Ross and Mike narrowly escape. Mory, however, gets gobbled up by a T-Rex.
Untitled play/movie (Summer 2002)
In what was supposed to be a homemade movie, Ross and Mike would discover learning under their soil is a civilization of hostile mole people who hate intruders. Ross and Mike soon stumble into their society and are sentenced to be executed until Frog jumps in at the last minute to save his owner and his friend. It succeeds and the Mole People are destroyed.
Lucky Not (Mid-October 2002)
In the duo's first adventure as 12 year olds, Ross and Mike find a fortune teller who promises them a great future, but at a high price. Ross decides the only way to get his bad luck to stop after encountering her is to physically stop her. Ross tracks her all the way back to her mansion in the middle of a thick forest and uses his golden gums (from story number 7) to turn her to solid gold, ending his bad luck streak.
Return of Zozu:
(Parts 1 and 2) (late-March 2003)
Zozu is furious with
Ross and Mike for thwarting his plans and has returned to try once
more. This time, with his wife, Zodie. Ross and Mike have to race
against the clock to get themselves into outer space and stop Zozu
from annihilating Earth.
After Mike gets fed up with Ross being too hard on getting them into space, he bails out, leaving Ross to deal with the two aliens on his own.
He gets up into outer space and sneaks aboard the space shuttle that Zozu and Zodie plan to use to blow up Earth. Ross promptly runs through the ship, trying to disarm the weapon. He's caught and ends up having to battle the two aliens and stop their plans before it's too late.
The fight takes Ross and Zodie outside the space station where Ross almost commits suicide when a missile launches and is headed towards Earth by jumping on it and steering it towards an asteroid. Zodie tries to stop Ross from causing the missile to harmlessly blow up on the asteroid by jumping on the missile with him and steering it back on track. But she fails and the missile hits the asteroid and explodes. Ross is able to get off of it in time, but Zodie doesn't.
Furious that his wife is dead, Zozu hops out of the space station and tries to battle Ross on his own. Ross wins by firing a laser cannon from his space suit and destroys Zozu's helmet with it, causing it to break and making Zozu's head freeze. Ross sets the space station to self-destruct and flees in an escape pod that gets him back home safely.
Weapons of a
Dangerous Mind (Early April 2003)
After doing
surprisingly well on an intelligence test in school, Ross discovers
he has an IQ much higher than normal and that his knowledge could be
used for some great purposes. Mr. Dozzom introduces Ross to Mr.
Dawnson, the head of a Nuclear Physics Department. Mr. Dawnson hooks
Ross up to a machine that can read his knowledge, then lets Ross go.
Ross soon discovers that Mr. Dawnson was just using his knowledge to create a dangerous nuclear weapon. Upon learning this, Ross tries to prevent Mr. Dawnson from launching it, leading to a battle in the Weapon testing center. It ends when Ross is able to push the created warhead on top of Mr. Dawnson, crushing him.
War of Meridell
(Mid-April 2003)
Ross and Mike discover a mysterious portal in
Mike's backyard that transports them to the fantasy land of Neopia
(from Ross and Mike soon get themselves involved in a
war between a kingdom named Meridell and a dark land called Darigan.
Meridell loses, and the item that brings it prosperity is taken by
Darigan. Ross and Mike are soon blamed for leaking information,
especially since it now looks like Lord Darigan has unlimited power
from the orb. It looks like Lord Darigan is unstoppable until
Darigan's greatest fighter, MajalKita, turns on him and helps the
group destroy him. Darigan is defeated and the orb is returned to
Meridell. Ross and Mike return to their present time by hopping
through the portal that took them there. (Disclaimer: I do not own
neopets)
Monsters in Toyland (Late May 2003)
Ross's mom's boss is having a wedding, and Ross and his mom were invited. At the wedding, Ross stumbles upon a caterer who appears to be putting a bomb inside the wedding cake. His motives seem to be that Ross's mom's boss used to be his employer, but after firing him, the caterer got stuck with his present job and ruining his wedding and attempting to end his life is revenge. Ross ends up stopping the guy and causing the bomb to explode on him.
Weeks later, Ross and his class go on a trip to a science museum and find a scientist who has invented a ray that can bring inanimate things to life. The scientist then spots Ross and decides to test the ray on the toys in a store next to him.
The scientist turns out to be the caterer who Ross nearly got killed when his plan to ruin the boss's wedding was foiled. The caterer underwent a major makeover to conceal his identity and now wants to get back at Ross for foiling his plans. He brings several toys in the store to life and orders them to kill Ross and his friend, Mike.
In the end, however, the toys are destroyed. A toy that was brought to life has the ability to shrink things, and the caterer gets hit by the ray, making him the size of a handheld game. Ross gets rid of him by flushing him down the toilet after the last toy is destroyed.
Camp Glaregon (Late August 2004)
This is the only Ross and Mike story available to the public thus far. It can be seen under the Goosebumps section so you can get the full effect of the story.
Two Zones
(Mid-May 2005)
The two start their high school days. Ross
immediately gets into a fight with Big Sad Sobber, who goes to the
same High School and is still bearing a grudge from middle school.
Sobber beats Ross in a physical fight, part of which involves Ross
being slammed under a table in the cafeteria. Ross then notices
strange markings on one of the tiles under the table.
Later that day when Ross is heading out to find his bus, he gets lost, so he asks the bus monitor. The bus monitor looks shocked to see Ross for some reason, but tries to pass it off.
Ross then discovers that the markings he saw on the tile in the cafeteria tile led to a dimension within the school. He finds it leads to a dark zone where the spirits of graduates who chose their darker path after high school lurk.
The bus monitor seems to know a surprising amount of detail about the zones and tells Ross there's a portal to the light zone where graduates who led successful and happy lives have their spirits sitting. He tells Ross in order to seal the dark zone, he's going to need a weapon of light. To do that, he's going to have to locate the light zone and have the spirits in there smelt him a weapon.
Then Ross finds a note in his gym locker that indicates there's a portal in the cafeteria, and the note is initialed D.M. Ross checks the cafeteria fully and finds the portal to the light zone. He gets a weapon smelted by the strongest spirits in there, and he goes to seal the dark zone.
Jumping the gun a little, Ross finds out that the spirits in the dark zone have the ability to duplicate anyone who they can stick their claws into. He also finds the bus monitor is really his father. When he was two, his parents divorced, and Ross heard nothing of his father since then. The dramatic turn of events of finding his father as the bus monitor gives Ross the motivation to make him proud. Ross finds out his dad's name is Dennis, and the initials D.M. on the note in Ross's gym locker were Dennis's. (Dennis McKane)
Ross and Dennis team up and seal away the dark zone, and Dennis and Ross's mom get remarried. Meanwhile, Ross starts getting into a relationship with a girl named Alicia. Ross's parents allow Ross to come along on their honeymoon and to bring a friend. Since Mike was sick with a stomachache, Ross chose to bring Alicia. It ends with Ross's parents getting remarried and becoming a whole family again while Ross and Alicia walk on the beach together.
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Now, during the course of those 17 stories, I made a lot of continuity mistakes. Examples include: the first story takes place in 1971, but the rest take place in present-days. In the third, Ross's dad was part of the family, but in the seventeenth story, Ross hadn't seen or heard from his dad since he was two. What happened to Frog is never explained, or how Ross suddenly lost the power of his golden gums. All of these questions will be explained in the next story in the Ross and Mike series, The End of Time. TEoT is scheduled to debut a month from today. (September 20) Read below for a sneak peak of it.
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The two were walking along the muddy edge of the river. The sound of the flowing water was easing and seemed to take away any stress that the body had.
"So, Ross, what do you think of Sophomore year. Is it tough, or what?" Mike asked.
"Well, considering you've asked me this about fifty times since the school year began, I'll tell you, it's not hard. It's challenging."
Mike scoffed. "Easy for you to say. Let me guess, you made honor rolls for all three terms so far?"
"Yup," Ross said, looking at the muddy ground as the two of them continued walking along the side of the stream. Then, something caught Ross's breath.
"Hey, Ross, you okay?" Mike asked, stopping and looking at his friend. "What's wrong?"
"Mike, have you noticed that before?" Ross asked.
"Noticed what?"
"That."
Ross pointed to a mysterious cave that was sitting along the side of the stream. Although nothing was happening around or in it, there was something dark and brooding about it. The cave didn't look very big; it looked as if it were just barely big enough to fit both teenagers into it.
"Huh." Mike said casually. "I never noticed that cave before. Let's go look inside it!"
Mike started hurrying along the side of the stream and towards the cave.
"Wait, Mike, I don't think we should…" Ross started. But it was too late. Mike was gone and hurrying off towards the cave. Blowing a breath of air out from the bottom of his mouth and up into his short dark hair, Ross followed.
When both of them were at the entrance to the cave, they looked in. The inside looked dark and murky. Normally, it would be very dark, but based on the sun's location, there was plenty of light to see the inside of the cave. And the two of them could have sworn they saw drawings on the cave.
"Hey Ross, what do you think those drawings are?" Mike asked as he slowly went inside the cave.
"I have no idea," Ross admitted as he followed Mike into the brooding cave.
"Hey Ross, look!" Mike said. He pointed to a picture that looked like it had been drawn with a chalky material, but was obviously something stronger if it stood the test of time like that.
"What is that?" Ross asked.
The drawing appeared to be of a winged demon and it seemed to have a large circular center with several markings around the side of it. It also had a picture of three people who appeared to be fighting a man in robes. Another picture showed what looked like a feminine figure looking like she was about to do something drastic and a male figure looking upset-possibly crying about what the female figure was doing. It also showed what looked like a giant computer, only it looked like it was holding something far more complex than just data.
"I wonder what sick-minded kids drew these pictures," Mike said as he looked at the weird drawings on the cave's walls.
Ross was about to say something until he noticed something odd. He looked down at the ground and saw a white light shooting up from the floor. Where was the light coming from?
Ross bent down and looked at the light. His heavy-linked, silver-colored necklace dangled from his neck as he investigated the source of the light.
"Ross, what is it?" Mike asked.
"It looks like a light," Ross deducted, not knowing what else to say.
Ross reached out and touched the light. Instantly the entire cave lit up with the blinding light. The two teenagers had to shield their eyes from the bright light, and it only seemed to be getting brighter and brighter.
Finally, the light altogether disappeared, and Ross and Mike were now scared. It was obvious they were no longer in the cave. It was obvious they were no longer by the stream. It was obvious they were no longer home.
