Minecraft: Mob Squad: Never Say Nether: An Official Minecraft

So here’s what you need to know: My name is Chug, I’m the greatest fighter around, and I have the four best friends in all the Overworld, one of whom is a pig. We live in a town called Cornucopia, which used to be entirely contained within tall, impenetrable walls. Our ancestors, the eight Founders, built it all by hand long ago to keep us safe, and our Elders have always been strict about the rules the Founders left behind.

Maybe too strict.

For generations, no one knew what was outside the wall—except Nan, the oldest person in town, and she never told anyone anything because she’s a feisty old bird. But then a vex started poisoning our crops, and the town Elders were going to send all the families away forever, so my friends and I had to go on an adventure to a woodland mansion to save our town from a bunch of illagers and this beet farmer dressed as a witch, and these brigands stole our llamas and threatened to throw us into a river, and—

Yeah, that’s the past, and the past is boring. All you need to know is that now our town has opened up the wall, and life is different—better. My brother Tok and I live outside the wall in New Cornucopia, where he uses his big ol’ brain to craft items, and I use my big ol’ personality to sell them in our shop. It’s called the Stack Shack. I wanted to call it ChugTokMart, but Tok said it sounded like I was choking on an apple, and he was probably right.

It’s morning, and my brother’s bed is empty. Tok is always awake before me. He says the early morning quiet helps him concentrate as he dreams up new recipes for tools and tries to master the art of brewing potions. I think he wants privacy so if he sets something on fire again, I won’t freak out. He makes lots of great things, but he also makes lots of huge messes—and loud, echoing booms. As I lie in my bed, curling and uncurling my toes against the blankets and thinking about breakfast, I strain my senses to figure out what Tok is working on. Bad smells usually indicate potions, while hammering suggests tools or armor and—

Boom!

I leap out of bed and run for Tok’s workshop. When I throw open the door, I’m relieved to see he’s been working outside in the yard and has therefore not damaged the roof. Again.

“Gunpowder?” I ask.

“Gunpowder,” he confirms, looking a little dazed.

“One of your eyebrows is sizzling, bro.”

He swipes at it and shakes his head. Gray powder surrounds his shoulder-length black hair like a cloud.

“I’m getting closer,” he says. “I just need to tweak the recipe.”

The problem is, he doesn’t have any recipes. Elder Gabe is the only person in town who can make potions, and he won’t tell Tok anything. I step closer and look at his brewing stand, but whatever ingredients he was working with are now various blackened stains. “Or you could make some nice, safe, unexploding pickaxes today. Or armor. People love your armor.”

Tok’s cats, Candor and Clarity, meow plaintively from around the corner, where they’ve wisely been hiding. He kneels and holds out his arms, and they run up to rub worriedly against him. “We have enough armor. The shop is fully stocked. But these potions—I’m so close! Elder Gabe won’t share his recipes or give me any ingredients, and I’ve pored through all Nan’s books, but there’s just so much I don’t know. I’ve studied all the potions I can find, and I keep trying random concoctions, but it’s like I’m missing some vital ingredients, and just…ugh!”

“You’re obsessed, bro,” I say softly, patting him on the shoulder.

He’s always been like this. Before he learned about crafting tables from Nan, he was constantly trying to construct machines to save time on chores—to weed our parents’ pumpkin patches or pluck the eggs from underneath our fussier hens—but something always went wrong. I guess now that he’s mastered crafting, his brain still needs something tough to chew on.

He stands up and gazes toward the mountains in the distance. “I wish we could go back to the woodland mansion library, see what’s on the shelves. I bet there are loads of books on potions.”

“The Elders ordered us not to go back to the woodland mansion,” I remind him. “They agreed to open the walls, they understand that people need freedom to come and go, but—”

“We’re still kids,” he finishes for me. “And it’s not safe.”

I nod. It’s kind of funny—I used to be the one who got us in trouble, whether I was mouthing off when I shouldn’t or getting in fights with this bully named Jarro and his toadies downtown. But now I’ve settled down, and Tok is the wild card, because once he’s at his crafting table or brewing stand, it’s like he goes into a trance and doesn’t think about safety—or flammability. As I like to remind our parents, who still live on the much more boring pumpkin farm in town, I’m now the good son who hasn’t blown up a single thing.

“Maybe we could get permission to go on an expedition,” Tok says, getting that mad gleam in his eye that makes me want to put on a helmet and duck. “Now that Lenna is compiling a library, surely everyone would benefit from new books.”

“Did I hear my name?”

We both look up, and I grin when I see Lenna jogging toward us, along with her pet wolf, Poppy, and our other friend, Mal. Lenna has oak-brown skin and styles her hair in two puffs. She used to wear stone gray hand-me-down clothes from her nine other siblings, but now that she’s moved away from her strict family and their beloved mine and is working as Nan’s apprentice, she chooses bright colors that usually clash.

“Tok wants to go back to the woodland mansion to find a book on potions,” I explain.

Our other friend, Mal, has red hair in a braid and matching freckles, and she’s pretty much our leader. She’s also Nan’s great-great-granddaughter. She looks Tok up and down, hands on her hips, noting the charcoal smudges on his face and the combination of bed head and gunpowder in his blue-black hair. “We came running when we heard the latest explosion. I guess your neighbors don’t even bother getting out of bed anymore, do they?”

“Let’s just say the folks next door don’t pay to have their hoes fixed,” Tok says sheepishly. “Could you really hear it all the way from the cow farm?”

Mal nods. “I was milking at the time.” She swipes at a wet smear in her red hair. “The cow and I were both surprised. That seemed like a bigger boom than usual.”

“I’m so close!” Tok paces around his workshop yard, and Candor jumps down from his shoulder to lick rogue gunpowder out of her orange-striped fur. “I mean, sure, Elder Gabe can make Potions of Healing and Regeneration, but I’m trying to create something totally new. It’s going to make you completely resistant to fire.”

Mal and I exchange a look; she’s my best friend, and we can pretty much read each other’s thoughts.

“But is fire really that big of a problem around here?” she asks gently.

Tok ducks his head. “I accidentally set the workshop on fire once, and Candor’s tail caught—”

I pat him on the shoulder. “Bro, that was an accident. She’s forgiven you. And her tail tip grew back as good as new.” The poor cat looked like a candle there for a minute, but I don’t mention that. Tok loves his cats more than anything.

“I could use an expedition, though.” Mal’s hand goes to her pocket and pulls out her diamond pickaxe, which was crafted by her great-great-great-grandmother, one of our town’s founders—and Nan’s mom, because that’s how old Nan is. “The new mine is going well, but I miss—”

“The discoveries,” Lenna breathes. “New places, new animals, new plants, the smell of fresh wind.”

“The loot,” Tok agrees. “Opening chests. Trading in the village. Picking up all the ingredients witches drop. Books galore!”

“Fighting hostile mobs.” I gaze off into the distance. “I haven’t seen a zombie in weeks. My sword arm sure could use some exercise.”

Mal hooks an arm around my neck. “Oh, selling shovels isn’t good enough for you?”

“Shovels!” Tok rolls his eyes. “Old Stu can make shovels. I want to make new things. I want to create new potions no one has ever seen before.” He sighs and gazes out at the mountains beyond. “It’s funny. We used to live within the walls, and we were happy, but we wanted more. Then we left home and had an adventure, and now we live beyond the walls. And I still want more.”

Lenna sits on the floor, rubbing Poppy’s soft gray wolf belly. “It’s like Nan says: Everyone in Cornucopia is descended from adventurers. Maybe some people are content to stay here, but we’re different.” Poppy wiggles happily, like she wants an adventure, too. “I say we go ask her to send us on an important expedition to the woodland mansion. It’s safe enough. We’ve been there before. And Nan is in a good mood today. Oh! I forgot.” She reaches into her enchanted, nearly bottomless pocket—a neat magic trick Nan taught us so we could carry loads of stuff—and pulls out four cookies. “She told me to give you plenty of cookies and said…” She looks up, thinking, and then draws her eyebrows down and says in a Nan-ish voice, “Tell that crafting boy to stop blowing things up before noon. Us old folks need our beauty sleep.”

After we eat our cookies and help Tok clean up the brewing mess, we follow the path through New Cornucopia and wave at the guard as we pass through the break in the giant wall to enter the older part of town. Tok’s cats pace beside him, Poppy runs up ahead to scout, and my pet pig, Thingy, runs along behind us, oinking to be included. I scratch his head the way he likes and wish I’d saved him some cookie. We amble past farms and fields and navigate the busy downtown crossroads everyone calls the Hub.

“Ow!” Lenna cries.

I spin around, and she’s rubbing the back of her head with a grimace of pain. Going on full alert, I pull my sword out of my pocket—because of course I always have a sword in my enchanted pocket, both for self-defense in case of random zombies and for sales demonstrations in case of random customers. Tok and I do a ton of trading in the shop and whenever we’re in the Hub, so I always have my pockets loaded with a variety of goods. Beside me, Mal has her pickaxe out and ready. Tok snatches something from the ground at Lenna’s feet.

“A poisonous potato?” he asks, holding it up to show us.

Muffled snickering from a nearby alley draws my attention, and Mal and I nod at each other and run for it. All we find, of course, are the retreating backs of the town bully, Jarro, and his two minions, Remy and Edd, disappearing around the corner.© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

“I wish he would grow up,” Mal mutters.

“He makes me want to throw up,” I respond.

I put my sword away as we return to Tok and Lenna. “You know who,” I confirm.

“We saved the town—we literally saved his life—and he’s still bullying us.” Lenna shakes her head. She used to be the weakest of us, and everyone in town thinks she’s weird, but now she’s a whiz with her bow and arrows, even if she focuses more on books these days. If Jarro knew the true depth of her skills, there’s no way he’d single her out.

He’d go back to focusing on my brother.

“An ocelot can’t change its spots,” Tok reminds her.

Not that we’ve ever seen an ocelot, but Nan’s books make them sound pretty cool.

With Jarro’s Big Potato Gambit out of the way, we continue our trek to Nan’s cottage. See, Jarro’s mom always makes him stay downtown. These days, she’ll tell anyone who’ll listen about how it was wrong to open the wall and that now everything is less safe. For us, at least, her paranoia is really useful: She keeps Jarro with her almost all the time, which means it’s been a while since I’ve gotten in trouble for punching him in the kidneys. But when we come downtown, he always tries something like this, something rude and sneaky and hard to prove, should we involve the adults. Not that the adults would do anything to help. They didn’t before we saved the town, and they still don’t. That’s how scared they are of Jarro’s mom—and the fact that she controls all the sweet berries in Cornucopia. Even Nan is a little scared of her.

I can relax a little once we’re out of the Hub and entering the carefully planted forest that hides Nan’s house. When Lenna moved in with her to become her apprentice, Nan had some of her nephews add a new room on to her small cottage. As soon as I see its tidy brick chimney poking up from the trees, I can smell more cookies baking. Thingy and I hurry ahead and knock on the door.

“Go away,” Nan shouts. “We’re full.”

“It’s me, Nan,” Mal calls. “The great-great-granddaughter you don’t mind.”

The door opens. Nan’s ancient, wrinkled face peers out. “You.” She points at Tok. “No explosions in my cottage. And you.” She points at me, and my heart nearly stops. “Four cookies is the limit, and that includes the pig. Got it?”

“Yes, Nan,” we chorus as she steps back to let us inside.

I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even know my name. She just calls me “the beefy one.”

Nan offers her cheek to Mal for a kiss, and we settle into our usual places around her table. Lenna is at home here now, and she brings us glasses of milk as Nan serves yet more of her cookies, which are the best ones in town.

“I’m guessing this isn’t a social call,” Nan says. “Children don’t visit old people for no reason.”

Mal sits up. “We’d like to go on an expedition to the woodland mansion. If Tok had the right books and could learn more about potion recipes, his experiments wouldn’t be so dangerous. And noisy.”

“And Lenna could find more books for the town library you’re building,” Tok adds, and I can tell he’s embarrassed by the suggestion that he’s causing problems that need to be solved. “You could give us a list of things to look for.”

Nan raises one tufty white eyebrow and pins each of us with a sharp look. “What do you really want?”

“Wildness,” Lenna says with her usual dreaminess. “It’s nice here, but too tame. The air doesn’t move. Even the bees are bored.”

If Lenna said that at home with her family, they would all laugh at her and call her Loony Lenna, and she would end up alone and crying under her bed. But here, with us and Nan, her words make perfect sense.

Some adults just automatically say no, but Nan isn’t one of them. Her lips twitch this way and that as she chews a cookie and thinks about it. “Bad idea, just now,” she finally says, and my heart sinks. “When they opened the wall, the Elders unanimously decided to restrict travel, especially for kids. You all know that. Your parents were worried sick, and a couple of you—I can’t remember which ones—nearly died the last time you left town. But I’ll send Stu a letter, see if some of the adults have time for a trip. We can tell them to look for books on potions and fire prevention.”

“But we know the way to the woodland mansion,” I argue. “We know more about the Overworld than anyone else in town! Have you seen these people fight with swords? They have little flower stem arms. Wibble wobble flobble. The mobs will destroy them!”

Nan snorts. “Yeah, I’ve seen. Downright embarrassing, especially when they’re related to me. But here’s the thing: Last time, when you kids left, the town was in danger. Your expedition was a last resort. Now that everything’s peaceful, there’s no way your parents would give you permission to go back out there.”

I hate it, but I know she’s right. We all do. Our parents love their safe, comfy life on the pumpkin farm, and they only agreed to let Tok and me open our shop outside the wall if we promised to come home for dinner every day. Mal is an important part of her family’s cow farm, and Nan needs Lenna’s help here. Apparently no one else can come up with a sufficient argument, so Tok just writes out a list of book topics to look for, and he and I trudge back to our shop while Mal heads out to the mine in her backyard and Lenna stays with Nan.

It’s a pretty day, and business is brisk, but we’re both droopy. Tok got excited about the possibility of getting his hands on that library, and I got excited about getting my hands on a sword that I could then swing at zombies and vindicators. At dinner with our parents, we’re quieter than usual, but they kind of prefer us that way. It’s like a little spark in Tok has gone out, and I hate that.

As we snuggle down in our identical, side-by-side beds and the cats curl up to sleep on Tok’s feet, I say, “Hey, bro, I’m sorry the trip’s not going to work out. But maybe the adults will bring back the books you need, and you can make a potion that’ll turn Elder Stu into a llama.”

I can tell Tok is still down because he doesn’t even laugh. He just says, “Maybe.”

Tok has a hard time quieting his mind, but I can fall right asleep. My last thought is that in the morning, I’m going to make his favorite breakfast to cheer him up.

But when I wake up, Tok’s bed is empty. There are no booms. He’s not in his workshop. The cats pace outside, crying.

My brother is gone.