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

This is the worst day of my life, and that includes the day Mom made beetroot soup for dinner. First my brother disappears, and now I’m stuck with my worst enemy. Mal made me promise not to hurt Jarro, and she made him promise not to hurt me, and now we’re just glaring at each other in a meadow, wishing we could hurt each other.

“So which way did they take Tok?” Mal asks, right back to business.

Jarro points—in the same direction Thingy is straining toward, testing the strength of his lead. “That way.”

“Obviously,” I mutter under my breath.

I take Thingy off the lead, and he jogs to the next dropped sweet berry. He happily gulps it down and trots on to the next one. Mal gives me a pleading look and follows him. I’d like to be up there with my best friend and my best pig, but there’s no way I can trust Jarro enough to leave him alone. He doesn’t like any of us, and he certainly doesn’t know how to defend us. He doesn’t know anything about life outside of Cornucopia—he doesn’t even know what zombies and skeletons are. He might be so busy bullying Lenna that a witch surprises us. Or he might steal Mal’s pickaxe. I don’t know his full capabilities. I just know he’s trouble.

So it’s Thingy, then Mal, then Jarro and me, then Lenna and Poppy. Every now and then, Mal looks back to check on us, brow drawn down as she stares at me and Jarro as we silently, angrily march side by side. Whenever he pulls ahead, I hurry to keep up. I don’t want him to get too close to Mal.

“Back off!” Jarro grumbles as I pick up the pace.

“You back off!” I mutter. “Stop trying to get ahead. It’s not a race. Just…walk normal!”

“I’m trying to walk normal, but you keep crowding me!”

He tries to push past me toward Mal, and I throw my arm across his chest, and he whirls around and shoves me, and then, somehow, in a way that is utterly not my fault, we end up in the dirt, wrestling and slapping and throwing elbows.

“Hey! You guys promised!” Mal shouts as she puts the lead on Thingy and runs back to stand over us.

“We’re roughhousing!” I squeak out as I try to knee him somewhere very tender. “Roughhousing is an important part of childhood development.”

“Yeah, you didn’t say no tussling!” Jarro adds as he tries to strangle me.

Lenna joins Mal to stand over us, and I can tell that they both want us to feel ashamed of our behavior, but I’m not, and judging by the elbow I just took to the nose, neither is Jarro.

It’s not long before we’re both bruised and out of breath. My elbows grow feeble, and Jarro’s lip is bleeding. We untangle, and I flop onto my back in the dirt.

“You done?” Mal asks.

“No,” I say, grinning. Poppy sits between her and Lenna, her tongue out and her eyes twinkling. I lunge for Poppy and drag her down, gently and playfully tussling with her. She wriggles and tries to lick my lips, and Lenna laughs.

“Wolf!” Jarro shouts, scuttling backward. “Isn’t it…dangerous?”

I rub Poppy’s belly. “No she’s not dangerous, are you? Are you, girl? You’re a big ol’ softy, aren’t you?”

“Unless someone threatens us,” Lenna warns. “Then she’s not soft at all.” She raises an eyebrow at Jarro as he absorbs this information.

“Can I pet her?”

Lenna nods, and Jarro creeps closer, his hand shaking as he extends it toward the big gray wolf that I now think of as a friend. Poppy sits up and sniffs him before looking to Lenna.

“It’s okay,” Lenna says.

After an experimental lick, Poppy wags her tail politely, and Jarro rubs her head. I remember what that felt like, the first time I touched a wolf. I thought it would be rough, but it was so soft. I still can’t believe Lenna tamed her, considering Lenna used to be the scaredy-cat of the group. But here we are, in the Overworld, petting a wolf…with Jarro.

“She’s sweet,” Jarro says, like he can’t quite believe it. Poppy rolls onto her back, and Jarro rubs her belly with a look of utter awe.

“As long as you’re not an evoker. She loves tugging on their cloaks,” I say.

“It’s a great strategy,” Mal explains. “Poppy distracts the monsters, and then we can hit them with our swords, or Lenna can use her bow and arrow.”

Jarro looks at each of us in turn, confused. “Wait, where are your weapons? Don’t tell me you’re out here without any protection.”

Mal whips her diamond pickaxe out of her pocket, and Jarro’s eyes go as big as pumpkins. “How’d you do that?”

I pull a sword out of each pocket just to watch him gawp again. “It’s a magic trick Nan taught us. I’m carrying an entire armory.”

Jarro stops petting Poppy and stands. He reaches into his pocket and pulls it inside out. It’s clear that it should only be able to fit an apple, maybe. “So teach me.”

Mal puts her hands on her hips and stares him down.

“Try manners,” Lenna reminds him.

Jarro rolls his eyes like this is the dumbest thing in the world. “Please teach me?”

So Lenna does, because Lenna is kind like that, and because she’s really dedicated to helping spread Nan’s lore. Soon Jarro is practicing putting everything from Lenna’s pockets into his pockets and pulling it all back out again.

“It’s so easy!” He pulls out a huge book. “I can’t believe everybody doesn’t know about this!” Mal and Lenna exchange a wary glance, and Jarro notices it. “What?”

“We’ve been teaching everybody back home. Your mom learned it weeks ago. She didn’t show you?”

Jarro’s face goes as red as beetroot. “She must’ve forgot.”

Mal winces. “Well, I’m sure she meant to. She said it would come in really handy when it came time to harvest the sweet berries.” She takes the huge book in Jarro’s hand and hands it back to Lenna. “And the cookies.”

Looking a little guilty, Jarro pulls out a dozen of Lenna’s cookies, which she tucks back into her own pockets.

“I told you we can’t trust him,” I mutter.

“I just forgot because I was mad because—” Jarro goes quiet, frowning.

Because his mom lied to him, or at least neglected to teach him something she knew, something he would find helpful. That’s got to hurt.

Good.

“It’s okay,” Lenna says in that Lenna-ish way that makes you feel okay about messing up. “Here. You probably need a cookie, anyway. I’m guessing whoever tied you to that tree didn’t feed you.”

She hands him back a cookie, and he devours it in two chomps and mutters, “Thanks. ’Sa really good cookie.”

“Thanks. I made it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s Nan’s recipe.”

“She always just seemed like a crazy old kook, but she can bake.”

“She’s not crazy!” I snap, because I definitely don’t like the way Jarro and Lenna are just talking, like he doesn’t have a long-running history of bullying her.

“It’s true. She’s just eccentric,” Lenna adds.

“And also my great-great-grandmother, so not a great target for rudeness,” Mal continues.

Jarro is turning red again, but he wipes cookie crumbs from his lip and tries to play it cool. “Well, she definitely seems unusual. And bossy. So I can see how you two might be related. Still, great cookies, and fun pocket trick. Nan’s cool in my book.”

Mal nods, and Jarro nods, and then everyone is getting along again, except for me, because I’m still mad and I will probably be mad forever, or at least until Jarro helps us get Tok back.

“Guys, we’re losing time. Thingy is getting antsy. Let’s go.” I take the lead back from Mal and let go so Thingy can run ahead, not caring this time what order we’re in. Jarro’s clearly not going to hurt the girls, but he’s more than glad to get on my nerves.

My pig is still chasing his berry trail, and it takes me a while to catch up. I follow him from berry to berry, scratch his back and enjoy his happy oinks, then prepare for him to run off for the next berry. But after a while…he doesn’t run up ahead. He cocks his chubby pink face back and forth, oinking confusedly.

“What’s up?” Mal says, arriving by my side.

“Either he’s full or the berry trail has run out.”

Of course, Thingy is never full, so it’s obviously the latter.

We spread out to look for berries, but if Thingy can’t find a berry, then there is no berry. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, and now the trail has run out. It would make sense if the kidnappers headed for the village or woodland mansion, but what if they didn’t? What if they suddenly changed direction? The world is so much bigger than we’d ever dreamed, and we’ve seen only a small fraction of it. Who knows how far away Tok could be right now?

I sigh and droop, and Mal pats my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Chug. We’ll find him. I just know we will.”

“But what if we don’t?” Jarro says.

We all glare at him. If looks could kill, he would be a skid mark right now.

“We’re going to find him,” Mal repeats. “And that’s that.”

“But how?” Jarro asks.

No one has an answer for that.

As we stand around, uncertain, hopeless, Poppy sniffs the ground like she always does when we stop. She follows her nose over to a small copse of trees, the only one for what seems like miles. Whatever she’s found on the ground has really caught her attention. Her ears perk up as she sniffs and wags furiously before giving a sharp, excited yip.

“Maybe Poppy found a berry?” I ask, voice cracking with hope.

Mal nods and leads us over there, and I’m surprised to find an iron ingot, of all things. I pick it up and turn it over in my hands. “It’s basically a rock, Poppy, but, thanks, anyway.” I angrily shove it in my pocket, reasoning that if we find Tok—no, when we find Tok—he can use it for his crafting. Mal puts her hand on my shoulder. She’s the kind of friend who can always tell when I’m on the verge of tears.

But Poppy isn’t done. She paws at the ground and rolls around in the dirt, wiggling on her back in ecstasy. I squat down and notice that there’s something weird about this dirt.

It’s got funny little shapes pressed into it here and there, like raindrops, all going in the same direction.

“Llamas,” I murmur.

“Where?” Mal asks, perking up as she pulls a lead out of her pocket.

I shake my head and point. “No. Those are hoofprints. There were llamas here. And someone must’ve dropped this iron ingot.” I take it out of my pocket and run my fingers over it before holding it out to Poppy. She sniffs it and yips excitedly.

“It’s got to be Tok!” I nearly shout. “He must’ve dropped it on purpose. His pockets are always full of crafting stuff.”

Mal squats beside me to inspect the prints. “Maybe he ran out of berries and had to use the next best thing.”

“It makes sense,” Lenna adds. “With all the loot they stole, they would need some way to carry it all.”

“Come to think of it, I do remember hearing big animals when I was blindfolded,” Jarro says. I hadn’t noticed that he had rejoined us, and now I am significantly less happy. “I don’t know what llamas are, but do they make weird sounds? Like, meehhh and bleh and ptoo?”

I’m honestly shocked at how well Jarro can reproduce llama sounds, possibly because he, too, is a stinky, hairy, drooling beast.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what they sound like.” Mal is similarly stunned.

“Then they’ve got some.”

Following a trail of llama prints isn’t nearly as pleasant as following a happy pig eating sweet berries, but we manage. When there’s dirt, we can see prints, and when we enter thick grass, there’s almost a trail where the grass has parted—and chunks of it have been nibbled off. As we walk, we fall back into our familiar line, with Mal in the lead, then me, then Lenna, but Jarro hangs around Lenna and starts asking her all sorts of questions. The funny thing is that the old version of Lenna, Loony Lenna, the one whose family kicked her out of the mine for being weird and dreamy—she would’ve been scared of Jarro and gone quiet and avoided eye contact. But since Lenna’s been working with Nan, she has this new confidence. She’s discovered that she really likes talking about her interests, and since Jarro is asking questions about animals and mobs, she knows exactly how to answer. She stinks at small talk, but she’s great at lecturing about the stuff she loves.

Fine. At least she’s keeping him occupied. And if he tries to hurt her, Poppy will bite off his arm. And then I’ll bite off the other.

I hurry up ahead with Mal.

“So they’re getting cozy,” I say darkly.

She glances back over her shoulder. “I mean, they’re walking side by side and talking, but I wouldn’t call it cozy.”

“He’s our enemy.”

“He’s just another kid who can be a jerk sometimes, Chug.”

“All the time.”

She glances back again. “Well, he’s not being a jerk now. Maybe he’s only a jerk around Remy and Edd.”

“He’s always around Remy and Edd, back home.”

“Exactly.”

I stomp a little harder so she’ll know I’m mad.

“We’re stuck with him, you know,” she finally says.

“Just because I know it doesn’t mean I like it.”

“Me neither. He wasn’t nice to any of us. But we changed out here. Maybe he can, too.”

I can’t imagine Jarro being anything other than the bullying jerk who torments my brother and lives to see me get in trouble, but there’s no point in arguing with Mal when she’s trying to play peacekeeper. I can’t believe my life right now depends on following hoofprints and playing nice with someone who treats me like poop. On our last adventure, I felt like I had everything I needed, like even when we’d been robbed, I could survive and thrive as long as I had the Bad Apples by my side. Now we’re missing Tok, my brother and best friend, and in his place, we’re stuck with…a moldy apple?

No. A moldy beetroot.

Whatever Jarro is, he’s not part of the Mob Squad. He’s just a jerk who’s too stupid to avoid being jerknapped.

Which reminds me…

“Hey, Jarro?”

“What?” he shouts back.

“Why’d they jerknap you, anyway?”

Mal and I slow down—since we’re not chasing Thingy’s appetite anymore, my desperation to find Tok is what’s really driving us—and Jarro and Lenna catch up.

“Stop calling me a jerk,” he growls.

“Then stop being a jerk,” I growl back.

“Boys!” Lenna and Mal say at the same time.

Jarro and I both growl in response, and it’s so funny and stupid that I nearly choke trying to hold back a laugh.

“But really. Why did they take you?” Mal asks.

Jarro walks for a minute before answering. “I heard a noise last night, out in the sweet berry field. I grabbed our axe and went running out there, thinking I would scare away some lost sheep or naughty little kids trying to eat the berries. But I ran right into a bunch of adults—strangers in armor with weapons. They already had Tok tied up, bound and gagged on a lead. They were ripping the berry bushes out of the ground and stuffing the berries into chests. I tried to stop them, but one kid against six adults? I never had a chance. And their swords didn’t look like the ones in Elder Stu’s shop, all shiny and new. They were dirty and chipped and stained, like they’d been used a lot.” Jarro shudders. “The leader was—mean, but almost like he felt sorry for me? He said they couldn’t let me go because I’d seen them, but that maybe they could put me to work in the mine.”

“My parents’ mine?” Lenna asks, worried.

Jarro shakes his head. “How would I know? They were blindfolding me. They’d taken my axe—it was my grandmother’s axe. One guy put his hand over my mouth before I could shout and wake up everybody. After that, they kept me with Tok, with somebody holding our leads, and I don’t know what the rest of them did. I just know they stole all our sweet berries, and it was my fault.”

Much to my surprise, Jarro is starting to tear up and trying his hardest not to cry. I know what it feels like, when you can’t protect what’s yours. When strange adults take what you’ve worked hard to collect—and when you realize for the first time that there might be people in the world who want to hurt you. And I remember how scary it was, the first time we were out here, in the Overworld for the first time. At least we had Nan’s books and teachings. At least we had one another. Jarro is a jerk, but he got kidnapped from his own yard in the middle of the night and then abandoned, alone, with nothing, in the middle of nowhere.

Still, I don’t trust him.

I reach into my pocket and pull out an axe.