The Overworld Games Read online

  Plus, I think I’ve already made Dad proud—or at least really happy.

  I’m not so sure about that second goal, though. I mean, how many wither skeletons and zombie pigmen are going to sign up for Firework Crafting? They’ll be too busy with Sword Fighting and Sprinting, for sure.

  OH CRUD.

  I just thought about which mobs MIGHT sign up for Firework Crafting.

  See, I’ve been so worried about zombie pigmen and wither skeletons, I totally forgot about some of the OTHER fire breathers in the Nether! I mean, blazes are all ABOUT fire. And they shoot off fireballs three at a time!

  And what about ghasts??? (GASP.) Those flying fluff balls have a REPUTATION for setting things on fire. They could shoot off fireworks in their sleep (I mean, if they actually slept).

  So if a ghast or blaze signs up for Firework Crafting, it’s all over for me. I’ll have to pack up my gunpowder and go home.

  UNLESS . . . I can make super-duper-DELUXE firework rockets. Like the kind that soar all the way to the Extreme Hills and beyond. Or rain down spark showers like a lightning storm. Or . . .

  Where’s Cash Creeper when you need him??? He and I could have put our brains together and made some stellar rockets for sure.

  But Cash is gone. And Dad’s my partner now.

  Speaking of, where IS Dad???

  I’m heading out back to find him. Forget the chickens and the hay. We’ve got WORK to do!

  DAY 16: WEDNESDAY (NIGHT)

  I’m starting to figure out where Chloe gets her competitive streak.

  I mean, I want to win the Overworld Games—I really do. But Dad? He takes this “winning the gold” thing to a whole new level.

  When we finally got out to the garage to work on fireworks this morning, I showed him the instructions Mr. Carl had given us for the event: “Use no more than 3 units of gunpowder per rocket. Have an adult present at all times. Ya-da-ya-da-ya-da.”

  But Dad wasn’t even listening. He had already crept into the corner to show me his secret stash of materials. There was a towering stack of paper, a whole BIN full of gunpowder, and even a few firework stars. Perfect!

  Then Dad went all mad scientist (or crazy potion brewer) on me. He picked up a piece of charcoal and scribbled a bunch of notes on the wall.

  He wrote every ingredient you could use to make rockets fly LONGER or HIGHER. To make them TWINKLE or trail off. To make HUGE explosions, STAR-shaped explosions, and even CREEPER-shaped explosions!

  Dad was on a roll, let me tell you. When he stood back to admire his work, he was sweating.

  “What do you think, son?” he asked.

  “I THINK it’s going to be tough to get the ingredients for creeper-shaped explosions,” I pointed out. Because according to Dad’s notes, one of the ingredients for a creeper-shaped explosion was a creeper HEAD.

  Dad said, “Yeah, you’re right. I guess I kind of lost MY head for a minute there.” Then he about fell on the floor laughing at his own joke—his total DAD joke.

  I wasn’t laughing, though, when I looked at the ingredients on the wall. I mean, some of them were normal:

  • Gunpowder (We have PLENTY of that, thanks to the Exploding Baby and my Evil Twin’s “strategic exploding.”)

  • Dye (No probs. Mom was the dye master when she went all ga-ga over knitting.)

  • Feathers (Piece of cake. Did I mention the chicken coop in the backyard?)

  But some of the other ingredients were going to be IMPOSSIBLE to find—unless Dad was thinking about breaking into someone’s treasure chest or something.

  “Gold nuggets, Dad? Diamonds? REALLY?”

  He shrugged. “Do you want to win or what?”

  I gotta say, the gleam in Dad’s eye made me a LITTLE nervous. But, yeah, I wanted to win. So when he said, “Trust me, creep, I got this,” I decided to go ahead and trust him.

  And to go talk to Mom about a few feathers and some dye.

  DAY 19: SATURDAY

  Sorry I haven’t written lately. I’ve been walking through fire. FIREWORKS, that is. See what I did there?

  Dad and I have been in a Firework Crafting FRENZY. I’m surprised we haven’t blown up the garage yet, with all the gunpowder and fire charges piling up!

  I swear Dad has been making my sisters blow up on purpose, just to get more gunpowder. Like last night after dinner, he tickled Cammy till she blew sky-high.

  Then when Chloe wanted to show off her strategic exploding, Dad kept asking her to show him again. And again. And AGAIN.

  Every time she blew, he’d get the broom and the gunpowder bin and clean up the mess. Then he’d wink at me, like we were in on this thing together. I mean, we ARE, but if Mom weren’t so busy with her chickens, I don’t think she’d exactly approve of Dad’s techniques.

  When she heard Chloe explode for like the thirteenth time, Mom DID come inside to see what was going on.

  But I saved Dad’s butt with my genius thinking. Right away, I asked Mom if she could help us whip up another batch of colored dye for our fireworks.

  I learned a long time ago that if I want to stay on Mom’s good side, I gotta really schmooze her with the compliments. So I told her what a great job she’d done with the rose red and dandelion yellow dyes, and that I was really hoping she’d make cactus green dye for our fireworks next.

  I’m not gonna lie—it wasn’t my best schmoozing. Because I REALLY don’t like cactuses cacti, and I’d rather not have Mom bringing any of those pokey plants home. But what can I say? Green was the only color I could think of on the fly.

  When Mom said she was thinking about combining the red and yellow dyes to make orange, I fell all over myself complimenting THAT idea. So pretty soon, Mom was off and running, and dye was bubbling on the stove.

  When I knew Dad was back out in the garage (where he couldn’t get us into any more trouble), I snuck into the backyard to get some feathers.

  I’ve been trying to pick up every chicken feather I can find on the ground. But sometimes, it’s pretty slim pickings. Like last night, I only found one pathetic little feather. So I decided to brave the chicken coop and look for more.

  Sure enough, the floor in the coop was COVERED with feathers! So I started scooping them up left and right. But it turns out, one of them was still attached to a chicken. OOPS.

  That thing squawked so loud, it scared the gunpowder right out of me. I actually blew up a little, which I really try not to do. And my explosion caused all those chickens to start squawking. And then Mom came running. And then Dad came running (with his broom to sweep up all the gunpowder).

  That’s how Dad and I pretty much got banned from the chicken coop. For FOREVER.

  But that’s okay. I’ve got a pile of feathers, and Dad’s got an even bigger pile of gunpowder. And we’ve got ALL WEEKEND to make fireworks.

  How lucky can one creep be?

  DAY 19: SUNDAY

  Dad and I spent the entire NIGHT making fireworks. Every. Single. Minute.

  I’ll bet our fireworks stash is the biggest and best in the whole OVERWORLD. Dad thinks so too. He said we’d better take inventory. That means making a list of everything you made. Dad says it’ll come in handy if anyone breaks into the garage and steals our fireworks.

  I gotta say, Dad’s gotten a little weird since we started this firework thing. He thinks spies from every middle school in the Nether are going to come and raid our stash before the Overworld Games. I think it’s because he hasn’t been sleeping. He looks like Sam the Slime did when he was drinking WAY too much hot chocolate and had the jitters.

  And a jittery Dad should probably steer clear of explosive fireworks.

  But I think the inventory is pretty cool, so I copied it here:

  So now I’ve been reading our inventory, trying to imagine what each of the firework rockets will look like. But you know what? Even if you’re a creeper with a genius imagination, it’s hard to imagine firework explosions. How high will they go? What colors will they be? Will they be super LOUD?
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  So I got this idea. At bedtime this morning, I heard Mom singing lullabies to Cammy in her room. So I snuck past and headed for the garage.

  Dad must have had the same idea, because he was already standing in the garage by the rockets. It was like my old man was reading my mind.

  “You want to try one?” he asked.

  That’s how we ended up creeping into the backyard with a rocket and some flint and steel. It was just one of the small BORING rockets. I was pretty sure no one would even hear it, except Sir Coughs-a-Lot next door. And maybe Sock the Sheep, who was eyeing us suspiciously.

  But I was wrong. Turns out, even our small rockets are pretty impressive. As soon as Dad lit the fuse, that rocket squealed and soared sky high. It climbed up, up, up and then . . .

  BOOM!!!

  After all the gunpowder and feathers settled, I tried to tell Mom that her dye colors were beautiful. “Did you see the red and yellows sparks?” I asked her. “How about that shower of ORANGE?”

  But she said Dad and I weren’t just banned from the chicken coop anymore. She said we were banned from the WHOLE backyard. “Don’t you know I have EGGS incubating in that chicken coop?”

  She hissed something about me being grounded for life if anything happened to those baby chicks. So I really hope the eggs hatch on time.

  Oh, and did I mention Sock the Sheep? He was so wigged out from the fireworks, he started shaking like a hissing creeper. Mom said I could take care of him in MY room, since I was the one who had caused his anxiety.

  So now I’m trying to sleep with a sheep staring at me. And a squid.

  But who needs sleep?! Now that I’ve seen how cool even our smallest rockets are, I KNOW I’ll blow away the competition at the Overworld Games.

  At tomorrow’s planning meeting, I’m going to let Mr. Carl know that I’m ducking out of Pig Riding. I really have to focus my talents on Firework Crafting if I’m going to win the gold.

  Then I can sit back and take it easy till the Games. Yup, this creep’s got it made in the shade.

  DAY 22: TUESDAY

  So, it’s possible that I didn’t TOTALLY understand how the Overworld Games work. Good thing I went to the planning meeting after school today and found out, right?

  See, I’ve been REALLY focused on winning the gold in Firework Crafting. And I still am—don’t get me wrong.

  But now Mr. Carl says that in order for Mob Middle School to win the Games, we have to take home gold in like FIVE events. So even though I’m an independent creeper who likes to do his own thing, I gotta look out for my peeps too, right?

  We were all talking about it after the meeting. Ziggy thinks his team will take home gold in Sprinting, and for once, I agree with him. How could he not win with Eddy Enderman teleporting the team to victory?

  Then I reminded my friends that I’ve got Firework Crafting in the bag.

  But we’ll still need three more gold medals. So I’m glad Chloe has been practicing Strategic Exploding. And Bones is just about the best Spider Rider around, even though I would NEVER tell him that.

  Still, we’re going to have to score at least ONE more gold from another event. Sword Fighting maybe? Nope. That gold medal has “Wither Skeletons from the Nether” written all over it.

  Which pretty much leaves . . .

  Yup, Sam thought of it too. “You’ll win that for sure, Gerald,” he said, slapping me on the back.

  I just about fell over—partly because Sam’s slap was WAY too hard (that slime doesn’t know his own strength) and partly because I haven’t been on a pig in like . . . oh, I don’t know . . . two weeks??? And if that skeleton kid from seventh grade is the only other mob who signed up for Pig Riding, I DEFINITELY need to get back on a pig. My school is depending on me!

  I pretty much sprinted home (even though I HATE sprinting) to ask Mom if she could take me to the pig farm before dinner.

  But you know what she said? She said she couldn’t go today because she has to look for her missing earrings. Her missing DIAMOND earrings.

  Mom was turning the house upside down looking for those earrings. And instead of helping, Dad was saying things like “I didn’t think you even LIKED those earrings,” and “You haven’t worn them since Cammy was an egg!”

  Well, it didn’t take me long to figure out that Mom wasn’t going to find her earrings. The guilt on Dad’s face was a dead giveaway.

  So I crept off to my room as quietly as I could, and I think I’ll just chill in here for a while. Because when Mom finds out that Dad used her diamond earrings to make fireworks, there’s going to be an explosion of a whole DIFFERENT kind.

  Sticky and I had better take cover.

  DAY 24: THURSDAY

  So Dad’s been hiding out in the garage for the past couple of days.

  I can’t really blame him. See, Mom’s hissing mad about the diamond earring thing, but she won’t TALK about it. Not one word. She’s afraid she’ll get so mad, she’ll explode, and that won’t be good for her precious eggs incubating in the coop.

  Instead, Mom’s giving Dad the silent treatment. She’s acting all peaceful and Zen on the outside, but I can tell she’s bubbling hot on the inside. Dad knows it, too. The CHICKENS probably even know it. I’ll bet those baby chicks are too AFRAID to hatch!

  Mom’s fuse isn’t as short as Chloe’s, but she’s not a peace-loving creeper like me and Great-Great-Grandpa Gerald either. When Mom finally blows, it’s going to be epic, let me tell you.

  So I was hiding in my room this morning when Cate crept down the hall. She must have just seen her pigman boyfriend or something, because she was pretty much floating. Love does WEIRD things to mobs.

  That’s when it hit me that Cate’s crush on Mr. Pigman COULD come in handy. I asked her if her boyfriend was looking forward to the Overworld Games. (That was just an icebreaker. You gotta make small talk before you move on to more important stuff.)

  She said “Yeah,” even though I don’t think she really heard what I said. So I asked if he was coaching any zombie pigmen or wither skeletons in Firework Crafting. I had to ask her THREE times before she finally heard me.

  Then she said, “No. Only a couple of ghasts.”

  GHASTS???

  I let Cate float on down the hall, and I ran out to the garage to tell Dad what we were up against.

  That’s when Dad got that gleam in his eye again, which made him look a whole lot like Chloe. He picked up one of our rockets and said, “Maybe we should add some more gunpowder to these things.”

  I reminded Dad that we’d already used 3 units of gunpowder. “That’s the max, right? Mr. Carl said so.”

  But Dad just shrugged. He said that SOME creepers think adding more gunpowder is dangerous, but he’s not really worried about it.

  I gotta say, I’M kind of worried about it. Because I’m the creep who’ll get in trouble if Mr. Carl finds out—maybe even kicked out of the Games. And I’m also the creep who will be setting off these fireworks, and I’d kind of like to not blow myself up.

  But I DO want to win. I mean, I HAVE to win!

  So the next thing I knew, I was opening up those rockets and stuffing in more gunpowder. Because every once in a while, Dad has a genius idea of his own.

  DAY 26: SATURDAY

  So tonight was supposed to be Pig Riding night.

  I tried to keep a positive attitude about the whole thing. I figured that if I was lucky, no other schools were going to sign up for the event. I’d probably win a gold medal just for showing up. It could happen, right?

  Turns out, it was the PIGS that didn’t show up.

  Sam and I walked all the way to the pig farm, but the pen was EMPTY! Then the farmer came out of his barn and showed us how the pig pen was broken and all black on one side.

  “Charred,” he called it. “From the lightning. The pigs got hit, too.”

  Well, Sam didn’t put two and two together right away, but I’m pretty good at math. So I knew exactly what had happened to those pigs.

&nb
sp; “Zombie pigmen?” I whispered.

  The farmer nodded. He raised his finger to his lips and pointed toward a field.

  My creeper heart started beating like crazy, because there were about SIX zombie pigmen staggering around that field. They didn’t look like Ziggy Zombie. No, they looked more like my big sister Cate. Their faces were half green and half pink—PIG pink. And they were grunting and growling, like they’d woken up on the wrong side of the pigpen or something.

  Sam wanted to bounce right out there and introduce himself, but the farmer held him back. “You’ll probably want to leave them alone,” he warned. “If you annoy one of them, ALL of them will come after you. They’re fast. And MEAN.”

  So the rumors about zombie pigmen were TRUE. And if anyone could annoy a zombie pigman, it’d be Sam—just by being a little too cheerful. I led him away from the farm and the zombie pigmen as fast as I could.

  But all the way home, I wondered . . .

  Where are Mr. Carl and I going to find more pigs for riding? If I can’t practice riding, I won’t win. And I HAVE to win!!!

  And what if zombie pigmen from other schools sign up for Pig Riding? (Can a zombie pigman even ride a pig? I don’t want to find out!)

  And what if I annoy one of them during the Games? (Because even though it’s hard to believe, Chloe says that I CAN be kind of annoying sometimes.) Will ALL the zombie pigmen end up coming after ME?

  Well I’ll tell you something right now (something I would NEVER tell Dad):