A.N.: This is the first chapter of the rewritten "The Devils Best Friend", I really hope it's better than the last version. Sorry I sat on my hands for so long, I managed to get a friend to proof read this but they never got back to me on it.

An eight year old boy with tan skin and dark hair pretended to hit mobs with his stone sword, his first stone sword. His father had given it to him as a sort of coming of age gift. When he turned twelve he would receive his first iron sword, and when his was sixteen he would be old enough to go out into the world on his own, as was tradition. But until then, he would have to content himself with slashing at the air and imagining that he was clearing a path through hordes of zombiepigmen for his loyal party as they conquered the nether.

"Steve, time to come inside now." called a woman from the small woodland house only ten blocks away. The sun was setting and mobs would start coming out of hiding at any moment.

"Coming, Mommy!" the boy called back. He held up his sword in front of his face and marveled at how it simply vanished with a little 'pop' as he willed it into his inventory. He had only recently learned how to store and equip items with the little magic he, and all humans, possessed. Item magic was the most basic of human magics, and allowed the placement of blocks and the ability to turn items into objects and back. It was item magic that made humans different from Notch's other mobs, such as creepers and zombies.

A creeper came out early and set its sights on Steve. It was his duty as a creeper to kill as many humans as possible, and this one looked too young to have children of its own, by killing it he could stop other humans from being born. He waited behind a tree as the older female human went back into the abomination it called home. 'Now!' The creeper ran out from behind its tree and stood between the boy and its house. The human screamed and ran, typical foolish human behavior, the woods would provide it no shelter. The human ran blindly away from its doom, but was young and panicked, easy pray. Soon its mere two legs would give out, so long as it did not stumble first… It tripped over its own foot.

Steve covered his face with his arms on instinct, all he could think to do was protect his face and cry in sheer terror as the creeper blew up with a cry of "GLORY!" in the ancient tongue of the creeper. The force of the explosion slammed the boy into a tree, but he didn't realize it, he had blacked out before he even hit the oak log block. He lay there, half dead, for a good thirty minutes before he got really lucky.

"Steve?!" Susana shouted into the woods. She had heard her son scream, but by the time she had made it back outside he was gone. "Steve?! Steve where are you?!"

There was no reply.

She ran back inside, fearing only the worst as a list of overworld mobs and their highest recorded stats ran through her mind at efficiency V speeds. "Jack! Steve's missing!" Came the panicked mother to her husband.

In a matter of seconds they were ready for whatever mob that had the audacity to get between them and their baby. A very wise enderman vanished when he saw the two in full enchanted armor, and the murderous looks they gave a not so wise zombie.

Steve woke up felling more groggy than he ever had before, but otherwise, fine. He vaguely remembered what had happened before he had passed out, and even his fuzzy mind could comprehend that he shouldn't be alive, and that if he was, he should be in great pain. But as he thought this, he found only a dull ach in his upper back where he had hit that tree. After several minutes of what could be called thought, Steve realized that he was moving, but not of his own accord. The ground he faced passed beneath him, but he couldn't feel his legs moving. Then it occurred to him that the pair of legs that were moving were not his, as he was oriented the wrong way to them. This meant that someone was carrying him over their shoulder, but who?... A person in a blue shirt and blue pants… no wait… a cyan shirt… hm… wasn't Steve wearing the same thing?…

Before Steve could really register it, he had been lain on his own bed in his own home. The man who had put him there stared at Steve for several seconds… or perhaps they were minutes… Notch it was hard to tell. The man had the same tan skin and dark brown hair as Steve, and they were indeed wearing the same outfit, cyan t-shirt, blue jeans and dark gray shoes. But what struck a note in Steve's head were his eyes: solid white, no iris, and no pupil. Steve felt he should know those eyes, despite the fact that he had never seen them in his life… Didn't his mother tell him a story about a man with white eyes?... Steve was too out of it to remember.

The silence was broken by the yelp of a woman and then the war cry of a truly pissed spouse. The man quietly broke a window, threw some sort of dark green sphere, and was gone. Steve fell asleep the second he left.

As the sun rose, Steve's father hacked and slashed at countless mobs out of pure frustration over the loss of his only son. Steve's mother only cried into her bloodied hands. Steve was nowhere to be found, this almost certainly meant that he was dead, that he had died and his body had despawned.

Jack beheaded a creeper, the last one fool enough to get within thirty blocks of him, and moved over to Susana. "C'mon Sweety, time to head home."

The mother only shook her head violently, still sobbing into her hands.

"C'mon Su', we can look more later, but we should restock on food and weapons." He knew that 'looking' would prove just as useless as it had all night. There wasn't a single block they hadn't searched in the entire biome, and there was no way their eight year old could have made it that far in one night. But it was all too obvious that Susana needed reassurance, so that was what he feebly tried to offer her.

After a moment's pause, She got up and started on a solemn walk home, Jack followed beside her with one comforting hand on her shoulder.

Susana and Jack were both exhausted, physically and emotionally, but it was no time for rest, at this point they had decided that they would either find Steve, or die trying.

First order of business: food. Susana headed for Steve's room, he kept a 'secret' store of apples under his bed. But when she opened the door she screamed.

Steve awoke with a start as his over exited mother screeched with, albeit mistakable, joy. Jack heard her and came running. "What's wrong!?"

Susana just rushed over and grabbed her son around the neck and proceeded to accidentally squeez the life out of him. "M-mom… air." Steve choked.

Jack gave a relieved sigh, "Where the nether were you boy?"

"Yeah what happened?" Asked Steve's mother, releasing him.

"There was a creeper, and a guy with white eyes carried me home." Steve said simply.

"Uh, white eyes?" Susana was unconvinced that he even existed, much less had gone out, saved Steve from a creeper, and then carried him home.

"Mm-hm." Steve seemed to think nothing of it.

"You must have had a bad dream sweetie." She claimed, in that 'mother knows all' kind of way.

"Oh…" It hadn't really seemed like a dream, but the whole thing had been rather fuzzy, so maybe it was just a dream. But Steve felt he should know that man, he was sure he had heard stories of a white eyed man, what was his name? "Mommy, didn't you tell me Herobrine has white eyes?"

"Well yes, but Herobrine is just a legend sweetheart, he's not really real." Again with the 'mother knows all'.

"Oh…" Oh well, must have been a dream then.