Chapter 13: Wiggler Woes
"Luigi, is now really the best time?" Adrian asked, tapping his nails on the table with his chin resting in his other hand. "We need to get to the castle, right? There could be-" His attention locked onto the plate set before him, piled high with a dressed pastrami and swiss sandwich. "...danger afoot."
Sitting down with his own sandwich, Luigi spoke before taking a mouthful. "Yeah, but we never got to finish breakfast. You can't adventure on an empty stomach."
Adrian scoffed, picking up his food and trying to pretend his mouth was not watering profusely. "Whatever you say, 'Mama'." He took a greedy bite, snickering to himself. A moment later, he chuckled harder when he noticed Luigi's squinted eyes glaring at him over his stuffed cheeks.
After having eaten, the team shuffled down the pipe to town, where two things came to Adrian's immediate notice. For one: the pipe they had just emerged from was within the big broad gate that Adrian had seen yesterday before he met the brothers, which he now recalled as being accurate to the pipe's location in Paper Mario. Unfortunately, he had no time to ruminate on that fact as the other, more pressing gravity befell him that Toad Town was under attack.
The second their ears hit open air, Luigi and Adrian heard screams and the waddles of a thousand boots. Without warning, something long and red whizzed right by Adrian's face and just as quickly retracted. Following the origin point of the shot, the two of them shuddered at the sight of the abomination(s) before them. Swarming the cobbled street and colorful buildings of the West plaza, rampaging wigglers charged after helpless townspeople; what was even worse, half of the monsters had dry, crackled bodies clad with sharp spikes, and the other half had bulbous snouts that stretched open wide and shot out sticky, prehensile tongues, which allowed them to consume anything and everything not cemented to the ground.
"Cheese and rice!" Adrian shrieked, jumping backwards to narrowly dodge the second lunge of a tongue. He ducked down behind the pipe and Luigi followed suit, shivering again.
"Eugh! They're wigglers, but with Yoshi heads! That's a dangerous combination if I've ever seen one. Angry, and hungry…" Luigi flinched as a tongue once more darted just short of snagging his sleeve. "I think they can smell us!"
"Told you we shouldn't have stopped for lunch," Adrian griped. He thought on his toes, grabbed the mostly-smashed bag trail mix out of his backpack and flung it far off overhead, the munchies scattering across the giant mosaic picture of a star in the plaza circle. In an instant, a pair of "wiggl-shis" formed a feeding frenzy on the snacks, kicking up an enormous amount of dust.
Luigi peeked back around the pipe to see if the coast was clear enough to progress, but he quickly tugged Adrian's arm, urging for him to look. "Not all of them took the bait."
The former half of the wigglers, Adrian saw, did not appear to be in pursuit of food, rather they were merely terrorizing locals for the sake of it. They would stand up onto the rearmost segment of their bodies, then topple over in the direction of whatever they intended to destroy. Afterwards, they used their many feet to pry themselves loose from the ground, as their spines would become embedded, and then they would do it again. A handful of these creatures were performing these deadly flops, trying to knock over a fence that they could otherwise climb, but they did not seem aware of that fact. Upon closer inspection, Adrian noticed that these wigglers' faces were that of-
"Pokeys. Big, dumb, mean cactus golems," Luigi whispered, frowning. He looked Adrian deep in the eye, clutching his fists in determination. "W-we can't leave them to ruin the village, they'll destroy everything!"
"But we can't attack them! Their spikes will penetrate your boots," Adrian stated matter-of-factly. It took his brain a second to catch up to what his mouth had said, which was, frankly, too much. Being a stranger to the world, he should have no idea that pokeys inflict damage to one who jumps on them, but he had just proven to know it. He felt his lungs constrict in panic.
Luigi was nonplussed. "You're right…" he said. His eyebrows knit together and he pouted pensively.
Had Adrian given himself away? How was he going to salvage his reasoning? Luigi seemed to be staring straight through him. Suddenly, the plumber's eyes grew huge and he reached out.
"Duck!" Luigi tucked his arms around Adrian and rolled them both out of an oncoming wiggler's path. A member of the "poke-ler" variant had snuck up in the dust cloud and crashed to the ground where Adrian had just been crouching. Luigi's shout and the resounding crack of punctured stone drew the attention of more mutants, namely the Yoshi-headed worms that had gulped every last crumb of Adrian's bait, plus the bag it came in.
His fight or flight response kicking in, Adrian's eyes sparked alight. No forethought even crossed his mind and he leapt backwards with Luigi mirroring his actions, putting both of them under the roof of the West exit, out of range of the ravenous caterpillars. 'This is no turn-based battle!' Adrian's head-voice enumerated, 'This is life or death. It's not a game!.. But what would I do if it was?' He rapidly considered everything laid out before him: the enemies' attack styles, the setting, his ally and his own abilities. Could he control foes? He had only tested his power on Luigi, but if ever there was a time to try, it would be now.
Adrian focused on the pokey hybrid nearest to him, still peeling itself free from the pavement. He mentally commanded it to freeze, but the beast still rose and looked at him with no change in its doofy expression. Somehow, Adrian could sense that his thoughts were not reaching it.
"Hyaaah!" Luigi cried, blindly charging at the duo of half-Yoshis and hopping onto the back of one. Miraculously, he managed to mount it, but the monsters did not respond well and started winding wildly around each other to get at him.
"Luigi- Oh!" Adrian just about started to yank his hair out in fear and worry. "What are you doing! Are you insane?!"
Gripping the raging worm he sat upon, Luigi blubbered, "It worked last time! I-I had to do something!"
Sighing with exasperation, Adrian called, "Well, hang on! I'll figure a way out of this!" He gasped as the pokey-pillar scuttled at him with alarming speed. "Nyararargh!" Adrian's legs ambulated uselessly for a moment before his feet caught traction and zipped away, taking the risk of running right past the chaos that Luigi was caught in the crossfire of. As he ran, he found himself approaching the remaining bulk of thorny worm enemies and was quick to curb to his left, where he set eyes on a yellow building with a half-eaten sign of a fire flower hanging by the door. All at once, the puzzle pieces snapped together in his mind. Skidding to a halt at the door, he yanked it open and barged in, slamming it shut to keep the creepy crawly cacti out.
The shop was mostly what Adrian expected, namely the long shelf along the left hand side displaying an assortment of wares and the cashier counter at the far end. He had no time to make more detailed observations, his notice snapping to a particular item on the wall. Adrian rushed up, snatched the POW block, and reeled back around to leave, when a voice barked from behind him.
"Hey! That costs five gold coins, kid!" The Toad shopkeeper, who was cowering behind the counter up until that moment, raised his green-spotted cap and shook his fist warily.
Adrian blinked at the Toad, breathless. Digging into his pocket, the only thing he had on him was his souvenir mushroom, which angered him to look at. "You know what? Take this as collateral!" Adrian chucked the shroom at the Toad's head, painlessly stunning him long enough to hightail it back out of the store. "I'll pay you back later!"
Just before he stepped foot back on the street, Adrian looked up in time to avoid two tumbling poke-lers that had waited just outside the grocer's. He slid across the ground between them, football-carrying the POW block under his arm. Before he could recover and stand though, a third foe toppled right at him. It was all Adrian could do to hold up the block and shield himself, eyes screwed shut in desperation and hope. One spiked segment made contact, then an instant, earth-rattling shockwave boomed through the whole town, centered directly in Adrian's hands.