A/N: First published crossover! Yay!
This is a little thing I wrote a couple of years back; it's kind of a different take on a game that, to me, was kind of... eeeehhh... Fun when I was little but, now that I'm older, kinda experimental and stiff. This was also my first time really focusing on Luigi; I hadn't really written him before, and I actually think he turned out rather nicely. Two awesome characters, one unusual, unexplored relationship... Right up my alley.
Disclaimer: Mario, Luigi, and their friends are owned by Nintendo, and Sonic, Tails, and their friends are owned by SEGA. I own nothing mentioned here, unless you count a copy of the game it's set in.
If he was really honest with himself, Luigi didn't understand why his friends and teammates hated on their Olympic opponents so much. As far as he knew, Team Sonic hadn't done anything particularly deserving of his people's hatred; sure, Sonic got kind of annoying sometimes with his constant over-exuberance and Dr. Eggman was one of the weirdest individuals Luigi had ever met and Shadow constantly gave everyone around him death glares, but did those things justify Wario and Waluigi sabotaging the other team's fencing gear? The two tricksters had almost gotten themselves disqualified from the Games for doing that, only saving their skin by managing to cast doubt on the heads of the officials via lack of evidence. Was it really worth that? Was Team Sonic really that abhorrent?
No amount of reasoning could convince Luigi's brother of this possibility. Mario was dead set on beating Sonic into a hole in the ground for some reason. The mentality was somewhat contagious, and Luigi had found himself on more than one occasion saying some things he would later regret to various members of Team Sonic. The sentiments were eagerly returned; even Tails, young as he was, could spit out some pretty nasty retorts given enough reason.
Really, the general animosity the Olympics seemed to hold was ruining Luigi's once-optimistic view of them. He had expected to have fun on this trip, but this wasn't fun at all.
These last thoughts were the ones running through his mind as the green-clothed plumber heaved himself out of the pool with a deep cough and a massive sigh. He felt heavier than lead; his clothes adhered to his skin and restricted his movement as soon as they touched the lukewarm air. He would have to go back to the hotel and exchange his soaked overalls for something drier.
He blew his nose into his soggy sleeve to try and clear the stench of chlorine from his nose and picked up his hat, which had, fortunately, flown off when the rest of him had gone flying into the water. As he repositioned the hat over his dripping brown hair, he glanced around the Water Cube, looking for some sign of the one responsible for his impromptu swim. Whoever he or she was, they had long since left by this point, so, he reasoned, there was really no point in getting angry about it.
He decided to head back to the locker room and wring out the rest of his clothes before daring to hit the streets, since he was by himself and didn't particularly care to draw attention to the incident if it could be avoided. It soon became apparent, however, that he wasn't alone, after all; voices in the locker room that was his destination got louder as he grew closer. Ever the timid one, he peeked in as discreetly as he could, then recoiled upon recognizing the cobalt blue and golden yellow figures who were quarreling within. Sonic must've pushed me in, he realized, even his thoughts sounding a little too angry for his liking.
He was all set to charge in and give the hedgehog a piece of his mind when Tails's young voice rang out with annoyance equal to Luigi's; "What were you thinking, Sonic?"
"Knuckles dared me to," came the teenager's weak defense. "He said he'd tell them I can't swim if I didn't."
Luigi's blue eyes widened, and he stepped a bit back to keep his cover. He can't swim?
"Since when did you take blackmail like that?" Tails demanded, his tone indicating responsibility beyond his years. "Now you've set yourself up for even more trouble, cuz once he finds out you can't swim and you pushed him in... What's that gonna look like? You're a coward at that rate, trying to threaten your enemies."
"Am not! I didn't want to do it. D'ya think I'd have shoved somebody into that death trap if I—"
"But you did it anyway."
"Well... I... At least now Knux won't tell them I can't swim, so we're good, right?"
"No, we're not! Think about it, Sonic. There's sixteen of us competing, we're doing the four-by-one-hundred-meter relay tomorrow, and we need four teams to make it official. All of us have to swim. You have to swim. If you just stand there and don't jump in or—"
"Okay, okay, I get it!" Luigi could detect a surprising amount of discomfort in Sonic's voice. "I did something stupid and I'm gonna pay for it. I'll... I'll work something out. I'm not gonna let Mario win."
"Okay, then." Luigi jumped and dashed around the corner—which happened to land him in the empty women's changing room—when he realized Tails's voice was closer to him than before. Just a second later, footsteps were heard as the two friends left the locker room. "I'll help you. We'll work on step one: actually getting in the water without freaking out..."
Once the duo was well out of earshot, Luigi leaped out of the girl's locker room like it was on fire, then, realizing how immature that was, stepped into the men's room as calmly as he could manage. His head was spinning with information as he absentmindedly searched for a spare towel.
He couldn't fathom what to do with the incident as he tried to rub some warmth into his icy-cold skin. Obviously, Sonic and Tails weren't as bad as his teammates were making them out to be; Sonic had only done what he did because he felt he didn't have a choice, and Tails had rightfully scolded him for being a coward and an unfair sport. Judging from the way Sonic had defended himself, Luigi sensed that this whole episode was extremely out of character for the hedgehog, and it was clear Tails was almost as fed up with the tense atmosphere as Luigi himself was.
Either way, he'd also been granted access to a valuable piece of information. If Sonic couldn't swim or was afraid of water (or both, from the way things sounded), then Luigi's team had a huge leg up on the swimming events to make up for their less-than-comparable performance so far on the track. Mario would be thrilled.
Despite this, however, something held Luigi back from saying anything to him about it as he went back to the hotel and listened to Mario and the others plan their strategies for the next day's events, including the relay swim. As far as Mario knew, all the members of Team Sonic were just as adapted to water as they were, no matter how much he tried to puzzle out the way they did it when they were all so heavy for their size. No one, save for Luigi, seemed to notice that Sonic's swimming stats were missing in entirety; they were too busy freaking out over Vector's stellar times.
Luigi stayed quiet concerning what he'd heard at the Water Cube, and he mused over the "why" of this lack of act as he lay in bed that night. Perhaps he just didn't want to discredit the hedgehog; after all, he and Tails had been on their way to cram in some practice that afternoon.
Hello, his mind screamed back at him, a day is not enough time to learn to swim! Besides, he's on the other team! He's their leader, for crying out loud! You can't help him! What would Mario say if he ever found out?
Ah, the age-old question. Everything Luigi had ever done had been with Mario's approval in mind. His older twin had always had a certain jurisdiction over him, and the last thing he wanted was for Mario to be unhappy or even angry with him.
But that's not everything, Luigi, his conscience whispered, considerably calmer than his mind. Where's your sense of justice? Where's your drive to play fair?
It got thrown out the window when everybody else threw it there, the plumber shot back, well aware that he was arguing with himself. No one's playing fair anymore. If I start getting all moral, I'll get trampled! Squished like a bug!
Set an example. Maybe there's more to these guys than you thought. Don't count that hedgehog out just yet.
Luigi turned over again and forced his thoughts onto something else until he finally dozed off.
The next afternoon was the swimming relay, and to Luigi's—and the rest of his team's—surprise, Sonic showed up right on time, wearing a bright orange life jacket.
"Whassa matter with-a you?" Wario sneered as snickers began to float up from the rest of the team behind him.
"Don't-a you remember?" Waluigi nudged him with a smirk. "He can't-a swim."
Of course, Luigi groaned to himself with a mental facepalm. Waluigi would have figured it out, wouldn't he? Maybe they had taken Sonic's inability into account yesterday, and he had simply been so distracted that he'd missed it.
Sonic glared at his mockers with a fire burning in his green eyes. "That's what you think," he retorted with bravado. "Prepare to be smoked, oh ye of little faith!" He stomped away, head held high despite the jeers directed at him.
Though the others turned their backs to him as soon as they saw that he wasn't listening, Luigi saw him glance down at the floatation device strapped to his chest with a look of pure contempt. Luigi half expected him to rip it off right there and stuff it in the nearest paper shredder, but he simply joined his team, who appeared to be mostly silently critical of his choice of fashion for the moment, at the edge of the pool. He turned his scowl on the water, staring silently into the clear liquid as if mentally challenging it.
At that moment, Toad called for the teams to get ready, and Luigi found himself between Mario and Princess Peach, with Yoshi at the back of the line, ready to begin. Knuckles, Tails, Sonic, and Amy were in the lane next to them. There was no shortage of trash talk between the two teams, which Luigi tried to ignore.
Then, the race began. Mario and Knuckles jumped in first, both narrowly managing to avoid disqualification by fouling. Cheering ensued, and soon both had crossed the pool twice and tagged the wall, Knuckles just a hair ahead of Mario. Luigi lost track of what happened from there as he dived in after his brother. A flash of golden fur next to him served as his motivation to swim faster and faster, to push off the opposite wall with more strength than he'd done before, and outrace Tails to the end once again. As he was climbing out of the pool with Peach jumping over his head and arcing gracefully into the water, Tails came up beside him and frantically reached out for the wall. There was but a split second of hesitation before Luigi realized Sonic was in the pool.
"No a-way!" Mario cried in shock, consolidating the mirroring gasps of Yoshi and Luigi and the outbursts of the spectators into one exclamation as the hedgehog defied even his own expectations and moved forward in the water. He was using no normal swim stroke; it was almost as though he was running underwater, using his arms to control his direction but letting his legs do the power work. Despite the unorthodoxy, the method was undeniably effective; despite his costly moment of delay before leaping in, he was slowly but surely catching up to Peach.
The princess, for her own part, changed strategies the second the cobalt creature entered her field of vision, as did Princess Daisy's team across the pool. Their ace in the hole snatched away, Peach and Bowser both picked up the pace from leisurely to furious, and soon enough Sonic was in last place, but only by a short distance. The cheers and shouts intensified with the competition, as the teams screamed at their underwater competitors to go faster and the roaring crowd egged them all on.
Yoshi and Amy dived in at nearly the same moment, and the cheers smoothly transitioned from "Sonic!" and "Peach!" to the appropriate names—even by the members of their own teams, who neglected to notice that Sonic hadn't gotten out of the water yet.
Luigi looked down in surprise, and suddenly his voice was lost on him. Sonic didn't look good at all; his muzzle was pale, his quills were limp, and his ears were pinned flat to his head as he clung to the pool's edge and gasped for breath, eyes screwed shut as if he was afraid to look at more water. His teammates were too wrapped up in their excitement to notice him.
You know what? That's it. No more. I'm not letting this go on any more.
In that moment, Luigi saw a bit of himself. This was the kind of fear that had the potential to control a person, a kind of fear that Luigi had felt all too many times himself. Even if Sonic wasn't usually the type to solicit help and comfort from others, he was a person, too, and everyone had their moments where all they needed was someone to help them get back up. What Luigi hadn't gotten much of in the past from anyone besides Mario, he would gladly offer to others.
Even if they were his beloved brother's biggest rival.
Slipping quietly away from his teammates, Luigi knelt down next to the pool and, before he lost his nerve, gently grabbed Sonic's hand that so tightly held onto the pool's edge; idly, he wondered if he was shivering with cold or with fright. The hedgehog's head snapped up to look at him, with confusion scrawled across his face upon recognizing who was helping him. He allowed Luigi to pull him up high enough to where he could throw his leg over the side and heave himself up onto dry land.
"Ugh, thanks... Luigi," he coughed once he was on his hands and knees on the hard surface. He looked up slightly with a genuine smile—not a confident smirk, for the very first time. Luigi thought he looked like a nice guy when he smiled for real, and he returned the contagious gesture.
"You're-a welcome. It's-a nothing. I a-know how you feel."
Green eyes darted away nervously. "Heh... not exactly heroic, is it?"
Luigi could only shrug. "It's-a not-a your fault."
"Hey... Listen, I... I'm sorry about yesterday. I was the one who shoved you in the pool. That... that was my fault." For a moment, Sonic was just a normal teenager, caught uncomfortably between relieving his conscience and saving his scalp. He looked back up as if to try and save face; "I normally wouldn't have done it, honest, it was just—"
"Don't-a worry about it. Those-a overalls needed a-cleaning, anyway." The plumber's smile turned wry, but it was still there. "Just as-a long as you don't-a do it again."
"No way," Sonic replied immediately, raising one hand to his heart with another real smile. "We've all been acting crazy enough around here."
"That's-a for sure."
The cheers around them erupted to an absolutely deafening level, and suddenly Sonic was on his feet, rejoicing with his teammates at their close second-place finish. Luigi suddenly found himself swept into a group hug from Daisy, of all people, as apparently she was determined to make the most out of her own team's loss by celebrating Mario's team's win.
Once Luigi realized his team had won the race, he forgot about his talk with Sonic; it wasn't until after they'd left the Water Cube that he realized the trash talk had been almost nonexistent after the race.
"Hey-a, Luigi," came Mario's voice breaking into this thought as if on cue. Luigi wordlessly turned to his twin, who was smiling at him, an odd sort of smile. "I-a saw you with-a Sonic..."
Luigi cringed, thoughts immediately filling his mind on how he could defend his actions and express just how fed up he was with all the poor sportsmanship. However, he only ended up gaping at Mario for a minute when his brother's smile softened. "Good-a job."
Luigi was struck speechless, left only to return the warm gesture with one of his own.