Not much to say here at the top, except for please enjoy it!

Life is full of twists and turns.

You serve one cause or another because you think it's right.

Sometimes it's wrong.

But isn't that all just a matter of opinion?

Think about it. If somebody just leapt into your home, squashing you like bugs, killing your friends and your family, you'd say they were evil.

Both the 'good' and the 'evil' are two sides of the same coin.

Nobody is truly good. Nobody is truly evil. Opinions grow and change with us as we mature.

Someone else on your side may have done something to them, and they are taking it out on you. You did not commit crimes, so this is unfair.

Because no matter how good, or how evil, you think you are, there is no such thing.

But still, a flipped coin can rarely land on its side. The sides can cross over, and events can happen that can light the spark of war.

Friendships are made. Bonds are created. And terrors beyond all seen before can ravage the world.

This is an account of what can happen when the coin lands on its side.

The truth will be uncovered. Sacrifices will be made. And two of the most insignificant creatures to walk the earth find themselves up to their necks in the other side.

Simple Potatoes Presents…

Double Sided Coin
A Mario Fanfiction

"Great. Just great. Why did the boss send us out here again? It's practically walking into a deathtrap!" moaned a voice from on the ground. Dipping lower, I could see Simon tapping one foot against the ground impatiently.

"Who cares? He gave me wings!" I teased, lowering myself from the sky to stand right next to my best mate. He rolled his eyes and groaned, while I put one arm round his mushroom-y shoulders. "Come on, Si! You know what he said about it! You'd be promoted soon, too, remember?"

"Well, I'm not a Paragoomba yet, so that's out of the window. Besides, if I can't stop the red man, I'm gonna die! He'll be arriving any minute!" That comment reminded me of why we had been positioned here, and gulped. If there was one thing I feared more than the boss' fire, it was the red man. Ever since I was a young Koopa, my parents had told me tales of the evil red man who always interferes with the boss' plans and murders everyone in sight. I had never imagined the boss would position us here, right in his path of destruction.

"Umm… Jay? Earth to Jay, wake up already!" My Goomba friend viciously headbutted me in the gut, knocking me back into reality.

"Thanks, Si… I needed that," I admitted, looking a bit sheepish. But suddenly a loud burst of music erupted throughout the area, and that was all I needed. The red man was here.

"Oh god… oh god oh god oh god…" Simon whimpered, and I tucked my head into my shell. Then, I remembered – wings! I grabbed Si and flapped right up to the tallest warp pipe, peering over the edge. There was the red man –we watched in horror as, with a single leap, he crushed a Goomba flat. I squeezed my eyes shut just as he jumped on a Koopa I'd known particularly well and kicked his shell at blinding speed – killing a few other soldiers with it alone.

At once the survivors fled, up onto pipes, down underground, even flying so high the red man couldn't see. Nothing was left for him. At seeing this behaviour, he stopped, looked around… and sat down.

"What is he doing?!" I hissed. "He's meant to kill us all, but we're out of reach! So he's just sitting down?!" Simon breathed a sigh of relief.

"Well, if he's sitting down, we can get outta here and tell the boss he left. Or, we can be suicidal and go say hi while he's not being a mass-murdering criminal!" suggested the 'shroom. I sighed.

"For your first idea, the boss would find out immediately and murder us both anyway. As for your second… are you CRAZY?! Even attempting civilised conversation with such an animal is an idea you would typically only find in a nuthouse! I mean… talking with it? Are you insane?! It probably doesn't even understand us, you idiot!... Hey, where'd you go?"

Si was jumping off the pipe. As he took a few steps towards the red man, the fiend leapt to his feet and began assaulting the Goomba, trying to jump fast enough to catch Simon under his shoes. I screamed and followed, heart beating a hundred ticks a second. Tucking my head inside my shell, I rammed him again and again while Si was recovering, then tried to get away… I lifted us both into the sky, circling at a safe distance, then set Simon down on the warp pipe.

"WHAT THE HELL?! I warned you! Don't try and say I didn't! But nooo, you didn't listen! See, that red man down there isn't capable of rational thinking at all! At all! You tried to communicate with a psychotic mass-murderer, Si? What the hell were you thinking?!" I yell with all my strength I had left, flopping down on the pipe top next to my Goomba friend. "…next time, don't be suicidal. It's like you want to die… and I don't want you to die…"

Mario looked at the winged Koopa and Goomba stood on the pipe, just thinking about everything. The Goomba had come down to see him – he'd tried to crush it. The Koopa leapt to its aid, injuring the plumber's leg in the process. He'd killed their kind for years, trying to help Peach… but if only he could come round to their point of view, and they could come round to his… things could get better for both sides.

"He's holding his leg… did I hit him there?" I asked excitedly, and Simon nodded yes.

"Just as his foot was coming down, you smacked it out the way so I could get away," he confirmed, eyes wide at the memory.

"B-but this is great news! His leg is injured, maybe broken, and we did it! Now you're bound to get promoted, right! …Si? Come on, we need to tell the boss!"

"No… no we don't," he muttered. "What if we could see the world from his point of view? I mean, he has no way to tell what it's like serving the boss and living in fear of a mass-murderer. And we don't know what it's like to… do what the red man does! We call it murder, and slaughter, and interference, but what if we're the bad guys?" he explained thoughtfully. Typical Simon; he can think in one second more than I've ever thought in my life.

"You know… maybe you're right. I mean, the pink lady doesn't seem to like what the boss does… and then the red man comes killing all of us… maybe we are evil for serving him," I sighed. I never like being thought of as evil. "You're saying we should try again?"

"Yep!" he nodded, smiling wider than I'd ever seen him do before. Grabbing him in my arms and feet I lowered the two of us slowly down from the pipe.

"Why are you risking it again?" I asked, curious.

"His leg's hurt, and he kills by jumping!" That's Simon Logic. Always the smart one. We descended the tall green pipe, down towards the red man, and he looked up. Huh, I never noticed he had a moustache. I trembled, gulped, and put a claw onto Simon's head in fear. But he didn't make any sort of movement towards us; just sat there.

He could take them out easily. Leap right onto the Koopa and send its shell flying into the Goomba, killing two birds with one stone. Yet with one leg broken (probably in multiple places) he couldn't really do anything. The longing to leap up onto the two was quashed by an intense pain that burned into one leg and rendered him immobile.

Goombas usually came at him purposefully, but this one seemed slightly afraid if not curious. The Koopa, though, was trembling and shaking more than he'd ever seen anyone do in his life. They were scared of him. He was killing their kind to save Peach; they were frightened of him. That was a given. But the two who had approached seemed to have no intention of harming him or taking him to Bowser. This was odd behaviour for beings incapable of rational thinking; who killed without mercy.

But then again, was he incapable of rational thought for slaughtering thousands upon thousands of their people, believing them to be all evil to the core? At least he didn't think so. To him, the Koopas and Goombas were monsters, but he was one to them. Two sides, two points of view. All he needed to know was what life was like from theirs.

"This red man isn't too scary up close," I thought to myself. "I mean, a moustache? Who has one of those anymore? Should we take him to the boss and get it over with?" I asked Simon, who was watching the many flickering emotions in the red man's eyes.

"…No," he replied firmly. He wasn't normally like this.

"C'mon, man, this isn't like you! Last time you found some Toad you refused to do anything but take it straight to the boss. What's with you today?"

"This 'red man' is no monster!" he yelled, whirling round to face me. Shocked, I took a step back. He breathed out, trying to calm himself, then cleared his throat and looked at the ground in dismay. During this time, I looked in to the monster from the tales' eyes and saw a million feelings; despair, confidence, pain. Remorse filled his eyes, and even though he probably couldn't understand a word that went between the two of us I felt guilty for even considering taking him to the boss. After all, the boss has no mercy, and however intelligent the mass-murderer is the boss would do nothing but kill him instantly. I let out a small cough.

"…Yeah, I suppose he's not too bad," I murmured in a small voice. "Sorry." The red man was not a monster – he was a sentient being who just couldn't see what was on the other side of the Goombas he'd stomped. It was settled. Simon grinned up at me, sensing forgiveness.

"Yeah! Now… where do we hide from the boss?" he asked. I slapped my forehead in frustration; why didn't I think of that?!

"Oh my god… but that's a good question. Where do we hide from the boss?" I replied, sighing.

"I say we don't! I think we should help the red man beat him, and show him what we think of his rules!"

"But why should we betray our noble Koopa ancestors –"

"But why should you betray your noble Koopa ancestors. I'm a Goomba, stupid!"

"Ugh! That's not the point!"

"Well, who do you have left back at the base? Nobody except me!"

"My family were murdered by this man sitting here right now!"

"Well, who cares? They're dead!"

"I should avenge them and hand this guy in right now!"

"If you do I swear to god, I will hunt you down and kill you!"

"Good luck, Mr. 'I'm a Goomba I just walk into people and they die', because this shell's not joking!"

"Bitch!"

"Bastard!"

"Say it again, I dare you!"

"Bastard!"

"You did NOT just go there."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Si, I just went there!"

"Why you –"

He full-on tackled me in my soft underbelly, and all the air was knocked out of my lungs as I doubled over and cringed. Two white wings fluttered down from my back, and I held them up in my hands.

"You… are a horrible person," I told him angrily.

"I know," came the reply.

The squeals, grunts and barks the two made gave away the fact they were arguing, and there was nothing he could do to get their attention. They might be friends, they might be foes, but whatever. He needed those two. Scraping his hand across the ground, he picked up a small stone and hurled it at the Koopa's shell, who quickly whipped round in annoyance to see him sprawled on the grass. He nudged the Goomba, who was first to approach – however, he did it with caution. He tried to crawl underneath him and lift his entire body, with which he failed. It took the Koopa's efforts to get him into a bush.

Mario rolled over onto his front and dragged himself further in, the sounds of the night louder in the background. A Boo cackled in the distance, and the two 'enemies' talked in their strange tongue. They would probably do something with him in the morning, whether that be taking him to Bowser or simply leaving him to die.

He tried saying hello, but the Koopa tilted his head to the side in confusion. They probably couldn't understand him, either. It was going to be a long night.

"What's he saying?" Simon asked as the raucous calls from the red man's mouth stopped. I shrugged.

"I dunno. Do you think he wants food?" I suggested, and he ran off out the gap in the hedge presumably to find something edible. I sighed and tried to communicate with the red man.

"Do… You… Understand… What… I… Am… Saying?" I said very slowly, and he looked bewildered. How are we gonna communicate like this? My train of thought was interrupted by Simon crashing back into the hedge with a green-spotted egg balanced on his head. At once the red man sat up and grabbed for the egg, trying not to move his legs. As Si handed it over, the red man placed it on his lap and rubbed it to keep it warm.

"…d'you think he wants it cooked, or just warmed?" Simon whispered.

"I'm not sure what he's doing. If he's trying to hatch the thing, red men have a weird-ass way of doing it," I pointed out. Si nodded in agreement, just as the first cracks spread across the egg. I held my breath. Then, I remembered!

"Mummy, tell us about the red man again!" I begged, my siblings curled around me, and we were all waiting for the story. My mother looked down upon us with kind eyes, and told us more about the red man.

"Now, children, you know all about the red man now. But you don't know about his monstrous steed," she began. A couple of us held our breath.

"Every so often, when the red man finds an egg, he hatches it into a terrifying reptile capable of devouring any Koopa or Goomba in one gulp. Nobody has seen the steed and lived to tell about it… except for your great-great-great-grandfather, the First Koopa. We red-shelled Koopas are the pure, noble-blooded ancestors of the Koopa who once defeated the red man on his steed single handedly, and for that we are above all others." My eyes were wide with wonder.

"How did he defeat such a terrible beast, mama?" asked Sam, my youngest brother.

"Another time, little ones. Now off to bed with you! Goodnight, and don't let the red man bite!" she laughed with her soothing voice. That was the last time I ever saw her, as the next day she was sent to the red man's path. She never returned.

"Nononono! Stop it! Don't let it hatch!" I yelled, shoving Si out of the way to grab the cracking egg before the dreaded steed would emerge and kill us all. Too late, however, as a full-fledged dinosaur popped out from the shell. It looked… a little cute to kill things, right? The red man reached up to pet the green dinosaur, but then its eyes locked on us.

"Jay, it's glaring at us…" muttered Simon, backing slowly away. I did the same, preparing to run, but the chase never came.

"What.. do you want?" asked the beast in his childlike voice. He didn't seem so fierce now… at least until he stuck out his tongue. The tales were true! The red man had a steed who ate everything!

"We only wanted to help!" Simon stuttered, trying to avoid being a dinosaur-sized dinner.

"Why is my friend's leg hurt?! Who did it!?" he roared. I meekly stuck one claw into the air, then dashed away out of the bush. A long, sticky tongue caught me from behind, however, and all went black.

He had taken his eyes off Yoshi for a split second, and then the Koopa was gone. The one who alerted him was the Goomba, who was jumping up and down to try and reach the dino's mouth.

He yelled at Yoshi to spit it out right this second and, thankfully, he obeyed. The red-shelled Koopa tumbled right out of Yoshi's throat, landing on his belly in the dust, coated in saliva. After a scolding, he explained how the two had dragged him to the bush and the fact that the Goomba fetched his egg.

Then it hit him. Yoshi could speak in both languages, and understood them too. This could be great for him, because if he could get them to tell Yoshi their intentions then he could finally get to the bottom of this whole thing. It was a whole lot to think about. With that, he lay his head back onto Yoshi's flanks and slowly drifted into dreamless sleep.

Well, I'm not certain that the majority of readers would like this, but if you did please drop me a review or PM! This will be my first multi-chapter story on FF, and I will accept almost any form of criticism about things I've done wrong here. That said, I am Simple Potatoes and thanks for sticking around! Potato out!