This is the Way

by ZR_Stein

Rating: teen
Tags: Star Wars, Violence, Crossover, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Fluttershy, Adventure, Science Fiction
Length: 4917

The Mandalorian and the Child land on Equestria, fleeing from the forces of the Empire. Nothing could have prepared them for Equestria, but the ponies are friendly and the location is idyllic; what better place could there be to raise a child?

Running from the remnants of the Empire, Din Djarin and the Child land on Equestria after blindly jumping into the Unknown Regions. The Mandalorian is ready to fight for his life and that of his adopted foundling if need be, but nothing could have prepared him for Equestria.

These ponies are odd, bright and naive and with abilities of their own, just like the Child. Perhaps...he was meant to be here.

In which the Mandalorian earns some much needed down time, the ponies learn of the wider galaxy, and everyone's horizons are a little bit expanded. This is a fic focused on character relationships, cultural interaction and exchange, and the struggles of fatherhood. With some badass action thrown in, because hey, he may be a dad, but he's still a Mando.

Published 2020-01-09 15:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-01-13 09:04:10 UTC

Arrival

The Razor Crest hung in the void of space, motionless. The two dorsal engines had cooled and gone dark, with only the memory of heat remaining behind. The ocean of stars was serene, unbroken by any movement.

In the cockpit, Din Djarin came to his senses slowly. The first thing he registered was the litany of bruises and aches across his body. As a Mandalorian, he was used to such things, but no one enjoyed waking up feeling like they’d lost a fight with a rancor. With a groan, Din leveraged himself into a seated position.

The emergency lights in the Razor Crest were on, Din noted blearily. The ship had lost power then, either temporarily or...well, if the onboard generator was fried, they were likely dead if there wasn’t a planet nearby. Him and the kid would…

The kid.

Scrambling to his feet, Din cast his gaze around wildly for the tiny green foundling that he still didn’t have a name for. Not seeing the baby immediately, Din cursed quietly, and reached for his gauntlet. With a few flicks of his finger, he’d turned on his bio-scanner.

There he was. It must have tumbled down into the lower section of the ship when...whatever had happened, had happened. He didn’t have time to piece together his memories right now.

It only took him a few seconds to jump into the hold and sweep the child up. With carefully controlled panic, the Mandalorian looked the child over with his bio-scanner, flipping through to his other scanner settings to thoroughly check him for injuries.

The child was alive, and in stable health. He let out a slow breath. The kid was unconscious, and likely would be for a while longer if the bruise on his green noggin was any indication, but he would live. He was a tough little womp rat, he’d make it through.

Just to be on the safe side though, Din brought out his medkit and gave the kid a bacta patch on the contusion. And then he carried the small bundle in his arms back up into the cockpit and set him down in his pram. A pity the child had been wandering around outside of it when they had jumped to lightspeed.

And with that thought, the Mandalorian cast his mind back. That’s right...they’d been found by an Imp. Not even a week off of Navarro and more Imperials had found them. Annoying kriffing bastards, the lot of them. He wasn’t sure whether or not this was Moff Gideon’s Remnant, or another Imperial; the TIE pilots hadn’t seemed keen on answering his questions. Not that he’d have let them answer when he could just shoot them.

The Razor Crest had taken some bad hits. With the power currently down, Din wasn’t able to check on the status of the ship, but he remembered warnings popping up onscreen telling him that the hyperdrive navigation computer had been damaged. Experienced spacers could work out the same equations that the nav computer...given time. Time that the Imp’s hadn’t given him.

So, Din had made a choice that was potentially suicidal. He’d made a blind jump.

If Paz had been in the Crest with him, he’d have probably called Din insane before smacking him upside the head. No one made blind jumps, especially not on the edge of the Unknown Regions. Space was only mostly empty after all, and the chances that he could’ve been sucked into a black hole or ground into space dust by a stray asteroid were high.
Honestly, the chances were probably very high, but hell, they were still alive, so his gamble had worked. And that was enough for Din. He’d leave the calculations of just how insane his stunt had been to droids. He was a more practical man.
So, he knew how they’d arrived at their destination. Where exactly they were in relation to the rest of the galaxy could wait until they had power again.

Checking on the child one last time (just to be safe, the little one could have stopped breathing or something), Din started about the business of getting his ship working again.

. . .

Twilight Sparkle stifled a yawn. While she deeply enjoyed gazing through her telescope, she couldn’t deny that it did wreak havoc on her sleep schedule. Normally the fact that something wrecked any of her schedules would be reason enough to stop doing that thing, but then again, stargazing was science. And science was on the short list of things she was willing to drop her schedules for. Other entries on the list were Magic, her friends, Princess Celestia (HIGHEST PRIORITY!!!), and her family. And maybe a new Daring Do book, if it was especially good.

Realizing she’d let her thoughts drift away, Twilight shook her head. She’d go to bed in another twenty minutes or so, first she needed to finish recording her observations. Bucephalus was at its brightest point in two hundred years, and she wanted to make sure she got the most out of this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Behind Twilight, Spike let out a particularly loud snore, startling Twilight. He was curled up around a leatherbound copy of ‘City of Stars: Canterlot’s Guide to the Cosmos’ by Neighl Degrass Tyson, a small line of drool stretching out of his mouth.

“Oh Spike.” Twilight said fondly. A purple corona enveloped Spike as she picked him up, untangling him from the book and settling him into his bed. She took a brief moment to pat him on the head, and then she returned to her telescope.
“Just a few more minutes…”

. . .

The generator on the Razor Crest let out a low whine as it powered on, the Mandalorian letting out a satisfied breath at seeing it working again. Two of the compression coils had been knocked out of alignment by their rough journey through hyperspace and had needed to be fixed.

With the ship having power again, Din returned to the cockpit and began looking the Crest’s screens over. Aside from the nav computer, there was also an air leak to worry about, in a place near the rear that he couldn’t easily access from the interior of the ship, not without ripping out parts of the hyperdrive. ILuckily, it wasn’t an immediate concern, as long as he landed within the next 24 hours. He could maybe risk the vacuum of space to patch it from the outside if he had no other option, his helmet could be made airtight with a little jury rigging and he had an oxygen tank lying around.

But, if there was a planet nearby, that wouldn’t be necessary. Din flicked over to the local system scanners.

Ah, excellent. There was a planet, and it was close to them. Extremely close, in fact. The gravity shadow must have been what had pulled them out of hyperspace. As he looked over the display, Din silently thanked the ancestors of Mandalore. While he wasn’t picking up much technology (if there was any on the planet at all), the planet was a garden world, with lush green vegetation and blue oceans, the atmosphere’s chemical makeup nearly identical to that of Sorgan, and a sight better than Navarro or Coruscant. They’d be fine there.

With a gentle hand, Din fired up the engines, wincing slightly as the left one sputtered. However, after a moment it lit up as it was meant to, and the Razor Crest began moving towards the planet below.

. . .

Twilight blinked her eyes slowly as she yawned for what felt like the thousandth time that night. She turned to look at the notebook that she’d been writing in, absently running through everything she’d written down. Satisfied, she turned her attention to a nearby clock, and winced.

“3 o’clock in the morning. Yeah...I think I’m done for the night.”

Stifling yet another yawn, the purple librarian pony began packing away her tools of the trade, carefully organizing everything so that it was just so. Being tired was no excuse for being sloppy.

Finally, with everything squared away, Twilight tilted her head up to take one last look at the sky. Overhead, she saw a small silver light move across the sky. A meteor, most likely. Twilight smiled.

“Oh, I’ll have to thank Princess Luna for that when I see her next, that was a nice touch. Well anyways. Good night.”

As Twilight settled down into her bed after saying goodnight to no one in particular, the silver ‘meteor’ grew larger and larger in the night sky.

. . .

Din set the Razor Crest down in a clearing among a dense forest. His sensors had showed him that there was a town ten klicks away from his landing site that he planned to scope out after he finished patching the leak. Hopefully the locals wouldn’t try to kill him on sight; out in the Unknown Regions, you never really knew what you were getting into. He’d heard the stories from spacers and fellow Mandalorians about what horrors lurked out beyond the Outer Rim. Space Wraiths, shapeshifters, soul sucking parasites and more. Despite its welcoming appearance, the planet could be lousy with them, for all he knew.

If that was the case, Din would face them as a Mandalorian would, with weapons ready and waiting to spill blood. He reached for his rifle and slung it onto his back, checking to make sure he had his blaster tucked away into his holster and that his gauntlets were ready. The flamethrower had sufficient fuel, the grapple line was wound up tightly, and the whistling birds in were prepped and waiting. His vibroblade was fully functional, no visible deformities on the blade or odd sounds indicating a misalignment.

Finally, Din checked his jetpack, seeing that it too had sufficient fuel and was operational. While he was still unfamiliar with it (he hadn’t put in any more practice since Navarro) he’d rather have it than not have it. Flight could be very useful, after all.
With the inventory of his gear out of the way, the Mandalorian checked on the child, and seeing that it was still sleeping, began going about the process of repairing his ship, starting with the air leak.

. . .

Five hours later, Din clambered down from the left dorsal engine, cracking his neck as he went. The sun had risen hours ago, which he was thankful for, as it made the work easier.

He wasn’t a mechanic by any means, but he knew enough to maintain the Crest, and he’d picked up some things from Kuiil. The leak was patched, the engine was running properly again, and the nav computer...well, to be perfectly honest the nav computer was beyond his ability to fix. Hopefully he’d be able to find someone on planet who could help him with that. If not.well, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Now that he was out in the middle of the Unknown Regions with no idea where he was, he couldn’t run the equations without the nav computer no matter how much time he spent on them, so he’d either fix the nav computer with help, or he’d be stuck here.

Din banished that thought from his mind as the ramp on the ship lowered, revealing a small green baby standing there, staring at him. Behind his helmet, Din smiled.

“Feeling better?”

The child looked at him with those enormous, soulful brown eyes of his and cooed.

“I’d glad. We had a pretty rough trip getting here.”

The trill that the child let out had a questioning lilt to it.

“No idea where here is. We blind jumped away from those Imps because we had no other choice. But I got the Crest fixed, for the most part. And there’s a town not too far from here. Want to tag along?”

The child walked forwards towards the Mandalorian and held up his hands above his head. Din huffed softly and picked him up without a word, setting him on his shoulder so that his hands were free. With a push of a button, the child’s pram floated out of the ship to hover alongside him in case the little one didn’t want to walk or be carried, or if they were attacked and he needed to be stored somewhere safely.

The ramp of the ship closed up behind them as the two set out through the forest towards the town.

Author's Note

So this is my first story on Fimfiction. My first MLP fic as well. I've mostly stuck to posting on FF.net and Spacebattles, but after watching the Mandalorian, I couldn't get this out of my head.

I hope y'all enjoy it. No idea how long my inspiration will last, it comes and goes as it pleases.

The Native

Fluttershy hummed quietly to herself as she picked a few sprigs of wild mint and packed them away into her saddlebag, the mint joining a small jar of flax seeds and a sheaf of sage leaf. Her stores of herbs had been running low, and it was cheaper to forage for them in the Whitetail Woods than it was to buy them in Ponyville. That she didn’t have to go into town to deal with other ponies was just an added bonus, in her mind.

Not that there was anything wrong with other ponies, she quite enjoyed them sometimes, despite some of the rumors she’d heard around town. Fluttershy loved all of her friends dearly, and she could hold a conversation with casual acquaintances if she needed to. Strange ponies that she didn’t know were another matter entirely, but in the past six months she’d even become better at dealing with strangers! Somewhat better, anyways. Being one of the Elements of Harmony and all of the craziness that came with it required a certain...mental fortitude, one that she hadn’t known was inside of her.

Fluttershy’s lips curled up into an amused smile as she remembered everything that had happened to over in the past half year. Who would have thought that the pony who clammed up around strangers and lived alone in the woods would be instrumental in defeating Nightmare Moon and Discord? Honestly, it boggled believability!

As memories and thoughts chased each other around in her mind like squirrels in October (oh, they were such dear little things), Fluttershy continued her self assigned task. She plucked some star anise pods and sorted through a small pile of fallen branches before finding some healthy pine needles.

At this rate, she’d be back at her cottage in an hour, and she could spend the rest of the day tending to her animals and enjoying the day. How lovely!

. . .

At the edge of the treeline, Din settled into a crouch against a fallen log and carefully set the kid on the ground next to him. The little gremlin looked around at the surrounding forest, his long ears flexing as he listened.

“All right. Stay within sight of me and don’t go near the town. If you want to try to find something to eat, go right ahead.” Din said evenly. After seeing the kid hunt and eat live frogs, he didn’t see any harm in letting him find his own food as long he stayed close enough to be safe from predators. This forest wasn’t the type that usually had a large variety of poisonous flora or fauna either, and the kid could probably magic away toxins from his stomach or sense whether or not eating something would hurt him.

Din shrugged mentally at his lack of knowledge about the strange, sorcerous abilities that the foundling in his care possessed and detached the scope from his rifle.

The edge of the town looked to be about half a klick away, maybe a bit less, and was mainly composed of stone and wood buildings with thatched roofing. The architecture was fairly primitive in appearance, though that didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. Backwater planets like this usually used what materials they had on hand to make buildings, and this settlement didn’t look very large.

Din thumbed the magnification dial on the side of the scope and took a closer look at the town, hoping to catch a glimpse of the inhabitants. After a moment, he grunted and murmured “Huh. Quadrupeds.”

The natives were some form of equine quadruped, which was a definite oddity. Out of the thousands of species in the known galaxy, Din couldn’t recall a single sentient species that walked around on four hooves. Unless these were beasts of burden...they were unclothed, after all.

Looking more closely though, Din could see clear signs of intelligent society. One rust colored equine with wings dropped a few small golden coins into the hoof of a cream colored equine without wings. The cream colored equine then handed the buyer a bunch of flowering plants. They engaged in commerce, and had language, if the way their lips were moving was any indication.

Idly, Din wondered how such a species could come to be. He was no xenobiologist, but weren’t hands a requirement for intelligent life to evolve? And what was with the wide variety of coat colors? Perhaps they were venomous, or maybe it was a form of social hierarchy. The Twi’lek likewise could have skin in any number of hues, but certain colors were more rare than others, and thus fetched a higher price at the slave markets.

Tabling those thoughts for now, Din continued his examination of the town. There was no technology in sight more advanced than a simple wagon; no droids, no vaporators, no landspeeders, nothing. Still, that didn’t necessarily mean there was no more advanced tech on this planet...he’d just have to look for it.

The thought that he’d landed on a pre-spaceflight planet and that he’d never fix the nav computer flitted through the Mandalorian’s mind before he crushed it.

Lowering the scope in his hand for a second, Din considered what he’d discovered so far. While the lack of tech was worrying, it also meant that the locals didn’t pose much of a threat to him. Not when he had all of his gear with him. He could watch for one of the equines to leave town, away from the others, and confront it. Communication might be difficult; he had no way of knowing whether or not they shared knowledge any of the half dozen languages he spoke. But if worse came to worst, he could resort to pictograms.

The kid would come in handy; by himself, Din was an armored warrior, face covered by an emotion concealing helmet and bristling with weaponry. The kid was adorable and had eyes that made you want to tuck him in and read him a bedtime story. Hopefully that would make him more…where’d the kid go?

Din stopped as he turned his head around, looking for his ward. He couldn’t see his little green head anywhere. After a moment, Din activated his tracking scanner, and found a trail of tiny footprints leading back into the forest.

The Mandalorian took a long, deep sigh and slung his rifle over his back.

. . .

Fluttershy tucked the last of the herbs that she needed to collect into her stuffed saddlebag and nodded to herself. That had gone even better than she’d expected; it wasn’t every day that she found truffles in the woods. They’d do nicely in a stew for dinner.

Turning, Flutterhy prepared to walk back to her cottage, and nearly ran nose-first into a very peculiar creature. She squeaked in surprise, jumping backwards, as it had been right behind her and she hadn’t even known that it was there!

However, after a second of study, she decided that the poor dear was harmless and moved closer. It was even smaller than Applebloom, and was wearing some sort of brown sack over most of its body. It hadn’t moved at all during her little fright, and was instead staring at her.

Fluttershy cleared her throat and asked “Umm...hello there. I’ve never seen a creature like you before.”

The little green monkey thing tilted its head at her and blinked once. Fluttershy cooed as she moved closer.

“Aren’t you the most precious little baby? How’d you get here in the middle of the woods?”

The creature wiggled its ears and chirped something. Fluttershy blinked slowly and said “Oh...I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. You said you landed here in...a giant metal egg?”

The creature gurgled.

“And you’re with your caretaker? Oh my, where are they?”

The creature turned to look back into the forest. Fluttershy followed its gaze. There, coming out of the brush was a tall figure standing on two legs. Its features were concealed by a gleaming silver helmet, and more shining armor covered its body. In its hands was a long stick of some kind, with two prongs on the end.

The stick was pointed straight at her. Like one would point a crossbow.

Fluttershy’s pupils shrank until they were pinpricks.

. . .

This wasn’t exactly how he’d planned to meet the natives. Still, it wasn’t all bad, as long as the equine made no sudden moves towards the kid.

Din kept his rifle trained on the yellow quadruped as he moved closer, finger on the trigger and disintegration round in the chamber. He didn’t want to kill it if possible, but he would if it tried to hurt the child. Thankfully, that looked like it wasn’t going to happen; the local was backing away from both him and the kid in fear, trembling noticeably. After he came within a few meters of the kid, and the equine was an equal distance away from either of them, he slowly lowered his rifle and slung it on his back, his gaze moving to the child for a second before he returned it to the native.

The equine still looked nervous, but as the two of them stared at each other, a sort of understanding passed between them, and it nodded to him. He nodded back and sat down on a nearby rock, the kid toddling over to him.

. . .

Fluttershy fought to control her breathing. That had been very scary, but she understood now. The tall one had simply been concerned about its child. Still, did he (she?) have to point a weapon of some kind at her?

Taking a deep breath, Fluttershy let it slowly out as she calmed her nerves. The child was tugging on the adult’s cape, and in response, the adult lifted the child up to sit on the rock as well. With that done, the armored figure turned its helmet back to her, and Fluttershy felt the weight of its attention back on her.

“Onthen al spek auerbesh?”

. . .

“Do you speak Basic?”

The equine stared at him for a long moment, blinking twice, before it responded almost silently in a melodic language that he didn’t understand.

“Galactic Basic, is it a language that you speak on this planet?”

The equine said something else in the same language more loudly, brow furrowed. So much for Basic. Still, he had five languages left that he was fluent in (he could at least speak some words in Jawa and Durese, so they counted). He’d try Sy Bisti next, then Huttese, Jawa, and Durese. If all of those failed...well, it was highly unlikely that the equine spoke Mando’a, but he’d give it a try. Just in case. But that’d come last, first he’d run down the trade languages that were common on the Outer Rim.

“Suwabanu Sy Bisti?”

. . .

The taller creature said more words to her and Fluttershy shook her head at him (she was fairly certain he was a male, the voice sounded masculine). Oh dear. It was unusual to meet a being that didn’t know Equestrian. Even Zecora knew Equestrian, and she was from Zebrica! Where did these two hail from that they didn’t?

Wait, those words sounded subtly different. More melodic and slurred together. Maybe he had changed languages?

Of course! He was asking her if she understood any of the languages he was speaking! Unfortunately, she didn’t understand this one either, so she shook her head more emphatically.

The creature paused before switching languages again, to a more guttural, grating one.

“Bal uba hutta?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand that one either. Maybe if we go visit Twilight she’ll be able to help.”

The creature paused again, and Fluttershy stared at the featureless helmet, wondering what he was thinking behind it. Mentally, she pictured the face of the little one in there, older and scowling. She almost giggled at the thought.

With that language striking out, the armored one ran through two more, neither of which Fluttershy understood. One was high and choppy, and the other was a seemingly unbroken stream of syllables that all sounded similar. Idly, Fluttershy was amazed that this creature knew so many languages. Unfortunately, none of them were recognizable.

“I’m sure Twilight will be able to help if we go see her, she should have a translation spell or a book of languages...oh dear, how do I tell you that? This is very frustrating.”

The creature, not understanding Fluttershy, muttered something softly to himself before he raised his helmet again.

“Speak do you Mando’a?”

. . .

“Do you speak Mando’a?” Din said, voice carrying a tiny hint of resignation. With all of the trade languages he knew striking out, the chances that this little yellow local knew the ancestral language of Mandalore were incredibly low. Not impossible though...his adoptive people had been conquerors for thousands of years. Though their conquering had been in the known galaxy, so it was almost certain that this native wouldn’t know-

“Speak you Griffish?!”

….what the kriff? The Mandalorian had to remind himself to close his mouth. Of all the tongues to hear on a planet far into the Unknown Regions, the tongue of Mandalore was not one of them. Even if it went by a different name here.

Din paused for a moment as he ran over the language lessons of his youth and said “Hello. My name is Din Djarin. What is your name?”

Oof...his pronunciation was a little rusty. In his defense, it’d been over a decade since he’d spoken more than a word or two of Mando’a at a time.

. . .

Fluttershy was confused, happy, and relieved all at the same time. Finally, the creature had found a language that she understood! Well, one that she understood a few words in. After Gilda had visited, Fluttershy had talked with Rainbow Dash about her, and had discovered that her old friend knew Griffish, surprisingly. Gilda had apparently taught Rainbow Dash back in flight school, and Rainbow Dash had lent Fluttershy her own Equestrian-to-Griffish dictionary (she still needed to give that back) and taught her a few phrases.

Why the creature knew Griffish was confusing, but the answer could wait. Wait, he’d said his name was Din Djarin...or he’d said his name was Djarin and his clan name was Din. Oh dear...she knew very little Griffish. There was a rule she was forgetting about naming order. And what were the rules on word order again? Was it verb-subject-object or subject-verb-object?

“Ummm...name Fluttershy...not speak...good...Griffish. We...go...speak...Rainbow Dash. Yes?”

. . .

If Din’s pronunciation was rusty, the equine’s (Fluttershy, he corrected) was atrocious, and the grammar was completely out of order.

It was sufficient though. Fluttershy had communicated that they did not speak Griffish well, and that they would seek out another native who presumably did. A Rainbow Dash, whoever that was. Hopefully they spoke enough of this Mando’a dialect that Din could ask some questions and get some answers. With how Flutterhy stumbled over even the simplest of words, he doubted she'd be able to suss out 'nav computer'.

Din stood up, causing Fluttershy to stumble backwards, startled. Pushing a button on his gauntlet, he signaled the kid’s pram to come out of the trees. The child could ride in there while they went to go see this Rainbow Dash. Now that they had a native to guide them, he wanted to keep the kid stored away from prying eyes for the moment.

Fluttershy stared at the pram as it floated there, mouth formed into a little ‘o’ of surprise. Once the kid was inside and the shutters sealed up, Din turned his attention to his guide, and nodded once.

“Take us to Rainbow Dash.”

“Rainbow Dash...umm...yes. We go.”

Author's Note

Bolded words have been used this chapter to indicate words not in one's primary language. I had to fudge words for Basic, since in Star Wars that's just English. Sy Bisti is, according to Timothy Zahn, Zulu with the vowels moved around, so I used Google translate for that. There's a Huttese translator online. And I am not a linguist in any way shape or form, and I don't have in depth knowledge on Mando'a, so if anyone spots errors in my work, please point them out. I already had to correct a line that said that Fluttershy had used a gendered word in Mando'a (it's a gender neutral language).

God damn, am I getting sick of referring to Baby Yoda as the kid or the child.