Grogu had tasted, eaten, and refused to eat a huge variety of food over the course of his life. There were foods that he loved and foods that he was shocked that anyone ate at all (looking at you veggies). Still, the 520 nm sweet crunchy things with the soft filling were unique. He’d never seen their like anywhere else he’d ever traveled. How the heck did they end up on Nevarro?
He knew that they must have been imported. They came from some other place. The foil container gave that away. If a local had made them they would have been packaged differently. Probably a box or a cloth bag or something readily made with the resources available on a planet that had no major industry other than molten rock production.
So who had brought this crunchy/softs (yes, that’s what he called them) across the galaxy? Probably not the kid who wouldn’t share them. He hadn’t been old enough to operate a starship. He also hadn’t been old enough to recognize the benefit of sharing something like that with his classmates in the hopes of being on the receiving end of something else just as nice. Not that Grogu had anything to give him other than advice.
Considering the lesson of that day was all about smuggling and pirates and stuff like that, Grogu wondered if that wasn’t how the crunchy/softs ended up on Nevarro. Some pirate or smuggler landed on the planet at Nevarro city to have maintenance done or get a ferment or whatever and traded goods for services. Crunchy/softs for an open tab at the cantina or tavern or whatever Nevarro called places where you could get food and drink.
Grogu hoped that the smuggler or pirate or whoever had gotten a lot of ferment for the crunchy/softs. They were really quite good. Not as savory as say Krayt dragon or as tangy dung worms, but they had an interesting crunchiness that he liked listening to and then a sweet softness that just pepped him right up.
He’d been pretty bored at the school while his dad, the Mandalorian, and Greef Karga and Cara Dune went off on their adventure. He’d already learned too much about smugglers and pirates during the time he was away from the Jedi Temple. After all, he didn’t get to Arvala-7 by taking a standard star liner. Nope, but enough said about that. He was about to fall asleep when the smell of the crunchy/softs woke his stomach up.
When he managed to acquire them and ate the first one, well, he had so much energy he ate the second one without even thinking twice about it. He’d been surprised at that and wondered if the smuggler who brought them to Nevarro had been smuggling spice and the crunchy/softs were just a convenient way of hiding the stuff. But then he realized no parent would let their kids eat crunchy/softs meant for them.
He’d been about to return to pack to the kid who wouldn’t share because it wouldn’t be right for him to eat them all, even though they tasted great and gave him all that energy. Unfortunately, his school day was cut short (well that wasn’t unfortunate really) and he didn’t have a chance to give the rest of the crunchy/softs back to the kid they had belonged to.
He’d tried to tell the Mandalorian that but his dad seemed pretty focused on getting the heck off Nevarro. Something about Imps… again. Wow, those guys just wouldn’t give them a break. So Grogu left the school, the city, and the planet with the rest of the 520s (he’d changed his mind about what to call them since the color was so striking).
His dad told him to ‘Hang on kid’ and they were doing whatever it took to stop the Tie fighters that were attacking the Mandalorian’s friends. It was a good thing he still had more of the 520s to eat. He needed the extra energy to do all that hanging on. The tall bounty hunter was doing loops and spins and drops and swoops and all sorts of maneuvers to avoid damage to the Razor Crest and to take out the remaining fighters. The 520s helped Grogu a lot.
And fortunately it all ended well. The Tie fighters were resolved. The Razor Crest was flying great. No more dead fish smell or critters dropping out of the superstructure. The Mandalorian had saved his friends. That was good day’s work by any measure.
Except for the slight mishap when the 520s refused to remain contained. Grogu had eater one too many. That was pretty much always the problem when you found something delicious that also helped you have the energy to do some sort of strenuous work. The line between ‘just enough’ and ‘urp too much’ was not just fine, it was binary. One too many was way too many.
At least the Mandalorian wasn’t surprised or put off or annoyed by that. He just told Greef Karga that he had some ‘on board maintenance’ to take care of and then helped Grogu get cleaned up. There had been one last 520 in the package and Grogu offered it the Mandalorian but his dad told him, “I’m not a fan of cookies kid. Save it for later.” Cookies? What the heck was a cookie?
