#thrawn gave shmi the therapy ysalamiri. he was 100% testing a tactical theory and he's delighted by the results

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Star Wars Wednesday

So the two ideas that came to me are actually going to end up two different prompts. I'm planning All Hail Shmi for week after next, though it will loosely connect to this one, so this one is Nature Hates Sith Lords

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Sheev Palpatine was a man of progress. Whatever the newest scientific advances were, he knew about them first. The most up-to-date technology? He already owned it. As he comfortably ensconced himself in the inner workings of the Republic like a spider in his web, he assured himself that he would be at the forefront of all knowledge.

And yet despite all the great minds reporting to him, and the forbidden lore of the Sith, there were yet things that utterly escaped the grasp of his understanding.

Sheev Palpatine was not loved by animals.

This did not bother him in the slightest at first. An animal was to be used, like people were, in his opinion. Let its fear and hatred fuel him if it could, why not make use of that? But this was more than being hissed at by the occasional spoiled purebred tooka in the arms of a senator's consort.

Shortly after the battle with the Trade Federation, Palpatine barely avoided tripping and breaking his neck when a hairless lothcat wound itself around his ankles with a rumbling growl that could be mistaken for a purr. Presumably the Force had not warned him of the event because an animal did not have evil intent. Nevertheless, Palpatine began relying on foresight more. And for irony's sake, he brought the bald lothcat home and named it Mister Malevolent.

Mister Malevolent lived up to his name many times over and was quickly foisted on some unsuspecting victim at a party. The next time Sheev saw him, Mister Malevolent looked more smug than a lothcat had any right to look while Queen Breha of Alderaan fussed over him.

That could be attributed to the fickle nature of felines. Sheev didn't care, particularly. But then that devilish Skywalker woman had the temerity to appear in his offices carrying a beast that even the Force had forsaken. The Force quickly forsake him as well, the moment she came into the room.

"Good afternoon, Chancellor," Shmi said pleasantly, and Sheev didn't like that he couldn't read the feelings behind her forever-stormy eyes. "I'd heard that Senator Amidala might return to Coruscant soon from her diplomatic mission. Such a sweet girl, it will be nice to see her again. Ani told me you might know when she would be arriving?"

He'd given her some trite answer, something warm and friendly and sickeningly polite, and then could no longer resist demanding some kind of explanation. "If you don't mind my asking, Miss Skywalker, just...just what is it you've brought to my office today?"

Shmi smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. Few of her smiles did in public, Anakin had assured him that this was fairly standard for her. "Oh, isn't she darling?" she stroked the furry head of the foot long reptile, who let her tongue loll out as she basked in the attention. "That fellow from the wild place, oh...what was his name, it was quite long...the frighteningly intelligent one..."

That did not describe very many people that Palpatine knew. "Thrawn?" he suggested.

"Ah yes! Thrawn!" Shmi nodded and let the lizard crawl further up her shoulder. "Ollie here was a gift from Thrawn. To keep me company, he said, since Anakin is so rarely able to visit."

"And that is a shame, isn't it?" Palpatine ignored the unholy gleam in the four eyes of the indomitable Ollie and turned the conversation to a favored subject. "Do you know, I read once that generations ago, the Jedi cooperated with the families of their initiates, and fostered some kind of community. It could have been propaganda, naturally, but it does seem like the Order has lost something, doesn't it?"

"Oh, Chancellor, you don't want to hear my thoughts about that," Shmi said modestly, "You'd be here all the next week!"

She took her leave shortly after, and Palpatine felt the Dark Side creep sullenly back into the room by increments. He gathered it tightly around itself and it curdled and settled as if insisting that it hadn't really made a break for it, you know, wasn't as if it was scared. But that pet of the Skywalker woman's was just all sorts of unnatural.

Palpatine knew a thing or two about "unnatural", and also about experiments, and therefore had no right to talk whatsoever.

It might have ended there, but it didn't. The longer he wove his plans together, the more he tangled the Senate and the Jedi and Skywalker in his web, the more the natural world seemed to rebel against him. Birds swooped at him in public. Rats refused to even touch the garbage he threw away. His shoes and robes had been befouled by more subspecies of canine than he could count as the war went on. And each time, he was in public. With a Jedi, or surrounded by influential people, so that he could not deal with the affront as a Sith ought to.

Sheev developed a theory: while not generally Force sensitive in any useful sense, animals were capable, somehow, of sensing the presence of the Dark Side. And it clearly agitated them. That was fascinating and bore some investigation, but it was also deeply inconvenient. Sooner or later, some Jedi was probably going to wonder why so many animals hated him.

Between that, the formidable Shmi and her Devil-Reptile Ollie, and Anakin drifting slightly from his guidance, Sheev began to feel almost that the Force was mocking him. The Dark Side would come crackling to his call whenever he went to reassure himself of his power, but it was a fickle, petulant thing. Something wilder and wider and connected to all living things seemed at times to muffle it, sometimes drowning the swell of negative emotions welling up from the many levels of Coruscant with the sheer effervescence of life. Warnings seemed to delay slightly, and his foresight became full of stranger and stranger things. Sheev's one comfort was that, according to the unintended admission of young Anakin, many of the Jedi were experiencing something very similar.

It was if the Force had been with them for so long that it had somehow tired, perhaps, of being taken for granted.

Nowhere was this untamed Force more apparent than on Naboo.

Six minutes after his arrival at flock of bogwings, known to carry up to nine times their own body weight, began swooping around him. With a little subtle misdirection in the Force, Sheev was able to trick them into carrying off an aide. The man had been particularly good at halving paperwork, too, which was particularly annoying.

Sheev was very good at deceiving others, but he didn't usually make a habit of deceiving himself. Nevertheless, it would not do to assume that the Force was not with him, simply because some animals were agitated by the presence of the Dark Side. After all, the Dark Side of the Force was still the Force.

And then a kaadu did its level best to charge the speeder they were in.

And a flock of nunas set up a horrific racket as they passed the stall selling them.

And as they passed one of the oceans of his homeworld, the waters churned and roughened into white-capped waves. Palpatine caught a glimpse of the armored, sinewy body of an opee sea killer, a rare sight on the surface. The monstrous fish seemed to be contemplating a leap for the bridge, and Palpatine wondered if he would be forced to repel the creature.

"My goodness," Quarsh Panaka shook his head in disbelief as the opee returned reluctantly to the depths. "There must be a storm on its way. I've never seen this many animals behave like this -- not even when the Trade Federation invaded all those years ago, though that was close."

"Indeed," Sheev forced himself to use a kindly and vaguely interested tone. "I find it fascinating that animals, dumb brutes though they may be, can sometimes more clearly perceive a coming disaster than people can, for all their cleverness."

He allowed himself a satisfied smile, knowing the man sharing the speeder with him was one such human insensible to the danger they invited into their palaces and senates. "Indeed, the Force works mysteriously."

Behind him, the Force mysteriously inspired a swarm of flying insects to spell out a very rude word.

And still Palpatine told himself it was nothing.

And then the Zillo Beast laid waste to an entire district of Coruscant in a fervent attempt to find him and reduce him to little more than a bad case of indigestion. Palpatine began to consider then that perhaps the Force was not so impersonal as he preferred to believe, or else someone very strong was targeting him.

Of course, by the time he reached that conclusion, it was already far too late.

#star wars #star wars wednesday #star wars au #nature hates palpatine #all hail shmi #the fluffy animals strike back #the force is done with sheev's shenanigans #it's also been messing with the jedi for letting themselves stagnate and become emotionally unhealthy #either shmi is an unintentional harbinger of force chaos with her therapy ysalamiri ollie #or else she is a willing and well-informed participant in the great force-mutiny and she's toying with sheevykins #this is the shmi from that other prompt who becomes a campaigner for justice #she's very popular with the non politician crowd #lothcat #zillo beast #ysalamiri #thrawn gave shmi the therapy ysalamiri. he was 100% testing a tactical theory and he's delighted by the results #fic prompts #writing prompts #shmi skywalker #sheev palpatine