5th in the Vader and Cat series.
In order, they are:
1.Cracking the Armor
2. Anotrher Disturbing Crack.
3. Completely Cracked...and the Cat Came Back.
4. Cracking the Death Star
5. Cracking Imperial Center, or: Cat Goes to Coruscant
6. Prune-Face Cracks, or: Cat Versus Palpatine
To forestall questions: During the Imperial Era, Palpy randomly re-named Coruscant as "Imperial Center", however most citizens continued to call it Coruscant. Hence the title.
Also, I have gotten a few requests to combine the VaderCat fics into one long piece. I'm sorry, but I won't be doing that. These are only going to work artistically as vignettes because I have no actual "storyline" or plot formed for a long Cat story. Making this a long WIP rather than just something for which I can whip up silliness whenever I feel like a new one sort of ruins the appeal. These are what I do when I need a break from my epics.
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Vader quickly discovered that cat hair, much like the cat itself, had the disturbing ability to get into places which were physically impossible for it to be. Chief among them was his pressure-sealed helmet, out of which he spent more than an hour picking tiny particles of orange hair while ensconced within the groundside hyperbaric chamber in his personal apartment on Imperial Center. His mechanical fingers were far too large and lacked the manual dexterity for the task at hand, so he missed many of them, but at least he would no longer have tiny hairs tickling his nostrils while he attempted to maintain an air of stark, awe-inspiring menace and brooding displeasure with those around him. Once he finished, he emerged from the pressure-chamber to find that the kitten had made itself quite at home in the exact center of his bed-- which was well enough, since he rarely ever slept, and if the animal had to occupy some space in the dwelling, he supposed that he would rather it appropriated a place which he would be quite content never to use again. Sweeping out of the bedroom, he made his way quickly into the living room, where he was not surprised to find a holomessage awaiting him.
The Emperor had already received word of his precious battle-station's destruction by the Rebel Alliance. He was considerably displeased with this unexpected circumstance, and in fact, he intended to hold Vader personally responsible. He expected a full report in his throne room in one hour. Vader sighed, glancing slowly down at his orange-hair-covered armor.
"Of course you do," he muttered.
The message had been left ten minutes ago. Left with no alternative, he pressed a button on the holotransmitter and contacted the Executor. Then he spent another fifteen minutes prowling the apartment until a frightened young officer appeared at the door bearing a small, hand-held vacuum. The Dark Lord snatched it without a word and stabbed the button beside the door, sealing it in the man's face.
Then he stalked into the kitchen, where he had planned to lay out his cloak on the wide counter-space beside the food-prep station. As he entered the room, he found the now familiar orange ball of fluff looking back at him from the counter. It purred happily at the sight of him, either oblivious to or completely unconcerned with his foul mood.
"Get off the counter!" he ordered.
It blinked.
"Get-- off-- the counter!" he repeated.
It stood up, stretched, and for a single instant, Vader actually wondered if it might be about to do as he wished. Then it simply curled up in a tighter ball, now with its back to him, and pretended not to have understood a word he said.
"Insufferable animal. I don't have time for this!" he declared.
He laid out his cloak on the kitchen table, then began to slowly and painstakingly vacuum hair off of the black material. He doubted that it would ever return to the pristine and terrifying state of utter perfection which had characterized it before the green-eyed feline demon had decided that a Sith Lord's cloak was the appropriate garment to wander about under, but after peering at it closely for several minutes, he didn't see anything that could be distinctly recognized as cat hair. Satisfied, he vacuumed as much hair as he could off the rest of his armor, then donned the cloak and hurried from the apartment, so concerned with not being late for his audience with Palpatine that he never thought to wonder why the cat was no longer on his kitchen counter or where the creature might have gone.
He realized his mistake a short time later, when he walked into the vast, dimly lit chamber which the Emperor used for private audiences. At the far end of the room, Palpatine himself waited in a massive, high-backed throne, which was situated atop a circular dias approachable only by ascending a long flight of stairs. At the bottom of those stairs, safely outside the angry Emperor's field of vision perched a tiny, green-eyed, orange kitten. Vader glared darkly at it, but he could make no gesture or verbal command without alerting Palpatine to the animal's presence.
I don't believe it, Vader said to himself. Then he paused. Wait. Nevermind. Yes, I do.