AN: A new take on my Palpatine SI idea.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Star Wars movies, TV series, books, comics or games. They all belong to their respective creators and/or copyright owners. It's not for sale or rent.

Prologue: A different breed of Sith

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Part 1

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Hego Damask's residence

Coruscant

Deep within the tall building existed a place shielded from outside eyes. The best devices money could buy, ancient Sith artifacts, and alchemy obscured the area. It was there that Master and Apprentice met for the final time.

Sidious wined and dinned with his Master, feeding him bottles of wine until the Muun creature was so intoxicated it faded in and out of drunken sleep. He applied every lesson and every bit of experience as a politician to keep a complacent, happy mask in place.

Darth Plagueis, the supposed Dark Lord of the Sith, failed to see through the deception. Sidious grabbed his coat, swirled it around his shoulders, and then headed towards the door. With every step he took, his anticipation built up. Before he got close enough for the door to slide open automatically, Sidious paused and turned around. He stretched his awareness through the force, fixing everything within the room in his mind in a way he would never forget it.

The serving droid's neck whirled quietly, and a pair of photoreceptors curiously focused on Sith. The Dark Side whispered seductively in Sidious' mind.

Your election assured, the Sun Guard absent; Plagueis unsuspecting and asleep.

Sidious moved in a blur. His blood sang with power, and the Dark Side waited in anticipation. His fingers crackled with a web of purple energy, and Sidious struck at Plagueis' breathing device.

The Muun's eyes snapped open. The Dark Side swelled within like a brewing storm. Yet, instead of defending himself or striking at Sidious, Plagueis gathered more and more power within himself.

There was no surprise or pain in the Dark Lord's eyes. Not even hatred.

It dawned on Sidious that his Master was silently challenging him. He could see and sense that the Muun's breathing device was little more than a half-melted piece of scrap hanging off the creature's face. Plagueis had to be slowly suffocating, yet there was no fear or concern Sidious could sense. Was this fool courting death?

That thought took Sidious aback. Was his Master even now experimenting on himself, preparing to challenge and deny death itself? Did he think himself immortal now?!

Sidious drew on the Dark Side deeper than he ever had and unleashed all that power at Plagueis. He had no intention of torturing his Master. That was a chance he decided to forego. His intent was singular, and the Force jumped to obey his will. The purple lighting focused, becoming death incarnate.

Something within Plagueis shifted. The Dark Lord of the Sith unleashed all his power in a devouring wave made of the Dark Side itself. It pushed the lighting back, giving the wounded creature a brief moment of respite.

A shadow of fear stabbed Sidious' black heart. He snarled and threw everything he had, everything he was, into the onslaught. Black, devouring raw power, clashed with his lighting. The Dark Side sang in anticipation, eager to see which one of her champions would triumph today and shroud the galaxy in darkness.

Master and Apprentice threw everything they had at each other, pushing the arcane defenses weaved around the room to their limits. At that moment, they were too evenly matched.

For all his skill and knowledge, Sidious knew his Master never taught him everything the creature knew. That was yet another chain the Muun used to bind him, one he burned to shatter.

Plagueis was intoxicated and wounded. With every passing moment, his body weakened, starving for oxygen. Yet he was the more knowledgeable one. At their level, knowledge was raw power. If he weren't as drunk as he was, Plagueis would have triumphed.

Instead, a sudden, chilling realization gripped him. He was dying. He would die here and now, and at best, he would be able to drag Sidious into the abyss with him.

This would be the end of the Sith. The end of Plagueis' ambition and his quest for immortality. Even worse, it came at a time and place when he was so close to achieving his dreams!

Plagueis mind screamed through the Force, refusing such a fate. He refused his Apprentice's foolish madness. His rage manifested within the Force, and Plagueis shoved it all into the connection he shared with his Apprentice.

Sidious stumbled back. He faltered for a moment when his Master's rage slammed into his mind. He lost control of the lighting onslaught, and Plagueis' attack threw him against the nearest wall with a bone-crushing force. Pain and shock cracked Sidious'mental defenses, and his Master's rage rampaged through his open mind. At the same time, the lack of oxygen and sustained wounds became too much for Plagueis. His intoxicated mind no longer had the focus to reignite his body into healing itself.

The Dark Side itself howled. Her champions were on the edge of death. The galaxy bated its breath, pausing a moment before Master and Apprentice fell into the abyss and gifting the Light Side with an unprecedented victory.

The line of Bane failed, like countless Sith before them, destroyed from within.

The Dark Side desperately searched for an option, for a loophole to avoid a catastrophic loss. There were no more Sith left to champion its cause. The odd ghost bound to their tombs or precious item was of no use. They were failures, born from lines of Sith that ultimately fell for the same reason Plagueis and Sidious destroyed each other.

The Dark Side stilled, contemplating yet another defeat. Even in the madness tainting it, she could grasp the old ways simply didn't work. The realization that she willingly acted to break and change or destroy the few Sith who chose to try another path was a bitter cup indeed.

Their kind had been dead for a long time. In her madness, the Dark Side made sure of it.

All but one. An anomaly lost above Korriban on the verge of what should have been the Sith Empire's triumph, only for everything to end in the flames of betrayal. He was lost in hyperspace, and until this very moment, the Dark Side would have made sure he would have perished there.

She didn't take denials lightly. Someone struggling against her, the full scope of gifts was pleasing only for so long before it became offensive.

In that endless moment, the Dark Side grasped that her kind of madness was little more than sheer pointless insanity. In desperation, the Dark Side lashed at a spot countless parsecs away from Coruscant. The Light Side misread her intention. It was eager to ensure that the anomaly that once upon a time aided the Sith in bringing the Jedi and the Republic to its knees would be no more. The Force struck at the anomaly in hyperspace.

An ancient fighter, hurling through hyperspace without adequate shielding or a way out, finally imploded, scattering its molecule across the galaxy and beyond.

That should have been it. That strike should have erased the anomaly from the face of the universe. The Light Side hummed in contentment, victorious.

The Dark Side snatched a chance from the jaws of defeat.

The energy ravaging Hego Demask's private rooms stilled, condensed, and flowed into the broken form of Darth Sidious. In its moment of death, the Dark Side snatched the ghost of the anomaly. It was a Sith, and intimately connected with it. She shoved it within the body of the man known to the galaxy at large as Sheev Palpatine.

The endless moment shattered. The shroud of the Dark Side shrunk the moment the line of Bane perished.

Broken bones knit together. Bruised flesh healed, consuming excess Dark Side energy.

Neurons sparkled back to life.

A dead Sith stirred as his body recovered, and a lifetime of memories, not his own, slotted in place within his healing mind.

A litany of ugly curses shattered the silence within the ravaged room. The body of Darth Sidious slowly rolled around, and a man who should have died millennia ago got up to his knees. His body shook in protest as he forced it to move.

The man once known as Darth Vael looked at the dead form of Darth Plagueis, the Wise, and shook his head at the waste. He stumbled to the windows, and his shaking hands gripped the soft matter of the curtains. His body shook with the tingling sensation of healing flesh and phantom pain.

The ancient Sith opened the curtains just as golden dawn rose upon Coruscant. He could feel the Dark Side. She was wary and cautiously optimistic. For the first time in over sixty years, he couldn't hear her constant whispering in the back of his mind. She was simply happy and content. That was something that no one in their right mind would ever accuse the Dark Side of.

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I could remember everything. The past sixty years I spent serving the Sith Empire, even as I slowly worked for a way to bring it back to what it was before the war with the Republic. The Triumvirate I built with Baras and Zash.

Vette, Ashara… Everything I cared about and lost.

I could remember everything Palpatine, no Sidious did. Even as stupid as it was, an echo of him burned within my heart in satisfaction at Plagueis' death.

That was such a waste. Once again, the old ways proved self-destructive.

A bitter chuckle escaped my lips. The only thing that surprised me was that Sidious managed to get himself killed this morning. That wasn't how I remembered things should have turned out. Then again, I had a lifetime of proof that what I knew of this universe from so long ago, in another life, was a pale imitation of a living, breathing universe.

The only real surprise was my current existence. That I was somehow alive in a time and place similar to what I once watched in movies in my first life. After all the changes my existence caused, the future should be different.

Perhaps it was the Force, slowly conspiring to get the timeline back into familiar rails. Perhaps, I wasn't in the future of the past I lived. Here and now, it didn't matter.

I was on Coruscant, thousands of years in the future. I was in an older body, one that the Mother Machine didn't rebuild.

Here and now, I had more power at my fingertips than ever.

For all intents and purposes that mattered, I was Sheev Palpatine. Later today, I would be elected Chancellor of the Galactic Republic.

Here and now, the fate of the galaxy was within my grasp.

I was the last of the Sith. The Jedi Order was a pale shadow of the one I knew, yet it was nevertheless dangerous. The Republic was more corrupt than ever. Already, the leaders of hundreds of worlds were eager to work with me to bring forth a New Order. In the coming decade, this number will increase exponentially.

I knew the Sith plan. It would have been impossible if the Republic wasn't rotten to the core. Without the Sith, it was a matter of a few decades, before centuries, before someone rose to grasp power, even as the Republic decayed further. It would likely be a warlord on the Outer Rim, which the Core gleefully abandoned before the Banites were in a position to begin implementing their plan with Plagueis' rise to power. In the last four thousand years, the Outer Rim colonies grew in population and industrial power. They shouldn't be a match for the Republic; they wouldn't be a match for the Republic if it weren't a shadow of its former self.

A war of secession would be inevitable. There were too many economic interests in the Core bound by the flow of cheap resources from the outer colonies. Without the abundance of inexpensive resources, there would never be another golden age for the Republic. Countless influential people and corporations would lose fortunes and power. The economy would go out of the airlock.

What the worlds in the Outer Rim desperately needed and would fight for if they saw a chance for victory was something the Core couldn't give them. That was the price for the Republic's Golden Age and the prosperity of trillions of its citizens.

Sooner or later, something would break, and the galaxy would burn in another war. It was a race between the Outer Rim becoming powerful enough and the Republic decaying further.

Naboo was a stress test for the Republic. The Stress Test and Republic failed it spectacularly.

The only question was, what would I do? Would I vanish, enjoying my well-earned retirement? That idea was enticing.

Yet, the power I now held and the possibility to reshape the galaxy for thousands of years to come made my blood sing. I had a lifetime of memories and ambitions pushing me to seize the chance. I had another lifetime of memories that would have all culminated in a civil war for the very soul and future of the Sith Empire.

Then there was the possibility that the kriffing Vong would invade in fifty or sixty years. Unless I got myself killed, I knew of a few ways that might keep me alive and spry for decades to come. While this body wasn't young, with the Force and state-of-the-art medicine, even the stress of ruling the galaxy might not be enough to kill me before the Vong came.

On the one hand, it would be amusing to sit back and watch the Republic choke on itself. On the other hand, the desire to grab it by the throat and do what no other Sith had achieved was overwhelming.

I wasn't Sidious. I didn't care about the Rule of Two; I didn't need to turn the galaxy into a horror show to get high on the Dark Side.

I might be able to build an Empire that would last for thousands of years. I might be able to finally end the madness that was the endless war between the Jedi and the Sith.

All I had to do was throw the dice and lit the galaxy on fire myself, like I already did once, for vengeance.

I closed the curtains and turned around, looking critically at the room. The last fight of the Banites turned it into a mess. Even with corrupt local law enforcement, this would be much to risk covering up.

It would take a few pictures for the wrong people to ask the right questions. I stretched my aching body and looked around for the serving droid. It was little more than a clump of scrap shattered against the wall to the right.

I had to tidy up before calling it in. I had the right people bribed to ensure there would be no autopsy or a proper investigation. Still, there was no need to leave obvious clues for enthusiasts who might decide that gathering blackmail material would be a good idea.

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Part 2

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Chancellor's office

Senate building

Coruscant

Mere hours after my official election as a Chancellor, I already knew why Sidious would have gleefully thought that the Death Star was an excellent idea. The way things were going already, I might let Tarkin use it out of sheer spite if I ever authorized the damn thing to be built in the first place. Until recently, I knew intellectually that the Republic had to be messed up to allow the formation of the Empire to be as easy as it was supposed to happen.

The truth was worse than I could have ever imagined. Sidious would have had to go out of his way not to be praised as a hero for ending the madness that was the current Republic's way of 'governing.'

Well, one of those reasons was simple. As far as most people running the galaxy would be concerned, Palpatine would have been little more than a puppet. A new status quo would allow them unprecedented opportunities to seize more power and increase their influence and fortunes. Padme would be wrong.

Democracy wouldn't die when the Senate voted in an Emperor. For almost all intents and purposes that mattered, it was already dead. The same factions that aided Plagues and Sidious to weaken and eventually remove Valorum and opened the way for my election were the ones who believed they could control me.

One of them was Mass Ameda, the Vice Chancellor and the current Acting Chancellor. He was also one of the leaders of the Rim Faction, the hypocrite. Ameda was indispensable in weakening Valorum and tying down his power. If I didn't play my cards right until I could turn him into my creature, he could make my life tremendously difficult.

He was already managing me and tasting the waters, so to speak.

I sat behind Valorum's old desk, reviewing drafts for the speech I would make after officially swearing in as a Chancellor in a few hours. Ameda sat in one of the comfortable chairs before me, surrounded by a large group of financial advisers.

"The Trade Federation as a whole provides services that have become indispensable to the Republic and its economy over the past century. Trying to take away their trade license or cripple their military forces would be impractical in the extreme…."

"We need the cheap resources supplied from the Outer Rim. Without them, the economy of the Republic as a whole is as good as dead. The Trade Federation is a cornerstone guaranteeing that trade continues to flow because otherwise pirates and local warlords would run rampant again, with predictable results." I summarized.

The financial adviser, who had been droning on and on for the last twenty minutes, closed his mouth with a loud click.

"I'm glad you're aware of the gravity of the situation, Chancellor-Elect," Amedda gave me an oily smile.

"The Neimoidian branch of the Trade Federation will be paying for what they broke on Naboo. We can later negotiate any further sanctions and penalties to a reasonable level. Any issues that can kill the economy should, at worst, drown in red tape until we can quietly shove the whole issue away from the public eye." I looked pointedly at Amedda.

The blue-skinned Chagrian relaxed in his chair.

"When I visit Naboo in a few days. There I will have a heart-to-heart conversation with my dear Queen and the people who were supposed to keep her from turning disastrous policies into reality." I stared at Amedda. "Do we have an understanding?"

"I'm glad you remain a reasonable man, Chancellor-Elect. You are deftly avoiding the mistakes of your predecessor." Amedda's oily smile became somewhat genuine. "I'm also relieved you aren't letting sentimentality cloud your judgment. Despite the tragedy on Naboo, neither you nor this office can afford to give credence to any potential accusations of bias."

"If that weren't the case, I wouldn't be sitting in this chair, and we both know it." I offered him a fake smile of my own. "Speaking about the economy," I wiped out the smile from my face, "what are our options to alter the taxation changes that made something like the current unpleasantries inevitable in the first place?"

At its core, the Republic was an economic and defensive alliance, with everything else built upon that foundation. No matter that the Sith engineered the Naboo Crisis, the preconditions for something like it would have never materialized if the Republic wasn't broken.

The Republic has been doing its best to abandon its defensive capabilities for over a hundred years. More recently, the Senate gleefully voted in taxation changes that could easily break the economy, and thus the second most crucial pillar holding this house of cards in place.

It was pure, short-signed greed that allowed it to happen.

"A bill to reinforce the freedom of trade across the Republic, with the right clauses hidden in it, might work," Amedda suggested.

"Please, arrange for a preliminary draft so we can examine it. When we have that, we can consult with whoever we need to ensure that what we show the Senate is acceptable for as many factions as possible."

"I will make the necessary arrangements." This time, Amedda's smile was genuine. The only reason he finally backed the tax reform was because it was yet another torpedo to demolish Valorum's career with.

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Republic One
Naboo

This was a different time and age from what I was familiar with. As far as some of my memories went, the Chancellor of the Republic never went away from Coruscant without an escorting fleet. Ideally, they would also have the better part of an army group for protection on the ground. Anything less would have been a wet dream for the Imperial military.

Today, I traveled to Naboo with a small cadre of Senate Guards, who were, in practice, parade troops. At the same time, a group of somewhat more competent and experienced Judicial Forces personnel came along to provide more security. This was yet another reminder that I was in a different galaxy.

The only reason I got this much security in the first place was the recent upheaval on Naboo. Otherwise, I would be stuck with the parade ground troops. Finding someone loyal and competent for the job suddenly became important on my endless 'to-do' list.

On the bright side, I now had at least a decade, if not more, to subvert and troll the Jedi. That was a bit of joy I gleefully looked forward to after the last few days. On a related note, I would never know how Amedda was supposed to survive for the next few decades working under Sidious. I was already ready to strangle the slimy bastard in public.

The transport's pilot brought us in a wide circle that offered a great view of Theed. Say what you will about the idiotic pacifism of my supposed people; they knew how to build breathtaking cities. Even with Palpatine's memories, seeing the capital for the first time in person was something else. It helped me anchor my mask in place to deceive the Jedi better.

Speaking about the Jedi and politics, for that matter, my brief vacation would be over as soon as we landed. I would have to begin managing them and, more importantly, my dear naive Queen and future senator.

For Sidious, Naboo was little more than an obstacle and a headache he looked forward to ignoring from the moment he became the Chancellor. I had other ideas, especially if the Force decided to be stubborn and Skywalker eventually hooked up with Amidala.

One useful lesson I learned serving the Sith Empire was that kindness had its keen edge. That was especially true when your peers were murderous idiots who went out of their way to ensure the enemy would fight to the death. Gaining a reputation for keeping your word and treating prisoners and civilians well could break the enemy better than a few additional divisions could.

This sentiment was true out of the battlefield as well, as long as people knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what would happen if they kriffed with you.

In that regard, a subverted Amidala could be beneficial politically. If she ended up marrying Skywalker, she could be an invaluable ally.