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It takes her years, it feels like. Years ever since that first whisper, the first little hint in the margins of another record - years since Palpatine's keen instincts, the ones that make her teachers love her with an exasperated fondness even though she never just obeys -
Palpatine is a curious girl on the cusp of becoming a curious young woman. A frustrated girl, chaffing against the chains her father sets on her - one who knows she has potential smothered by those around her, though she can't quite name it -
A lifetime as a delinquent with daddy's money, a long habit of cultivating bonds and debts like a magpie squirreling away golden chains - it comes in handy when she gets enough of a clue that the itch rises under her skin.
She cashes in a lot of favors. It isn't easy to move under her own power, won't be for years yet until she's twenty one and free of her father's yoke, but there's gaps in every security and she's able to play nice long enough to get on a Youth Legislature field trip -
And from there, stealing a ship is child's play. Flying alone through hyperspace settles something in her, an itch under her skin, and this ship's specs say it needs two pilots but she's very scornful of the pilot who needs a helping hand to fly this thing - she always knows exactly what switch to flip, how to lean, when to move.
(One of the few times she's at peace, really. Such a pity her peace is illegal.)
Her heart's fluttering in her chest a bit as she lands on a grassy plain outside the ruins, more as she carefully enters -
This isn't a temple, she realizes.
It's better.
It's a storage facility.
Palpatine explores rather like a kid unleashed into a toy store she's been told might have booby traps but that anything she can carry out is hers to keep.
(She's tempted not to go home. Keeping all this away from her father would be hard, and she's just found something she likes so much more than daddy's money. An entire library of things.)
She does, reluctantly, force herself to actually look around before trying to figure out removing any specific items. Is there a main control room anywhere - ?
