(Quoth she, "I'd better hope you're not putting me on the Council right now!")

Indeed, it is very solidly break time.

Even if it kind of isn't, since she's technically traveling for a state occasion.

Naboo is a nice planet, and not just because it's Tatooine's direct opposite in climate; she rather approves of the planetary focus specifically on demonstrated competence.

Even though, despite Padmé being awesome, she thinks they maybe should have looked for a little more field-relevant expertise in a potential planetary leader.  Not that she's allowing herself to backseat politic, especially after-the-fact, and especially after directly benefiting from Her Majesty helping her.

C3PO is rather glad to have an opportunity to perform his original purpose, explaining protocols and translating for Kina (when she needs things translated, which becomes asymptotically less frequent).  That this trip is also being used to gather training data for political and personal analysis modules is not immediately relevant.

...Kina is not actually good at not working, but she is mostly only working on personal projects, like learning to swim, upgrading C3PO with financial audit modules, and teaching R2-D2 slicing.  (Just in case.)

(Speaking of just in case, she's been insistent her mom learn self-defense - someone might try to kidnap her, even with the most overtly malicious Sith definitively dead, just to exert influence on Kina, and Kina would not have a good time mounting a rescue mission.  Especially with whatever else such a party would undoubtedly have been up to, if they turned to kidnapping for influence.  ...Kina's mind is a scary place to live in, sometimes.)

After a while, Padmé has a chance to visit. "Kina! It's great to see you! How have you been?"

"I've - been, y- Padmé.  The whole thing with Chancellor Palpatine and the Senate was...stressful, and I'm glad to get some time away from the Temple, as kind as it has been to me, in the aftermath.  It's...I don't know if I'll ever quite disassociate the circumstances I arrived there within from the place itself."

"...Your planet is beautiful."

"Thanks." She looks out into the fields, which still are beautiful, even after this much time. It's probably not best to talk about the Senate incident right now. She's supposed to be relaxing. So, "What's that you're working on with the droids?"

"I'm mostly stuffing more processing power into Threepio here; he can then use it to do analysis, financial and personal.  And after the tale of your adventure with the flagship...Your team needed a slicer, I think.  So I'm teaching Artoo how, at least the basics.  He'll probably be a lot better than I would, when I'm done; I work with machines, not really code."

"Cool! I really don't know much about how that sort of thing works, but could you give me the basics?"

"Slicing is...Well it's pretty complicated!  But you know how Mace Windu got the battle droids to not shoot him by exploiting the fact that they wouldn't shoot their commander?  It's like that, but turned up to hyperspeed because there's so much more maneuvering space when you're inside the dataframe!"

"Huh! What's the end goal? Do you think you and R2 could actually take control of the battle droids, or just interfere with them if they tried to attack us again?"

"I'm expecting him to at least be able to get you maps of the ship next time; I'm also vaguely expecting even the Trade Federation to have patched that security flaw, if they still exist by the next time a Sith does something stupid.  Or whoever actually designed those droids; apparently the data we seized from their operations points at several Trade Federation systems for raw materials, notably Malastare - which also had Sith operations - but Geonosis, which is notably isolationist, for the assembly, and it's CIS through-and-through presently.  I wonder if Dooku would actually let Jedi in to investigate?  He's bound to want his own military force, and he's not going to leave the Trade Federation sitting on top of it if I know anything about the man; he's drawn to power almost for its own sake, which is honestly worrying, and he hates anything resembling ineffective exercise thereof.  So either they've had, 'accidents', already, and they're his droid factories now, or he's waiting for a convenient excuse.  ...I'd ask him myself, but the Order's all 'you shouldn't talk to Dooku, Kina, he's dangerous'.  I know he's dangerous; that's why I want to talk to him!  So I know how he's going to be dangerous!  And to provide a check against the amoral scientist manipulating him in the other corner!  ...Excuse me; that's work talk.  I'm allegedly here to vacation."

She quirks a small smile.  "Are there sights you'd recommend?"

She gestures out to the fields and the lake again. "You're looking at my favorite one."

"But my second favorite's probably the palace courtyard! It has some fountains, and art, and there's this really cool sculpture kind of decorated with holograms - oh, we should go see it."

"That would be very nice, I think."  Kina's smile seems to acquire a sense of solidity, more than it had before, despite looking the same.

She'll have to ask Padmé if she gets out of the palace very much; it wouldn't do for her to be that isolated, especially now.

After grabbing Shmi and the droids, they head down to the courtyard. It soon becomes evident that confinement to the palace courtyard is not, in fact, isolation; there's an enormous area that could probably fit at least one small town, and it's open to the public. There is art! It is indeed very nice!

"That is very pretty art."  Not that Kina knows all that much about art, but she can tell it's high quality.

"...I heard the Gungans were instrumental in the decisive battle; has any of their art made it in here?"

"Not really? I mean, there are a few things, like this Globe of Peace we just got, but we really haven't had much interaction with the Gungans before all of this, and bringing in art isn't the top priority at the moment."

"Huh.  That's...really weird, actually?  Like.  How did there just end up being - no contact whatsoever between two whole governments until this whole thing?"

Kina privately suspects that it's racism.

"I hope that's going to change - they have some impressive engineering, from what I've heard.  Craft that can go through the planetary core and stand up to its local megafauna."

"Contact... usually hasn't gone well. You're right that they're incredibly intelligent, but that's not necessarily something everyone recognizes - honestly, I think a big part of it is just the meesa and the okeeday, and yes, I know that speaking a different dialect is a terrible reason to conclude that someone's inferior to you, but... well, the stereotype has taken hold, and a lot of Naboo people don't really have any respect for the Gungans."

"And, of course, that then causes the Gungans to form a stereotype of us, and now even though a lot of us don't have a problem with the Gungans, they'll hate anyone from Naboo as a default. Which in turn only makes Naboo people think less of them. Neither of us has ever really had a motivation to involve themselves with the other, until the whole invasion thing."

"...wow, that's.  Really kriffed up, honestly.  That it happened like that, that it took this to change it at all...I hope that at least it - stays changed, open, respectful.  The backlash would be...horrible, if what they did got - forgotten, afterwards."

"Hopefully that won't happen! I'm not sure if we're going to be able to fix everything, but hopefully we can make things better."

"Although, I, uh, think I may have been a little too forward in trying to get Gungan representation."

"Um..."

"Well..."

She closes her eyes and winces.

"We might have chosen Jar Jar Binks as our new Senator."

"...that's either going to go horribly wrong, or horribly right.  My advice is, get him a protocol droid or personal aide, or really probably both, and something to fidget with in meetings.  His heart's in the right place, at least."

And then Kina shares in Padmé's wince, having now stopped dissociating from her emotions to problem-solve.

"Yeah, we might want to find a protocol droid for him. It's not even him breaking something that I'm directly worried about, it's how people would perceive us for it - obviously, Naboo's Senators don't have a great reputation at the moment. Although I guess with all the news going on at the moment, no one will really notice if Jar Jar makes a mistake or two."

"You really can't be blamed for a Sith Lord happening, either.  ...Maybe - Threepio, would you be willing to help out?"

"I see no reason why I couldn't, for a friend."

"Really? That would be great, but are you sure you would want to? His term would last... uh, depends on if he gets kicked out, but probably a few years! I thought you wanted to stick with Kina?"

"She can learn languages from the Order; she cannot keep an eye on Senatorial politics while she's Temple-bound.  I'm a bit at loose ends, really.  Regardless, it is not as if I am incapable of using a communicator, nor she of visiting under several pretexts.  Really though, madam, I advise purchasing the parts for a protocol droid and asking my Maker to assemble them for you; I'm an intelligence risk because my loyalty is foremost to her, rather than you."

"I definitely trust Kina!" she responds. "But if you want, I can do that. Kina, do you want to build another?"

"I'd love to!  Especially for one of my friends!"

"...And I can teach them Jar-Jar handling."

"Kina, I know you pretty much beat a Sith Lord, but I'm worried Jar Jar will be a little more of a challenge than that."

Kina giggles.  "...Well, if he's - huh, I wonder if he is Force-sensitive?  That'd be - interesting!"

Padmé presses her hand to her head. "Oh, nooo, that would be so... well, interesting, yes, but... urgh."

"I know, right?  ...Onto only semi-related business, did I actually see a Gungan shield bounce a blaster bolt back at the droids, in some of the footage that the Palace released of the battle of Theed?  Because if so, I really want to learn how they managed to do that!"

"They can't reliably control the direction, but deflection, sure! Hoping to build another addition for your set of gear?"

"I bet that the entire Jedi Order might like to have that ability available!  Lightsabers are not actually built for deflecting blaster bolts, you know?  But yes, I do want to pick one up myself even if the Order doesn't; it seems like it'll be generally handy, just in case."

"Yeah, those would probably be a lot more precise than a lightsaber! I don't think the ones they have would fit you, but I'm sure you can build your own. You'll want to make sure it can strap to your arm; you're starting to run low on empty hands."

"Mmhmm.  Well, no, the thing is that blocking a blaster with a lightsaber requires more precision than using a shield would.  I'll figure something out for spare hands, I'm sure.  Is there someone you'd recommend I ask about getting those plans, though?"

"Yeah, I just meant it could kind of focus its energy to where... well, maybe that wasn't the right word. Anyway, I can talk to Boss Nass - he's the leader of the Gungans, and we're trying to open up some trade. We'll have to pay for it, but honestly, if you make improvements to the design, that'll probably cover everything."

"I'll see what I can do!  Especially if the Jedi Order's buying in, it'd be good potential trade and publicity..."

"Yeah! So how have - "

She's interrupted by a call from her advisors. Apparently, another Naboo politician has been found to have close ties to Palpatine, and it's not yet clear whether this is exaggerated or an actual part of the conspiracy. "I'm sorry, Kina, but I have to leave. I'll see you soon, hopefully. Bye! Uh, may the Force be with you? That's what the Jedi say, right?"

"They do.  And I hope the Force is with you as well, Padmé.  See you soon!  And do let me know if I can help."

Not long afterwards, R2 pulls up to Kina with a message. It seems there's been a bit of a breakthrough in hunting for the Sith Lord, with suspicious purchase history found for machines that seemed to match Kina's descriptions of the Sith Lord's technology. The sender's identity is still difficult to determine, so does Kina want to try her hand at decoding what they have?

Sure, she can poke at it.  What do they have?

It's tricky. After a little poking, they can get the source of several messages believed to have been sent either by or from the Sith Lord. But while everything seems to suggest that it comes from on solid ground - there are even gravitational fields corresponding to a planet being there - the coordinates don't match any planet in the Jedi databases.

Well, does the galaxy at large think there's a planet there?

Nothing's coming up so far. If the Jedi archives don't have it, they probably won't be able to find it anywhere else... hmm. R2's asked some questions online to anyone available on Rishi, which seems to be the closest planet to the origin of the message.

It takes a few hours to get a response. Eventually, though, one person suggests that it might be a planet called Kamino. It seems to have pretty high levels of technology, from the little R2 can find, but it's also pretty reclusive. Still, the Jedi should have had something on them.

Oh, and this is interesting.

Kamino specializes in cloning.

"...Cloning."

"Well."

"That bears investigation.  Even if I posit a more benign interest...I don't trust it."

"Not to mention the fact that the Order should've known it was there before now."

"...For which I am preemptively blaming Count Dooku.  He had recent access to the Archives, and disillusionment with the Order.  If someone were to want to maliciously edit our records...I'd tap him to actually do it."

"R2, good work.  See if you can find any other 'missing' planets this way."

And Kina thinks she's going to recommend that the Order audit everything they operate.  Just in case.

It's C3PO who finds the smoking gun, with his shiny new analysis modules:

There's a large, ongoing expenditure from the Jedi Order's emergency funds, which mostly never get touched - one that's being routed into Kamino.